|
Batteries are stretching solar past sundown and bringing round-the-clock clean power closer to reality. |
|
| | FIRMING UP RENEWABLES: As solar deployment surges exponentially around the globe, more countries are taking the next critical step: to expand large-scale storage to absorb the abundance of daytime energy. By leveraging bigger batteries with longer-duration maximum capacity, grids can advance toward the holy grail of 24/7 clean power.
In India, the national electrical authority wants new solar and onshore wind projects to install a minimum of two hours of storage by 2027 and four hours by 2029. In Spain, where renewables generate 60 percent of the nation’s electricity but batteries have lagged, the government is all-in on permitting reform and subsidies for storage installations, with a goal of 22.5 GW by 2030. In the U.S., developers are on board to add 24 GW to the grid this year, more than half of it in Texas.
For longer-term storage, California is setting the pace. In May, the state became the first large economy to derive more than half of its electricity from the sun, thanks in large part to batteries. In June, the Tumbleweed project in Kern County became the first U.S. installation to rely on stored power for up to eight hours at a stretch, enough to keep solar energy on the wire until around 2 a.m. Tumbleweed doesn’t use new technology; it simply doubled the number of four-hour battery boxes on its site.
With data center power demand projected to rise by 2.5x by 2030, ultra-long duration storage–lasting from days to whole seasons–is ripe for innovation. As Bill McKibben recently told the New York Times’ Ezra Klein: “If the last five years were about sun and wind, the next five are about batteries, and this technology is now moving at an extraordinary pace.”
|
|
| | Love Zeroing In? Forward it to a friend! |
|
| | | 🚗 1.0 – Electrify Transportation Repriced Range: China’s low-cost auto push is no longer a fringe story in Britain. The £30,000, made-in-China Jaecoo 7 became the UK’s best-selling car in March, with more than 10,000 sales—70 percent more than its nearest rival. Chinese brands are pairing aggressive pricing, long warranties, and plug-in-hybrid range with dealership scale, putting fresh pressure on Europe’s incumbent automakers (The Telegraph). The Long Haul: California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Baja California are teaming up to create a zero-emissions freight corridor along Interstate 5. The international coalition aims to install 20 charging sites and three hydrogen stations on a route used by nearly 10,000 trucks a day. With no new U.S. federal funding provided, the project will lean on a $102 million federal grant from 2024 (Trucking Dive).
|
|
| |
| | MINI-SUNS ON THE GRID: On August 25, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Pacific Fusion broke ground on a billion-dollar nuclear fusion demo site that could revolutionize the quest for reliable, affordable, and scalable carbon-free energy. By 2030, the startup aims to win the race to achieve “net facility gain” — to produce more energy from its pulsed-power technology than it needs to run its fusion machine. If Pacific meets that bar, the next step – perhaps as early as the mid-2030s — will be to deliver commercially competitive, on-demand energy to the state’s grid.
Globally, more than 50 companies have fusion power plants in the works or on the drawing board. Since 2021, the emerging sector has drawn more than $14 billion in investment, with a record $4.5 billion in the last year alone. In contrast to traditional fission plants, fusion creates little waste or radiation risk and is far less likely to cause a nuclear disaster. Beyond helping to power AI data centers, “high-yield” fusion reactors could maintain and modernize the U.S. nuclear stockpile without explosive testing. To that point, Pacific signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Nuclear Security Administration on the day of the groundbreaking. |
|
| | 💡 2.0 – Decarbonize the Grid Peak Boredom: Thanks to record levels of renewables generation, wind output, and battery discharge, Texas kept peak electricity prices at a manageable $46 per megawatt despite record power demand – and without a single appeal for voluntary conservation. (In 2023, the grid manager issued six appeals in the space of one week in August.) Storage is smoothing the solar-to-evening handoff so effectively that it’s erasing the price spikes battery developers have relied on for revenue (Heatmap News). Batteries Not Excluded: Federal support for batteries is proving surprisingly durable. The U.S. Energy Department announced $500 million in awards for the manufacture of battery components or processing of critical minerals. Meanwhile, the Pentagon offered Sila Nanotechnologies a conditional $1.4 billion loan as Washington seeks to reduce dependence on Chinese supply chains. Experts warn that the defense industry alone cannot sustain the domestic battery ecosystem after Congress repealed the $7,500 EV tax credit (New York Times).
|
|
| 🐄 3.0 – Fix Food Ground Down: A siege of summer heatwaves and drought has battered English crops, with growers reporting sharply lower yields and losses in the tens of thousands of pounds. Farmers can adapt to gradual warming with new varieties and practices, but sudden extremes are harder to absorb. To compound the problem, imports offer limited insurance when Mediterranean producers face the same heat and water stresses (BBC).
|
|
| 🌳 4.0 – Protect Nature
Premium Pressures: With climate change and runaway development pushing more properties into harm’s way, global disasters are now expected to cost about $450 billion in a typical year, with nearly two-thirds of losses uninsured. Insurers are raising premiums, narrowing coverage, and retreating from high-risk markets, shifting a growing share of catastrophe costs onto households, businesses, and governments (Financial Times). Moving Mountains: In a disaster that scientists say was likely precipitated by climate change, a glacier collapse on the Nepal-Tibet border sent rock, ice, and mud miles downstream, killing at least 670 people and leaving nearly 3,000 missing. Nepal had invested in flood warnings, but the system was designed for smaller events—a stark example of climate extremes outgrowing infrastructure built for yesterday’s risks (NPR).
|
|
| 🧱 5.0 – Clean Up Industry Exhaust Velocity: While satellites deliver real climate value, notably methane detection, commercial launches are scaling faster than their environmental toll can be regulated. “Starwashing” companies are selling the space boom as a solution to Earth’s problems while downplaying the atmospheric downside of ozone-damaging rocket soot, heat-trapping water vapor, and sunlight-scattering aluminum oxide dust (Grist). Coal Comfort: The U.S. Energy Department has redirected a $500 million award in Middletown, Ohio, from a hydrogen-ready steelmaking project toward a coal-burning blast furnace. The original plan was projected to cut more than 1 million metric tons of greenhouse gases annually. The DOE says the revised project reflects customer unwillingness to pay a premium for lower-carbon steel (Mother Jones).
|
|
| 🧹 6.0 – Remove Carbon Growing Gains: Mafix has raised $5.4 million to scale a silicon fertilizer that the company says can improve crop yields while permanently removing CO₂ through enhanced rock weathering, and all within a single growing season. The ag-tech startup plans to produce a thousand tons of fertilizer with existing cement kilns, a strategy aimed at speeding commercial deployment without building new facilities (ESG Today). Claws and Effect: Researchers released about 65,000 liters of sodium hydroxide into the Gulf of Maine to test whether enhanced ocean alkalinity can safely increase the ocean’s carbon uptake without harming lobsters and other marine life. But as federal funding dries up, researchers warn that the research could stall just as interest in large-scale ocean carbon removal has begun to surge (The Guardian).
|
|
| 🏛️ 7.0 – Win Politics And Policy Court Check: Federal courts have ruled against the Trump administration in several major environmental cases this summer, including executive efforts to freeze billions of dollars in climate grants and roll back Biden-era soot standards. Although the administration has won some narrower cases on refinery emissions calculations and compliance deadlines, several of its highest-profile environmental reversals remain tied up in ongoing litigation (Bloomberg). Shock Absorbers: The relatively mild oil price response to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz was the product of high inventories, alternative export routes, emergency stockpiles, and shifting demand. But as those cushions wear thin, the crisis has exposed a new energy landscape where the U.S. and China are relatively insulated from supply shocks while lower-income importing countries bear the brunt (Foreign Affairs).
|
|
| 🏃 8.0 – Turn Movements Into Action Worry Gap: Climate change failed to crack the global top five “worries” in an August survey by Ipsos. Crime and violence ranked first at 32 percent, followed by inflation, poverty, and unemployment at 29 percent each. Even so, climate concern rose sharply across much of the Northern Hemisphere, up 16 percentage points in Hungary and 8 percentage points in South Korea, Great Britain, and Spain–all countries hit by extreme summer heat (Ipsos). Off Message: Although six of ten Democrats call climate change “a very big problem,” roughly the same proportion as in 2016, candidates have largely stopped campaigning on it. Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who ran on the Green New Deal in 2020, won his primary without focusing on climate – even as his state endured its hottest summer in 30 years (ABC News).
|
|
| ⚡ 9.0 – Innovate! Hot Rocks: Sage Geosystems has brought the third enhanced U.S. geothermal plant online, providing an early commercial proof point for larger projects with Ormat Technologies (a renewable energy company) and Meta. The company is seeking to scale around-the-clock clean power beyond niche demonstrations (Canary Media).
|
|
| 💰 10.0 – Invest! Bonds Building: Green bond issuance set a quarterly record of $193 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up 2 percent year over year. Blue bonds for marine and freshwater projects jumped roughly sixfold to $3.7 billion in the first half of the year, outstripping all of 2025. Across all categories, sustainable bonds were up 4 percent in Q2 (ESG Today). Drilling for Growth: On the heels of its record-setting IPO, Fervo’s first utility-scale, enhanced geothermal plant will be a high-stakes test. By adapting oil and gas drilling techniques, the company has won bipartisan political support and major customer commitments. Its next challenge is to prove the always-on clean technology can reliably scale beyond its earlier commercial projects (Fast Company).
|
|
|
| | For more, follow Speed & Scale on LinkedIn and X. |
|
| | Share this email with a friend by forwarding it! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
