World

US researchers say they have developed a way to make cobalt-free lithium-ion battery cathodes, while Ford says it has broken ground on a new $5.6 billion production complex for electric vehicles and batteries.

The 2.7 million people employed in solar in China last year dwarfed the 250,000 working in the US solar industry, according to a new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency.

An international group of researchers has demonstrated an aqueous zinc battery with excellent performance in terms of capacity, rate capability, specific energy, and output voltage. The supercapacitor-battery hybrid device has also shown unprecedented cycling stability 99.2% capacity retention after 17,000 cycles at 100% depth of discharge.

Historic analogues suggest that emergency-like policy measures could foster high growth rates, expediting a breakthrough and increasing the likelihood of future hydrogen availability. However, EU targets require unprecedented growth rates, according to a group of German and US researchers.

Lhyfe has started an 18-month offshore green hydrogen pilot project in France, while SSAB, LKAB, and Vattenfall have commissioned a pilot facility to store fossil-free hydrogen gas in Sweden. The EU and US, meanwhile, have both announced progress on policy measures to support hydrogen.

A recent report by the International Energy Agency Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme (IEA PVSP) reviews the current regulatory and industrial landscape for end-of-life PV management in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, South Korea, China, Australia, and the United States.

In other news, Alstom tested its hydrogen train for long-distance transportation and the IEA released a report suggesting that hydrogen development may require an annual investment of around $60-130 billion through 2030.

In other news, Our Next Energy reveals 240-Ah anode-free cell with high energy density, ABB E-mobility expands its manufacturing footprint in the US, and Volvo’s parent company Geely unveils 600 kW supercharging technology.

Almost half of the workers were employed in China, around 280,000 in North America, over 260,000 in Europe, and some 50,000 in Africa, according to a new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). The vast majority of workers were employed in manufacturing and installation of new capacity, with solar jobs paying lower wage premiums than the nuclear, oil, and gas industries.

As the pace of solar installations quickens, developers are racing to find the best remaining sites and optimize their position in interconnection queues. But what if the best investment opportunity is hidden in a site built a decade or more ago? Time gets the better of us all, and many early solar sites no longer perform as expected. Yet those sites generally sell power at prices today’s developers can only dream of. Chris Chappell and Stephen Shirey of Clean Energy Associates examine what can be done to unlock the value in these legacy sites.