Energy markets are sending mixed signals. Battery storage is getting dramatically cheaper while generation costs tick upward, nuclear economics are being re-examined, Europe’s electricity mix continues to evolve, agricultural emissions remain concentrated in a handful of countries, and commodity pricing highlights the stark differences between scarcity and scale.

The UK government has announced the largest public investment in community energy in the country’s history, committing up to £1 billion to help towns and villages own and control their own clean power generation.

Electricity systems are expanding fast — but infrastructure, flexibility, and charging networks are racing to keep up. From record solar additions in the United States to coal declines in China and accelerating EV adoption globally, the energy transition is increasingly defined by scale, speed, and the ability of grids and networks to adapt.

From record-breaking power demand and billion-dollar data centres to ultra-fast batteries and Australia’s quietly rapid clean-energy build-out, this week’s stories all point to the same shift: electricity is becoming the backbone of the global economy. As EVs, AI, cooling demand, and clean power scale simultaneously, markets, grids, and investment flows are being reshaped in real time — not in theory, but on the ground.

The European Union is at growing risk of running short of the raw materials needed to build its clean energy system, according to a new report from the European Court of Auditors. Lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper and rare earth elements are essential for solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, electric vehicles and grid infrastructure.

The Trump administration has launched Project Vault, a $12 billion public-private initiative aimed at building a long-term U.S. stockpile of critical minerals used across energy, manufacturing, technology and defense supply chains.

Global power generation is becoming increasingly concentrated, while market forces, technology costs, and industrial innovation continue to reshape energy systems. From China’s outsized role in global electricity supply to Texas’ market-driven clean energy buildout, Europe’s coal decline, new forms of heat storage, and tightening metals markets.

Geothermal energy is beginning to take on a larger role in the U.S. energy system, driven by steady capacity growth, a rising project pipeline, and major advances in drilling and reservoir technology. U.S. geothermal power capacity now sits at just under 4,000 megawatts-electric (MWe) — roughly 4 gigawatts — up around eight percent since 2020.

From the rapid build-out of AI-driven data centers to the world’s first round-the-clock gigawatt-scale solar plant, these stories capture how quickly the global energy system is evolving. Falling battery costs are reshaping electricity markets, emerging economies are charting new transition pathways, and critical materials like copper are emerging as potential bottlenecks.

At this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, the Trump administration used one of the world’s most prominent global stages to do something unusual: rather than moderating its energy message for an international audience, it reaffirmed it in full.

A new ultra-small hydro generator is showing promise for delivering electricity in remote and underserved areas. Designed to operate in shallow, slow-moving water, the system has already been tested powering street lights. Its portability and simplicity could allow off-grid communities to generate reliable local power without large infrastructure, expanding access to clean electricity in hard-to-reach regions.