Tuesday, 4 August 2026

Eversource, National Grid, EnergyHub, Sunrun and The Mobility House will jointly test vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capabilities in Massachusetts, according to CleanTechnica.

The five companies described themselves as leaders in grid flexibility and smart charging technology in announcing the joint effort, CleanTechnica reported.

The partnership is designed to let electric-vehicle drivers in the state earn incentives while supporting grid reliability and affordability, per the same report.

V2G uses bidirectional charging to draw power back out of parked EV batteries and feed it to the distribution network, turning residential vehicles into a dispatchable resource for the two utilities involved.

Large-scale solar covered a record 38.2% of electricity consumption in Queensland, Australia, at 9:10am on July 26, according to RenewEconomy. The mark broke the state's previous high of 37.1%, set on April 25.

Utility-scale solar output at that moment was about 3,097 MW, RenewEconomy reported, against consumption of around 8,112 MW. The record landed on a Sunday morning in the middle of winter, when demand and solar angles both work against high shares.

Storage set its own high later in the day. Battery-stored energy in the state reached 5,646 MWh at 3.30pm, RenewEconomy reported, citing Eldridge.

Counting renewable generation together with storage output, the maximum share reached just under 76% of consumption, according to RenewEconomy.

Louisiana's CP2 LNG project will take additional liquefaction technology from Baker Hughes, which won the supply order from developer Venture Global LNG for the plant's expansion, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

Six liquefaction blocks are covered by the award, which the equipment maker booked in the second quarter. Counting earlier work, Baker Hughes now has 12 liquefaction modules in scope on CP2, delivered under a master equipment supply agreement the two firms already had in place.

Block design pairs two single mixed-refrigerant modules. Alongside those, the order takes in integrated control systems, air coolers, cold boxes and compression trains built on the supplier's centrifugal compressor technology.

Baker Hughes described itself as a supplier to Venture Global across more than 100 million tonnes per annum of LNG production capacity, existing and planned, according to OEDigital.

Battery maker CATL took in CNY 53.26 billion from energy storage battery systems in the first half of 2026, a gain of 87.5% that left the segment at 19.2% of company turnover, ESS News reported.

Total first-half revenue came to CNY 276.92 billion, a year-on-year rise of 54.8%, according to ESS News. Shareholders' net profit reached CNY 43.28 billion, 42% above the prior-year figure.

Shipments of energy storage batteries placed the company first worldwide over the six-month period, CATL said, drawing on figures from Chinese research provider ICCSino.

Manufacturing assets stood at 525 GWh of battery system capacity, alongside 764 GWh still being built, ESS News reported.

The company set out a repurchase programme covering CNY 20 billion to CNY 40 billion of its Shenzhen-listed shares.

An interim cash payout of roughly CNY 6.49 billion was proposed separately, a sum ESS News reported as 15% of first-half net profit.

The First Public Hydrogen Authority (FPH2) has opened Request for Proposals RFP 01-26 to secure low-carbon hydrogen fuel for public transit and industrial users, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The solicitation is structured as a centralized purchase covering California's transit and industrial fleets, with the stated goals of cutting costs, building scale and securing clean supply, Hydrogen Fuel News reported.

FPH2 is a special joint powers authority driven by the Cities of Lancaster and Industry in California. Pooling procurement under that structure, according to Hydrogen Fuel News, rests on the premise that larger, consistent orders and long-term contracts can clear the hurdles that have slowed hydrogen development.

The RFP covers a range of public transit and industrial needs rather than a single offtaker.

Strategic Value Partners is acquiring a minority equity interest in South Field Energy, a 1,182-MW natural gas-fired power plant in Columbiana County, Ohio, Power Magazine reported.

The purchase runs through the firm's SVP Funds group, which is taking the stake in the plant. Power Magazine describes Strategic Value Partners as a global investment firm.

The interest is a minority one rather than a controlling position in the 1,182-MW station.

Energy Vault said on July 27 that construction has begun at its powered AI infrastructure campus in Snyder, Texas, built for Crusoe Cloud, according to Power Magazine.

The announcement, reported by Power Magazine, marks the start of site work at the Snyder location. The campus is designated as powered AI infrastructure and is being developed for Crusoe Cloud as the customer.

Power Magazine describes Energy Vault as a global energy infrastructure company that supports power grid reliability alongside next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing infrastructure. That dual positioning places the developer between grid services and the compute buildout now drawing utility-scale power commitments.

The PJM Board of Managers has directed PJM to file two proposals with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission addressing the reliability and affordability effects of Large Loads joining the grid faster than new generation can be built, according to PJM Inside Lines.

The imbalance behind the directive is stark in PJM's own numbers. New Large Loads across the region are forecast to grow by an estimated 70 GW by 2038, while roughly 15 GW of generating resources have retired since 2022, PJM Inside Lines reported.

That gap already shows up in the capacity market. The most recent auction, covering the 2028/2029 Delivery Year, cleared 6,831 GW below the system's Reliability Requirement, according to PJM Inside Lines.

One of the proposals would create a one-time Reliability Backstop Procurement. PJM proposes running it from Sept. 30 through Oct. 21, with results released in early December, per PJM Inside Lines.

Cost exposure is bounded. PJM proposed capping the total cost of accepted supply offers in that procurement at $555/MW-day.

The procurement also carries a hard delivery deadline: eligible resources must come online no later than June 1, 2032, according to PJM Inside Lines.

Explaining the package, the Board said it is guided by PJM's core responsibility to keep the lights on for the 67 million people served in the region.

Meta has left RE100, the global corporate initiative whose members commit to using 100% renewable electricity, according to Electrek. The exit comes as the company bankrolls new gas-fired power plants to feed its expanding artificial intelligence data centers.

The gas commitments are concentrated in Louisiana. At Hyperion, Meta's data center in Richland Parish, the original power plan called for three new gas plants totaling about 2.26 GW, Electrek reported.

Entergy Louisiana announced a second agreement in March 2026 under which Meta will fund seven additional combined-cycle gas plants totaling more than 5.2 GW, according to Electrek. Taken together, the Louisiana buildout reaches 10 gas plants and roughly 7.5 GW.

The same Entergy package includes Meta funding for up to 2.5 GW of renewables, Electrek reported. That is about a third of the gas capacity attached to the utility's Louisiana arrangements with the company.

Meta joined RE100 as Facebook in 2016, pledging to cover its entire operation with renewable electricity by 2020. Combined-cycle plants, which recover exhaust heat to drive a second turbine, are dispatchable in a way that solar and wind are not, and the Entergy agreements pair them with the smaller renewables tranche rather than substituting for it.

One Nation is polling at or above both major parties in Victoria, Australia, according to two separate surveys reported by RenewEconomy, even though the party holds almost no seats in the state parliament.

Freshwater Strategy put the Liberal-National Coalition in front on a primary vote of 27 per cent, One Nation second on 25 per cent, and Victorian Labor trailing on 23 per cent.

Redbridge, in polling commissioned by the Victorian Unions, had One Nation in the lead on a primary vote of 27%, with Labor and the Liberal-National Coalition tied on 26% and the Greens on 13%.

The two surveys disagree on the order of the top three but agree on the compression: under either set of numbers, no party clears the high twenties on primaries.

That polling strength has no equivalent in the chamber. One Nation does not hold a single seat in the lower house of the Victorian Parliament and has one representative in the upper house.

RenewEconomy frames the numbers against the state's energy position and the arrival of a new premier, arguing One Nation is not the answer to Victoria's difficulties.

Massachusetts is extending its ConnectedSolutions residential battery virtual power plant (VPP) program to vehicle-to-grid (V2G) connections, according to ESS News. The state already has more than 150,000 electric vehicles on the road, ESS News reported.

The existing battery scheme paid out more than USD 5.4 million to 5,251 residential participants for the 2025 season. Those payments bought measurable grid relief: batteries enrolled in ConnectedSolutions delivered roughly 40 MW of net summer capacity savings during the 2025 season, split between 28.9 MW from residential systems and almost 11 MW from commercial units, per ESS News.

Program administrators are aiming considerably higher. Their 2025-2027 plan targets roughly 125 MW of battery performance capacity, comprising 93 MW residential and 31.5 MW commercial. Reaching that residential figure would require more than triple the 28.9 MW logged last season.

A spokesperson for the program told EV website electrek.co that initially eligible vehicles include the Ford F-150 Lightning, Nissan Leaf, Kia EV9, Polestar 3, and Volvo EX90. The Mobility House, EnergyHub, and Sunrun are participating, with EnergyHub's Edge DERMS platform managing dispatch for the pilot.

The wider ConnectedSolutions footprint gives some sense of what aggregated household assets can do under stress. During a June 2024 heat wave, utilities reported that the region-wide VPP cut peak demand on the New England power grid by more than 375 MW, according to ESS News.

Adding bidirectional vehicles changes the arithmetic of the residential target. Passenger EV packs are larger than typical home batteries, and the eligible list names five models rather than a single platform, meaning enrollment growth depends on how many owners of those vehicles pair them with compatible bidirectional charging hardware. The Mobility House and Sunrun bring vehicle-side and residential-solar customer bases into the same dispatch stack that EnergyHub controls.

Commercial batteries remain the smaller share of both the delivered result and the plan, at almost 11 MW achieved against a 31.5 MW target. Residential assets, now including cars, carry the bulk of the capacity ambition.

BMW will start series production of high-voltage batteries for its upcoming iX5 eSUV at a new plant in Woodruff, South Carolina, in December, according to electrive.

The packs use cylindrical cells in the 46120 format supplied by battery cell manufacturer AESC, mounted straight into the pack housing under a Cell-to-Pack design that dispenses with intermediate module structures, electrive reported.

The system runs on an 800-volt architecture. Per electrive, the iX5 60 xDrive carries a usable net energy content of 144kWh in the USA and 141kWh in Europe.

On the manufacturing footprint, electrive put BMW's electromobility spending in the Spartanburg region at approximately USD 1.7 billion, a figure that covers partnerships with local cell suppliers including AESC.

electrive also reported that the Gen6 battery cell cuts CO2e emissions by around 28% against the previous generation.

The split between the two energy ratings matters for how the same pack is homologated across markets, since the 144kWh and 141kWh figures describe usable net content rather than gross capacity. Cell-to-Pack integration is what makes that packaging density available: removing the module layer frees volume inside the same housing for active material. The 46120 cylindrical format is the physical unit that BMW's Woodruff lines will handle from December onward.

The 28% CO2e reduction claimed for the Gen6 cell is a per-cell comparison against BMW's preceding generation, not a vehicle-level number. Sourcing cells from a supplier operating alongside the Spartanburg-area investment shortens the distance between cell output and pack assembly, and AESC is named among those local suppliers.

Battery storage developer Viridi has installed a battery energy storage system (BESS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as part of grid technology research, according to Power Magazine.

The installation follows a strategic partnership Viridi announced with the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee, Power Magazine reported. The stated purpose of the tie-up is to support research into next-generation utility grid technologies that advance grid resilience and reliability.

ORNL is a Department of Energy laboratory, and the partnership frames the Viridi hardware as a research asset rather than a commercial grid-connected project.

Regione Puglia has opened two funding lines for green hydrogen, Progetto Bandiera Puglia and the Hydrogen Valley JTF call, each carrying a budget of EUR 10 million, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The combined EUR 20 million is directed at accelerating green hydrogen production and industrial decarbonisation in Taranto, with support going to electrolysis demonstrators and renewable hydrogen plants, Hydrogen Fuel News reported.

The two calls will finance industrial research alongside the build-out of renewable hydrogen production plants sited in Apulia's most carbon-heavy zones, according to the same report.

Costco Wholesale's distribution center in Port St. Lucie, Florida has been operating entirely off the state's electrical grid as of July 28, according to officials at energy solutions firm Trinity Energy, cited by Solar Builder.

The installation covers every load at the site. Solar and storage supply all building equipment, lighting, refrigeration, and electric vehicle charging, according to the Solar Builder report.

Trinity Energy said the design ties Costco's solar generation, battery capacity, and fleet charging into a single integrated platform rather than separate systems. Refrigeration and EV charging are the two loads that make a full grid disconnection difficult at a distribution site, and both sit inside the same package here.

The Florida site is not the retailer's first. Costco's Mira Loma and Ontario distribution centers in California went through solar and storage pre-commissioning in late 2025, according to Solar Builder. The Port St. Lucie project takes the same combination a step further by severing the grid connection outright.

Green Mountain Power (GMP) pulled 90 MW from its virtual power plant (VPP) at the peak of Vermont's early July heat wave, trimming an estimated USD 6 million from what all customers pay for peak electricity, Electrek reported.

The aggregation now stands at 110 MW of capacity, which the utility says makes it the largest single power resource in Vermont by capacity, according to Electrek. That places a distributed fleet, rather than a generating station, at the top of the state's supply stack.

Residential batteries account for 53 MW, more than half the total, per Electrek. Enrollment has passed 10,000 batteries across more than 5,000 GMP customers.

Those batteries can cover nearly 10% of Vermont's summer peak demand, a storage-to-state-peak ratio GMP describes as the highest in New England, Electrek reported.

The capacity has already displaced hardware. GMP has permanently closed peaker plants at Vergennes and Rutland, following an ISO-New England retirement process, as the VPP grew, according to Electrek. Peakers earn their keep on a handful of high-demand hours a year, the same hours a dispatchable battery fleet is built to cover.

The USD 6 million figure is an estimate of avoided peak cost spread across the customer base, not a payment to battery owners. Peak-hour purchases set a disproportionate share of a utility's wholesale bill, so shaving the top of the load curve during a heat wave carries outsized value relative to the megawatt-hours involved.

Dispatching 90 MW against a 110 MW nameplate implies most of the enrolled fleet responded when called. The gap between enrolled capacity and delivered output is the number that decides whether a VPP can substitute for firm generation in a capacity accreditation process, which is the test the Vergennes and Rutland closures passed.

Two conservation organizations have challenged the federal green light for a data center on public land in Boulder City, Nevada.

According to CleanTechnica, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club Toiyabe Chapter filed an administrative appeal contesting federal approval of the Townsite Data Center.

The facility would carry 167 megawatts of capacity and was proposed by Skylar Capital Management, CleanTechnica reported.

Climate, environmental, and social justice organizations filed testimony asking the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC) to scale back a proposed rate increase from Puget Sound Energy, according to CleanTechnica.

CleanTechnica described Puget Sound Energy as Washington's largest utility and reported that the groups want the commission to cut the size of the requested hike.

The utility's filing seeks major rate increases alongside costly new gas infrastructure, per CleanTechnica.

The testimony puts the groups on the record before the UTC, the state body that reviews and sets utility rates, as it weighs the request.

ExxonMobil Pipeline Co. has appointed Rozena Dendy as president, effective this month, according to Oil & Gas Journal.

Dendy moves into the role from a regional manufacturing post. Oil & Gas Journal reported that she most recently served as regional manufacturing manager, with executive leadership and oversight of four ExxonMobil plant operations.

The unit she takes over, referred to as EMPCo, owns, operates, or holds a joint interest in more than 16,000 miles of inland and offshore pipelines, per Oil & Gas Journal. That network includes the largest crude oil pipeline by volume in North America.

Throughput across the system averages more than 3.5 million b/d, according to Oil & Gas Journal. The barrels cover crude oil, refined products, liquefied petroleum gases, natural gas liquids, and chemical feedstocks.

Indiana ranked among the top three US states for solar installation last year, according to Canary Media.

The same reporting places that ranking against a steady contraction in the state's coal fleet. Canary Media reported that more than a dozen coal plants have closed in Indiana since 2010.

The outlet examined the two trends in the context of federal proposals that would keep Indiana coal generation running, which it reported would threaten drinking water.

Maryland has scaled back EmPOWER, its flagship energy-efficiency program, and proposed stripping renewable-energy and load-management requirements out of the state's commercial building code, according to Inside Climate News.

The administration of Governor Wes Moore said the reductions to EmPOWER will deliver consumers "immediate relief," Inside Climate News reported.

Consumer and climate advocates take the opposite view. According to the same reporting, they warn the combined moves could make it harder for the state to hit its pollution-reduction goals.

The building code proposal reaches beyond efficiency measures for utility customers. Removing renewable-energy and load-management provisions would alter what new commercial construction in the state is required to install, per Inside Climate News. Load-management requirements govern how buildings shift or shed electricity demand, a function that intersects directly with the ratepayer savings the efficiency program was designed to produce.

T1 Energy, a solar and battery manufacturer based in Austin, Texas, has bought a portfolio of solar cell patents for total consideration of about USD 135 million, Solar Builder reported, citing T1 Energy officials.

The seller is Evervolt Green Energy Holding, a holding company based in Singapore, according to the same report, which described the assets as "foundational solar patents". Company representatives told Solar Builder that the acquired rights cover mainly cells and modules built on the Tunnel Oxide Passivated Contact (TOPCon) architecture.

Chief executive Daniel Barcelo tied the purchase to the company's manufacturing position in the United States. Holding the intellectual property behind leading silicon-based solar technologies is "an important step to differentiate T1's competitive position," Barcelo said in comments carried by Solar Builder, describing the firm as a vertically integrated crystalline silicon U.S. solar manufacturer.

T1 Energy is pursuing the first fully integrated polysilicon solar supply chain in the United States, Solar Builder reported. That target would span polysilicon through finished modules under one owner.

Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator has approved the 150 MW/1.2 GWh Simcoe Battery Energy Storage System Project in Norfolk County and signed a facility agreement carrying a 20-year capacity term, according to ESS News.

The contract gives the project guaranteed payments, which ESS News reported can be topped up with revenue from grid exports and ancillary services. The counterparty is Simcoe Battery Project General Partnership Inc..

Ownership sits with a consortium. ESS News named Six Nations Group and the Mississaugas of the Credit Business Corporation alongside Aecon Group, Sitka Power Inc. and NRStor as project owners.

Aecon expects the site to enter commercial operations in 2030, per ESS News.

The four-hour duration implied by the 150 MW power rating and 1.2 GWh of energy capacity places the asset in the longer-duration segment of grid-scale lithium deployment.

Tesla has contracted for roughly 1 TWh of electricity a year from Project Sterling, a hybrid solar and battery plant ContourGlobal is developing in Arizona, in the United States. The volume equals about 90% of what the site is expected to generate annually, ESS News reported.

Solar capacity at the site totals 509 MW (dc), or 450 MW (ac). Alongside it sits a battery energy storage system rated at 360 MW and 1.4 GWh, according to ESS News.

On-site construction is due to start later this year. ContourGlobal is targeting commercial operation in 2028.

The power is destined for California rather than the state where it is produced. Project Sterling interconnects with the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) grid in Arizona and holds firm point-to-point transmission rights into California's CAISO market, ESS News reported. Through a pseudo-tie to CAISO, the plant will supply Tesla's California operations with bundled electricity and renewable energy certificates (RECs) under the long-term corporate power purchase agreement.

Antonio Cammisecra, chief executive of ContourGlobal, said the contract is the company's "biggest PPA ever".

With 1.4 GWh of storage sitting behind 450 MW (ac) of solar, the battery can discharge for roughly three hours at full rated power, moving daytime generation into later delivery hours on the CAISO side of the pseudo-tie. Selling around 90% of as-generated output under contract leaves ContourGlobal with only a narrow merchant position on the remainder.

Baker Hughes has won an order from Dynamis Power Solutions for 76 NovaLT16 industrial gas turbines destined for mobile power generation units serving data centers and oil and gas sites across North America, according to World Oil.

World Oil put the combined capacity at approximately 1.3 GW. The scope covers the NovaLT16 turbines packaged together with generators, gearboxes and control systems.

The booking was split across two reporting periods. Baker Hughes said the turbines themselves were booked in the second quarter, with the associated generators and gearboxes booked in the third quarter.

Dynamis will fit the units into its DT17 hypermobile power platform, which World Oil describes as designed to deliver rapidly deployable, natural gas-fired power for industries that need reliable electricity where permanent grid infrastructure is unavailable or constrained.

That framing places the order in the segment of the power market where load arrives faster than interconnection queues can clear it. Data centers and upstream oil and gas operations both sit in that category, and both appear in the stated end-use mix for the mobile units.

Where a utility-scale solar project is sited in California determines how quickly it clears permitting, according to research from The Nature Conservancy in California and ECOnorthwest reported by CleanTechnica.

The research separates two categories of land. Projects placed on ground already altered by human activity encounter fewer obstacles than those proposed for undisturbed natural land, according to CleanTechnica.

The finding puts siting decisions, rather than technology or procurement, at the center of how fast developers move from proposal to approval. Land already shaped by prior use carries a lighter permitting burden.

The work is described by CleanTechnica as new research from the two organizations.

Tesla and ContourGlobal have signed a long-term power agreement covering 1 terawatt-hour per year tied to the Sterling renewable project, according to CleanTechnica.

The underlying asset, Project Sterling, is a hybrid plant pairing solar photovoltaic (PV) generation with a battery energy storage system (BESS) in Arizona, CleanTechnica reported.

The contracted volume of 1 TWh per year is the figure disclosed for the agreement between the two companies. Pairing solar PV with storage at a single site allows output to be shifted beyond daylight hours, a structure reflected in the hybrid design CleanTechnica described for the Arizona plant.

One of the largest batteries in the state is idle after its owner was placed into administration, RenewEconomy reported.

The Templers battery energy storage system (BESS) was under construction, according to an image credited to Zen Energy and published by RenewEconomy.

RenewEconomy, which covers the Australian energy market, did not attach further operating detail to the stalled asset beyond the administration of its owner.

More than 30 months have passed since a wind farm reached final investment decision in New South Wales, Australia, according to RenewEconomy.

The last project to clear that hurdle was Squadron Energy's Uungula wind farm, which reached final investment decision in December 2023, RenewEconomy reported.

Uungula is also the only wind farm currently under construction in the state, according to the same report.

French molten salt reactor developer Stellaria has signed a memorandum of understanding with Unitel Group and Energie Hub to build an integrated energy hub in the Fos-sur-Mer area of southern France, according to World Nuclear News.

The three partners intend to deploy several Stellarium units progressively at the site, World Nuclear News reported. The Stellarium is a next-generation modular reactor developed by Stellaria.

The design is very compact, measuring 4 cubic metres, according to World Nuclear News.

Stellaria is a start-up spun out of the French Alternative Energies & Atomic Energy Commission and Schneider Electric.

The company describes the Stellarium as "the world's first reactor to operate with a liquid fuel capable of destroying more waste than it produces".

The reactor already has a committed offtaker. In November 2025, Stellaria signed a pre-order agreement with California-headquartered data centre developer and operator Equinix, giving Equinix the first power capacity reservation on the Stellarium. Stellaria plans to deploy that reactor starting in 2035.

Brent crude has slumped to USD 86 a barrel since both sides paused skirmishes on Friday, according to World Oil, after the benchmark soared above USD 100 on Thursday during the flare up in fighting.

President Donald Trump said he would prefer to avoid another escalation in the war with Iran and urged Tehran to make a deal, World Oil reported, laying the ground for further diplomacy after the tit-for-tat strikes stopped.

Asked about the Strait of Hormuz, Trump told Fox News: "Iran doesn't control the strait, we control the strait".

Talks are running in parallel to the public signaling. Omani and Iranian negotiators met in Tehran over the weekend and discussions are ongoing, according to people familiar with the situation cited by World Oil, who asked not to be identified because the matters are sensitive.

Shipping data points to crude moving on a route that bypasses the strait. At least eight crude carriers are signaling Egypt's Mediterranean port of Sidi Kerir to collect Saudi crude, with arrivals set through mid-August, according to ship-tracking data reported by World Oil.

A push to salvage the 1.5C warming limit has laid bare a split over the future of coal, oil and gas, with climate-vulnerable nations seeking a faster move away from those fuels and major emerging economies and producers resisting any focus on particular energy sources, Climate Home News reported.

The process at the centre of the dispute is the Belem Mission to 1.5, launched at COP30 to address the global shortfall in climate ambition.

The like-minded developing countries bloc, which counts China and India among its members, and Arab states led by Saudi Arabia have warned against singling out specific energy sources within the mission, according to Climate Home News.

On the other side of the argument, the Marshall Islands has put forward a global commitment to build no new oil, coal and gas infrastructure as part of the mission.

The ambition gap the process was set up to close is wide. Full implementation of current pledges is expected to hold warming to only around 2.3-2.5 C by 2100, Climate Home News reported, citing the UN.

The initiative is due to culminate in a report at COP31 setting out priority actions for keeping the 1.5C goal within reach.

Mercedes will launch the GLA in November as three battery-electric models, with hybrid versions held back until early 2027, according to electrive.

The crossover sits on the 800-volt architecture Mercedes first used in the electric CLA, electrive reported. That platform sets the charging ceiling for the top two variants.

Battery choice splits the range in two. The entry GLA 200 carries a 58 kWh lithium iron phosphate pack, while the GLA 250+ and GLA 350 4MATIC use an 85 kWh nickel manganese cobalt pack, per electrive.

Charging performance splits along the same line. The GLA 250+ and GLA 350 4MATIC draw up to 320 kW at an 800-volt station and go from 10 to 80 per cent in 22 minutes, according to electrive. The GLA 200 peaks at 200 kW on its LFP pack, the outlet reported.

A fourth variant follows in early 2027 with a 71 kWh NMC battery, closing the gap between the existing two capacities, electrive said.

Brent crude settled near USD 91 per barrel, up about 8%, after President Trump said there would be new strikes against Iran, World Oil reported.

The move rebounded from the benchmark's steepest three-day decline since 2020, according to World Oil.

Trump told Fox News that Iran would face another round of strikes following an attack on American forces in Jordan.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had targeted an air base and command center with ballistic missiles, per World Oil. Iranian media later reported strikes on Iranian territory.

Sanctions were imposed on two Iranian companies involved in charging vessels for passage through the Strait of Hormuz, World Oil reported.

Inventory data added to the tightening picture. U.S. Energy Information Administration figures showed crude stocks fell by 7.2 million barrels last week, the largest drawdown since mid-June, according to World Oil.

Separately, fires broke out aboard two LNG vessels at Egypt's Damietta port.

Toyota will become an equal shareholder in cellcentric, the hydrogen fuel-cell joint venture currently held by Daimler Truck and Volvo Group, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

Hydrogen Fuel News reported that the three partners are targeting greater industrial scale, lower costs, and faster uptake of hydrogen fuel cells in heavy-duty vehicles.

The transaction remains subject to regulatory approvals. Hydrogen Fuel News said that if those approvals proceed without obstruction, the deal should close by late 2026 or early 2027.

cellcentric was set up in 2021 as a 50:50 joint venture between Daimler Truck and Volvo, per Hydrogen Fuel News. Toyota's entry as an equal partner restructures that two-way ownership split.

GravitHy has filed building permits and an environmental authorization for a hydrogen-based direct reduced iron (DRI) and hot-briquetted iron (HBI) facility at Fos-sur-Mer in southern France, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The plant targets about 2 million tonnes of low-carbon iron per year, Hydrogen Fuel News reported.

Hydrogen supply is built into the site rather than contracted out. The facility will run on 720 MW of water electrolysis capacity, according to the same report. That fleet is set to produce nearly 120,000 tonnes of green hydrogen annually on-site, Hydrogen Fuel News said.

The permit filings cover both construction consent and environmental authorization, the two approvals a French industrial installation of this scale requires before work can begin. GravitHy is described by Hydrogen Fuel News as a French low-carbon iron company.

In the DRI route, hydrogen replaces the coke used in a blast furnace to strip oxygen from iron ore. The hot-briquetted iron output named in the filing is the compacted, transportable form of that product. Pairing 720 MW of electrolysis with roughly 2 million tonnes of annual iron output puts the electrolyzer block among the larger single-site hydrogen installations tied to a steel-sector offtaker.

Many retired electric vehicle batteries in China are processed by uncertified recyclers, creating environmental and worker safety risks, according to Inside Climate News.

The outlet reported that the practice is spread across the country. China spent the past decade building the world's largest electric vehicle market and is now confronting one consequence of that build-out: a growing wave of batteries nearing the end of their service life, Inside Climate News said.

The hazards flagged by the outlet fall on two fronts, environmental damage and the safety of the people doing the dismantling, and both stem from processing that sits outside the certified channel.

Nine government hospitals in Jordan's northern governorates now run solar-powered water heating systems, with a combined hot water storage capacity of 35,000 litres, according to pv magazine.

That installation is the opening phase of a wider rollout. The full programme targets 33 hospitals across three phases at a total cost of JOD 3.2 million ($4.5 million), pv magazine reported.

Noor Solar Energy carried out the first phase after winning a tender held in October last year, according to the report. The nine systems delivered under that contract account for the 35,000 litres of storage capacity now in place.

On completion, the programme is expected to supply around 217,000 litres of hot water a day across the participating hospitals, with annual financial savings estimated at more than JOD 266,000, pv magazine reported.

The Jordan Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Fund (JREEEF) administers the project, which has been supported by the Italian government, according to pv magazine. Solar thermal collectors displace conventional fuel or electric heating for hospital hot water demand, a load that runs continuously across wards, kitchens, and sterilisation units.

Two further phases remain before the 33-hospital target is met.

Colombia's Ministry of Mines and Energy awarded contracts for around 270 MW of new solar paired with 100 MW of battery energy storage in the opening round of its long-term clean energy auction, according to pv magazine.

The hybrid product, which ties solar photovoltaic generation to battery storage, took 390 MWh per day, the ministry said as reported by pv magazine. Bids cleared at COP 315.87 ($0.099)/kWh.

The storage volume alone lifts Colombia's installed battery capacity by roughly 1,000%, per pv magazine. That step change comes from a single procurement round rather than incremental grid-scale additions.

Winning projects hold 15-year contracts, and supply obligations start Jan. 1, 2030, pv magazine reported. The lead time gives developers close to four contract-free years before delivery begins under the awarded terms.

Minister of Mines and Energy Edwin Palma said the results of the first auction day mark a milestone for the country's just energy transition, according to pv magazine.

The pairing of a fixed daily energy obligation with dispatchable battery capacity distinguishes the hybrid product from a conventional solar-only tender. Sellers commit to a defined daily MWh delivery rather than whatever the array produces hour by hour, shifting shape risk onto the project owner and its storage asset.

Factorial Energy and SK On have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly assess whether solid-state cells can be integrated into SK On's existing lithium-ion production lines, electrive reported.

The evaluation covers technical feasibility as well as integration, according to electrive. The partnership is aimed at speeding the market launch of Factorial's FEST solid-state technology, which electrive reports is already being tested in real-world applications, including with the Stellantis brand Dodge.

SK On brings scale to the arrangement. The cell manufacturer has an annual production capacity of more than 200 GWh worldwide, according to electrive. Its established automotive customers include the Hyundai Motor Group, Ford, Volkswagen and Ferrari.

That manufacturing base is the point of the deal for Factorial. "A battery breakthrough only matters if it can be manufactured at scale," said Factorial founder and chief executive Siyu Huang, as quoted by electrive. Adapting existing lithium-ion lines rather than building dedicated plants is the route the two companies have agreed to examine first.

Factorial's own backers overlap with SK On's customer list. Its strategic investors and partners include Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis, electrive reported. Hyundai therefore sits on both sides of the arrangement, as an SK On buyer and as a Factorial investor.

Solid-state cells have so far run into the same obstacle across the industry: laboratory performance that does not translate into volume output on equipment designed for conventional liquid-electrolyte chemistry. The Factorial and SK On study addresses that gap directly by testing whether the incumbent line configuration can carry the new cell format. FEST remains in real-world testing rather than serial production.

The memorandum does not commit either party to a production volume or a build-out. Its stated scope is the joint evaluation of technical feasibility and integration.

TotalEnergies, South African renewables developer Hydra Storage Holding and local investment firm Reatile Renewables have inaugurated a 216 MW solar plant paired with 500 MWh of battery storage in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, according to ESS News.

The Hydra project sells 75 MW of dispatchable renewable electricity into the national grid under a 20-year power purchase agreement with Eskom, the national utility, ESS News reported. Delivery runs continuously between 5:00 a.m. and 9:30 p.m., the mechanism that turns intermittent solar output into a firm daytime and evening block.

That contract covers more than 400 GWh a year, which ESS News put at roughly the consumption of 200,000 South African households.

The combination of 216 MW of photovoltaic capacity with a 500 MWh battery energy storage system is billed as Africa's largest hybrid renewable energy project to commence operations, per ESS News.

The start-up lands in a market that added 1.6 GW of solar in 2025, lifting cumulative installed solar capacity above 10 GW, according to ESS News.

GE Vernova is expanding its Power Transmission manufacturing site in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, backing the plant with a USD 138 million investment that the company says should create roughly 275 high-skilled manufacturing jobs through 2028, according to the GE Vernova newsroom.

The Charleroi plant builds high-voltage circuit breakers, switchgear products and instrument transformers, per the company's announcement. Those are the components that sit between generation and load on transmission networks, and the expansion targets that product line directly.

Hiring does not stop at the 2028 mark. GE Vernova said additional recruitment is planned beyond that point, on top of the approximately 275 positions tied to the USD 138 million commitment.

Counting other commitments, the company expects to put USD 166 million into Western Pennsylvania and to create more than 700 new highly-skilled manufacturing jobs across the state, according to its statement.

The site work also fits inside a much larger capital program. GE Vernova said it plans to invest nearly USD 1.3 billion across its U.S. manufacturing facilities and research centers between 2025 and 2028, aimed at strengthening domestic manufacturing capacity, accelerating innovation and helping meet growing electricity demand.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro attended an event marking the expansion, the company said.

The framing GE Vernova chose is a supply-chain one. High-voltage circuit breakers and instrument transformers have long factory lead times, and the company is positioning added Charleroi capacity as a response to rising power demand rather than as a one-off plant upgrade.

Seven coking coal mines account for 81% of India's total coking coal methane emissions of 138.3 kilotonnes per year, according to a new study from IEEFA that tracked 30 mines. IEEFA found around 87% of India's abatable coking coal mine methane can be cut for less than USD 20 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent, in line with global estimates.

Existing abatement technologies could remove roughly 105 kilotonnes of methane per year from the mines IEEFA tracked. That places the bulk of the reduction opportunity inside a cost band that carbon markets and compliance regimes routinely clear.

The wider emissions picture is larger. According to the IEA's Global Methane Tracker 2026, India's coking coal mining released around 234.7kt of methane in 2025, at a methane intensity of 5.1kg CH4 per tonne of coal, 50% higher than the 3.4kg intensity of steam coal.

The study lands against an expansion policy. India launched Mission Coking Coal in 2021 with the goal of more than doubling domestic coking coal production by FY2030. IEEFA's argument is that methane abatement should be embedded in that build-out rather than retrofitted later.

Demand-side substitution changes the arithmetic sharply. The scrap-based electric arc furnace route requires 12 kg of coking coal per tonne of steel, against 770 kg for the conventional blast furnace route. The Indian government is targeting 50% of steel production fed by scrap metal by 2047, up from 23% now.

One domestic producer has already tested capture at the point of use. In 2022, Tata Steel became the world's first steel producer to pilot continuous injection of coal bed methane into a blast furnace, at its Jamshedpur plant in Jharkhand.

Vattenfall InCharge is installing 150 charging stations without reserved parking bays in North Brabant and Limburg as part of a pilot project, electrive reported. The bays at those points stay open to any vehicle, including petrol and diesel cars.

The trial pairs the open points with an equal number of conventional ones. According to electrive, 150 open charging points and 150 typical points serving as a control group will be installed, with all 300 set up between August 2026 and January 2027.

Driver behaviour is the variable being tested. Among petrol and diesel drivers surveyed, 41% said they would voluntarily vacate a shared parking space for someone who needs to charge, electrive reported.

The design responds to a vehicle fleet that has outgrown dedicated-bay assumptions. The Netherlands now has 750,000 battery-electric vehicles and over 600,000 plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), according to electrive. Reserved bays sit idle when no electric vehicle is plugged in, and the pilot measures what happens when that restriction is removed at half the sites.

Results from the control group will show whether open bays reduce charger availability for electric drivers or free up scarce kerbside parking without much cost to charging access.

EU antitrust regulators have given themselves more time on the merger between Italian energy contractor Saipem and Norwegian peer Subsea 7, extending the review deadline by about three weeks, according to a European Commission filing cited by Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The extension runs 14 working days and moves the decision date to December 16, per the same report. Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported the delay was recorded in a European Commission filing.

The transaction had already moved beyond a routine clearance. It triggered a full-scale EU investigation earlier this month, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

On the substance of the case, the outlet reported that the two contractors would likely have to offer remedies to win EU approval, addressing concerns that the combination may result in price hikes and reduce competition.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the License Termination Plan for the Oyster Creek Generating Station in New Jersey, according to Power Magazine.

That approval clears the way for Holtec International to pursue construction of four SMR-300 small modular reactor units at Lacey Township, New Jersey, Power Magazine reported.

Holtec is targeting 2036 for the 1.36-GW SMR-300 project at Oyster Creek, according to Power Magazine.

South Korean shipbuilder Samsung Heavy Industries has signed a memorandum of understanding with US engineering firm Sargent & Lundy to develop a standardised floating small modular reactor platform, according to World Nuclear News.

The two companies intend to design a single floating small modular reactor (FSMR) platform capable of hosting multiple reactor types, which World Nuclear News reported would provide "versatility to enable the installation of various types of reactors and offering flexible options to shipowners and customers".

Samsung Heavy Industries already holds Approval in Principle from the American Bureau of Shipping, granted in December 2025, for a floating marine nuclear power platform carrying two SMART100 small modular reactors developed by the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI), per the same report.

The FSMR project sits at the conceptual design stage. World Nuclear News reported that the agreement targets the global market, including the United States, and is expected to be a key step in moving the project toward commercial deployment.

Standardising the hull and systems around interchangeable reactor designs is the commercial pitch here: a shipowner selects the reactor, not the vessel. That approach separates the marine platform qualification track, where the American Bureau of Shipping approval already sits, from the reactor licensing track, which differs by jurisdiction.

Air Products cancelled its Louisiana Clean Energy Complex, a blue hydrogen and blue ammonia plant planned for Ascension Parish, Louisiana, in late June, according to IEEFA. The project had been on the drawing board since 2021 and was designed to produce roughly 600,000 metric tons of hydrogen a year from natural gas, with part of that volume converted to ammonia.

Cost escalation tracked the project from announcement to cancellation. IEEFA reports the company put the initial price at $4.5 billion in 2021 and said it would self-finance construction. Two years later, following passage of the IRA, Air Products raised the figure to $7 billion.

The budget kept climbing. By December 2025, according to IEEFA, Air Products said it was exploring a partnership with Yara International on a project then estimated at as much as $9 billion. Under the terms described, Yara would have taken 80% of the low-carbon hydrogen produced at the site and run onsite ammonia production.

The carbon case rested on capture rates the company set out publicly. Air Products said it would capture 95% of CO2 emissions from the hydrogen production process, or approximately 5 million tonnes per annum.

The cancelled complex was the largest single line item in the company's low-carbon build-out. IEEFA reports that in 2024, Air Products had $15 billion earmarked across eight blue or green hydrogen projects, of which the Louisiana site accounted for $8 billion.

The two names attached to the final structure had split roles: Air Products as producer and owner of the hydrogen train, Yara as offtaker for the bulk of the output and operator of ammonia production. That arrangement, floated in December 2025, did not survive to a final investment decision, with the cancellation following in late June.

A 200 MW/800 MWh battery plant built by Greenvolt Power is now running in northeastern Poland, ESS News reported. The Turośń Kościelna site sits near Białystok, in Podlaskie Voivodeship, and feeds into the country's transmission network through a 110 kV connection.

Cells at the plant use lithium iron phosphate chemistry, delivered by BYD Energy Storage; P&Q held the general contractor role. Greenvolt Power sits within Greenvolt Group, which KKR owns.

The asset's contracted revenue starts in 2028, when it enters Poland's capacity market on a 17-year agreement. Its capacity obligation is set at 170 MW, or 85% of the plant's power rating, according to ESS News.

Work on a second site of identical size is close to complete. The Ełk project in Warmińsko-Mazurskie Voivodeship matches the 200 MW/800 MWh configuration, with commercial operation expected in Q4 2026.

At the end of June, Greenvolt counted 2,595 MW of battery storage projects in its Polish pipeline, plus 657 MW of solar PV and 238 MW of wind, ESS News reported.

João Manso Neto, chief executive of Greenvolt Group, said the company has battery projects under development in 13 countries, totalling a 5 GW pipeline.

Poland's 2028 capacity market delivery year drew contracts for more than 30 electrochemical storage projects in the main auction, together carrying a capacity obligation of roughly 1.7 GW, according to ESS News. The 170 MW obligation at Turośń Kościelna represents a tenth of that total.

Hungary's Paks nuclear station must go entirely offline inside 72 hours, its operator said, after the River Danube fell to a record low, according to World Nuclear News.

MVM put the river 28 centimetres under the mark set in 2018.

Four VVER-440 reactors of Russian supply make up the site, and together they cover roughly half of Hungarian electricity, World Nuclear News reported.

Farther down the river, one of the two reactors at Romania's Cernavoda plant has already come off the grid because of the shrinking Danube. Nuclearelectrica said unit 1 was disconnected from the National Energy System "due to the unprecedentedly low level of the Danube, caused by severe drought".

Romania's Cernavoda houses two Candu units rated at 650 MWe each and accounts for about a fifth of the country's electricity, per World Nuclear News.

EDF has also pulled reactors offline in France to stay inside limits on cooling water discharges, taking out Bugey unit 3, Chooz unit 2 and Golfech 2, World Nuclear News reported.

Bottom trawlers operating in the Dutch section of the Dogger Bank SAC now need a permit and an environmental assessment before they can fish there, following a May 11 ruling by the District Court of The Hague, Mongabay reported. The court tied that obligation to the Habitats Directive.

Mongabay reported that the EU's General Court, deciding a separate case on May 21, found that member states hold the authority under the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) to limit harmful activity in vulnerable marine areas including Dogger Bank.

Both judgments build on a European regulation in force since November 2025, which closed roughly 28% of the Dutch SAC and roughly 53% of the German SAC to trawling, according to Mongabay.

A broader restriction already applies across the water. The UK government prohibited bottom trawling throughout the entire UK Dogger Bank SAC in June 2022, after NGOs applied legal pressure, Mongabay reported.

China has set a 2030 goal of 3,500GW of installed renewables capacity, with wind and solar accounting for 2,800GW of the total, Carbon Brief reported.

The document is the 15th five-year plan for renewable energy. China's economic planner, the NDRC, released it jointly with the National Energy Administration in late July, according to Carbon Brief.

The earlier wind and solar pledge stood at 1,200GW by 2030. China hit that level six years ahead of schedule, per Carbon Brief.

Output targets sit alongside the capacity numbers. Renewable generation is to reach 6,000TWh by 2030, with wind and solar contributing 4,000TWh.

Wind and solar capacity was just under 2,000GW as of June 2026, with hydropower at 454GW, Carbon Brief reported.

Solar additions alone came to 277GW in 2024 and 315GW in 2025, according to Carbon Brief.

Hydropower capacity is slated to reach 570GW in 2030, up from 448GW in 2025, and 160GW of the later figure is pumped-storage hydropower.

Coal still moves through the transmission lines serving China's large-scale clean-energy bases. Global Energy Monitor put coal's share of the power sent from those bases to the rest of the country at 42%, Carbon Brief reported.

Bloom Energy reported approximately $1.07 billion in second quarter revenue, a 165% increase year-over-year, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The quarter followed a first quarter in which revenue rose 130% year-over-year, per the same report. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $0.78.

Hydrogen Fuel News attributes the back-to-back revenue surge to booming AI data center demand and expanded Brookfield financing, describing it as a shift toward profitable, large-scale solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) deployments.

Household batteries connected to Australia's main grid now carry more power capacity than the country's grid-scale battery fleet, according to RenewEconomy. The crossover holds for power, not for stored energy.

Modo Energy puts installed home battery capacity at 7.8 GW as at the end of June, up from an estimated 1.4 GW. That figure sits just above the 7.7 GW of grid-scale capacity counted by the same firm.

RenewEconomy attributes the surge to the federal government's Cheaper Home Batteries program, which it describes as enormously popular.

The shift is already visible in load shapes. Modo Energy says home batteries charging through the solar peak and discharging into the evening are reshaping operational demand.

The distinction between power and energy matters for how the two fleets behave. RenewEconomy notes the milestone applies to power capacity, with storage volume a separate question.

Shell plc reported second-quarter 2026 income attributable to shareholders of $10,821 million, up from $5,694 million in the first quarter and $3,601 million in the same quarter of 2025, according to the company's unaudited results published via GlobeNewswire.

Adjusted Earnings, the measure Shell uses to strip out identified items, came in at $9,836 million for the quarter, against $6,915 million in Q1 2026 and $4,264 million a year earlier.

Cash flow from operating activities reached $21.4 billion in the quarter, the company said.

The balance sheet tightened sharply. Net debt stood at $41.8 billion at the close of Q2 2026, down from $52.6 billion three months earlier. Gearing fell to 18.7% from 23.2% over the same period.

Shareholder distributions totalled $5.2 billion in the quarter, split between $3.0 billion of share repurchases and $2.2 billion of cash dividends paid to Shell plc shareholders.

The buyback picture was complicated by an acquisition. Shell said it temporarily suspended the $3.0 billion share buyback programme announced with its first-quarter results in connection with its agreement to acquire ARC Resources Ltd., leaving $1.8 billion of that programme completed.

A fresh programme now replaces it. Shell announced the commencement of a buyback comprising $3.0 billion of new repurchases plus $1.2 billion carried over from the suspended programme, which the company expects to complete by its third-quarter 2026 results announcement.

CS Wind has shipped the first transition pieces for Vattenfall's Nordlicht offshore wind project in Germany, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital, opening deliveries to what the outlet describes as set to become the country's largest offshore wind development.

The components left the Port of Aalborg for the German North Sea, where they will be fitted at the Nordlicht I wind farm, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported. That project requires 68 monopile and transition piece foundations in total, per the same report.

Nordlicht I is rated at 980 MW and sits alongside the 630 MW Nordlicht II in a cluster roughly 85 kilometres north of Borkum, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital. Combined annual output is expected to reach around 6 TWh once both farms are fully commissioned, with operation scheduled for 2028.

DEME holds the transport and installation scope for the monopile foundations and transition pieces across both projects, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

Vattenfall has said the turbine towers will be partially built from low-emission steel, cutting the projects' overall carbon footprint by around 16%.

A 10 MW/25 MWh battery storage installation is now running at Marktoberdorf in Bavaria, Germany, built by regional utility VWEW-Energie together with developer Green Flexibility, ESS News reported.

Seven months separated contract signature from commissioning, according to statements from the two companies cited by ESS News.

Dispatch follows Green Flexibility's REGIOlink concept. ESS News describes it as a grid-neutral strategy under which the unit answers to electricity price signals and to requirements set by the local distribution network.

Neither party had worked with the other on a project before this one, per ESS News.

Türkiye installed 2.1 GW of new solar capacity in the first half of 2026, according to figures from energy think tank Ember cited by pv magazine, lifting cumulative installed solar to around 26.9 GW.

The expansion showed up in the plant count. Türkiye had more than 41,000 solar plants at the end of June, against roughly 37,600 at the start of the year, pv magazine reported.

Most of the capacity came outside the licensing regime. Ember energy analyst Bahadır Sercan Gümüş told pv magazine that 1.8 GW of this year's additions so far came from unlicensed power plants.

June set two generation records. Solar covered 16.5% of Turkish electricity generation for the month, the highest monthly share on record, beating the previous mark of 16.1% set in June 2025, according to pv magazine. Output reached approximately 5 TWh over the month, also an all-time high.

Storage entered the picture during the same period. Gümüş said Türkiye's first storage-integrated solar plant started commercial operations in the first half of the year, reaching 260 MW.

The next procurement round is scheduled for October, when the Turkish government plans to tender 900 MW of solar and 1.5 GW of wind under its Renewable Energy Resource Area (YEKA) program, pv magazine reported.

Developers added 36 GW of new data center capacity to the U.S. pipeline in Q1 2026, a 19% drop from Q4 2025, according to a Wood Mackenzie report cited by Solar Builder.

The slowdown in fresh announcements sits alongside a much larger pool of projects already disclosed. Cumulative U.S. disclosed data center capacity stands at 331 GW, with roughly 40% under active development, per the same report.

Commitments are firming further down the funnel. Large load capacity backed by signed construction or electricity supply agreements totals 195 GW, equal to 26% of 2025 U.S. peak load, Wood Mackenzie said.

Earlier-stage activity moved in the opposite direction from headline additions. Capacity in advanced discussion phases jumped from 37 GW in Q4 2025 to 107 GW in Q1 2026.

Texas holds the largest cumulative planned capacity of any state at nearly 100 GW, according to the report. Ohio remains the second-largest market.

On the supply side, disclosed around-the-meter deployments split closely between fuels. Gas makes up 40% of projects and 48% of total site capacity, while renewables and storage account for 41% of deployments and 38% of capacity, Solar Builder reported from the Wood Mackenzie findings.

Zelestra has locked in Axpo as the offtaker for a 207 MW/830 MWh battery project in the Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia under a tolling contract running 10 years, ESS News reported.

Ownership, construction and operation of the site stay with Zelestra, while Axpo handles optimization services under the terms of the deal, per ESS News.

Ground is due to be broken in 2027, and the battery is slated to reach commercial operation the following year, in 2028, according to ESS News.

Eliano Russo, CEO of Zelestra Italy, said the addition takes the developer's authorized battery storage portfolio in Italy to 970 MW, a position he described as the country's second-largest holding of permitted battery storage capacity.

Simone Rodolfi, head of origination and structured products at Axpo Italia, said the contract is Axpo's first battery storage tolling agreement in Italy.

Under the tolling structure, Zelestra retains the asset and the operating obligation, and Axpo directs how the battery is optimized across the decade-long term.

Rivian booked second-quarter revenue of USD 1.658 billion, a 27% increase year-over-year, according to Electrek's report on the company's Q2 2026 results.

The quarter covered the commercial debut of the R2, the automaker's first vehicle priced under USD 50,000. Electrek reported that external deliveries of the mid-size SUV began on June 9.

Rivian produced 12,613 vehicles and delivered 12,194 over the three months, per Electrek.

Losses narrowed on a per-share basis. The company posted a net loss of USD 837 million, equal to USD 0.63 per share, against a USD 0.97 per-share loss a year earlier, Electrek reported.

Management lifted its full-year outlook. Rivian now expects to deliver 65,000 to 70,000 vehicles in 2026, an increase of 3,000 units from its prior range, according to Electrek.

The balance sheet closed the quarter with USD 5.31 billion in cash, equivalents, and short-term investments.

Rivian topped that up after the quarter ended. In July the company sold 86.25 million Class A shares in a follow-on offering, raising about USD 1.3 billion, Electrek reported.

Shell plc posted second-quarter adjusted earnings of USD 9.8 billion, up from USD 6.9 billion in the first quarter, according to World Oil.

Cash flow from operations reached USD 21.4 billion over the quarter, World Oil reported, supported by higher commodity prices and a USD 3.4 billion working capital inflow.

The balance sheet tightened alongside the earnings jump. Net debt fell to USD 41.8 billion from USD 52.6 billion at the close of the first quarter, per World Oil.

Shell attributed the quarter's performance in part to record upstream production in Brazil and record refinery utilization, World Oil reported. Upstream volumes averaged 1.824 MMboed, with liquids production rising slightly to 1.367 MMboed.

Shareholder distributions continued at the same pace. Shell announced a new USD 3 billion share buyback program, the 19th consecutive quarter in which it has committed at least USD 3 billion to repurchases, according to World Oil.

On portfolio activity, Shell said its acquisition of ARC Resources has cleared shareholder approval and is expected to close during the third quarter.

A record 3.34 MMboed of oil and natural gas came out of Petrobras assets in the second quarter of 2026, up 14.1% against the same quarter a year earlier, World Oil reported.

Production rose 3.4% from the first quarter, with four newly ramping floating production units behind the sequential move: Maria Quiteria at Jubarte, Alexandre de Gusmao at Mero, and P-78 and P-79 at Buzios.

Ten new producing wells came online over the three months, split six in the Santos basin and four in the Campos basin, according to World Oil.

Buzios supplied the bulk of the increment. Platform output across the field topped 1.2 MMbpd on a June 26 average, after P-78 and P-79 started up and ramped, World Oil reported.

P-79 began producing on May 1, five months earlier than the timetable in the company's previous business plan. The unit is rated at 180,000 bpd of production capacity and 7.2 MMcmd of gas compression, according to World Oil.

Adding P-79 took installed capacity at Buzios to roughly 1.33 MMbpd, World Oil reported.

At Mero, where the Alexandre de Gusmao unit is deployed, quarterly output averaged about 740,000 bpd. That same unit was one of the four cited by World Oil as lifting volumes above the first-quarter level.

Continental Resources Inc. will compete for shale acreage in an auction run by Argentina's Neuquen province, home to the bulk of the Vaca Muerta basin, according to World Oil. Bids for 15 blocks in the province will be opened on August 19.

The basin already produces more than 1 million barrels per day of oil and gas, World Oil reported.

The auction would extend a position Continental built over the past year. World Oil reported that the company became the first U.S. shale independent to enter Argentina last year, through a deal to acquire assets from local driller Pluspetrol SA.

A second transaction followed in January, when Continental bought stakes in blocks operated by Pan American Energy Group, which is half-owned by bp Plc, according to World Oil.

Advanced nuclear developer Aalo Atomics has signed a strategic partnership with energy-first AI infrastructure company Crusoe to build a nuclear-powered "AI Factory" data center, according to Power Magazine. The companies announced the agreement on July 30.

The two firms plan a demonstration at Idaho National Laboratory in 2027 that pairs nuclear generation directly with AI data center load, Power Magazine reported.

Under the arrangement, Aalo's advanced reactor development program at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) would be combined with Crusoe's modular AI data center platform. That structure puts reactor development and compute buildout on the same site rather than connecting them through an existing grid interface.

The partnership sets up a test of co-located generation and computing load, with Aalo supplying the reactor side and Crusoe the modular data center hardware.

Queensland energy minister David Janetzki and NSW energy minister Penny Sharpe appeared together on stage at the Australian Clean Energy Summit in Sydney, according to RenewEconomy.

Both ministers speak for grids still running majority coal. Queensland's grid carried a 60 per cent coal share over the last 12 months, according to Open Electricity as cited by RenewEconomy. The NSW figure stands at 53 per cent on the same measure.

The seven-point gap between the two states is the clearest quantitative marker of how differently the two jurisdictions sit on coal dependence, based on the Open Electricity data reported by RenewEconomy.

Australian gentailer Origin sold 17% less gas over the 2025-26 financial year, while its electricity sales volumes edged up 1%, according to RenewEconomy.

The company said the gas fall came as no surprise, RenewEconomy reported. Origin cited lower consumption by its large customers, and a shrinking role for gas in the electricity market as batteries of all sizes take on smoothing duties and peak supply.

Origin is building some of that battery capacity. Stage 1 of its Eraring battery in New South Wales, rated 460 MW and 1770 MWh, entered commercial operation in January at the site of the coal plant that shares its name, RenewEconomy reported.

A further AUD 80 million expansion at Eraring has since been approved, according to RenewEconomy. Across four construction stages, the site is set to reach 700 MW and 3,160 MWh.

Mortlake, an Origin-developed battery energy storage system (BESS) in Victoria, connected to the grid in March. Its output is still ramping toward a nameplate rating of 300 MW and 650 MWh, RenewEconomy reported.

The two states now host Origin battery projects totalling 700 MW at Eraring and 300 MW at Mortlake, set against the 17% contraction in its gas book.

Red Eléctrica has finished expanding the 220 kV Cerdà substation in Barcelona, according to the company. The facility is intended to support the electrification of the Port of Barcelona's quays.

The transmission operator described itself as the Redeia subsidiary responsible for electricity transmission and system operation in Spain, and said the work was completed this week.

The expansion carried an investment of more than EUR 1 million by Red Eléctrica, per the company's statement. The substation sits in the Zona Franca.

Shore-side electrification allows berthed vessels to draw power from the grid instead of running onboard engines, which shifts port demand onto the transmission network. The upgraded Cerdà site is the connection point Red Eléctrica identifies for that shift at the quays.

EDP has commissioned a 36 MW/72 MWh battery energy storage system at its Las Lomillas site in Spain, completing a hybrid plant that puts wind, solar and storage behind one grid connection, according to ESS News.

The site sits in Cuenca and pairs a 49.5 MW wind farm with a 36 MW solar plant and the new battery, all exporting through a single 122 MW grid connection, ESS News reported. The connection infrastructure was originally designed for about 50 MW of export capacity.

The storage installation is built from 24 containerized units rated at 1.5 MW each, per ESS News.

Funding came in part from Spain's Institute for the Diversification and Saving of Energy (IDAE), which awarded up to EUR 6.2 million (USD 7.13 million) through its program for innovative renewable energy storage projects under the European Union's NextGenerationEU recovery plan, ESS News reported.

EDP said Las Lomillas takes its hybrid renewable capacity in Spain above 260 MW.

Red Eléctrica is starting construction on the 400 kV Cardoso substation in the municipality of Carreño, the first facility of the Central Asturias Power Ring, according to the transmission operator. Red Eléctrica describes itself as the Redeia subsidiary responsible for transmission and operation of the electricity system in Spain.

The operator plans to invest EUR 26.5 million in the substation and the line that will connect it to the transmission grid.

Work is expected to take approximately 18 months, Red Eléctrica said.

Cardoso is designed as a Gas-Insulated Switchgear (GIS) substation, which the company describes as compact and smaller in size, housed inside a building for better landscape integration. It will carry two switchyards, one at 400 kV and one at 220 kV.

The substation is the opening element of the Central Asturias Power Ring, according to the company's announcement.

A power plant project built to serve a data center in Georgia is under investigation over claims that construction started before the required air permits were issued, according to Inside Climate News.

The scrutiny lands as regulators weigh a separate question with wider reach: whether privately operated power plants can lawfully supply electricity to data centers at all, Inside Climate News reported.

That legal question sits upstream of the permitting dispute. The permitting inquiry concerns the sequence of one project's construction and its air approvals. The regulatory review concerns the underlying model, private generation serving data center load, which would apply beyond a single site.

Germany's latest hydrogen freight support program drew 526 applications requesting EUR 455 million against a fund of EUR 220 million, according to CleanTechnica.

That leaves requested support at more than double the money available. CleanTechnica reported the breakdown as 71 applications for refueling stations and 455 for vehicles or fleets.

The split points to demand concentrated on rolling stock rather than the fueling infrastructure needed to serve it, with vehicle and fleet requests outnumbering station requests by a wide margin.

Nearly USD 300 million (EUR 260 million) from the France 2030 investment program will go to five ports for infrastructure upgrades serving the country's floating offshore wind industry, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

Port-la-Nouvelle and Marseille-Fos are among the winners, alongside Cherbourg, Brest and Nantes-Saint-Nazaire, according to the outlet.

The five projects emerged from a call for projects launched in 2024, which sought to ready French port infrastructure for manufacturing, assembling and integrating floating wind components, the outlet reported.

The French government estimated the awards will attract nearly USD 1.5 billion (EUR 1 billion) of total port infrastructure investment, supporting large-scale floating offshore wind deployment in France, per Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

France is aiming for nearly 6 GW of installed floating offshore wind capacity by 2040.

Italy's wholesale electricity market cleared at zero for 88 hours in the first half of 2026, against 20 hours in the same period of 2025, according to pv magazine.

The Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) ties the fourfold rise directly to the expansion of intermittent generation, pv magazine reported.

Solar output rose 19% over the period and wind output rose 16%, according to ENEA figures cited by pv magazine. In May, the two sources together covered 33% of national electricity demand, an all-time high.

The surplus hours arrived alongside firmer demand. Italian electricity consumption grew 2.5%, a gain offset by higher gas burn in power generation, which rose 4.4%, per pv magazine.

That fuel mix shows up in the emissions line. Italian CO2 emissions fell 2%, against an EU average decline of 3%, according to pv magazine.

ENEA's Ispred index, which tracks progress of the country's energy transition, had fallen 25% by mid-2026, pv magazine reported.

Sungrow has commissioned a large-scale solar-plus-storage project in Sierra Leone, according to pv magazine. The Chinese manufacturer says it is the first national-scale power generation project connected to the country's grid in nearly a decade.

The installation pairs a solar array with a 35 MWh energy storage system built from eight units of Sungrow's PowerTitan Series ESS, pv magazine reported. The project is backed by the World Bank.

It sits within the Sierra Leone government's Regional Emergency Solar Power Intervention Project, known as RESPITE, a World Bank initiative targeting an increase in the national electricity access rate from 16% to 36%.

The scale of the supply problem is set out in the same reporting: Sierra Leone's national grid records daily power outages of up to 18 hours.

RESPITE has already delivered generating capacity this year. In June, two solar plants were inaugurated under the programme, the 30 MW Newton solar power plant and the 10 MW Lungi solar power plant, according to pv magazine. The storage component now added by Sungrow gives the programme a dispatchable element alongside those daytime-only assets.

The capacity of the solar array tied to the battery system was not disclosed.

Chevron reported adjusted second-quarter earnings of $12 billion, or $6.06 per share, beating the average analyst estimate of $5.56 per share compiled by LSEG, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital. ExxonMobil, reporting the same day, posted $3.52 per share against an LSEG consensus of $3.60.

ExxonMobil's adjusted earnings reached $14.7 billion, a 67% increase from the first quarter, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

The divergence shows up in volumes. Chevron lifted production to 4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day from 3.85 million boepd in the first quarter, with US output reaching a record 2.08 million boepd. ExxonMobil moved the other way, with total production of 4.5 million boepd against 4.6 million boepd three months earlier.

Chevron's upstream segment earned $8.2 billion, triple the year-earlier figure at a 200% increase, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

Both sets of results were lifted by crude prices. Benchmark Brent averaged a closing price of $96.68 per barrel over the second quarter, up 23% from the first quarter, with uncertainty over a tenuous ceasefire cited by Offshore Engineer OEDigital as the driver.

ExxonMobil returned $4.3 billion to shareholders in dividends and bought back $5.1 billion of its own stock over the three months.

Chevron also said it has banked $1.5 billion in synergies from last year's Hess acquisition, clearing the mark six months ahead of schedule and exceeding the $1 billion target set when the deal closed, per Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

SEACOR Marine swung to a second quarter 2026 net income of USD 3.3 million from a net loss of USD 6.7 million a year earlier, and disclosed that its Board of Directors is evaluating strategic alternatives including a sale of the company.

Consolidated operating revenues came in at USD 54.6 million, with operating income of USD 16.0 million and direct vessel profit of USD 7.9 million, according to the company's results statement issued through GlobeNewswire. Earnings were USD 0.13 per basic share and USD 0.12 per diluted share, against a loss of USD 0.26 per basic and diluted share in the second quarter of 2025.

Asset sales carried much of the result. The company completed the disposal of five vessels and other equipment during the quarter for net cash proceeds of USD 44.7 million, recognizing gains of USD 31.3 million after transaction costs.

On the strategic review, the Board expects to weigh a range of options that may include a sale of the company, a merger, other business combinations, sale of assets, or other transactions aimed at maximizing value for shareholders, the statement said. Independent financial advisors have been retained to assist in that evaluation.

Operating metrics improved sequentially. Average day rates reached USD 20,227, up from USD 18,199 in the first quarter of 2026 and USD 19,731 in the second quarter of 2025. Fleet utilization was 68%, matching the year-earlier quarter and above the 59% recorded in the first quarter of 2026.

The company flagged one drag on the current quarter. SEACOR Marine does not expect either of its two premium liftboats in the Middle East to operate during the third quarter of 2026, citing observed delays due primarily to the ongoing conflict.

ZF Friedrichshafen will place Sebastian Schmitt on its executive board effective 1 September 2026, according to electrive, with the supervisory board appointing the 44-year-old industrial engineer to the supplier's top management body.

Schmitt arrives on the board from the unit at the centre of ZF's restructuring. He has run the Electrified Powertrain Technologies Division, known internally as Division E, since November 2025, electrive reported.

The appointment coincides with a departure. Peter Holdmann, ZF's chief technology officer, will leave the group by mutual agreement on 31 August 2026, according to electrive.

Responsibilities are also being pulled upward. Chief executive Mathias Miedreich, appointed in September 2025, takes on additional oversight of the Chassis Solutions Division and the group-wide research and development portfolio, electrive reported.

The reshuffle follows a loss-making year. ZF reported turnover of EUR 38.8 billion in 2025 alongside an operating loss of EUR 1.8 billion, with around 153,000 employees, according to electrive.

Job cuts have fallen heavily on the division Schmitt has been running. ZF has eliminated 14,000 positions in Germany, of which 7,600 sat in Division E, electrive reported.

Nadara has closed a EUR 1.2 billion refinancing secured against 1.5 GW of operating wind and solar capacity in seven European countries, according to ESS News.

The package covers 47 operating renewable assets: 34 onshore wind farms and 13 solar plants located in France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, Sweden, Norway and Finland, ESS News reported.

Fifteen international commercial banks formed the syndicate behind the transaction.

Nadara said the platform gives it greater flexibility to fund repowering of existing assets, development of hybrid renewable projects and deployment of battery energy storage systems.

The company was formed in 2024 by merging Renantis, previously known as Falck Renewables, with Ventient Energy. Both companies were backed by infrastructure funds managed by JPMorgan Asset Management, according to ESS News.

Electrovaya has launched ElvaPulse 1500, a stationary battery energy storage system (BESS) targeted at data centers and other critical infrastructure, according to ESS News. The company is a Canadian battery manufacturer listed on Nasdaq and the Toronto Stock Exchange as ELVA.

The unit is built into a 20-foot modular container on a 1500 VDC architecture. ESS News reported nominal energy of up to 2.88 MWh and continuous power output of up to 7 MW.

Electrovaya said the platform is meant to sit alongside generators, uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems and broader grid modernization work, as data center operators face growing power demand from artificial intelligence infrastructure.

First deliveries are targeted for the second quarter of 2027 from the company's manufacturing plant in Jamestown, New York, where Electrovaya has said site upgrades and construction are underway, according to ESS News.

The company also said the platform is being developed to support projects seeking eligibility for the U.S. 48E investment tax credit.

Central Maine Power (CMP) and Eversource submitted the proposal that ISO New England has named as its preliminary preferred longer-term transmission solution under the 2025 request for proposals (RFP), according to ISO New England Newswire.

The RFP addresses needs identified by the New England States Committee on Electricity (NESCOE) in connection with the 2050 Transmission Study, ISO New England Newswire reported.

The CMP and Eversource proposal would upgrade the transmission system between northern Maine and the more populous regions of southern New England, according to the same report. ISO New England Newswire said land-based wind generation is expected to increase in northern Maine, while electricity demand is highest in southern New England.

A decision point follows publication of the final report. Within 30 days of that report being posted, NESCOE may terminate the 2025 longer-term transmission planning (LTTP) RFP process, or proceed with an alternative cost allocation for the project, per ISO New England Newswire.

Volkswagen has opened UK order books for the new ID. Polo, with prices starting at GBP 23,945, according to electrive.

Buyers who want the car before the general launch pay more. Launch editions are available from GBP 25,555, electrive reported, with regular sales beginning in September. The regular production models are scheduled to go on sale on 10 September in the UK.

Range depends on the version chosen. The ID. Polo delivers a WLTP figure of up to 281 miles, per electrive.

Volkswagen says all 52 kWh variants with 211 PS qualify for the UK government's GBP 1,500 Electric Car Grant. That subsidy is tied to the specific battery and power combination rather than the model line as a whole.

The car also marks a change under the skin. According to electrive, the ID. Polo is the first Volkswagen ID. model to use a front-wheel-drive version of the MEB+ platform.

Spanish energy retailer Factorenergia has started operations in Brazil, aiming at small and medium-sized businesses as the country's electricity market gradually opens to more consumers, according to ESS News.

The entry came through a partnership with Path Investimentos. Factorenergia said it plans to replicate its European business model in Brazil, bundling energy retail with distributed generation, energy management, energy efficiency and battery energy storage systems. Its stated target segment is small and medium-sized businesses.

Barreto said the company is developing pilot battery storage projects in the states of Bahia and Para, ESS News reported, to test a model that pairs long-term electricity supply contracts with battery systems.

On the commercial case, Factorenergia said customers with monthly electricity bills between BRL 15,000 and BRL 20,000 could cut energy costs by 17% to 25%. That range is the company's own estimate for the bill bracket it is chasing.

Automation carries much of the customer relationship. About 74% of Factorenergia's customer service is already handled by AI platforms built by the company's engineering team in Spain, according to ESS News.

The timing tracks a regulatory change. Brazil is preparing to open its retail electricity market to low-voltage consumers from November 2027, which would widen the pool of customers a retailer can sign directly.

Ownership shifted before the Brazilian launch. The move follows SmartestEnergy's purchase of an 85% stake in Factorenergia, ESS News reported. SmartestEnergy is part of Japan's Marubeni Corp.

Zambia and Zimbabwe together accounted for more than two-thirds of all new coal power proposals announced across Africa in 2025, according to Global Energy Monitor's Boom and Bust Coal 2026 report cited by Mongabay.

Both countries lean heavily on water for electricity. Mongabay reported that more than 80% of Zambia's power supply and about half of Zimbabwe's came from hydropower in 2024.

That dependence turned into a supply failure. Successive droughts linked to the 2023-24 El Niño pulled down water levels in Lake Kariba, formed by a dam on the Zambezi River, and drastically reduced generation, precipitating what Mongabay described as one of the region's worst energy crises in decades. Households faced power cuts lasting up to 18 hours a day.

The Kariba hydroelectric complex has been operational since 1960, and its output is split equally between the two countries. A single reservoir therefore sets the generation ceiling on both sides of the border at once, which is why one drought produced two national shortages.

Rooftop solar has taken up part of the gap in Zimbabwe. Kudakwashe Manjonjo of Power Shift Africa told Mongabay that about six to eight percent of the country's electricity now comes from net-metering systems, a billing arrangement under which households generate their own power with solar panels and feed surplus output back into the national grid.

The coal pipeline sits alongside that distributed solar growth rather than replacing it. Global Energy Monitor's count measures proposals announced, not plants built, and the two countries' share of the continent's new announcements marks a shift in where African coal planning is now concentrated.

The ExxonMobil-led consortium developing Guyana's Stabroek Block has recouped the USD 55 billion it has invested since 2014, about two years ahead of schedule, Exxon Chief Financial Officer Neil Hansen told Offshore Engineer OEDigital in an interview. Hansen attributed the faster payback to the pace at which the block was developed.

The cost recovery changes what Exxon reports from the country. Entering the third quarter, the company will book about 100,000 fewer barrels per day from Guyana, according to Hansen, who said free cash flow would rise by 2030 to twice the level seen in 2025.

The mechanism sits in the joint venture's production sharing contract with Guyana. That agreement allowed Exxon and its partners to take up to 75% of the oil produced to cover exploration and development spending. With the accumulated outlay now recovered, that cost-recovery barrel share falls away, which is what shrinks the volume Exxon reports even as physical output continues.

Guyana is now pumping more than 900,000 barrels per day, per Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

Stabroek is estimated to hold at least 11 billion barrels of oil equivalent and has become one of the top assets in the U.S. producer's portfolio since the discovery, the outlet reported.

Ownership of the block is split three ways. Exxon operates with a 45% interest. Chevron holds 30% after acquiring Hess Corp, the original partner in the consortium, and CNOOC holds 25%.

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened an investigation into roughly 1.2 million Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles after receiving 156 complaints that a front suspension component detached while the car was being driven, according to Electrek.

The component at issue is the front lower lateral link, which owners reported separating from the vehicle, Electrek said. The scope of the probe covers Model 3 cars built for 2018-2020 and Model Y cars built for 2021-2023.

NHTSA says it is not aware of any crashes, injuries, or fatalities tied to the defect. The complaint total of 156 is what triggered the agency's review of the 1.2 million vehicles.

Tesla has addressed comparable failures twice before through recalls. Electrek reported that the company recalled roughly 2,800 Model 3 vehicles in 2021 over a suspension issue traced to a production problem. A second recall in 2023 covered 422 Model 3 vehicles for similar failures.

The current investigation is therefore several orders of magnitude larger in vehicle count than either prior action, spanning both nameplates rather than the Model 3 alone.

PJM started taking applications on July 31 for its Expedited Interconnection Track, a fast lane restricted to large generation projects that hold backing from a primary siting authority and can commence operation within three years, according to PJM Inside Lines.

The track carries a hard volume limit. PJM will consider up to 10 interconnection requests per calendar year in 2026 and 2027, covering large new or uprated capacity resources, per PJM Inside Lines.

Eligibility turns on size as well as siting. A project must offer at least 250 MW of unforced capacity, the amount credited for reliability purposes, PJM Inside Lines said.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission accepted the track on June 9, according to the same PJM Inside Lines account.

Projects that clear the screen face a compressed schedule. PJM expects them to execute a Generation Interconnection Agreement within 10 months of submission.

The mechanism is temporary. Per PJM Inside Lines, the EIT process will sunset at the end of 2027.

Low-cost electricity from the Bonneville Power Administration and its network of dams has drawn data center operators including Microsoft and Amazon to central and eastern Washington over many years, according to Inside Climate News.

The same reporting notes that hyperscale data centers sometimes draw as much power as an entire city, and that this scale of consumption is fueling concerns about the effects on communities of color.

Bonneville's dam-based generation is the anchor of that appeal, Inside Climate News reported, with the utility's cheap power long attractive to the companies behind large computing sites in the state's central and eastern counties.

Westinghouse Electric Company has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of its common stock, according to Power Engineering Nuclear.

The nuclear technology and services supplier is currently held by two owners. Power Engineering Nuclear reported that ownership has been split between Brookfield Renewable Partners with 51% and Cameco with 49% since a 2022 deal valued at USD 7.9 billion.

The filing arrives with a large federal financing package attached to the company's flagship reactor design. The U.S. Department of Energy, through its Office of Energy Dominance Financing, issued a conditional loan commitment of up to USD 17.5 billion to accelerate deployment of 10 new large-scale Westinghouse AP1000 reactors across the United States, per Power Engineering Nuclear.

Each AP1000 unit can generate approximately 1.1 GW, which puts the 10-reactor programme at roughly 11 GW of new capacity, according to the same report.

A strategic partnership sits alongside the loan commitment. Power Engineering Nuclear reported that the partnership targets at least USD 80 billion of new reactors to be constructed across the United States using Westinghouse reactor technology.

The scale of that pipeline contrasts with recent US construction history. The last two large reactors completed in the country, Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia, entered commercial operation in 2023 and 2024 respectively, according to Power Engineering Nuclear.

Westinghouse Electric's own record includes a trip through insolvency. The company emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018 after a nearly 17-month reorganization that stemmed from financial and construction problems on its nuclear plant projects, per the report.

Nextpower has closed its purchase of assets from the power conversion business of Zigor Corp., taking in the unit's subsidiary Apex Power Conversion, according to Solar Builder.

The renewable energy technology company expects more than 10 GW of capacity to come online within the next calendar year, Solar Builder reported, with deliveries ramping in early 2027.

Nextpower's power conversion portfolio now offers modular configurations up to 5.2 MVA, according to the company.

The transaction also widens the buyer's engineering bench, giving Nextpower access to global engineering talent in the U.S. and Spain.

Hyundai used the 2026 Gaikindo Indonesia International Auto Show (GIIAS) to present the Neira Concept, a seven-seat electric minivan, according to Electrek.

The carmaker said local production of the seven-seat electric people mover will begin in Indonesia by the end of 2026, Electrek reported. Assembly is assigned to Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Indonesia.

The concept shared the stand with the IONIQ 3 and several other Hyundai models at GIIAS 2026, per Electrek.

On design, Electrek noted the Neira is nearly identical to the Kia Carens Clavis EV, an electric MPV that launched in India last year. That overlap points to a shared platform approach for multi-purpose electric vehicles aimed at markets where three-row seating drives family car demand.

Hyundai has not tied the concept to a separate production name in the reporting, and the seven-seat layout is the specification the company put forward at the show.

An Aberdeen business group wants the UK government to move quickly on investor confidence in the North Sea, after bp began seeking buyers for its UK upstream assets, World Oil reported.

The seller went public on Thursday, saying it had opened a marketing process for a possible sale of the North Sea business as part of a review of its holdings and where it puts capital, according to World Oil. Five producing hubs sit inside the package: Andrew, ETAP, Glen Lyon, Clair and Clair Ridge.

Russell Borthwick tied the sale directly to the fiscal and regulatory record. Confidence in the UK Continental Shelf, he said, "has been badly shaken after years of policy uncertainty, punitive taxation and mixed messages about the future of the industry".

On tax, the Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce wants faster work on scrapping the Energy Profits Levy and bringing in the proposed Oil & Gas Revenue Levy in its place, a regime that would keep a standing windfall tax that only bites when commodity prices run high, World Oil reported.

Gas Networks Ireland has appointed Reganosa to carry out independent technical verification services on the front-end engineering design (FEED) for Ireland's Strategic Gas Emergency Reserve project, according to Offshore Magazine.

The reserve is built around a floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) and associated infrastructure, intended to hold supply continuity through emergency situations, Offshore Magazine reported.

The unit is to be stationed at Cahiracon, Co. Clare, on the Shannon Estuary.

Reganosa's mandate covers verification of the design work rather than delivery of the reserve itself. The FSRU-based configuration keeps regasification offshore of onshore terminal construction, with the vessel and its connecting infrastructure forming the emergency supply route.

BC Ventures, the 50:50 joint venture between Borr Drilling and its well construction partner in Mexico, has completed the purchase of five jackup rigs from Fontis Finance for USD 287 million, according to Offshore Magazine.

The deal lifts Borr Drilling's owned and jointly owned global fleet to 34 rigs and widens its position in Mexico's shallow-water sector, Offshore Magazine reported.

BC Ventures acquired the rig-owning entities behind two Friede & Goldman JU-2000E design units, the Oberon and Titania FE, plus three LeTourneau Super 116-C design units, the Courageous, Defender and Intrepid. All five are presently located in Mexico, per Offshore Magazine.

Separately, Keppel intends to monetize up to 10 legacy rigs through a new private fund it manages, Keppel Offshore Fund (KOF), Offshore Magazine reported.

The first tranche moves six operational rigs this year, sold through the indirect subsidiary Rigco Holding to KOF for about USD 1.2 billion, according to the same report.

Four further rigs, in various stages of completion, would be progressively finished and potentially divested to KOF from 2027 to 2028, at a potential price of USD 998 million, Offshore Magazine reported.

An indirect subsidiary of Keppel, together with funds, accounts and entities managed by Apollo, have agreed to subscribe for limited partnership interests in the fund.

PJM has filed a proposal with FERC seeking to start a Reliability Backstop Procurement (RBP) on September 30, 2026, according to PJM Inside Lines.

The procurement is designed to bring forward new generation to cover a shortfall of 6,831 MW left by the recent capacity auction for the 2028/2029 Delivery Year, PJM Inside Lines reported. PJM describes the effort as a parallel path to secure new supply against that gap.

Contract terms would run as long as 15 years, and PJM set a maximum willingness to pay equal to a MW-weighted average of USD 555/MW-day, per PJM Inside Lines. That ceiling is expressed as a weighted average rather than a per-project cap.

PJM staff will hold a stakeholder workshop on August 10, walking through the manual page by page to set out key dates, participation requirements, and how projects will be evaluated and selected, according to PJM Inside Lines.

A second, separate filing is expected from PJM on August 7. It will propose how PJM, working with state authorities and its Members, would facilitate load reductions during periods of extreme grid stress for large loads that do not procure their own power supplies, PJM Inside Lines reported.

Deep Sea Minerals Corp. has received a determination of substantial compliance from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on its DSHMRA application, the company said in an interview published by Offshore Magazine.

The determination means the application has met first-stage completeness requirements and can proceed into the federal review process, according to the company's own description of the milestone.

The acreage at stake is large. Offshore Magazine reported that Deep Sea Minerals Corp. holds a concession of roughly 150,000 sq km in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.

The company is a recent arrival to the seabed business. It was founded in Vancouver in 2022 as Copperhead Resources, a land-based minerals venture, then rebranded in early 2026 and moved its focus fully underwater, per Offshore Magazine. It is pursuing a Nasdaq listing.

The pivot came with new leadership. James Deckelman was hired as chief executive in January, bringing more than 25 years of deepwater oil and gas experience from bp, ConocoPhillips, Talisman Energy and BluEnergies, according to Offshore Magazine.

That hiring pattern is itself the signal worth reading in the filing: a company applying for federal seabed review staffed its top job with an executive whose track record is in offshore hydrocarbons rather than hard-rock mining.

Benton Resources and Metals Creek have started soil gas surveys at the Smoking Gun and Parson's Pond properties in Newfoundland, looking for natural hydrogen and helium anomalies ahead of possible drilling, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The two companies brought in Rudy Willick and Rudiger Re-Chem for the sampling program, which is set to collect roughly 650 to 750 soil gas samples over two to three weeks, Hydrogen Fuel News reported.

Each sample will be tested for hydrogen, helium, neon, carbon dioxide, and light hydrocarbons, according to the same report. That multi-gas panel matters because helium and neon act as tracers alongside a hydrogen signal, while carbon dioxide and light hydrocarbons help separate a subsurface source from shallow biological gas.

Surveys of this kind precede any drill decision. Benton Resources and Metals Creek have framed the work as anomaly detection at Smoking Gun and Parson's Pond, with drilling described only as potential.