Monday, 17 August 2026

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.