• At the peak on July 22, the grid had a margin of more than 20,000 megawatts, enough to supply an additional five million homes.

• Solar at times supplied more than 45 percent of all electricity, and batteries set a record with 11,980 megawatts.

• Solar capacity in Texas has more than doubled since 2023 and battery storage has more than tripled.

Records without disruptions

High temperatures pushed electricity demand in Texas to record levels in late July. The old record was broken two days in a row. Still, ERCOT, which runs the state's grid, did not need to ask residents to conserve electricity. Such calls have otherwise been common during the hottest months in recent years.

On July 21, demand reached 87,403 megawatts. That broke the previous record of 85,508 megawatts from August 2023. The next day, July 22, demand rose to 91,308 megawatts at around 5 p.m. One megawatt is enough to supply about 250 homes when consumption is at its highest.

When the peak was reached, there was still a margin of more than 20,000 megawatts between demand and the generation capacity connected to the grid. That is equivalent to electricity for an additional five million homes.

Thomas Gleeson, chair of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, said the grid hit an all-time peak without any problems.

Solar at times supplied nearly half of the electricity

The grid's ability to handle the hottest hours is largely due to the rapid expansion of solar power. During parts of the day, solar supplied more than 45 percent of all electricity generated. On July 21 and again on July 27, the record for solar generation was broken. It now stands at 34,700 megawatts.

Batteries also set a record. On July 22, they discharged 11,980 megawatts to the grid.

Batteries charge during the day, when electricity prices are at their lowest and solar is supplying large amounts of power. When the sun sets and solar generation declines, the batteries release the stored electricity. This keeps the grid stable and lowers electricity prices. At night it is often windier, and wind power then takes over part of the generation.

The expansion of solar and batteries has pushed the period when the grid is under the most strain to late in the evening, much later than just five years ago, according to ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas and Gleeson.

Leading the US in solar and batteries

Since Winter Storm Uri in 2021, when millions of Texans were hit by rolling blackouts, Texas has become the national leader in both solar power and battery storage.

Last year, ERCOT added 16,000 megawatts of new generation to the grid, most of it solar and batteries, according to Vegas. Between 2023 and 2025, the state's solar capacity more than doubled, and battery storage more than tripled.

ERCOT expects demand to reach about 175,000 megawatts by 2032, nearly double today's record. The increase is driven by data centers, a growing population and new industry. The queue of projects seeking to connect to the grid holds 460,000 megawatts. Not all of it will be built, but about 70 percent of the queue consists of solar and batteries.

Cyrus Reed, conservation director for the Sierra Club's Texas chapter, said solar power and batteries have made the grid more reliable, less costly and cleaner. Since 2021, Texas has met demand even during summers with record consumption, and solar and batteries are a major reason for that, according to Reed.

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• Solar overtakes coal as the world's largest source of electricity generation within six years, according to research firm BloombergNEF.

• Solar is the cheapest source of new electricity generation. Coal costs almost twice as much.

• Annual solar installations have grown from under 100 gigawatts in 2016 to over 650 gigawatts last year.

Solar overtakes coal

Solar is on track to become the world's largest source of electricity. According to BloombergNEF's latest energy transition outlook, this happens within six years. Solar then overtakes coal as the leading generator of electricity.

Jenny Chase, clean power specialist at BloombergNEF, says solar is the cheapest source of power in many countries. It is also the easiest and fastest to deploy. According to her, solar will play a substantial role in the global energy mix. She says solar and batteries will transform world power markets over the next ten years.

Two decades of growth

Solar has grown steadily over the past 20 years. Every year, more capacity has been added than the year before. In 2016, less than 100 gigawatts of solar was installed worldwide. Last year, the figure was over 650 gigawatts.

This year, BloombergNEF expects 640 gigawatts. From 2027, installations grow again.

Cheapest of all power sources

Fixed-axis solar PV is the cheapest source of new electricity generation. That remains the case this year, according to BloombergNEF's latest levelized cost of electricity benchmarks. Onshore wind comes in second.

Coal costs almost twice as much as these two technologies. Coal is even more expensive than battery storage, the technology that has seen the largest cost decline in recent years.

The most expensive are combined cycle gas turbines and offshore wind.

China, India and the US largest

China is by far the world's largest market for solar. It is followed by India, the US and Germany, measured in gigawatts expected to be installed this year. Pakistan is the fifth largest country.

Next in line are Brazil, Japan and Saudi Arabia, among others.

Several countries have launched programs to encourage domestic manufacturing. These cover assembly of modules, manufacture of cells and wafers, and production of polysilicon.

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• Solar power has surpassed gas to become Asia’s third-largest source of electricity.

• Solar generation in Asia has nearly quadrupled since 2020, reaching 1,727 terawatt hours over the twelve months to April 2026.

• China accounts for nearly three-quarters of the growth and has built up 1.2 terawatts of installed solar capacity.

Solar grows rapidly across Asia

Solar power has now overtaken gas as a source of electricity generation in Asia, according to a new analysis by Carbon Brief based on data from Ember.

Over the twelve months to April 2026, solar power generated 1,727 terawatt hours of electricity in Asia. Gas generated 1,711 terawatt hours during the same period. This makes solar the continent’s third-largest source of electricity after coal and hydropower.

Coal still accounts for around 52 percent of Asia’s electricity generation, while hydropower provides approximately 12 percent.

The development follows several years of rapid growth. Since 2020, annual solar generation has nearly quadrupled.

Asia at the center of global solar expansion

Asia accounts for around 60 percent of global solar growth since 2020, making the continent the main driver of worldwide solar deployment.

The trend also reflects changes in the global electricity mix. In April 2026, wind and solar power together generated more electricity than gas worldwide during a single month for the first time.

The main force behind Asia’s growth has been China. The country accounts for nearly three-quarters of the increase in the region’s solar output since 2020.

Record installations in 2025 brought China’s cumulative installed solar capacity to 1.2 terawatts by the end of the year.

China plays a central role

China also holds a dominant position in solar manufacturing. More than 80 percent of global solar manufacturing capacity is located in the country.

This has helped other Asian nations expand solar power through imports of low-cost solar panels.

During the energy crisis linked to the Iran war, Chinese solar exports to Asia increased sharply. In March 2026, exports reached 39 gigawatts, double previous levels and a new record.

Gas expansion loses momentum

At the same time, gas power has developed more slowly than many expected.

Many Asian countries depend on imported liquefied natural gas, LNG, to support gas-fired electricity generation. Supply disruptions and higher prices have affected expansion plans.

During 2022 and 2023, plans for around 81 gigawatts of new gas capacity in Asia were cancelled. Several LNG import terminals and pipelines in South Asia and South Korea have also been delayed or cancelled.

Global shortages of gas turbines have further postponed projects in Vietnam and the Philippines.

Between 2019 and 2024, Asia’s gas-power capacity increased by 22 percent. However, electricity generation from gas rose by only 6 percent during the same period. Many existing gas plants are not operating at high utilization rates because other energy sources are more competitive.

Solar reduces the need for gas

The expansion of clean energy has reduced the need for gas-fired generation in several countries.

Pakistan is highlighted as a notable example. The country’s rapid growth in rooftop solar installations has helped lower demand for gas-fired electricity.

Even in China, gas generation has become less competitive than coal and renewable energy due to supply constraints and high prices.

According to the International Energy Agency, IEA, the latest energy crisis has renewed concerns among gas-importing countries in Asia about the reliability and affordability of gas supplies. Many of these countries are also highly dependent on gas shipments passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

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This is part 3 about Project Energy Society. Here you'll find part 1 and part 2, and here are more articles about the energy society and EnergyNet.

The meeting begins with a small culture clash.

It's a perfectly ordinary Thursday and we sit down in a perfectly ordinary conference room.

But there we're going to talk about something unique. Something found nowhere else in the world. Whose epicenter, right at that moment, is this perfectly ordinary conference room, in a mid-sized city in southern Sweden.

"Marc," says Jonas Birgersson and smiles. "Just a reminder about the different meeting cultures."

Marc's last name is Weiss, and he throws up his hands in a mea culpa.

"Oh right, sorry!" he laughs.

The conference room is at ViaEuropa in Lund, Sweden, and the meeting has – typically Swedish – begun with a round of the table so everyone gets to introduce themselves. We only made it as far as the first person, however, before Marc Weiss – typically American – started firing off a whole series of questions at her.

Weiss settles down for a moment, and when it's his turn, he introduces himself as a professor at UC Berkeley and CEO of Global Urban Development.

He's a heavyweight in urban development. Former adviser to Bill Clinton, has worked with Steve Jobs, and built the NoMa neighborhood in Washington DC. Among other things.

Weiss is in Lund because he's involved in Project Energy Society, or EnergyNet as it's mostly called. We're all sitting there together in the conference room because the project has gone from theory to practice.

Last year, just after Easter, Broadband Jesus was resurrected as Electricity Jesus when the first installation in Lund was inaugurated.

Two buildings had gotten solar panels and a battery, and were then connected with a freedom cable, so they could share electricity with each other.

Now, a year later, ten buildings are being connected in the same way in Lund. Over lunch with a couple of people on the project, they tell me they're busy designing EnergyNet for seven new neighborhoods and urban development projects around Sweden.

That's actually exactly why we've gathered in the conference room. Jägersro outside Malmö, best known for its horse-racing track, is set to become a new neighborhood for 4,000 residents. A representative for that project is with us, along with Markus Paulsson, a key person from the City of Lund.

Find someone who talks about you the way Jonas Birgersson talks about power electronics

Birgersson starts a PowerPoint presentation but soon jumps up out of his chair and ends up in front of the whiteboard.

There he talks passionately about... power electronics!

You know the meme:

The new version goes: Find someone who talks about you the way Jonas Birgersson talks about power electronics.

If you don't have the same feelings for power electronics as he does – or even know what it is – don't worry! Most people don't.

I didn't get it either until quite recently, but I now realize it's one of those things that's very useful to know about if you want to understand the future. It's one of those technologies that works in the background, but its development over the past few years has been dramatic.

You don't need to understand exactly what power electronics is, but rather what it does and why what's happening now will lead to major changes.

The current electricity grid is a water hose

Let's start with the current grid and the role of power electronics in it.

Think of the electricity grid as an enormous system of water hoses. In a few places, water is pumped into the hoses, and in lots of places you can get water by turning a tap. For water to come out of the tap, the pressure in the hose has to be high enough.

If millions of people suddenly open their taps at the same time, the pressure across the whole system drops. Then the producers have to respond immediately by pumping in more water. If they can't keep up with the sudden demand, the pressure collapses entirely and nobody gets water.

In the same way, electricity is "pumped" into the lines, where it has to be consumed the same microsecond it's produced, and if the frequency in the grid isn't stable, you get a power outage.

The problem is that the electricity grid is, for the most part, dumb as a rock. The grid is blind and can't communicate with the people using the electricity. If I set my electric car to start charging at one in the morning, the car can't tell the grid that at that point in time I'm going to need such-and-such an amount of electricity and politely ask: "Is that okay?"

Instead it just switches the charging on with no warning, and the grid has to make sure it delivers immediately.

Power electronics are the grid's sluice gates

In other words, what would be needed are smart, programmable sluice gates that can sense the pressure themselves and decide exactly how much should be let through at any given moment.

That's what power electronics is.

Power electronics controls and shapes the electricity itself, instead of passively letting it flow wherever the pressure happens to carry it.

Unfortunately, this technology barely exists in the current grid. The reason is that it's very expensive and is only used to move very large amounts of electricity over long distances. That requires enormous converter stations. They're full of advanced equipment – like power electronics – that can handle very high voltage and very large amounts of power.

There you can, to a greater degree, decide how much power should be sent through the connection. You can say: Send 500 megawatts this way. Or 1,000 megawatts that way. Or reduce the flow. Or reverse the direction.

That's why it's so useful when you want to connect two electrical systems without forcing them to dance in exactly the same rhythm.

But this only exists in a few places. Out in the hose system itself, where you and I live, there are no such intelligent sluice gates. There the grid is passive copper and iron, unable to measure, think, or make decisions.

Why don't we build power electronics in everywhere?

The problem, as I said, is the cost. A system like that costs millions of dollars and takes years to build. That's why production is low and the cost trend is poor.

The electric car affects more than vehicles

So why is Birgersson so passionate?

Because something has happened that changes the playing field: The electric car.

An electric car is, in practice, a big battery on wheels, surrounded by power electronics.

The charger is especially significant. An electric-car charger is based on the same basic principle as your phone charger, but handles roughly a thousand times higher power.

Because sales of electric cars have grown – and are growing – sharply, the use of the cars' power electronics has too. More production means we learn to make it faster, better, and cheaper.

This is called Wright's law. I've written about it several times before, but in short it's a rule of thumb that says that with every doubling of total production, the cost falls by about 20 percent.

If the product you make costs 1,000 dollars per unit when you've made 300 of them, then it drops to 800 dollars once you've made 600. And so on.

Power electronics has therefore dropped substantially in cost.

The power electronics in electric cars have, roughly speaking, become around 70 percent cheaper per car since the early electric-car phase. But because today's cars also have much higher power and better charging capability, the more relevant figure is per unit of capacity: There the cost drop looks to be around 80–85 percent.

That corresponds to a Wright's law effect of around 19 percent per doubling. Very close to the rule of thumb's 20 percent, in other words.

On top of that, yet another kind of law is at play here: Moore's law. That's a different rule of thumb, which in the case of power electronics says that power density doubles roughly every four years. This trend has been observed by researchers between 1970 and 2020.

That means a converter of a certain size that handles 100 watts today will handle 200 watts in four years, 400 watts in eight years, 800 watts in twelve years, and so on.

This kind of exponential growth makes the numbers very large very quickly. In the original Moore's law, the number of transistors per chip went from 2,300 in 1971 to over 58 billion, 50 years later.

Higher power density means the same small device can do more work, or that the same work can be done by a smaller device. That's good because smaller and lighter power components take up less space, require less material, and often less cooling.

It means that now it's possible, cost-wise, to build the intelligent sluice gates into the system that keep track of and regulate what's happening out in every part of the grid.

The grid is getting more and more expensive

So we just stick power electronics into the current grid and solve the problems? Unfortunately it isn't that simple.

The grid still suffers from the same one-directional logic, even if we made it smarter. Even if you place smart technology closer to the users, the equipment is forced to submit to a grid that is still governed hierarchically and demands strict real-time balancing for the entire system at once.

The current grid has yet another problem: It's massively over-dimensioned and very expensive.

The grid has to handle the very highest peaks in usage, like an extreme cold snap, which might happen once every ten years. There's only one way to do that: To have grids and cables that can handle all the electricity used then.

In the industry it's called "fit and forget." You build a heavily over-dimensioned line, and then you don't have to worry about it anymore. It handles the extreme cases, but the rest of the time this expensive infrastructure largely sits unused.

It's as if we were to triple the number of lanes on every road in order to handle the Easter traffic without delays.

On top of that, the grid components themselves, like power transformers, are getting more expensive and are delivered more slowly.

Naturally, this makes it very expensive to build and maintain the grids.

In other words, it's no surprise that somewhere between 50 and 100 billion dollars will need to be invested in the Swedish grid alone in the coming years. Grids in other countries face investments that are at least as large. Guess what happens to your grid fee then…

The problems can be solved, if we learn from the internet

Despite its cost, the architecture of the grid itself worked reasonably well in the past, when the roles were locked into a handful of large producers and millions of passive consumers.

A problem arises in today's society when consumers suddenly acquire their own "pumps" in the form of solar panels, and start pushing power back into the system when it's sunny, or create massive new drains in the form of fast-charging electric cars.

So Birgersson & co. don't intend to fix the old grid. Instead they're building a new, parallel grid. One that can manage on its own, but can also cooperate with the old grid.

EnergyNet borrows its architecture and its lessons from how the internet works.

The internet isn't one single gigantic network, but a network of smaller networks that communicate with each other through set rules. EnergyNet applies exactly this structure to electricity distribution. It divides the grid into local zones, for example a single building or a block, which can largely function independently, but also talk to and cooperate with the other networks.

This architecture is made possible by power electronics. Especially the energy router, which is an advanced power-electronic machine. In the old system you have a dumb main fuse as your only protection against the grid. Either it's open and the electricity rushes through, or the fuse blows and everything goes dark.

The energy router instead works as a smart, digital sluice gate between your home and the outer grid. It isn't just open or closed. It measures the situation on both sides, negotiates digitally about what should be sent, decides the direction, and lets through only the exact amount of power both sides have agreed on.

For electricity to be sent or received, a digital negotiation has to take place via a shared language, Energy Protocol.

The router simply asks the outer grid:

"I have a surplus of electricity from my solar panels — is there anyone to receive it right now?"

Only when the answer is yes does the sluice gate open. Then the right amount of electricity is sent, in the right direction, at the right time.

This makes it impossible for your house to accidentally disturb the frequency in the large grid, and equally impossible for a disturbance in the rest of the grid to automatically knock out your house.

An everyday version of the same principle already exists in USB. The charger for your computer or phone has a cord with a USB port on one end and a power plug on the other. When you put the plug into the wall socket, you don't have to choose yourself exactly how much electricity should be transferred. The charger and the computer negotiate automatically according to an open standard.

Energy Protocol does something similar, but on a completely different level: between houses, batteries, solar panels, chargers, and local grids.

From real time to near real time

The old grid is fragile because the electricity has to be produced in the exact same microsecond you flip the switch. EnergyNet removes this rigid demand for "strict real time" and instead works in "near real time." Just as the internet uses data buffers so you can stream a movie without it stuttering, EnergyNet uses local batteries as energy buffers. The electricity is packaged and routed based on need and availability.

This architecture changes how we look at power outages. In the old grid, the electricity is either on or off. Lit or dark. EnergyNet makes sure that if the outer grid goes down, your own network can immediately disconnect and live off its own local battery. Through software, the house's most important functions are then prioritized, for example communication, the fridge and freezer, or medical equipment, while the jacuzzi gets cold.

Cheaper and cheaper to build EnergyNet

So the new grid needs batteries. Fortunately, the rise of electric cars has also brought another major advance over the past ten years: cheap batteries.

The same Wright's law has done its job here too. Since 2010, the cost of a lithium-ion battery has fallen by 93 percent. And for a battery in a stationary energy storage system, by 83 percent over the past ten years.

That means it will become cheaper and cheaper over time to build EnergyNet.

If EnergyNet picks up speed, starts spreading across the world, and becomes really big, that will in itself drive down costs, through increased production of the key components.

If you plan for this from the start when building a new neighborhood, it's of course the cheapest option.

That's exactly the message in the conference room to the representative from Jägersro. Build this into the plan and you'll be able to offer your future residents lower energy costs, clean electricity, and on top of that a strong resilience against disturbances. It's of course easier to knock out a grid with a few central points than a network of thousands of grids with no central points.

Energy Valley

But Birgersson isn't content with that. He wants to show that EnergyNet can create positive side effects in the surrounding area.

Now he's left the board and returned to the presentation slides. One of them shows a satellite image of the western Skåne–Copenhagen area.

Scandinavian Bay Area, it says.

With a wink, naturally, to California's San Francisco Bay Area, where Silicon Valley is located.

That's one of the reasons Marc Weiss is in the room.

Because he was, in fact, involved in creating the Silicon Valley we know today.

The year was 1981. Ronald Reagan had just taken office as president in a gloomy America. The American economy was wrestling with both high inflation and high unemployment, the steel and auto industries were in free fall, and the nation faced seemingly insurmountable and intense competition from efficient, state-backed Japanese and German industry.

In San Francisco's Bay Area, however, another industry was taking shape. The official birthplace of Silicon Valley is the garage where Bill Hewlett and David Packard built their first products back in the 1930s.

The place got its name only later, after the silicon-using semiconductor industry established itself there in the 1960s.

In the early 1980s, the area had reached a critical mass of garage entrepreneurship, exciting companies like Intel and Apple, strong personalities like Steve Jobs, venture capital, and not least research at Stanford.

Even so, Silicon Valley's future as we know it today was not at all predetermined. Several seeds had been sown, but no one knew whether they would grow into the meadow of flowers we have today, or dry out.

California's governor at the time, Jerry Brown, saw an opportunity and in 1981 set up The California Commission on Industrial Innovation. Its two co-chairs were David Packard and Steve Jobs among many other heavyweight names.

In 1982 they presented their proposals in Winning Technologies: A New Industrial Strategy for California and the Nation.

You can summarize the commission's contribution like this:

First, it gave a language to the Silicon Valley model: Innovation as the result of the interplay between universities, capital, entrepreneurs, education, and public policy.

Second, it connected the state's leadership directly with the representatives of the tech sector, which made high technology a central part of California's economic strategy.

Third, it led to, or contributed to, concrete investments in technical education and computer literacy.

Because both the political world and other actors took the strategy to heart, it became exactly the right nourishment for all the seeds that had been sown around the bay.

The commission's deputy director, and one of the report's main authors, was Marc Weiss.

44 years later he's in Lund, ready to use all his knowledge to help create a new valley: Energy Valley.

Seeds have been sown here too.

Here you'll find Lund University's Faculty of Engineering with a power electronics lab.

One of their researchers, Max Collins, now works on the EnergyNet project. He has a background at the neutron accelerator being built in Lund, ESS. There he worked on a very advanced power converter that takes energy from the grid, stores and shapes it, and delivers high-voltage pulses to the klystrons at exactly the right time and with very high quality.

The City of Lund is fully engaged and very active in the project, where, as mentioned, Markus Paulsson has been a driving force from the very beginning. For example, the first EnergyNet was installed in the buildings of two municipal companies.

There are collaborations with both the Californian universities Stanford and UC Berkeley.

The university, municipality, and business community in Lund also have experience forming a successful cluster within biomedicine, which they can now translate to the energy field.

And of course they have the entrepreneur and visionary in Jonas Birgersson and the sharp colleagues and advisers he draws to himself.

He, too, has done this before, but back then it was the telephone network that got a kick in the nuts. He still carries some scars from that time, but those experiences are worth their weight in gold today.

Unique

In my research I can't find anyone in the entire world trying to create anything like EnergyNet. There are plenty of projects about making the current grid a bit smarter, and a few that build new microgrids on a small scale. But no one with the ambition to build an entirely new energy system, and the idea for how it should be done.

Personally, I'm convinced it's possible.

EnergyNet is an idea that is both revolutionary and completely self-evident. The architecture is already proven and the components are readily available and getting ever cheaper.

Nor does it require large financial outlays from taxpayers; instead property owners will be able to look at the numbers, see that it's profitable, and therefore make the investment.

The openness of the project — Energy Protocol is open source, for example — means it can quickly spread across the world, and anyone who wants to can get involved and even build their own grid.

One thing that is needed is political decisions that make it permitted to run electricity cables — the freedom cables — between properties. This is forbidden, or complicated, in large parts of the world.

But not, in fact, within the EU. The area was deregulated within the union a few years ago, and it became possible to create so-called energy communities.

That gives the EU both a head start and an enormous opportunity.

If EnergyNet is rolled out fastest and most widely in the EU, Europe will have the lowest energy costs in the world. It will also have by far the most robust grid in the world, one that can withstand natural disasters, terrorism, and war.

Of course, it also cuts the dependence on gas and oil from despicable dictatorships.

On top of that, it becomes an industry in itself that creates jobs and growth and attracts research, companies, and resources.

The center of that could become Lund, with a surrounding cluster — an Energy Valley — but all of Europe, and ultimately the whole world, will benefit.

Mathias Sundin
Angry Optimist

• Batteries' share of the electricity grid on Australia's east coast rose from around 3 percent to nearly 10 percent in one year.

• In the first quarter of 2026, batteries discharged more than three times as much power as the year before.

• From July 2026, power prices will fall, and households could save up to 10.7 percent.

Rapid expansion

Over the past two years, Australia has built out large-scale energy storage faster per capita than any other country. In 2025, more new battery capacity came online than in the previous eight years combined. Between January 2025 and January 2026, batteries' share of the grid rose from around 3 percent to nearly 10 percent.

The country's combined capacity of batteries that are operational or about to come online is the second largest in the world, after China and the United States.

Lower prices

The effects are showing up on the electricity market. In the first quarter of 2026, the power that batteries fed into the east coast grid was more than three times greater than during the same period in 2025. The wholesale market price fell by 12 percent. Batteries set the price of electricity almost a third of the time.

From July 2026, Australia's benchmark power prices will begin to fall. Households could save up to 10.7 percent and small businesses up to 20.9 percent.

From ridicule to grid function

The expansion took off after an event in 2017. A severe storm knocked out the entire power grid in the state of South Australia. About six months later, the state government decided to build a large battery to solve the problem.

The Hornsdale battery had a capacity of 100 megawatts and was the largest in the world at the time. It was built at the initiative of Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Several leading politicians were skeptical and dismissed the project as a curiosity with no practical use for the grid.

Warp News has written earlier about the fight around batteries in Australia.

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• Solar power supplied 12.8 percent of US electricity in May 2026, while coal fell to 12.2 percent.

• Solar produced 45.5 TWh during the month, 17 percent more than in May 2025.

• Over five years, solar's share has more than doubled.

New record for solar

In May 2026, solar power produced more electricity than coal in the US over a full month, for the first time since records began. This is shown by official data analysed by the energy think tank Ember. Solar accounted for 12.8 percent of electricity, the highest share ever recorded. Coal accounted for 12.2 percent, the fourth-lowest monthly share ever measured.

Solar power produced a total of 45.5 TWh in May, the highest figure on record. That is 17 percent more than in May 2025. The previous record was set in July last year. The record could be broken again during the summer months. Total solar output is usually highest in June or July. Its share of the electricity mix is often highest in April or May, because solar output is strong then while demand is lower, before cooling needs rise in summer.

During May, solar became the third-largest source of electricity in the US, behind gas and nuclear.

Coal continues to decline

Coal generation hit an all-time monthly low in April 2026, at 39.3 TWh. In May it rose slightly to 43.4 TWh, but remained 11 percent below the level in May 2025. The increase was outweighed by the growing solar output, which allowed solar to overtake coal.

Coal's share of US electricity generation has nearly halved in five years, from 19.7 percent in May 2021 to 12.2 percent in May 2026. Over the same period, solar's share has more than doubled, from 5.4 to 12.8 percent.

The second milestone this year

Solar overtaking coal follows another event in March. Then, renewable energy sources together produced more electricity than gas in the US, also for the first time. According to Ember, the two records show how the role of clean power is growing in the US electricity system, despite a policy environment that is challenging for clean energy projects.

According to Nicolas Fulghum, data analyst at Ember, US solar power continues to set new records. He describes how solar has gone from a small contributor to the third-largest and fastest-growing source of electricity in the US. He points out that markets from Texas to California are betting on solar to meet rising electricity demand.

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• American nuclear power has long been defined by delays, where a single reactor design could take a decade to test.

• The company Antares built the Mark-0 microreactor within the U.S. Department of Energy's pilot program, in partnership with Idaho National Laboratory and BWX Technologies.

• The reactor reached criticality in less than twelve months, and Antares became the first private company to take an advanced reactor there within the program.

First private reactor of its kind in four decades

The Mark-0 microreactor has reached criticality at Idaho National Laboratory in the United States. This means the reactor's nuclear reaction became self-sustaining, which is the first step before a reactor can begin producing electricity. The company Antares is behind the reactor and thereby became the first private company to bring an advanced reactor to criticality within the Department of Energy's Reactor Pilot Program.

Mark-0 is the first privately developed American reactor of a type other than a light-water reactor to reach criticality in more than four decades. The test was carried out in partnership with the Department of Energy, Idaho National Laboratory, and the company BWX Technologies. The U.S. Army took part as a future end user of the technology, providing support for integration and observation.

From concept to criticality in under twelve months

Antares went from concept to a critical reactor in less than twelve months. The company had set the schedule as a non-negotiable requirement. According to Antares, American nuclear power has long been defined by delays and by companies that promised but did not deliver. The company had committed to criticality in 2026, electricity production in 2027, and power to military installations in 2028. Criticality is the first of these commitments to be met on the schedule that was set.

Fuel from a military program

Mark-0 uses the same nuclear fuel as Project Pele, a program to develop and demonstrate a transportable microreactor for military use. The fuel, of the TRISO type, was manufactured by BWX Technologies in the state of Virginia. The test contributes data that validates key reactor physics parameters for Antares' reactors and provides Project Pele with verification data. Engineers also gained direct insight into the physics of the reactor's core and into how its control drums behave.

The company behind the reactor

Antares was founded in 2023 and has received more than 140 million dollars in funding. The company develops compact microreactors for defense and space applications and operates facilities in Torrance, California; Idaho Falls, Idaho; and Aiken, South Carolina.

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• Researchers at ETH Zürich have built extremely powerful magnets small enough to fit in the palm of a hand.

• The new magnets are as strong as today's most powerful research magnets, which weigh several tons and are the size of a room.

• The magnets draw less electricity than an LED bulb, compared to the power consumption of several thousand households for traditional magnets of the same strength.

Two compact magnets

The research group at ETH Zürich has constructed two magnets made of superconducting tape based on rare earth elements, barium, and copper oxide (REBCO). The first magnet consists of two so-called pancake coils and reached a magnetic strength of 38.3 tesla. Tesla is the unit used to measure magnetic fields. For comparison, an ordinary refrigerator magnet has about 0.005 tesla, and a hospital MRI scanner typically has 1.5 to 3 tesla.

The second magnet consists of four pancake coils and reached 42.3 tesla. Both magnets have an inner diameter of only 3.1 millimeters.

Less material and lower energy consumption

Traditionally, steady magnetic fields above 40 tesla have only been achievable with large resistive magnets that consume megawatts of electrical power. The world record of 45.5 tesla was set by a hybrid magnet that requires more than 20 megawatts.

The magnets in the new study consume less than 1 watt. The coil volume is more than 1000 times smaller than that of the 45.5 tesla hybrid magnet. The new 38 tesla magnet uses 450 feet of superconducting tape. A previous magnet of the same type that reached 26 tesla required 3 miles of tape.

Specialized winding technique

To wind the superconducting tape around a diameter as small as 3.5 millimeters, the researchers developed a special technique. It enables a seamless connection between the coils outside the magnet bore, preserving the tape's current-carrying capacity. The coils were also soldered to enhance mechanical stability.

Measurements confirmed the field strength

The researchers performed nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments inside the magnet's 3.1 millimeter bore to calibrate the field measurement. The measurements were carried out at 14 and 20 tesla using commercial spectrometers. The magnetic field was measured with a precision of a few parts per million.

The magnets can be used for NMR spectroscopy and materials characterization, where sample volumes are often in the millimeter range or smaller.

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• Between 2016 and 2025, Finland's emissions from electricity generation fell from nearly 15 million tonnes to around 3 million tonnes per year.

• Nuclear and wind power together account for 64.5 percent of electricity generation, while fossil fuels account for less than 4 percent.

• Finland's last active coal plant, Salmisaari, was permanently shut down in April 2025.

Structural changes in the power system

Finland has carried out three structural changes in recent years that together have made the electricity mix nearly 95 percent carbon-neutral. Fossil-fueled electricity generation from coal, oil, and natural gas has essentially been phased out and accounted for less than 4 percent of generation in 2024. Nuclear and wind power have increased substantially during the same period and together accounted for 64.5 percent of generation that year. The remainder comes from hydropower, biomass, biofuels, and waste-to-energy.

End of Russian gas and a new nuclear reactor

Finland's Climate Change Act entered into force in 2022. That same year, the country ended 50 years of gas imports from Russia, several years ahead of the EU's final plan from December 2025 to phase out all Russian natural gas.

The following year, in 2023, Finland's fifth nuclear reactor came online, completing the country's current fleet of reactors. Nuclear power now supplies roughly 40 percent of electricity generation. OL3, which came online in 2023, is Europe's largest nuclear reactor.

Wind power has grown tenfold

Wind power capacity in Finland has grown tenfold since 2015 and nearly tripled since 2020. Wind now accounts for more than a quarter of the country's electricity mix.

In April 2025, Salmisaari, the country's last active coal plant, was permanently shut down. The plant's operator is replacing coal with heat pumps, biomass, and waste heat, with the aim of reaching carbon neutrality by 2030.

Emissions fall as nuclear and renewables expand

According to Climate TRACE data, emissions from Finland's power sector have fallen by about 80 percent over the past decade. The decline has continued since the Climate Change Act took effect in 2022. Climate TRACE data show particularly large drops in both monthly and annual emissions in 2023 compared to 2022, as OL3 came online and wind power expanded.

Emissions data for the Salmisaari plant stop in March 2025, and no emissions were detected in April 2025, coinciding with the plant's closure.

Growth alongside emissions reductions

Finland's electricity production rose by 15.3 percent between 2021 and 2024. During the same period, the country's GDP was near an all-time high according to World Bank data, and the population grew by 1.6 percent. Even so, emissions from the power sector fell during the period, and per-capita electricity consumption dropped by 6 percent according to the IEA.

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Sodium-ion batteries have long been seen as a cheaper and more durable alternative to lithium-ion batteries for energy storage, but manufacturing at scale has been held back by technical problems in production. CATL now says the company has solved the challenges around energy density, foaming, and moisture control. That is why the agreement with HyperStrong is possible. The company has the capacity to deliver 60 GWh of sodium-ion batteries over three years. It is the largest sodium-ion battery order placed to date and corresponds to half of all energy storage batteries CATL delivered during 2025.

The agreement

The agreement was announced on April 27 and builds on a broader framework agreement from November 2025, when HyperStrong committed to purchasing 200 GWh of battery cells from CATL during the period from 2026 to 2035. The cooperation covers research, product development, and project implementation.

Technical performance

CATL's sodium-ion cell for energy storage is a large-format product of more than 300 Ah with an energy density of approximately 160 Wh/kg. The system's energy conversion efficiency is 97 percent, and the lifespan exceeds 15,000 cycles at 80 percent capacity retention. The cell operates in temperatures from minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit to 158 degrees Fahrenheit, a wider range than most lithium-ion cells.

The cells have the same dimensions as CATL's lithium-ion products. This means they are compatible with existing supply chains and installations, which lowers adaptation costs and shortens the time from order to deployment.

Sodium as a raw material

Sodium-ion batteries use sodium instead of lithium as the charge carrier. Sodium is roughly 1,000 times more abundant in the Earth's crust than lithium and significantly cheaper to source. This makes the technology an alternative for applications where cost matters more than maximum energy density, particularly large-scale energy storage.

Market and competition

The global market for sodium-ion batteries is expected to reach $1.08 billion in 2026, with an annual growth rate of 15.8 percent. According to SNE Research, CATL controls 39.2 percent of the global market for EV batteries.

Competitor BYD has developed a third-generation sodium-ion platform that handles more than 10,000 cycles. However, no other sodium-ion battery manufacturer has secured an order anywhere close to 60 GWh.

CATL is working in parallel on sodium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. The company's chief scientist has confirmed mass production by the end of 2026, with the goal of reaching the same energy density as LFP batteries within three years, corresponding to a range of 370 miles. The first electric vehicle with a sodium-ion battery, the Changan Nevo A06, was presented in February.

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• A simple AI query uses about 0.3 watt-hours of electricity. A microwave at around 1,000 watts uses about 0.28 watt-hours per second. So a simple AI query corresponds to roughly one second in the microwave.

• A hundred AI queries a day equals the electricity an average American uses in just over a minute.

• AI accounts for less than 0.2 percent of the world's total energy use.

New figures for 2025

Hannah Ritchie has compiled data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) on the electricity use of data centres and AI during 2025. AI data centres consumed 155 TWh, which corresponds to about 0.5 percent of the world's electricity. Data centres as a whole, including those that run services such as Netflix, Google Maps, online banking, and messaging apps, consumed about 1.5 percent of the world's electricity. Data centres that are not AI-focused used more than twice as much electricity as AI data centres.

Since electricity is only part of total energy use, data centres account for less than 0.5 percent of final energy, and AI for less than 0.2 percent.

Energy use per query

A medium-sized text query to an AI model uses about 0.05 watt-hours for the graphics processors, which totals around 0.1 watt-hours. A larger text query uses about 0.3 watt-hours for the graphics processors, or up to 0.6 watt-hours in total.

Google has reported 0.24 watt-hours per text query to Gemini. For ChatGPT, the figure 0.34 watt-hours per query has been mentioned. Asking ten simple questions to a chatbot corresponds to about ten seconds in the microwave.

A hundred queries a day produces a footprint of about 30 watt-hours. That equals the electricity an average American uses in just over a minute, or an average European in two and a half minutes.

More complex tasks use more energy

Agent-based AI tools, which can plan and carry out tasks independently, use more energy per task. Such a task can take 15 minutes or more to complete and involves 4 to 6 sequential calls. A user who runs 24 agent-based queries per day consumes about 2.4 kilowatt-hours, equivalent to one cycle of a tumble dryer or driving an electric car five miles.

Geographically concentrated demand

Demand for data centres is not evenly distributed around the world. In the US, 5 percent of electricity is used for data centres, of which about 2 percent goes to AI data centres. In Europe, the figure is 1.6 percent, but in Ireland data centres account for more than 20 percent of electricity consumption. In the state of Virginia in the US, data centres account for more than a quarter of electricity consumption.

Forecasts to 2030

The IEA presents four scenarios for data centre electricity consumption. In the base case, global electricity consumption reaches 945 TWh in 2030. The high and low scenarios fall within about 100 TWh of this figure. The differences between the scenarios are small because much of the build-out is already planned. It takes several years to build a data centre.

In the base case, data centres grow to 3 percent of global electricity consumption by 2030. AI data centres then consume about the same amount as non-AI data centres. The IEA estimates that data centres account for about 9 percent of the growth in global electricity demand over the next five years.

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• Solar and wind accounted for 99 percent of the growth in global electricity demand during 2025.

• Solar energy grew by 636 terawatt-hours – more electricity than all LNG exports through the Strait of Hormuz can produce.

• For the first time in history, coal power accounts for less than a third of the world's electricity generation.

Renewable energy overtook coal as the world's largest source of electricity generation during 2025, according to a new report from the think tank Ember. It is the first time since 1919 that coal's share of the electricity mix is lower than that of renewable sources. Back then, however, global electricity demand was 300 times smaller than today, and renewables consisted mainly of hydropower.

Solar energy drives the development

Solar power grew by 636 terawatt-hours during 2025, an increase of 30 percent compared to the previous year. That is double the entire annual electricity consumption of the United Kingdom, and 33 percent higher than the previous record of 479 terawatt-hours set in 2024. Solar power alone met 75 percent of the growth in global electricity demand during the year.

Installed solar capacity grew by a record 647 gigawatts during 2025. It was the fourth consecutive year that solar power accounted for the largest absolute increase of any single electricity source.

Wind power increased by 205 terawatt-hours, equivalent to 8.2 percent. Nuclear power rose by 35 terawatt-hours to a historic peak of 2,812 terawatt-hours, driven by new reactors in China and increased production in France and Japan.

Fossil electricity generation declines structurally

Fossil electricity generation fell by 0.2 percent during 2025. It is the first time a decline has occurred as a result of a structural shift toward clean energy rather than economic crises or other one-off events. Previous declines have occurred in connection with the 2008–2009 financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic.

Coal power fell by 63 terawatt-hours, or 0.6 percent, and now accounts for less than a third of the world's electricity generation. Gas power increased marginally by 36 terawatt-hours to 6,919 terawatt-hours.

In both China and India, fossil electricity generation fell at the same time – by 56 and 52 terawatt-hours respectively – thanks to rapid expansion of clean electricity generation. Together the two countries accounted for 42 percent of the world's fossil electricity generation during the year.

The share of solar and wind has doubled

The share of solar and wind power in the global electricity mix has increased by more than 10 percentage points over ten years, from 23 percent to 33.8 percent. During the same period, coal's share has dropped from 38.7 percent to 33.0 percent. 81 percent of all growth in solar and wind since the year 2000 has occurred during the past decade.

Ember calculates that without the growth of solar and wind power since the year 2000, fossil electricity generation would have been 30 percent higher during 2025, and emissions 28 percent higher, equivalent to an additional 4,065 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year.

Lower emissions per kilowatt-hour

Global electricity demand increased by 2.8 percent during 2025, equivalent to 849 terawatt-hours. Despite the increase, emissions from the electricity sector fell slightly. The average kilowatt-hour produced 458 grams of carbon dioxide equivalents, 2.7 percent less than in 2024 and 16 percent less than in 2005.

Electric vehicles and battery storage are growing rapidly

Electric vehicles' share of the world's new car sales passed 25 percent during 2025. The global electric vehicle fleet replaced 1.8 million barrels of oil per day, of which new electric vehicles sold during 2025 accounted for 0.5 million barrels per day. The reduced oil use from the electrification of the transport sector corresponds to emission reductions of about 80 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year, more than the entire annual emissions from the United Kingdom's electricity sector.

The price of battery packs for stationary storage fell to a record low of 70 dollars per kilowatt-hour during 2025, a drop of 45 percent from the previous year. Global battery storage capacity increased by 247 gigawatt-hours, 46 percent more than in 2024. That is enough to shift about 14 percent of daily solar power generation to other hours of the day.

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• Project Obsidian will be the world's first geothermal power plant to extract energy from rock at 300 to 500 degrees Celsius.

• The millimeter wave drilling technique allows drilling to reach depths and temperatures that conventional drills cannot handle.

• Each well at the higher temperatures can deliver 10 to 100 times more power than other forms of geothermal energy.

Three phases up to gigawatt scale

In central Oregon, an engineering team is building a power plant that will extract electricity from the Earth's internal heat at temperatures between 572 and 932 degrees Fahrenheit. The facility is called Project Obsidian and will be built in three phases. Phase I covers 50 megawatts, Phase II 250 megawatts, and Phase III more than one gigawatt. The plant produces electricity without fuel, without waste, and without emissions.

Microwaves replace the drill bit

The key technology is known as millimeter wave drilling. Instead of using a mechanical drill bit, high-frequency electromagnetic waves are sent down through a waveguide from a gyrotron at the surface. The waves break down the rock without physical contact. The technology is described as the most significant change in drilling since the drill bit was introduced in the 1930s.

Conventional drilling struggles at extreme depths. The equipment cannot withstand prolonged temperatures of several hundred degrees, and the deeper the drill goes, the harder it becomes to power the drill bit. Millimeter wave drilling bypasses these limitations by delivering energy electromagnetically, resulting in fewer interruptions and lower costs.

Clean well with gas pressure

To bring rock fragments, known as cuttings, up from the bottom of the hole, a pressurized gas system is used. In conventional drilling, thick drilling mud is used to transport the cuttings upward, but mud circulation becomes less effective at great depths. The gas system keeps the drilling zone clean and efficient even far down in the rock.

Beyond the geothermal ring

Traditional geothermal energy has depended on locations where nature does the easy work, such as hot springs and geological hotspots around the so-called Ring of Fire surrounding the Pacific Ocean. With millimeter wave drilling, geothermal power becomes available east of the Mississippi and on other continents. The technology is estimated to be able to reach more than 90 percent of humanity.

The most studied site

Project Obsidian is located at the most studied and economically most favorable site in the United States to demonstrate geothermal power at a new scale. The layout follows a model in which drilling begins conventionally and then switches to millimeter waves when heat and depth make the usual tools unusable. The wells are built to withstand decades of high heat and high pressure. Water is stimulated to move through rock formations and carries the heat up to high-efficiency turbines placed close to the point of use.

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• Researchers at CSIRO have created a working prototype quantum battery that charges wirelessly with a laser and completes a full battery cycle: charging, storing, and discharging energy.

• Unlike conventional batteries, quantum batteries charge faster the larger they are — a phenomenon known as "collective effects."

• The prototype charged in femtoseconds and stored the energy for nanoseconds — roughly six orders of magnitude longer than the charging time.

A battery that works differently

Australian researchers at CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, have created a prototype quantum battery — something that previously existed only as a theoretical concept since 2013.

Lead researcher Dr James Quach describes the prototype as the first to complete a full battery cycle. That means the battery charges, stores energy, and can then discharge it again.

The quantum battery charges wirelessly using a laser and uses principles of quantum mechanics to store energy.

Larger battery — shorter charging time

One of the most unusual properties of quantum batteries is that they charge faster the larger they are. This is the opposite of how conventional batteries work.

Quach illustrates this with an everyday example: a mobile phone takes about 30 minutes to charge, while an electric car can take an entire night. That is because charging time increases with size in conventional batteries.

In quantum batteries, the reverse is true, thanks to what are called collective effects. This means quantum cells charge faster when more cells are involved. Quach and his colleagues first demonstrated this phenomenon in 2022, but that prototype had no way of extracting the energy again.

Femtoseconds and nanoseconds

The new prototype, described in the scientific journal Light: Science & Applications, charged in femtoseconds — that is, quadrillionths of a second. The energy was then stored for nanoseconds, which is roughly six orders of magnitude longer than the charging time.

To put those numbers in perspective: if a battery takes one minute to charge and holds its charge six orders of magnitude longer, it would stay charged for a couple of years.

The current prototype has a capacity of only a few billion electron volts, which Quach himself describes as very small and not enough to power anything useful.

Potential applications

A quantum battery that charges wirelessly with a laser opens up use in places that are difficult to reach with cables. Quach mentions drones as one example — they could be charged while in flight.

Professor Andrew White, who leads the quantum technology laboratory at the University of Queensland and was not involved in the research, believes quantum batteries will most likely find their first practical use in quantum computers. There, they can deliver energy in a way that minimizes energy losses in these systems.

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• The Indian state of Bihar is installing solar panels at no cost for families living below the poverty line.

• The families will have zero electricity costs for basic usage such as fans, lighting and mobile charging.

• In the first phase, 250,000 households will receive solar panels with a capacity of 1.5 kilowatts each.

No electricity costs for the poorest

The state government of Bihar, India, has launched a program providing free rooftop solar panels to households living below the poverty line. The program is called Kutir Jyoti Yojana and targets families with so-called BPL cards, an Indian system for identifying the poorest households.

The entire installation cost is covered by the state. Families do not have to pay anything at any stage of the process. The only requirement for households is that they are responsible for basic cleaning and safety around the panels.

The solar panels will provide families with enough electricity to run fans, turn on lights and charge mobile phones without worrying about electricity bills. This means zero electricity costs for basic usage. The savings come in addition to the 125 free units of electricity that the Bihar government already offers residents.

In the first phase, the government will install solar panels with a capacity of 1.5 kilowatts on the rooftops of 250,000 households.

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• Ukraine installed at least 1.5 gigawatts of new solar energy in 2025, enough to power roughly 1.1 million households.

• The country has seven gigawatts of wind power in the pipeline and could more than triple its current wind power capacity.

• Battery storage projects that take two years in Europe are completed in six months in Ukraine.

Decentralized energy as defense

Russia has systematically bombed Ukraine's energy infrastructure since the start of the invasion. Before the winter of 2025–2026, half of the country's energy infrastructure lay in ruins. Total damage to the energy sector is estimated to exceed 56 billion dollars.

Ukraine's response is to replace the large, centralized power plants with decentralized renewable energy sources. Wind and solar installations spread across the landscape are harder to hit and easier to repair. A coal power plant is a single large target that one missile can take out. Doing equivalent damage to a wind farm requires around 40 missiles, according to Jeff Oatham at DTEK, Ukraine's largest energy company. Attacking decentralized solar installations is not economically rational either, as it would require a large number of strikes with limited impact on the overall energy system, according to Ukrainian energy expert Olena Kondratiuk.

Since the full-scale invasion, Ukraine has added over three gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity. The country's grid operators plan to nearly double renewable energy production over the next four years.

Rooftop solar at record pace

Solar installations on households, businesses and public institutions have continued at a high pace during the war. Ukraine's energy company YASNO reports that their customers are buying solar and storage packages at a rapid rate. On sunny days, Ukraine even has energy surpluses.

In Mykolaiv, just 60 kilometers from the front, 26 newly installed rooftop solar panels together with 100 kilowatt-hours of battery storage power a rehabilitation center for children and persons with disabilities. The center continued operating even during a 32-hour shelling stretch in mid-December. In addition to treating 70 patients a day, the center has opened its doors to residents who lack heat.

The German-Ukrainian Energy Partnership estimates that Ukraine's long-term technical solar potential exceeds 80 gigawatts, comparable to 80 medium-sized nuclear reactors. A study from the University of Technology Sydney shows that Ukraine could meet 91 percent of its energy needs with a combination of solar and onshore wind using one percent of its land.

Wind power near the front line

Just 65 miles from the front, DTEK is building the 500-megawatt Tyligulska Wind Power Plant. It is the first wind farm ever built in a war zone. When completed, it will supply 900,000 households with electricity.

Before Russia's occupation of Ukrainian territory in 2014 and 2022, the country had 34 wind farms with nearly 700 turbines. Ukraine now has seven gigawatts of wind power in the pipeline that could be installed this year, according to Andriy Konechenkov of the Ukrainian Wind Energy Association.

Microgrids and storage

Several Ukrainian cities are building microgrids that combine renewable and conventional energy sources. The city of Vinnytsia has five microgrids combining solar, gas and hydroelectric power with energy storage. Five major wind farms are set to join within two years. In Khmelnytskyi, the national university's microgrid of 4,400 kilowatts includes solar panels, natural gas-fired cogeneration, diesel power and gas boilers.

The city of Zhytomyr, west of Kyiv, plans to run entirely on renewable energy by 2050.

In 2024 and 2025, Ukraine's national grid operator invested in half a gigawatt of storage capacity. That is nearly a quarter of Germany's total storage capacity. Battery storage projects that take two years in Europe are completed in just six months in Ukraine.

A grassroots movement

Andriy Martynyuk of the Ukrainian environmental organization Ecoclub describes the development as largely a grassroots movement. Individual consumers want to become independent of the power grid. He expects demand for renewable energy to increase further when state subsidies for fossil energy, which have kept prices below market rates, are phased out.

Ukraine's energy transition is not driven by climate concerns but by security needs. The country had an installed capacity of 60 gigawatts before the war. Now a new, decentralized energy system is being built under extreme conditions. European countries are financing a large part of the transition, including all solar installations in Mykolaiv and the Solar Supports Ukraine program, which keeps schools open during blackouts.

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• New podcast series – Best Case Scenarios – explores the best possible developments in energy, transportation, biotechnology, and brain science over the next 25 years.

• The first episodes focus on energy and transportation with concrete figures on costs, technology, and global impact.

• The focus is on what happens if everything goes right and how technology can reduce costs, emissions, and accidents.

Kevin Kelly and Dan Pink have launched the podcast Best Case Scenarios. Kelly is a co-founder of Wired magazine and has written extensively about technology, long-term trends, and the future of society. He is known for books such as The Inevitable, where he analyzes how technological systems evolve over time.

Dan Pink is a bestselling author focused on work, motivation, and human behavior, with books including Drive and To Sell Is Human. Together, they bring experience from technology journalism and behavioral science to conversations about long-term progress.

In each episode, they invite an expert to describe the best possible scenario for the next 25 years within a specific field. These are not predictions, but visions to aim for.

The first four episodes focus on energy, transportation, biotechnology, and brain science. Two of the interviews – on energy and transportation – provide a detailed picture of how technology could transform society at scale.

Energy: electricity for one cent per kilowatt-hour

In the energy episode, they interview Ramez Naam, investor and clean energy analyst. He describes how solar power is already the fastest-growing energy source in the United States and currently accounts for about 8 percent of electricity generation. In a conservative best-case scenario, solar could supply more than one-third within 25 years and become the single largest source.

Cost trends are central. New natural gas in the US costs around 12 cents per kilowatt-hour to build. Solar in the US Southwest produces electricity for about 3 cents per kilowatt-hour without subsidies. By 2050, solar could reach around 1 cent per kilowatt-hour at the plant gate. With battery storage, nighttime costs could add another 1–2 cents. That is lower than both natural gas and nuclear power today.

Solar panel efficiency is just above 20 percent today and could reach 30 percent by 2050, reducing land use by one-third. Powering 100 percent of US electricity with solar would require about 1 percent of US land area. Agriculture uses around 30 percent.

Naam also highlights rapid battery cost declines. Electric vehicles become competitive around 100 dollars per kilowatt-hour. In China, EV batteries are close to 50 dollars per kilowatt-hour, and grid-scale storage is around 65 dollars. He assesses that practical fusion energy with net energy gain is likely within 25 years. If costs decline quickly, fusion could supply a large share of electricity.

Globally, about one billion people still lack access to electricity. Cheap solar panels have led to sharply increased imports in countries such as Pakistan and several African nations. At the same time, global oil demand is approaching its peak within 5–10 years, as electric vehicles become cheaper than gasoline cars.

The best-case scenario is a nearly carbon-free grid, very low electricity prices, and reduced dependence on fossil fuels worldwide.

Transportation: self-driving vehicles and less parking space

In the transportation episode, they interview Brad Templeton, entrepreneur and expert on autonomous technology. He notes that the US drives about 3 trillion miles per year. Globally, around 1.5 million people die annually in traffic accidents, including about 44,000 in the United States.

Templeton’s best-case scenario is based on autonomous vehicles becoming cheaper per mile than owning a private car, which today costs about 60 cents per mile for an average new vehicle. When vehicles no longer need drivers and can operate nearly around the clock, costs decline. Vehicles can also be built more simply, without steering wheels or pedals.

He describes how households gradually shift from three cars to two, and eventually to one or none, relying instead on mobility on demand. Since 80 percent of trips are made by a single person, smaller one-person vehicles could reduce road space requirements.

Templeton points out that a large share of urban land is currently devoted to parking. When autonomous taxis do not need to park, land can be repurposed for housing or parks. He also envisions a new form of public transport: small pods collecting passengers locally and connecting to larger autonomous vehicles for longer distances, without fixed timetables.

Electric vehicles and optimized charging mean transportation can use electricity when it is cheapest, for example at midday when solar production is high. This links the energy system and mobility.

Templeton’s best-case scenario includes fewer accidents, lower cost per trip, reduced emissions, and cities with less parking and more usable space.

The podcast Best Case Scenarios continues to explore what similar developments could look like in biotechnology and brain science – focusing on what is possible if technology, economics, and policy align.

Also, don’t miss Kevin Kelly’s appreciated article at Warp News, The Case for Optimism.

Warp NewsKevin Kelly

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• The research reactor WEST in France held plasma stable for 1,337 seconds, just over 22 minutes, which is a new world record.

• The record surpassed China's previous mark by approximately 25 percent.

• The test showed that the reactor's internal surfaces withstood the demanding conditions without breaking down.

Stable plasma for over 20 minutes

The French research reactor WEST, a so-called tokamak, held hot plasma for 1,337 seconds. That corresponds to just over 22 minutes. The result is a new world record for how long a fusion reactor has held plasma stable.

The record beats the previous record set just weeks earlier by China's EAST reactor. The French run improved the time by approximately 25 percent.

Anne-Isabelle Etienvre, Director of Research at the French agency CEA, presented the result. According to her, WEST has reached a new technological milestone by holding hydrogen plasma for more than twenty minutes using 2 megawatts of heating power.

How a tokamak works

A tokamak is a ring-shaped magnetic container. Strong magnetic fields guide charged particles so they circulate around the ring instead of striking the walls. This is called magnetic confinement.

The technology makes it possible to heat a thin gas until the atomic nuclei have enough energy to fuse and release energy. That is the fundamental principle behind fusion energy.

The challenge is control. Plasma reacts immediately to any deviation, and small instabilities can grow rapidly if the research team does not correct them in time.

The role of materials

A functioning fusion reactor requires that the materials inside withstand extreme heat over long periods. In WEST, tungsten is used in the so-called divertor region, where the plasma's heat and particles are directed away. Tungsten tolerates high temperatures but still requires careful management to avoid damage or unwanted impurities entering the plasma.

The test at WEST focused specifically on stability and control, not on producing more energy than it consumed. Reaching net energy depends on several factors simultaneously: plasma density, temperature, and how well the machine retains heat and particles.

Different records, different pieces of the puzzle

Long operating time is only one part of what is required for fusion energy. Energy production is another.

In the United Kingdom, the JET facility produced 69 megajoules of fusion energy in a single five-second pulse using a small amount of fuel. That record demonstrated high energy production over a short period. The WEST record instead demonstrated stability over a long period.

Different research reactors test different aspects of what is needed. Together, they build up knowledge of what a future power plant reactor needs to handle.

Next step: ITER

In the same region of France, the larger fusion reactor ITER is now being assembled. It is designed to produce approximately 500 megawatts of fusion power from roughly 50 megawatts of heating power.

Data from WEST will be used when engineers operate ITER. The translation from experiment to larger machine is how fusion moves from laboratory tests to power plant-relevant scenarios.

The CEA research team is planning longer test campaigns that will collectively yield hours of plasma time, with gradually increasing power. Each extension strengthens the knowledge of safe and repeatable operation.

Fusion reactions do not create long-lived radioactive waste the way fission reactors do. However, fast neutrons can activate the metal structures around the plasma, which is why material selection and design are central issues. Tritium, a radioactive hydrogen isotope with a short half-life, is used in a closed loop on site.

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• Fervo Energy has drilled its hottest well yet at a new geothermal site in Utah, with measured temperatures exceeding 555°F at approximately 11,200 feet deep.

• An independent assessment shows the site has multi-gigawatt energy potential.

• Fervo pumps cold water underground, where it is heated by the Earth's natural heat. The water is then brought back to the surface.

Heat from the Earth's interior becomes electricity

Geothermal energy means extracting heat from the Earth's interior and converting it into electricity. Unlike solar and wind power, it can deliver electricity around the clock, regardless of weather. Fervo Energy is one of the companies developing next-generation geothermal technology, and has now completed an appraisal drilling campaign at a new site called Project Blanford in Millard County, Utah.

The vertical appraisal well was drilled in under eleven days and reached a depth of approximately 11,200 feet. Measured temperatures exceeded 555°F, making it the hottest well in the company's history. Temperature logs place the site above the 95th percentile for deep geothermal gradients across the Western United States.

Multi-gigawatt potential

An independent assessment based on drilling data shows the Blanford site has the potential to produce multiple gigawatts of geothermal energy. A diagnostic fracture injection test was also completed, confirming that the target formation can be stimulated. The test provided key data for further development planning.

Easier bedrock lowers costs

Fervo's previous projects have been carried out in metamorphic and igneous rock formations. The geothermal reservoir at Blanford instead consists of sedimentary formations, including sandstones, claystones, and carbonates. These formations are easier and cheaper to drill than the granite typically used for geothermal projects. This means the global resource potential for so-called EGS, enhanced geothermal systems, is expanded.

Progressively higher temperatures

Fervo has successively drilled into increasingly hotter reservoirs. At the company's Project Red, the resource temperature measured approximately 365°F. At Cape Station, the temperature was around 400°F. Now the temperature at Blanford exceeds 555°F. Higher temperatures lead to higher output per well and better efficiency in the power plants.

How the technology works

Fervo pumps cold water underground, where it is heated by the Earth's natural heat. The water is then brought back to the surface. Power plant technology based on organic Rankine cycle converts the geothermal energy into electricity. The process emits no carbon dioxide or other pollutants. One hundred percent of the water is reinjected into the ground after use.

The company uses fiber optic cables in its wells to collect real-time data on flow, temperature, and performance. AI-based analysis of subsurface data is used to identify where the best resources are located and to optimize drilling plans.

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• LKF is replacing 280 individual electricity subscriptions with a shared internal grid in Lund, Sweden.

• Tenants will stop paying grid fees and instead pay only for their actual electricity consumption.

• The system enables locally produced solar power and stored battery energy to be shared directly between buildings, without loading the overhead grid.

Construction begins in February

In February, LKF starts the excavation work for EnergyNet in the Spjället/Pottugnen residential area in western Lund. This marks the start of construction for the infrastructure that will connect the buildings' electricity systems into a shared internal grid. The project is part of Project Energy Society, where Warp Institute is one of the partners.

The project is being carried out in collaboration with Kraftringen and technology provider ViaEuropa. Excavation work continues through the spring.

Previously, electricity had to be sold and bought back

Before EnergyNet, LKF was required to sell its locally produced solar power on the open market. Tenants then had to buy back that same electricity. With the internal grid, that step is eliminated, and electricity can instead be shared directly with tenants – including electricity stored in batteries during the day – without loading the overhead grid.

Electricity costs reflect actual consumption

A central part of the project is how tenants pay for electricity. Today, the monthly bill is dominated by a fixed grid fee to Kraftringen, regardless of how much electricity the tenant actually uses.

With EnergyNet, that fee disappears. The cost is instead tied directly to actual consumption, creating conditions for tenants to reduce their energy use.

LKF describes it as a major system shift, where electricity can be used more efficiently through the internal grid.

Solar panels, batteries and smart control

The infrastructure being built this spring will connect the buildings in the area. Combined with solar power production, battery storage and digital control systems, the setup creates opportunities to smooth out peak demand and reduce the load on the overhead grid.

The system is built on the principle that energy produced in an area is primarily used there. Surplus is shared with neighboring nodes. This reduces the need to transport electricity over long distances and lowers pressure on the national transmission grid.

Lessons from a pilot project in Brunnshög

EnergyNet is not LKF's first step in internal energy sharing. Previously, LKF, together with ViaEuropa and LKP within the collaboration group CoAction Lund, carried out a pilot project in Brunnshög. That project was followed closely by hundreds of companies and organizations from Sweden and other countries, including the United States.

The Brunnshög project has contributed new knowledge about energy communities and internal electricity grids. The work is now being scaled up to a residential area with 280 apartments.

LKF assesses that the experience from this initiative could form the basis for more local electricity grids and new ways of organizing local energy sharing.

Network rather than centralized machine

Underlying the system is a changed way of thinking about how electricity grids should work. Today's grid is designed as a centralized machine, where a small number of power plants produce electricity that is transported over long distances to passive consumers. Stability relies on large rotating machines and central control.

EnergyNet is instead built on the principle that an electricity grid should function as a network with many nodes, similar to the internet. Each part can operate independently if needed but is normally connected to the others. Problems are isolated locally rather than spreading through the entire system.

Balancing is handled through power electronics and software rather than large power plants. This makes energy flows programmable and enables real-time control, so electricity can be directed where it is most needed. The technology required – digital control systems, power electronics, batteries and local production – is already available.

Read more about Project Energy Society.

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