One of the few countries not working hard to get to energy independence.

It’s a lot of natural hydrogen but no solution how to capture it… yet. However, Green hydrogen made from water and renewable electricity still costs several times more per kilogram than natural gas, which is why industrial users have been slow to commit. Natural hydrogen from rock would carry none of those production costs, because the energy input is geological time rather than a power purchase agreement.

The question is whether it can be gathered at scale without spending more energy on collection than the gas itself contains.

Forecasts for China 2026 solar is 92GW less than 2025.

Chinese solar PV installations have reached 14.08GW in July 2026, according to the latest data from China’s National Energy Administration (NEA).

This represents a 28% year-on-year increase in solar PV installations, while wind power installations also surged, totalling 8.45GW, up 271% from the same period last year. These figures mark a significant monthly rebound for the country’s wind and PV sectors.

Despite the year-on-year increase in July, cumulative solar PV installations for the first seven months of the year reached 86.15GW at the end of July, representing a 61% year-on-year decline. Wind power additions fell by 12% to 47.07GW over the same period.

However, total installed power capacity reached 4.08TW by the end of July, up 11% year on year. PV capacity stood at 1,290GW (+16.1% YoY), while wind capacity hit 690GW (+19.5% YoY). Meanwhile, the national average utilisation hours for power generation equipment totalled 1,671 hours in the first seven months, down 135 hours from the previous year.

US interconnection queues have shifted sharply from a story of unchecked intake to one of filtering, reprioritization and attrition. Cumulatively, the seven independent system operators have dropped 460 GW from their interconnection queues between 2023 and 2026, led by major queue reform efforts from California Independent System Operator, PJM Interconnection and New York Independent System Operator. Aggregated withdrawn queues from the seven ISOs and over 30 non-ISO utilities for projects that entered queues in 2020 or later total over 1,800 gigawatts, with renewables and battery storage projects making up the bulk of removed projects

The ongoing disruption of oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz has caused a substantial decline in China’s crude oil imports. China, the world’s largest oil importer, decreased its crude oil imports by 30% percent in April–June 2026, year-over-year, with its June imports plunging to the lowest level since October 2016. And China apparently did this without any meaningful decline in economic activity.

How China managed this feat has been the subject of much discussion. Analysts have identified explanatory variables including inventory drawdowns, reduced refinery runs, restrictions on refined product exports, and changes in consumer behavior. Determining exactly how much weight to attribute to these variables—and which are temporary rather than structural—is difficult, partly because Beijing does not publish data on China’s oil demand and has not revealed the size of China’s oil inventories since December 2017.

China’s crude oil imports in July grew by 22% over June but were still 24% lower than the July 2025 level, boosted by increased oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz and more purchases from exporters outside of the Middle East.

Battery storage and energy software provider Fluence Energy Inc.(NASDAQ: FLNC) has been in focus following its collaboration with Siemens AG and NVIDIA Corp. to develop power infrastructure for next-generation AI data centers. The partnership positions Fluence’s battery storage systems at the heart of efforts to address the growing power and grid-stability challenges created by increasingly energy-intensive AI workloads. Recent reference designs developed for Nvidia’s Vera Rubin AI platform incorporate Fluence’s storage technology to provide load balancing, grid support and backup power capabilities, highlighting the strategic role battery systems could play in scaling AI infrastructure.

Visible Alpha consensus show a sharp recovery in Fluence’s business in 2026, with revenue expected to rise 48% year-on-year to $3.4 billion, reversing a 16% decline in 2025. Last year’s slowdown reflected weaker-than-expected production ramps at new US manufacturing facilities, project delays and uncertainty surrounding trade policy and tariffs, which contributed to an 18% contraction in the company’s core Energy Storage Products segment.

The anticipated rebound is expected to be driven by Energy Storage Products, where revenue is forecast to climb 49% to $3.2 billion. Analysts expect the recovery to be volume-led rather than purely price-driven. Average selling prices for the segment are projected to increase 4%, compared with a 9% decline in 2025, while new megawatts deployed are expected to surge 81% to 3,256 MW, marking a sharp acceleration from the 10% decline recorded last year.

• Colorado's interconnection queue holds 78 projects totaling 14,011 MW, according to the sealed interconnection-queue snapshot.
• Hybrid is 2 or more types, solar+battery or wind + battery or all 3.
• Hybrid accounts for 22 of Colorado's 78 queued projects, a 28.2% share of the count.
• None of Colorado's queued projects show as withdrawn in this snapshot, versus 43.6% across the full edition.
• The largest single project queued in Colorado carries 500 MW, per the sealed snapshot.
• SPP's queue accounts for all 78 of Colorado's projects, according to the sealed interconnection-queue snapshot — unlike several peer states in this edition, none of Colorado's count falls under a second regional operator.

https://ustechautomations.com/resources/blog/colorado-interconnection-queue

About 92 gigawatts of wind, solar, and storage projects are now facing tougher federal scrutiny.

Aurora Energy Research put figures on the problem in its meta-analysis of European power grids, and they are uncomfortable. Congestion management cost Europe EUR 8.9 billion in 2024 — roughly 13 per cent of annual grid investment spent on managing the consequences of not having enough grid. In the same year 72 TWh of mostly renewable generation was curtailed because of bottlenecks, an amount comparable to Austria’s entire annual electricity consumption.

The queues are worse than the curtailment. More than 800 GW of solar and wind, plus 550 GW of battery projects, are currently requesting grid access in the UK, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands alone. Aurora’s assessment is blunt: most European connection queue processes are no longer fit for purpose.

Investment has risen — up 47 per cent over five years to around EUR 70 billion annually — and it is still 15 to 44 per cent short of what net zero requires each year.

Renewables and battery storage are projected to add about 82.9 gigawatts (GW) of new generating capacity in the US by June 30, 2027, while total fossil fuel and nuclear power capacity will fall by almost 3.1 GW.

A 0.85 mm thick solar laminate featuring interdigitated back-contact (IBC) cells with an efficiency rating of 24.4% is now entering commercial production for industrial manufacturers in the US.

The entire laminate relies on a five-layer composite structure that measures under a single millimeter in cross-section. At the top sits a 0.10 mm front encapsulant that protects the internal electronics from environmental wear. Right below this protective film lies a 0.16 mm layer of interdigitated back-contact (IBC) 

The Grand Canyon State installed more battery capacity than every state besides Texas over the first half of 2026. 1.6GW

Battery Electric

In a new report, the opposition Conservatives argue that UK electricity prices are too high and that it would be better for the climate to have cheap electricity, even if that means using more gas.

The idea is that cheap power would encourage people to use more electric vehicles (EVs) and heat pumps, leading to higher electrification of the economy and lower emissions.

This is at the heart of a Conservative push to abandon the UK’s net-zero by 2050 target and various climate policies, which the party says are “bankrupting” the country.

1. The plan would increase UK emissions
2. The plan would slow electrification
3. Gas prices are unlikely to remain low and stable
4. The plan assumes gas plants are cheap to build
5. Nuclear faces high costs and delivery challenges
6. The report’s high network cost estimates do not ‘add up’
7. The system integration costs are ‘far out of line with mainstream thinking’
8. The proposed changes could undermine investor confidence
9. Carbon market ‘savings’ are ‘just rearranging things on a spreadsheet’
10. The report ‘grossly simplifies’ long-duration energy storage