Log in
1, Rio Tinto begins plans the possible use of a large heat battery, one of the first to be used in an industrial process.
US-based Rondo will work on the design of a 360 MWh heat storage project for an alumina works owned by Rio Tinto in Queensland, Australia. If the plan goes ahead, it will be one of the first such ‘batteries’ in large scale heavy industry. Rondo’s technology is designed to take in electricity at times of day when power is very cheap - an increasing feature of the solar-dominated Australian grid - and convert it to very high temperature heat. The heat is released as steam over the rest of the 24 hours.
2, Electricity generation using cheap aluminium pellets.
The growth of data centres is being accompanied by an increase in behind the meter electricity production, often using highly polluting and noisy generators. This is contributing to the widespread resistance to the building of these large and highly energy intensive plants. Voya Energy uses scrap alumimium made into pellets and then combined with air, water and an electrolyte to produce electricity for buildings such as this. There is no combustion, no CO2 emission, no noise and no other source of pollution. The end product is an aluminium compound that can be used in a variety of other industries but eventually, Voya hopes, will be recycled back into pure aluminium for re-use in electricity generation. This isn’t a process that it is going to out-compete conventional sources of electricity such as solar power but may well be able to beat diesel, particularly in today’s conditions. Initial estimates are for a cost of around 30 cents per kilowatt hour. The company raised $35m in a venture capital fund raising backed by some of the best known US investors. (Thank you to Jesse Scharf).
3, Burgenland, Austria aims for net zero by 2030, largely by over-installing wind and solar.
Burgenland is a small Austrian province on the eastern edge of the country, running along the border with Hungary. Its population is only about 300,000 but it has aggressive ambitions for decarbonisation. It has raised more cash from the European investment bank to build more wind and solar farms. The intention is to use surplus energy to power heat networks and battery storage. This is accompanied by such policies as heavy investment in building insulation improvements and support for agrivoltaics in farming The detailed plan is to achieve full net zero by 2030, making it probably the first part of the EU to hit this target.
4, Should utilities be privately or publicly owned?
Bloomberg carried an article about the comparative electricity prices of two towns in Massachusetts, separated by a narrow lake. On one side, customers of a municipal utility pay 16 cents per kWh while on the other side, households pay 34 cents, a price that rivals the costliest countries in Europe. Their supplier is privately-owned National Grid, a subsidiary of the UK’s main transmission operator. Massachusetts prices are generally high by US standards and have increased above inflation in recent years. Moreover the gap between the two sides of the lake has increased in recent years. Can we generalise from this example to say that municipally owned utilities are more capable of delivering lower priced electricity? Not necessarily, but new work from an Oxford-based group has suggested that the large difference in the costs of capital between publicly owned electricity generators and private competitors may mean a real difference in prices charged. Their analysis suggests that the cost of capital of a fully public system in today’s financial condition may be 3 to 5 % percent less than a private owner. As a result, they conclude the state could buy out all UK generating assets at a fair market price of £72bn to generate an annual saving in electricity bills of almost £15bn.
5, Even as EU manufacturers ask for a relaxation of targets for the EV share of automotive sales, demand booms for electric cars.
Sales of EVs in Europe were up 60% in September 2026 compared to the same month last year. Tesla was up 71%. Chinese makers increased their market share as the EU debates rules that will slow the surge. So almost one third of car sales in Europe were fully electric in September.
6, Separating CO2 from other gases using specialised membranes.
Unisieve in Zurich raised $9m of capital to commercialise its technology for point source carbon capture using metal oxide frameworks (MOFs) to split different gases. The company writes ‘At the core of our technology is a membrane cartridge that continuously separates gas into two streams. Inside, crystal-tuned pores act as molecular sieve, allowing selected molecules through while retaining others’. If this approach works it will be particularly valuable for industries such as cement production. My guess is that MOFs are a plausible contender to be the lowest cost point source carbon capture route.
7, Large scale green hydrogen, ammonia and methanol production in China.
China Energy Engineering started construction of the second phase of a plant that will eventually produce 600,000 tonnes of green ammonia as well as hydrogen and e-methanol. This appears to be the first commercial scale green ammonia plant in China. (For reference, global production is about 200 million tonnes). Separately, ammonia from the existing much smaller factory on the site was used in the first refuelling at sea of a long distance vessel that uses it as a fuel. China’s low costs for producing hydrogen will give it a major advantage in producing internationally competitive ammonia, whether for powering ships or for fertiliser. In an additional boost for ammonia as a shipping fuel, Maersk obtained EU funding to convert four of its large carriers that transport ammonia to dual-fuel engines that can also run on ammonia.
8, Emissions from plug-in hybrid cars (PHEVs) far higher than officially estimated.
Two recent studies demonstrated again that PHEVs are used far less in electric mode than current EU estimates. As a result, their emissions are almost as great as ICE cars. A report from Transport and Environment using data from 2024 car registrations suggested an emissions level of 146 grams per kilometre, not the 24 grams officially estimated. For comparison, T&E wrote that non plug-in cars registered in 2024 had average emissions of 169 grams A study from the International Council on Clean Transportation offered a slightly lower figure for PHEV emissions but stlll far higher than expected. The main reason for the huge underestimate of CO2 emissions appears to be that PHEVs are only driven in electric mode from 21% of the time compared to the 80% assumed in official figures.
9, German battery storage companies go into insolvency even as the national energy storage market booms.
Sonnen, a well-established home battery brand with 150,000 installations, went underthis week. This follows several other failures of local energy storage companies in the German market. Nevertheless battery storage, both commercial and residential, continues to grow rapidly in the country. Over 500,000 new installations were made in the first nine months of this year, with residential customers alone - including those with small plug-in solar kits - buying just under 4 GWh of capacity. (For comparison, the UK probably has about 15 GWh of total battery storage). Perhaps surprisingly, Sonnen’s US subsidiary continues to prosper but in the German market lower priced Chinese competitors and aggressive larger competitors buying their hardware from Asia left Sonnen nursing huge losses.
10, The first Lego bricks made from plastic derived from e-methanol.
Lego said it would use e-methanol from European Energy’s pioneer plant at Kassø to make some of its components. The company suggests it will gradually increase the percentage of e-methanol used in the plastic production process for 90 of its bricks. The European Energy factory makes the e-methanol from green hydrogen and CO2 collected from a biomass electricity plant. Lego’s move into using e-methanol as a raw material follows the increasing use of recycled plastics in its products. Its goal is that the bricks will be 100% low carbon by 2032 as part of the company’s path to net zero by 2050. But this week’s announcement about e-methanol didn’t hide from saying that progress is difficult. The move ‘follows more than five years of partnership, testing, learning and scaling to use e-methanol for the production of plastic. It’s been a complex journey.’
As always, I’m very grateful to those readers who sent in suggestions for news items to cover. Thank you.
Updated language on when your sensitive data might inform ads.
Credit:
Google
