Thursday, 27 August 2026

China's MIIT has decided that the wild vehicle designs used to compete in the Chinese auto market need to go, CleanTechnica reported.

The decision lands on a market where the distinction between cars and electric cars has largely collapsed. The Chinese auto market is now largely the Chinese EV market, according to CleanTechnica.

Competing in that market has gotten harder and harder, CleanTechnica said, with styling one of the levers manufacturers have pulled to stand out.

Offshore wind projects in Australia's Gippsland zone are sizing turbines at around 15 MW, and at that scale only 750 MW of the pipeline risks failing to secure a suitable installation vessel, Jernetz told RenewEconomy. Turbine sizes are plateauing there because ever-larger machines strain ports and boats, and manufacturers cannot find economies of scale above that point.

The vessel market is already tight. UK research house Westwood puts utilisation rates for offshore wind vessels in the 70 per cents, and that is before a swathe of major projects in Asia and Europe start construction, according to RenewEconomy.

BNEF estimates the current wait to attract offshore wind vessels at four to five years, and RenewEconomy reported that drawing boats to a small industry in the far southern hemisphere may cost more and take longer than that.

One workaround on the table is Feederdock, a floating offshore rig designed by German maritime company ONP. The main jacket vessel never enters port under the design. Instead, feeder vessels with a 6.2m draft carry components out from shore, and a 3,200 tonne crane assembles the turbine at sea.

Build times are not short. Energy Estate commercial director Mark Richards said the jack-up vessel would take four years to construct, with each feeder boat requiring two years, according to RenewEconomy.

The supply squeeze extends beyond Australia. New Zealand revived its offshore wind industry in July through regulatory legislation, RenewEconomy reported, adding another southern-hemisphere claimant to the same constrained pool of installation assets.

Engie's Assú Sol complex in northeastern Brazil holds 752 MW (AC) of capacity and ranks as the largest operational PV project in the company's global portfolio, according to pv magazine.

The site is not a single plant. Assú Sol groups 16 integrated solar plants, pv magazine reported.

Those plants occupy 2,344 hectares in the state of Rio Grande do Norte in northeast Brazil, per the same report.

Potentia Energy has finished construction of the AUD 190 million Quorn Park solar hybrid in New South Wales, Australia, according to ESS News. The site pairs a 98 MW solar plant with a 20 MW / 40 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS).

ESS News reported the project cost at USD 136.4 million.

What separates Quorn Park from other hybrids is its licensing treatment. ESS News reported it was the first hybrid project in Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM) to win approval for a single hybrid generator performance standard (GPS), meaning the solar array and the battery are dispatched as one unit rather than as two registered assets.

That single-asset treatment covers 160,000 panels and a 16-unit BYD battery system, licensed and dispatched together under the GPS, according to ESS News.

Potentia Energy is a joint venture owned by Enel Group and Inpex, per ESS News.

Revenue is underpinned by a 10-year power purchase agreement with Zen Energy, ESS News reported.

Applications to the Boiler Upgrade Scheme reached a record 8,150 households in July, according to figures published by UK DESNZ on 27 August.

The monthly total was 112% higher than the same month a year earlier, UK DESNZ said. Against June of this year, applications rose 81%.

UK DESNZ attributes part of the pull to a larger grant. The subsidy was raised by 20%, from GBP 7,500 to GBP 9,000, to shield households running on heating oil and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from fossil fuel price spikes.

Demand has skewed away from the mains gas network. Since the scheme launched, 49% of grants have gone to rural properties and 38% to homes off the gas grid, according to UK DESNZ.

The grant remains open until March next year for eligible families across England and Wales.

The UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) published its impact evaluation of Wave 1 of the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF) on 27 August 2026, covering a programme that applies to England.

According to DESNZ, Wave 1 ran from 2022 to 2024 and awarded GBP 179 million to successful applicants.

The evaluation states that the wave delivered energy performance improvements in over 16,000 social housing properties.

DESNZ describes the SHDF as a grant funding programme for local authorities and social housing landlords, financing the installation of energy efficiency and low carbon heating measures in social homes in England.

The UK Department for Energy Security & Net Zero (DESNZ) has issued a tender for a safety and risk assessment covering the deployment of plug-in batteries with 800 W AC mains output, according to ESS News.

The tender lands the same day plug-in solar became legal in Great Britain. ESS News reported that August 27 marked the regulation change permitting 800 W solar kits in England, Wales and Scotland. Households in Northern Ireland are not covered by the change.

Battery storage was left out of that change, ESS News reported, despite being a component of 'balcony solar' systems used in Europe.

According to ESS News, the DESNZ tender forecasts an 18-month examination, with an estimated start date from early October 2026. That timetable places any resulting evidence base well beyond the solar rule change now in force.

Jason Howlett, CEO of the Energy Storage Association, said the ESA would "wholeheartedly support" the safe introduction of plug-in battery storage, while adding that more work is required on the regulation front.

Singapore's Seatrium is preparing to send two floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) units, P-80 and P-82, to Petrobras' Búzios field in Brazil's pre-salt Santos Basin, with departures scheduled weeks apart, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

Each vessel is built to produce 225,000 barrels of oil per day and to process 12 million cubic metres of gas per day, the outlet reported.

The two hulls carry more than 110,000 metric tonnes of topside modules fabricated across Seatrium yards in Singapore, China and Brazil, per the same report. Integration and commissioning were completed at the company's Tuas Boulevard Yard.

P-80 and P-82 are the 47th and 48th projects Seatrium has undertaken for Petrobras, Offshore Engineer OEDigital said. They follow P-78, which sailed away in 2025.

Búzios is Brazil's largest field by reserves and by production and has already passed the milestone of 1.2 million barrels of oil per day, Petrobras president Magda Chambriard said.

Chinese inverter and energy storage manufacturer Sungrow has begun construction of a battery energy storage system factory in Egypt with a planned annual production capacity of 10 GWh, according to ESS News.

The project carries a USD 50 million investment and will occupy around 50,000 square meters, of which approximately 18,000 square meters is building space, ESS News reported.

A groundbreaking ceremony took place on Aug. 17 at the China-Egypt TEDA Suez Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone in Ain Sokhna, inside the Suez Canal Economic Zone. Production is scheduled to start in April 2027.

The site will assemble battery energy storage systems (BESS) and is expected to create more than 100 direct jobs, per ESS News.

Egyptian authorities have described the plant as the first specialized BESS manufacturing facility in the Middle East and Africa, with output intended for the domestic market and for export.

PowerChina is the construction contractor and said the facility is its first industrial manufacturing project in Egypt.

Nearly 172,000 solar installations have been fitted across the United Kingdom since the start of 2026, according to UK DESNZ. July alone accounted for close to 28,000 completions across homes, businesses and larger-scale projects, behind only March and June this year.

Rooftop systems drove the monthly total. More than 19,800 rooftop solar panels were installed in July, which UK DESNZ described as equivalent to one installation every two minutes. Rooftop accounted for more than 7 in 10 installations during the month.

The South East ranked as the top region for deployment, with 22,628 installations this year, taking its cumulative total to 305,101, a 14% increase since last July, according to the same release.

Growth was broader than the South East. Wales recorded an 18% rise in installations over the last 12 months, Scotland grew by 14%, and the North East increased by 11%.

UK DESNZ said major retailers including Currys, B&Q, Screwfix and Amazon are preparing to offer plug-in solar panels following changes introduced by government.

Energy Minister Michael Shanks said households across Britain are embracing solar power and installing record numbers of solar panels to generate clean, homegrown power, helping them cut their energy bills.

Ireland has passed 3 GW of installed solar capacity, according to Irish PV association Solar Ireland, reported by pv magazine. The last official government statement on installation numbers, issued in June, put the figure at 2.6 GW.

The milestone comes four years after the country's first utility-scale solar farm was connected to the grid in 2022, per pv magazine.

Rooftop systems account for a large share of the deployment. "Four years later, we have more than 200,000 homes with solar on their roofs," said Solar Ireland CEO Ronan Power, as quoted by pv magazine.

On the grid-scale side, solar farms generated 1.1 GWh of Ireland's electricity in 2025, according to Central Statistics Office figures cited by pv magazine. That output was 51% higher than the 2024 total.

The Irish solar industry remains set on a 2030 target of 8 GW of installed capacity, pv magazine reported.

Developers are preparing for the country's sixth renewable energy auction, RESS 6, which is due in December. It will be the first Irish auction to incorporate the European Union's new rules on non-price criteria under the Net Zero Industry Act (NZIA). Those criteria shift auction scoring away from price alone, changing how bids are ranked in a market where the installed base has roughly tripled since its first utility-scale connection.

The gap between the 3 GW figure reported by Solar Ireland and the 2.6 GW in the June government statement reflects deployment added since that count. Reaching 8 GW by 2030 requires more than doubling the current installed base.

Chennai Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC), the city's public transport operator, has taken delivery of 130 electric buses, according to electrive. The batch cost 2.345 billion rupees, roughly 21 million euros, the state government said in a public statement cited by the outlet.

The delivery opens a procurement of 750 low-floor electric buses, electrive reported. That order splits into 500 units specified with air-conditioning and 250 specified without.

MTC intends to buy the full 750-vehicle fleet for 13.37 billion rupees, about 120 million euros, and run it through seven depots, according to electrive.

The EiV12 low-floor model carries a 235 kW motor, a 283 kWh lithium iron phosphate battery pack, and a range of up to 200 kilometres, electrive reported. Top speed is 75 kph.

The operator already runs 625 electric buses, of which 400 are non-AC and 225 are air-conditioned, according to electrive. Completing the 750-unit order would more than double that existing electric fleet.

APM Terminals Elizabeth has ordered 96 Class 8 electric terminal tractors from Orange EV and 34 electric rubber-tired gantry cranes from Konecranes for the Port of New York and New Jersey, according to Electrek.

The terminal handles nearly 30% of container traffic across the Port of New York and New Jersey, Electrek reported. It supports more than 600 vessel calls and 800,000 truck loads each year.

Henrik Kristensen, Managing Director of APM Terminals Elizabeth, said the orders represent another milestone in the terminal's modernization journey. In his words, they help "strengthen critical port infrastructure, enhance operational performance and prepare for future cargo growth".

Bethann Rooney of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey framed the purchase in emissions terms, saying modern electric equipment moves the port toward the Port Authority's sustainability goal of a net-zero future. Rooney also said the new equipment strengthens the capacity and reliability of the port facilities.

The two equipment classes cover different parts of the yard workflow. Terminal tractors haul chassis and containers between the quay and stacking areas, the segment tied to the 800,000 annual truck loads Electrek cited. Rubber-tired gantry cranes stack and retrieve containers in the yard, and the 34 units ordered from Konecranes replace diesel drive systems at that stage of the chain.

UniCredit has arranged EUR 218 million of debt and guarantee support for two Greenvolt Power battery projects in northeastern Poland, ESS News reported. The Ełk and Turośń sites add up to 400 MW/1.6 GWh.

The money splits two ways: bridge lending of EUR 153 million and a guarantee line worth EUR 65 million, per ESS News.

Both installations carry identical specifications, at 200 MW/800 MWh apiece.

Commissioning schedules differ. The Turośń Kościelna plant held its inauguration in July. At Ełk, which ESS News notes also carries the name Nowa Wieś Ełcka, the connection to the grid is done and the developer is aiming for commercial operation during the fourth quarter of 2026.

Greenvolt Power puts its European development pipeline at 12.8 GW, with roughly 5 GW of that in battery storage, according to ESS News.

Control of the developer sits with KKR, which secured a majority stake through a takeover launched in December 2023.

New US residential solar generating capacity will fall 21% this year against 2025, according to a Wood Mackenzie projection cited by Inside Climate News.

The contraction has already claimed one of the sector's largest installers. Freedom Forever of California, which was active in about 30 states, filed for bankruptcy in April and is now selling off assets, Inside Climate News reported.

The downturn arrives after a long decline in system costs. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory data cited by Inside Climate News put the median installed rooftop solar price at USD 3.62 per watt in 2025, down from USD 15.72 per watt in 2001 in inflation-adjusted 2025 dollars. The outlet attributed the drop to production efficiency and other factors.

Employment gives a sense of what is exposed. Solar installation companies employed about 178,713 people in 2024, according to the latest Solar Jobs Census from the Interstate Renewable Energy Council.

American K-12 schools now host 2.4 GW of solar capacity, enough to power more than 450,000 homes, according to a Generation180 report covered by Solar Builder.

The report finds that nearly one in seven American K-12 students attends a school that uses solar energy. Generation180 puts the installed base at about 9% of K-12 schools nationwide, or 10,840 schools, with an average system size of 225 kW.

School solar capacity has tripled since 2016, according to the study.

California holds the largest fleet, with roughly 895.3 MW spread across 2,921 schools, Solar Builder reported. The state also led five-year cumulative capacity growth, adding 273.7 MW of school solar from 2021 to 2025.

Local officials in Mo i Rana, Norway approved rezoning a portion of T1 Energy's Giga Arctic campus for data center development, according to a company announcement distributed by GlobeNewswire Energy.

The permit cleared by a committee of the Mo i Rana municipal government covers 161,000 square feet of the campus, which can now be used for either industrial purposes or data center operations.

T1 expects that a 50 MW data center could be operational in 2027, with a pathway to expansion, the company said.

The rezoned area sits alongside the existing Giga Arctic building, which measures 926,000 square feet. T1 holds a 50-year lease on the Giga Arctic site, with options for extension; the site is located within an industrial park in northern Norway.

Power access is the constraint that shapes the timeline. T1 holds a position in the grid capacity queue for a total of 396 MW, according to the company. That queue position is roughly eight times the capacity of the initial 50 MW phase the company describes.

An executive order bans foreign-produced transformers, inverters, and circuit breakers from the U.S. power grid, taking aim at equipment connected to entities in 24 embargoed nations, according to pv magazine.

The U.S. Department of Energy has 120 days, until Dec. 24, 2026, to publish the formal rules implementing the policy, pv magazine reported. Until that rulemaking lands, developers and utilities are working from the order's text alone.

The scope reaches deep into transmission. Per pv magazine, lines rated at 69 kV or higher are explicitly included. That threshold pulls in the bulk-power equipment layer where transformers and circuit breakers are hardest to source and slowest to replace.

Smaller assets sit outside the perimeter. The order excludes residential or commercial distributed energy assets that connect solely to local low-voltage distribution lines, according to pv magazine. Rooftop solar and behind-the-meter installations that never touch the transmission network are therefore not captured by the restriction.

The commercial weight falls in one direction. China represents the primary commercial supplier affected across solar, battery, and electrical component supply chains under the order, pv magazine reported. The equipment categories named in the order, inverters above all, sit at the intersection of solar and storage procurement.

The count of 24 embargoed nations defines the sourcing test. Equipment is judged by its connection to entities in those jurisdictions rather than by the technology itself, which shifts the compliance burden onto ownership and supply-chain tracing rather than product specification.

How the Department of Energy draws those lines is the open question the rulemaking must answer before the December deadline.

European natural gas prices reached their highest level in three years this week, Semafor Net Zero reported, with the region's storage sites at their thinnest for this point in the year since 2011.

Qatari liquefied natural gas exports remain near rock bottom, according to Semafor Net Zero. Before the war, those shipments made up one-fifth of global LNG supply.

Goldman Sachs analysts wrote this week that EU gas prices will likely need to trade 40% above current levels for Europe to keep outbidding rival buyers through the winter, Semafor Net Zero reported. That threshold sits at more than double the prewar forecast.

The pricing pressure carries a reputational cost for sellers. TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné cautioned this week that emerging economies watching Europe's experience are "losing trust" in LNG as a reliable energy source, according to Semafor Net Zero.

Europe's position rests on paying up. Depleted inventories leave the region dependent on spot cargoes at a moment when a supplier that once covered a fifth of the world market is barely shipping. The Goldman Sachs figure quantifies what that dependence costs: a further 40% on top of a three-year price peak.

Pouyanné's warning points at the demand side of the same equation. Buyers in emerging economies compete for the same cargoes Europe is bidding for, and the price Europe must clear to win them is the price they would have to match.

EKPO Fuel Cell and Akkodis, a Swiss digital engineering specialist, will integrate and test an EKPO fuel cell stack in a 40-tonne hydrogen truck delivering system output of up to 360 kW, according to electrive.

The stack in question is the NM20, EKPO's most powerful unit, rated at up to 400 kW and designed for a service life of over 25,000 operating hours, electrive reported.

The demonstration vehicle follows a one-stack-one-system layout: a single NM20 supplies the full 360 kW system output, at efficiencies of up to 61%, per electrive. That configuration removes the need to combine multiple stacks to reach heavy-duty power levels.

EKPO is a joint venture between automotive suppliers ElringKlinger and OPmobility. Akkodis brings the digital engineering side of the integration and test work.

Development and commercialisation of the NM20 stack are backed under IPCEI, the European Important Project of Common European Interest funding programme, according to electrive.

Batteries installed during 2026 carry enough capacity to move 34% of new daily solar generation out of daylight hours, pv magazine reported, citing Ember.

The volume behind that estimate is 459 GWh of new storage projected for this year, half again as much as the 307 GWh installed during 2025, according to pv magazine.

Installation costs sit at $140/kWh on a global average basis, down from $2,634/kWh in 2010, a drop of 95% across those years, pv magazine reported.

Solar PV's share of world electricity reached slightly above 10% during the first six months of 2026, compared with 8.9% a year earlier, according to pv magazine.

Country results in 2025 spread widely around the projected global figure. Bulgaria led on the storage-to-solar ratio at 77%, with Chile at 76% and Australia at 60%, pv magazine reported.

Storage added in the United States last year totalled 58 GWh, sufficient to time-shift roughly one-quarter of new daily solar output, according to pv magazine. The European Union trailed the global average, with 27 GWh installed in 2025 and a 16% shift ratio.

In California, solar paired with batteries covered more than a quarter of demand across the 19:00 to 21:00 evening peak on an average day in the first half of 2026, pv magazine reported. The comparable figure for the first half of 2023 was 6.8%.

Terra Charge will add the North American Charging Standard (NACS) to its Japanese network from fiscal year 2028, with a target of 2,500 NACS charging points by the end of fiscal year 2033, according to electrive.

The Japanese charging infrastructure provider already counts a substantial NACS base in the country. As of 19 August, Terra Charge reported 1,323 publicly registered NACS charging points nationwide, electrive said.

The standard remains a small share of the national fleet of chargers. Japan has around 68,000 charging points in total, most of them CHAdeMO, according to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry as cited by electrive.

Beyond DC hardware, the company is examining an AC NACS charger aimed at sites where vehicles sit for longer, including hotels and multi-family residential buildings, electrive reported.

Two floating production, storage and offloading units built for Petrobras were christened on August 27 at Seatrium's Tuas Boulevard Yard in Singapore, and are expected to depart within weeks of each other for the Búzios field in the pre-salt Santos basin, according to World Oil.

Each vessel is designed to produce up to 225,000 bpd of oil and to process 12 Mcm of gas per day, World Oil reported.

Petrobras President Magda Chambriard said production from the pair is scheduled to begin next year and will lift Búzios output by 450,000 bopd. Both units are scheduled to start producing in 2027, with P-80 and P-82 now moving toward offshore commissioning and startup at the field.

The combined effect is an increase of roughly 34% in installed production capacity at Búzios, according to World Oil. The field is Brazil's largest by reserves and by production, and has already surpassed 1.2 million bpd, Petrobras said.

Fabrication was spread across three countries. Seatrium built more than 110,000 metric tons of topside modules for the two hulls at yards in Singapore, China and Brazil, then completed integration and commissioning at its Singapore facility.

From 25 September, Tesla begins a recall covering nearly 2.98 million cars in China, spanning all four of its model lines sold there: the Model 3, Model Y, Model S and Model X, electrive reported.

That action sits inside a larger regulatory sweep rather than standing alone. China's market regulator SAMR put the combined total at 4.3 million vehicles, with Xiaomi, Xpeng, Zeekr and Leapmotor also named among the affected manufacturers, according to electrive.

The fault sits with the manual release handles used to open doors from inside when normal systems fail. SAMR says occupants may struggle to find or work those releases during an emergency, electrive reported.

Retractable electric handles mounted on the outside, of the kind fitted to the Model S, leave first responders and firefighters with no physical way in once a car loses power. China is banning that design outright from next year, according to electrive.

No European recall has been ordered while the German inquiry runs. The Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt is still examining why a door opening mechanism apparently failed, the German Federal Ministry of Transport told Reuters. That work started in April 2026 at the request of the public prosecutor's office, following a crash in Schwerte, Germany, that killed three Tesla occupants.

The Dutch vehicle authority RDW said on Wednesday it is watching developments. "There is currently no recall in Europe for the affected electric vehicles," the RDW told Reuters.

Revolve Renewable Power Corp. has signed a MXN 450 million project-level financing facility with Banco Multiva, S.A., Institucion de Banca Multiple, Grupo Financiero Multiva, according to Power Magazine.

The facility, described by Power Magazine as non-recourse-style, is equivalent to USD 24 million. Repayment is secured against project cash flows and contracted revenues rather than corporate guarantees, Power Magazine reported.

Revolve Renewable Power is headquartered in Canada and owns, operates and develops power generation and digital infrastructure projects, according to Power Magazine.

MARS Energy Group has acquired Citadel Roofing and Solar, a northern California company, according to Solar Builder. The buyer describes itself as a diversified energy and infrastructure platform.

Solar Builder reported that the transaction brings more than 1,000 employees onto the MARS platform of solar energy resources.

Financial terms were not disclosed, Solar Builder said.

WestLight Energy said it has received the final piece of funding needed to build what it describes as one of California's largest community microgrids, in the Pescadero community of Northern California, according to a GlobeNewswire release.

The project targets the frequent power outages affecting Pescadero, a rural farming community of 700 people, and is designed to supply energy resiliency there.

The financing stack pairs grant funds with USD 10 million from WestLight Energy and USD 3 million from the County of San Mateo, the company said.

WestLight Energy anticipates construction beginning in mid-2029, with service expected to start in mid-2031.

Toyota has launched the updated 2027 bZ5 electric SUV in China with regular prices from 129,800 yuan to 199,800 yuan, or roughly USD 19,500 to USD 30,000, according to Electrek. The refreshed model is sold in six variants.

FAW-Toyota is running limited-time prices across the lineup starting at 109,800 yuan, about USD 16,500, Electrek reported. The regular range covers all six trims.

The pricing undercuts Tesla's best-selling crossover in the same market. Electrek reported the base Tesla Model Y RWD starts at 263,500 yuan, or USD 39,200, in China, with a CLTC range of 593 km.

The repricing follows a steep sales decline. FAW-Toyota sold 529 bZ5s in China last month, down 64% from July 2025, according to Electrek. CnEVPost data cited by Electrek put the model's monthly peak at 3,019 units in September 2025.

On the powertrain, the electric SUV uses a single front-mounted motor rated at a maximum 268 horsepower, or 200 kW, with 243 lb-ft (330 Nm) of torque, per Electrek.

The gap between the bZ5 entry price and the Model Y RWD sticker is the core of Toyota's positioning: the limited-time 109,800 yuan offer sits well under the 263,500 yuan Tesla starting point. Whether that closes the volume gap will show in monthly deliveries measured against the 3,019-unit high.

GE Vernova will hand its finance leadership to Claire McDonough on January 1, 2027, according to the company's announcement of a chief financial officer transition.

McDonough joins the company in November 2026 and works through a handover period before assuming the CFO role in full at the start of the year, GE Vernova said.

Incumbent CFO Ken Parks stays in the seat through 2026, covering the third and fourth quarter earnings calls and the publication of the 2026 10-K, according to the same announcement.

Parks then moves into a Strategic Advisor role in the first quarter of 2027 and retires in April 2027, the company said.

The schedule leaves the outgoing CFO responsible for the full-year reporting cycle, with his successor already inside the company for roughly two months before the formal switch.

A mine in Australia described as Gina Rinehart's flagship operation supplying electric vehicle materials has run on an average of 93% renewables so far this year, RenewEconomy reported.

The figure is an average across the year to date rather than a single-period reading, according to the same report. Wind turbines serving the site are at the Mt Weld mine, per a photograph credited to Lynas Rare Earths that accompanied the RenewEconomy article.

The renewables share places the mine's electricity supply well above conventional diesel-dependent remote mining operations, though RenewEconomy did not break the 93% figure into wind, solar, or storage components.

Glencore Canada has finished sinking the shaft for its Onaping Depth Project at the Craig Mine in Sudbury, Ontario, giving the operator first access to nickel ore ahead of first production from the Onaping Depth Zone later in 2026, according to Natural Resources Canada.

The project carries nearly CAD 2 billion in private sector investment since construction started in 2019 and has generated roughly 7,000 jobs, Natural Resources Canada said.

It is the first new mine developed in the Sudbury Basin in more than a decade, and Natural Resources Canada said it will secure nickel output in the basin beyond 2040. The agency described nickel as a key input for stainless steel and batteries.

Federal support has been narrower than the private outlay. Natural Resources Canada said the federal government provided Glencore up to CAD 11 million through Environment and Climate Change Canada's Decarbonization Incentive Program, funding a battery-electric underground fleet that the agency said will eliminate diesel emissions from production.

Glencore's Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations currently employ more than 1,000 people and have contributed nearly CAD 400 million in direct GDP to Ontario, according to Natural Resources Canada.

The shaft completion marks the transition from construction to ore access at a site where spending began seven years before first production. The extension of Sudbury Basin nickel output past 2040 anchors a supply source for battery and stainless steel feedstock at a time when the basin had gone more than ten years without a new mine.

One of the Trump administration's secret deals to cancel offshore wind projects and support fossil fuels will hand USD 900 million to a million-dollar Trump donor, according to a Washington Post report cited by CleanTechnica.

CleanTechnica characterized the arrangement as one of several recent undisclosed agreements pairing offshore wind cancellations with support for fossil fuels. The Washington Post figure of USD 900 million refers to the payout flowing to the donor.

CleanTechnica also reported that the Trump administration announced a deal in August with a German party connected to the cancellation of offshore wind projects.

Keeping two large coal plants running would leave Dominion Energy producing far more electricity than its system needs by 2033, according to expert analysis filed Wednesday and reported by CleanTechnica.

The filing examines Dominion Energy's new long-range energy plan and concludes that the surplus arises directly from retaining the coal units rather than retiring them.

The plants at issue are Wateree and Williams in South Carolina, both slated for retirement under the plan, CleanTechnica reported. The analysis states that grid reliability would remain strong once the two units come offline.

CleanTechnica frames the filing around potential customer savings from the retirements.

A miles-long oil sheen was reported near an inactive oil and gas platform in Cook Inlet, Alaska, according to CleanTechnica.

CleanTechnica reported that the sheen is raising renewed concerns about the risks posed by aging offshore infrastructure.

The sighting lands as the Trump administration and Congress push additional offshore oil and gas lease sales in the Cook Inlet region, CleanTechnica said.

Ovintiv has closed more than 60 separate transactions worth roughly USD 460 million so far in 2026, picking up about 41,000 net acres and 240 drilling locations across its Permian and Montney positions, according to World Oil.

The spending splits evenly between the two basins. In the Midland basin of the Permian, the company is acquiring approximately 21,000 net acres and 120 well locations for about USD 230 million, World Oil reported.

The matching USD 230 million goes to the Montney, where Ovintiv is buying approximately 20,000 net acres and 120 locations in the liquids-rich Alberta oil window, per the same report.

On Ovintiv's own math, the deals price out at roughly USD 11,000 per net acre and between USD 1.3 million and USD 1.7 million per well location, after adjusting for the minimal existing production on the acquired assets, World Oil reported.

The purchased inventory sits alongside 260 locations Ovintiv generated through organic inventory enhancements. Together, according to World Oil, the two streams take the company's 2026 additions to approximately 500 net 10,000-ft-equivalent well locations.

The structure of the buying campaign is as notable as its size: more than 60 discrete transactions rather than a single corporate acquisition, spread across two basins in different countries. That approach concentrates the spend on undeveloped acreage, which is consistent with the per-location pricing Ovintiv disclosed and with its statement that the assets carry minimal existing production.