Tuesday, 11 August 2026

Sonatrach and Bosch have signed a memorandum of understanding in Berlin to examine green hydrogen production and electrolyser manufacturing in Algeria, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The outlet described the signing as a step in EU-North Africa energy transition cooperation.

The scope set out in the MoU covers the exchange of engineering know-how, feasibility studies, and capacity-building initiatives, per Hydrogen Fuel News. That work spans the conversion of solar energy into hydrogen through to the design and operation of hydrogen infrastructure.

No production capacity, investment figure, or timetable was attached to the agreement in the reporting. The document is exploratory: it commits the two companies to study electrolyser manufacturing in Algeria rather than to build it.

Researchers at the University of Sydney have built a sunlight-driven liquid gallium process that splits seawater into hydrogen at 12.9% solar-to-hydrogen efficiency, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The method is described as circular and runs on seawater directly, without the purified water or grid electricity that conventional electrolysis routes require, Hydrogen Fuel News reported.

Solar-to-hydrogen efficiency measures how much incoming solar energy ends up stored as hydrogen. The 12.9% figure cited by Hydrogen Fuel News applies to the gallium-based seawater route developed by the Sydney group.

Removing the water-purification and grid-power steps changes the input list for a hydrogen plant: no desalination or deionization train, and no connection to electricity supply, per the same account.

Researchers at the IMDEA Materials Institute in Madrid have built a strain-engineered Cu3Pt catalyst on a NiTi substrate that matches platinum-level oxygen reduction reaction performance while using 25% of the platinum load, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The performance gap in testing was one millivolt. Hydrogen Fuel News reported that the compressed Cu3Pt sample recorded 855 mV at 1 mA/cm2 in an acidic environment, against 856 mV for pure platinum under the same conditions.

The work was led by Jorge Redondo and published in the journal Electrochimica Acta, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The cathode side of a fuel cell is where platinum loading concentrates, and the oxygen reduction reaction is the step the metal is there to accelerate. Cutting the load to a quarter while holding the measured potential steady addresses the cost line that platinum content dominates in proton exchange membrane stacks.

The approach relies on mechanical strain rather than a different metal chemistry. Compressing the Cu3Pt structure on the NiTi substrate is what delivered the 855 mV result reported by Hydrogen Fuel News, placing the alloy within a millivolt of the pure platinum reference.

Gangwon Province has secured 29 billion won in state funding for research and development on a liquid hydrogen storage tank and transfer system at the Samcheok hydrogen complex, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The money comes from South Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, Hydrogen Fuel News reported. The 29 billion won award covers the first phase of the province's coastal import terminal strategy.

The programme is run by the Korea Agency for Infrastructure Technology Advancement (KAIA) and sits inside the Samcheok hydrogen specialized industrial complex on the east coast, according to Hydrogen Fuel News. The outlet describes the work as preparation for a future commercial liquid hydrogen receiving terminal.

Two technical elements define the scope: the storage tank itself and the transfer system that would move liquefied hydrogen between vessel and shore-side infrastructure. Both are the components an import terminal needs before cargo handling can begin at commercial scale.

CB&I has completed the first fill of its non-vacuum liquid hydrogen tank at NASA Marshall, according to Hydrogen Fuel News, a step the outlet describes as advancing efforts to commercialize lower-cost, large-scale hydrogen storage.

The demonstration tank was filled at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Hydrogen Fuel News reported.

Shell International Exploration and Production, GenH2, and the University of Houston joined the project as partners, per the same report, which characterized the work as an alternative to vacuum-insulated tanks.

Lumen Farm, a 140-MWac solar project under construction in northeast Texas, will send its full output to Tesla under a long-term power purchase agreement, Electrek reported.

The developer behind Lumen Farm is Zelestra, according to Electrek. EQT backs the renewable developer.

Crews are set to break ground in 2027, and the site is scheduled to reach commercial operation two years later, in 2029, per Electrek.

Tesla and Zelestra have contracted before. Their earlier deal, signed in 2024, was a 57-MWac PPA spanning three solar plants in the Castilla-La Mancha region of Spain, Electrek reported.

Republicans passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act a year ago, ending the 30% federal tax credit available to households buying rooftop panels, Canary Media reported.

Stew Miller, who launched a North Carolina rooftop solar company in the 2000s, told Canary Media there is "a lot of negativity" in his industry right now.

The repealed credit applied to household purchases of rooftop systems. Miller's company has operated in the North Carolina market since the 2000s.

Cuba has received a second batch of 5,000 photovoltaic systems donated by the Chinese government, intended to bring power to isolated rural households and keep essential services running, pv magazine reported.

Among the services on the list are clinics, emergency medical units, daycare facilities, homes for children without parental care, and bank branches.

Storage capacity per unit in this batch reaches 14.3 kWh, around double what the earlier shipment provided, according to pv magazine.

Cuba also introduced two resolutions covering renewable output and equipment imports. Under Resolution 179/2026, electricity from any renewable source fed into the National Electric Power System (SEN) earns CUP 90 ($3.30) per kWh, with no distinction between residential and non-residential producers and no time-of-day variation, pv magazine reported.

Resolution 180/2026 lifts customs duties on photovoltaic systems and their main components. The same exemption covers solar water heaters and PV pumps, small wind turbines, biodigesters and biogas equipment, solar-powered lighting and air conditioning, renewable-powered electric vehicle chargers, and biomass-processing equipment, according to pv magazine.

Distributed solar supplied 28% of Pakistan's electricity generation in FY25, up from 10% in FY23, according to RenewEconomy.

The shift followed a sharp deterioration in household energy affordability. Electricity rates in Pakistan climbed 155% over three years, and inflation reached 38% in May 2023, RenewEconomy reported.

Rooftop economics now sit well below the tariff. IEEFA estimates that residential solar paired with a medium battery produces electricity at around PKR 20/kWh, half the PKR 40/kWh cost of grid supply.

Utility-scale build came earlier and on a far smaller scale. In 2015-16 the Quaid-e-Azam Solar Park in Bahawalpur brought four 100 MW projects online in Punjab, according to RenewEconomy.

The gap between that centralised capacity and the current generation share underlines where the growth has come from: consumer-side installations rather than state-procured plants.

A systematic review of highly renewable energy transition scenarios projects solar PV supplying about 61% of the world's electricity by 2050, according to pv magazine. The work was carried out by researchers from Leibniz University Hannover and LUT University.

That headline figure sits inside a very wide band. As pv magazine reports, most of the reviewed studies put the combined solar PV and wind share of electricity generation between 80% and 99% by 2050, but the solar PV share alone spans 5% to 98%.

Cost assumptions diverge as sharply. Capital expenditure figures for utility-scale solar PV in 2050 range from EUR 151 to EUR 720/kW across the reviewed literature, with around 18% of studies still assuming more than EUR 500/kW, according to pv magazine.

Modeling design explains part of the spread. About a third of the studies represent solar PV as a single generic technology, according to pv magazine, while 80% of all studies in the field run at hourly resolution.

The upper end of the range has already been picked up as an industry benchmark. Individual studies reach a global solar PV share of 70% or more, a result the global PV community has taken up in framing a 75 TW target by mid-century, pv magazine reported.

The One Big, Beautiful Bill scrapped the 30% solar tax credit and the USD 7,500 federal EV tax credit, Electrek reported. July 4th was the cutoff for safe harboring a new solar project and still claiming the 30% rate.

SEIA and Wood Mackenzie put the projected residential market slide at 18-21% after the credit lapsed, according to Electrek. That range is a forecast, not a recorded contraction.

Batteries are now paired with a far larger share of new systems. Up to 45% of new solar installations included energy storage technology in 2025, with the attachment rate still climbing, Electrek reported. In 2020 the comparable share sat at roughly 6%.

Both credits removed by the bill were Biden-era measures supporting renewable energy. A month after the solar credit was killed, the industry is anything but dead, Electrek reported, citing the projected 18-21% slide and the rising battery attachment rate.

The safe harbor deadline set the line for projects not yet built that could still qualify for the 30% credit.