Know What's Happening in Energy
Know What's Happening in Energy
Renewables snag $400M of Philippines investment approvals, solar leads with $293M project
Renewable energy projects accounted for roughly 48% of the Philippines Board of Investments' approved outlay of P47 billion ($840 million) in the first two months of 2026. The energy sector secured about P22.4 billion ($400 million), highlighted by a P16.4 billion ($293 million) solar venture by Cleanenergy 2 Power.
Also developing:
Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) posted a record 2025, with consolidated core net income rising 12% to P50.57 billion, surpassing its P50 billion profit target. The boost came primarily from its power‑generation arm, which grew its share of profit to 33% and contributed P16.8 billion. While overall energy‑sales volumes slipped slightly, the generation unit’s output surged 78% to 27,289 GWh. Meralco is also advancing the MTerra Solar farm, now 75% complete and slated for full operation by 2027.
Atombeam and Trilliant have partnered to combine Atombeam’s Neurpac data‑compression software with Trilliant’s AMI communications platform, offering utilities a way to transmit more grid data without new hardware. Neurpac’s “Data‑as‑Codewords” encoding claims up to 75% reduction in data size, effectively...
U.S. ethanol production held steady at 1.113 million barrels per day, slipping 5,000 barrels from the prior week but climbing 32,000 barrels year‑over‑year as plants chase demand. Iowa State University’s Center for Agricultural and Rural Development reported improved operating margins...
Simon Fraser University has signed memoranda of understanding with Cerio, Corix and Moment Energy to deepen the sustainability of its Cedar Supercomputing Centre, Canada’s most powerful academic HPC system. The centre already runs on clean hydroelectric power and boasts a...
Component-level inspections give utilities granular data to improve hazard modeling, risk forecasting, and targeted mitigation. By focusing on small hardware such as cotter pins, connectors, and splices, utilities can markedly reduce outage risk during wildfires, storms, and other extreme events....
ENGIE announced a £10.5 billion equity purchase of UK Power Networks, valuing the distribution operator at a £15.8 billion enterprise value. The acquisition gives ENGIE its second‑largest market globally and adds 192,000 km of mostly underground network serving 8.5 million customers across London and...
North Sea crude spreads fell to a two‑month low after Vitol and TotalEnergies halted a heavy buying spree, pushing the WTI Midland spread to just $1.70 above Brent. Derivative indicators turned bearish as weekly Brent CFDs entered contango and the...
Roanoke City Public Schools will install a solar‑powered microgrid with battery storage at Patrick Henry and William Fleming high schools, funded by a $450,000 state grant and $2.1 million from Secure Solar Futures. The $2.55 million project, the first public‑school solar microgrid...
Boulder Municipal Airport aims to start offering unleaded aviation fuel by late 2026, ahead of Colorado’s 2030 statewide leaded‑avgas phase‑out. The draft transition plan, due by Jan. 1, 2026, outlines annual reviews but omits specifics on fuel type, infrastructure, and financing. To...
Oil peaked in 2008 at $140 and has fallen sideways since to ~$65 today. In hard-money gold terms, 1 ounce buys 100 barrels of oil. Oil has been deflating for decades. The only time it was cheaper was 2020 when...
The EPA is expected to drop the controversial half‑RIN rule and raise biomass‑based diesel renewable volume obligations (RVOs) to 5.25 billion gallons in 2026 and 5.61 billion gallons in 2027, roughly a 20% increase over the June proposal. Using an average equivalence...
Heron Power announced a $140 million Series B round to launch gigawatt‑scale production of solid‑state transformers for data centers and the electric grid. The round, led by Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism Fund and Breakthrough Energy Ventures, follows a $38 million Series A raised in...
The U.S. Department of Energy is finalizing a $26.5 billion loan package for Southern Company that will support more than 16 GW of baseload projects, including 5 GW of new gas, 6 GW of nuclear upgrades, battery storage, and over 1,300 miles of transmission. The...
Airbus and a coalition of airlines completed the GEESE wake‑energy retrieval trials, demonstrating that two A350s can rendez‑vous over the North Atlantic while maintaining vertical separation. The Pairing Assistance Tool coordinated flight paths in real time, achieving a 75% success...
President Donald Trump claimed the United States received over 80 million barrels of Venezuelan crude, a figure far exceeding reality. Vortexa ship‑tracking data shows U.S. imports of Venezuelan oil totalled about 17.7 million barrels, roughly 300,000 barrels per day, in January and...
The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced it will approve third‑party applications to resell Venezuelan crude and refined products to Cuba. Transactions must follow the same conditions as U.S.-authorized sales to Venezuela's state oil firm, including depositing...
Eidesvik Offshore has secured an additional contract extension from Aker BP for its 2012-built platform supply vessel Viking Prince. The extension adds roughly two months to the vessel’s hire, pushing the end‑date to the end of April 2026. This follows...
Nordex SE posted record Q4 2025 results, with order intake rising 9.2% to €3.2 billion and revenue up 16% to €2.5 billion. EBITDA surged to €307 million, delivering a 12.1% margin, while net profit jumped to €184 million. Full‑year 2025 figures also broke records,...
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker just issued an order aimed at facilitating at least 2 GW in nuclear capacity additions. It's good to see an increasingly wider recognition of the potential of nuclear power, which has been stunted for decades by pseudoscientific...
Venture capital in Africa is pivoting from fintech to solar microgrid projects as investors chase more predictable, asset‑backed returns. After a fintech boom between 2016‑2021, market saturation, rising customer‑acquisition costs and tighter regulation have eroded margins. Solar microgrids, backed by...
Saudi Arabia’s largest oil shipper, Bahri, provisionally chartered five very large crude carriers as daily charter rates neared $200,000, the highest level since 2020. The vessels are slated to move Saudi crude to Asian markets, chiefly China, in the coming...
Surge Battery Metals, together with Evolution Mining, released the final assay results from its 2025 core drilling program at Nevada North Lithium Project. Infill drilling returned a 116‑metre interval averaging 3,752 ppm lithium, including a 32.1‑metre zone grading 4,521 ppm, confirming a...
![[Episode #270] – View From the Energy Transitions Commission](/cdn-cgi/image/width=1200,quality=75,format=auto,fit=cover/https://cdn.xenetwork.org/ets/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/powerpress/ETS-PodcastArtwork-full.png)
In this episode, host Chris Nelder talks with Lord Adair Turner, co‑chair of the Energy Transitions Commission (ETC), about the commission’s role as a cross‑sector coalition that produces techno‑economic roadmaps for net‑zero pathways. Turner explains how the ETC balances diverse...
Germany's Bundestag will vote on a hydrogen acceleration law that expands eligible infrastructure to include carbon‑capture‑and‑storage (CCS) based hydrogen production. The amendment also adds import facilities for power‑to‑liquid fuels such as synthetic aviation fuel. Projects designated as "overriding public interest"...
Last night’s State of the Union address tied AI dominance to power plants, permits, and domestic mining. Earlier in the day, the House Energy & Minerals Subcommittee debated how to actually fix the mineral markets behind that ambition via the SECURE...
Trump’s EPA is yanking support for electric school buses #energysky -- via Canary Media: https://t.co/wWCGInkszK
The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced sanctions on 12 tankers and their owners that have shipped hundreds of millions of dollars in Iranian petroleum and petrochemical products. The designations also include nine individuals and entities in Iran,...
CHART OF THE DAY: Global energy-related CO2 emissions, with historical path, plus different scenarios: current policies, stated policies and net-zero by 2050. The later curve is getting more cliff-like by the day. My @Opinion column on net zero is here:...
Shoals reports record $148 million Q4 revenue, full-year growth of 19% #energysky -- via pv magazine usa: https://t.co/bo7p0b9Z7D
German startup Solarsecure Tech introduced the SolarSecure Vision gateway, a hardware‑agnostic device installed at the meter connection point that intercepts and validates inverter‑to‑cloud communications. The gateway blocks unverified kill‑switch commands while allowing authenticated signals, including mandatory grid‑operator directives, to pass via a...
Bring Your Own Generation Comes With Its Own Risks #energysky -- via Heatmap News https://t.co/3GKbb5kFF7 https://t.co/rYlt6Su0pH
FERC finds that setting min. stds for interregional transmission capacity "can inaccurately value interregional transfer capability." OK. But the status quo is definitely inaccurately valuing interregional transfer capability. Nothing will change. FERC missed an opportunity.
Ontario natural gas storage remains well below the five‑year average, sitting 27.7 Bcf short and driving Dawn hub prices higher as winter ends. Seasonal withdrawals are the third‑largest on record, with the March exit projected near 60 Bcf. The forward price curve...
Are the RUSSOPHOBES in Europe still buying Russian oil? The answer is YES. SANCTIONS = NEVER WORK. https://t.co/EGIEz4CjE2
It's worth keeping in mind that this chart shows electricity consumption per capita, which has much better correlation with wealth than "primary energy". Electricity consumption is more closely-tied to the markers of modernity (access to IT, A/C, refrigeration, water treatment...)...
South Africa’s Minerals Council criticised the 2024 budget for omitting any reduction in electricity tariffs for the ferroalloys sector, despite industrial power costs soaring over 900% since 2008. The omission threatens the ferrochrome industry, which supports more than 20,000 jobs,...
I don't think the world is ready for the reality that the great solar boom wasn't as cost-efficient as everyone thought. And actually, in a round-about way, was probably predominantly subsidised by growing Western indebtedness, at the cost of middle-class...
Good piece by @atrembath and @TedNordhaus on the distinction between solar optimism and solar maximalism. I'm definitely quite bullish on solar, but we also need other clean energy technologies (wind, storage, nuclear, geothermal, CCS for some industrial processes) alongside it....
The episode examines the looming loss of Renewables Obligation (RO) support for UK waste‑wood biomass plants in 2027 and the resulting risk of a 3 million‑ton oversupply of waste wood. Richard Coulson of the Wood Recyclers Association explains how the sector...
U.S. shale isn’t dead but frack fleets are heading overseas “The opportunity in Argentina is one of the most promising," says Patterson-UTI Energy CEO. https://t.co/BGmL1ZLCnL #Shale #Oil #Fracking #EnergyMarkets #SupplyConstraints
OPEC+ likely to restart supply hikes The oil glut is looking more like Y2K Still, OPEC+ increases will probably be cautious. https://t.co/XT9I0sGhYp #Oil #OPECPlus #EnergyMarkets #Geopolitics #Shale
Siemens and CAPHENIA announced a partnership to accelerate commercial Sustainable Aviation Fuel production by integrating Siemens’ digitalisation and automation tools with CAPHENIA’s plasma Boudouard reactor technology. The reactor splits bio‑methane into synthesis gas at 1,500 °C with over 86 % efficiency, enabling...
New filings suggest the Keystone XL pipeline is being resurrected South Box in Canada & Bridger Pipeline in the U.S. are involved. https://t.co/Gl3HfeV9C5 #KeystoneXL #Pipelines #EnergyPolitics #Oil #Canada #US
🇺🇸U.S. ethanol production continued at a strong rate last week, topping 1.11M barrels per day for a third straight week. For the last three weeks, output has been about 3% above the year-ago levels. https://t.co/VcHmt2Mthb
Last week global gas markets split, with Asian spot LNG rallying to the low‑$11/MMBtu range while European TTF and US Henry Hub prices eased. In Northeast Asia, the JKM benchmark rebounded after a brief dip, driven by renewed buying from...
Germany’s regulator is reconsidering the grid‑fee exemption for utility‑scale battery storage, creating uncertainty for projects commissioned before 2029. While the Bundesnetzagentur expects storage capacity to surge to 68 GW by 2037, the potential retroactive fees could dampen investor momentum. At the...
Researchers have created a high‑entropy alloy (HEA) catalyst composed of Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, and Cu, derived from a layered double hydroxide precursor. The HEA nanoparticles are uniformly anchored on nitrogen‑doped carbon nanotubes via dicyandiamide‑assisted pyrolysis, yielding a single‑phase fcc...
Sunbolt announced an expanded Eclipse Solar Charging Umbrella lineup, adding a refreshed fabric‑canopy version with 88 W of high‑efficiency panels and a new permanent Aluminum Canopy model delivering 110 W. Both units are built in the United States, feature six dual‑port USB/USB‑C...
Russia's finance ministry announced plans to lower the cut‑off price that triggers the transfer of oil revenues into the budget reserve fund. The move aims to channel more of the declining oil proceeds into the $56 billion reserve to protect it...
Japan’s LNG resales hit a record in fiscal 2024, surpassing the volume imported from any single supplier. Declining domestic consumption, driven by nuclear restarts, efficiency gains and renewable growth, has pushed utilities and trading houses to redirect surplus cargoes to...
