Monday, 17 August 2026

Petrobras is the sole owner and operator of offshore block FZA-M-59, holding a 100% stake in the area, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The same report states that the block was awarded in the 11th Bidding Round run by the ANP, the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels, in 2013. The award was made under the concession regime.

No partner shares the licence: Petrobras carries the full working interest as operator.

Rome is building a green hydrogen production and refueling hub at its Acilia bus depot, intended to supply an initial fleet of hydrogen fuel cell buses, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The city's local authority has joined forces with ATAC SpA on the depot infrastructure, Hydrogen Fuel News reported, with the design handed over under that partnership.

Siting electrolysis and dispensing equipment inside an operating bus depot ties hydrogen supply directly to the vehicles that consume it, removing the need for road delivery of fuel to the site. The hub is described as serving a first tranche of fuel cell buses rather than the full depot fleet.

INP has started up a solar-powered PEM electrolyser at Nordenham-Einswarden that splits treated rainwater to make green hydrogen and methanol, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The unit draws its electricity from two photovoltaic plants, Hydrogen Fuel News reported.

The installation has been taken on as a demonstration site for WENde, a national research initiative, according to the same outlet.

Feedstock water is the distinguishing feature. Rather than drawing on treated municipal or industrial supply, the electrolyser is fed with rainwater that has been treated before entering the stack, per Hydrogen Fuel News. Proton exchange membrane systems are sensitive to water purity, which puts the treatment step at the centre of the demonstration.

Pairing the stack directly with two solar plants means the electrolyser follows an intermittent input rather than a steady grid draw. The methanol output gives the site a liquid product alongside hydrogen gas.

Eight oil companies booked EUR 7.5 billion in excess profits in Europe during the first half of 2026, according to CleanTechnica.

The figure covers a period that opened with the start of the conflict in Iran on 28 February 2026, CleanTechnica reported. Brent crude moved above USD 100 within weeks of the conflict starting, according to the same account.

CleanTechnica's calculation attributes the EUR 7.5 billion to just eight companies operating in Europe over the six-month window. The publication frames the sum as windfall profit rather than ordinary earnings.

The crude benchmark move above USD 100 is the price mechanism CleanTechnica ties to the profit figure, with the conflict date marking the start of the run-up.

The Coalition in Victoria, Australia, has said it may keep ageing coal-fired power stations in operation, according to RenewEconomy.

RenewEconomy also reported that the Coalition will scrap plans to move away from gas.

The position covers two separate parts of the state's fuel mix at once: the operating life of existing coal generation, and the policy track directing consumption away from gas. In its own words, as reported by RenewEconomy, the Coalition says it may keep "old coal clunkers" running.

A 157-tonne steel core catcher has been installed at what will be the eighth unit of the Leningrad nuclear power plant in Russia, according to World Nuclear News. The lift and positioning of the component at the unit, also designated Leningrad II-4, took eight hours.

Valery Zhemchugov said the operation was completed almost three months ahead of schedule, in full, and in compliance with all quality requirements.

Rosatom said the installation clears the way for preparations to begin on the reactor vessel assembly, which is scheduled for 2029. Construction on the unit started with first concrete in March 2025.

The core catcher sits beneath the reactor vessel and is designed to contain molten fuel in a severe accident, one of the passive safety features that shapes the sequence of civil works before vessel installation.

World Nuclear News reported that the Leningrad plant has an installed capacity of 4,400 MWe and supplies more than 55% of the electricity demand of St Petersburg and the Leningrad region.

AboitizPower Corporation and Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power have signed a memorandum of understanding to examine cooperation on nuclear energy technologies and their possible deployment in the Philippines, according to World Nuclear News.

The signing took place on 31 July at KHNP's headquarters in Gyeongju, South Korea, World Nuclear News reported. Choi Il-kyung, Head of Business Operations at KHNP, and Carlos Ramon Aboitiz, Head of AboitizPower, put their names to the document.

World Nuclear News describes the arrangement as exploratory and non-exclusive, with no binding obligations on either side. That framing places the MoU well short of a project commitment: no site, no reactor selection, no capital allocation follows from it.

The Philippine build-out target gives the discussions a timeline to work against. According to World Nuclear News, the country aims for its first nuclear power plants to be operational by 2032 with an initial capacity of 1,200 MW. That figure is set to double to 2,400 MW by 2035 and reach 4,800 MW by 2050.

AboitizPower is described by World Nuclear News as a leading Philippine energy company. The scope agreed with KHNP covers nuclear energy technologies and their potential deployment in the Philippine market rather than a defined asset.

Plug Power and Microsoft have tested a 3 MW hydrogen fuel cell backup prototype that matched diesel performance in simulated data center outages, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The unit emits only water and heat at the point of use, Hydrogen Fuel News reported. That distinction matters for facility operators, since diesel standby generators are the incumbent technology for ride-through power when grid supply fails.

Hydrogen Fuel News said the equipment sits in two 40-foot containers at Plug Power's facility in Latham. The containerised format keeps the fuel cell stack, balance of plant and controls in a transportable envelope rather than a purpose-built plant room.

The test targeted the same duty cycle a diesel set would cover: a sudden loss of utility supply, followed by an immediate demand for full rated output. Hydrogen Fuel News reported the setup is designed to match diesel performance.

At 3 MW, the prototype addresses a single block of critical load rather than a whole campus. Scaling would require multiple units, and Hydrogen Fuel News did not report a commercial deployment schedule.

Radiant Nuclear has designed, built and transported a complete micro reactor named Kaleidos that fits onto the back of a truck, according to Atomic Insights. The unit will be fueled, started and tested through five phases, one of which requires 150 hours at full power without operator assistance.

The design targets speed at both ends of a deployment. Atomic Insights reported that Kaleidos can go from site delivery to supplying loads within 48 hours. At the other end of the cycle, the reactor is intended to be road transportable in just 30 days after being operated for its full life cycle at 100% power. That combination of mobility and rapid startup is the core of the product, rather than any single output figure.

The first customer named by Atomic Insights is military. Radiant was selected as an initial base power supply provider for the Space Force, with its first unit due for delivery to Buckley Space Force base in Colorado in 2028.

Manufacturing plans run ahead of that delivery. Radiant intends to roll one Kaleidos reactor per week out of its first factory, according to Atomic Insights. The company is also establishing its R-50 factory, sized at fifty reactors per year, together with a reactor fueling facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

The five-phase test program is the immediate gate. The 150-hour unattended full-power run tests whether a micro reactor can hold output without operator intervention, the condition a factory-built fleet would need to make serial production economic. Radiant has already moved a complete reactor by road, which is the step most micro reactor developers have yet to demonstrate physically.

Serial output at one unit per week from a single plant, and fifty per year from the R-50 line, describe a production model closer to industrial manufacturing than to conventional plant construction. Colocating fueling with the factory in Oak Ridge places two of the harder logistical steps at one site.

Spot fixtures for construction service operation vessels have repeatedly cleared EUR 60,000 per day over the past three months, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital, which describes the CSOV market as tight.

Nine CSOV newbuilds have arrived since early May, and the market took the extra tonnage without difficulty, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported. Another eight C/SOVs are expected before year-end, which would take deliveries to 22 vessels, the highest annual total recorded to date for the segment, according to the same report.

The orderbook behind those deliveries has emptied. No new C/SOV orders have been placed so far in 2026, following a slowdown in 2025 that produced only eight contracted newbuildings, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported. That contrasts with the more than 80 vessels ordered between 2021 and 2024 on expectations of rapid offshore wind expansion, according to the report.

Demand on the charter side has come from project schedules slipping. SSE chartered three additional vessels because of Dogger Bank delays, two starting in May and one from late July, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

Brazil accounted for one of the larger fixture packages. Petrobras awarded three new contracts there, with the Normand Valiant and two Windcat vessels taking 830 days of firm contract days, the report said.

In Poland, four vessels had been fixed for the Baltyk II, Baltyk III, and Baltica 2 offshore wind projects, chartered in by Equinor and Ørsted, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners has closed AUD 469 million (USD 327 million) in debt financing for the 260 MW/1,216 MWh third stage of its Supernode battery in Southeast Queensland, Australia, with the stage underpinned by a 15-year offtake agreement with Queensland government-owned electricity generator Stanwell Corporation, according to ESS News.

The same report said Stage 2 has entered commercial operation with 250 MW/1,040 MWh online, lifting the storage facility to 520 MW/1,858 MWh across the site. Supernode is planned as a 780 MW/3,074 MWh campus once complete.

Battery supplier CATL has set out what it will deliver for the final stage. Per ESS News, the company said it will provide Tener S systems for Stage 3, drawn from its Tener series.

That marks a shift in product line for the site. CATL supplied its EnerC Plus systems for Stages 1 and 2, with the equipment covered by a Long-Term Service Agreement, ESS News reported.

Stage 3 accounts for the balance of the campus design, taking the project from the 520 MW/1,858 MWh now operating to the planned 780 MW/3,074 MWh total. The Stanwell contract fixes an offtake path for that capacity over 15 years.

MOBY Robotics, a Miami-based startup founded in 2025, is pursuing subsea mineral discovery and recovery with fleets of autonomous robots rather than the large remotely operated vehicles and riser systems that have defined deep-sea mining hardware, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The company's thesis, as reported by Offshore Engineer OEDigital, is that the sector's future does not depend on ever-larger ROVs and massive riser systems. In their place, MOBY is betting on AI-enabled robots that work cooperatively on the seafloor.

Two modular platforms carry that approach. NEMO is an autonomous underwater vehicle built for mapping, survey and persistent underwater monitoring. SCOOBEE is an autonomous seafloor crawler that can be configured for tasks ranging from inspection to mineral collection, with integrated marine life detection and avoidance systems, per the same account.

The firm's leadership brings classification-society experience to the venture. Andrew Lipman, MOBY's chief operating officer, served as a U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer and then spent 17 years with the American Bureau of Shipping, most recently as Director of Subsea and Mining Operations based in Shenzhen, China, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

Solar generation in European countries climbed by as much as 17% on heatwave days across June and July, according to analysis published by the energy think tank Ember.

Successive heatwaves pushed temperatures above 40°C in many parts of Europe over the two months, lifting electricity demand while disrupting nuclear, gas, coal and hydropower output.

Despite that strain, Ember says the continent's grids held stable, carried in large part by what the think tank describes as record volumes of solar.

The pattern Ember documents cuts across generation types. Where thermal and hydro plants faltered under the heat, solar output moved with the temperature, peaking on precisely the days when air conditioning load was highest.

Meine Electric's iron-air battery has entered a utility-scale pilot led by Atal Incubation Centre - Anna University (AIC-AU), which will test the technology under utility-scale operating conditions, according to ESS News.

The cost case is the pitch. Meine Electric claims its technology can reach a levelized cost of storage below USD 0.05/kWh, ESS News reported. That figure is the company's own claim rather than a measured pilot result.

AIC-AU's role is evaluation rather than supply: the incubation centre is running the project and assessing how the chemistry behaves at utility scale.

New Zealand's government has agreed to act on 15 recommendations from a sector review of small- and medium-sized solar installations, according to pv magazine. The package includes legalizing plug-in solar, next-working-day approval for systems under 10 kW, and sign-off by accredited installers, without an inspection, for installations below 100 kW.

The cost effect is the sharpest part of the reform. Analysis previously released by the Ministry for Regulation found that implementing the report's recommendations would cut average approval for a residential solar system from around NZD 640 and three months to NZD 200 and six days, pv magazine reported.

The ministry put the aggregate gain at between NZD 28 million and NZD 50 million in net benefits over ten years, attributing it to lower compliance costs, fewer delays and the use of plug-in solar.

The consenting changes land on a small installed base. Cumulative solar capacity in New Zealand reached 836 MW at the end of last year, according to figures from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) cited by pv magazine.

Grid-access rules for the same customer segment were reset earlier in the year. New Zealand's electricity authority introduced a 10 kW default export limit for residential solar and battery systems in April, a step intended to standardize grid access. That threshold matches the capacity ceiling now proposed for next-working-day approval.

Utility-scale build is moving in parallel. The country's largest solar farm to date, a 150 MW project on the north island, came online in July, pv magazine reported. That single site is equivalent to a substantial share of the 836 MW counted across the whole market at the end of last year.

Ghana's Genser Energy has secured a EUR 456 million (USD 527 million) credit package arranged by three South African banks, First Rand Bank, Absa and Standard Bank, Semafor Net Zero reported.

The company plans to follow the debt raise with an equity sale targeting USD 350 million, according to chief executive Baafour Asiamah Adjei. Genser's current debt stands at about USD 1 billion, Adjei said.

Genser owns eight power plants across Ghana and Burkina Faso with installed generation capacity exceeding 334 MW, and operates a 270-mile natural gas pipeline across Ghana, per Semafor Net Zero.

Next on the build pipeline is a 470 MW power project agreed with the government of Côte d'Ivoire, which Genser plans to begin constructing. The site is Taboth, a village 25 miles west of Abidjan.

The single project would add more capacity than the eight plants Genser already owns and operates combined.

Tesla has put a Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) adapter on sale in the United States for the Model Y Premium, according to electrive. The accessory is listed in the Tesla Shop at around USD 80.

The hardware plugs into the main housing of the Gen 3 Mobile Connector and delivers a standard US 120 V domestic socket rated at 20 amperes and 2.4 kilowatts, electrive reported.

Until now, V2L in the US market was restricted to two vehicles at the top of Tesla's line-up: the Model Y Performance and the Cybertruck. The adapter extends the discharge function to a lower trim without a change to the vehicle itself.

Compatibility stops short of the earlier car, however. Teslarati reports that the adapter does not work with older Model Ys, leaving owners of first-generation cars built before the Juniper series outside the feature.

The US listing follows the same accessory in another market. Tesla launched a V2L adapter in China last year, per electrive.

ReconAfrica said it flowed natural gas and potential liquids to surface from two separate zones of the Huttenberg formation at the Kavango West 1X discovery well in Namibia, according to a company announcement carried by GlobeNewswire.

Vertical production testing at the well, referred to as KW1X, is complete, and the operator has prioritized the Huttenberg formation for an open-hole horizontal production test.

The Jarvie-1 rig is expected to drill up to 1,000 metres of horizontal section through the Huttenberg, ReconAfrica said. Original well log analysis identified 75 metres of pay in the formation.

BW Energy holds a 20% working interest in the well, and the National Petroleum Corporation of Namibia, or NAMCOR, holds a 10% carried working interest, per the same announcement.

ReconAfrica said it has mapped 22 structures on PEL 73 using existing seismic data, and that the inventory could grow with additional seismic coverage on the licence.

Chevrolet has opened free charging to electric vehicle buyers at its dealership network across Peru, Electrek reported.

The offer lands in a market Electrek describes as growing rapidly for plug-powered vehicles. Melisa Black, GM Peru Marketing Manager, said sales of electrified vehicles in Peru grew by more than 86% in the first half of the year, which she attributed to rising consumer interest in the technologies.

For the brand itself, that translated into 8,285 plug-in Chevrolets sold in Peru over the same six-month period, according to Electrek.

Leasing platform DRIVN has agreed to put 100 electric trucks into service with listed logistics operator AVG Logistics across India, according to electrive.

The first 30 units are set to begin operating in August, electrive reported. The remaining 70 vehicles follow across several subsequent phases after that initial batch.

DRIVN specialises in leasing electric vehicles for heavy commercial fleets, per electrive. The agreement covers deployment across India rather than a single corridor or depot.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales have started a three-and-a-half-year project examining how inverter-based resources interact with grid protection systems, according to ESS News.

The project, named PROFILES, runs until the end of 2030 with a total budget of AUD 12.9 million, ESS News reported. About half of that funding came as a grant from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), according to the same report.

Work will combine modeling, simulation and hardware-in-the-loop testing to assess fault-current behavior and the protection requirements that follow from it, ESS News reported. Fault-current behavior is the pivot: protection schemes on conventional networks were designed around the current signatures of synchronous machines, and inverter-based plant does not reproduce them.

ESS News lists Transgrid, AEMO, ElectraNet, Power Electronics, SMA, Tesla and Siemens among the industry partners. The mix spans transmission network operators, the market operator and inverter and battery suppliers, which puts both sides of the protection question - the devices producing the fault current and the relays reading it - inside the same programme.

The ARENA contribution means public money covers roughly half the cost, with the balance carried elsewhere in the consortium, per ESS News. The end-2030 completion date sets the horizon for any findings feeding into protection settings or connection practice.

China's wind-powered underwater data center in Shanghai reached full commercial operation in May 2026, fourteen months after its June 2025 launch, The Conversation reported.

The build carried a price tag of US$226 million. Instead of refrigerating fresh water to cool its computers, the site draws on seawater, cutting electricity use by at least 30% against conventional data centers, according to The Conversation.

One large operator already walked away from the concept. Microsoft sank a sealed server unit onto the seafloor off Scotland's Orkney Islands in 2018, wired to shore by cable and holding 864 servers, The Conversation reported. Two years of operation produced a failure rate roughly one-eighth that of comparable installations on land. Microsoft closed the project in 2024 and declined to build further submerged sites.

Other developers have kept going with seawater cooling. Keppel started construction in 2026 on a four-story floating data center in Singapore, due to open in 2028, that will use seawater to cool its equipment, The Conversation reported. Planning work in Ulsan, South Korea, dates to 2025 for a submerged facility sized for more than 100,000 servers and projected to consume 30% less power than land-based equivalents through seawater cooling.

Siting resistance on land shapes the calculation. Gallup polling in March 2026 recorded 70% of Americans opposed to AI data centers in their own communities, The Conversation reported.

Li Shufu is leaving the chairmanship of Geely Automobile and will be appointed honorary chairman for life, electrive reported. An Conghui, also known as Andy An, takes over as chairman.

The management reshuffle extends to the executive suite. According to electrive, Gui Shengyue moves from chief executive to vice chairman, a post being vacated by Li Donghui. Jerry Gan becomes the new CEO.

Li departs after a quarter that electrive describes as a record for the carmaker. Revenues rose 15 per cent year-on-year in the last quarterly report filed under his leadership, with gross profit up 26 per cent.

Among the deals that defined Li's tenure was his purchase of a nearly ten per cent stake in what is now Mercedes-Benz Group AG, formerly Daimler AG, in 2018, per electrive.

The honorary chairman title keeps the founder formally attached to the company he built while An assumes the board seat.

Installed solar capacity worldwide has crossed 3 TW, according to pv magazine.

The pace of each successive terawatt has compressed sharply. Citing BloombergNEF, pv magazine reported that global capacity took roughly 10 years to climb from 100 GW in 2012 to the first terawatt, that the second terawatt arrived in under three years, and that the third followed less than two years after that.

BloombergNEF projects installed solar capacity will exceed 9 TW by 2036, pv magazine reported.

The technology's geographic spread has widened alongside the volume. BNEF counted 74 countries with at least 1 GW of installed solar in 2025, compared with 42 in 2020, according to pv magazine.

That redistribution is expected to continue. More than a quarter of global installed capacity is expected to sit in developing countries by 2036, while the share held by wealthy countries is projected to fall to around 20%.

Growth on that scale is straining the systems built to move the electricity. In China, solar deployment has outpaced the build-out of transmission and storage infrastructure, and curtailment levels are rising as a result, with some generation cut back during high-output periods, pv magazine reported.

Ola Electric has launched a stationary storage business in India, according to ESS News, with a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery portfolio that runs from residential backup units to utility-scale systems.

At the top of the range sits the Mahashakti platform. ESS News reported that each liquid-cooled container carries 6.26 MWh of energy and 2.5 MW of power, and is natively configurable for durations of 2 to 4 hours.

The company has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Axis Energy covering the potential deployment of up to 20 GWh of battery energy storage systems by 2032 under the Mahashakti platform, per ESS News.

On timing, deliveries of the residential Shakti Gen2 system are scheduled for November 2026, ESS News said, with commercial and utility rollouts following from March 2027.

The commercial launch lands against a national procurement pipeline. Current Indian plans call for at least 44 GW of battery energy storage capacity to be added by 2030, according to ESS News. That target frames the addressable market the Axis Energy MoU is aimed at, since the 20 GWh figure is contracted as a potential volume rather than a firm order.

The LFP chemistry choice covers the full product ladder rather than a single segment, spanning residential backup through to utility-sized ambitions. The 2-to-4-hour configurability of the Mahashakti container matches the duration band typically procured for grid-connected storage tenders.

General Motors is winding down Chevrolet's retail operations in China after almost 21 years while keeping vehicle production in the country for export markets, according to electrive.

GM confirmed the decision to National Business Daily on 10 August, saying its joint venture with SAIC will continue building Chevrolet vehicles in China and redirect the brand toward international markets outside the US.

The retail retreat follows a collapse in domestic demand for the brand. Chevrolet's China sales peaked at about 767,000 units in 2014, helped by models such as the Cruze, but fell to fewer than 9,000 vehicles in 2025, per electrive.

Exports are now the larger business. Chevrolet shipped 6,930 vehicles out of China in the first half of the year, an increase of 6.9 per cent year-on-year, according to the China Passenger Car Association. That first-half export figure sits close to the brand's entire 2025 domestic sales volume.

The partnership behind the plants is not ending. GM recently renewed its joint venture with SAIC for another 20 years, extending it through to 2047. The renewal came after a comprehensive restructuring of the venture that included a USD 6 billion write-down by GM in January 2026.

Chevron has struck oil and gas condensate in Block 0 offshore Angola, logging more than 300 ft of net pay, according to World Oil.

The find came from the 105-4X exploration well in the Lower Congo basin, where World Oil reported a hydrocarbon column exceeding 2,000 ft in the primary Pinda reservoir.

Chevron said it will assess the discovery for potential development as a tie-back to nearby existing infrastructure. That route avoids a standalone production facility by routing output through installations already in place.

Operatorship sits with Chevron subsidiary Cabinda Gulf Oil Company Ltd. (CABGOC), which holds a 39.2% working interest in Block 0, per World Oil. Sonangol E&P is the largest single holder at 41%, with TotalEnergies on 10% and Azule Energy on 9.8%.

Kevin McLachlan, Chevron Vice President of Exploration, described the well as "another important milestone for Chevron's over 70-year history in Angola".

Entergy has signed a non-binding agreement with Holtec to study the deployment of dual-unit SMR-300 projects, according to World Nuclear News. The framework covers joint evaluation of customer demand, candidate sites, and possible commercial structures.

Entergy and its affiliates serve customers in Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas, World Nuclear News reported.

Holtec plans to deploy two SMR-300 reactors, named Pioneer 1 and 2, at the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station site in Michigan. That project is intended to demonstrate viability for additional orders domestically and abroad, according to World Nuclear News.

The agreement carries no commitment to build. Its stated scope is limited to assessing whether demand, siting, and commercial terms can support paired SMR-300 units.

China National Nuclear Corporation has announced the completion of cold functional tests at unit 8 of the Tianwan nuclear power plant in China's Jiangsu province, according to World Nuclear News.

The reactor is one of two VVER-1200 units covered by agreements signed between Russia and China in June 2018 for Tianwan units 7 and 8, World Nuclear News reported.

Construction of unit 8 started in February 2022. The two units are scheduled to enter commercial operation in 2026 and 2027 respectively, according to World Nuclear News.

The Ohio Power Siting Board is now positioned to rule on whether the largest solar and energy storage project in the state to date can proceed, according to Canary Media, after a key legal deadline passed the previous Friday.

The board's pending decision revisits ground it has covered before. Canary Media reported that the Ohio Power Siting Board first approved the Oak Run Solar Project in March 2024.

The project would rank as the state's largest combined solar and storage development on record, per Canary Media.

Sunrun has signed an agreement with distributed energy resource platform Voltus to feed residential battery capacity into Voltus's Bring Your Own Capacity programs for AI hyperscalers, the residential storage and solar provider said in an announcement.

Under the arrangement, Sunrun will supply energy capacity drawn from a portion of its residential storage-plus-solar systems located in the PJM and MISO grid regions, which the company said would help deliver flexible power against rising electricity demand.

Sunrun described itself in the announcement as America's largest provider of residential battery storage, solar, and home-to-grid power plants, and Voltus as a leading distributed energy resource platform.

The financing route is the notable part of the structure. "In collaboration with Voltus, we are providing critical capacity from home batteries supported by funding from hyperscalers," said Sunrun CEO Mary Powell. That places data center operators, rather than utilities or ratepayers, as the funding counterparty for aggregated household assets.

The Voltus deal follows a separate initiative by Sunrun with Renew Home and Tesla aimed at unlocking more than 16.8 GW of flexible capacity from home batteries, solar, smart thermostats and electric vehicles, according to the announcement.

A peer-reviewed study published last week found that if AI is taken up at similar rates in the fossil fuel and renewable energy sectors, the net result is an annual emissions increase of 0.47 to 1.8 gigatonnes of CO2, according to Climate Home News.

The finding cuts against the argument that AI deployment pays for its own energy footprint through efficiency gains elsewhere. The study measures the two effects against each other and reports that the fossil side wins on net.

Data centre emissions are small today. Climate Home News reported that greenhouse gas emissions from data centres now stand at less than 1% of the global total, and are set to rise.

The electricity side moves faster than the emissions share suggests. Data centre power use is projected by 2030 to reach nearly three times the combined annual consumption of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria, according to Climate Home News.

The reporting also traces the accountability fight inside the industry. Holly Alpine and her husband Will, both Microsoft managers, quit their jobs in 2024 and launched a campaign to hold Big Tech accountable for the emissions its technology enables.

Their target is the enabled-emissions question rather than the direct footprint of the servers: the emissions that follow when the technology is sold into fossil fuel operations. That framing lines up with the study's mechanism, in which parallel adoption across both sectors produces a net rise rather than a wash.

The UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero published two summary business cases covering the small modular reactor programme on 17 August 2026. One documents the award of a Technology Partner contract by Great British Energy - Nuclear to Rolls-Royce SMR.

The second business case covers the appointment of an Owner's Engineer by Great British Energy - Nuclear, a role set to provide independent technical assurance, design review and delivery oversight for the programme, according to the department.

The Technology Partner award ties Rolls-Royce SMR to the UK small modular reactor programme as the selected reactor technology supplier, per the transparency data released by the department. Owner's Engineer scope, as described in the accompanying document, is separated from the technology supply role and centres on scrutiny of design and delivery rather than construction.

Both documents were released as transparency data under the department's own publication.

The UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) published its accounting officer assessment for the Small Modular Reactor Programme Technology Partner Contract on 17 August 2026. The document was released as transparency data covering the department's major projects.

Accounting officer assessments are mandatory for every project or programme inside the Government's Major Projects Portfolio (GMPP), according to DESNZ. Each is judged against four standards that Parliament and the public expect for the use of public resources: regularity, propriety, value for money, and feasibility.

The DESNZ publication places the small modular reactor technology partner contract inside that same scrutiny framework applied across the GMPP.

Agastya Green Energy Ltd plans an integrated 12 GW ingot and wafer manufacturing facility in the Orvakal Industrial Area in Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, at an estimated cost of INR 78 billion (USD 815.8 million), according to pv magazine.

The company is part of the Anubhav Agarwal Group (AAG), pv magazine reported. The site is designed for 12 GW each of ingot and wafer output.

That upstream capacity is intended to complement the company's planned solar cell and module operations. Agastya Energy told pv magazine it is planning 5 GW of cell and module capacity across two phases, with the first phase covering 2 GW.

India's ALMM requirement for solar wafers takes effect on June 1, 2028, according to pv magazine. Wafers sit between polysilicon and finished cells in the supply chain, and a 12 GW line at a single site would place Agastya Energy's upstream capacity well above the 5 GW of downstream cell and module capacity it has mapped out.

Japan's biomass power fleet has recorded at least 14 fires, explosions and accidents in the past few years, according to Mongabay. The fleet includes an estimated 34 large-scale plants with combined output of 3.5 GW, Mongabay reported.

The most serious of those incidents hit the 1.07-GW Taketoyo plant in Aichi in 2024, per Mongabay. It was the third accident of its kind at the site, which opened in 2022. The most recent was a fire at the Niigata East Port biomass plant in March 2025.

An Nakane, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth Japan, told Mongabay that explosions at biomass power plants in the country "have been occurring too frequently, and despite this, regulations are being applied leniently".

The safety record matters because of the scale of the feedstock trade behind it. Japan is now the second-largest wood pellet consumer in the world after the U.K., according to Mongabay. That places the country's plant operators at the receiving end of one of the two largest pellet import streams supporting subsidized generation classified as renewable.

The Taketoyo unit alone accounts for a large share of the large-scale capacity Mongabay counted. Repeat incidents at a single site of that size, followed by the Niigata East Port fire, are what Nakane pointed to in arguing that enforcement has not kept pace with the frequency of failures.

Prime Minister Mark Carney announced up to CAD 10 billion in federal financial support and investments on August 17, 2026 to expand clean electricity generation and transmission in Labrador, according to Natural Resources Canada.

The federal money sits inside a far larger construction programme. Natural Resources Canada put the combined projects enabled by a Definitive Cooperation and Implementation Agreement between Hydro-Québec and Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro at nearly CAD 70 billion, describing that total as the largest clean energy investment in North American history.

That agreement terminates and replaces the 1969 Churchill Falls Contract, according to Natural Resources Canada, and commits the two utilities to develop Gull Island and expand capacity at the Churchill Falls Generating Station.

The supported work covers upgrades to Churchill Falls, development of the Gull Island hydroelectric project, and enabling infrastructure for critical minerals development in the Labrador Trough. Natural Resources Canada said the federal government will guarantee the financing to develop Gull Island, a project it described as massive and long-discussed.

A separate and much smaller line item targets the mining side. Natural Resources Canada said Canada is making a federal investment of nearly CAD 20 million to support feasibility work for mining-enabling infrastructure through the First and Last Mile Fund.

Carney made the announcement alongside Québec Premier Christine Fréchette, Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Tony Wakeham, and the chief executives of Hydro-Québec and Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro.

Equinor has bought a stake in the Lackawanna Energy Center, a 1,483 MW gas-fired combined cycle plant in Pennsylvania, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

Invenergy retains the remaining Class A shares and all of the Class B shares, and stays on as manager and operator of the plant, OEDigital reported. Invenergy is described in the same report as North America's largest privately held independent power producer.

Helge Haugane, executive vice president for power at Equinor, told Reuters the transaction gives the company "a significant foothold in one of the world's most attractive markets".

The plant sits in the PJM power market, which serves nearly 70 million consumers across 13 states, per OEDigital.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has docketed FANCO's Regulatory Engagement Plan for a proposed Category II High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) deconversion and fuel fabrication facility, according to a company release carried by GlobeNewswire.

The plant is intended to produce ceramic fuel for FANCO's EAGL-1 reactor and for other advanced-reactor customers, the company said. EAGL-1 is described as a 240-megawatt-electric, lead-bismuth-cooled fast-spectrum small modular reactor.

Docketing of the plan does not itself constitute a license request. FANCO said it currently anticipates submitting its license application during the fourth quarter of 2027.

The engagement plan follows a letter of intent FANCO sent to the NRC on August 6, 2026, notifying the agency that it planned to seek a license under 10 CFR Part 70, the company said. That part of the federal rules governs possession and use of special nuclear material, the category into which HALEU falls.

Deconversion and fabrication sit at the point in the fuel cycle where enriched uranium is converted into a usable reactor form. FANCO's stated design pairs a lead-bismuth eutectic coolant with a fast neutron spectrum, and the company frames the fuel plant as serving both its own reactor and third-party developers.

Senegal raised fuel prices by 7% to hold down the cost of subsidies, Semafor Net Zero reported. The increase follows a subsidy bill that has already consumed nearly the entire full-year allocation.

According to Semafor Net Zero, the government's spending overshoot came after crude prices climbed past the USD 85 benchmark used to build the subsidy estimate. With the reference price breached, the allocation set aside for the year was drained well before the year closed.

The 7% adjustment at the pump is the government's mechanism for capping that exposure.

Senegal is not alone in passing higher import costs to consumers. Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria and Tanzania are among the African countries where fuel prices have risen, Semafor Net Zero reported.

The underlying vulnerability is import dependence. Africa still buys around 70% of the fuel it consumes from abroad, according to Semafor Net Zero. That share leaves national budgets that fix retail prices directly exposed to movements in international crude, with the gap between the administered price and the landed cost absorbed by the treasury until the allocation is exhausted.

Willdan Group Inc. has bought all assets of KCS Corp., a Chicagoland-based engineering consulting firm, according to Solar Builder. Willdan officials announced the deal on August 17, and financial details have not been made public.

The KCS staff will move into Willdan subsidiary APG, an engineering, procurement and construction firm that concentrates on energy resources and utility interconnections, the companies said in reporting carried by Solar Builder.

Once settled at the new company, that team will work on Willdan's growing pipeline of battery storage, grid modernization practices and data center infrastructure, according to Solar Builder.

The interconnection focus at APG places the acquired engineers on the queue side of storage development, where projects wait for utility studies and connection agreements before construction can proceed. Pairing that work with data center infrastructure in a single subsidiary keeps generation, storage and large-load connection engineering under one roof.

Used electric vehicle sales rose 7.7% in July from June and 10.1% year over year, according to Cox Automotive data cited by Grist.

Price explains much of the pull toward the second-hand market. New EVs carry an average premium of USD 6,477 over comparable internal combustion models, per the figures reported by Grist. On used lots that premium narrows to USD 2,967, which Grist described as making them an attractive option.

The monthly and annual gains in used EV sales both came from data Cox Automotive released, as reported by Grist.

The One Big Beautiful Bill repealed the federal tax credits for electric vehicles, worth USD 7,500 for new purchases and USD 4,000 for used ones.

The regional split in demand is wide. Benchmark Mineral Intelligence data cited by Grist put North American EV sales down 18% so far this year, against a 28% gain in Europe.

Lake Powell sits roughly 30 feet above the elevation at which its turbines would stop generating hydroelectric power, according to Mongabay.

The reservoir has dropped more than 20 feet from where it stood at the start of the year, based on U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) data cited by Mongabay.

Federal officials warned in April that a "major intervention" would be needed to keep the reservoir above that generation threshold by the end of the year, Mongabay reported.

The stakes extend well beyond the powerhouse. The Colorado River Basin supplies wildlife habitat, hydropower and more than 40 million people across seven U.S. states, according to Mongabay.

USBR responded in July with a proposed 10-year plan carrying major potential water cuts for Arizona, California and Nevada, Mongabay reported.

Targa Resources Corp. has signed 20-year fee-based integrated midstream agreements with ExxonMobil covering gathering, processing and downstream services across the Permian Basin, the company said in a statement distributed by GlobeNewswire. The contracts support ExxonMobil's development of what Targa described as its premier Permian Basin acreage.

Alongside the agreements, Targa announced three natural gas processing plants in the Permian Delaware. The Wrangler, Ranger and Ranger II plants carry aggregate capacity of roughly 825 MMcf/d, according to the company. All three are expected to enter service in the first half of 2028.

Takeaway capacity is being expanded in parallel. Targa said it will build Bull Run II, a natural gas pipeline of about 70 miles in the Permian Delaware, to lift gas takeaway capacity to the Waha Hub.

The build-out pushes up spending. Targa updated its full year 2026 net growth capital estimate to approximately USD 5.0 billion.

The company is also weighing further expansion beyond the three plants now sanctioned. Targa said it is evaluating up to five additional processing plants in the Permian Delaware to accommodate expected production growth in the area over the longer term.

Canada will spend roughly C$70 billion (USD 50 billion) on hydropower, onshore wind and transmission under a package announced Monday by Prime Minister Mark Carney, Inside Climate News reported. Carney said the spending would cover domestic electricity demand and send power to Massachusetts and New York, calling it "the largest clean energy investment in North America's history".

Two hydro projects anchor the generation side. At Churchill Falls, which runs at 5,428 MW, swapping in more efficient turbines would add as much as 2,500 MW, according to Inside Climate News. A second site, Gull Island, is proposed at 2,700 MW with a start date in the mid-2030s.

The wind target is 2,000 MW of new onshore capacity.

Cross-border volumes are far smaller than the new generation. The Champlain Hudson Power Express would carry up to 240 MW to New York City, and the New England Clean Energy Connect line up to 200 MW to Massachusetts, Inside Climate News reported.

Indigenous leaders were consulted on the project plan, which gives the Innu Nation an option to take partial ownership of the wind and transmission assets.

For households in Newfoundland and Labrador, the package sets a 15% rebate on the first 2,000 kWh used monthly, which Inside Climate News reported translates into projected savings near $350 a year per household.

Two floating liquefaction vessels with a combined 12 MMtpa of capacity are planned offshore Rio Negro in the Gulf of San Matias, and the partners behind them are now asking Argentina to admit the scheme to its Large Investment Incentive Regime (RIGI), according to World Oil.

The application covers a USD 51 billion development, Argentina LNG, held by YPF, Eni and XRG, and is tied to plans to move Vaca Muerta gas into large-scale export volumes, World Oil reported.

Spending is weighted toward the first phase. About USD 29 billion is due to be committed by 2031, the year the two FLNG units are targeted to enter service.

Work on the ground is mapped for 2026 through 2030. Across those years the partners put annual employment support at roughly 20,000 direct, indirect and induced jobs, with headcount reaching as high as 40,000 at peak activity.

YPF Chairman and CEO Horacio Marin described entry into RIGI as "a fundamental step" for the project.