Wednesday, 9 September 2026

Argentina's commercial and industrial (C&I) distributed generation capacity grew 101.4% year-on-year from a base of 65.6 MW in July 2025, according to pv magazine, with 66.5 MW added over the following 12 months.

The C&I segment now represents nearly 80% of the 165.5 MW registered under the national distributed generation scheme, pv magazine reported.

Users in the segment grew more slowly than the megawatts they installed. C&I prosumers went from 1,205 in July 2025 to 2,089 in July 2026, a 73.4% increase, according to pv magazine. Average installed capacity per C&I user rose from approximately 54.4 kW to 63.2 kW over the same period, an increase of about 16.2%, pv magazine reported. Larger systems, not just more of them, drove the capacity gain.

Across all user categories, Argentina counted 4,891 user-generators with 165.5 MW connected through bidirectional meters in July 2026, against 3,034 users and 82.4 MW a year earlier, according to pv magazine.

Monthly additions ran at almost 6 MW between June and July 2026, lifting the national total from 159.5 MW to 165.5 MW, pv magazine reported, citing the Secretariat of Energy.

Developers in the United States lost 22 renewable projects to cancellation in 2025, together carrying nearly 9.8 GW of capacity, according to pv magazine, citing the Sabin Center report.

That capacity figure is the largest recorded in a single year, well above the previous high of 3.26 GW in 2024, per pv magazine.

The single biggest loss was the 6.2 GW Esmeralda 7 Solar Project in Nevada, which the Bureau of Land Management canceled in October 2025, according to pv magazine.

The Sabin Center tracker counts 888 state and local restrictions on renewable development and 567 contested projects nationwide, pv magazine reported. Of those 567 contested projects logged since 2004, at least 227, or roughly 40%, have been canceled.

New ordinances and rules are being adopted at a slowing pace. At least 70 new state and local restrictions were added in 2025, according to pv magazine. That follows 165 new restrictions in 2023 and 112 in 2024.

Opposition is concentrated in two states. New York accounts for 52 contested projects and Virginia for 40, the highest counts in the country, pv magazine reported.

South Korea's Ministry of Climate, Environment and Energy issued a summary of the 12th Basic Plan for Long-term Electricity Supply and Demand on 26 August 2026, setting a target of 45GW of offshore wind by 2040, according to IEEFA.

The gap between that target and the installed base is wide. Offshore wind project development in the country has produced only about 365MW of realized capacity over the past decade, IEEFA reported.

A separate Medium-term Plan sets the auction cadence intended to close it. IEEFA said the program seeks to auction roughly 4GW of capacity each year from 2026, reaching 10.5GW under construction by 2030 and 25GW by 2035.

Permitting has been the binding constraint. Under the original regime, developers had to secure 42 separate approvals spread across several government bodies, according to IEEFA.

The Offshore Wind Special Act addresses the dispute side of that process by creating a stakeholder reconciliation body in which at least 50% of members are project-affected parties, including fishing communities, tasked with negotiating and resolving disputes, IEEFA said.

For comparison, IEEFA noted that Europe had 39GW of operating offshore wind capacity at the end of 2025, built after nearly two decades of learning across project development, finance, and supply chains.

African solar panel manufacturing output will reach around 3.5 GW in 2026, according to a report from Ember and Africa Tech Futures Lab cited by pv magazine, with new plants in Egypt and Tanzania geared predominantly towards US export.

A further six countries account for a smaller share of that base. Panel manufacturing capacity across Morocco, South Africa, Algeria, Tunisia, Nigeria and Kenya is expected to reach around 1 GW, pv magazine reported.

The factory build-out sits against a supply chain that remains overwhelmingly Chinese. Up to 94% of the panels installed in Africa today are still imported from China, according to the report.

Installations are running well ahead of local production. A record 17 GW of solar will be installed in Africa this year, and 36 of Africa's 54 countries are on track to install a record amount of solar in 2026, pv magazine reported.

Rooftop and off-grid systems have carried most of the recent growth. Of the estimated 26 GW of solar added in Africa between 2023 and 2025, distributed solar accounted for 20 GW, according to the report.

The import bill remains small in absolute terms. Africa imported just $2.4 billion of solar panels in the last 12 months, according to Ember chief analyst Dave Jones.

Scania will equip 40 of its trucks with Toyota's current fuel cell system, according to electrive, which reported the two companies are expanding their hydrogen fuel cell partnership.

Operation of the first Scania hydrogen fuel cell trucks carrying Toyota technology is set to begin in the first quarter of 2027, electrive reported.

The retrofitted vehicles will go to logistics companies for use under real-world conditions through Scania's 'Pilot Partner' programme, according to electrive.

POSCO and BHP signed a HyREX Collaboration Agreement on September 3, 2026, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The agreement covers validation of hydrogen-based steelmaking using Pilbara iron ore at POSCO's Pohang Steelworks, with the stated aim of advancing near-zero emissions steel production, Hydrogen Fuel News reported.

Under the partnership, the two companies intend to run POSCO's hydrogen reduction ironmaking process on Pilbara ore in new pilot and demonstration plants.

Green Maritime Infrastructure (GMI) has signed German systems integrator eCap Marine to fit two additional bulk carriers with hydrogen energy technology, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The order lifts GMI's fleet to four vessels, all intended to move heavy dry bulk cargo such as asphalt and gravel along the Norwegian coast, Hydrogen Fuel News reported.

Hydrogen Fuel News described the expansion as consistent with Norway's Green Shipping Programme and as a move from trial runs to full fleet operations.

Beyond Aero and Aeroports de la Cote d'Azur are planning phased hydrogen refueling infrastructure at French Riviera airports to serve hydrogen-electric business jets in the early 2030s, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The build-out centers on compressed gas, fixed dispensers, and mobile refueling, Hydrogen Fuel News reported.

Three airports fall within the partnership's scope: Nice Cote d'Azur, Cannes Mandelieu, and Golfe de Saint-Tropez. The work described by Hydrogen Fuel News is aimed at the practical steps needed to fly hydrogen-electric aircraft from those sites.

Kiwa PVEL's 2026 PV Module Reliability Scorecard recorded failures at 87% of manufacturers and 61% of bills of materials (BOMs) tested, the highest rates in the Scorecard's history, according to Solar Builder.

Module breakage led the failure categories again, with 60% of manufacturers logging at least one breakage failure, Solar Builder reported.

Kiwa PVEL reports that failures are showing up across nearly every test sequence, which it describes as signaling a systemic issue with module quality and reliability.

Hail testing accounted for a sizeable share of the results. Solar Builder reported that 23% of BOMs experienced a Hail Stress Sequence failure, and that 61% of 2.0 mm glass // 2.0 mm glass modules broke from 45 mm hail in Kiwa PVEL testing.

Cell interconnection design also separated the results. Zero-busbar BOMs showed Thermal Cycling power loss spanning 0.6% to 8.4%, a wider range than BOMs using traditional cell busbars, per Solar Builder.

Encapsulant thickness tracked with the weaker Thermal Cycling outcomes: more than 70% of BOMs with power loss above 2% after TC600 used front encapsulants whose area weight fell in the lower quartile range, according to Solar Builder.

Lifetime power costs for North Sea offshore wind fall as much as 28% by 2050 in DNV's high-volume case, provided turbine designs converge on a standard and project pipelines stop lurching between boom and pause, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

Eight suppliers and developers from Europe's offshore wind sector took part in the DNV-led joint industry project behind the numbers. DNV set it up after a run of rising project costs, uneven auction outcomes and stop-start development schedules.

The modelling splits into three cases. Keep growth moderate and end the current turbine platform's production run early, and levelized cost of electricity (LCoE) drops roughly 5% by 2035. Stretch those production runs while leaving growth unchanged, and the saving widens to about 14% by 2035 and 25% by 2050. Sustained deployment at the top of the range delivers around 19% by 2035, reaching 28% by 2050.

DNV built the model around a roughly 15 MW machine on monopile foundations. That platform serves as a reference point only: DNV does not present 15 MW as the optimum size, nor as a ceiling on what comes next.

European factories can broadly meet near-term demand at that 15 MW scale, DNV found.