Author: Arnes Biogradlija

Electric vehicle sales exceeded 20% of global new car market share in 2024 and reached 35% in the first quarter of 2025. The battery management system sitting at the centre of every one of those vehicles has evolved in parallel, but less visibly than the cells it monitors. A review published in the Journal of Energy Storage in 2026 by researchers from Moroccan universities provides a structured account of where BMS technology currently stands: the gap between what the system needs to do to support next-generation batteries and what current commercial implementations can reliably deliver is wider than the EV…

Nineteen new green methanol projects were approved in China in the first half of 2026, representing approximately 3.525 million tonnes of annual planned capacity, making green methanol by far the most active segment of China’s hydrogen-derived fuel pipeline. Into that accelerating build-out, SPIC’s Wenzhou Da’an Green Hydrogen Demonstration Project has delivered something none of the new approvals can yet claim: an actual commercial export cargo. The first batch of 3,750 metric tonnes of green methanol has been loaded and shipped to international destinations, the first large-scale export of Chinese green methanol on record. The project behind the shipment is one…

Global battery energy storage capacity is expanding at a compound annual growth rate of 42% through 2030, according to GlobalData’s 2026 Strategic Intelligence report on batteries in power. China and the United States together held 74.6% of installed capacity at the end of 2025. Still, the geography of deployment is broadening: Australia has emerged as the third-largest market worldwide, with total installed capacity in the National Electricity Market exceeding 9 GW after more than doubling in the past year, alongside more than 1 GW added in Western Australia’s Wholesale Electricity Market over the same period. AEMO commissioned 2.7 GW of…

In January 2025, CATL announced a 19 GWh storage partnership with Masdar valued at US$6 billion for the Round-The-Clock solar project in Abu Dhabi, widely reported as a landmark agreement that would anchor the Chinese battery giant’s position in the Middle East’s rapidly expanding energy storage market. By mid-2026, the actual supply contracts for that same project had been split between BYD, which won 11.275 GWh, and Sungrow, which secured 7.5 GWh in May. Together they account for 18.775 GWh, nearly the entire planned storage capacity of a project that features a 5.2 GW solar PV plant paired with 19…

A consortium including HOCHTIEF, Siemens Financial Services, and Demeter has taken a 15% equity stake in the Phase One Lionheart project entity for €133 million, the European Investment Bank has committed €250 million, and Germany’s state-owned KfW bank has contributed €150 million in equity directly through the Deutschlandfonds. The total financing package for Phase One of Vulcan Energy’s Lionheart project reached €2.2 billion at financial close in May 2026. With the first drawdown now active and civil construction underway at the 30 MW geothermal power plant in Landau, the project has moved from its decade-long development phase into execution. The…

Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles accounted for less than 1% of European zero-emission heavy-duty truck sales in 2025, in a market where battery-electric trucks moved from pilots to early-scale commercial deployment, and diesel remained dominant across long-haul duty cycles. Into that market, Toyota has signed a binding agreement to acquire a one-third stake in Cellcentric, the fuel cell company founded in 2021 by Daimler Truck and the Volvo Group. The three companies will hold equal shares once regulatory approvals are complete, with the transaction expected to close by the end of 2026 or early 2027. The deal combines Toyota’s 30-year commercial…

Norway expects to receive approximately $78 billion from its oil and gas sector this year in the form of taxes and dividends, derived from a fiscal regime that charges Equinor 78% in effective tax on Norwegian Continental Shelf profits and in which the state owns 67% of the company. The UK, operating the same geology on the other side of the median line, has averaged approximately £2.5 billion per year in oil and gas tax receipts over the past decade, a period that included both a Conservative government that slashed sector taxes to stabilise production and a windfall tax imposed…

On 10 July 2026, Lady Justice Cockerill handed down the liability judgment in the Pan-NOx Prohibited Defeat Device trial, the largest and most complex group claim in English and Welsh legal history, finding that three vehicles, one Mercedes and two Peugeot/Citroën models, contained prohibited defeat devices, while Ford, Renault, and Nissan were found not to have breached emissions regulations. The carmakers broadly claimed victory. But a 2010 internal document from PSA Peugeot Citroën, disclosed during proceedings, offers a more unsettling reading of the industry’s relationship with clean air standards than any court verdict can capture on its own. The document,…

In May 2026, solar supplied 12.8% of US electricity while coal supplied 12.2%, the first month on record in which solar generation exceeded coal in the national electricity mix. Solar generated an all-time high of 45.5 terawatt-hours in May, exceeding output from May 2025 by 17% and surpassing the previous monthly record set in July 2025. Coal’s share of the electricity mix has nearly halved over five years, falling from 19.7% in May 2021 to 12.2% in May 2026, while solar’s share more than doubled from 5.4% to 12.8% over the same period. The milestone arrived without ceremony and against…

Between 2018 and 2023, Shell’s trading subsidiary in the Bahamas, Shell Western Supply and Trading Limited, posted profits of $6.2 billion. The office employs 37 people. That works out to $28 million in profit per employee per year, compared to a group-wide average of $270,000. The ratio of 104 to 1 is not the product of exceptional individual productivity. It is the output of a transfer pricing structure in which a subsidiary classified as a “risk-taking entrepreneur” under OECD guidelines captures the margin on oil trading flows from West Africa and Latin America to the UK and Singapore, in a…