Weekly Debrief

Planning guidance for developers of nationally significant renewable energy infrastructure projects.

Planning guidance for developers of nationally significant energy infrastructure projects.

Electricity network owners are hiring at fastest pace since 1950s

New charges to fund the building of electricity pylons and Sizewell C nuclear power station will be added to bills from April

Decision by the Secretary of State on an application by East Anglia THREE Limited under the Planning Act 2008.

UK government wants to provide specific support to hybrid offshore wind turbine support structures that could eventually compete with and even replace floating technology

Additional green freight funding aims to cut upfront cost of new electric trucks by up to £120,000

New venture aims to advance solid-state battery development for the next generation of electric vehicles and energy storage systems

There are many questions about what is happening with sodium-ion batteries today. For example, to most people, news that CATL expects to commercialize sodium-ion batteries for EVs in 2026 with 310 mile range comes as quite a surprise. Background There are several different sodium-ion battery cathodes, just as there are ...

In 2023, nearly all hydrogen consumed in the European Union was still produced from fossil fuels, despite four years of increasingly ambitious hydrogen strategies and tens of billions of euros in pledged public support. This single data point captures the core tension shaping today’s hydrogen geopolitics: political momentum has accelerated faster than technology deployment, cost [...]

Orsted knocked the UK's clean power goals when it cancelled a Contract for Difference for its planned Hornsea 4 offshore wind farm last year – without reform, more projects could go the same way, writes John MacAskill

Securing access to reliable supplies of concrete and aggregates is the latest step in BW Ideol's scaling-up strategy for concrete floating offshore wind foundations

Donut Lab has unveiled what it claims to be the world’s first commercially production-ready all-solid-state battery, signaling a potential shift in electric vehicle (EV) energy storage.

Offshore wind giant Orsted stands to lose $8bn from Sunrise cancellation and further billions of dollars in lost future revenue

German developer RWE had been expecting decision on planning consent for its Dogger Bank South project this week

Joint venture will use Corteva's technology and BP's downstream capabilities to produce and deliver biofuel feedstocks for global markets

BusinessGreen's Workforce 2030 campaign speaks to Zac Richardson, chief engineer at National Grid, on how skills development is critical to the UK's clean power goals

The Trump administration may be bent on undermining global climate action and engineering an oil boom, but governments and businesses still have it within their power to accelerate decarbonisation What does dog food and aircraft design have in common? And what have they both got to do with the Trump administration confirming this week it is quitting the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? One of the many nefarious goals of the Trump administration, both domestically and on the international stage, is to inculcate a sense of learned helplessness in its opponents - and even in its supposed allies. Trump and his apologists repeatedly seek to assert such power and demonstrate such visible contempt for anything others hold dear in such a chaotic way that opponents start to think resistance is at best highly risky and at worst totally futile. This playbook is apparent in pretty much everything the Trump administration does - witness the revelling in the brazen breaches of international law at the heart of the US resource grab in Venezuela - but it is particularly obvious in its approach to climate change and the environment. The full spectrum contempt for climate action evident in the withdrawal from the UNFCCC is designed to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, where talk of an 'ESG backlash' and assertions that decarbonisation is pointless prompt businesses and the public to comply in advance and roll back environmental efforts even when they are not required to do so. But it does not have to be this way. There is no point being delusionaly optimistic in the face of these challenges. US isolationism, obstructionism, and imperialism present a grave threat to global climate action. There are huge obstacles in the way of a Venezuelan oil boom - obstacles the Trump administration is trying to wish away - but any uplift in oil production threatens a further increase in emissions at a time when they are meant to be falling if there is to be any hope of averting some of the worst climate scenarios. It will become far harder to convince carbon intensive economies to invest in decarbonisation if the world's largest historic emitter by a country mile will not even turn up at UN climate talks. Military adventures and the chaos they engender are a less than ideal backdrop for executing a global green industrial revolution. But it is critical to remember there are still actions governments, businesses, and individuals can take to cut emissions and accelerate the clean technology transition. Which brings us back to the dog food and the aircraft. New research yesterday revealed that while dog food may be responsible for a mind-blowing one per cent of UK emissions, the carbon intensity of different dog food products varies enormously. Different consumer choices, aided by better labelling or even modest regulation, could unlock massive emissions savings with little to no impact on the well-being of any dog or its owner. At a more industrial level, separate research this week explained how proven technologies and approaches could more than halve global aviation emissions if only airlines would deploy them. Trump cannot stop airlines opting for the most efficient aircraft models or configuring planes to improve passenger carbon footprints. The same pattern is evident in multiple sectors as clean technologies, efficiency measures, and climate resilience upgrades offer clear commercial and economic benefits. Meanwhile, CDP yesterday published its annual A list report, providing a timely reminder that, for all the talk of an ESG backlash, investors with $127tr of assets want more environmental data from corporates, and companies with over half of global market capitalisation are trying to provide it. They are doing so because climate risks and clean tech opportunities are real, regardless of what the US President says to the contrary. The news cycle at the start of this year has been almost unbearably bleak, but it is critical to remember that no organisation is helpless in the face of attacks on climate action, even when those attacks emanate from some of the most powerful people in the world. Governments and businesses will understandably want to tread carefully when dealing with a Trump administration that increasingly behaves like a rogue state. But it is possible to continue to take steps to cut emissions without antagonising the President - just witness the clean tech investments of many of the Silicon Valley companies that have so visibly sought to ingratiate themselves with the man in the White House. The political zeitgeist in favour of sustainability will swing back again, because reality will always assert itself eventually. But in the meantime action can, and must, still be taken. A version of this article first appeared as part of BusinessGreen's Overnight Briefing newsletter, which is available to all BusinessGreen Intelligence subscribers.

Ming Yang Smart Energy has rolled out the MySE23X, the world's first fully-recyclable carbon fibre wind turbine blade.

Nine-out-of-10 heat pump owners satisfied with home warmth during cold snap compared to eight-out-of-ten gas boiler users, new study finds

Paying UK wind farms to switch off to prevent overloading the grid is a national scandal - and one the government has the power to fix, writes Pablo John from ADE: Demand

Producer of packaged salads for several major UK supermarkets has been sold by administrators to private equity firm Sun Capital Ltd

CATL’s batteries and energy management systems are already operating in roughly 900 ships and vessels, a figure that on its own should reframe how maritime decarbonization is discussed. Shipping is conservative for structural reasons tied to safety, long asset lifetimes, and unforgiving certification regimes, so deployment at this scale signals ...

Europe’s push toward next-generation energy storage received a strategic boost with the announcement of Argylium, a joint venture between Syensqo and Axens. The new company will focus on scaling up advanced materials for solid-state batteries, a technology widely viewed as critical for the next generation of electric vehicles and grid-scale energy storage.

Demand for power grid equipment is set to keep rising over the next decade despite bottlenecks in the manufacturing of transformers and other vital grid components, leading to extended waiting times, the CEO of the world's biggest maker of transformers, Hitachi Energy, Andreas Schierenbeck, told Platts, part of S&P Global Energy, in an interview. "We haven't seen peak demand [for grid equipment]

ANALYSIS | The swoop by Alphabet for wind, solar and storage developer Intersect is the first of its kind by a data centre hyperscaler as the race for power hots up, say industry experts

Speculative ventures are stopping vital projects from getting connections, major European grid operator says

Social media group to pre-pay for power from reactors planned by Oklo and TerraPower

Its electric vehicles have been overtaken but the US group has its eyes on the giant batteries for grid operators

Proposal for a capped contingent liability regarding a policy indemnity to Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks Transmission (SSENT) for the Orkney Transmission Link project.