Wednesday, 19 August 2026

The City of Nuremberg is tearing down a former nursery building using only electric construction machines and electric trucks, according to electrive.

The requirement came before the contract. Nuremberg wrote emissions-free operation into the tender for the job, electrive reported.

The demolition contract went to Metzner Recycling, with support from Robert Aebi Nurnberg, electrive reported. The firm is working with a Volvo EC230 Electric crawler excavator, an ECR18 Electric compact excavator and an L20 Electric wheeled loader, and a Volvo FM Electric roll-off skip lorry is also available for haulage.

No dedicated charging equipment was set up on site. Machines and trucks draw from the site's regular construction electricity supply, according to electrive.

The project is not the first of its kind in the area. It follows a fully electric building demolition completed in 2025 at the Siemens Technology Campus in Erlangen, electrive reported.

GM will fit native NACS charging ports on its electric models for the 2027 model year, according to electrive.

Until now, only one GM vehicle has carried the connector directly. The Cadillac Optiq is the sole GM model with a directly integrated NACS charging port, electrive reported.

Other GM electric vehicles have reached Tesla's fast-charging hardware through an accessory instead. Since September 2024, GM customers have been able to use Tesla's Supercharger network with an adapter, according to electrive.

The switch covers the returning Chevy Bolt, which electrive said is set to arrive later this year as a 2027 model.

BYD has confirmed a pure electric range of 1,003 km (623 miles) on the CLTC cycle for its new Denza N8, Electrek reported. The vehicle uses a battery pack rated at 130.15 kWh.

China's industry ministry, MIIT, cleared the model for sale in its most recent new energy vehicle approval batch last week, according to Electrek.

The Denza N8 carries BYD's Flash Charging system, which the carmaker says moves the pack from 10% to 70% in five minutes. BYD itself calls the range figure "world-leading".

Three motors drive the vehicle, with combined output of 890 kW (1,193 hp).

The range figure rests on the CLTC test cycle rather than an independent measurement, and both it and the five-minute charging window come from BYD.

Helmerich & Payne drilled 15.85 million ft of total measured depth across 776 wells, ranking as the most active U.S. land drilling contractor, according to Enverus first-quarter 2026 data.

On the operator side of the same Enverus ranking, ExxonMobil came first with 5.44 million ft drilled across 229 wells in the first quarter. That places the operator leader at roughly a third of the footage recorded by the top contractor, whose totals span work for multiple customers.

Enverus also reported that active U.S. rigs averaged 637.6 during the week ended July 31, 2026, a 13% increase from a year earlier.

President Irfaan Ali has put Guyana's share of crude output from the ExxonMobil-led Stabroek project at 39.8%, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

That share began at 12.5%. The move to 39.8% was announced by Ali.

The higher take follows cost recovery on the project by the Exxon-led consortium, Ali told journalists. He said the change is expected to increase the country's oil revenue.

Recovery ran ahead of the original schedule. Exxon's Chief Financial Officer put the recouped investment at USD 55 billion since 2014, reached roughly two years earlier than planned as the Stabroek block was developed quickly, in remarks reported for July by Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

India's installed solar capacity has climbed from 7 GW in 2016 to more than 150 GW in 2026, according to pv magazine, a more than twentyfold increase.

The next stage of that build-out may lean more heavily on distributed generation, with economic gains for rural communities, according to Shantanu Roy of the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy, cited by pv magazine.

pv magazine attributes both the capacity figures and the twentyfold comparison to its report on India's model solar villages.

Translucent Energy has launched a 1.2 GW solar module assembly plant in Summerville, South Carolina, according to pv magazine. The first phase carries a USD 15.6 million investment and is expected to create 167 local jobs.

Commercial shipments are due to start in December, with the manufacturer targeting 600 MW to 800 MW of deliveries in the plant's first full year, pv magazine reported.

Equipment for the assembly lines is scheduled to reach Summerville in October, once factory acceptance testing is complete.

The site covers 26,105 m². Managing Director Augustus Rylands said it marks the first step in a broader multi-year domestic manufacturing roadmap.

According to pv magazine, the factory will ramp shifts to capture demand driven by Section 232 trade tariffs.

Japan's plan to burn ammonia alongside coal in its power stations carries higher costs and tighter supply than renewable alternatives, according to a fact sheet published by IEEFA.

The co-firing pathway is staged. Japan is targeting a 20% ammonia share in coal-fired power plants by 2030, then 50% or more after 2030, and 100% by 2050, IEEFA said. The strategy is framed as part of the country's power sector decarbonization approach.

IEEFA's assessment is that ammonia co-firing in Japan faces both higher costs and constrained supply relative to renewables.

On the supply side, IEEFA points to the Blue Point Complex in the United States as a prospective source. The project plans an ammonia production facility of 1.4 million tonnes per annum and is expected to help meet Japan's future demand, according to the fact sheet.

Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe (PEJ) has handed site management for Poland's first nuclear power plant to general contractor Bechtel, with earthworks starting on the construction site, according to World Nuclear News.

The handover coincides with the appointment of Budimex SA, described by World Nuclear News as one of the largest construction companies in Poland, as main contractor for the earthworks at the Lubiatowo-Kopalino site.

That first phase covers ground levelling, reconstruction and expansion of drainage systems, and a temporary road network of about 16 kilometres, per World Nuclear News. Ground movement and levelling will cover a future construction site of more than 300 hectares.

Under the permit obtained, site preparation is scheduled to run from the third quarter of 2026 to the first quarter of 2029. PEJ said it expects to pour first concrete for the plant's first unit in the fourth quarter of 2028, overlapping with the tail end of the preparation window.

More than 200 people are already working at the site, a number PEJ said will steadily increase in the coming months.

The reactor choice dates back to November 2022, when the then Polish government selected Westinghouse AP1000 technology for the Lubiatowo-Kopalino site in the Choczewo municipality in Pomerania, northern Poland.

Oklo's Groves Isotope Test Reactor has reached first criticality, and Deep Fission's underground reactor has received safety design approval, World Nuclear News reported. Both units sit inside the Reactor Pilot Program.

The Groves unit is sited near Lockhart in Caldwell County, Texas, and was among 11 advanced reactor projects the US Department of Energy (DOE) picked in August 2025 for the Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program, according to World Nuclear News.

Deep Fission's approval covers the Gravity design, a small modular reactor intended for emplacement in an optimised borehole one mile (1.6 km) below the surface. Each unit will generate 15 MWe using pressurised water reactor technology and low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel, World Nuclear News reported. The company broke ground in December at the Great Plains Industrial Park in Parsons for its pilot project.

Groves joins a run of criticality milestones under the same program. Antares Nuclear's Mark-0 was the first to reach initial criticality, in early June, closely followed by Valar Atomics' Ward 250, according to World Nuclear News. Deployable Energy's Unity demonstration reactor went critical on 1 July, and Aalo Atomics' Critical Test Reactor followed in the early hours of 4 July.

That sequence tracks against a target set by executive order. Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy, signed by President Donald Trump in May, set the goal "to construct, operate, and achieve criticality of at least three test reactors using the DOE authorisation process by 4 July, 2026," World Nuclear News reported.

The DOE authorisation route, rather than a commercial licensing process, is the mechanism named in the order for those test reactors. Four units had already reached criticality before the Groves milestone, exceeding the three named in the order.

Deep Fission's path differs from the criticality-first group: its milestone is a safety design approval, not a reactor start-up. The borehole approach places the pressure vessel a mile underground rather than inside a surface containment structure.

IEA member countries released 26 million barrels from emergency stocks in July, lifting cumulative releases to 300 million barrels since the agency announced a coordinated 400-million-barrel action on March 11, according to Oil & Gas Journal.

The monthly pace has fallen sharply. Government stock draws averaged 750,000 b/d in July, against 1.5 million b/d in June and 2.5 million b/d in May, Oil & Gas Journal reported.

Asia Oceania members accounted for 4 million barrels of the July total, down from 8 million barrels in June and 44 million barrels in May, the same report said.

US Strategic Petroleum Reserve withdrawals came to 17 million barrels in July, roughly half the volume released in June, according to Oil & Gas Journal.

More than 100 million barrels of the volumes committed under the 400-million-barrel coordinated action have still not reached the market, the report said.

Commercial and government stocks are drawing down together. Global observed oil inventories fell by 69 million barrels in July, equivalent to 2.2 million b/d, with oil on water accounting for more than 90% of the decline, per Oil & Gas Journal.

That left global observed inventories below 7.9 billion barrels at the end of July, the first time they have been under that level since April 2025, the report said.

Measured from the end of February through July, cumulative stock draws totaled 410 million barrels, an average of 2.7 million b/d, according to Oil & Gas Journal.

A federal appeals court has stripped Sentinel Midstream's Texas GulfLink crude export terminal of its federal authorization, finding the licensing agency committed "serious procedural errors." The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated the license on Aug. 12, according to Oil & Gas Journal.

The court found that the US Maritime Administration (MARAD) breached the Deepwater Port Act by drawing an improper boundary map that overlooked pipeline infrastructure overlapping with a competing terminal, the Sea Port Oil Terminal (SPOT), Oil & Gas Journal reported.

The challenge came from Citizens for Clean Air & Clean Water in Brazoria County, known as Better Brazoria and represented by Earthjustice. The group argued that MARAD violated the "one port" rule when it issued the GulfLink license in February, according to Oil & Gas Journal.

GulfLink sits about 30 miles offshore Freeport, Texas, and was designed to load Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) at rates of up to 1 million b/d, with the government of Japan and Freeport Commodities as offtakers, per Oil & Gas Journal.

The terminal's onshore and subsea build-out centers on a 44-mile, 42-in. OD pipeline. Oil & Gas Journal put the estimated investment at USD 2.1 billion, funded as part of a broader trade agreement between the US and Japan, with first operations scheduled for around 2028.

The overlap that undid the license involves a substantially larger rival. SPOT, developed by Enterprise Products Partners in partnership with Enbridge Inc., also lies about 30 miles from Freeport and is designed to handle VLCCs at export rates of up to 2 million b/d, according to Oil & Gas Journal. Its estimated cost is USD 2.5-3 billion.

Taken together, the two terminals were positioned in the same offshore corridor with pipeline routes MARAD failed to reconcile. That is the specific defect the Fifth Circuit identified in revoking federal authorization.

Amtrak will begin deploying 83 new Airo trainsets this fall, with the first eight assigned to the Pacific Northwest's Cascades route, according to Grist.

The fleet carries an USD 8 billion price tag, and Grist reported the investment is expected to cut trip times on multiple routes. The trainsets can reach speeds of up to 125 mph.

Capacity rises on the Cascades service. Each Airo set there will seat 317 passengers, significantly more than the rolling stock currently in service on the route, per Grist.

Siemens builds the trains domestically, according to Grist. They combine electric and diesel propulsion, which lets a single set run across both conventional and electrified track without a locomotive swap.

On emissions, Grist reported the Airo locomotives meet the Environmental Protection Agency's Tier 4 standards, cutting particulate matter and nitrogen oxide output significantly.

The Northeast Regional route is next in the sequence. Riders there will board Airo equipment in 2027, according to Grist.

Public money is backing part of the purchase. Grist reported the federal government announced USD 3 billion in funding for Amtrak in August, of which USD 2 billion is earmarked for buying trains.

At least a dozen data center developments proposed across Alabama would, if built to full capacity, draw more electricity than every home in the state combined, according to an analysis published by Inside Climate News.

The question of who absorbs that load lands on a utility whose customers already pay the most in the country. Average residential bills in Alabama Power's service area are the highest in the nation, Inside Climate News reported.

The largest single proposal identified in the analysis is Project Marvel, a campus in Bessemer. Inside Climate News reported it is slated to consume 90 times more energy than all Bessemer residences combined.

Zoning for that project has already cleared. Public officials approved the rezoning, greenlighting clear-cutting of at least 100 acres previously zoned for agricultural use, according to the outlet. Residents near the site face up to a decade of construction to finish 17 buildings the size of Walmart Supercenters.

A second development, Project Red Clay in Lowndes County, is planned on an 800-acre site. The developer has outlined four buildings of 720,000 square feet each, a 100,000-square-foot warehouse and a 30,000-square-foot office, Inside Climate News reported.

The developments identified in the analysis stretch from Bessemer to the Black Belt.

A new state law changes how these contracts are reviewed. SB 270, enacted this year, requires the Public Service Commission to consider whether a utility's contract with a data center developer is in the public interest, and takes effect Oct. 1, according to Inside Climate News.

Sage Geosystems is producing power from its first next-generation geothermal plant, sited on a rugged tract near San Antonio in the United States, according to Canary Media.

Canary Media reported that the installation is the third next-generation geothermal system of its kind to come online in the United States. The outlet framed the start-up against a sector racing to commercialize geothermal as a source of on-demand clean electricity.

Thailand should scrap its net billing arrangement for rooftop solar and move to net metering, IEEFA said, arguing the switch would cut residential payback periods to roughly 5.5 years for 5kW systems and 4.5 years for 10kW systems by letting households offset consumption at retail rates.

The pricing gap is the core of the complaint. Under the "Solar for Thai People" net billing scheme, exported power earns THB2.2 (USD0.07) per kWh, while retail tariffs average about THB3.88/kWh (USD0.12/kWh), according to IEEFA.

Installed costs compound the problem. IEEFA put Thai rooftop systems at approximately USD936 per kW, nearly 50% above regional peers including Pakistan, Malaysia and Vietnam.

Rooftop capacity remains a minority of the solar fleet. Thailand had roughly 11.8 GW of solar capacity as of early 2026, split between 8GW of utility-scale ground-mounted plants and 3.6GW of rooftop, IEEFA reported.

Quota design has also constrained the segment. The 90-MW residential quota set in the 2019 net billing scheme was meant to last until 2030, but was fully taken up by 2024, according to IEEFA.

The backdrop is a power system built on imported and domestic gas. Natural gas accounts for 66% of Thailand's electricity generation, IEEFA said.

That exposure has left a mark on the balance sheet of the state utility. By March 2026, EGAT carried more than THB36 billion (USD1 billion) in losses from past energy crises, according to IEEFA.

UK energy regulator Ofgem has identified 16 long-duration energy storage (LDES) projects it is "minded to" support under a new cap-and-floor scheme, according to Carbon Brief.

Carbon Brief reports that the use of LDES technologies is expected to cut UK energy system costs by more than GBP 24 billion between 2030 and 2050.

The technology class already has an incumbent at scale. Dinorwig power station in North Wales is a 1,728 MW pumped-hydro station opened in the 1980s and used to manage short-term surges in electricity demand, according to Carbon Brief.

Newer chemistries are arriving at a much smaller scale. The UK's largest vanadium flow battery site opened in May 2026 at Uckfield, East Sussex, co-located with a 3 MW solar farm, Carbon Brief reported. The site consists of 90 vanadium flow batteries able to store 21 MWh of electricity.

That pairing of a flow battery installation with on-site solar sits at the opposite end of the size range from Dinorwig, whose capacity is measured in gigawatt-scale power output rather than tens of megawatt-hours of stored energy.

A cap-and-floor scheme sets a revenue floor and a revenue ceiling for supported assets, the mechanism Ofgem is applying to the 16 shortlisted projects.

Eneva and GE Vernova started commercial operation of the Azulão I thermal power plant at Silves, Brazil, according to GE Vernova, which described Eneva as the largest private natural gas operator in the country.

The plant holds a contract to supply 295 MW of capacity to Brazil's National Interconnected System (SIN) over 15 years, GE Vernova said. The company said the plant will contribute to the stability, reliability and security of the country's electricity supply.

Generation equipment at the site centres on GE Vernova's 7HA.02 gas turbine, paired with an H65 generator, per the company's release.

Alongside the supply scope, GE Vernova secured a 15-year service agreement covering the plant, which it said aims to sustain reliability and operational availability.

Azulão I is the first of two units. The wider Azulão Complex, taking in Azulão I and Azulão II, is expected to deliver a combined output of up to 950 MW, an amount GE Vernova equated to the power needed by approximately four million Brazilian homes. Commercial operation of the complex is scheduled for July 2027.

A 57 MW / 120 MWh battery energy storage system near the town of Lipnice nad Sázavou in Czechia's Vysočina Region has been energized by Czech industrial holding Suas Group and Slovak investment firm EIF, ESS News reported.

The project cost 400 million CZK (USD 19.1 million) and is now the largest operational battery storage system in Czechia, according to ESS News.

On the technical side, ESS News reported the installation is built from 144 battery cabinets, 18 power conversion systems and nine transformer skids.

Suas Group believes the plant will pay for itself within five to eight years, drawing revenues from multiple electricity markets and using algorithmic management to schedule day-ahead and intraday trading.

The ranking it takes over is fresh. The second-largest system in the country, a 37.95 MW / 41.7 MWh battery at the Modlany Energy Park in northern Czechia, was commissioned earlier in the same month, ESS News said. On an energy basis, Lipnice stores almost three times as much.

Both projects sit inside a build-out that state aid has underwritten. The European Union approved an aid package covering 1.5 GWh of storage capacity in the Czech Republic in March 2025, according to ESS News.

Aurora Energy Research forecast that total battery storage capacity in Czechia will reach 6 GWh by the end of the decade. Measured against that projection, the 120 MWh at Lipnice accounts for a small share of the capacity the country would need to add.

South Africa's Eskom will not fine or disconnect residential customers who fail to register their small-scale embedded generation (SSEG) systems by a September 30 deadline, according to pv magazine.

The utility set the deadline itself, and pv magazine reported that stakeholders challenged whether Eskom had the authority to impose penalties of that kind. Eskom then determined that the deadline would not trigger them.

The South African Photovoltaic Industry Association (SAPVIA) welcomed the decision not to proceed with the penalties, pv magazine said.

The registration question sits against a fast-growing rooftop and utility-scale base. Cumulative solar capacity in South Africa has passed 10 GW, with 1.6 GW added last year, according to pv magazine.

India had more than 150 GW of renewable energy capacity under construction as of June 30, 2026, according to pv magazine, even as fresh tendering activity dropped to a fraction of its recent peak.

The auction slowdown is stark. Awarded renewable capacity fell to 14.7 GW in 2025-26 from 40.6 GW in 2024-25, pv magazine reported, and only 4.7 GW had been awarded in the current financial year as of August 10, 2026.

Offtake remains the bottleneck behind the awarded volumes. Unsigned power purchase agreement capacity stood at 40-45 GW as of April 2026.

Rating agency ICRA expects renewable energy, including large hydropower, to supply more than 35% of India's total electricity generation by 2029-30, up from 22% in 2024-25, pv magazine reported. That trajectory rests on the construction pipeline clearing rather than on new awards.

Grid congestion is already cutting into output at specific nodes. Around 37% of the capacity at impacted substations in North, West and South India operates under transmission general network access and faces curtailment of 30-50% during solar hours, according to ICRA's Girishkumar Kadam, cited by pv magazine.

Storage procurement has moved faster than the generation auctions it is meant to support. Total awarded battery energy storage system capacity in India, counting both under-construction and operational projects, reached around 90 GWh as of June 2026, pv magazine reported.

On cost, ICRA estimates the levelized cost of storage for two- to four-hour BESS projects at INR 4/kWh to INR 7/kWh, against around INR 5/kWh for pumped storage hydropower, according to pv magazine. The overlap in those ranges leaves pumped hydro competitive at the longer end of the battery cost band.

The gap between the 150 GW under construction and the 4.7 GW awarded so far this financial year sets up a build-out concentrated in projects already contracted, with grid access and storage readiness determining how much of that capacity earns full output.

BP plc and ADNOC plan to develop a major offshore gas field in Venezuela, according to Semafor Net Zero.

The two companies vowed to raise oil and gas production in the country, with concerns over a protracted conflict in the Middle East overriding worries about Caracas' treatment of international firms, Semafor Net Zero reported.

Semafor Net Zero framed the plans as a response to calls from Washington for energy companies to help rebuild production in Venezuela.

Venezuela holds the world's largest stated crude reserves, according to Semafor Net Zero.

IONITY has opened its first fast-charging hub in London at Greenwich Shopping Park, according to electrive, the first of several sites the operator plans for the English capital. The site carries 12 charging bays delivering up to 400kW of power, electrive reported.

The operator is marking the launch with a "Free Friday" on 21 August, billed as free charging for 24 hours, per electrive.

IONITY CEO Jeroen van Tilburg framed the site as a shift in where the network builds. "Our expansion goes beyond long-distance travel to enable reliable charging where demand is growing fastest: in urban areas," van Tilburg said.

That urban positioning is tied to commercial demand as much as private drivers. Under a partnership with Uber, IONITY is offering what electrive described as attractive charging rates to ride-hailing drivers. High-utilisation fleet duty cycles favour high-power hubs with multiple bays, since ride-hailing drivers charge mid-shift rather than overnight, and queueing carries a direct earnings cost.

Greenwich Shopping Park places the bays at a retail destination rather than a motorway corridor, the segment where IONITY built its original network. Van Tilburg's comment sets the network's long-distance origins against the new city focus.

Electrive said further London hubs are planned, without naming the sites.

Ten U.S. states have adopted plug-in solar legislation, and more are expected to follow, according to pv magazine. Most of those laws cap system size at 1,200 W, with Colorado the exception at up to 1,920 W, pv magazine reported, citing Bright Saver.

The safety benchmark behind the state rules is UL 3700, published in late 2025, which sets construction, performance and labeling criteria for plug-in solar systems, according to pv magazine. Maine, New York and Vermont go further than a device-level requirement: the inverter, panels, cables and mounting hardware must all meet UL 3700 or a comparable standard.

Pricing sits at roughly USD 1.50 per watt, according to Bright Saver, which anticipates prices falling sharply over the coming year, pv magazine reported. The cheapest systems already sell for under USD 500. Stephan Scherer put the category at about half to a third the cost of traditional solar, according to pv magazine.

The format is not new. The concept took off in Germany during the 2010s, and more than one million plug-in solar devices are now registered there, pv magazine reported. That installed base is the reference point for a U.S. market where legislation is only now arriving state by state, with the wattage cap and the certification scope as the two variables that differ between jurisdictions.

Bayernwerk Netz has introduced a new allocation procedure for grid connections covering battery storage systems with import capacity above 300 kW and consumers whose power requirement exceeds 1,000 kW, according to ESS News.

Bayernwerk Netz is the major distribution system operator serving the German state of Bavaria and a subsidiary of E.ON, ESS News reported. The thresholds set the point at which storage projects and large industrial or commercial loads fall under the revised connection criteria rather than standard treatment.

The operator is spending heavily on the network the new procedure governs. ESS News reported that the Bayernwerk subsidiary plans to invest around EUR 12 billion in grid expansion between 2026 and 2030.

The 300 kW import threshold captures grid-scale and larger commercial battery systems, which draw power from the distribution network when charging rather than only exporting to it. Consumers below the 1,000 kW mark sit outside the change.

A cabless electric truck measuring 15.6 metres in length is under development at Voltempo, electrive reported. The company calls the vehicle the Smart Trailer, rating it at 42 tonnes permissible gross weight on a five-axle configuration.

Dropping the cab, according to founder Michael Boxwell, should yield roughly 15 per cent more cargo volume than a conventional trailer, alongside five to seven tonnes of extra payload.

Voltempo puts the vehicle's own weight in a band of ten to twelve tonnes. A conventional electric articulated lorry comes in at around 19 tonnes on the company's comparison, electrive reported.

Completion of the prototype is targeted for September 2027. Testing would then move to a South Wales route designated for autonomous vehicles. Voltempo says production could start as early as late 2027, with deliveries by mid-2028.

Build work on the prototype sits with Berkeley Coachworks. Voltempo has not identified the major lorry manufacturer supplying the electric powertrain.

Barley, maize, cabbage, potatoes and field beans can adapt their photosynthesis to the partial shading created by agrivoltaic installations, according to a University of Hohenheim study reported by pv magazine.

The research team grew the five crops at five locations across Germany, with photovoltaic modules mounted above the plots, pv magazine reported. Fully sunlit plots were used as the reference for comparison.

Under the shaded conditions, both dark respiration and the light compensation point fell across every crop in the trial, according to pv magazine. Lower dark respiration means less of the carbon fixed during the day is burned off, and a lower light compensation point means the leaf reaches break-even between photosynthesis and respiration at weaker light.

That physiological response does not automatically translate into more harvested output. The adaptations do not necessarily result in higher yields, according to the study as reported by pv magazine. The finding separates leaf-level acclimation from farm-level productivity, the metric that determines whether a dual land use site pays for the farmer as well as the module owner.

The work was published in the European Journal of Agronomy under the title "Partial shade effects of dual land use systems: Harnessing plant acclimation to drive sustainable farming solutions," pv magazine said.

Clearstone Energy has lost its appeal against the refusal of the Axminster Energy Hub, a 150 MW battery energy storage system, ESS News reported. The appeal was dismissed by planning inspector Helen Heward, who set out her reasoning across 17 pages on August 13, 2026.

Heward said the evidence on deflagration and explosion mitigation fell short. She was "not persuaded" that the proposed strategies would work effectively, or that hazards "would be satisfactorily controlled for cabinets 10cm apart".

ESS News reported that Clearstone nominated the Wärtsilä Quantum 1 system for the site, with 52 units scheduled for installation. Cabinet separation of 10cm was the configuration the inspector examined.

East Devon District Council refused the planning application in May 2025, according to ESS News. The council then dropped its objection while the appeal was running, after a meeting on January 14, 2026. The appeal was dismissed regardless.

LG Energy Solution has begun battery production at a newly built 226-acre plant in Lansing, Michigan, according to ESS News. The site will supply cells for both utility-scale energy storage systems (ESS) and electric vehicles.

ESS News reported the plant carries an investment of more than USD 2 billion since 2022. Production started at the newly constructed 226-acre facility.

Two chemistries will run in parallel at the site. Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells are destined for utility-scale storage, while higher-density nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) cells are built for electric vehicles, per ESS News.

DTE Energy is among the first customers lined up to deploy Lansing-made LFP cells in its upcoming storage projects, according to ESS News. On the vehicle side, the NMC output is earmarked for Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky, which will use the cells in the 2027 Toyota Highlander EV.

Staffing currently stands at about 900 people on site. ESS News reported the plant is projected to employ roughly 1,700 workers and reach annual output above 35 GWh at full scale.

The Lansing ramp feeds a wider shift in where LG Energy Solution builds storage cells. The company projects that 80% of its global ESS manufacturing capacity will sit in North America by the end of 2026. ESS News reported the plant also advances a target of more than 50 GWh of North American LFP manufacturing capacity by the same point.

That split between an LFP line pointed at grid batteries and an NMC line pointed at a single vehicle program puts one plant on both sides of the demand curve, with a named utility offtaker and a named automaker offtaker attached from the start.

Einride, a provider specialising in electric and autonomous freight transport, has announced a partnership with Tesla to deploy 500 Tesla Semi trucks in the USA, according to electrive. The order will take the company's battery-electric truck fleet in the country to 750 vehicles.

Procurement of the 500 units begins in September 2026 and will be completed within two years, electrive reported.

The trucks will run on Einride's Saga AI platform and serve Amazon's logistics operations along with other customers, converting signed contracts into revenue-generating freight capacity, according to electrive.

Einride also plans new electric freight corridors in California, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, and Georgia.

The first five Russian engineering specialists have returned to the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in Iran, Rosatom Director General Alexei Likhachev said, according to World Nuclear News.

That return lifts the number of Russian specialists at the Bushehr site to 25, Likhachev said, with more due back within the next two weeks provided there is no escalation of military action.

The company intends to go further if conditions allow. "If all goes well, we'll increase our project staff to 100 people by the autumn," Likhachev said.

Work on the site has not stopped. Construction on the main and auxiliary buildings for Bushehr 2 and 3 is continuing, alongside preparatory work on hydraulic structures, according to the same account.

Marathon released 13 compounds above the levels allowed under its air permits at its El Paso Refinery during the night of Aug. 4 into the early morning of Aug. 5, according to reports the company filed with TCEQ and reviewed by Inside Climate News.

The filing lists more than 10,000 pounds of propylene, 15 pounds of hydrogen sulfide and over 1,400 pounds of isopentane released between Aug. 4 and 5, along with other hazardous compounds, Inside Climate News reported.

The releases did not stop there. Marathon reported ongoing emissions until Aug. 7, including hydrogen cyanide, nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide beyond its permit allowances.

In an updated report filed with TCEQ on Aug. 18, the company said its investigation had traced the event to an electrical issue that shut down the fluid catalytic cracker on Aug. 4. Hydrocarbons then escaped through an external floating roof tank as the cracker was restarting.

County Commissioner David Stout, whose district includes the refinery, called Marathon's handling of the Aug. 4 and 5 incident "entirely unacceptable".

U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar has asked the Environmental Protection Agency to investigate recent incidents at the refinery, according to Inside Climate News.

The emissions land while the plant's air permit is already contested. El Paso County protested the renewal, and TCEQ commissioners granted the hearing request in June. No hearing date has been scheduled.

Switzerland's Phenogy AG and Germany's HD Advanced Technologies (HDAT), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, will work together on developing and manufacturing sodium-ion battery cells in Europe, ESS News reported.

The cell development runs through a joint venture company, according to ESS News. Phenogy brings its sodium-ion cell chemistry and cell design; Heidelberg contributes its specialized printing process.

A separate manufacturing agreement covers hardware rather than cells. Under it, HDAT will produce cabinets, containers and other system products for Phenogy, ESS News reported. That arrangement starts with Germany and Europe, with plans to extend to the US in the future.

Phenogy entered the European energy storage scene in September 2025, when it launched a megawatt-hour-scale sodium-ion energy storage system at a commercial site in northern Germany, according to ESS News.

Sodium-ion cells use no lithium, and the chemistry has drawn interest from European system integrators looking for supply outside lithium-based cell chains. The tie-up pairs a cell developer with a manufacturer whose parent business is printing machinery, applying a printing process to cell production rather than conventional coating lines.

The main control room of unit 4 at the Changjiang nuclear power plant in China's Hainan province has been commissioned, World Nuclear News reported, clearing a step before the reactor's start-up in early 2027.

A ceremony to launch operation of the control room was held on 31 July, according to World Nuclear News.

Work on the neighbouring unit is further along. Changjiang unit 3 achieved first criticality on 10 July and was connected to the grid on 1 August, the outlet reported. Both units are scheduled to be fully operational in early 2027.

China Huaneng holds a 51% share in the Changjiang Phase II project, according to World Nuclear News.

The Strait of Hormuz remains de facto closed as Iran keeps attacking ships transiting the waterway, according to Semafor Net Zero.

Semafor Net Zero also reported that Tehran rejected the UAE's allegation against it, calling it a "false flag".

Iran has received materiel from Russia to replenish depleted weapons stockpiles, NBC reported, according to Semafor Net Zero. The delivery points to an external resupply channel for Tehran while the shipping disruption persists.

Financial friction is widening alongside the maritime disruption. Saudi Arabia is tightening scrutiny of financial transfers to the UAE, Semafor Net Zero reported.

Equinor has acquired a 17% stake in a Chevron deepwater exploration block off the coast of Namibia, according to Semafor Net Zero.

The purchase places Equinor alongside Chevron, QatarEnergy, and Namibian companies including Trago Energy on the license, Semafor Net Zero reported.

State oil company NAMCOR holds a guaranteed 10% stake in all exploration licenses in the country, according to the same report, giving Windhoek a direct share of any future production without carrying upfront drilling costs.

Saudi Arabia's state-owned mining company Maaden is drawing on oil producer Aramco for technical expertise as it steps up surveying of the kingdom for copper, zinc, and other minerals tied to the energy transition, Semafor reported.

The partnership is expected to be owned 51% by Maaden and 49% by Aramco, according to Semafor.

Maaden's push into exploration comes as the number of exploration firms registered in Saudi Arabia climbed from six in 2020 to more than 225 by 2024, according to Enterprise AM figures cited by Semafor.

Enrolling 10% of California's projected electric vehicles in vehicle-to-grid (V2G) programs by 2036 could supply roughly 9 GW of 12-hour storage, more than one-third of the state's long-duration storage procurement target for that year, according to a report covered by Solar Builder.

The study was carried out by grid experts at GridLab, Kevala, and E3, and drew on roundtable discussions facilitated by the Energy & Efficiency Institute at the University of California Davis, Solar Builder reported.

Its central argument is that opening up V2G infrastructure alongside other customer-owned resources could help address California's affordability and reliability problems. The framing treats parked EV batteries as procurable capacity rather than as passive load on the distribution system.

On the barrier side, the authors call for standardized, interoperable program frameworks to lift participation and better align incentives across utilities. That points at fragmentation between utility programs as a constraint on enrollment rather than at battery hardware or vehicle availability.

The new numbers build on earlier work from the same lead author. GridLab's 2024 study with The Brattle Group concluded that virtual power plants could save California utilities and consumers USD 550 million a year while covering more than 15% of the state's peak electricity demand using commercially available technologies, according to Solar Builder.

Read together, the two figures place aggregated customer-owned resources in the same conversation as utility-scale procurement: one measured against a peak demand share, the other against a long-duration storage target.

BMW and E.ON claimed owners of an iX3 could earn up to EUR 720 per year by using the car as an energy storage unit, with E.ON paying EUR 0.24 for every hour the vehicle stays connected to a bidirectional wallbox, according to electrive.

The payment is time-based rather than volume-based: the utility pays per hour of connection, not per kWh discharged, per electrive's account of the offer.

Germany's metering base limits how far such offers can spread. The share of intelligent metering systems, digital electricity meters with an internet connection, stands at just 5.5% in Germany, according to the Bundesnetzagentur as cited by electrive.

Markus Hackmann, Managing Director at the P3 Group, a Stuttgart-based tech consultancy focused on e-mobility, told electrive that a major breakthrough in bidirectional charging is still missing.

Interoperability is the second constraint. "The bidirectional charging system cannot currently scale to benefit customers because we lack multiparty interoperability," Marco Piffaretti, Operating Agent at Task 53, told electrive.

Bidirectional charging requires the vehicle, the wallbox, the meter, and the electricity supplier to exchange data on common terms. Piffaretti's point identifies that chain, rather than vehicle hardware, as the bottleneck holding back customer-facing scale.

Children in London caught up with children in Luton on lung function within four years of the Ultra Low Emission Zone taking effect, according to a Queen Mary University of London study reported by Electrek.

The scheme's reach has widened well beyond its original boundary. Electrek reports that Khan expanded the zone in 2021 and 2023, and it now covers all of Greater London, where around 9 million people live.

Vehicle turnover moved with it. Between June 2023 and September 2024, London had 58% fewer non-compliant vehicles on the road, according to Electrek.

A scrappage scheme aimed at low income residents supported that shift. Electrek reports the GBP 200 million programme, worth USD 258 million, helped pay to take 15,232 old vehicles off the road.

Norway's direct state ownership in offshore oil and gas licences and infrastructure carries a combined value of 1.41 trillion Norwegian crowns, or USD 150 billion, according to a survey published by the industry ministry and reported by Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The figure covers the government's direct financial interest in producing fields, undeveloped licences and associated infrastructure on the Norwegian continental shelf.

Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported that state oil holding company Petoro carried out the valuation of the SDFI stakes, with the industry ministry presenting the result.

The survey was published on Wednesday, according to the same account.

A startup named El Rampeño is running garbage collection in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana with electric three-wheeled vehicles charged by solar power, Electrek reported.

The substitution matters because more than half of Havana's garbage truck fleet is out of service, a consequence of the fuel blockade, according to Electrek.

El Rampeño owns 30 tricycles and has 10 of them in service, company president Yasiel Hernández told Electrek.

The vehicles came from Vehiculos Electricos del Caribe, or VEDCA, a joint venture between the manufacturer Tianjin Dongxing Industrial and Commercial Group of China and Minerva, a Cuban state-owned electric micromobility company, per Electrek. That structure ties a municipal service in the Cuban capital to a Chinese manufacturing partner at a moment when diesel supply for conventional collection trucks has failed.

Solar charging removes the fuel input entirely from the collection cycle, which is the mechanism by which the trikes keep working while the diesel fleet sits idle.

Republican politicians who championed the artificial intelligence buildout are recasting themselves as middle-ground pragmatists, pressing for guardrails on data centers and for the rollback of industry tax breaks, Semafor reported.

Rather than a moratorium on new facilities, a growing number of GOP candidates are calling for guardrails to shield skeptical communities from unchecked AI growth, alongside the removal of tax preferences for the industry, according to Semafor.

The repositioning has already produced state law. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation in May allowing communities to reject data center development and blocking data center costs from being passed on to consumers, Semafor reported.

In Ohio, GOP gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy pledged an executive order that would halt new data center construction unless host communities received tax breaks and environmental protections, according to Semafor. Ramaswamy made the shift after the May primary, beginning to argue that technology companies should work for the state.

The candidates are aligned with President Donald Trump's White House, which sought to blunt the momentum of anti-AI activists with a voluntary ratepayer protection pledge, Semafor reported. The pledge, released in March, carried industry promises to foot the bill for the power demand created by new data centers.

The common thread across the pledge, the Florida statute, and the Ohio promise is cost allocation: who pays for the electricity that new computing capacity draws, and whether local governments can say no.

DNO ASA has agreed to sell its Côte d'Ivoire oil and gas business to Panoro Energy ASA for USD 86.5 million, according to World Oil.

The consideration splits into USD 65.1 million in cash and 7 million newly issued Panoro shares, World Oil reported. Closing is expected in mid-September 2026.

The assets being transferred are producing roughly 3,300 barrels of oil equivalent per day net to DNO, per World Oil. At the transaction's effective date they carried 9.4 MMboe of net proved plus probable reserves and 5.0 MMboe of net 2C contingent resources.

DNO bought the business from RAK Petroleum plc in 2022. The seller estimates an annualized internal rate of return of approximately 24% on the Côte d'Ivoire investment since it entered the country in October 2022, World Oil reported.

Wells drilled with laterals longer than 15,000 ft made up 15% of new Permian well completions in 2025, the EIA reported, as operators pushed horizontal sections close to three miles.

The shift shows up most clearly in the average. A newly completed horizontal Permian well ran 10,867 ft of lateral in 2025, up from 6,149 ft in 2015, according to Enverus data cited by the EIA.

Short wells have all but disappeared from the mix. Laterals under 5,000 ft accounted for 43% of Permian completions in 2015 and just 4% in 2025, per the EIA.

The mid-range has also started to give ground. Laterals between 5,000 ft and 15,000 ft rose from 57% of completions in 2015 to a peak of 90% in 2021, then slipped to 81% in 2025 as operators adopted super-lateral designs, the EIA reported.

Well count itself has flattened. Setting aside the disruptions of 2020 and 2021, when the Covid-19 pandemic and negative oil prices curtailed activity, new horizontal completions have held near 6,000 per year since 2022, according to the EIA.

Output over the same period moved in the opposite direction. Combined Permian oil and natural gas production rose from 2.9 MMboed in 2015 to 11.2 MMboed in 2025, the EIA reported.

The combination of a stable completion count and longer laterals means each new well contacts more reservoir rock than its predecessor a decade earlier. The average newly completed horizontal well now covers roughly the lateral footage that two wells delivered in 2015.

ConocoPhillips Alaska brought its Coyote 3SX development online on August 7, taking first oil from the Kuparuk River Unit on Alaska's North Slope, according to World Oil.

The project cost approximately USD 800 million, World Oil reported. It came online ahead of schedule and under budget.

Peak gross oil production is expected to reach approximately 12,000 bpd, according to World Oil. The development sits on state land.

Funding was approved in October 2025, with construction starting in early 2026, per the same report. Site work peaked in April, when approximately 365 workers were on the project.

CoreMarine has finished disconnecting Golar LNG's Hilli Episeyo floating LNG vessel off Cameroon, ending eight years of operations at the site, according to World Oil.

The disconnection clears the vessel for its planned redeployment to Argentina, World Oil reported.

The unit carries LNG production capacity of 2.45 MMtpa and is expected to reach Golfo San Matías by mid-2027, per World Oil.

Before that deployment offshore Argentina, Hilli Episeyo is expected to undergo upgrade work in Singapore, World Oil said, as part of the country's developing LNG export infrastructure.