Wednesday, 12 August 2026

Tesla has applied for a ten-year property tax limitation in Texas tied to a USD 10.1 billion solar cell manufacturing facility in Fort Bend County, according to application documents posted by the Texas Comptroller and reported by pv magazine.

The application, code-named Project Crystal Sun, describes a 3,050-acre site near Richmond in Fort Bend County, within the jurisdiction of the Lamar Consolidated Independent School District, pv magazine reported.

The capital commitment splits into USD 1.5 billion of real property and USD 8.6 billion of manufacturing equipment and personal property, according to the filing as described by pv magazine.

Staffing projections in the paperwork put permanent employment at 9,712 full-time positions once the plant is fully operational, with peak construction employment of 1,147, pv magazine reported.

Whether the plant lands in Texas is not settled. Tesla stated in the paperwork that it is actively evaluating a competing out-of-state site, and that receipt of local tax incentives is a key factor in final site selection, according to pv magazine.

An economic impact analysis attached to the filing estimates that full buildout could contribute USD 107 billion to Texas gross domestic product and USD 6.4 billion in state and local tax revenue over a 38-year horizon, pv magazine reported.

Consulting firm Kroll prepared the filing, which was signed on July 22 and surfaced publicly in early August, according to pv magazine.

Researchers at the University of Newcastle recovered almost 100% of the silver in end-of-life solar panels during what they describe as the world's first continuous pilot-scale flotation trial for solar panel recycling, according to pv magazine.

The trial processed 22 kilograms of solar-cell material stripped from 468 kg of panels, pv magazine reported. Under continuous operating conditions over roughly 90 minutes, the silver was concentrated into a product amounting to just 1.25% of the original material. That concentrate carried more than 80 times the silver content of the feed material, according to the same report.

Froth flotation, a separation technique borrowed from mineral processing, replaces the acid-leaching route used in conventional silver recovery. The team's early assessment suggests the flotation process could be three to five times less expensive than acid leaching, pv magazine reported.

Cost is the binding constraint on panel recycling. Recycling is currently estimated to cost about USD 10 to USD 15 per panel, against only a few dollars to send the same panel to landfill, according to pv magazine. Any process that shifts the balance changes the economics of collection.

"Silver is the highest-value material in a solar cell," said lead researcher Mahshid Firouzi, adding that recovering it has the potential to make solar-panel recycling far more financially attractive.

The volume at stake is substantial. Australia is expected to accumulate more than one million tonnes of waste panels by 2035, containing an estimated 300 to 500 tonnes of silver, pv magazine reported. Silver used in cell metallisation is otherwise lost to landfill when panels are discarded whole.

The pilot result establishes that the separation holds up under continuous operation rather than in batch laboratory conditions, the distinction the researchers claim as a first.

A community solar array has been deployed at a Public Storage facility in Justice, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, according to Canary Media.

The panels sit on roof space that was otherwise unused, Canary Media reported.

Canary Media identified Krzysztof Wasowicz as the mayor of Justice, and described the array as located in his village.

LCH2 is advancing a 150-acre site in Lewis County, Washington, that would turn forest residuals into hydrogen, capture carbon and host a data center, Hydrogen Fuel News reported.

The developer frames the acreage as a "regional energy and industrial ecosystem" rather than a single hydrogen plant.

Capacity targets in the current planning envelope are set at roughly 1,000 tonnes per day of biomass throughput and about 100 tonnes per day of fuel-grade hydrogen once the site is fully built out, according to Hydrogen Fuel News. The same envelope adds carbon capture and productization, dispatchable clean-power generation, and a 50 MW Advanced Compute Complex supplied behind the meter from on-site generation.

Supply for the plant is drawn from a resource assessment cited by Hydrogen Fuel News. Within a 75-mile drive zone centered on Centralia, that assessment counts about 600,000 bone-dry tons per year of pulpwood, forest residuals and sawmill residuals, and rates the volume as available at low supply-chain risk.

Ways2H is contributing the conversion technology and the engineering basis, per Hydrogen Fuel News. Under its RefHynery platform, steam-enhanced thermochemical conversion runs without oxygen, so the feedstock is not combusted directly.

A grant application filed by LCH2 puts ongoing employment at 140 to 220 direct jobs and a further 250 to 500 indirect or supported jobs, on top of a construction workforce.

Ken Cavallon, Executive Director of LCH2, told Hydrogen Fuel News that Lewis County has "the forest resources, the energy-transition need and the industrial know-how" for clean hydrogen made from forest residuals.

South Korea's Shinsung E&G has started up a 350 MW solar module production line at its Gimje plant in Jeollabuk-do province, according to pv magazine. The addition lifts total capacity at the site to 600 MW.

A company spokesperson told pv magazine the line turns out modules built on n-type cell technology.

Output is earmarked for project contracts Shinsung has secured in the Saemangeum development area, pv magazine reported. Those include an 80 MW ground-mounted plant, a separate 74 MW project, and a 300 MW floating solar installation.

The company said it has no plans for further expansion, but would respond to growth in domestic market demand by bringing its remaining line into operation.

Cadeler has placed the last turbine at the 960 MW He Dreiht offshore wind farm in the German North Sea, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The project was developed by EnBW. Offshore Engineer OEDigital reports it comprises 64 Vestas V236-15.0 MW machines, the first commercial-scale deployment of Vestas' flagship offshore turbine.

Installation ran across two vessels. Wind Orca started the campaign in April 2025, and Wind Keeper picked up the remaining scope in Q1 2026 under Cadeler's long-term contract with Vestas, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The site sits roughly 90 km northwest of Borkum and around 110 km west of Helgoland.

Once fully operational, He Dreiht will produce enough renewable electricity for approximately 1.1 million households, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

France collected 13,760 tonnes of end-of-life solar modules in 2025, a 40% increase on the previous year, according to pv magazine.

Soren, the body that manages panel take-back, oversaw the processing of more than 12,736 tonnes of modules over the year, with a recovery rate above 90%, pv magazine reported.

The processed volume splits three ways. Recycling absorbed 10,684 tonnes, energy recovery accounted for 1,298 tonnes, and 754 tonnes went to disposal, according to the same reporting.

Volumes on that scale remain small against what Soren sees coming. The organisation expects nearly 180,000 tonnes of photovoltaic panels to reach the end of their useful life each year in France by 2040. That figure is more than an order of magnitude above what was collected last year.

Soren CEO Nicolas Defrenne framed the collection business in industrial rather than environmental terms, saying panel recycling is no longer a niche issue but a strategic imperative for European industrial sovereignty.

The recovery rate reported for last year matters for that argument: material that stays above 90% recovery is material that does not need to be imported again. The residual streams, the 1,298 tonnes routed to energy recovery and the 754 tonnes sent for disposal, are the portion that leaves the loop.

How fast collection scales from 13,760 tonnes toward the 180,000-tonne annual figure Soren projects will determine whether the recycling base built so far can absorb the wave of retirements without new capacity.

CAPE Holland, a Venterra Group company, and GBM Works have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to jointly develop and commercialize the Vibrojet foundation installation system worldwide, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

Vibrojet installs offshore wind monopile foundations by pairing vibratory driving with controlled water jetting, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported. The combination targets the seabed penetration step that governs schedule risk on monopile campaigns.

The two companies want the system commercially available as an integrated offering for offshore wind farm installation projects from 2027 onwards, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital. The MoU covers joint further development alongside commercialization, rather than marketing of a finished product.

The technology already has field time behind it. Earlier this year it was used to install three offshore wind turbine monopile foundations at the Hollandse Kust West wind farm, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported. That deployment gives the partners a reference installation ahead of the commercial launch window they have set.

Monopiles remain the dominant foundation type for fixed-bottom offshore wind, and installation method is one of the few remaining levers on cost and permitting for developers. Vibratory driving and jetting approaches compete with conventional impact hammering, which is the source of the underwater noise emissions that shape offshore consent conditions. The named partnership structure here, with CAPE Holland operating under Venterra Group, places an installation equipment specialist alongside the technology developer.

What the parties have committed to is a development and commercialization pathway with a stated target year, not a signed supply contract. The 2027 ambition is the date to test against: it is the point at which Vibrojet is meant to move from a three-foundation reference campaign to a service offered across installation projects.

Researchers at Shenyang Agricultural University report that decorating cadmium sulfide with carbon quantum dots made from cellulose nearly doubled visible-light hydrogen production in laboratory tests, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The method described by Hydrogen Fuel News converts cellulose into carbon quantum dots, then attaches those dots to cadmium sulfide nanoparticles. Cadmium sulfide is a visible-light photocatalyst, and the reported gain applies to hydrogen output measured under visible light at lab scale.

The feedstock is the distinguishing element. Cellulose, a biomass-derived material, supplies the carbon for the quantum dots rather than a synthetic precursor. The doubling figure cited by Hydrogen Fuel News refers to lab tests, not to a pilot or commercial installation.

Australian company PlasmaLeap is building modular systems that make nitrogen fertiliser on farms using electricity, air and water, according to RenewEconomy.

The outlet reported that fertiliser supplies and prices are under pressure from disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

That pressure framed discussion at the Renewables in Agriculture conference, where reliable and affordable fertiliser supply was high on the agenda, RenewEconomy said.

PlasmaLeap's approach shifts fertiliser production to the point of use, replacing a purchased input with electricity plus two locally available feedstocks, air and water.