Tuesday, 11 August 2026

Queensland regulators have cleared BHP's Saraji East coal project, a mine the company sought despite what it describes as a weak economic outlook and a state royalties regime it blames for deterring investment, IEEFA reported.

The permit comes months after BMA, BHP's coal joint venture, shut down the adjacent Saraji South operation late last year, saying the mine no longer stacked up economically. BHP's public position is that it has stopped putting fresh capital into Queensland coal.

Peak Downs is the second permit in play. BHP wants its mine life stretched by 93 years, pushing the end date to 2116, according to IEEFA.

Mine life and rehabilitation money move together in BHP's accounts. The company's 2025 Annual Report said shifting the mine life of its steelmaking coal assets by one year would, on its own, alter closure and rehabilitation provisions for those assets by roughly USD 40 million, IEEFA said.

The state-level number is far larger. Queensland's Estimated Rehabilitation Cost for mine sites hit AUD 14.3 billion in 2025, IEEFA reported. Of that, AUD 2.4 billion is attributed to BMA across the permits it holds.

BHP also put a figure on climate exposure in the same annual report. Under a sensitivity scenario of 1.5C by 2100, its steelmaking coal assets carry an indicative write-down of about USD 2 billion, per IEEFA.

The cut-off for automatic payment of the Warm Home Discount is 23 August. Eligible households whose name does not appear on the energy bill by that date will not receive the GBP 150 rebate automatically this winter, according to UK DESNZ.

UK DESNZ put the reach of the rebate at roughly six million households over the coming winter. About 250,000 of those are in Scotland, where payment will land automatically for the first time.

Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh linked the widened eligibility to last winter's uptake, saying "almost a million more families with children received the GBP 150 Warm Home Discount last winter" after the scheme was expanded.

A second measure sits alongside the rebate. VAT came off domestic electricity bills from 1 October under a decision by the Prime Minister, trimming GBP 45 from the yearly Ofgem price cap.

The scheme runs to 2030/1. The government confirmed earlier this year that eligible households will keep receiving the Warm Home Discount through that date.

What matters for households now is the account name. Payment arrives without an application only where the eligible person is the named bill holder before 23 August.

Trump announced a package of critical minerals financing headlined by a $1.4 billion loan to Sila Nanotechnologies for batteries, according to Semafor Net Zero.

The package also includes a $150 million loan to Niron Magnetics for magnets, a $400 million loan for scandium, and $58 million in Export-Import Bank financing for graphite and boron, Semafor Net Zero reported.

Semafor Net Zero said the administration is ramping up efforts to stockpile critical minerals amid the Iran war.

At the State Department event, Trump was joined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, according to Semafor Net Zero.

The White House announced new tariffs Thursday covering imported polysilicon and related products, among them silicon-based solar panels, according to Canary Media.

Canary Media reported that the measure is expected to raise the cost of installing solar while strengthening efforts to reshore solar manufacturing.

The duties reach beyond finished modules to polysilicon itself, the feedstock material used in silicon-based panels, per Canary Media's account of the announcement.

Canary Media characterized the tariff as far-reaching, with the two effects it identified pulling in opposite directions for the sector: higher installation costs on one side, a firmer domestic manufacturing base on the other.

California lawmakers are working on the state's high energy costs ahead of the close of this year's legislative session on Aug. 31, according to Canary Media.

Among the measures on the table is Senate Bill 905, described by Canary Media as a complicated package of proposals aimed at utility rate reform in the state.

The Aug. 31 deadline sets the window in which the legislature can act on the bill, per Canary Media's account of the session calendar.

The Senate Indian Affairs Committee voted 6-5 along party lines to advance legislation restructuring underground coal rights in Montana, Inside Climate News reported. The beneficiary is Signal Peak Energy, whose coal output goes largely to buyers in Japan and South Korea. The measure carries the backing of Montana's Crow Tribe.

Crow Tribe chairman Frank White Clay sat in the committee room for the tally. His endorsement of the legislation dates to 2024, according to Inside Climate News.

The bill hands over two categories of federal property in Musselshell County: 4,530 acres of subsurface interests and 940 acres of surface interests. Both parcels already fall inside an existing Signal Peak mining permit, the outlet reported.

Once those acres leave federal control, Signal Peak would no longer be bound by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Inside Climate News reported.

A separate application from the company covers 7,100 acres and would open 175 million tons of coal beneath the Bull Mountains to extraction. Burning it would put 240 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere across 11 years, environmental groups said. A lawsuit followed the expansion request.

The U.S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement signed off on the expansion anyway, resting its decision on the "energy emergency" declared in an executive order from President Donald Trump, according to Inside Climate News.

The US has placed advanced robotics on its list of banned tech products dominated by China, covering humanoid robots, quadruped machines and robot lawn mowers, and is reportedly preparing to block connected power inverters used in solar energy, according to Semafor Net Zero.

Beijing has vowed retaliation, calling the bans "discriminatory and suppressive," Semafor Net Zero reported.

Inverters sit between solar arrays and the grid, and the reported move would extend restrictions from consumer and industrial hardware into a component embedded in operating power systems.

The restrictions land against a weaker Chinese macro picture than headline output suggests. Semafor Net Zero cites Logan Wright, author of Broken China, who estimates growth is now running at no more than 1% and may even be zero. Chinese debt has reached more than 300% of GDP, according to the same reporting.

Manufacturing throughput tells a different story. Semafor Net Zero points to Xiaomi's EV "Super Factory" in Beijing, which turns out one luxury sedan every 76 seconds.

Compensation payments have become the sticking point in US-Iran peace talks, with President Donald Trump refusing Tehran's war reparations claim and demanding payment for American soldiers killed instead, Semafor reported.

Who commands the Strait of Hormuz is also unresolved. Trump has asserted that Washington holds "control of the Strait of Hormuz". Tehran's position, according to Semafor, is that the shipping lane stays shut until its demands are met.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Gulf officials said they would rather see the strait under Tehran's control than a return to fighting that puts energy infrastructure at risk, Semafor relayed.

Six new figures have been named to key positions by Iran's supreme leader, according to the outlet. All six opposed the June memorandum of understanding with the US.

The Philippines has removed building permit and certificate of compliance requirements for plug-and-play micro-solar systems rated up to 1 kW, according to pv magazine. The exemption applies to systems at or below that size and to micro-inverters up to 0.8 kW.

Owners of bigger own-use arrays get a narrower concession. Larger zero-export systems no longer need a certificate of compliance from the Energy Regulatory Commission, but building permits still apply to them, pv magazine reported.

The update also closes off a second layer of friction at the utility level. Distribution utilities are barred from requiring pre-installation clearances or technical permits, and from charging inspection fees, on own-use solar installations, a measure pv magazine said is intended to prevent administrative delays.

Equipment is already arriving in volume. Over the first four months of 2026, the country imported 4 GW of Chinese solar panels, according to pv magazine.

The rule change sits against national renewable energy targets of 35% of the energy mix by 2030 and 50% by 2040, as reported by pv magazine.

The Corpus Christi City Attorney's office has recommended that City Council members block a citizen-initiated ballot measure on industrial water charges, invoking a state law passed by Texas' Republican-led Legislature in 2023, according to Inside Climate News.

Community organizers in the Texas city collected almost 13,000 signatures, enough to place the measure, called the Fair Water Amendment, before voters in November, Inside Climate News reported. The council's window to intervene closes with an August 17 deadline for the provision to reach the November ballot.

The legal route the city attorney's office identified runs through Senate Bill 1860, which state lawmakers used in 2023 to ban municipal "climate charters," per Inside Climate News.

The amendment targets an exemption written into a 2018 agreement. Under that deal, large energy companies do not pay extra water fees during drought, in exchange for helping fund a new seawater desalination plant in the region. That plant has yet to be built, according to Inside Climate News.

The surcharge at issue carries concrete cost exposure for the region's biggest industrial water users. Inside Climate News reported it would have added more than USD 1 million to the monthly water bill of ExxonMobil and Occidental Chemical, the two largest water users. Valero, the third-largest, would pay an additional USD 830,000 per month.