Rio Tinto has approved construction of a new 25-megawatt solar plant at its Kennecott copper operation in Utah, bringing the mine’s total solar capacity to 30MW. The new solar plant will be located next to Kennecott’s existing 5MW solar plant, which was completed in 2023. Together, the two solar plants... Read more →

Rice University researchers have developed a catalyst that could render steam methane reforming (SMR) entirely emissions-free by using light rather than heat to drive the reaction. SMR is currently responsible for more than half of global hydrogen production and is emissions-intensive. The new copper-rhodium photocatalyst sports an antenna-reactor design that,... Read more →

As part of an ongoing push around renewable energy, GM announcED a 15-year renewable energy purchase agreement with NorthStar Clean Energy for three GM assembly plants. NorthStar’s Newport Solar project in Newport, Arkansas, will support the electricity needs of GM’s Lansing Delta Township Assembly and Lansing Grand River Assembly in... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced $33 million for nine projects across seven states to advance concentrating solar-thermal (CST) systems technologies for solar fuel production and long-duration energy storage. CST technologies use mirrors to reflect and concentrate sunlight onto a receiver, helping to produce carbon-free clean fuels, heat, and... Read more →

The University of Michigan Solar Car Team on Saturday won the American Solar Challenge, an 8-day, distance-based race from Tennessee to Wyoming. The U-M team covered 2,120 miles before crossing the finish line in Casper, Wyoming, taking advantage of many of the route’s opportunities to add distance through optional loops... Read more →

SunHydrogen, the developer of a technology to produce renewable hydrogen using sunlight and water, entered into a joint development agreement with Honda R&D Co., Ltd.. SunHydrogen’s solar hydrogen technology uses abundant and low-cost materials, requires no external power other than sunlight, and is designed with scalability in mind. Its core... Read more →

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced 60 selectees that will receive $7 billion in grant awards through the Solar for All grant competition to deliver residential solar projects to more than 900,000 households nationwide. The grant competition is funded through the Inflation Reduction Act, which created EPA’s $27-billion Greenhouse... Read more →

Chevron New Energies, a division of Chevron USA Inc., is developing a 5-megawatt hydrogen production project in California’s Central Valley. The project aims to create lower carbon energy by utilizing solar power, land, and non-potable produced water from Chevron’s existing assets at the Lost Hills Oil Field in Kern County.... Read more →

Holtec International announced a new power plant design which melds the benefits of nuclear (high energy density, non-polluting, base load) with those of solar (zero fuel cost, minor regulatory barriers) that is entirely carbon-free and is adaptable for deployment in any country. Called CNSP, an acronym for Combined Nuclear/Solar Plant,... Read more →

Rio Tinto will drive development of Australia’s largest solar power project near Gladstone, after agreeing to buy all electricity from the 1.1GW Upper Calliope Solar Farm to provide renewable power to Rio Tinto’s Gladstone operations. The agreement will bring more renewable power into one of Australia’s most important industrial hubs... Read more →

Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have found that in some parts of the country, compound energy droughts—i.e., when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, both at the sametime—can last nearly a week. The team published the findings in an open-access paper in the journal Renewable... Read more →

Rio Tinto has approved a new 12.4MW solar farm and 8.8MVa/2.1MWh of battery storage to provide renewable energy for the Amrun bauxite operations near Weipa in Queensland, Australia. The 12.4MW solar farm and battery storage are part of Rio Tinto’s global decarbonization strategy and ongoing efforts to reduce emissions at... Read more →

Duke Energy will break ground in DeBary, Fla., on the first demonstration project in the United States to create clean energy using an end-to-end system to produce, store and combust 100% green hydrogen. The innovative system is the result of collaboration between Duke Energy, Sargent and Lundy, and GE Vernova... Read more →

Researchers in Japan have mimicked the process of photosynthesis to produce methane from CO2 water and sunlight. An open-access paper on their work is published in the journal ACS Engineering Au. Previously, corresponding author Kazunari Domen from the University of Tokyo and colleagues developed a system that used sunlight to... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) announced the Solar-thermal Fuels and Thermal Energy Storage Via Concentrated Solar-thermal Energy funding opportunity, which will award $30 million for projects to produce fuels via renewable energy resources and improve thermal energy storage technologies. This announcement focuses on concentrating... Read more →

Molecular photoswitches that can both convert and store energy could be used to make solar energy harvesting more efficient. A team of researchers has used a quantum computing method to find a particularly efficient molecular structure for this purpose. The procedure was based on a dataset of more than 400,000... Read more →

Electrify America has begun commercial operation of the new 75MW Electrify America Solar Glow 1 solar photovoltaic renewable energy generation project in San Bernardino County, CA, announced last year. Electrify America Solar Glow 1 is the result of a 15-year virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA) with developer Terra-Gen. Electrify America... Read more →

A joint research team from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) and collaborators have developed a stable artificial photocatalytic system that is more efficient than natural photosynthesis. The new system mimics a natural chloroplast to convert carbon dioxide in water into methane, very efficiently using light. A paper on this... Read more →

Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting based on solar energy is one promising approach for the production of green hydrogen. However, its widespread application is limited by a lack of efficient photoanodes for catalyzing the rate-limiting oxygen evolution reaction (OER), an important reaction in PEC water splitting. Recently, organometal halide perovskites (OHPs)... Read more →

SunHydrogen, the developer of a technology to produce renewable hydrogen using sunlight and water (earlier post), entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with COTEC to explore the development and optimization of industrial electroplating solutions for SunHydrogen’s semiconductor deposition, a fundamental component of the company’s nanoparticle technology. Located in Changwon,... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) announced the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law: Silicon Solar Manufacturing and Dual-use Photovoltaics Incubator funding opportunity (DE-FOA-0003057), which will award $45 million for projects to enable continued solar cost reductions while developing next-generation solar technologies and boosting US solar manufacturing. The... Read more →

Sparc Technologies announced that Sparc Hydrogen, a JV between the University of Adelaide, Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) and Sparc Technologies, has executed a Kick-Start agreement with the CSIRO to undertake on-sun testing of Sparc Hydrogen’s photocatalytic water splitting (PWS) reactor at the CSIRO Energy Centre in Newcastle, New South Wales,... Read more →

Researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and their Canadian partners have designed a low-cost photoreactor design for solar-driven synthesis. The photoreactors have a low level of complexity, are readily manufacturable via mass fabrication techniques in polymers, and are easy to adapt to diverse photocatalysts. An open-access paper on... Read more →

Synhelion and its partner the University of Florida announced that their joint project has been awarded US$2.7 million from the US Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO). The project aims to accelerate the large-scale development and deployment of concentrating solar thermal power (CSP) technology to produce green hydrogen... Read more →

The US Department of Energy is funding a demonstration of Sunvapor’s solar steam and thermal battery technology to lower further the Carbon Intensity (CI) of the renewable dimethyl ether (DME) produced by Oberon Fuels at its Maverick Innovation Center in Brawley, California. Oberon Fuels’ Maverick Innovation Center The demonstration project... Read more →

The US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Sandia National Laboratories, co-leads of the Heliostat Consortium, announced seven awardees from a request for proposals (RFP) aimed at achieving DOE’s goals for heliostat cost reduction, sustained multifaceted innovation, and improved solar field performance. Heliostats are mirrors that... Read more →

EPFL researchers have built a pilot-scale solar reactor that produces usable heat and oxygen, in addition to generating hydrogen with unprecedented efficiency for its size. This is the first system-level demonstration of solar hydrogen generation. Unlike typical lab-scale demonstrations, it includes all auxiliary devices and components, so it gives us... Read more →

Lightyear, the developer of solar electric vehicles, will redirect its focus and resources completely towards the development and production of Lightyear 2, its intended mass-market model. This means the suspension of the production of Lightyear 0, the first production solar car. Accordingly, Lightyear has submitted the request to the court... Read more →

Fusion Fuel (earlier post) completed the interconnection of its H2Évora plant to the Portuguese electric grid and has successfully commissioned the facility. The demonstration project, comprising 15 HEVO-Solar units and associated balance-of-plant equipment, will produce 15 tons of green hydrogen per year and avoid the emission of 135 tons of... Read more →

Scientists from the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are providing researchers with a guide to how best to measure the efficiency of producing hydrogen directly from solar power. Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water-splitting, which relies on sunlight to split water into... Read more →

ETH Zurich spin-off Synhelion has started the construction of DAWN—its own industrial plant to produce synthetic fuels using solar heat. (Earlier post.) Located in Jülich, Germany, the facility will demonstrate the entire process from concentrating sunlight to producing synthetic liquid fuel on an industrial scale. The production process—using only solar... Read more →

Global investment in renewable energy totaled $226 billion in the first half of 2022, setting a new record for the first six months of a year, according to Renewable Energy Investment Tracker 2H 2022, a new report published by research firm BloombergNEF (BNEF). Investment in new large- and small-scale solar... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) launched the Cadmium Telluride Accelerator Consortium (CTAC)—a $20-million initiative designed to make cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar cells less expensive, more efficient and develop new markets for solar cell products. CdTe solar cells were first developed in the United States and are the second-most common... Read more →

bp will acquire a 40.5% equity stake in and to become operator of the Asian Renewable Energy Hub (AREH), which has the potential to be one of the largest renewables and green hydrogen hubs in the world. Based on the development of world-scale renewable power generation, AREH, in the Pilbara... Read more →

Electrify America entered into a 15-year virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA) with developer Terra-Gen to build a solar photovoltaic renewable energy generation project in San Bernardino County, California called Electrify America Solar Glow 1. The new solar project is expected to generate 75 MW at peak solar capacity or an... Read more →

Perovskite materials may hold the potential to play an important role in a process to produce hydrogen in a renewable manner, according to an analysis from scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Hydrogen has emerged as an important carrier to store energy generated by renewable resources, as a... Read more →

Using a hematite photocatalyst, a team led by researchers from Kobe University has succeeded in producing both hydrogen gas and hydrogen peroxide at the same time from sunlight and water. An open-access paper on the work is published in Nature Communications. Hydrogen has gained attention as one of the possible... Read more →

DHL Express is installing solar panel units on trucks within its US pickup and delivery fleet, reducing fuel consumption in markets throughout the country. Equipping 67 of DHL Express’ medium- and heavy-duty trucks with the TRAILAR solar technology is expected to reduce CO2 emissions by 1,000 kg per year for... Read more →

Ford is partnering with solar company Sunrun to enhance home energy management, leveraging the onboard battery capability of the all-electric F-150 Lightning. Americans experienced the most power interruptions on record in 2020, according to the US Energy Information Administration; with F-150 Lightning, homeowners can use their truck to maintain their... Read more →

The US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), joined by partners at Sandia National Laboratories and the Australian Solar Thermal Research Institute, launched the Heliostat Consortium (HelioCon), an international effort to drive down the cost of heliostats. HelioCon, led by NREL, emphasizes the significance of heliostats as... Read more →

For more than 20 years, California has aggressively supported the rooftop solar market through its Net Energy Metering (NEM) program in Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE), and San Diego Gas & Electric Company (SDG&E) territories. NEM allows customers who generate their own energy (customer-generators) to... Read more →

Heliogen and Bloom Energy have successfully demonstrated the production of green hydrogen by integrating the companies’ technologies: Heliogen’s concentrated solar energy system and the Bloom Electrolyzer. Heliogen’s AI-enabled concentrated solar energy system is designed to create carbon-free steam, electricity, and heat from abundant and renewable sunlight. When combined with Bloom’s... Read more →

Hyundai is facilitating the easy installation of an integrated clean energy ecosystem called Hyundai Home. Hyundai Home offers customers an opportunity to access solar energy and electric vehicle charging from their home with top-rated home chargers, solar panels, and energy storage systems through a one-stop marketplace platform. The Hyundai Home... Read more →

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered a new way to train microbes to make n-butanol. A team of biologists and engineers modified Rhodopseudomonas palustris TIE-1 (TIE-1) so that it can produce a biofuel using only three renewable and naturally abundant source ingredients: carbon dioxide, solar panel-generated electricity... Read more →

Lightsource bp, together with Xcel Energy and EVRAZ North America, launched its new 300-megawatt Bighorn Solar project. Lightsource bp, a 50:50 joint venture with bp, unveiled the solar project that will help reduce emissions and support more than 1,000 jobs at EVRAZ’s Pueblo steel mill—the world’s first steel mill to... Read more →

Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Toyota Motor Corporation, and Toyota Central R&D Labs., Inc. (CRDL) have commenced discussions on joint research aimed at accelerating development and implementing advanced technologies in the field of energy and the environment. The three parties each possess a strong desire... Read more →

Researchers at Monash University in Australia have conducted a lifecycle analysis and net energy analysis (LCA/NEA) of a hypothetical large-scale solar-electrolysis plant for the production of green hydrogen. The open-access paper on the study is published in the RSC journal Energy & Environmental Science. Process flow diagram and construction phase... Read more →

AMPLY Power is working with Duke Energy Sustainable Solutions to expand fleet electrification offerings, including the first commercially available combination solar canopy and overhead electric vehicle charging solution covered by a power purchase agreement (PPA) leasing and financing model. The field-tested solution, enabled by the patent-pending Pantograph In-Depot Equipment (PIDE)... Read more →

Cummins Inc. joined government leaders and partner Iberdrola, one of the world’s largest energy companies, to announce its plans for one of the world’s largest electrolyzer plants for the production of green hydrogen to be located in Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. This investment in Spain comes on the heels of Iberdrola... Read more →

Ireland-based electrolyzer company Fusion Fuel Green PLC will collaborate with Consolidated Contractors Group S.A.L. (Offshore) (CCC), to develop green hydrogen plants in the Middle East. CCC and Fusion Fuel have agreed to cooperate on projects involving the production of green hydrogen for potential clients in the refining and petrochemical industries... Read more →