Monday, 7 September 2026

Canadian Solar's CS PowerTech subsidiary opened the first phase of a heterojunction cell factory in Jeffersonville, Indiana in July 2026, according to pv magazine.

That opening phase carries 2.1 GW of annual cell capacity, pv magazine reported, and forms part of a site designed to reach 6.3 GW once built out.

The plant sits within a wider shift in where heterojunction (HJT) manufacturing money is going. Some of the most significant new commitments to the technology are emerging in the United States rather than in the established manufacturing centers of China and Southeast Asia, pv magazine reported.

Heterojunction cells combine crystalline silicon with thin amorphous silicon layers and have long been treated as a higher-efficiency alternative to mainstream cell architectures. The Jeffersonville build gives the technology a domestic cell footprint measured in gigawatts rather than pilot lines.

Three electric models from Chinese brands GAC, Geely and Leapmotor each took the maximum five-star Euro NCAP safety rating in the group's latest round of evaluations, according to Electrek.

The GAC Aion UT scored 91% for Crash Protection, alongside 88% for Post Crash Safety, 74% for Crash Avoidance and 66% for Safe Driving, per the Euro NCAP results reported by Electrek.

The Leapmotor B05 posted the strongest Crash Protection result of the three at 92%, with 89% for Post Crash Safety and 77% for Crash Avoidance, according to the same results. Its Safe Driving score matched the Aion UT at 66%.

The Geely E2 led on Post Crash Safety with 95% and on Safe Driving with 79%, while recording 86% for Crash Protection and 72% for Crash Avoidance, Electrek reported.

Euro NCAP Programme Director Dr. Aled Williams said the results show Chinese carmakers are still working hard to match the high standards expected by European consumers.

Brooke Rollins, the United States agriculture secretary, disclosed fossil fuel investments worth as much as USD 2.5 million held jointly with her husband Mark Rollins, an executive in the oil and gas industry, in reports filed in July, Inside Climate News reported.

The U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee-Minority produced a separate tally on presidential holdings. Its report put President Trump's potential gain at around USD 15.5 million on the oil and gas positions he held at the end of 2025, according to Inside Climate News.

Industry-wide earnings have moved in the same direction. Oil and gas companies have booked more than USD 125 billion in profits since the launch of the war, Inside Climate News reported.

An April survey found 94% of farmers concerned about rising production costs tied to the war in Iran, according to Inside Climate News.

The department Rollins runs has closed off one alternative for growers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture stopped funding wind and solar projects on American farmland and made renewable energy projects ineligible for loans under the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), Inside Climate News reported.

REAP loans finance on-farm generation and efficiency upgrades. Cutting renewables out of the program eliminates that borrowing route while 94% of surveyed farmers report concern over production costs linked to the war in Iran.

China has instituted an administrative domestic freeze on regulatory approvals for new battery manufacturing capacity, according to Chinese media reports relayed by ESS News.

The suspension was first reported by Chinese financial outlet Caixin and subsequently picked up by Reuters. Chinese media are reporting the freeze applies to regulatory approvals for new battery manufacturing capacity.

Authorities are conducting an audit into operational and planned pipelines across stationary energy storage and electric vehicle cells, according to the reporting. The scope therefore covers both grid-scale storage cell lines and automotive cell lines rather than a single application segment.

Projects already under active construction are believed to remain permitted to proceed. That distinction places the measure at the approvals stage, leaving factories mid-build outside the freeze.

The measure has not been formalized in public documents. No official ministry decree, National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) circular, or Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) gazette has been published on government portals.

The reported pause follows another fiscal change in the same sector. China restored a 2% lithium-ion battery tax last month, ending an exemption that had run for 11 years, according to ESS News.

Dangote Refinery has won clearance from Nigeria's securities regulator for an initial public offering on the Lagos stock exchange, Semafor reported. The listing is set to raise about USD 1.6 billion, according to Semafor.

The share sale forms one part of a wider USD 5 billion fundraising effort, Semafor reported, with half of that total already committed through a private placement.

The company's refining complex processes 700,000 barrels a day and is the largest in Africa, according to Semafor.

Latvia has expanded its EUR 85 million household renewable energy support program, raising grants for eligible households and doubling the minimum supported battery capacity to 10 kWh from 5 kWh, according to pv magazine.

Households holding the Goda gimene family card now qualify for solar grants covering up to 85% of eligible costs, up from 70%, pv magazine reported.

Demand has skewed heavily toward panels. The ministry reported more than 14,000 applications for solar panels and more than 2,000 applications for batteries, per pv magazine. The revised 10 kWh floor applies to the smaller battery stream.

As of May 2026, the scheme had supported 15,700 projects and awarded more than EUR 59.75 million, according to the Latvian government as cited by pv magazine. The award total sits against the EUR 85 million program budget.

Installed solar capacity in Latvia has reached 1,521 MW, according to statistics from the Latvian Renewable Energy Alliance cited by pv magazine. Around 601 MW of that has been added so far this year, on top of the 920 MW installed by the end of last year.

Four days of closed-door talks in London have improved the chances of a relatively ambitious deal on shipping emissions, observers told Climate Home News. The industry accounts for 3% of global emissions, according to the same report.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO), which oversees the negotiations, reported "constructive discussions" and "genuine willingness within the group to make concrete further progress", according to Climate Home News.

Government positions are lopsided in favour of action. UCL analysis cited by Climate Home News found that, among delegations that expressed a view at the talks, 38 backed a Net-Zero Framework-style solution and 17 opposed it.

Adoption is a numbers game with a high bar. A new framework can pass if two-thirds of countries present and signed up to Marpol Annex VI vote in favour, as they did in April 2025, according to Climate Home News. Just over 100 states endorse that regulation.

That threshold was cleared once and then reversed. In October 2025, following a high-profile intervention by President Donald Trump and threats of US sanctions and visa restrictions, the US convinced a majority of voting nations to postpone adoption of the Net-Zero Framework for a year, Climate Home News reported.

The design of the pricing instrument determines whether the sector's own targets are reachable. IMarEST analysis, cited by Climate Home News, says only a Pacific proposal to levy ships' total emissions, rather than only those above a set level, would meet the industry's goals of cutting emissions 20% between 2008 and 2030, 70% by 2040, and reaching net zero "by or around, i.e. close to 2050".

The calendar is now tight. Additional talks run from November 23-27 and from November 30 to December 3, before a potentially final round of official negotiations opens on December 4, according to Climate Home News.

The gap between the 38 supportive delegations and the two-thirds voting rule is the arithmetic that decides the outcome. Because the ballot counts only states present and party to Marpol Annex VI, attendance in the December round matters as much as declared positions. The postponement secured in October 2025 showed that a majority of voting nations can be moved after a framework has already won a vote.

The observers' read of the London round is that a relatively ambitious outcome is more likely than before, not that it is settled.

Windward Offshore has taken delivery of the Windward Hamburg, closing out a four-vessel series of purpose-built commissioning service operation vessels (CSOVs) ordered from shipbuilder Vard, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The newest unit is built on Vard's 4 19 design. Offshore Engineer OEDigital reports the Windward Hamburg measures 87.5 meters long and 19.5 meters wide, with berths for up to 120 people.

Two of the earlier vessels are already earning. Windward Athens and Windward Paris are working for clients and have together moved more than 14,000 people via their motion-compensated gangways, according to the same report. Gangway transfer counts are the operating metric that matters for CSOVs, which exist to put technicians onto offshore structures in conditions that would otherwise stop the work.

The third unit, Windward Munich, was delivered in July and is sailing to Hamburg for its official naming ceremony, per Offshore Engineer OEDigital. Its first charter is scheduled to begin afterwards.

Delivery discipline is the other detail in the series. All four vessels arrived on or ahead of schedule, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital. Slippage at the yard is the usual complaint in offshore construction fleets, where a single late hull can push a commissioning campaign into a worse weather window and reprice a charter.

With the Windward Hamburg handed over, the operator's Vard-built series is complete.

Solar Energy Corp. of India (SECI) has opened bidding for 700 MW of interstate transmission system (ISTS)-connected solar PV capacity sited in special economic zones or areas designated as export-oriented units, with the output contracted to a single commercial and industrial consumer in Odisha, according to pv magazine.

The request for selection commits SECI to 25-year power purchase agreements with the winning bidders, pv magazine reported.

Bid sizing is wide. Developers can compete for as little as 50 MW of contracted capacity or for the full 700 MW on offer, according to pv magazine.

The siting condition is the mechanism that carries the commercial logic. Placing the projects inside special economic zones or export-oriented unit areas is intended to let them qualify for an exemption from the Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM) requirements, in line with a May 2024 circular issued by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), as amended from time to time, pv magazine reported. ALMM restricts which module models and manufacturers can be used in supported Indian projects, so an exemption widens the equipment pool available to bidders.

The structure also differs from SECI's more familiar role. Rather than aggregating capacity for state distribution utilities, the agency is intermediating between developers and a corporate offtaker, signing 25-year contracts against a single C&I consumer's demand in Odisha.

Zagreb, the Croatian capital, has put 62 electric buses supplied by MAN and Iveco into service together with the charging infrastructure to run them, electrive reported.

Municipal transport operator ZET bought 30 solo electric buses, 26 articulated electric buses and six electric midi-buses, at a total cost of nearly EUR 56.8 million, according to electrive. EU money from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) covered EUR 45.4 million of that, arranged with the Croatian Ministry of Sea, Transport, and Infrastructure, while the city budget of Zagreb financed EUR 11.4 million.

Mayor Tomislav Tomašević said the step electrifies one-fifth of the entire ZET bus fleet, which he called a truly significant achievement.

The vehicles are served from a new electric bus depot in Podsused. Electrive reported that 67 charging stations, each with two charging points, have been installed there, giving 134 charging points in total, with a connected load of 3.5 MW for the whole facility.

The purchase forms one tranche of a wider city plan to acquire 500 electric buses over ten years and fully electrify the ZET fleet.

Yara has inaugurated a carbon capture facility at its Sluiskil ammonia and fertilizer plant in the Netherlands with capacity to capture and liquefy up to 800,000 tonnes of CO2 a year, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The captured stream comes from ammonia production and is liquefied and held temporarily at the site, OEDigital reported. From there, Northern Lights vessels carry the CO2 to Øygarden in Norway.

Northern Lights will inject the CO2 for permanent storage around 2,600 meters below the seabed, according to the same report.

Over the next 15 years, the project is expected to capture and store about 12 million tonnes of CO2, OEDigital reported.

The facility follows an agreement between Yara and Northern Lights signed in 2023. That deal links industrial CO2 capture in the Netherlands to permanent offshore storage in Norway.

Svein Tore Holsether, President and CEO of Yara International, said the Sluiskil facility proves that large-scale industrial decarbonization is possible today.

An annex to the budget bill sent to Brazil's Congress puts expected proceeds from an extraordinary pre-salt oil auction in 2027 at 22.4 billion reais, or USD 4.4 billion, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

That is a smaller sum than the government carried earlier in the year. A projection of 31 billion reais from a new extraordinary pre-salt auction was dropped in May, according to the same report.

The government removed the line after Brazil's federal audit court TCU questioned the model for selling federal rights in the pre-salt region, and said the projected revenue had to come out "until the oil disposal model has been properly implemented".

Next year's fiscal framework leaves little room. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government, which faces re-election in October, projected a primary surplus of 18.6 billion reais, or 0.13% of gross domestic product, per Offshore Engineer OEDigital. The 2027 auction figure is larger than that entire surplus.

A virtual power plant built on home batteries, thermostats and heat pumps in the San Francisco Bay Area has been launched by Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), Rewiring America and Google under the name Smart Home Assets for Reliability and Efficiency (SHARE), ESS News reported.

PG&E and Rewiring America expect the aggregation to reach roughly 12 MW of capacity by 2028, according to ESS News.

ESS News reported the program could enroll up to 21,000 distributed energy resources already installed by PG&E customers, including home batteries and smart thermostats.

Google will pay for running the program and for any incentives handed to participants, ESS News reported.

Customers of PG&E in Santa Clara and Alameda counties qualify for new high-efficiency heat pumps with onboard batteries, supplied by Carrier, and Google will cover part of the equipment and installation bill.

PG&E runs the aggregation itself, sending dispatch instructions through its distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) platform and measuring how the enrolled devices perform, according to ESS News.

Chinese equipment brand SANY delivered 200 heavy-duty electric haul trucks in a single month, according to Electrek. The same report puts monthly electric wheel loader deliveries at more than 600.

SANY announced the figures on LinkedIn, saying it shipped 200 electric dump trucks and 403 electric wheel loaders to customers worldwide, per Electrek.

Many of the company's electric equipment options run on a swappable 550 kWh battery pack, Electrek reported. Swappable packs matter for mining and quarry duty cycles, where machines work continuous shifts and a depleted battery can be exchanged rather than plugged in and waited out.

The delivery numbers sit alongside a far larger program. SANY plans to build 100,000 electric semi trucks with Pony.ai, according to Electrek. That target dwarfs the monthly haul truck and loader volumes and points the company toward on-highway freight rather than off-road earthmoving alone.

Heavy off-road equipment has been slower to electrify than passenger vehicles because of the energy demands of continuous digging, loading, and hauling. A 550 kWh pack is roughly an order of magnitude larger than a typical passenger EV battery, and the swap architecture removes charging downtime from the operator's cost calculation. Loaders lead the mix in SANY's own count, with 403 units shipped against 200 dump trucks.

EKPO and Akkodis are integrating a 360 kW NM20 proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell into a 40-tonne truck in Germany, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The two companies are testing zero-emission heavy-duty performance under real-world logistics conditions, Hydrogen Fuel News reported.

The system delivers up to 360 kW of system power at an efficiency of around 61%, according to the same report.

That power rating puts the NM20 at the upper end of what fuel cell drivetrains have targeted for long-haul freight, where gross combination weights reach 40 tonnes. Efficiency near 61% determines how much hydrogen the vehicle consumes per kilometre, and therefore the operating cost gap against diesel tractors carrying the same load.

HHLA is testing a hydrogen fuel cell-powered Konecranes straddle carrier at Container Terminal Tollerort in Hamburg, fitted with a system supplied by zepp.solutions, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The machine is built on the modular D200 platform, Hydrogen Fuel News reported. Rather than running in isolation, it sits inside the Clean Port & Logistics cluster, operating alongside reach stackers, tractors and forklifts in a dedicated hydrogen test field.

Early reports indicate the hydrogen carrier matches its diesel-hybrid counterparts on lifting capacity, according to Hydrogen Fuel News. The outlet described the unit as matching diesel-hybrid performance with zero emissions.

Straddle carriers do the heavy horizontal work at container terminals, moving and stacking boxes between quay and yard. They are among the most fuel-intensive pieces of equipment on a terminal, which is why the diesel-hybrid comparison is the relevant benchmark rather than a battery-electric one. Lifting capacity parity is the threshold a terminal operator needs before a fuel cell drivetrain can enter routine rotation rather than remain a demonstration asset.

The Clean Port & Logistics grouping puts several classes of handling equipment on the same hydrogen supply and test infrastructure at once, which lets an operator assess refuelling logistics and duty cycles across a mixed fleet instead of one vehicle type. That structure matters more than any single machine: refuelling throughput, not vehicle performance, is usually the constraint on hydrogen adoption in port yards.

Feiruide and SHPT have formed a partnership to develop and deploy 1,000 hydrogen fuel cell unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over the next three years, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The two partners are aiming the fleet at long-endurance missions, and Hydrogen Fuel News reports the programme is also intended to build real-world data on safety, economics and hydrogen infrastructure.

Planned applications include inspections, mapping and emergency response, per the same report.

Jiangsu Feiruide Technology Co., Ltd. already designs and builds hydrogen drones, with work spanning lightweight airframes and smart flight systems, Hydrogen Fuel News said.

Fuel cell propulsion competes with battery-electric designs on flight duration, which is the constraint the partners name in framing the fleet around long-endurance work. Inspection and mapping sorties, along with emergency response tasking, are the mission set the two companies cite for that endurance.

The stated intent to collect operating data on hydrogen infrastructure alongside safety and economics indicates the deployment doubles as a test of refuelling logistics rather than airframe performance alone.

Argentina is stepping up pressure on companies involved in offshore oil development around the Falkland Islands as the territory nears first production, according to World Oil, reviving a longstanding dispute with the UK.

The press office of President Javier Milei circulated statements from Halliburton, SLB and Baker Hughes confirming that the three oilfield service companies have no involvement in oil development off the islands, which Argentina calls the Malvinas, World Oil reported.

The pressure campaign extends to ownership of the islands' commercial infrastructure. Argentine businessman Eduardo Elsztain holds about a 2% stake in FIH Group Plc through Dolphin Fund Ltd., according to World Oil. FIH Group is the parent of the Falkland Islands Company.

Elsztain had sought a larger position. British authorities declined to allow an Argentine investor to take a majority interest in the Falkland Islands Company, World Oil reported.

A Royal Decree has transferred legal ownership of the producing onshore Oman Blocks 3 and 4 to Kistos Holdings from Mitsui E&P Middle East, giving the company its first upstream position in the MENA region, World Oil reported.

Those two blocks sit within a larger purchase from Mitsui covering Oman Blocks 3, 4 and 9, priced at USD 148 million.

On the full three-block package, 2P reserves rise by 25.6 MMboe, with the deal backdated to an effective date of Jan. 1, 2025, according to World Oil.

Output from the acquired interests ran at roughly 9,000 to 10,000 boed during 2025, weighted toward liquids.

That works out to around USD 5.80/boe on the company's own valuation, and Kistos expects cash generation from the assets to begin immediately, World Oil reported.

Executive chairman Andrew Austin said the transaction with Mitsui in Oman is "doubling the Company's current production and 2P reserves" while adding geographical diversification.

The blocks were already onstream when the decree took effect, so the USD 5.80/boe metric attaches to producing barrels rather than to exploration acreage.

More than a year separates the Jan. 1, 2025 effective date from the Royal Decree that closed the change of ownership on Blocks 3 and 4. Block 9 accounts for the balance of the USD 148 million package.

Bus operators in Leicester can apply for up to GBP 5 million in grant funding to subsidise purchases of additional electric buses and charging infrastructure, according to electrive.

The grants will cover up to 75% of the price gap between a new electric bus and an equivalent diesel vehicle, electrive reported, with associated charging infrastructure subsidised by up to 75% as well.

Leicester City Council will administer the money under its One Network bus plan, and all operators within the Leicester Buses One Network Partnership are eligible, according to electrive.

The scheme builds on a fleet that is already largely electric. Some 190 electric buses are in operation, electrive reported, accounting for about 75% of the Leicester Buses network.

A further 60 electric buses are on order and due to enter service by March 2027, according to electrive. The council's stated goal is complete electrification of the bus network by 2027.

Flow Power posted AUD 20 million in EBITDA and AUD 58 million in gross margin for the financial year ending June 30, according to ESS News, which reported that pension investors are weighing a sale of the Australian retailer and developer.

The company operates 41 MW of battery energy storage systems, including grid-scale units co-located at its regional solar plants such as the Berri project in South Australia, ESS News reported.

A further ~100 MW of storage is under active construction, per the same report. Behind that sits a 1.4 GW development pipeline covering front-of-meter batteries, wind, solar, and hybrid facilities across Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM).

One of the investors named in the report, OPTrust, manages CAD 27 billion, according to ESS News.

The gross margin figure of AUD 58 million sits nearly three times above the EBITDA line, an indication of the operating cost base carried by a business that both retails electricity and builds generation and storage assets. The 41 MW operational fleet is small relative to the 1.4 GW pipeline, meaning most of the portfolio's value rests on projects still to be financed and built.

France's Direction generale de l'energie et du climat (DGEC) is preparing a second round of electrolysis subsidies aimed at bringing forward 1 GW of green hydrogen capacity, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The support scheme is intended to narrow the cost gap between green hydrogen and fossil-based hydrogen, Hydrogen Fuel News reported.

The first round of the mechanism ended with three selected winners, according to the same report.

The subsidy round sits under France's refreshed hydrogen roadmap, which targets 4.5 GW of electrolyser capacity by 2030 and 8 GW by 2035, per Hydrogen Fuel News. The 1 GW sought in the coming round would therefore cover part of the capacity the roadmap calls for by the end of the decade.

The cost differential the DGEC is targeting is the central obstacle for electrolytic hydrogen, which competes against gas-derived supply on price rather than on availability.