Wednesday, 5 August 2026

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.