Author: Arnes Biogradlija

Germany recorded 459 negative-price hours in 2024 and 573 in 2025, setting new records each time. Through the first half of 2026, the pattern has shifted in a way that complicates straightforward narratives about the direction of price volatility: the frequency of negative hours has declined relative to 2025, but the depth of those negative prices has increased, and the occurrence of extremely high prices, most dramatically during the late-June heatwave, has grown. The result is a day-ahead market with wider daily spreads than at any point in the previous three years, driven by two opposing forces that are both…

The LDES Council estimates that up to 8 terawatts of long-duration energy storage capacity will be needed globally by 2040, potentially unlocking $540 billion in annual grid savings. Against that projection, the technology pool capable of delivering economically viable storage beyond four hours remains narrow and largely unproven at commercial scale. The announcement by Victoria’s State Electricity Commission that it will deploy a 20 MW, 200 MWh compressed CO2 battery at the site of the decommissioned Hazelwood power station in the Latrobe Valley is therefore more than a single infrastructure commitment. It is the first commercial deployment of this technology…

Tesla reported a federal tax bill of zero dollars for 2025, continuing a pattern in which the company has owed the US government almost nothing for all but one of the past 20 years, despite reporting total US revenues of $264 billion over that period. The conventional exclamation points to loss carryforwards and green energy tax incentives. What a Reuters review of corporate filings across 14 countries made visible in April 2026 is a second mechanism: Tesla units in the Netherlands and Singapore recorded approximately $18 billion in profits between 2023 and early 2025, profits that were not taxed in…

Conventional enhanced geothermal systems access rock at temperatures around 150 to 200 degrees Celsius. Quaise Energy is targeting 300 to 500 degrees Celsius, temperatures that exist at depths beyond what standard drill bits can reach economically. The Houston-based company has raised $134 million in a first close of its Series B, led by Prelude Ventures with strategic investment from JERA and Idemitsu, two of Japan’s largest energy companies, bringing its total capital raised to $230 million. The money funds Project Obsidian, a 250-megawatt superhot geothermal power plant being built on federal leases in Oregon’s Deschutes National Forest near the Newberry…

Global sodium-ion battery shipments reached 9 GWh in 2025, up 150% year over year, almost entirely driven by Chinese manufacturers operating at a scale that Western producers have yet to match. In that context, Peak Energy has announced a 183,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Sacramento, California, targeting 4 GWh of annual sodium-ion battery system production and citing more than 6 GWh of customer commitments from Jupiter Power, Energy Vault, and RWE Americas. The facility, representing up to $71 million in capital investment and supported by a $10.5 million CalCompetes tax credit awarded in May 2026, is scheduled to begin production and…

Heating and cooling buildings account for over a quarter of UK CO2 emissions, and the country has deployed almost none of the shallow geothermal energy that could displace fossil fuels in that sector at scale. The gap is not primarily technical; it is a knowledge gap. Developers, planners, and regulators lack the subsurface data needed to assess geothermal viability, design aquifer thermal energy storage systems with confidence, or satisfy environmental requirements about interference between adjacent schemes. The British Geological Survey’s release of 17 borehole data packs and a drilling report from the Cheshire Observatory, the final major deliverable from the…

Only 0.3% of electric vehicles built since 2022 have required a battery replacement, according to Recurrent Analytics data, compared with roughly one in twelve vehicles produced between 2011 and 2016. That is not a marginal improvement. It reflects a wholesale transformation in battery chemistry, thermal management architecture, and software-controlled charge management that has occurred largely out of view of the consumer surveys still showing battery longevity as the leading obstacle to EV adoption. The gap between what the performance data shows and what prospective buyers believe represents one of the more consequential mismatches in the current automotive market. The Recurrent…

Mitsubishi Gas Chemical and Gold Hydrogen have signed a memorandum of understanding to study a green methanol production facility on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula, using natural hydrogen from the Ramsay Project as the primary feedstock, with a preliminary feasibility study planned for the second half of 2026 aligned with Ramsay flow testing. The agreement positions MGC as both technology owner and methanol marketer in the staged process. On paper, the logic is compelling: natural hydrogen that surfaces at high purity without the energy input required for electrolysis, combined with captured CO2 and renewable power from a region with strong solar…

On 24 June 2026, Belgium set a new record for the quarter-hourly electricity price at €1,038.25 per MWh for the 15-minute slot beginning at 8:45 pm. The Netherlands reached €902 per MWh, Germany €747 per MWh, and France €433 per MWh during their respective evening peak intervals. Belgian daily average prices on that date hit €257.55 per MWh, the highest level since December 2024. These numbers did not emerge from a generation shortfall or a grid emergency. They emerged from an entirely predictable combination of rising cooling demand, declining solar output after sunset, low wind production, and reduced thermal plant…

EU electricity prices for energy-intensive industries averaged more than twice US levels and nearly 50% above those in China in 2025, sustained from the prior year, while household electricity prices in many countries have risen faster than incomes and inflation since 2019. The political consequences are accumulating. Governments across Europe spent a decade positioning the shift to clean energy as an affordability solution and are now explaining why consumers who have absorbed that transition face some of the highest retail power bills in the developed world. The explanation, however accurate, is not landing. The more important question is whether the…