Tuesday, 28 July 2026

Saudi Arabia's energy ministry has issued a tender for two 1400 MW pressurized water reactors, and Westinghouse was not asked to bid, Neutron Bytes reported.

The procurement sits inside a much larger buildout plan. Saudi Arabia's stated long term ambition is a fleet of 16 nuclear plants across three sites, according to Neutron Bytes.

China lodged its bid for the Saudi reactor business in August 2023, per the same account.

Saudi officials would rather contract South Korea's Korea Electric Power Corp (Kepco) to build the reactors while drawing on U.S. operational expertise, and would do so without accepting the proliferation controls Washington generally requires, according to the WSJ as cited by Neutron Bytes.

That preference runs into a legal obstacle. The 123 Agreement between South Korea and the U.S. bars South Korea from selling its nuclear reactors or technologies to countries that do not themselves hold 123 Agreements with the U.S., Neutron Bytes reported.

The combination leaves the tender's two reactor units subject to a bilateral nuclear cooperation framework that has not been settled. Any Kepco award would depend on resolving the same proliferation terms Saudi officials have declined to accept.

The US State Department's Bureau of African Affairs has launched the US-Africa Strategic Investment Program, offering grants of up to USD 50 million each from a total budget of USD 500 million, according to Semafor.

Businesses, nonprofits, and international organizations can compete for the awards, which Semafor reported are intended to "de-risk and catalyze" private investment, with a focus on critical minerals and what the State Department calls "commercial diplomacy."

The money is not development finance. Per Semafor, Washington is instead paying for the groundwork that often decides whether an investment proceeds: geological mapping, customs modernization, regulatory reform, and workforce training.

Administration sits with an office assembled from what remains of USAID's Africa portfolio, folded into the State Department after the agency was dismantled in 2025, Semafor reported.

Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Frank Garcia recently pointed to the Lobito Corridor as a prime example of the new US approach to the continent, according to Semafor. The 810-mile US-backed rail and transport route links the port of Lobito in Angola to mines in DR Congo and Zambia.

Grant-funded permitting reform and customs work sit upstream of the mine-to-port economics that determine whether critical minerals volumes reach export markets at all. The corridor Garcia cited connects that logistics question directly to copper and cobalt supply chains feeding battery and grid equipment manufacturing.

New offshore wind contract awards collapsed to 11.4 GW in 2025 from 56 GW the year before, according to the Global Wind Energy Council, as cited by Mongabay.

Grid connections told a different story. Mongabay reported that 9.3 GW of offshore wind capacity came online globally in 2025. China accounted for 6.6 GW of that total, while European countries added around 3 GW, per the same report.

The pipeline thinned as developers walked away from committed projects. Ørsted canceled the 2.4 GW Hornsea 4 project in the UK in May 2025, citing an increase of supply chain costs, higher interest rates, and an increase in the risk to construct and operate, according to Mongabay. The project would have ranked among the largest offshore wind farms in the world.

TotalEnergies followed a year later. In May 2026 the company pulled out of offshore wind plans in Germany, with two major projects totaling 3 GW, citing rising construction costs and grid connection delays, Mongabay reported.

Policy has removed capacity as well. The Trump administration has spent USD 2.6 billion buying back leases for offshore wind projects to ensure they do not proceed, according to Mongabay.

Where fleets are already built, the output is material. Mongabay reported that offshore wind supplied nearly 20% of the electricity the United Kingdom generated in 2025, with around 3,000 turbines producing enough power for approximately 15.5 million homes.

Turbine scale continues to climb. Mingyang Smart Energy unveiled a 50 MW configuration pairing two 25 MW turbines on a single floating platform, according to Mongabay. Floating designs extend siting options beyond the shallow water depths that fixed-bottom foundations require.

The gap between the 11.4 GW awarded and the 9.3 GW connected leaves little cushion for the years when today's contracted projects would have reached commissioning.

Bojangles has opened its first DC fast-charging station, at a restaurant in Savannah, Georgia, Electrek reported. The fried chicken chain is planning dozens more sites.

The charging hub sits at the company's restaurant at 4401 Ogeechee Road and opened in May, according to Electrek.

The chain built the site with EV charger company XLR8 America and Energy and Environmental Design Services, which handled installation and maintenance, per the same report.

Bojangles plans to add 85 chargers by early 2027, the New York Times reported this month. A company spokesperson initially said a second charging site at a Bojangles restaurant will open in Charlotte later this year.

BYD has produced 100,000 electric vehicles in Brazil, according to CleanTechnica.

The Brazilian site ranks as the carmaker's largest production facility outside Asia, CleanTechnica reported. That places the plant at the top of BYD's manufacturing footprint in every region beyond its home continent.

The milestone lands as the company sells electric vehicles in many countries across Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America, per the same report.

DNO ASA's Kurdistan net production dropped to 273 boepd in Q2 2026 from 39,600 boepd in the prior quarter, according to the company's trading update published via GlobeNewswire, leaving the North Sea to carry almost the entire portfolio at 84,912 boepd.

The Kurdistan figure compares with 56,070 boepd in Q2 2025, the company reported. North Sea volumes moved the other way over the same twelve months, rising from 33,348 boepd, though they slipped from 88,647 boepd in Q1 2026.

DNO said limited field operations restarted at the Tawke license in Kurdistan on 9 April, with workovers on existing wells and the relaunch of a previously announced eight-well drilling campaign. Production itself came back later: the company initiated output from the Tawke field on 28 June and from Peshkabir on 11 July.

Offshore Norway, the Dvalin Nord field started production on 30 June, according to the update. DNO expects the field to deliver 3,000 boepd net at plateau.

The Norwegian oil and gas operator paid a Q2 dividend of NOK 0.375 per share, totaling USD 39.4 million. That rate equates to NOK 1.50 per share on an annualized basis, the company said.

DNO will publish its Q2 2026 operating and interim financial results on 13 August at 07:00 CET.

A team at the University of Sydney in Australia has measured a power conversion efficiency of 30.2% on a two-terminal monolithic perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell with an area of 10 cm², according to pv magazine.

The measurement was confirmed by the PV Performance Lab at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), pv magazine reported.

Cell area is the substantive change. The device is ten times larger than the team's earlier 1 cm² perovskite-silicon tandem cell, which reached 30% efficiency and was independently certified by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in 2024, according to pv magazine. Scaling from a square centimetre to ten while holding efficiency above 30% is the step that separates laboratory records from anything a manufacturer can use.

On the device architecture, pv magazine reported that a heterojunction silicon cell serves as the bottom junction of the tandem stack.

The work was led by Professor Anita Ho-Baillie, John Hooke Chair of Nanoscience, per pv magazine. The team said the result reinforces the University of Sydney's position as a leader in perovskite-silicon tandem research.

London Ambulance Service has put 77 more battery-electric emergency vehicles into service, expanding what it describes as the UK's largest fully electric ambulance fleet, electrive reported.

The intake splits into 37 ambulances and 40 fast-response cars, according to electrive.

With the new vehicles running, the service operates 41 electric ambulances, 81 electric fast-response cars and three electric motorcycles.

That leaves the fleet's electric share still a minority. Around a quarter of the 1,200 vehicles the service runs can now operate on electric power, a figure that counts hybrids alongside battery-electric models, according to the service.

Charging capacity has been the constraint on how fast an emergency fleet can switch. The service installed 288 charging points across 18 ambulance stations in London last year, bringing 27 per cent of its sites to full charging capability, electrive reported. Charging infrastructure is scheduled to reach every London Ambulance Service site by 2028.

Duty-cycle range is the other question for ambulance electrification, and the service says its electric ambulances can complete a full 12-hour shift on a single charge.

On emissions, the service says it has cut carbon emissions by 12 per cent since 2022 and is targeting a further 20 per cent reduction by 2029.

Hawaiian Electric has filed an Integrated Grid Planning proposal to add renewables and energy storage across Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi Island, and Maui, according to CleanTechnica.

The utility will seek an additional 500 MW of firm generation on Oʻahu, CleanTechnica reported. Firm generation refers to capacity a system operator can call on when needed, the counterpart to variable solar and wind output that the storage component of the filing is meant to shift across the day.

CleanTechnica describes the procurement as one of the state's largest energy procurements ever and as significant progress toward 100% renewable energy. The three islands named in the filing are separate grids rather than one interconnected system, so capacity procured for one cannot be dispatched to another.

The filing sits in the Integrated Grid Planning docket, the process Hawaiian Electric uses to set resource needs before opening competitive solicitations. That sequencing means the 500 MW figure is a procurement target rather than contracted capacity.

A 22 MW solar plant at the Natural Resources Development College (NRDC) in Zambia is feeding electricity into the national grid, ZANIS reported. The plant was commissioned on March 24, 2026, at a total cost of USD 17.5 million.

According to ZANIS, the project was developed by Kiyona Energy Limited in partnership with NRDC. Peter Sakala, Head of Projects at Kiyona Energy Limited, said the plant is currently injecting 22 MW into the national grid and can supply power to approximately 15,000 households.

The installation was established under the Presidential Solar Initiative through a partnership between NRDC, Kiyona Energy Limited and ZESCO Limited, ZANIS reported.

Equipment procurement for the 600 MW thermal power plant under construction in Sinazongwe District, Zambia, has reached 80 percent, according to ZANIS (Zambia News and Information Services).

The scheme pairs coal mining with power generation and is being developed in partnership with ZCCM-IH, ZANIS reported, with the stated aim of raising Zambia's electricity capacity while supporting development in Southern Province.

Roy Mwamba, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Wonderful Group, said the project's major deliveries are expected once access roads are fully opened.

Oilserv Limited has started work on the shallow-water portion of the Gas Transmission System (GTS-1) expansion serving Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG), the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported.

The expansion is intended to reinforce the supply infrastructure feeding the Bonny Island liquefaction plant, according to NAN.

GTS-1 is the transmission line that moves feedgas toward the liquefaction facility, and the shallow-water scope now under way covers pipeline re-routing and installation in that segment.

Bidding in the Nigeria 2025 Licensing Round drew 200 technical and commercial bids from 143 prequalified companies for 37 oil and gas assets, according to the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC).

The round targets 300,000 barrels per day, the News Agency of Nigeria reported.

The bid count exceeds the number of assets on offer, indicating that companies filed multiple submissions across the acreage tranche. NUPRC put the prequalified bidder pool at 143 and the asset count at 37.

The commission is Nigeria's upstream petroleum regulator.

Nigeria's Federal Government will put 13 oil and gas blocks back into the bid basket in the ongoing 2025 Licensing Round, the News Agency of Nigeria reported.

The returned acreage comes with a condition attached. According to the News Agency of Nigeria, successful bidders must begin development promptly or forfeit the assets under the government's "drill or drop" policy.

That forfeiture clause shifts the burden onto award winners rather than the licensing authority, tying continued tenure to actual work on the ground rather than to the award itself.

The Puerto Rico Energy Bureau conditionally approved a 100 MW/400 MWh battery energy storage project proposed by Yabucoa Energy LLC, according to ESS News, clearing the contract subject to several modifications.

The four-hour system sits in the municipality of Yabucoa, in the island's southeast, on the site of the former Shell refinery, ESS News reported.

Yabucoa Energy will develop, operate and maintain the battery under a 20-year energy storage services agreement with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), according to ESS News.

The regulator attached a durability condition to that term. Yabucoa Energy must hold the full 400 MWh discharge capacity across the whole 20 years, replacing or expanding system components as necessary, ESS News reported. That obligation shifts battery degradation risk onto the developer rather than the offtaker for the life of the contract.

On the cost side, the agreement assumes interconnection infrastructure costs of up to USD 20 million, ESS News reported. If the final figure comes in below that ceiling, contract payments must be cut by the difference.

A research team from Switzerland and the Netherlands has released an open-source framework for intraday, national-scale PV power forecasting that pairs satellite-based deep learning with optical-flow techniques and numerical weather prediction models, according to pv magazine.

The framework was tested against Switzerland's installed base. Per pv magazine, the researchers trained a separate XGBoost model for each of the 6,434 operational PV systems identified in the country. That per-system approach replaces the single aggregated model typically used for fleet-level output estimates.

Accuracy at the national aggregate was the headline result. Satellite-based models forecast daily total PV generation with relative errors below 10% on 82% of days across the study period of 2019-2020, pv magazine reported.

The forecasting chain runs on clear-sky index imagery. Each model received four consecutive clear-sky index images covering the previous hour and predicted the next eight images over a two-hour forecast horizon, according to pv magazine. Two hours is the window that matters most for intraday electricity trading and for balancing decisions taken after the day-ahead auction has cleared.

The combination of three method families in one pipeline addresses different failure modes. Optical flow tracks cloud motion from image to image and works well over short horizons; numerical weather prediction carries further out but resolves individual cloud fields poorly; satellite-based deep learning sits between them.

The work was published in the journal Energy and AI under the title "Intraday spatiotemporal PV power prediction at national scale using satellite-based solar forecast models," per pv magazine.

System-level forecast error translates directly into balancing costs, since transmission operators must procure reserves to cover the gap between scheduled and delivered solar output. Distributed rooftop fleets are harder to forecast than utility-scale plants because output data from thousands of small systems is fragmented or unavailable in real time. Modelling each of the 6,434 systems separately, rather than scaling up a representative sample, is the design choice the Swiss test case demonstrates.

Because the code is published open source, other jurisdictions can apply the same chain to their own PV registries and satellite feeds.

Floating photovoltaics on the reservoir behind Morocco's Hassan Addakhil Dam would deliver electricity at a real levelized cost of USD 0.045/kWh with an internal rate of return of 7.36%, according to research from Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University reported by pv magazine.

The modelling tested several coverage scenarios for the reservoir. First-year output ranged from 316.2 GWh at the low end to 948.6 GWh at the high end, pv magazine reported.

Water retention is the second output of the design. Covering 15% of the reservoir surface suppresses 70% of evaporation across the covered area, which the researchers put at water savings of up to 4.18 million cubic meters per year.

The cost figure rests in part on a thermal advantage over dry land. Panels sitting on water run roughly 5 to 7 degrees cooler than ground-mounted equivalents during the summer period, and that cooling translates into an annual energy gain of 10.6% against conventional land-based installations, according to pv magazine. Cell efficiency falls as module temperature rises, so the reservoir surface acts as a passive heat sink through the hottest months.

The economics reported for the site sit against a national utility-scale solar base that remains small. Morocco added 204 MW of new utility-scale solar capacity in 2025, lifting cumulative utility-scale capacity to 1.29 GW, pv magazine reported. On the upper coverage scenario for a single reservoir, the modelled 948.6 GWh of first-year generation would come from one water body.

The 7.36% internal rate of return is the metric that determines whether a developer or a public offtaker can finance the build, and the study treats the deployment as economically viable on that basis. Dual-purpose siting is what carries it: the same surface area produces power and cuts reservoir losses, and the 4.18 million cubic meters retained annually accrues to whoever manages the dam rather than to the generator.

Scania Industrial Batteries will supply battery systems for the battery-electric underground mining vehicles built by Canadian machinery manufacturer MacLean Engineering, under a strategic partnership reported by electrive.

The hardware at the centre of the deal is Scania's Core 800 pack. According to electrive, each unit carries 97 kWh of capacity at a nominal voltage of 691 volts, with thermal management and a battery management system integrated into the pack.

MacLean picked Scania as preferred battery partner for its battery-electric vehicle platform after what the two companies describe as a comprehensive global evaluation process.

Scania says more than 2,000 of its battery systems are already running in underground mines worldwide. That installed base spans drivetrains from 400 to 800 volts and energy capacities from 21 to 768 kWh, according to the company.

Underground mining is one of the harder duty cycles for battery integration: enclosed workings put a premium on heat removal and on packaging, which is where the Core 800's integrated thermal management and voltage class matter for a vehicle designer choosing between suppliers. The stated aim of the partnership is to advance the electrification of underground mining vehicles.

The Moranbah Solar Farm and battery project has cleared 5.3.4A Connection Approval with the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), clearing the grid hurdle for Grupo Cobra and its developer subsidiary Zero-E Australia, ESS News reported.

Rated capacity at the site is 145 MW of solar generation, sitting alongside a battery energy storage system of 50 MW and 100 MWh.

The hybrid plant is sited in the Bowen Basin, which ESS News identifies as Australia's largest coal-producing region.

Zero-E has put construction start at mid-2027, with first operation tipped for early 2029.

Output will reach the network at Ergon Energy's 132 kV Broadlea substation, according to ESS News.

Moranbah holds a contract from Tender 7 of the Capacity Investment Scheme, one of 19 projects picked in that round. Tender 7 underwrites 7.8 GW of renewable generation and 7.9 GWh of storage through long-term revenue guarantees, ESS News reported.

Up to 250 jobs are expected during the build phase.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) published research on 28 July 2026 assessing hydrogen bioenergy with carbon capture and storage technologies, the United Kingdom department said. The evidence was gathered by the Energy Systems Catapult under a DESNZ commission.

Five routes were examined, according to DESNZ: biomass gasification with carbon capture and storage (CCS), anaerobic digestion paired with steam methane reforming and CCS, wastewater ammonia conversion, biomass pyrolysis with CCS, and dark fermentation.

DESNZ describes hydrogen BECCS as a technology that pairs hydrogen production with the capture of carbon dioxide for storage. Two of the five assessed routes rely on gasification or pyrolysis of biomass feedstock, while a third converts ammonia recovered from wastewater.

The anaerobic digestion route combines biogas production with steam methane reforming and CCS, placing the capture stage downstream of the reforming step rather than at the point of combustion. Dark fermentation, the fifth route in the assessment, produces hydrogen biologically.

The publication is framed by DESNZ as an updated assessment, following the department's decision to commission the Energy Systems Catapult to collect evidence on the technologies.

The Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division recently changed its name to the Energy and Natural Resources Division, according to Inside Climate News.

The renamed division also added "unleashing American energy" to its stated mission, Inside Climate News reported.

Former attorneys at the department described the shift to the outlet. Among them is Tom Mariani, who spent nearly 40 years working as an environmental attorney inside the Department of Justice, according to Inside Climate News.

Neoen has begun construction on its second battery energy storage project in Italy, according to ESS News. The developer told the outlet that the next phase of storage deployment in the country will hinge less on technology and financing availability than on grid infrastructure, permitting and regulatory certainty.

The new site is the Pasian di Prato Battery in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, a 25 MW/100 MWh system, as reported by ESS News. The four-hour asset secured a capacity market contract in February 2025 and is expected to enter operations in 2027.

Neoen's first Italian battery, the 10 MW/40 MWh Broni Battery, remains under construction, ESS News reported.

On the generation side, the company's 7.4 MWp Arena Po solar plant in Pavia province started feeding electricity into the grid in early 2026 and is now fully operational, according to ESS News. Output is expected to reach 11.9 GWh a year, sold under a 10-year power purchase agreement signed with data center operator Equinix.

Across its portfolio, Neoen said it holds 120 MW of solar capacity and 2.3 GW of combined battery storage and solar capacity globally.

Keppel has opened a program to monetize as many as 10 legacy offshore drilling rigs through the newly created Keppel Offshore Fund, a transaction valued at roughly USD 2.86 billion, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

The first tranche covers six operational modern jack-up rigs, which Keppel will divest to the fund in 2026 for about USD 930 million, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital. Cash reaching Keppel from that initial six-rig transaction is put at about USD 478 million in 2026.

Apollo Global Management is the anchor investor. Funds, accounts and entities it manages have agreed to put USD 1.5 billion into the vehicle, per the same report.

The accounting treatment cuts the other way in the near term. Keppel said it expects to book a loss of approximately USD 71.3 million on the divestment of the six operational rigs in its first-half 2026 results, including the recycling of foreign currency translation losses.

Beyond the jack-ups already in scope, up to four additional uncompleted rigs could be progressively transferred between 2027 and 2028, subject to certain conditions. That staging is what takes the program to the full complement of 10 units.

Keppel chief executive Loh Chin Hua said the transaction marks a further milestone in the company's transformation and establishes a clear pathway for the progressive monetisation of the legacy rigs.

Average wholesale electricity prices in Australia's National Electricity Market fell 47% year-on-year to AUD 74/MWh in the June quarter, their lowest quarterly average since 2020, and AEMO attributed the drop to a record renewable share, according to pv magazine.

That renewable share reached a June-quarter high of 42.1% of NEM generation, up from 37.1% a year earlier, pv magazine reported.

Rooftop capacity did much of the lifting. Cumulative rooftop solar in the NEM rose to 26.4 GW at the end of the June quarter from 25.7 GW three months earlier, according to pv magazine. Output from distributed PV averaged 2,520 MW over the quarter, a record for the period and 6.9% higher year-on-year, lifting its share of the energy mix to 10.3%.

Household batteries scaled faster in percentage terms. Residential storage capacity across the NEM expanded by almost 3.3 GWh, or 41%, over the quarter, pv magazine reported.

Grid-scale commissioning also accelerated. Fourteen new generation and storage projects totalling 3.9 GW reached full output during the quarter, double the previous quarterly record, according to pv magazine.

Gas was the loser in the dispatch stack. Gas-powered generation in the NEM averaged 1,050 MW, down 30% year-on-year and the lowest June-quarter average since 2003, pv magazine reported.

The picture diverged in the separate Western Australian market. In the Wholesale Electricity Market, average real-time wholesale prices rose 30% year-on-year to AUD 118/MWh, according to pv magazine.

Georgia Power has commissioned the Moody Battery Facility, one of the utility's first battery energy storage system sites tied to solar generation, according to Solar Builder.

The installation sits just outside Valdosta in southern Georgia and holds 49.5 MW of capacity, Solar Builder reported. That capacity can be discharged to the state grid over a period of about four hours.

Moody was cleared alongside three other battery projects in the state, a group Solar Builder puts at 715 MW combined, under the 2023 update to Georgia's Integrated Resource Plan.

Approval reaches well beyond that first tranche. The Georgia Public Service Commission has signed off on construction of nine further battery energy storage facilities, which Solar Builder said plan to add more than 3 GW of storage to the Georgia grid once online.

The utility also secured approval for two new solar systems with adjacent storage in Laurens and Dougherty counties, a combined 350 MW, per Solar Builder.

Tesla has asked a federal judge for emergency access to Angstrom Automotive Group's plant in Troy, Texas, to remove the tooling it needs to keep building the Cybertruck, according to Electrek. Electrek reported that the case was filed on July 23 in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas.

The dispute turns on money owed. Angstrom offered to keep the plant running if Tesla paid USD 250,000 per week on top of what it already owes on open purchase orders, per Electrek.

Tesla went to the site before it went to court. Electrek reported that Tesla sent representatives to Troy on July 21 accompanied by law enforcement, and the gate stayed shut.

The complaint frames the tooling as unreplaceable in the near term. According to the filing as reported by Electrek, no other supplier can currently make the parts, and rebuilding the tooling from scratch would take five to six months.

That timeline matters because the buffer is thin. Tesla says its on-hand supply of the affected Cybertruck components is dwindling and will be exhausted in mere days, according to Electrek.

Seatrium has secured Approval in Principle from Bureau Veritas Marine & Offshore for a 30 MW Floating Data Centre concept, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The design is a jetty-moored barge without propulsion, built around six independent 5 MW Data-In-A-Box modules, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported. Each module packages IT equipment, cooling systems, power distribution and supporting infrastructure into a single modular unit.

Seatrium said it is also working on 100 MW and larger floating data centre concepts aimed at hyperscale deployments, according to the same report. The company framed those larger units as a response to land, power and cooling constraints in coastal markets.

The classification approval follows a memorandum of understanding that Seatrium and Bureau Veritas signed during Singapore Maritime Week earlier this year to advance offshore power and digital technologies, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

Researchers at Westlake University have built an anion exchange membrane, designated PAMQ, that reduces superacid use by 62.5%, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The team behind the membrane is based in Hangzhou, Hydrogen Fuel News reported.

Durability is the second claim attached to the material. Hydrogen Fuel News reported that PAMQ endures alkaline stability testing running to 10,000 hours.

Under load, the membrane has run for more than 2,500 hours at a current density of 1.0 A/cm² in electrolyzers using non-platinum-group-metal catalysts, according to Hydrogen Fuel News. That combination matters for anion exchange membrane water electrolysis, where the appeal over proton exchange membrane systems is the ability to drop precious-metal catalysts, and where membrane degradation in caustic conditions has been the constraint on stack lifetime.

Superacid chemistry is used in making the polymer backbones of high-performance ion exchange membranes. Cutting that input by 62.5% addresses both the cost and the handling burden of the synthesis step, per the figure reported by Hydrogen Fuel News.

The PosHYdon pilot has produced its first green hydrogen offshore, on the fully electrified Q13a-A platform in the North Sea off the Netherlands, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The platform sits about 13 kilometers off the Dutch coast, Hydrogen Fuel News reported.

The pilot combines offshore wind power, electrolysis, and existing gas infrastructure on the same installation, per the same report. Hydrogen Fuel News described the setup as the world's first demonstration of combined offshore wind, gas, and hydrogen systems operating together.

Zambian state-owned utility ZESCO has commissioned the second phase of the Chisamba solar power plant, lifting the complex to 200 MW of generation capacity, according to pv magazine.

The added 100 MW took seven months to build and created more than 1,400 jobs, Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema said, as reported by pv magazine.

The expansion came in at USD 70 million against an initial estimate of USD 100 million, pv magazine reported. That is below the USD 100 million price tag attached to the first phase, which was completed by May 2025 with ZESCO subsidiary Kariba North Bank Extension Power Corp as developer and Powerchina as engineering, procurement and construction contractor, according to the same report.

Chisamba sits inside a government programme to deploy 1 GW of utility-scale solar by the end of the year, pv magazine reported. The wider goal is to raise Zambia's installed electricity generation capacity to 10 GW by 2030.

Spain's official state bulletin (BOE) published details of seven renewable energy projects approved or submitted for permitting during the third week of July, covering 260 MW of battery energy storage systems, according to ESS News.

The filings also cover 40.5 MW of renewable hybridization projects, ESS News reported.

The largest single approval went to Bruc Energy, which secured administrative approvals for four battery storage modules to be developed in Alcalá de Guadaíra, Seville, according to ESS News. Each module carries a capacity of 39.6 MW.

FRV requested authorization for a BESS project in Camargo, Cantabria, rated at 49.94 MW, per the same report.

A smaller application came from Dargon Energy, which submitted plans for a storage facility of 4.99 MW in L'Arboç, Tarragona, ESS News said.

Solaria filed for a 45 MW battery storage module to be hybridized with its Agrupación Maira Gamma solar project in Briviesca, Burgos, according to ESS News. The solar plant is rated at 140.127 MW.

The U.S. Department of Energy selected Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Idaho as potential host states for Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses, the department announced.

The five contenders emerged from 28 applications submitted by 26 states, according to the Energy Department. States filed their responses by April 1, 2026.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright signed Memorandums of Understanding with each of the five states to continue exploring opportunities to host the campuses, the department said.

Each campus is designed to handle activities spanning the full nuclear fuel lifecycle: fuel fabrication, enrichment, reprocessing of used nuclear fuel, and final disposition of used nuclear fuel. That scope places front-end supply and back-end waste management on a single site rather than splitting them across separate facilities.

The Energy Department put the potential draw of the proposed campuses at up to USD 50 billion in capital investment. Establishing a campus could generate as much as USD 10 billion in state and local tax revenue and create nearly 25,000 jobs, according to the department.

Rock Tech Lithium has signed a binding offtake agreement with Geneva-based commodity trader Transamine covering concentrate from its Georgia Lake project in Ontario, according to electrive.

Deliveries start in 2028. Rock Tech will supply up to 100,000 dry metric tonnes of spodumene concentrate a year across an initial seven-year term, electrive reported. The ramp is staged: 50,000 tonnes are planned in the opening months of the contract before volumes rise to the annual maximum of 100,000 tonnes during regular operations.

Transamine is putting up an upfront payment facility of up to USD 80 million to support project development, according to electrive. That prepayment is repaid over 24 months from the first commercial delivery, offset directly against concentrate volumes rather than in cash.

The two parties also agreed an option to extend the contract by up to five additional years, electrive reported.

Chief executive Mirco Wojnarowicz called the agreement a strategic milestone, saying it "provides a long-term, commercial foundation for the Georgia Lake mine's future production, strengthens our financing pathway" and shows "how Rock Tech is turning critical minerals ambition into execution".

More than 300,000 people have been forced from their homes by wildfires burning in France and Spain, according to CleanTechnica.

CleanTechnica described the fires as mammoth blazes threatening entire cities in the two countries.

The outlet reported the displacement figure as a running total of people driven out by the fires.

Oil producers as a group are on track to pocket a half-trillion-dollar cash windfall this year, double the pre-war estimate, Wood Mackenzie analysts said Tuesday, according to Semafor Net Zero.

The cash is arriving as Big Oil companies post what are expected to be bumper second-quarter profits driven by the war in Iran, Semafor Net Zero reported.

So far the money is not moving. Most producers have chosen to sit on the cash rather than dole it out to shareholders or invest in new drilling, according to Semafor Net Zero.

Equity markets have already priced in part of the gain. Chevron and ExxonMobil shares are each up nearly 40% over the past year, Semafor Net Zero reported.

Spot electricity prices in South Australia have twice been pushed above AUD 20,000 per MWh this year by diesel and gas generators, according to RenewEconomy, which reported the spikes hit once during a summer heatwave and again during a June cold snap.

The first episode came during the Australia Day heatwave in January. RenewEconomy reported that demand rose so sharply that the state's fleet of big batteries exhausted itself, after which gas and diesel plant seized control of the market and set prices at up to more than AUD 20,000/MWh.

The pricing episodes sit awkwardly against South Australia's generation profile. Wind and solar supply an average 75% of the state's electricity, according to RenewEconomy. The state is targeting 100% net renewables by the end of 2027.

RenewEconomy frames the spikes as a black mark against the renewables build-out, with the marginal price being set by the smallest and dirtiest units on the system rather than by the technologies that dominate the mix. The June repeat, driven by cold rather than heat, indicates the exposure runs across both demand seasons.

Canada's LNG export projects may come online into weak demand, oversupplied markets, low prices and weak investor returns, IEEFA said in a slide presentation published July 28, 2026.

The presentation, titled "The current state of LNG in Canada," frames the shift as a change in market conditions rather than a delay. IEEFA describes a new riskier market landscape for the Canadian LNG industry as Middle East tensions continue to fluctuate.

Demand-side behaviour is central to that argument. Many Asian economies handled the Strait of Hormuz crisis by cutting LNG imports and speeding up adoption of renewables, according to IEEFA. That response points away from the assumption that supply disruption in one corridor pulls buyers toward alternative long-haul cargoes.

IEEFA sets the four pressures together: weak demand, overabundant supply, low prices, and weak returns for investors. Each compounds the others for developers still hoping to launch new export capacity.

A United Nations Environment Programme report released Tuesday catalogues international laws and policies that are moving the just transition from aspiration to operating practice, according to Inside Climate News.

The report finds that countries with strong environmental governance and trusted institutions are well positioned to pivot away from fossil fuels, Inside Climate News reported.

That framing puts institutional quality, rather than technology cost alone, at the centre of how quickly a country can move off fossil fuels. The report treats governance capacity and public trust as prerequisites for the shift, per the same account.

Inside Climate News reported that countries are demonstrating that cutting greenhouse gas emissions does not have to come at the expense of vulnerable communities, workers, Indigenous peoples or ecosystems. The just transition concept, once largely rhetorical, is now embedded in binding law and policy instruments highlighted by the report.