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While the permit is a milestone for the U.S., it’s also a sign of how far ahead China is in the race to dominate the global nuclear industry. TerraPower had initially planned to build its first reactors in China back in the 2010s before relations between Washington and Beijing soured. In the meantime, China deployed the world’s only commercial-scale fourth-generation reactor, using a high-temperature gas-cooled design, all while building out more traditional light water reactors than the rest of the world combined. Just this week, construction crews lifted the reactor pressure vessel into place for the latest natively-designed Hualong One at the Lufeng nuclear plant in Guangdong province.
Lithium extraction plants in Chile. Lucas Aguayo Araos/Anadolu via Getty Images
Sodium-ion batteries and novel technologies to store energy for long durations are loosening lithium’s grasp on the storage market — but not by that much. Global lithium demand is on track to surpass 13 million metric tons by 2050, the consultancy Wood Mackenzie estimated in its latest forecast covered in Mining.com. That’s according to an accelerated energy transition scenario that more than doubles the base-case projections. Under those conditions, supply shortages could start to show as early as 2028 if the industry doesn’t pony up $276 billion in new capacity, the report warned. Under a less ambitious decarbonization scenario, the estimates fall to about 5.6 million tons of lithium.
The Department of Energy ordered the last coal-fired power plant in Washington State to remain open past its planned retirement last year on the grounds that losing the generation would put the grid at risk. At least for the near future, however, the station’s owners say they have little need to fire up the coal furnaces. On an earnings call last week, TransAlta CEO John Kousinioris said that, given “how flush” Washington is with hydropower, the cost of firing up the coal plant wasn’t worth it most of the time. Instead, the utility said it wanted to convert the station into a gas-fired plant. In the meantime, Kousinioris said, “our primary focus is more on getting clarity on the existing order,” according to Utility Dive.
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The European Union has proposed setting a quota for publicly funded projects to source 25% of their steel from low-carbon sources. The bloc’s long-delayed Industrial Acceleration Act came out this week with formal pitches to fulfill Brussels’ goal to revive Europe’s steelmaking industry with cleaner technology. Still, the trade group Hydrogen Europe warned that the rules neither accounted for limited direct subsidies for key technologies to develop clean fuel supply chains nor the absence of similar quotas in other industries such as housing construction or automotive construction. “We call on co-legislators to strengthen the Act and close the gaps on ambition, scope, and clarity. Europe must ensure that its industry can grow, compete, and lead globally in strategic clean technologies like hydrogen,” Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, chief executive of Hydrogen Europe, said in a statement. “Hydrogen Europe and its members stand ready to support policymakers to ensure the Industrial Accelerator Act delivers on its initial promises.”
A week ago, Google backed a deal to build what Heatmap’s Katie Brigham said “would be the largest battery in the world by energy capacity. Now China is building by far the world’s largest commercial experiment yet in using compressed air to store energy. The $520 million project, called the Huai’an Salt Cavern CAES demonstration plant, includes two 300-megawatt units. The first unit came online in December, and the second switched on in recent weeks, according to Renewables Now. At peak output, the facility could power 600,000 homes. The Trump administration initially dithered on giving out funding to compressed air energy storage projects in the U.S. But as of December, a major project in California appeared to be moving forward.
Breaking China’s monopolies over key metals needed for modern energy technology and weapons is, as ever, a bipartisan endeavor. A top Democrat just backed the Senate’s push to support a critical minerals stockpile. In a post on X, Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin pitched legislation she said “ensures we have a plant to stockpile critical minerals and protect our economy. This is an important step to ensure hostile nations like China never have a veto over our national security or economy.”
The U.S. liquified natural gas industry is certainly looking at boom times. U.S. developers signed sale and purchase agreements for 40 million tons per year in 2025 from planned export facilities, according to new Department of Energy data the Energy Information Administration posted. That’s the highest volume since 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent demand for American LNG soaring. That conflict, too, is still having its effects on global fossil fuel supplies. A Russian-flagged LNG tanker is on fire in the Mediterranean Sea as the result of a drone strike by Ukraine, The Independent reported Wednesday.
It’s not just fossil fuels. Qatari smelter Qatalum started shutting down on Tuesday as 50% shareholder Norsk Hydro issued a force majeure notice to customers. “The decision to shut down was made after the company’s gas supplier informed it of a forthcoming suspension of its gas supply,” the company said in a statement to Mining.com. QatarEnergy — which owns 51% of Qatalum’s other shareholder, Qatar Aluminum Manufacturing Co. — had previously suspended production after halting output of natural gas due to Iranian drone attacks.
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Panel manufacturer Silfab Solar paused production at its South Carolina factory in Fort Mill after a chemical spill triggered a regulatory investigation. The plant accidentally spilled approximately 300 gallons of a water solution containing less than 0.3% potassium hydroxide. Experts told WCNC, the Charlotte-area NBC News affiliate, that the volume of the caustic chemical that spilled will be harmless. But the state Department of Environmental Services “asked Silfab to cease receipt of additional chemicals at their facility until an investigation is complete.” Such accidents risk political backlash at a time of heightened public health anxiety over clean energy technologies. As Heatmap’s Jael Holzman wrote last summer, the Moss Landing battery factory fire sparked a nationwide backlash.
Two-thirds of offshore wind potential is located at sites where the water is too deep for traditional turbine platforms. But the first wind farm with floating platforms only came into operation nine years ago. The largest so far, located in Norway’s stretch of the North Sea, is just under 100 megawatts. So, if completed, Spanish developer Ocean Winds’ in the United Kingdom would be by far the largest plant. The company took a step forward on the 1.5-gigawatt project when the company signed the lease agreement this week, according to OffshoreWIND.biz.
In Denmark, meanwhile, right-wing politicians are campaigning against the country’s offshore wind giant, Orsted. The country’s conservative Liberal party campaigned on divesting from the company, which claims the Danish government as its largest shareholder, back in 2022. Now, Bloomberg reported, the party is once against renewing its calls to exit Orsted after this year’s election.
The Maanshan nuclear plant in southern Taiwan.Daniel Ceng/Anadolu via Getty Images
Facing surging electricity demand and mounting threats of blackouts from Chinese attacks on energy imports, Taiwan is taking yet another step toward reversing its nuclear phaseout. Nearly a year after the island nation’s last reactor shut down, Taiwanese Premier Cho Jung-tai, a member of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party that has long opposed atomic energy, announced new proposals to allow the state-owned Taiwan Power Company to submit plans to restart at least two of the country’s three shuttered nuclear stations. (A fourth plant, called Lungmen, was nearly completed in the late 2010s before the DPP government canceled its construction.) The government report also said Taiwan may consider building new nuclear technologies, such as small modular reactors or fusion plants.
In June 2023, thousands of lightning strikes in heat wave-baked Quebec sparked more than 120 wildfires that ultimately scorched nearly 7,000 acres of parched forests. Lightning, in fact, starts almost 60% of wildfires. Now a Vancouver-based weather modification startup called Skyward Wildfire says it can prevent catastrophic blazes by stopping lightning strikes through cloud seeding. MIT Technology Review found some good reasons to doubt the company’s claims. But experts said preventing wildfires is cheaper than putting them out, so it may have some merit.
