Monday, 24 August 2026

Renewable energy companies filed 65% of the requests to connect data centers to Brazil's main power grid, according to Mongabay, counting only plans submitted to the Ministry of Mines and Energy through December 2025.

The requests totalled 68 by that date, spread across 37 Brazilian municipalities, Mongabay reported.

Brazil's Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Silveira, pitched the country to global investors at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2025, according to Mongabay.

The demand backdrop is set by the International Energy Agency, which projects global data center energy consumption could reach 945 TWh by 2030, Mongabay reported.

GE Vernova Inc. has introduced a medium-voltage uninterruptible power supply (MV-UPS) built to keep data centers, AI factories and other energy-intensive facilities running on stable, continuous power around the clock, according to the company's announcement.

Shipments are expected to begin in mid-2027, with the first project energized in late 2027, GE Vernova said.

The design shifts power protection from low voltage up to medium voltage, placing what GE Vernova calls a stability block between the facility and its power supply. One coordinated system can then protect a much larger share of the site than a low-voltage arrangement covering discrete loads.

"Our MV-UPS is the true end-to-end medium-voltage power stability solution for energy-intensive industries, including data centers," said Philippe Piron, CEO of GE Vernova's Electrification segment. He said it applies proven GE Vernova power-conversion and energy-storage technologies in a new way.

The product ties two existing GE Vernova capabilities, power conversion and energy storage, into a single offer aimed at the load profile of AI compute sites.

The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) registered 124 renewable energy generation facilities in the first quarter of the 2026/27 financial year, according to SAnews.

The solar and wind projects carry a combined capacity of 804 MW, with investment value estimated at R20.18 billion, SAnews reported.

Most of the capacity sits behind the national utility. According to SAnews, 61 of the registered facilities connect to the Eskom network, accounting for 757 MW and approximately R19 541 million in investment.

The remaining 63 facilities connect to municipal distribution networks, representing 47 MW of capacity and an estimated R639 million in investment cost, per the same report.

Processing times shortened. NERSA cleared the 124 registration applications within an average of 10 working days, SAnews reported, against an average of 11 working days for 111 applications handled in the first quarter of the 2025/26 financial year.

The quarterly total feeds a registration regime that began in 2018. Since inception, NERSA has registered 2 619 generation facilities with a combined capacity of 20 131 MW and estimated total investment of approximately R409 billion, according to SAnews.

Van Oord has installed the monopile foundations at Baltica 2, the 1.5 GW Polish offshore wind farm that will supply enough renewable electricity to power around 2.5 million Polish households once operational, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The foundations rank among the heaviest deployed in the sector. Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported that each Baltica 2 monopile measures up to 100 meters in length, spans between 9.5 and 10.5 meters in diameter, and weighs approximately 1,900 tonnes.

Van Oord used two specialist offshore installation vessels for the campaign, Svanen and Aeolus, which Offshore Engineer OEDigital described as a key factor in delivering the project.

Monopiles are the dominant foundation type for fixed-bottom offshore wind in shallower waters, and their installation is the gating item for turbine erection and array cable pull-in. Completing the foundation scope moves Baltica 2 into the next construction phase ahead of commissioning.

Indonesia, source of roughly 60% of the world's nickel, set this year's production quotas about 40% below the 2025 level, Climate Home News reported. Nickel feeds battery manufacturing for electric vehicles.

Weda Bay, the largest nickel mine on Earth, absorbed a cut of more than 70% to its allowance. Its full-year permission ran out at the end of May, and mining stopped there.

The tighter quotas pushed nickel to $20,000 a ton in May, a level not seen since 2024, according to Climate Home News.

Chinese industry groups reacted with anger, telling president Prabowo Subianto that $50 billion of investment was exposed by the cuts, Climate Home News reported. Those groups speak for firms that have put billions into mining and refining Indonesian ore.

Indonesia's forestry task force has taken back more than four million hectares from mines and plantations working illegally inside protected forests since the start of the year. Fines collected passed two trillion rupiah, or $113 million.

Illegal small-scale mining supplied about a quarter of Indonesian nickel in 2022 and roughly 10% by 2024, Climate Home News reported.

Emissions have stayed heavy. Major producers in the country released an estimated 15 million metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2023.

The 200 MW/3,600 MWh Rigifa battery energy storage system (BESS) in Scotland has secured planning consent, ESS News reported. The 18-hour duration project is one of the largest lithium-ion storage schemes to clear consenting in the country.

Rigifa is one of five Field projects picked by Ofgem for support under the forthcoming long-duration electricity storage (LDES) cap and floor scheme, according to ESS News.

The regulator published its minded-to decisions for LDES projects in June 2026, selecting 16 projects from a shortlist of 77 that had been revealed in September 2025, ESS News reported.

Seven of those 16 selected projects sit in the north of Scotland, per the same report.

Rigifa will connect to the Gills Bay substation near Thurso on the north coast of Scotland, ESS News said.

EcoPro BM is converting an existing NCA cathode line at its plant in Debrecen, Hungary, so it can also turn out high-nickel NCM material for European carmakers, according to electrive.

The upgrade carries a price tag of around 40 billion won, or roughly 25 million euros, electrive reported.

Output from the reworked line is contracted forward. From the fourth quarter of 2027, the site will ship cathode material with a nickel content above 90 per cent to a German premium car manufacturer, according to electrive.

Debrecen currently runs three production lines with a combined annual capacity of 54,000 tonnes, enough for the batteries of roughly 600,000 electric cars, electrive reported.

Actual throughput sits well below that ceiling. EcoPro BM has planned a production volume of about 10,000 tonnes for 2026, rising to 30,000 tonnes in 2027, according to electrive.

The site was originally scoped larger. At the 2023 groundbreaking, the company had set out a future capacity of 108,000 tonnes per year in Debrecen, electrive reported.

On the financial side, higher volumes and improved capacity utilisation are expected to push the Hungarian subsidiary into quarterly profitability in the second half of 2026, according to electrive.

Lawmakers in New Zealand voted through legislation that closes off tort law as a route for climate litigation, halting the Smith case against six companies, Climate Home News reported. The Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill cleared its third reading 67 votes to 53.

Under the amendment, civil claims for climate loss or harm brought under tort law are barred, whether already filed or filed later, according to Climate Home News. The measure awaits a formal signature from the Governor-General and is expected to take effect within days.

Ministers have pointed to that litigation route as a drag on business confidence and investment. Justice minister Paul Goldsmith framed the change as delivering "certainty around their climate change obligations" for businesses.

Mike Smith, a Northland iwi leader and activist, had sued six companies: the dairy firms Fonterra and Dairy Holdings, the energy firms Genesis Energy and Z Energy, New Zealand Steel, and the coal miner BT Mining. Judges on the Supreme Court had let the claim proceed in a unanimous ruling, with a trial set down for April 2027.

Greenpeace Aotearoa described the bill as a "shocking abuse of executive power".

Riyadh is examining a government-backed insurance scheme for vessels moving through the Gulf or the Red Sea, an attempt to keep trade flowing, Semafor Net Zero reported.

Nothing has been settled. The Financial Times described the discussions as preliminary, with no certainty that they end in a deal.

Semafor Net Zero reports that vessel movements through the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea are still severely disrupted, with the Iran conflict approaching the close of its sixth month.

That disruption has already changed Saudi tanker logistics. Crude cargoes have been sent thousands of miles around Africa rather than through the Red Sea, avoiding Houthi attacks, according to Semafor Net Zero.

A sovereign scheme would shift part of that war-risk exposure onto the state rather than private underwriters, on routes where Saudi Arabia is already paying for the longer voyage around Africa.

A turbine at the 920 MW Greater Changhua 4 offshore wind farm tripped automatically on 8 August after its system detected an abnormal condition, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

Ørsted said no personnel were injured in the incident and that all relevant authorities and key stakeholders have been notified.

The unit remains shut down and isolated, with a safety exclusion zone established around it as a precaution, while the remainder of the wind farm continues to operate normally, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

Ørsted said it will continue investigating the cause in close collaboration with its turbine supplier, Siemens Gamesa, while monitoring the situation.

French researchers have built very-low-bandgap thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cells using a barrier structure that suppresses dark current, allowing the devices to run at higher temperatures, according to pv magazine.

The cell has a bandgap of 0.23 eV at 200 K and relies on an indium arsenide/indium arsenide antimonide (InAs/InAsSb) type-II superlattice absorber, pv magazine reported. The publication described the work as the first fabrication and characterization of a TPV cell at that bandgap.

After processing, cells exposed to an 800 C emitter performed more than tenfold better than standard PIN devices at temperatures above 150 K, per pv magazine. That threshold matters because conventional low-bandgap detectors and converters lose output as thermal generation swamps the photocurrent, which is the failure mode the barrier design targets.

A passivated barrier micro cell kept showing a photovoltaic effect at 273 K, around 0 C, with an open-circuit voltage of about 75 mV, according to pv magazine. Cryogenic cooling is the usual requirement for absorbers in this bandgap range, so operation at the freezing point of water is the specific result the group is putting forward.

Researchers from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the University of Montpellier, the University of Orleans, and the University of Toulouse contributed to the study, which appeared in Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, pv magazine said.

Thermophotovoltaic conversion turns radiant heat from a hot emitter into electricity through a semiconductor junction, and the absorber bandgap sets which part of the emitted spectrum can be harvested. Pushing the bandgap down to 0.23 eV extends collection deeper into the infrared, capturing photons from cooler emitters that wider-bandgap cells pass through. The trade is thermal noise: the narrower the gap, the more dark current the junction generates at a given operating temperature. The barrier architecture reported by the French group attacks that trade directly rather than accepting cooling as the price.

The measured 75 mV open-circuit voltage is modest, and the tenfold comparison is against PIN reference cells rather than against a commercial converter. The result establishes device feasibility at the bandgap and the temperature, not a deployment case.

An engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) tender has opened in China for a 660 MW/3.96 GWh compressed air energy storage (CAES) facility, according to ESS News.

The plant will be built in Sili town, Jiyuan, in Henan province, with planned static investment of about CNY 4.79 billion (USD 670 million), ESS News reported. The tender covers engineering, procurement and construction work for the 660 MW/3.96 GWh facility under a single package.

Jiyuan Hengdong Energy Storage Technology is developing the project and will award engineering, procurement and construction works under one EPC contract, according to ESS News. Bids are due by Sept. 22, 2026, and the construction period is expected to run 36 months.

The design uses an advanced adiabatic CAES configuration, with pressurized water serving as the thermal storage medium, ESS News reported. Rather than reusing an existing salt cavern or mine, the developer will excavate a new underground cavern to hold the compressed air.

That combination sets the technical scope of the tender. Adiabatic designs recover the heat generated during compression and return it during expansion, removing the need for fuel combustion on discharge. Cavern construction, rather than turbomachinery supply, typically drives both the schedule and the capital cost in such projects, which is consistent with the 36-month build window attached to the Jiyuan tender.

At 3.96 GWh, the facility would store six hours of output at its rated 660 MW, based on the capacity figures reported by ESS News.

MODEC's floating production, storage and offloading vessel Errea Wittu has arrived in Guyana ahead of deployment at ExxonMobil's project in the Stabroek block, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The unit was developed for ExxonMobil Guyana and will integrate the development of three resources in the block: Snoek, Mako and Uaru, the outlet reported.

Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported that the FPSO will sit roughly 200 kilometers offshore Guyana in a water depth of 1,690 meters, held in position by a SOFEC Spread Mooring System. Storage capacity on board is around 2 million barrels of crude oil.

MODEC will also handle operations and maintenance services on the vessel for ExxonMobil Guyana, according to the same report.

McDermott has been awarded an engineering, procurement, construction and installation (EPCI) contract from ADNOC valued at over USD 1 billion covering Package 4 of the Umm Shaif Integrated Gas Cap and Surface Pressure Boosting Project, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The award covers the full EPCI scope for a new surface pressure boosting facility at the Umm Shaif field, delivered by McDermott together with its Qingdao McDermott Wuchuan (QMW) consortium. That scope includes construction and installation of a jacket and topside, plus associated brownfield modifications on existing infrastructure.

Work will be split across two locations. Engineering and project management will be led from McDermott's offices in the United Arab Emirates, while fabrication is assigned to QMW, the company's joint venture fabrication yard in Qingdao, China, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

Once built, the topside will rank among the heaviest offshore modules ever installed in the Middle East, according to the same report.

The contract value places the award above the USD 1 billion mark, a level Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported for Package 4 alone.

Walmart has opened the 100th site in its own electric-vehicle fast-charging network, at a Supercenter in Monument, Colorado, according to electrive. The retailer now runs fast chargers at 100 stores spread across 20 US states.

The hardware at most sites is dense. electrive reports that the majority of locations carry between eight and 16 fast-charging points, with outputs of up to 400 kW. Each stall is fitted with both CCS and NACS connectors, covering the two plug standards used by US electric vehicles.

Shayne Wahlmeier, Senior Vice President of Walmart Energy, described reaching 100 sites as an important milestone, saying the company's broad footprint positions it to make EV charging more accessible for communities while expanding the ways it serves customers.

Harmony Energy has energized its 35 MW / 70 MWh Skeeby battery energy storage system near Richmond, North Yorkshire, England, according to ESS News.

The site is the first Harmony Energy project to go live since Alpiq acquired a 90 percent stake in the developer, an agreement announced in July, ESS News reported. That transaction brought roughly 400 MW of assets under construction into the Swiss producer's existing European battery storage portfolio.

Construction at Skeeby began in early 2026, giving a turnaround of about seven months from shovel to energization, per ESS News. The installation uses Tesla Megapacks.

Harmony Energy's most recent large commissioning before Skeeby was the 100 MW / 200 MWh Chevire battery system at the port of Nantes-Saint-Nazaire in France, brought online in 2025, ESS News reported. Skeeby's 70 MWh of energy capacity is roughly a third of that French site, and both projects hold a two-hour duration at nameplate power.

Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson said Canada will put close to CAD 19 million behind StormFisher Environmental Ltd. to enlarge the company's London Digester plant in London, Ontario.

StormFisher Environmental Ltd. operates as a subsidiary of Generate Upcycle. Natural Resources Canada ranks the London Digester first in the country among food waste anaerobic digestion plants making renewable natural gas (RNG), with feedstock drawn from municipal source-separated organics alongside food and beverage waste from industrial, commercial and institutional sources.

The federal money forms part of a CAD 70 million expansion, and the department expects site capacity to reach 675,000 GJ of RNG per year once the work is done.

That build finishes in 2027, on the department's timeline. The upgraded plant is set to add 450,000 gigajoules (GJ) of RNG annually, which Natural Resources Canada equates to powering roughly 4,500 homes for a year. A further 86,000 tonnes of nutrient-rich organic fertilizer per year is also expected from the expanded operation.

The cash comes from the Clean Fuels Fund at Natural Resources Canada, a program covering construction and expansion of clean fuel production plants.

Equinor, Aker BP and Vår Energi have set up a strategic exploration collaboration targeting some of the largest remaining oil and gas opportunities on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS), according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The three companies plan to mature and test a portfolio of roughly 20 to 25 exploration opportunities over the next four to five years, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

The partners frame the work around keeping energy supplies flowing from the NCS to Europe. Output from the shelf is expected to decline after 2035 in the absence of new discoveries and developments, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The tie-up pools exploration effort among three of the operators active on the Norwegian shelf rather than leaving each to pursue the remaining large prospects alone.

Japanese households shopping for rooftop solar and home batteries are driven mainly by electricity costs. An August poll by iChoosr, which runs group-buying campaigns for solar and storage, put bill reduction first for 48% of respondents, while 19% pointed to disaster resilience, pv magazine reported.

The respondent pool numbered 14,478, drawn from 24 prefectures. All had signed up for iChoosr's "Minna no Ouchi ni Taiyoko" ("Solar for Everyone's Home") campaign, with sign-ups running from Feb. 25 to July 23, according to pv magazine.

A March poll by the solar and battery marketplace operator Goodfellows produced a similar ordering. Among solar owners weighing a battery purchase, 51.9% pointed to electricity savings in 2025, up from 39.3% in 2022, pv magazine reported.

Expectations of what the hardware will actually do skew the same way. Residential installer ECODA surveyed households in 2025 and found 76% expecting solar-plus-storage to cut electricity costs, with 49.1% expecting backup power in a disaster, according to pv magazine.

Behind the cost focus sits the end of guaranteed export payments. Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) counted roughly 530,000 residential solar systems, about 2 GW, exiting the feed-in tariff (FIT) scheme during November and December 2019 alone, pv magazine reported. Once a FIT contract expires, the owner loses the fixed export price and must either accept a lower rate for exported power or keep it on site.

The group-buying channel has built up a sizeable pipeline. iChoosr counts more than 110,000 household registrations in Japan since 2019 and more than 10,000 completed installations, according to pv magazine.

DNV has agreed to buy Equinor's WellSpot digital technology and will sell it commercially under the name Wellhead Fatigue Manager, according to World Oil. The platform monitors and manages fatigue across the lifecycle of subsea wells.

WellSpot is not a new build. Equinor developed and ran the technology over the past 15 years, World Oil reported.

Equinor and Aker BP will be the first users of the version operated by DNV, according to World Oil. That gives the platform two named operators on its books from the outset of DNV's stewardship.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The deal moves a tool built inside an operator into the hands of a certification and advisory group, which then offers it to the wider subsea market. Wellhead fatigue accumulates over years of drilling riser loading and current-driven motion, and tracking it determines when a well can keep producing and when intervention is required. DNV said the acquisition expands its capabilities for monitoring and managing fatigue across the lifecycle of subsea wells.

McDermott has secured an engineering, procurement, construction and installation (EPCI) contract from ADNOC valued at more than USD 1 billion for an offshore pressure boosting facility at the Umm Shaif field in Abu Dhabi, according to World Oil.

The award covers Package 4 of the Umm Shaif Integrated Gas Cap and Surface Pressure Boosting Project, which World Oil reported is designed to maximize gas recovery and lift production from the field.

McDermott will deliver the full EPCI scope alongside its Qingdao McDermott Wuchuan (QMW) consortium, with engineering and project management led from the United Arab Emirates, World Oil reported. Fabrication is set for the QMW joint-venture yard in Qingdao, China.

McDermott said the topside will rank among the heaviest offshore modules ever installed in the Middle East once completed.

A coalition of 95 organizations has asked Congress to vote down four Congressional Review Act resolutions that would overturn Clean Air Act preemption waivers, according to CleanTechnica.

The waivers targeted by the resolutions underpin standards for passenger cars, light-duty and medium-duty vehicles, and small off-road engines, CleanTechnica reported.

CleanTechnica described the waivers as long-standing measures relied upon by states to protect public health and air quality. The four resolutions form a single package before Congress, each aimed at the preemption waivers rather than at the underlying vehicle standards themselves.

The group of 95 signatories issued its call as a joint appeal rather than through separate filings.

An unmanaged shutdown of Sasol's Secunda coal-to-liquids plant would strip $550 million from South Africa's economy, according to researchers cited by Semafor Net Zero. The estimate comes from modeling by University of Cape Town researchers.

Secunda is the world's largest single-site greenhouse gas emitter and supplies close to a third of South Africa's domestic fuel, Semafor Net Zero reported, describing the plant as both an economic powerhouse and an environmental headache.

That dual role explains why the modeling matters even though no closure is on the table. The University of Cape Town work landed while Sasol contends with shareholder activism and banks pulling funding from high-carbon assets, according to Semafor Net Zero.

Sasol set out plans last year to cut the budget it had earmarked for emissions reductions, a move worth as much as $1 billion in savings, while holding to a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2030, per the same report. Semafor Net Zero characterised the decision as a set of trade-offs between capital discipline and the company's emissions promises.

Coal supplies roughly 80% of South African power, and the country is the continent's largest polluter, Semafor Net Zero reported, leaving its industrial heartland exposed to international climate pressure.

Canada is putting nearly CAD 10 million into modernizing the City of Red Deer's electricity system, drawn from Natural Resources Canada's Smart Renewables and Electrification Pathways Program (SREPs), the department said. Shafqat Ali, President of the Treasury Board, announced the funding.

The money covers the deployment of over 45,000 smart meters across Red Deer, according to Natural Resources Canada. It also pays for the communications equipment required to run the smart meter network.

SREPs is a CAD 4.5-billion program, per Natural Resources Canada, backing grid modernization, energy storage and renewables in every region of the country.

Santos has exited the Mahalo Gas Project, selling its 42.86% interest to Comet Ridge, which now holds 100% of the asset and operates the wider Mahalo Gas Hub in Queensland, Australia, World Oil reported.

Settlement of the upfront consideration ran through two channels: A$24.42 million handed to Santos in cash, plus a share issue of 83.78 million new Comet Ridge shares.

Santos also retains a claim on future output. Should cumulative sales gas from Mahalo hit 10 PJ, then 20 PJ, then 30 PJ, a tranche of A$10 million falls due at each threshold, adding up to A$30 million in contingent payments, according to World Oil.

The consolidated permit position spans roughly 1,850 sq km. Booked volumes across that acreage stand at 361 PJ of 2P reserves, rising to 676 PJ once 2C contingent resources are added to the 2P figure.

Managing Director Tor McCaul said the completed deal leaves Comet Ridge in control of "one of the few development-ready gas positions on the east coast" of Australia.