Author: Arnes Biogradlija
Arnes Biogradlija
Arnes Biogradlija is the founder and Editor in Chief of EnergyNews.biz, which he launched in 2021 to separate energy transition realities from fairy tales. He writes data driven analysis on hydrogen, energy storage, small modular reactors, grids and industrial policy, and leads the Energy Talks interview series. EnergyNews.biz reporting has been cited more than 100 times by the International Energy Agency.
Widely quoted estimates put the capital cost of 100 MW of data center capacity at $900 million to more than $1.8 billion depending on facility type, and they do not necessarily include servers and GPUs. Epoch AI’s May 2026 model implies the building is about 30% of the upfront capital for a GB200 NVL72 campus, while Cushman & Wakefield finds costs up 21% per MW in under two years. The ranges are plausible, but they describe one layer of the cost stack. Epoch AI’s May 2026 model of a typical US hyperscaler AI campus puts upfront capital at $37.9 billion…
A 2030 optimisation study of five shipped fuels finds electricity is at least 41 percent of every delivered cost, shipping is minor even over 10,000 km, and liquid hydrogen needs about 76 times the shipping capex of ammonia per MW.
A Journal of Energy Storage study finds that in 2024 battery dispatch followed day-ahead prices at r² 0.88 in California and 0.73 in Texas, a measure of price following that does not by itself show a carbon benefit.
Daejeon’s 38.8 km hydrogen tram, billed as the longest catenary free line in the world, is now expected to open in 2030 instead of 2028, while Ulsan’s 10.85 km first section carries the first proof point in 2029.
A review in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy puts the room temperature hydrogen capacity of metal organic frameworks generally below 1 wt%, against a US DOE on-board system target of 6.5 wt%, and flags the gap between powders and prototypes.
Global X launched an SMR ETF of about 15 companies whose top 10 holdings carry 97.8 percent of the weight, as the IEA scenario of 1,000 SMRs by 2050 would need about $670 billion of cumulative investment against about $5 billion a year now.
The European Investment Bank agreed up to €40 million in a convertible loan to Finland’s Steady Energy for its 50 MW thermal LDR-50 district heating reactor, its first SMR investment, with construction not due to start before 2029.
A review in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy says replacing oxygen evolution with ethylene glycol oxidation from PET waste can lower the anode potential by up to 1 V while co-producing chemicals and hydrogen.
The founder of Europe’s largest second-life storage factory says the model lost to cheaper new cells, and that is good news: Germany needs about 100 GWh of stationary storage by 2030 against about 25 GWh installed, and prices keep falling.
BCA Industries has designed a mobile battery recycling system on two semitrailers that it says captures about half the available high purity black mass on site, but throughput, cost and regulatory status are not disclosed.
