Author: Arnes Biogradlija

A single metric is increasingly shaping investment calculus for battery energy storage systems across European power markets: the Top-Bottom spread, defined as the difference between the highest and lowest hourly electricity price within a given 24-hour period. For a one-hour duration battery operating under ideal conditions, this figure represents the theoretical ceiling on daily arbitrage revenue. What that ceiling has done since 2022, and where it appears headed, carries direct implications for storage project economics across the continent. Germany offers the clearest longitudinal case. During the 2022 energy crisis, TB1 spreads reached approximately 300 €/MWh on a rolling average basis,…

When the European Commission settled its emissions cartel case against BMW, Volkswagen, and DaimlerChrysler in 2021, the €875 million fine was calibrated against a defined window of illegal coordination: 2009 to 2014. That timeline, it now appears, may have been a negotiated convenience rather than an accurate historical record. Internal emails filed as evidence in ongoing litigation at London’s High Court of Justice, and reviewed by Follow the Money, show the same carmakers exchanging strikingly coordinated communications about diesel emissions technology as early as October 2006, the precise starting point the Commission originally suspected but ultimately said it could not…

European power markets recorded over 700 hours of negative day-ahead prices in 2024, representing more than 8% of the year and marking the highest occurrence ever documented. What began as sporadic events in select markets has evolved into a continent-wide phenomenon, with Spain reaching 6.3% negative-price hours in 2025 after recording zero such instances in 2023. The shift from rare anomaly to regular market feature signals fundamental misalignment between generation capacity additions and system flexibility requirements. The transition to quarter-hourly settlement intervals on October 1, 2025, provides granular visibility into pricing patterns that previous hourly data obscured. Finland led European…

Grid-scale battery installations have grown from niche applications to critical infrastructure components in four years. Global utility-scale battery power capacity increased more than twelve times between 2020 and 2024, according to the International Energy Agency’s Electricity 2026 report, driven by installation costs declining approximately 40% since 2024 and fundamental shifts in power generation portfolios. The deployment acceleration correlates directly with jurisdictions experiencing rapid variable renewable integration. California, Texas, Germany, the United Kingdom, and South Australia have emerged as leading markets, where battery systems now routinely dispatch stored energy during evening demand peaks when solar generation ceases. This operational pattern addresses…

We are addicted to bad news. In the climate conversation, even the well-intentioned are often paralyzed by the idea that saving the planet requires a sacrifice we can’t afford. We hear that we are trading one environmental disaster for another: that to get off oil, we must rape the earth for metals. WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE Cédric Philibert, a former lead analyst at the International Energy Agency (IEA) and a man who predicted our current climate crisis with terrifying accuracy back in 1990, has a different message. It is time to stop viewing the energy transition as a burden…

Global electricity demand is on track to grow 50 percent faster to 2030 than it did over the past decade, yet power‑sector emissions are forecast to plateau rather than fall, despite an unprecedented build‑out of renewables and nuclear generation. That tension defines the new “Age of Electricity” and exposes a structural gap between ambition and system design. Between 2026 and 2030, global electricity consumption is projected to rise by an average of 3.6 percent per year, compared with 2.8 percent over the previous ten years. This equates to around 1 100 terawatt‑hours of additional demand each year, versus 700 terawatt‑hours…

Cummins Inc. has terminated its electrolyzer operations, abandoning a business segment that executives projected would generate $400 million in annual revenue by 2025. The Columbus-based manufacturer cited deteriorating market conditions driven by federal policy reversals under the Trump administration, marking one of the most visible corporate retreats from green hydrogen infrastructure in the United States. The decision represents a sharp pivot from Cummins’ 2020 strategic positioning, when the company held a dedicated “Hydrogen Day” event forecasting electrolyzers as “a fast-growing and increasingly important part of our business.” That optimism materialized briefly under Biden-era incentives, including the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax…

Maintaining gas supply reliability above 99.99% across 3,700 kilometers of underground pipework provides Hong Kong and China Gas Company Limited with an operational foundation few utilities can match. That infrastructure advantage, combined with the town gas already containing approximately 50% hydrogen, positions the 160-year-old utility to capitalize on decarbonization mandates affecting maritime transport, aviation, and heavy industry sectors, where electrification remains technically constrained. The company’s strategic repositioning centers on three distinct revenue streams: green methanol production from waste conversion, hydrogen ecosystem development, and sustainable aviation fuel manufacturing through its EcoCeres subsidiary. Each targets industries facing imminent regulatory pressure to reduce…

Most conversations about decarbonizing heavy transport are stuck in a childish binary: batteries good, hydrogen bad. It’s a comforting story because it’s simple. It also collapses the moment you leave a conference stage and step into a real logistics control tower. Diederick Luijten has spent decades inside industrial gases and the last years deep in hydrogen mobility. He’s not selling a miracle molecule. He’s describing a system constraint: power availability. In parts of Europe, the grid is already saturated. Not “busy.” Not “strained.” Saturated. The punchline is brutal: you can have the best electric truck on the market and still…

If you want a fast reality check on the last twenty years, ignore speeches and watch the commodity signal. The argument in this lecture sequence is blunt: the industrial economy is not “transitioning” in the comforting sense of swapping inputs while preserving the same machine. It is reorganizing under constraint, and the constraint is still oil, not ideology. You can purchase the full masterclass here. WATCH 1st PART OF MASTERCLASS HERE This matters because the dominant public story assumes continuity. Electrify everything, scale wind and solar, add batteries, and industrial society keeps its current shape. The lectures make the opposite…