Green incentive plans, technology breakthroughs and rising consumer adoption are giving a massive boost to the energy transition and to our electric future, with the stated goal to get to a carbon-free world in 2050.
Renewable energies, that have reached grid parity, become dominant in new power generation and are expected over coming decades to account for 48% of the power mix and 64% when including hydropower.
But as they are by nature intermittent, energy storage becomes a key element of the power puzzle.
Hydrogen, which offers high energy density and can be 100% clean, is particularly well suited to store energy from renewables. But it’s not only about utility-scale storage, hydrogen can also be used in many applications that are hard to electrify with batteries: long-range transport (buses, trucks, ships…), energy-intensive industries…
Various government initiatives across the world are likely to accelerate adoption of hydrogen and hence put it on a secular growth path. If incentives will be important, potential government restrictions about internal combustion engines in certain regions or diesel generators for large-scale backup power systems will also have a major role to play in hydrogen’s widespread adoption.
Electric Vehicles (EVs) are also a cornerstone of our electric future. Performances of batteries are improving fast thanks to new materials, smart sensors and integrated computing capabilities while new features such as autonomous driving are about to revolutionize the driving experience.
Electric mobility adoption will greatly benefit from these performance leaps and government incentives with EVs’ total cost of ownership expected to stand below that of internal combustion engine vehicles in a near future.
After Microsoft, that is financing the restart of an idle reactor, Amazon and Google just made the headlines by announcing that they both will bet on a very promising technology, small modular reactors or SMRs. The former (which also acquired earlier this year a data center powered by an adjacent nuclear power plant) will partner…
On Friday, US electric utility Constellation announced the restart of its Crane nuclear plant, that had been shut down in 2019 for economic reasons, along with a 20-year power supply agreement with Microsoft. The Tech giant will then secure 835 MW of power over 20 years to supply its data centers in the PJM Interconnection,…
Just months after the US Senate passed the ADVANCED Act, a landmark legislation designed to ease the permitting process for nuclear reactors and reduce costs and construction times (see our previous report), various US administrations are moving fast on the nuclear topic. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) indeed exempted Kairos Power from a full environmental…
If one needed further evidence that we are heading towards a growing supply/demand imbalance for uranium, last week’s news flow provided it. Kazatompron, Kazakhstan’s state-owned uranium miner (and the world’s largest), announced (again) a cut to its 2025 production forecast due to continued sulphuric acid shortages and delays in construction works at new deposits. The company…
With AI electricity consumption surging and utilities starting to have difficulties meeting demand, both cloud giants and utilities are actively looking at solutions to tackle the power challenge. Deploying new solar/wind capacity and building nuclear reactors (or reopening idle ones) are clearly part of the agenda. But these initiatives also represent a multi-year effort, suggesting…
The US gave a major boost to its nuclear industry yesterday as the Senate passed the ADVANCED (Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy) Act with overwhelming bipartisan support, and as the DoE announced it would fund up to $900 million to support the deployment of small modular reactors (SMRs). The ADVANCED Act is a…
The last couple of weeks have been highly supportive for the nuclear industry, confirming that companies in the uranium/nuclear ecosystem are entering into a new era of growth. It is indeed becoming evident that AI is going to drive electricity demand to new heights with the US Department of Energy undersecretary for infrastructure recently commenting…
The disruption caused by Generative AI is not only deeply impacting the Tech industry and (soon) almost any economic activity but it will also have geopolitical, environmental, and energetic consequences. Since the early 2000s, cloud computing has rapidly grown to become the dominant IT platform, delivering any type of digital and/or communication service around the…
The last few weeks have been tough in the clean energy space, with high interest rates not only pressuring stock valuations but also affecting business fundamentals. Notably, higher funding costs sparked wind projects cancellations and a slowdown in residential solar installations. If hydrogen names have not been spared by these funding headwinds and concerns about…
Solar inverter manufacturer SolarEdge posted last night preliminary Q3 results that fell well below expectations (revenue 19% below, gross margin 30% below) following cancellations and pushouts of existing backlog from its European distributors. The company noted higher-than-expected channel inventory and slower-than-expected installation rates from the end of the summer. This weakness in Europe was clearly…
Just like solar names, hydrogen stocks have not been spared by the funding concerns that emerged in the wake of the banking crisis a couple of months ago, as most hydrogen projects require tens or even hundreds of million dollars financing. But recent newsflow has been reassuring, with Plug Power reaffirming in recent days its…
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09.05.2023
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