Sunday, 13 September 2026

Alstom and TransPennine Express plan to put 29 fully electric Adessia Stream trains into UK service in 2034, according to Electrek. Electrek describes them as the first mainline fleet in the country designed to run primarily on battery power.

The trains sit within a wider set of British transit contracts valued at more than EUR 1.2 billion, per Electrek. The British government says the fleet will be built in Derby and will support more than 6,000 permanent jobs across the UK.

Electrek reports the Adessia Stream units will reach speeds of up to 110 mph and offer around 300 seats per train.

TransPennine Express has been trialling battery-electric traction on intercity services since 2024, swapping one diesel engine in a Class 802 Nova 1 train for a Hitachi battery-electric system, according to Electrek.

IAA Transportation 2026 runs in Hanover from September 15 to 20, gathering commercial vehicle manufacturers and suppliers, according to electrive. The specialist outlet reports that around 150 world premieres and new products are expected at the exhibition grounds.

Ford will hold the public premiere of its all-electric Transit City at the show, with electrive reporting a starting price of EUR 35,990 net in the L1H1 configuration.

Kia is staging a world premiere of the PV7, the second model in its Platform Beyond Vehicle line-up after the PV5, according to electrive.

Stellantis is bringing its new SCV electric vans, which electrive reports are available with an electric powertrain delivering 100 kW of system power and up to 270 km of range.

Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a self-rebuilding high-entropy antiperovskite oxygen-evolution electrode built on porous nickel foam for anion exchange membrane (AEM) electrolyzers, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The work is led by Guowen Meng and Bin Chen at the Institute of Solid State Physics in Hefei, the outlet reported.

Rather than resisting surface reconstruction, the design uses it. Under oxygen evolution reaction conditions, the electrode transforms its own surface into an active oxyhydroxide layer, per Hydrogen Fuel News.

Hydrogen Fuel News reported that the electrode can sustain industrially relevant current densities in AEM electrolyzers for hundreds of hours with only minor performance dips.

OQ Alternative Energy (OQAE) and Asyad Group have signed a clean hydrogen offtake term sheet to supply green hydrogen for mobility in the Special Economic Zone at Duqm in Oman, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The partnership pledges to produce more than 91,000 kilograms of low-carbon hydrogen a year, Hydrogen Fuel News reported.

That output could support around eight to ten heavy-duty truck refuels per day, replacing about 1,100 liters of diesel daily, according to the same report.

The agreement is directed at hydrogen use for mobility inside the Duqm special economic zone.

The Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre flew its HYDRA-II liquid-hydrogen drone at Rotterdam The Hague Airport in South Holland, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The flight was a joint effort by Royal NLR, Rotterdam The Hague Airport and TULIPS, Hydrogen Fuel News reported. The exercise validated hydrogen supply, storage and safe handling in real-world operations at a live airport.

Alabama Power booked $860 million in profit during the first two quarters of 2026, up 14% from 2025 and tracking toward $1.72 billion for the full year, according to Inside Climate News. The utility is a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Co. and serves roughly two-thirds of the state.

Those results followed the failure of a state legislative push to tighten oversight of the company. The Alabama House voted 104-0 in March 2026 to pass HB 475, sponsored by state Rep. Mack Butler, Inside Climate News reported. Under the measure, the Alabama Public Service Commission would have been required to convene public hearings on rate-increase requests from Alabama Power, a step the regulator has not taken in 44 years.

At issue is a postponed rate hike tied to Alabama Power's 2025 acquisition of an operating natural gas plant. The company paid $622 million for the 895 MW facility, according to Inside Climate News. The increase was set to take effect in 2027 and add $3.37 to the average customer's monthly bill.

A research group has reported an electrode design that lowers the overpotential of the hydrogen evolution reaction in ammonia-laden alkaline electrolytes to 168 mV at 10 mA/cm², according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The findings, published in Scientific Reports, describe thermally treated carbon fibers coated with nickel and gold layers to enhance hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activity in ammonia-containing alkaline media.

Hydrogen Fuel News reported that the team stripped surface sizing from the carbon fibers, then electrodeposited roughly 40 nm of nickel nanoparticles topped with a thin gold layer. The outlet framed the substrate-engineering approach as a path toward cost-effective hydrogen production from ammonia streams.

Bloom Energy is joining the S&P 500, according to Hydrogen Fuel News, which reported that S&P Dow Jones Indices will add the fuel-cell maker to the benchmark later this quarter alongside Illumina and Everpure.

The promotions come with corresponding demotions. Molson Coors, The Trade Desk, and Builders FirstSource are being moved down to the S&P SmallCap 600, per the same Hydrogen Fuel News report.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told oil traders not to expect a breakthrough on the Strait of Hormuz, according to World Oil.

Wright estimated that transit workarounds are still moving 10 million barrels per day of crude and oil products, World Oil reported.

Iran plans to unveil an agreement on a temporary shipping lane through the strait on Monday in Oman, per World Oil. The plan follows a round of regional diplomacy that included direct talks between Iran and Abu Dhabi, according to the same report.

Wright also said Tehran's nuclear program will end "one way or another," World Oil reported.

On the domestic side, the U.S. nuclear industry remains heavily dependent on uranium imports to fuel reactors that generate about a fifth of the nation's electricity, according to World Oil.

Saudi Arabia is building AI infrastructure with both American and Chinese partners, according to Semafor Net Zero.

At Riyadh's LEAP conference this month, state-backed HUMAIN unveiled Arabic technology built on a model from China's MiniMax, Semafor reported. HUMAIN is building its infrastructure with American technology and has agreed that Chinese frontier models will not be trained on computing capacity it obtains through US export approvals, per the same report.

AWS alone has committed $5.3 billion to data centers in the kingdom, according to Semafor.

DataVolt is constructing a roughly $1 billion, 100-megawatt facility at NEOM designed to export compute, with ambitions to expand to 360 megawatts, Semafor reported.

On the Chinese side, ByteDance's cloud arm is building infrastructure in Riyadh, and Tencent Cloud has secured a Saudi operating license, per the same report.