From breakthroughs in EV battery performance to shifting global energy dependencies and rapidly changing power economics, these stories highlight how technology, markets, and policy are shaping the next phase of the energy transition. Falling renewable costs, expanding electrification technologies, and rising electricity demand from AI are all influencing how countries plan their future energy systems.

European leaders are preparing to debate new ways to lower electricity prices at a summit later this month, as governments face growing pressure from industry over high energy costs. Among the options being discussed are proposals to further decouple electricity prices from gas markets and address the growing number of periods with negative power prices.

From record-breaking solar growth and China’s expanding electricity dominance to semiconductor supply chains and ocean innovation, this week’s stories highlight how energy, industry, and infrastructure are scaling at historic speed. The shift is not just about clean power — it’s about how electricity, materials, and advanced manufacturing are reshaping the global economy.

The UK’s first geothermal power plant has begun generating electricity, bringing deep geothermal power onto the national grid for the first time. Located at the United Downs Industrial Site near Redruth in Cornwall, the flagship project developed by Geothermal Engineering Ltd (GEL) taps heat from granite rock formations more than five kilometres beneath the surface.

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.