Wednesday, 5 August 2026

Shell plc reported Q2 2026 Adjusted Earnings of $9.8 billion and commenced another $3 billion of share buybacks, according to the company's second-quarter press release published via GlobeNewswire.

The buyback tranche marks the 19th consecutive quarter in which Shell has announced at least $3 billion of repurchases. The company said the programme is in line with its policy of distributing 40-50% of cash flow from operations through the cycle.

Cash flow from operations reached $21.4 billion in the quarter, which Shell attributed to higher realised prices and a working capital inflow of $3.4 billion.

Shell described the earnings figure as reflecting strong operational performance across its businesses despite Middle East outages, citing record upstream production in Brazil and record refinery utilisation.

Gearing stood at 19%, on net debt of $42 billion, or $12 billion excluding leases. Shell characterised the position as a strong balance sheet.

The capital expenditure outlook for the year was left unchanged at $24 billion to $26 billion.

On costs, Shell said it has achieved structural cost reductions of $5.8 billion since 2022, including roughly $700 million delivered in the first half of 2026.

Oil is now flowing from BP plc's Atlantis expansion in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, World Oil reported. Gross peak annualized output from the addition runs to roughly 10,000 boed.

BP's share of that stream comes to about 5,000 boed net, according to World Oil. Ownership of the field splits 56% to BP as operator and 44% to Woodside Energy.

The work finished early and below its cost estimate, World Oil said.

Water depth at Atlantis runs to about 7,074 ft, with the field roughly 150 miles from New Orleans to the south.

BP also recently sanctioned Kaskida and Tiber, a pair of developments World Oil said should deliver approximately 160,000 bpd of new oil production capacity in the U.S. offshore region by the end of the decade.

Engie has signed an hourly matched electricity supply agreement with Legrand that pledges to cover the French industrial group's consumption with renewable generation 70% of the time, according to pv magazine.

The contract runs from 2029 to 2031, with Engie supplying Legrand from a portfolio of renewable generating assets spread across several production sites, pv magazine reported.

Engie says the arrangement is the first of its kind in France. Certification for the offtake agreement rests on the international EnergyTag standard, according to pv magazine.

Hourly matching differs from conventional annual-volume renewable contracts by requiring generation and consumption to line up within the same hour rather than netting out across a year. The 70% figure is the share of hours Engie has committed to cover under the agreement, per pv magazine.

Sébastien Hubau, managing director of Engie's business-to-business activities worldwide, called the contract a "real milestone".

The FCC placed foreign-produced inverters on its Covered List last week, according to CleanTechnica. New inverter models can no longer be imported into the United States, effective immediately.

The restriction carries no exemption by supplier country. As CleanTechnica reported, it applies "regardless of the nationality of origin" to all foreign countries, including those considered allies.

Inverters convert direct current from solar panels and batteries into alternating current for grid use, making them a required component in nearly every photovoltaic and storage installation. The Covered List designation blocks the entry of new models rather than targeting a single vendor or jurisdiction.

CleanTechnica set out the case in an item headlined on the cost of the measure to the United States.

OPEC+ will lift output by a further 188,000 bpd from September, a step that has done little to loosen a market still short of barrels, according to Tamas Varga, analyst at PVM Oil Associates, cited by World Oil.

Varga expects tightening global oil inventories and continued geopolitical instability to keep crude prices supported through August, even with the additional supply coming from the producer group.

The group has now unwound its voluntary production cuts in full. Even so, a meaningful recovery in regional oil flows remains elusive, Varga said.

He attributed that gap between paper supply and physical availability to a string of disruptions across crude and refined product markets: attacks on energy infrastructure, constrained exports from Kazakhstan, and shipping risks in the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

Refined product balances point the same way. U.S. distillate inventories have climbed off their May lows but remain well below both year-ago levels and the five-year seasonal average, according to Varga.

That combination leaves the September increase working against a backdrop where restored quota volumes are not translating into comparable volumes reaching buyers.

The Sierra Club has filed a grassroots comment letter signed by more than 2,000 members and supporters opposing the proposal to rescind the SEC's 2024 climate disclosure rule, according to CleanTechnica.

CleanTechnica reported that the group submitted and joined multiple filings against the rollback of that rule. The signature count of more than 2,000 members and supporters was the figure cited for the grassroots letter.

Brent front-month futures added $1.04, or 1.24%, to reach $84.81 a barrel by 0800 GMT on Tuesday, clawing back part of the 7% drop the previous session that left the contract at a three-week low, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

The gain came with no clear diplomatic settlement of the U.S.-Iran conflict in sight and with oil flows through key shipping routes still disrupted, according to the same report.

Esmail Baghaei, spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry, contradicted Trump's account on Monday. He said talks with the U.S. were not happening and that no meetings had been put on the calendar.

The UK Maritime Trade Operations agency reported an incident on Tuesday 20 nautical miles northeast of Al Khasab in Oman, where a cargo vessel radioed that an unknown projectile had struck it, per Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The Strait of Hormuz carried roughly one-fifth of the world's daily oil and liquefied natural gas volumes before the conflict started in late February, according to the outlet.

Goldman Sachs expects Brent to stay between $80 and $90 a barrel until either a new U.S.-Iran agreement is confirmed or attacks and targets escalate significantly. Tuesday's level fell within that band.

Baghaei's denial of any scheduled meetings points away from near-term confirmation of an agreement. The projectile report near Al Khasab is the most recent incident cited in the same coverage.

Emaldo has partnered with Danish energy aggregator Twig to widen market access for its battery storage customers in Denmark, Sweden and Finland, ESS News reported.

The scale behind the deal sits in Emaldo's existing customer base. According to ESS News, Emaldo said in July that customers earn more than EUR 1 million per month through its Grid Rewards program, drawing on over 150 MW of controllable capacity.

Twig runs an automated platform spanning asset aggregation, forecasting, optimization and trading, with coverage of day-ahead, intraday, imbalance and ancillary service markets in Europe, the United States and Japan, per ESS News. The company was founded in Denmark in 2021.

This is Emaldo's second aggregation tie-up in short order. ESS News reported that the Twig agreement follows a deal Emaldo struck in July with Swedish balance responsible party Bixia, aimed at expanding ancillary service market access in Sweden. The Bixia arrangement was confined to one country; the Twig arrangement reaches across three.

For distributed battery owners, the route to revenue runs through a party that can bid aggregated capacity into wholesale and reserve markets. Twig's stated coverage of imbalance and ancillary services alongside day-ahead and intraday trading gives Emaldo's fleet more than one product to sell from the same asset.

A joint research project applying artificial intelligence to lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cell production started in July 2026 under the leadership of EAS Batteries, according to electrive.

The project, named KiBa-Pro, carries EUR 2.4 million in funding from the German Federal Government, electrive reported. That money supports a consortium of research institutions and industry partners working on a data-driven method for manufacturing LFP cells.

Roles are split between the two named partners. EAS Batteries coordinates the work and leads the digitalisation of cell manufacturing, while RWTH Aachen handles cell characterisation and the development of the AI models, according to electrive.

The technical objective is a virtual LFP cell built from production data captured on the line. Per electrive, advanced AI methods will analyse large datasets to identify correlations between production parameters and the resulting cell properties.

LFP chemistry sits at the centre of the consortium's scope, and the funding covers both the characterisation side at RWTH Aachen and the manufacturing digitalisation side at EAS Batteries.

US President Donald Trump accused oil majors of "making too much money" after the companies reported windfalls from the Iran war, and said they should "give some back to the public," Semafor Net Zero reported.

The attack followed a quarter of outsized results across the sector. According to Semafor Net Zero, ExxonMobil's second-quarter profits doubled year-on-year and Chevron posted its highest earnings on record. Aramco, BP and Shell also declared blockbuster earnings, per the same report.

The conflict disrupted shipping and pushed crude above USD 100 per barrel in May, Semafor Net Zero said. Average US pump prices reached USD 4.55.

That combination leaves Trump with limited tools on the supply side. The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve is already at its lowest level since the early 1980s, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Retail fuel costs are the most visible transmission channel from the shipping disruption to households, and the reserve is the standard federal lever for blunting them. With the stockpile depleted, the pressure Trump applied was rhetorical rather than physical: a demand that the companies booking the windfall return part of it.

The earnings spread across both US majors and international producers indicates the price move was captured broadly rather than by a single company.

China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) told photovoltaic manufacturers to stop competing below cost and to compete on product quality instead, without setting a formal price floor, according to pv magazine.

The message came at a solar industry price-compliance meeting held on July 31 in Yancheng, Jiangsu province, pv magazine reported. The regulator convened the session as part of the central government's campaign against what it calls "involution-style" competition.

SAMR's call stopped short of a mandated minimum price, pv magazine reported, keeping the intervention at the level of guidance on pricing conduct rather than administered tariffs.

Markets moved on the announcement. The most-traded polysilicon futures contract on the Guangzhou Futures Exchange hit its daily limit on August 3, closing 8.99% higher at CNY 35,890 per ton, according to pv magazine.

Equities followed. Shares in Tongwei and Flat Glass closed at their daily limits in Shanghai after the regulatory announcement, pv magazine reported.

Supply-side behaviour shifted first. Several polysilicon producers reportedly suspended quotations over the weekend following the meeting and temporarily pulled lower-priced material from the market, according to pv magazine.

The compliance push has a technical anchor. A voluntary group standard setting out a common cost-accounting framework for polysilicon, wafers, cells and modules was released on July 27 under the guidance of SAMR and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), pv magazine reported.

That document, the General Rules for the Cost Accounting Model of the Photovoltaic Industry, gives regulators and companies a shared basis for judging what sits below cost. The China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA) was tasked with promoting the standard and steering companies away from low-price dumping and other potential price violations, according to pv magazine.

The combination matters for how the guidance bites: without a price floor, enforcement rests on whether a quotation can be shown to fall under a cost benchmark defined by the new accounting rules. The immediate reaction in polysilicon futures and in Tongwei and Flat Glass shares points to a market reading the compliance meeting as a constraint on the lowest-priced supply.

Registered projects for Brazil's first battery energy storage system capacity auctions exceeded 260 GW in the first tender and 280 GW in the second, according to preliminary data from the Energy Research Office (EPE) reported by ESS News.

The capacity reserve auctions, known as LRCAP, are set for Dec. 2 and Dec. 4, ESS News reported. The first of the two tenders is reserved for projects that use domestically manufactured equipment.

Registration closed on July 31. EPE is expected to publish the list of qualified projects on Nov. 17, according to ESS News.

Proposed capacity is heavily concentrated in one part of the country. The Northeast region accounts for 71.1% of registered projects, with the Southeast region next at 18.8%, per the EPE data cited by ESS News.

EPE attributed the volume of submissions to the modular nature of battery storage projects and to the absence of environmental licensing and certification requirements at the registration stage, ESS News reported.

Registered capacity at this stage is a gross measure of developer interest rather than a pipeline that will be contracted. The gap between the registered volumes and the qualified list due in November will show how much of the more than 280 GW submitted for the second tender survives EPE's screening ahead of the December auction dates.

T1 Energy has agreed to deliver 641 MW of solar modules to Clearway Energy Group, according to Solar Builder. The manufacturer is based in Austin, Texas, and produces both solar and battery products.

Under the terms reported by Solar Builder, T1 Energy will supply solar cells made at its G2_Austin manufacturing facility. The 641 MW volume covers modules destined for Clearway.

Dan Barcelo, chairman and chief executive officer of T1 Energy, called the arrangement "a strategic partnership with Clearway, a leading energy developer that is adding needed gigawatts to U.S. grids".

T1 Energy officials told Solar Builder the company expects to offer products containing over 60% domestic content by 2027. That threshold matters for developers seeking to qualify projects under domestic content rules, and it depends on cell production moving inside the United States rather than being imported for assembly.

The cell-level sourcing is the operative detail. Module assembly alone carries a lower share of a panel's value than cell manufacturing, so a supply deal specifying cells from G2_Austin gives Clearway a different content profile than one built on imported cells.

Car leasing and mobility provider Drivalia has secured EUR 48 million in financing from the European Investment Bank (EIB), according to electrive.

The money will fund the purchase of 2,900 battery-electric vehicles destined for corporate customers in Italy and Finland, electrive reported.

The EIB estimates the fleet will cut CO2 emissions by roughly 3,000 tonnes per year against a comparable fleet of internal combustion engine vehicles.

Drivalia runs about 216,000 vehicles across 16 European countries, per electrive. The 2,900 electric cars covered by the loan represent a small slice of that total, concentrated in two of those markets.

Audi's entry-level electric car, the A2 e-tron, will start at about EUR 38,200 in Germany with a WLTP driving range of up to 649 km, according to Electrek.

The version fitted with the 140 kW motor and the efficiency package draws 12.8 kWh per 100 km under WLTP conditions, Electrek reported. Electrek describes the model as the most efficient car Audi has built.

Aerodynamics carry part of that result. The A2 e-tron has a drag coefficient of 0.24, the best figure in Audi's compact lineup, per Electrek.

Four power outputs will be offered when the car goes on sale in fall: 125 kW, 140 kW, 170 kW and 240 kW. Electrek reported the range-topping WLTP figure of 649 km alongside the EUR 38,200 entry price.

Three battery packs are expected, at 50 kWh, 58 kWh and 79 kWh, according to Electrek.

On pricing, the A2 e-tron undercuts the Q4 e-tron, which starts at EUR 47,500, or nearly EUR 10,000 more than the electric A2, Electrek reported. That gap places the new model below Audi's existing compact electric offering in the German market.

Sono Motors GmbH stopped its operational business and opened insolvency proceedings as of July 31, according to electrive.

The company's managing directors, Denis Azhar and Jan Schiermeister, are putting the core technical portfolio up for sale in three separate packages, electrive reported. Those are the solar integration of the Sion, the power electronics including the solar charge controller for vehicles, and the Solar Data Services.

The insolvency comes after a change of ownership earlier in the year. Sono Group N.V. announced in March 2026 that it was withdrawing from the solar business, and the step was completed on 4 May, when the subsidiary Sono Motors GmbH was transferred to entities controlled by Azhar and Schiermeister, according to electrive.

The listed parent has since moved into an unrelated line of business. Sono Group N.V. now operates as a treasury company that buys Bitcoin and seeks to generate returns through options trading, electrive reported.

Essar Group has unveiled a GBP 4.3 billion energy transition plan for its Stanlow Manufacturing Complex in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The programme centres on large-scale hydrogen production, paired with carbon capture projects and sustainable aviation fuel initiatives. Together, according to Hydrogen Fuel News, the measures are intended to cut refinery emissions at the site by up to 95%.

Essar Oil UK acquired the Stanlow site in 2011, Hydrogen Fuel News reported. The operation was rebranded as EET Fuels in 2024.

Stanlow is one of the larger refining assets in the country, and the spending figure places the plan among the more substantial single-site industrial decarbonisation commitments announced by a refiner. Hydrogen production at refinery scale is used both to process fuels and, when combined with carbon capture, to lower the carbon intensity of the products leaving the gate. The sustainable aviation fuel component ties the site to a market where refiners are converting existing hydroprocessing capacity rather than building from scratch.

The up to 95% figure is a ceiling rather than a committed reduction, and Hydrogen Fuel News attributes it to the combined effect of the three workstreams rather than any single project.

HRS and Baker Hughes have agreed to develop high-capacity hydrogen refueling stations together, pairing HRS's turnkey station work with Baker Hughes's VerHy550 compression technology, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The two companies are targeting industrial decarbonization alongside hydrogen mobility, Hydrogen Fuel News reported. Compression is the piece Baker Hughes brings to the arrangement; station delivery and integration sit with HRS.

Beyond individual forecourts, the partners are also working on centralized Hydrogen Filling Centers, according to the same report. Those centers and the stations are aimed at three customer groups: mobility fleets, regional logistics hubs, and industrial users.

Hydrogen Fuel News said the deployment is intended for France, with possible extension across Europe.

The pairing addresses a practical constraint in refueling economics. Higher-capacity stations need compression rated to handle rapid, repeated fills for heavy fleets rather than occasional passenger vehicle dispensing, and the filling-center model shifts part of that duty to a shared site serving multiple offtakers.

Hyundai Motor Group, PT Pertamina (Persero) and the West Java Provincial Government are starting a waste-to-hydrogen pilot project at the Sarimukti landfill just outside Bandung, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The scheme centres on gas that decomposing waste already produces. Hydrogen Fuel News reported that the partners intend to capture methane-rich biogas at the site, upgrade it into biomethane, and then convert that gas into low-carbon hydrogen for use at refueling stations.

Rather than build a separate distribution chain, the project plans to tap existing compressed natural gas (CNG) infrastructure, per Hydrogen Fuel News, which describes the pilot as supporting circular economy and clean energy goals.

The combination of a municipal waste site, a state oil and gas company and a provincial government puts landfill gas at the centre of the hydrogen supply route, with the fuel destined for vehicle refueling rather than industrial offtake.

Power production across the French nuclear fleet dipped by almost 9% during the July 2026 heatwave, with three of the country's 57 reactors taken offline and output throttled at seven more, Carbon Brief reported.

Carbon Brief put the earlier demand spike at almost 20%, measured on daily electricity consumption in France through a two-week heatwave in June 2026.

Nuclear supplies around 70% of French electricity, Carbon Brief said, leaving the country's supply unusually sensitive to reactor curtailments.

Cooling water sits at the centre of the problem. France hosts around 60 of the 440 river-cooled reactors worldwide and another seven operate elsewhere in Europe, with river-cooled units representing 14% of the global fleet, according to Carbon Brief.

Carbon Brief cited an article in Forbes stating that each additional degree Celsius costs a nuclear plant around 0.6-1% in cycle efficiency.

Measured over a full year, the losses are far smaller. Heatwaves trimmed annual nuclear generation by 0.6% on average between 2003 and 2022, Carbon Brief reported, citing a recent study co-authored by McMaster University researcher Michael Tadrous.

Only once has a national nuclear fleet given up more than 1% of its yearly nuclear output to heat- and drought-related curtailments, Tadrous said: France in 2003, at 1.3%.

Reactors in Romania, Hungary and Serbia have been hit by low water levels on the Danube this summer, and a Swiss reactor shut because river temperatures ran too high, according to Carbon Brief.

No floating photovoltaic array sits on a Canadian hydroelectric reservoir, Solar Builder reports, even as the technology has been picked up across Europe, Asia and other parts of the Americas. Inside Canada, FPV deployment is confined to a handful of mine and farm sites, all small, and suppliers have spent several years pitching the case to the country's hydroelectric utilities.

Asked about the technology, BC Hydro spokesperson Whitney Deane told Solar Builder the company has "not deployed floating solar on our reservoirs" and knows of no such projects running in British Columbia.

Swiss operators have taken the opposite route. Romande Energie S.A. and ABB placed a demonstration array of 24,000 square feet on Lac des Toules, a lake sitting 5,938 feet up, and specified it for -30 C, gusts reaching 120 km/h, 60 cm of ice cover and snowfall of up to 50 cm, according to Solar Builder.

A commercial follow-on is under development at the same lake. Romande Energie plans roughly 27,000 panels over 721,000 square feet, with output put at almost 23 million kWh a year and completion set for 2030, Solar Builder reports.

Portugal holds Europe's biggest reservoir-mounted plant. EDP runs the 12,000-panel array on the Alqueva Reservoir, wired through a hybrid line that carries hydro and solar output together. Solar Builder puts the project at EUR 6 million and 7.5 GWh a year.

Canadian reservoirs will multiply regardless. WaterPower Canada expects the waterpower sector to add about 11,000 MW over the coming decade, backed by roughly USD 100 billion in planned investment by 2035.

Within that pipeline, greenfield projects account for 5,700 MW. Expansions and refurbishments at existing sites make up the remaining 5,300 MW, per WaterPower Canada figures cited by Solar Builder.

South African energy technology firm Plentify has signed a partnership with Deye to build what CleanTechnica describes as Africa's largest residential virtual power plant.

A virtual power plant aggregates distributed household assets, such as batteries and controllable loads, and dispatches them as a single resource. The partnership targets that segment rather than utility-scale generation.

The backdrop is South African supply scarcity. According to CleanTechnica, Eskom, the country's electric utility, imposed an electricity rationing schedule known as load shedding when generation capacity fell short of demand. Rolling cuts of that kind pushed households toward inverters and battery systems, the hardware base a residential aggregation platform depends on.

CleanTechnica did not attach a capacity figure or a household count to the Plentify and Deye programme.

Annual talks at the International Seabed Authority (ISA) ran three weeks and closed on Friday with no immediate breakthroughs, according to Climate Home News.

The US is not an ISA member country, and it advanced its unilateral deep-sea mining push during the session, Climate Home News reported.

At issue is the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean. The Trump administration wants to mine it, as does Canadian firm The Metals Company (TMC), one of the mining frontrunners, according to Climate Home News.

The ISA assembly chose consultations led by Malta and pushed a decision on requesting an ITLOS advisory opinion to next year's meeting, Climate Home News reported.

TMC sued the ISA at ITLOS, arguing the body acted in bad faith over an inquiry into the contractor. The court rejected that argument, according to Climate Home News.

In closing remarks, ISA secretary-general Letícia Carvalho described the past year as having "presented both significant challenges and noteworthy achievements".

An environmental review written for a solar project now underpins a federal permit for an AI data center in Boulder City, Nevada. The Bureau of Land Management signed the amended right-of-way on June 26 after the developer asked to swap the clean energy build for computing capacity in late 2025, according to Electrek. Electrek reported it as the first data center approved on BLM-managed public land, cleared by carrying over a review completed for a different project.

The permit history starts with Townsite Solar 2. Its 2023 federal right-of-way covered an 80-acre parcel inside Boulder City limits and authorized a solar farm paired with 35 MW of battery storage, per Electrek.

The electrical profile of the site flips. Solar output at the parcel was set at 19 MW. The data center is permitted to draw as much as 167 MW, equivalent to the consumption of 75,000 homes, with backup generators on site.

Bruce Sillitoe, the BLM Las Vegas field office manager, found the two proposals "substantially the same," pointing to acreage, boundaries, build schedules, and structure dimensions, according to Electrek. That determination is what let the older analysis stand in place of a new one.

Boulder City is fighting it. Its council backed an appeal to the Interior Board of Land Appeals in a unanimous July 14 vote, and the city wants the project halted until the appeal is resolved, Electrek reported.

What the appeal contests is the transfer of the review, not the engineering of the building. Sillitoe's comparison rests on footprint and schedule measures, while the permitted use shifts from a 19 MW generator with 35 MW of storage to a load of up to 167 MW backed by on-site generation.

A proposed NRC rule to modernize certification of fuel transportation packages was published on July 27, 2026, and its comment period closes August 26 under Docket ID NRC-2025-1667, according to Neutron Bytes.

The proposal addresses radiation dose limits and testing methodology, Neutron Bytes reported, while the fissile-package criticality provisions at 10 CFR 71.55 and 71.59 stay as written, with no amendment, no discussion, and no invitation to comment.

Criticality rather than dose is what governs fresh high-assay low-enriched uranium. Neutron Bytes counts three things an advanced fuel cycle moves: fresh fuel, fresh fueled reactors, and irradiated reactors. Dose governs the irradiated category alone, and that is the only one the rule helps.

The 71.55(g) moderation exception, which permits uranium hexafluoride shippers to assume water stays out of a package, stops at 5 wt% U-235, per Neutron Bytes. Enrichment for HALEU runs between 5 and 20 percent U-235. The exception therefore ends where the HALEU band begins.

On dose, Neutron Bytes reported that the 0.1 mSv/h limit measured 2 meters from the vehicle stays in place. An alternative of 0.5 mSv/h is proposed for a narrow case only: package contents meeting the highway route controlled quantity definition in 49 CFR 173.403, plus advance coordination by the licensee with Federal, State, or local inspection authorities.

Enrichment build-out is already under way. Centrus expects 12 metric tons of annual HALEU capacity from its initial build-out, with first new capacity by 2029, Neutron Bytes reported. Separately, DOE is funding five companies on two-and-three-year schedules to develop and license transport packages.

Those package licensing schedules and the Centrus capacity timeline run alongside criticality provisions for fresh HALEU packages that the proposal leaves unchanged.

Sonnedix has closed a EUR 730 million financing package covering the refinancing, optimization and construction of solar photovoltaic (PV) and battery energy storage system (BESS) assets in Italy, Spain, Portugal and France, according to ESS News.

The package covers roughly 540 MW of PV plants plus two BESS assets spread across the four countries, ESS News reported. The single facility therefore mixes three distinct uses: paying down existing debt, upgrading operating plants, and funding assets still under construction.

Nine banks joined the transaction, per ESS News: AIB, Crédit Agricole CIB, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo, Sabadell, Santander CIB, Societe Generale and UniCredit.

The financing follows a purchase last month. In July, Sonnedix bought a 260 MW/1,040 MWh BESS portfolio at Tuscania, in Lazio, from Sphera Energy, ESS News reported. That portfolio carries four hours of duration at full power output, a configuration suited to shifting midday solar generation into evening demand.

The geographic footprint of the EUR 730 million facility spans the same market where the Tuscania batteries sit, alongside three others. Two BESS assets are inside the financed perimeter, against the 540 MW of PV capacity that makes up the bulk of the collateral.

Frontline plc has agreed to sell two very large crude carriers built in 2017 for an aggregate price of USD 270 million, according to a GlobeNewswire release.

The two vessels are expected to be delivered to the new owner during the third quarter of 2026, the release said.

Frontline expects the transaction to generate net cash proceeds of approximately USD 179 million after repayment of existing debt secured on the vessels, according to the same release.

The aggregate sale price covers both tankers.

Par Pacific Holdings reported net income attributable to stockholders of USD 462.1 million, or USD 9.35 per diluted share, for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, against USD 59.5 million, or USD 1.17 per diluted share, in the same quarter of 2025.

The swing was driven by the Refining segment, which posted operating income of USD 629.9 million for the quarter, compared with USD 81.3 million a year earlier, according to the company's results release distributed by GlobeNewswire.

Adjusted EBITDA came in at USD 571.3 million for the second quarter of 2026, versus USD 137.8 million in the second quarter of 2025.

The earnings gain did not come from higher runs. Refining segment throughput fell to 181 thousand barrels per day from 187 Mbpd in the year-earlier quarter, per the same release.

Par Pacific said its Hawaii turnaround was substantially complete, with the majority of processing units back online.

On the balance sheet, the company completed a USD 500 million Senior Unsecured Notes offering and cut term debt by more than USD 130 million, according to the release.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has ordered the state's utility regulator and grid operator to audit every data center moving through the interconnection queue, according to Power Magazine.

The directive covers the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), and applies to each project advancing through the queue rather than a sample.

Power Magazine reported that Abbott attached a penalty to the review: developers that do not disclose ownership, financial, water, and community-impact information could be denied grid access.

The disclosure list reaches past electricity. Water use and community impact sit alongside corporate ownership and financial detail as conditions for keeping a connection request alive, per Power Magazine.

Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD) started construction on Princeton Road Station with a groundbreaking ceremony held on the morning of July 17, according to Power Magazine.

The plant is a dual-fuel facility rated at 694 MW, sited just north of Hallam, Nebraska, Power Magazine reported.

Power Magazine reported that the project will become the largest natural gas generation plant in the NPPD fleet. The ceremony marked the formal start of construction.

EVgo is installing more than 500 DC fast-charging stalls at shopping centers owned by Brixmor Property Group, according to Electrek, placing chargers where drivers already stop for groceries, lunch, or errands.

Once the expanded rollout is finished, at least 90 Brixmor centers will host EVgo fast chargers, more than a quarter of the landlord's portfolio, Electrek reported. Brixmor owns 346 open-air neighborhood shopping centers across 29 states, with major tenants including Kroger, Publix, TJ Maxx, and Ross Stores.

Site density is capped: each new Brixmor location will carry up to 12 EVgo DC fast chargers. That structure spreads the stalls across dozens of retail sites rather than concentrating them in a few large hubs.

The first new installation is planned for Barn Plaza in Doylestown, around 30 miles north of Philadelphia, per Electrek. Additional locations will include sites in Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Texas, with deployment scheduled to begin later this year.

The two companies are not new partners. EVgo first installed chargers at a Brixmor shopping center in Pleasanton, California, in 2016, according to Electrek.

The retail-anchored model ties charging dwell time to shopping trips, a different siting logic from highway corridor charging. With up to 12 stalls per site and at least 90 centers in scope, the program leaves roughly three-quarters of Brixmor's 346-center portfolio without EVgo hardware after completion.

ADNOC has deployed an AI-enabled Real-Time Operations Center (RTOC) platform across a fleet of more than 120 drilling rigs, in collaboration with SLB, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The rollout covers ADNOC Drilling's rig fleet and supports ADNOC Onshore and ADNOC Offshore. The platform runs on SLB's DrillOps intelligent well delivery and insights solutions.

The operational case rests on time saved when something goes wrong at the wellsite. Analysis of real-time drilling data cuts incident response times by 4-12 hours and helps avoid one to two days of rig downtime. On a fleet of that size, avoided downtime is the metric that determines whether a digital drilling programme pays for itself.

The RTOC platform was developed in the UAE and is hosted within ADNOC's cloud environment. Keeping the hosting in-house rather than on a vendor stack leaves the operator holding its own drilling data set, the raw material for any further model training on well delivery.

Drilling data streams from rigs have long been collected. The distinction here is scope: rather than a pilot on selected wells, the deployment spans the full fleet of more than 120 rigs across both onshore and offshore operations. That makes the response-time gain a fleet-wide figure rather than a single-rig demonstration result.

SLB's role is the software layer, not the rigs. DrillOps supplies the well delivery and insights functions that the operations center depends on, while ADNOC Drilling contributes the fleet and ADNOC the cloud environment. The split matters commercially: the service company sells the intelligence, the operator retains the infrastructure.

The 4-12 hour range on incident response and the one to two days of avoided rig downtime are the only performance figures attached to the deployment. Rig day rates are the multiplier a reader needs to convert those hours into money, and that number is not on the table here.

Odfjell Drilling has put its Deepsea Atlantic semisubmersible rig back to work after a 106-day off-hire period triggered by an equipment handling incident, according to World Oil.

The rig restarted operations once repairs were finished and a spare blowout preventer (BOP) was installed in place of the unit dropped during the April incident, World Oil reported.

Before the yard work began, Odfjell recovered the dropped BOP, then moved the rig to the yard for repairs and fitting of the replacement equipment.

Odfjell said its insurance coverage extends to recovery or replacement of the dropped BOP and to the repair costs tied to the incident.

Brent crude prices plunged and equities jumped Tuesday after the US signaled that a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz could be imminent, according to Semafor Net Zero.

The same report placed the move in a wider political fight over fuel costs. US President Donald Trump castigated oil majors for not doing more to bring down gas prices, following strong earnings reports from ExxonMobil, Chevron, and others, Semafor Net Zero said.

The downside case remains tied to the waterway. If disruptions at Hormuz persist, JPMorgan analysts predicted US gasoline prices will rise back above USD 4.20 a gallon, per the same report.

Lucid chief executive Silvio Napoli said the Cosmos will most likely launch in the second half of 2027, according to Electrek. "I think it's going to be '27. … Most likely the second half of '27," Napoli said.

The timing comment landed alongside quarterly results that fell short on both lines. Electrek reported that Lucid filed its Q2 earnings with a wider-than-expected loss and a slight miss on revenue.

On the balance sheet, the company repeated in the same Q2 filing that it holds sufficient liquidity to carry it well into 2027, according to Electrek.

Management also pointed to internal levers rather than outside capital. Lucid said it had identified USD 1.4 billion in cash flow improvement opportunities for the remainder of the year, including work on reducing capital expenditures and vehicle inventory, according to Electrek.

A federal appeals court in the United States has found that the Environmental Protection Agency acted improperly when it terminated green bank financing worth billions of dollars, according to Canary Media.

The money at issue was cut off last year, Canary Media reported, in a move the court has now held was not properly executed.

Canary Media said the decision sets up a potential showdown before the U.S. Supreme Court. The dispute concerns one of the Trump administration's earliest moves against a Biden-era climate program, according to the same report.

The city council has voted to let a billion dollar retrofit of the Scattergood gas plant proceed, according to CleanTechnica.

The project is described as a billion dollar effort. Once complete, the retrofit would allow the plant to burn a fuel mix rather than its current single fuel, CleanTechnica reported.

A large solar and battery project in Australia has won planning approval, with the consent requiring the developer to pave a road to hold down dust, RenewEconomy reported.

RenewEconomy identified the scheme as the Sundown solar and battery project, associated with Recurrent Energy.

The dust condition ties the approval to a physical works obligation on access infrastructure rather than to the generation or storage assets themselves. Sealing the road is a prerequisite of the consent, according to RenewEconomy.

bp's plan to market its UK North Sea business shows how fiscal uncertainty is weighing on investment in the basin, INEOS Energy chairman Brian Gilvary said, according to World Oil.

Gilvary, a former bp chief financial officer, blamed a specific policy pairing. The Energy Profits Levy, combined with the ban on drilling, has "effectively shut down investment," he said, as reported by World Oil.

bp announced last week that it intends to sell its UK North Sea assets within a wider portfolio review, World Oil reported. Chief executive Meg O'Neill cited capital discipline and portfolio optimization as the rationale for the decision.

Gilvary's reading of the sale places it against the tax and permitting backdrop rather than the company's own capital allocation logic. He described the move as evidence of the growing impact of fiscal uncertainty on the basin, according to World Oil.

A manager at a Chinese solar company has been accused of offering a bribe to secure approval for PV panels and has been refused bail, according to RenewEconomy.

RenewEconomy identified the man as Guoxin Zhu and reported that he was arrested at Sydney International Airport in Australia.

The allegation centres on an offer of a bribe made to obtain approval for photovoltaic panels. Zhu's application for bail was denied.

PJM Interconnection has settled on a plan intended to stop data centers from pushing other customers' utility bills higher across its 13-state territory, Canary Media reported.

According to Canary Media, PJM is the biggest grid operator in the United States. The plan targets the cost burden that data center demand places on other ratepayers in the territory, which spans 13 states.

Canary Media described the decision as one PJM reached after an extended process, framing the outcome as leaving the states to work out the details.

Italy's energy regulator Arera has proposed a maximum bid of EUR 22,000/MWh/year for the country's second battery storage capacity auction, set for November 24, 2026 with delivery in 2029, according to ESS News.

That ceiling is roughly 40% below the EUR 37,000/MWh/year cap applied to the first auction under the long-term electricity storage procurement mechanism (Macse), which secured capacity for 2028 delivery, ESS News reported. The consultation on the proposal runs until September 7.

The reduction tracks Arera's revised view of what a battery project costs to build. The regulator now estimates total investment costs at EUR 125,000/MWh, against EUR 209,500/MWh used in the first round, per ESS News.

Arera based that revision partly on a BloombergNEF report published in December 2025, which put global stationary battery pack costs at about USD 70,000/MWh excluding power electronics, down 45% from 2024, ESS News reported.

Volumes are rising as the cap falls. The 2029 auction will seek 16 GWh of storage capacity, ESS News reported, against Terna's estimated requirement of 32 GWh by 2030.

The first auction, held in September 2025, awarded 9,968 MWh of storage against a 10 GWh procurement target, according to ESS News. Clearing prices in that round settled well inside the ceiling, ranging from EUR 14,354/MWh/year in southern Italy and Calabria to EUR 18,816/MWh/year in Sicily.

Those outcomes leave the proposed EUR 22,000/MWh/year ceiling above every price cleared in the first round, while cutting the headroom bidders had under the previous cap.

The Michigan Supreme Court has vacated a key permit for the proposed replacement of the segment of Enbridge's Line 5 pipeline that runs beneath the Great Lakes, according to Grist. The court found that a state commission had not examined the full scope of possible environmental harm.

The justices ruled 6-1 and sent the permit back to the Michigan Public Service Commission for a more thorough review, Grist reported. The disputed crossing sits under an environmentally sensitive area of the Great Lakes.

Line 5 carries crude oil and natural gas liquids 645 miles from Superior, Wisconsin, through Michigan to Sarnia, Ontario, according to Grist. Of that distance, 4.5 miles of pipe crosses the straits.

Enbridge spokesperson Ryan Duffy wrote that the company disagrees with the ruling and is disappointed by it, calling the decision an additional delay to a project already under review for nearly a decade. Duffy said Enbridge is reviewing the opinion and assessing its legal options.

The case was brought by four tribal nations across Michigan and three environmental groups, according to Grist.

Residents of the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania fear that planned data centers could ruin landscapes and waterways they value, according to Inside Climate News.

The region is an ecotourism destination known for fishing, hiking and some of the purest waters in Pennsylvania, Inside Climate News reported.

The concerns cited by the outlet center on the physical footprint of the projects rather than their electricity demand: residents worry about the effect on the landscapes and the pristine waterways that draw visitors to the area.

Eight projects will trial hydrogen infrastructure and high-power electric charging at UK airports under the Zero Emission Flight Demonstrator competition, according to Hydrogen Fuel News, which reported the programme is intended to prove that zero-emission regional flights are operationally viable.

About GBP 7.3 million has been earmarked for the eight projects, drawn from a wider GBP 43 million green aviation package, Hydrogen Fuel News reported. The funding covers work ranging from liquid hydrogen logistics to electric charging solutions.

The competition is supported by the UK Department for Transport, and the eight projects launch this summer, according to Hydrogen Fuel News. Each is aimed at demonstrating electric and hydrogen-powered aircraft together with the ground systems those aircraft require.

UK government modeling cited by Hydrogen Fuel News indicates zero-emission flight could cut several million tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2050. That outcome depends on infrastructure, operations, and regulations advancing together, according to the same modeling.

The split of funding puts the airside ground layer, rather than the aircraft alone, at the centre of the trials. Hydrogen Fuel News describes the eight projects as covering both the hydrogen supply chain into airports and the charging hardware needed to turn a demonstration flight into a repeatable operation.

Sunrun priced the Class A Notes in its latest residential solar and storage securitization at a coupon of 6.28% and a credit spread of 200 basis points, tightening 20 basis points from the public Class A-1 Notes in the company's April 2026 deal, according to a GlobeNewswire Energy release.

The deal is Sunrun's seventeenth securitization since 2015 and its second issuance of 2026.

Collateral consists of 37,595 systems spread across 42 utility service territories in 13 states, with a weighted average customer FICO score of 756, per the release.

The opening balance of the Class A Notes equals a 74.2% advance rate on ADSAB, calculated as a present value using a 7.5% discount rate.

BofA Securities acted as sole structuring agent and joint bookrunner alongside Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and RBC Capital Markets.

Sunrun expects the transaction to close by the end of August.

Spread compression on the senior tranche is the sharpest detail in the pricing. The 200 basis point level on the Class A Notes sits 20 basis points inside the comparable public tranche from the April 2026 transaction, the only prior issuance Sunrun has brought this year. The advance rate of 74.2% against ADSAB fixes how much senior debt the portfolio supports at the 7.5% discount rate applied.

The borrower base is granular rather than concentrated: 37,595 systems, 42 utility service territories, 13 states, and a weighted average FICO of 756. Four banks handled distribution, with BofA Securities alone responsible for structuring.

Base Power, a home battery startup based in Texas, has raised USD 1 billion and lifted its valuation to USD 13 billion from USD 4 billion, according to Canary Media.

The funding round and the valuation step-up were reported by Canary Media, which described the company as a home battery startup and located it in Texas.

Canary Media put the pre-raise valuation at USD 4 billion and the post-raise figure at USD 13 billion. The USD 1 billion raise is directed at putting large batteries into more homes, per the outlet's reporting on the round.

Battery electric vehicle sales at BYD rose 31%, making it the company's second best sales month ever for BEVs, according to CleanTechnica.

Passenger vehicle sales across BYD's full lineup grew 20.5%, CleanTechnica reported. The BEV figure outpaced that overall rate, with the 31% increase reported for battery electric models alone.

CleanTechnica characterised the BEV result as the second strongest sales month the company has recorded for battery electric vehicles.

Colombia's incoming far-right president Abelardo de la Espriella has pledged to increase coal exports and start fracking for methane gas, undoing the ban on all new hydrocarbon exploration that the government of Gustavo Petro has enforced since 2022, according to Climate Home News.

The reversal cuts against the diplomatic initiative Colombia launched only months ago. Climate Home News reported that Colombia hosted 57 governments in Santa Marta in April for the first conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels, a voluntary gathering held outside the official UN climate negotiations.

Fabio Arjona, who is to become environment minister, described that conference as an "absolute waste of time and money," per Climate Home News. Arjona will replace Irene Vélez Torres, a co-chair of the Santa Marta coalition.

Leadership of the coalition is already changing hands. Ireland and Tuvalu will formally take over as co-chairs after COP31, and they are set to host the second Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Tuvalu next year, Climate Home News reported.

The grouping therefore loses its founding host government's political backing while retaining its calendar. Colombia convened the first meeting and supplied one of its two co-chairs; the incoming administration dismisses the exercise and intends to expand the two fossil fuel activities the coalition exists to phase down, coal and gas.

Sudan has removed customs duties on solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, according to pv magazine. The Sudanese Customs Forces, a government office affiliated with the country's Ministry of Interior, confirmed the exemption through its social media pages, pv magazine reported.

The tariff change came after a fire damaged the Merowe Dam hydroelectric plant, which pv magazine describes as Sudan's largest hydroelectric power station at 1.25 GW.

The fire broke out over last weekend and caused significant damage to power transmission lines, per pv magazine. Outages hit four states: Khartoum, Northern, River Nile and Red Sea.

With the country's single biggest generating asset impaired and transmission lines damaged, imported solar equipment now enters duty-free, lowering the landed cost of distributed generation for households and businesses in the affected states.

Factorial Energy has agreed a strategic partnership with Tulip Tech to commercialise solid-state and lithium-metal batteries for drones, electrive reported.

Tulip Tech is based in Den Bosch in the Noord-Brabant province in the Netherlands and, according to electrive, develops high-density battery systems for drones and serves more than 250 customers in the defence, security and commercial sectors. The company says it builds more than 100,000 battery packs per month.

Factorial, described by electrive as a US battery specialist, counts Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis and Hyundai-Kia among its backers. All three automotive groups plan to fit Factorial's lightweight solid-state cells in future electric vehicles, which are expected to deliver a range of over 1,200 kilometres, according to electrive.

The drone tie-up moves that cell chemistry into a market with different weight and energy-density priorities from passenger cars. Tulip Tech's existing customer base spans defence, security and commercial buyers, and its monthly pack output gives Factorial a route into serial production volumes for airborne applications.

Vantage International Management Company has awarded Fugro Survey India a three-year contract for remotely operated vehicle (ROV) deepwater drill support on ONGC's offshore drilling operations in India, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The work covers drilling and completion activities in water depths reaching 3,000 meters, carried out from the Platinum Explorer drillship, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

Fugro will deploy its FCV3000 ROV system on the campaign.

Per the same report, the scope runs from subsea installation and intervention through drilling and completion support, blowout preventer (BOP) and well-control monitoring, cementing observation and seabed inspection.

ROV support at those depths sits on the critical path of a deepwater well: the vehicle is the operator's eyes on the BOP stack, confirms cement placement at the wellhead, and inspects the seabed around the drill centre. Contracting that function on a three-year term rather than well-by-well ties the vessel spread to a single provider across the campaign.

Rooftop solar capacity in Bangladesh stands at 667 MW across 239 establishments, including groups of companies, according to analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) reported by pv magazine. Government data put the figure at 418 MW as of June 2026.

The gap widens further once smaller installations are counted. IEEFA estimated that if units below 150 kW are included, national rooftop capacity might already be around 1 GW, pv magazine reported.

Even the lower, government-reported number sits close to the country's utility-scale fleet. Grid-scale solar and wind capacity in Bangladesh was 859 MW as of the same month.

The economics behind the buildout are straightforward. IEEFA research put the levelized cost of electricity for rooftop solar at $0.028 to $0.032/kWh, against a current daytime grid tariff of $0.094/kWh for industrial offtakers with a sanctioned load of up to 5 MW, according to pv magazine.

Engineering, procurement and construction companies are holding a rooftop solar project pipeline of 500 MW, IEEFA found.

Official ambition runs far ahead of installed capacity. The government wants 5.5 GW of new rooftop solar by 2030. That sits inside a broader plan to install 10,450 MW of renewable energy capacity between 2026 and 2030, with rooftop solar expected to supply more than 50% of the new capacity, per pv magazine's account of the target.

The discrepancy between the IEEFA count and the official register matters for that target: the baseline against which 5.5 GW of new rooftop capacity is measured depends on which number the government uses. IEEFA's higher figure, and its roughly 1 GW estimate including sub-150 kW systems, suggest commercial and industrial offtakers have moved faster than the official data records.

A prospective agreement would pair a ceasefire with a 60-day period during which Oman and Iran govern the Strait of Hormuz, according to Semafor.

The 60-day arrangement is the operative term of the deal as described by Semafor, tying the shipping chokepoint's administration to the ceasefire itself rather than to a permanent settlement.

Iranian negotiators are treating the waterway as a red line and as their best leverage over Washington, the Wall Street Journal reported. That framing places control of the strait at the center of the talks rather than at their margins.

Chinese authorities have suspended 18.33 GW of a planned 20 GW monocrystalline silicon ingot project in Yunnan province, and will only allow construction to restart once the developer removes three times as much existing manufacturing capacity, pv magazine reported.

The project belongs to Yunnan Yuze New Energy and sits in the Dongchuan district of Kunming, according to pv magazine. Of the planned production line, only 1.67 GW has been recognized as completed capacity, according to a response from the Kunming Development and Reform Commission to the municipal people's congress.

The condition attached to any restart is a swap rather than a permit. Yuze must identify qualifying photovoltaic manufacturing capacity inside Yunnan and secure its exit at a ratio of 3 GW retired for every 1 GW of new capacity, pv magazine reported. Applied to the whole unfinished 18.33 GW portion, that arithmetic implies taking out 54.99 GW of existing capacity.

As described by pv magazine, the developer has no timetable to work against: authorities have not set a deadline for completing the capacity reduction, and no policy currently supports capacity replacement across provincial borders. That combination confines the search for retirable lines to Yunnan alone.

The site is not a paper project. Yuze registered the Dongchuan scheme in February 2023 as a two-phase production base with planned investment of more than CNY 5 billion, or USD 740.3 million, according to pv magazine. Construction began in April 2023, and part of the first phase entered production in 2024.

That sequence leaves the recognized 1.67 GW as the only operating slice of a base designed for 20 GW. The remainder now depends on a transaction the developer must arrange with rival manufacturers in the same province, at a 3-to-1 exchange rate.

Heelstone Renewable Energy has bought Cypress Pointe Solar, a development-stage solar photovoltaic project in Texas, from Azimuth Renewables, according to a GlobeNewswire release. Heelstone is described in the release as a Qualitas Energy company.

The project carries a planned installed capacity of approximately 188 MWp, per the same release.

Cypress Pointe Solar sits in Sabine County and will interconnect within the Southwest Power Pool market rather than the Texas grid operator's footprint, according to the announcement. Heelstone said the Commercial Operation Date is targeted for 2029.

The purchase adds a project more than twice the size of Heelstone's most recent financing round. The company reached financial close in July 2026 on three solar PV projects with a combined capacity of 86 MWp, according to the release. The Texas acquisition alone represents 188 MWp of planned capacity, against that 86 MWp financed portfolio.

The transaction moves an early-stage asset from a developer to an owner-operator platform ahead of construction, with the seller named as Azimuth Renewables. Terms of the deal were not part of the announcement.

A USD 489.4 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy has reached financial close, with borrower Amanecer Puerto Rico LLC, a Pattern Energy subsidiary, taking the funds to cut power costs and reinforce the island's electric grid. The lender is DOE's Office of Energy Dominance Financing (EDF).

The money goes into 220 MW of battery energy storage systems at two sites, Arecibo and Santa Isabel. DOE said the batteries at those sites come from American manufacturing lines fed by secure domestic supply chains.

Over a 25-year horizon, the agency put the savings for Puerto Rican households and businesses at roughly USD 312.5 million on their electricity bills.

The department added that the systems can carry backup electricity to more than 100,000 customers when supply falls short. Running the same fleet against 2025 operating data, DOE calculated the batteries would head off close to 13 million customer interruption hours.

EDF Director Gregory A. Beard said the investment "will strengthen Puerto Rico's electric grid, lower electricity costs". He also tied the loan to support for American manufacturing and to dispatchable power for the island.

New York City lawmakers have put forward 17 proposed bills to tighten oversight of electric bikes, scooters and other micromobility vehicles, according to Electrek. Electrek described the package as potentially one of the most sweeping overhauls of e-bike regulation in the city's history.

One measure would ban the sale of Class 3 e-bikes, according to Electrek, a category that remains legal in New York but is capped at 25 mph, or 40 km/h.

The package leaves out one of the more contested ideas in the city's micromobility debate. Electrek reported that no bill in the set would require license plates and registration for all e-bikes and e-scooters, an approach that has been heavily debated in New York.

Hearings on the legislation are expected to begin in the City Council this fall, according to Electrek.

Canada is putting nearly CAD 5 million into transmission and road infrastructure serving First Phosphate's Begin-Lamarche phosphate mine in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec, according to Natural Resources Canada. The money flows through the First and Last Mile Fund, and the announcement was made by Claude Guay, Parliamentary Secretary to Tim Hodgson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources.

The federal contribution splits across two separate projects. Natural Resources Canada said it is providing CAD 3,071,587 for an electrical transmission line to serve the deposit and CAD 1,771,350 for road infrastructure at the same site.

First Phosphate is matching the federal money on both projects, which Natural Resources Canada said brings in close to CAD 5 million in additional private investment.

On employment, the department said the two infrastructure projects are expected to create approximately 500 jobs during construction. The mine itself is expected to support approximately 300 jobs once production begins in 2029, according to Natural Resources Canada.

The First and Last Mile Fund draws on CAD 1.5 billion in federal funding announced in Budget 2025. It targets the connective infrastructure, the power lines and access roads, that determines whether a mineral deposit can reach a customer at all.

This is not the first federal cheque written for Begin-Lamarche. Natural Resources Canada said the new funding builds on a CAD 16.7-million investment through its Global Partnerships Initiative for First Phosphate's Begin-Lamarche demonstration and feasibility project, which is aimed at producing LFP-CAM quality phosphorous in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean and was announced in March 2026.

The commodity in question sits directly in the battery supply chain. Quebec accounts for nearly one-fifth of Canada's mineral production and holds significant deposits of critical and strategic minerals including phosphate, which is used in lithium iron phosphate batteries, according to Natural Resources Canada.

NRG Energy unveiled the first project under its Bring Your Own Power (BYOP) structure on August 4, a 1.2-GW combined-cycle plant in Texas, according to Power Magazine.

The plant carries a price tag of USD 3.2 billion, Power Magazine reported, with a customer parent guarantee behind it. Commercial operation is targeted for late 2029.

Underpinning the build is a 15-year contract with what NRG describes as an investment-grade "leading global cloud and artificial-intelligence hyperscaler," per Power Magazine. The counterparty was not named.

The BYOP label describes the commercial arrangement rather than the technology: a large electricity customer contracts for dedicated new dispatchable capacity instead of drawing on existing supply. On the Texas project, the combination of the 15-year term and the parent guarantee places the offtake risk with the hyperscaler's parent for the bulk of the plant's early operating life.