CO/2 Reduction Newsletter — Week Ending September 12, 2026

Original newsletter by Bob Haar

Shared with ICS by Raymond Johnson

The following is Bob Haar’s weekly CO/2 Reduction Newsletter, shared with ICS by Raymond Johnson. ICS has formatted the newsletter for web readability and added links to relevant underlying or supporting sources where available. The substance of Haar’s newsletter has been preserved, with figures checked against primary sources and updated where more recent data is available.

Quotes of the Week

“Africa’s solar revolution is here. Growth is spreading to new markets across the continent, and rooftop and distributed systems are putting power directly into the hands of households and businesses.” — Sonia Dunlop, CEO, Global Solar Council

About This Newsletter

Bob Haar generally includes projects larger than $1 billion or 1 GW. An acronym guide appears at the end.

Biggest Global News

Every $1 invested in tackling climate change and air pollution together returns about $15 in economic benefits, according to Hidden Assets, published September 7 by UNEP and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition. Excluding non-market welfare benefits, the return is still about $4 to $1. The largest gains are in health.
In 2025, outdoor air pollution was linked to an estimated 6.4 million premature deaths worldwide, with household air pollution linked to two million more. Each year of delayed action forgoes more than $1.5 trillion in benefits.
Europe added at least 33.8 GW of solar in the first half of 2026, up 1.9% from 33.2 GW in the first half of 2025.
EU solar generated 282 TWh between March 1 and August 31, avoiding roughly €30 billion in gas import costs — about €1 billion per week. In June, solar supplied a record 25% of EU electricity and was the continent’s largest single source for the month.
Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines drove Southeast Asian renewable investment past $12 billion in the first half of the year.
Nigeria was among the sub-Saharan African markets to see a small-scale solar boom, as rising fuel prices pushed households and businesses toward solar and storage for backup power.
Central Asia saw half-year investment exceed $4 billion for the second time, with strong onshore wind activity in Kazakhstan.
Brazil drove global biofuels investment to $7.7 billion, the highest level since the second half of 2008.
U.S. solar installations in Q2 rose 45% over Q2 2025, to 11.4 GWdc, driven almost entirely by utility-scale volumes.

Global Roundup

Africa — Fifteen major African markets imported more than $400 million worth of solar panels in the first quarter of 2026 alone, compared with about $600 million for all of 2025, according to the IEA. The continent added 4.5 GW in 2025, a 54% increase. Solar panel manufacturing output across Africa is expected to reach around 3.5 GW by year end, though most is destined for export.
Batteries — Taiwan’s ProLogium began mass production of its Gen 3.5 all-solid-state Lithium Ceramic Battery on September 2. Third-party TÜV testing measured 381 Wh/kg and 903 Wh/L on a 185.4 Ah large-format cell, and UL Solutions testing qualified the cell as genuinely all-solid-state under China’s GB/T 43568-2026 standard. Initial line capacity is 0.5 GWh — roughly 6,000 EV packs — with a second plant planned at Dunkirk, France.
Netherlands — Europe’s largest industrial carbon capture facility was inaugurated September 7 at Yara’s Sluiskil ammonia and fertilizer plant. It will capture and liquefy up to 800,000 tons of CO₂ annually, which Northern Lights vessels will carry to Øygarden, Norway for permanent storage 2,600 metres below the seabed — about 12 million tons over 15 years. It is the first complete commercial cross-border capture, transport and storage chain.
Germany — A British startup, Cool Planet Technologies, has christened a 10,000-ton-per-year carbon capture plant at a Holcim cement facility in Lower Saxony.
Germany — The far-right Alternative für Deutschland won 43.8% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt on September 6, more than doubling its 2021 result. The party took 39 of the state parliament’s 83 seats, three short of a majority, and no government has yet been formed. Its manifesto calls for a wind power moratorium, but wind permitting is regulated federally and analysts expect such a measure to fail in court. Roughly 26,000 jobs in the state are tied to renewable energy.
Germany — Facing financing difficulties on new offshore wind projects, Germany is adopting the contracts-for-difference approach used successfully in the UK.
Hong Kong — The Green Accelerator, a newly launched non-profit platform, is designed to fund and deploy green technologies in developing countries.
Iberia — Spain and Portugal both set August renewable generation records.
Kazakhstan — Agriculture-focused carbon platform Agreena has secured an agreement with a major commodity trading house for the purchase of 4.5 million tons of carbon credits over seven years, from a project supporting farmers transitioning to regenerative agriculture.
Netherlands — The European Commission has agreed to the fourth payment request, for $750 million, under the country’s $6 billion clean energy grant plan. Network utility TenneT has issued a $3 billion green bond for grid build-out, bringing its total to $17 billion.
Pakistan — Battery storage is now mandatory for new wind and solar projects.
Poland — Baltic Power, the country’s first offshore wind farm, has delivered its first electricity to the national grid. The ORLEN and Northland Power project will run 76 turbines of 15 MW each for about 1.2 GW, generating roughly 4 TWh a year — close to 3% of Polish demand. Construction completes this autumn.
South Korea — HiNa Battery has signed a five-year deal to supply 10 GWh of sodium-ion battery storage.
United Kingdom — EnergyPathways is developing MESH, a 300 MW / 55 GWh compressed air energy storage facility using purpose-built salt caverns beneath the East Irish Sea near Barrow-in-Furness. At more than 190 hours of discharge it would be Britain’s largest long-duration storage asset and the world’s largest CAES plant. Jacobs is leading consenting; final investment decision is targeted for 2028, with operation around 2031.

Biggest US News

U.S. clean power additions jumped 45% to 17.1 GW in Q2 2026, the strongest second quarter and first half on record, bringing cumulative clean power capacity to nearly 388 GW — enough for about 83 million households.
The quarter’s additions were 7.4 GW of utility-scale solar, nearly 5 GW of land-based wind, and 4,685 MW / 17,177 MWh of battery storage across 164 projects.
New Mexico led all states with just over 4 GW — 24% of everything added — ending Texas’s two-and-a-half-year streak. Most of that was Pattern Energy’s 3,650 MW SunZia wind project, the largest land-based wind farm ever built in the United States, which alone accounted for 73% of U.S. wind capacity added in the quarter.
The clean power development pipeline reached a record 205 GW, including 111 GW of utility-scale solar and 56 GW of battery storage. The land-based wind pipeline declined 4%, which ACP attributes to a federal pause on Department of Defense permit reviews.
Solar and battery storage together accounted for 70% of all new U.S. generating capacity added in the first half of 2026, with solar alone at 45%.
Solar has led new U.S. generating-capacity additions for 28 straight months.
Offshore wind threatened — On August 10, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb granted the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s request to reconsider its construction and operations approval for the 2.8 GW Atlantic Shores project off New Jersey, rejecting the developer’s argument that BOEM lacks authority to revisit a granted permit. The project has been stalled since Shell withdrew in January 2025, but the precedent puts other permitted offshore projects on less certain ground.
JPMorgan has rebranded its $11 billion forestry asset management unit to reflect a broader focus on nature-based assets.

US Roundup

California — Lawmakers passed AB 1156, which would let landowners in water-constrained regions convert fallowed farmland to solar without paying the Williamson Act cancellation fee, normally 12.5% of unrestricted market value. It passed the Senate 21–14 and now awaits the governor’s signature. Separately, the Westlands Water District’s Valley Clean Infrastructure Plan envisions up to 21 GW of solar with storage across roughly 136,000 acres of fallowed San Joaquin Valley farmland, and has made its first solicitation.
Colorado — Renewables supplied 53% of the state’s electricity in the first quarter of 2026 and 56.1% in the second, the first time renewables have been a majority. Context is warranted: renewable generation rose 15.8% year over year, but coal generation fell 62%, largely because Xcel’s Comanche Unit 3 has been offline for turbine repairs since August 2025, and total in-state generation declined. The underlying trend is real — solar out-produced coal in Colorado in the first half — but the headline percentage flatters it. All remaining Colorado coal plants are slated to close by 2031.
Litigation — Underserved communities have again asked the courts to restore the $3 billion Environmental and Climate Justice fund.
Nuclear — The Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing closed a loan of up to $1.9 billion to NextEra Energy on September 8 to restart the 615 MW Duane Arnold Energy Center in Linn County, Iowa, which shut down in 2020. Google has signed a 25-year power purchase agreement for the output; NextEra expects the plant online around the end of 2028. It is the third shuttered U.S. reactor with federal restart financing, after Holtec’s Palisades in Michigan ($1.52 billion) and Constellation’s Crane Clean Energy Center, formerly Three Mile Island, in Pennsylvania ($1 billion). None has yet returned to service.
Texas — Record levels of renewable generation and battery discharge carried the state through record summer heat without incident.

Global News

Australia — Solar generation rose 12% in August. Energy Vault has secured land for a 1 GW battery storage project.
Belgium — The European Investment Bank is lending $1.2 billion for connections to the Princess Elizabeth Energy Island.
Brazil — A new law links data center incentives to renewable energy use.
Electric vehicles — Global EV sales reached 1.83 million in August, up just 2% year over year, with 13.4 million sold in the first eight months of 2026, 4% above the same period last year. The aggregate conceals a sharp regional split: Europe was up 36% in August and 29% year to date; China fell 11% year over year but held EV penetration above 60% of passenger car sales for a fourth consecutive month; and North America fell 33% in August, its steepest decline of the year, leaving the region down 21% year to date following the expiration of the federal EV tax credit.
United Kingdom — EVs accounted for 30% of new car registrations in August, totaling 27,876 vehicles, up 30% year over year.
Australia — EV sales have jumped 91% over eight months, surpassing gasoline cars.
Brazil — EV sales have quadrupled compared with 2025.
France — Solar capacity stands at 34 GW, up 3 GW so far this year.
Germany — A utility has broken ground on a 1.6 GWh battery storage project. The 1 GW Borkum Riffgrund 3 offshore wind farm has begun operation.
India — The Asian Development Bank has agreed to help raise up to $1 billion in private investment for renewable projects. The UK has recognized India’s carbon credit scheme, allowing importers to seek carbon price relief under its carbon border adjustment mechanism. Two companies plan a 2.4 GW solar cell factory.
Mangroves — After years of steady decline, mangrove forests are recovering. They are a major carbon sink and serve as natural storm buffers against hurricanes.
Singapore and Laos — The two countries have signed an Article 6 Implementation Agreement for bilateral carbon credit transfers, Singapore’s twelfth such agreement.
Switzerland — The country has made its commercial BECCS debut, with captured CO₂ shipped to Denmark.
Taiwan — The country’s four major public funds will freeze fossil fuel investment by 2030.

US News

West Coast — On August 26, elected officials from the three West Coast states joined officials from British Columbia and Baja California to announce the BC2BC zero-emission vehicle corridor along Interstate 5, enabling electric trucks to travel the full length with assured charging availability.
PJM — The grid operator, serving six states, is now seeking 6 GW of battery storage.
Oracle — The company is soliciting plans to build 2 GW of renewables in New Mexico, part of a wider plan for its Project Jupiter data center to achieve carbon-free energy matching.
Texas — OCI Energy and Arava Power have broken ground on a 347 MW solar project, bringing their combined solar portfolio to 1.2 GW.
Utah — Fervo Energy has signed the world’s largest enhanced geothermal power purchase agreement, a deal to supply Google with 396 MW from its Cape Station project in Beaver County, expected online in 2028. Google holds an option to expand by about 600 MW, to nearly 1 GW, by June 2030.

Acronyms

GW is 1 gigawatt (1 billion watts), able to power about 300K homes.
BESS is battery energy storage system. BESS systems are measured by two factors. For example, 320 MW/640 MWh: 320 MW (megawatts) represents the power capacity or power rating of the battery system, meaning the maximum rate at which the battery can instantaneously discharge electricity or charge. 640 MWh (megawatt-hours) represents the energy storage capacity of the battery system.
CAES is compressed air energy storage.
PHS is Pumped Hydro Storage.
SAF is sustainable aviation fuel.
CDR is Carbon Dioxide Removal.
DAC is Direct Air Capture of CO₂.
BECCS is bioenergy with carbon capture and storage.
GHG = Greenhouse gases.
1 terawatt = a thousand gigawatts.
Not all queued projects are implemented.
Green hydrogen is made from clean power. Blue hydrogen is made from fossil fuel with carbon capture. Pink from nuclear. Others from fossil fuels.
SMR is “small modular reactor.”
VPP means “Virtual Power Plant.” This is when utilities tap customer stored power sources like EVs.

Editorial note: This web version preserves the newsletter’s substance and organization while making typographical, formatting and wording adjustments for readability. Figures have been checked against primary sources and updated where more recent or more precise data is available. Relevant source links have been added by ICS where they could be identified confidently.