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The rush to build AI data centers has turned into a convenient rationale for a new wave of gas plants. Utilities and energy suppliers are pointing to “unstoppable” AI demand to justify trillions of dollars in gas, nuclear, and even coal investments, arguing that only these resources can keep the lights on in an AI era. But underneath the rhetoric, the numbers tell a different story: building fossil-fuel infrastructure to power data centers is shortsighted when renewables are already the cheaper, faster choice.

A risky bet

As Amory B. Lovins and Justin Locke write in Canary Media, energy suppliers don’t yet know how many of those facilities will eventually materialize, yet they are using AI’s ravenous appetite for electrons to justify vast new investments in long‑lived fossil assets. This is locking in decisions that will expose them to volatile power prices for decades, even though the demand forecasts behind them are highly uncertain. There are several risks to this approach:

• Overbuild risk: If even a portion of today’s AI demand projections fail to materialize, ratepayers and investors are left paying for plants that are neither fully used nor easily repurposed.
• Fuel‑price risk: Gas plants embed long‑term exposure to fuel price volatility, while AI customers are demanding stable, predictable cost structures.
• Carbon‑policy risk: As climate policy tightens, highly emissive assets built today are more likely to face higher compliance costs, curtailed run times, or accelerated write‑downs.

By contrast, modular clean resources — wind, solar, storage, and other firm clean options — can be staged over time and financed with far less exposure to future fuel prices or demand shortfalls.

Gas is often slower and more expensive in practice

The argument that “only gas can scale fast enough” ignores real‑world constraints that are already biting. Turbine supply chains, long development timelines, and mounting local opposition are slowing conventional projects. At the same time, renewables and storage have become the dominant source of new capacity because they can often be sited and built faster, especially at the scales that individual data center campuses require.

Clean portfolios also avoid the compounding effect of fuel and carbon costs over a project’s life. Once built, wind, solar, and many forms of storage have effectively zero marginal fuel cost, whereas gas plants commit owners to decades of commodity risk. For hyperscalers and AI developers under pressure to deliver both growth and cost predictability, that distinction matters as much as emissions.

Smarter ways to meet AI‑era load growth

The good news is that utilities and large loads are not limited to “gas or nothing.” A growing set of policies and incentives are emerging to make big new loads take responsibility for their own power while protecting other rate-payers:

• Large‑load tariffs and cost‑shielding structures: Several states are experimenting with dedicated tariffs for very large customers that explicitly allocate grid upgrade and resource costs to those who are driving the demand, rather than socializing them across all ratepayers.
• Bring‑Your‑Own (BYO) and Clean Transition Tariffs: Under BYO structures, large loads pay directly to add new power resources, often clean resources, that serve their needs without burdening other customers. When designed as Clean Transition tariffs, eligibility can be restricted to carbon‑free options, further aligning with policy goals.
• On‑site and “on‑campus” clean generation: Data centers can build or contract for renewables and storage on or near their sites, easing transmission constraints and speeding deployment compared with distant, central‑station plants.

These approaches are already moving from theory to practice. Utilities in multiple states are exploring structures that require data centers to pay most or all of the cost of new capacity built on their behalf, while some large tech firms are co‑developing clean power projects and associated tariffs to cover their incremental load.

What this means for developers

For data center operators and AI developers, the choice is increasingly clear. They can accept utility plans that saddle them with long‑term exposure to fuel and policy shocks, or they can embrace cleaner, more flexible alternatives that support their growth trajectories while mitigating public concerns. The second path is not only better for the climate; it is also the more rational business decision in a world where power, not compute, is becoming the real bottleneck for AI infrastructure.

GRID-INDEPENDENT ENERGY FOR DATA CENTERS

No need to wait years for a grid connection. 247Solar’s hybrid clean solutions are ready to power your data centers as soon as you can build them. 247Solar’s solutions provide both electricity and chilling in a single turnkey package. 247Solar builds, owns, and operates its systems and sells energy on a PPA basis at predictable prices for 20 years or more.

247Solar offers data centers

On-grid or off-grid, 247Solar Plants offer a 24/7 alternative to fossil fuels for a broad range of applications:

• Rapid deployment now
• Firm, 24/7 baseload power
• Close load following
• Super-high reliability – no backup required
• Electricity and chilling in a single package
• Predictable energy costs

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THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ JUST MADE RENEWABLES IMPOSSIBLE TO IGNORE

For years, the case for clean energy investment rested heavily on climate economics: lower emissions, falling costs, long-term sustainability. The recent disruption around the Strait of Hormuz has added a harder-edged argument that is harder for skeptics to dismiss — energy security.

Writing in Fortune, Tenzin Seldon, the founder and managing partner of Pulse Fund, notes that roughly 20 million barrels of petroleum liquids move through the Strait of Hormuz every day, representing approximately one-fifth of global supply. With that corridor under threat, oil prices have spiked and the vulnerability of fuel-dependent economies has been exposed in real time. The message is not subtle: any nation, grid, or industrial operation that depends on liquid fuels imported through geopolitical chokepoints is carrying a risk that cannot be fully hedged.

That risk is not new, but it has rarely been this visible. The 1973 Arab oil embargo, the 1990 Gulf War, and repeated tanker incidents in the region have all sent the same signal. What is different now is that the alternatives — solar, wind, storage, electrification, and distributed clean generation — have matured to the point where the transition is an economically rational response, not just a political preference.

For industrial operators, the implications are direct. Facilities that rely on diesel or gas for power and heat carry not just a carbon liability but a supply-chain and price-volatility liability that is ultimately tied to the same geopolitical risks that move oil markets. Electrifying those loads and backing them with clean, locally generated or contracted power is a way to reduce that exposure.

For investors and lenders, the Hormuz episode reinforces what many are already pricing into portfolios: that fossil-fuel dependence is a systemic risk factor, and that clean energy infrastructure is increasingly a resilience asset, not just a green preference. This security argument, long the domain of defense analysts, has now become broadly compelling.

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COLOMBIA SUMMIT: REST OF WORLD STEPS AROUND FOSSIL-FUEL STALEMATE

When nearly 60 nations gathered in Santa Marta, Colombia in late April for the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, the meeting’s most telling detail was not who attended — it was who did not.

The United States was not invited, a direct consequence of the Trump administration’s retreat from international climate engagement. China, India, Russia, and Japan also stayed away, as did the oil-rich Gulf states. Together, those absentees represent the world’s three largest greenhouse-gas emitters, its largest oil exporter by reserve, and several of the economies most structurally dependent on fossil-fuel revenues. As the BBC reported, the nations that did attend represent roughly 20 percent of global fossil-fuel output — significant, but far short of a majority.

Colombian Environment Minister Irene Vélez Torres was direct about the absences. According to Newsgram’s coverage of the summit, she told The Guardian simply: “This is not the space for them.”

That framing matters. The Santa Marta conference, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, was deliberately designed to operate outside the traditional UN climate architecture. The New York Times described it as “the first global conference aimed at phasing out fossil fuels,” while the BBC noted that it addressed something “that has eluded consensus at UN climate summits.” The implicit argument is that the COP process — where major emitters and fossil-fuel producers hold effective veto power over ambitious language — has become too slow and too compromised to drive real transition policy.

The attending countries — including Australia, Nigeria, Angola, Brazil, Canada, Norway, Turkey, Vietnam, and dozens of smaller and island nations — represent a coalition defined not by geography or ideology but by a shared conclusion: that waiting for the largest emitters and producers to lead is no longer a viable strategy.

For mid-sized economies in particular, the security and resilience logic of this position is increasingly hard to argue with. As the Hormuz disruption demonstrated this spring, fuel-dependent nations bear the sharpest end of geopolitical energy risk without having meaningful influence over the conditions that create it. Building domestic clean generation, electrifying industrial loads, and reducing import dependence are not just climate policies — they are rational acts of national self-determination.

The Santa Marta declaration did not produce binding commitments, and no one expected it to at a first convening. What it did produce is a coalition architecture — a table that excludes the actors most likely to obstruct progress and includes those most motivated to move. A second conference, to be led by Pacific island nations, is already planned.

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The post Zero Carbon: Why Data Centers Should Accelerate Clean Power, Not Gas appeared first on 247Solar, Inc..

The Iran war is reshaping mining by driving up costs and exposing structural vulnerabilities across global supply chains. A recent analysis in Mining Technology argues that the primary impact is being transmitted through higher oil prices, shipping disruption at chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz, rising marine insurance premiums, and mounting uncertainty around logistics for industrial inputs and refined metals. For miners, this translates directly into sustained pressure on operating and processing costs.

The authors note that the Strait of Hormuz handled roughly a quarter of global seaborne oil trade in 2025, making any disruption to this corridor a global event for both energy and materials flows. As security risks rise, mining companies face higher fuel bills, longer and less predictable shipping times, tighter freight availability, and elevated insurance costs for bulk commodity cargoes.

These shocks are especially acute for energy‑intensive processing assets such as aluminum smelters, copper smelters, and steel plants, which are highly sensitive to electricity availability, imported feedstock, and uninterrupted logistics. Recent attacks on Gulf smelting infrastructure underscore that processing and refining—not mines themselves—are emerging as the most immediate points of failure in the current crisis.

Thus, the authors write, the conflict is reinforcing an existing structural weakness: mining supply chains remain heavily exposed to concentrated trade routes and volatile fossil fuel markets. This means, they suggest, that the industry is likely to respond with a stronger strategic push toward supply diversification, localized processing, renewable power integration, and reduced diesel dependence as part of a broader investment in operational resilience.
Diesel dependence looms large

For mining operators, the diesel issue is particularly stark. Iron ore mining, for example, is described as “highly diesel‑intensive” across extraction, hauling, and transport, meaning that sustained increases in oil prices feed straight through to higher unit costs and thinner margins. When those fuel costs are compounded by shipping delays and rising insurance premiums linked to disruption in and around Hormuz, miners are squeezed from both sides.

The article notes that this environment is “reinforcing the longer‑term shift toward electrification as companies look to de‑risk their cost base and reduce exposure to oil price volatility.” This points to a clear opportunity for mining companies to rethink their on‑site energy strategies, and this is precisely where 247Solar’s solar thermal technology can fit in.

By shifting from imported diesel and grid‑delivered fossil power toward locally produced, dispatchable renewable energy, miners can:

• Stabilize a major portion of operating costs by decoupling from oil price shocks and marine chokepoints
• Improve resilience of critical processing assets that depend on reliable power and heat;
• Advance decarbonization commitments without sacrificing reliability in remote or off‑grid locations.

247Solar’s modular, tower‑based systems use sun‑tracking heliostats to heat air to around 1,000°C, drive turbines to generate electricity, and store thermal energy in solid materials for use when the sun is not shining. Each unit can provide both round‑the‑clock clean electricity and industrial‑grade process heat—up to about 970°C—for applications such as mineral processing and drying. The systems are factory‑built, scalable, and well‑suited to remote mines, either as standalone microgrids or in combination with PV and wind.

Unreliable fossil fuels

Critics of renewables often say, “the sun doesn’t always shine,” but the Iran war demonstrates is that fossil fuels are intermittent in a far more dangerous way—they can be turned off deliberately anywhere along a long, fragile supply chain. By contrast, the “fuels” for solar and wind are domestic, inexhaustible, and immune to embargoes or blockades. And once built, renewable assets offer highly predictable operating costs with no equivalent of a sudden doubling of sunlight prices.

For mine operators navigating the supply‑chain and energy‑price risks in a volatile new world, the strategic question is whether they want to keep renting access to fuels that can be weaponized—or harvest free resources that cannot. Integrating dispatchable renewable systems like 247Solar’s offers a practical pathway to reduce diesel dependence, protect margins, and build the resilient, low‑carbon operations that the current crisis demands.

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ROUND-THE-CLOCK CLEAN HEAT AND POWER FOR MINES WITH NO ADDITIONAL CAPITAL COST

247Solar builds, owns and operates our hybrid solutions and sells round-the-clock clean heat and power on a PPA basis. Mines pay only for the energy they use with no additional capital cost and no risk.

 

We remove the burden of ownership by assuming all responsibility for operations, maintenance, insurance and repair. We guarantee energy delivery – redundant systems ensure reliability and eliminate the need for gensets.

 

Here’s what that means for miners:

• Reduced energy costs by 25% or more
• Stable, predictable energy prices for decades
• Lower operating costs per ton
• Increased competitiveness
• Longer life-of-mine

 

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BDO: ENERGY TRANSITION DRIVES A NEW ERA FOR MINING

BDO

The accelerating energy transition is no longer just reshaping commodity demand. According to BDO’s Annual Mining Report 2026, it is fundamentally redefining what it takes for miners to stay competitive, investable, and secure over the next decade.

On the market side, the report underscores that demand growth is increasingly concentrated in “transition metals” – copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, rare earths and certain high purity iron ore products linked to green steel¬ – commodities that sit at the heart of electrification, batteries, renewables, and data center build out. Traditional bulk commodities are still important, but the growth narrative, and much of the capital, is shifting toward materials that enable decarbonization.

At the same time, BDO highlights that investor and customer expectations have changed materially. Major OEMs, battery manufacturers, and utilities are under intense pressure to demonstrate low carbon, ethically sourced supply across their value chains. They are increasingly screening suppliers not just for volume and cost, but for emissions intensity, resilience to geopolitical shocks, and the credibility of their transition plans. For miners, this means that high emissions production—even of “hot” transition metals—faces growing commercial risk. Low carbon operations, by contrast, can command premium contracts, preferred offtake status, and more patient capital.

Production and consumption both matter

BDO’s message is that the energy transition is not only about what miners produce, but how they power their own operations. The report notes that many mines still rely heavily on diesel for power generation and mobile equipment, and on coal or gas dominated grids for electricity. With fuel price volatility, mounting carbon costs, and tightening ESG scrutiny, that model is increasingly exposed.

The report identifies a set of emerging best practices among leading operators:

• On site renewables and microgrids – Growing deployment of solar, wind, and hybrid microgrids—often paired with battery or thermal storage—to reduce diesel burn, stabilise power costs, and improve reliability at remote sites.
• Electrification of mining fleets and processing – Progressive replacement of diesel haul trucks and auxiliary equipment with electric or hydrogen ready alternatives, combined with increasing electrification of crushing, grinding, and materials handling.
• Long term renewable PPAs and partnerships – Miners securing long term contracts with renewable IPPs or investing directly in generation assets to lock in predictable, low carbon power for energy intensive operations.

BDO also stresses that regulatory and financial signals are converging. Governments are moving toward stricter carbon pricing and disclosure regimes, while lenders and insurers are tightening requirements for high emissions assets. This, the report argues, raises the “risk adjusted cost of fossil energy” for miners and strengthens the business case for non fossil alternatives. Companies that move early to adopt cleaner, more autonomous energy systems are likely to enjoy lower long term operating costs, reduced risk premia, and a stronger social license to operate.

Read the full report here.

US LAUNCHES $500M INITIATIVE TO BOOST CRITICAL MINERALS PROCESSING

Nordroden/Shutterstock

Mining.com reports that the US Department of Energy (DOE) plans to provide up to $500 million in funding to expand domestic critical minerals processing and battery materials manufacturing and recycling, as Washington seeks to reduce reliance on foreign supply chains.

The funding opportunity, issued by the DOE’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation (CMEI), seeks to support demonstration and commercial-scale facilities that process or recycle critical materials used in batteries and energy technologies.

The initiative targets minerals such as lithium, graphite, nickel, copper and aluminum, along with other materials contained in commercial battery systems.

The DOE’s Notice of Funding Opportunity addresses three topic areas with the goal to develop demonstration and commercial facilities that increase the domestic supply of critical minerals and materials for advanced battery technologies.

1. Critical minerals and materials processing – domestic facilities that process key critical materials from raw feedstocks;
2. Battery materials and component manufacturing – production of cathode/anode materials and other advanced battery components;
3. Critical materials recycling – projects that recover and re introduce critical minerals from spent batteries and other end of life products.

The funding call represents the third round of financial support under DOE programs focused on battery materials processing and battery manufacturing and recycling. The move is part of a broader push by Washington to rebuild domestic critical mineral supply chains, which are currently dominated by overseas processing hubs, particularly in China.

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CASE STUDY: ECONOMIC FORCES DRIVING SOUTH AFRICA’S RENEWABLES TRANSITION

Discovery Alert

South Africa offers a concrete case study of how the pressures described in BDO’s Annual Mining Report 2026 are already reshaping real operations on the ground.

Discovery Alert reports that several South African mines across platinum, iron ore, and diamonds are moving decisively to on site solar and wind generation to address three interlinked challenges: chronic grid unreliability, escalating electricity tariffs, and intensifying investor and customer scrutiny of carbon footprints. In doing so, they are acting on the same imperatives BDO identifies: securing access to low carbon, cost stable power and reducing dependence on diesel and unreliable fossil fueled grids.

The operations surveyed by Discovery Alert are deploying hybrid renewable systems and microgrids, in some cases sized at tens of megawatts, that can cover a significant share of mine load while providing resilience against South Africa’s well documented load shedding and transmission constraints. The mines are targeting reductions in grid purchases and diesel backup use, cutting exposure to both price spikes and supply interruptions to stabilize their energy costs and de risk operations.

Equally important, these projects are being justified on core financial and strategic metrics—lower life cycle energy costs, improved uptime, and enhanced ESG performance. In short, how these mines are embracing renewables is a live demonstration of BDO’s thesis that the transition in what miners produce and the transition in how they power themselves are now inseparable drivers of value and risk.

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The post Mine Power: Iran War Risks and Outlook for Miners appeared first on 247Solar, Inc..

Tariffs and trade rules are no longer background noise for clean energy—they are now directly shaping project costs, schedules, and bankability across solar, wind, storage, and transmission. Recent and proposed duties on imported modules, batteries, steel, aluminum, and grid gear are pushing equipment prices higher and tightening availability, especially where manufacturing is concentrated in a handful of countries. For project developers and EPCs, that means procurement risk has become project risk.

The most exposed projects are those built around technologies with highly concentrated supply chains. Conventional PV and some wind components are good examples. A large share of global module and upstream PV capacity is located in a single country, and rare‑earth‑based generators and certain castings for turbines depend on a narrow group of suppliers. When new tariffs or export controls land, these single‑source strategies can translate almost overnight into double‑digit CAPEX increases, delayed Notice to Proceed, or the need to reopen PPAs and EPC contracts. Many organizations respond by passing costs through where they can, but that slows project uptake and complicates financing.

By contrast, technologies designed from the outset for geographically diversified manufacturing and sourcing are faring better. Supply‑chain analysts consistently find that organizations with distributed, multi‑country supplier networks maintain far greater flexibility under shifting tariff regimes, even though they bear some additional complexity in quality control and logistics. In practical terms, diversified supply lets developers and EPCs reroute orders, rebalance supplier allocations, and preserve delivery schedules—rather than putting projects on hold, raising prices or accepting shorter margins.

This is the context in which 247Solar’s hybrid solar solutions have been intentionally designed. Our factory‑produced, modular CSP‑based systems use standardized components manufactured under license, virtually all of which can be produced in multiple countries and sourced from multiple suppliers. Because our systems are modular and factory‑built, rather than heavily customized on site, they are well suited to a distributed manufacturing model where licensees can serve regional markets with common designs and interchangeable parts. That architecture reduces exposure to any single trade lane or policy decision, while still allowing local content strategies and regional cost optimization.

This minimizes supply chain risk:

• Our customers are not tied to one country’s factory for critical components, making it easier to navigate targeted tariffs or changing sourcing rules.
• Standardization simplifies qualification of multiple licensees and suppliers, helping maintain bankability while diversifying sourcing.
• Modular, factory‑produced units ease assembly and shorten on‑site construction windows.

At 247Solar, we realize the need for more resilient, less tariff‑exposed supply chains. As tariffs, sourcing rules, and domestic‑content incentives continue to evolve, technologies that can be manufactured flexibly across multiple regions allow projects to keep building profitably, even when policy headwinds pick up.

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ROUND-THE-CLOCK CLEAN CLEAN ELECTRICITY AND HEAT

400kWe 247Solar Plants deployed at scale

247Solar Plants™ bridge the gap between conventional wind and solar and the need for round-the-clock utility power and industrial-grade heat. 247Solar Plants store the sun’s energy as heat instead of electricity, for 18 hours or more, at much less than the cost of batteries. No generators are required, and 247Solar’s turbines can also burn a variety of fuels, including hydrogen, to ensure 24/7/365 dispatchability.

Extensive Applications

On-grid or off-grid, 247Solar Plants offer a 24/7 alternative to fossil fuels for a broad range of applications:

• Industrial CHP: 24/7 low-carbon Combined Heat & Power for industry
• Data Centers: 247Solar’s hybrid clean solutions are ready to power your data centers as soon as you can build them. 247Solar’s solutions provide both electricity and chilling in a single turnkey package.
• Ultra Heat: Each 247Solar Plant can provide up to 1,500,000 Btu/hr. of heat at temperatures up 1000℃/1800℉ for industrial processes such as cement, glass, steel making, or minerals processing
• Microgrids: Always-on, emissions-free electricity and heat for islands, mines, communities, facilities
• 24/7 baseload power: 24/7 solar electricity, especially for emerging economies
• Green Hydrogen: 24/7 solar electricity and heat to power electrolysis around the clock
• Green Desalination: 24/7 solar electricity and heat to purify water around the clock

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TECHNOLOGY: Why Thermal Storage Belongs Next to Batteries

Electrified Thermal-Solutions

A new generation of high-temperature thermal batteries is poised to expand the role of energy storage beyond electricity-only applications and open a pathway to decarbonizing industrial heat. An article by Canary Media’s Maria Gallucci’s on Electrified Thermal Solutions’ Joule Hive system explains why thermal storage belongs alongside batteries in industrial clean energy systems.

Conventional battery energy storage systems (BESS) excel at fast-response, electricity-in/electricity-out services, but they cannot directly supply industrial process heat. By contrast, Electrified Thermal’s “heat battery” uses electric resistance to charge stacks of metal-oxide firebricks, storing energy as ultra high temperature heat that can be delivered as hot gas or steam to furnaces, boilers, and kilns. This electricity-to-heat architecture allows the same asset to provide firm heat for industry and also regenerate electricity when required.

The Joule Hive unit now operating at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio can store roughly 20 megawatt-hours of heat at temperatures up to 1,800 degrees Celsius — hot enough to displace fossil-fired heat in virtually any industrial application, including cement, steel, chemicals, and glass. That temperature range is significantly higher than most commercial electric boilers and heaters can withstand, enabling TES to serve hard-to-abate, high temperature processes that are otherwise difficult to electrify.

Gallucci reports that leading industrials such as ArcelorMittal, Holcim, and Vale are already backing this class of technology, seeing an opportunity to bank low-cost solar energy for dispatchability around the clock as both electricity and fossil-free heat. While battery storage is optimized for electrons, high temperature thermal storage uniquely unlocks both electrons and molecules — the superhot air and steam needed to decarbonize industry at scale.

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POLITICS: Solar and storage win on economics, forcing MAGA pivot

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A recent Washington Post article by Evan Halper describes how key Trump-world figures are recalibrating their stance on solar as AI data centers drive a steep increase in electricity demand. Influential conservatives, including Katie Miller and prominent tech allies, now pitch solar plus storage as essential to powering AI, competing with China and keeping household power bills in check, even as they downplay climate arguments.

Halper notes that solar and batteries are expected to provide roughly 79 percent of new U.S. grid capacity this year, with most new projects sited in Republican-led states and about 40 percent in Texas alone. This growth is occurring despite the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back tax credits, weaken federal clean energy programs and privilege gas, coal and nuclear — policies that have raised costs and increased supply risk. Under pressure from conservative governors and voters, the White House has already allowed several previously blocked industrial-scale solar projects in Nevada and other states to move forward.

It appears that economics are beginning to override ideological opposition. AI load growth, utility concerns about reliability and GOP anxiety over rising bills are creating a durable constituency for continued solar and storage build-out, even under a hostile federal policy framework.

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ENERGY TRANSITION: Replacing Diesel May Be Africa’s Fastest Climate Win

Renewables in Africa

A LinkedIn essay from Renewables in Africa argues that the continent’s true baseload is not its formal grids but millions of diesel generators quietly filling the gaps left by unreliable utility power. From hospitals and telecom towers to mines, malls, and off grid industries, diesel self generation in some countries rivals or exceeds utility capacity — yet it is largely invisible in official planning.

The author explains that diesel persists because it delivers immediacy, control, and independence from unstable grids, but at a steep economic and environmental cost: power that is two to four times more expensive than grid electricity, exposure to volatile fuel prices and foreign exchange risk, and significant local air pollution. In this framing, replacing diesel is not a marginal clean energy play but one of Africa’s largest decarbonization opportunities, especially where grids are weak and industrial users already pay high operating costs.

For off grid mines and C&I users on unreliable networks, the article highlights that solar plus storage hybrids are now delivering cheaper lifetime electricity, in many cases cutting diesel consumption by 40–80 percent with paybacks under five years. In mining, agriculture, and manufacturing, the business case is clear. The bottlenecks are now financing structures, execution capacity, and policy alignment.
The piece concludes that energy storage is the critical enabler: solar alone cannot fully displace diesel, but solar plus storage and smart controls can turn volatile fuel spending into predictable infrastructure investment.

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The post Zero Carbon: How Tariffs Increase Supply Chain Risk appeared first on 247Solar, Inc..

By Dr Kristen Griffin, Chief Product Officer, 247Solar, Inc.

As seen in Mining Weekly

Long viewed as the troubled sibling of solar photovoltaic (PV) power, solar thermal power has emerged from its adolescence ready to take on the biggest prize of all – decarbonisation of industrial heat.

Over the past several decades, as demand accelerated for renewable energy, the need for technologies capable of delivering energy around the clock has become clear. The concentrated solar power (CSP) towers that emerged in the early 2010s initially appeared to fit the bill.  The basic concept was simple: an array of mirrors focuses sunlight on a receiver at the top of a tower, which captures the solar energy as heat. This heat is either immediately converted to electricity using a turbine or stored for later use at night or during bad weather.

Unfortunately, the limitations of technologies available at the time drove a series of design choices that increased the complexity of the system, including the selection of steam turbines. The steam turbines were paired with molten salts as the most effective heat transfer fluid and thermal energy storage medium available at the time.

The resulting systems involved complex designs, corrosive high-temperature fluids, and many moving parts, all of which made them cost effective only when built at the largest scales. These handicaps ultimately crippled their prospects. Ever since, traditional solar power towers have been characterised by challenges with reliability, toxic leaks and, ultimately, an ability to provide energy only 60% of the time at a high cost.

Intermittent Renewables Prevail

Meanwhile, simpler renewable energy solutions such as solar PV and wind were careening down their respective cost curves. Yet they too were intermittent — producing electricity only when the sun was shining or the wind blowing.  Round-the-clock clean electricity remained a distant goal. Round-the-clock decarbonised heat was an even bigger challenge, earning the moniker “hard-to-abate,” because no solution based on solar PV or wind existed.

And so it was that even though traditional CSP had the ability to address both of the most pressing challenges of decarbonisation, it languished as a technology desperately in need of innovation.

As so often happens, the solution came from another scientific discipline entirely. An engineering lab at MIT was exploring applications for heat exchangers using newly developed high-temperature materials. The team, some of whom would go on to found modular concentrated solar energy system provider 247Solar Inc, envisioned using these materials for heat exchangers in air-based turbines to produce electricity.

The team realised that by transferring heat to the compressed air inside the turbine at a sufficiently high temperature (~1000 ^oC), they could eliminate the turbine’s combustor and drive the turbine to produce electricity without steam or combustion. No water or fuel would be required, and no emissions would be produced. This single innovation eliminated the complexity that had plagued traditional CSP and birthed a new generation of elegantly simple solar thermal power.

Another advantage also emerged: the hot air flowing into the heat exchanger did not need to be pressurised. This meant that the entire system, including the receiver, could operate at atmospheric pressure.  Once the receiver no longer needed to be an airtight pressure vessel, it was no longer limited to small sizes able to withstand high pressures and no longer required complex cooling systems, both of which had made prior air-based designs economically unviable.

In addition, the thermal storage no longer required expensive, liquid-based systems with hard-to-handle molten salts. Instead, the thermal storage could be a simple enclosure filled with inexpensive rocks, sand or ceramics. Once air-based solar thermal became possible, the limitations of traditional steam-based CSP disappeared.

How it Works

This next generation solar thermal plant is more like a wind turbine than traditional CSP in terms of few moving parts, design simplicity, and low risk to the environment.  Like wind turbines, these modular systems can be deployed in any quantity to address the energy needs of a wide range of offtaker loads.

A simple receiver sits atop a tower, passively collecting sunlight from an array of mirrors and heating air that flows through it.  The hot air can be directly provided to an offtaker for industrial processes, converted to electricity and medium-temperature heat by the turbine, and/or circulated through a thermal storage enclosure for later use. Because this system stores the sun’s energy as heat instead of electricity, no batteries are required, eliminating their costs and hazards.

This simple design provides high reliability and continuous operations through three unique features. With few moving parts and no liquid or steam, the system is easy to maintain and has an intrinsically low risk of failure. During maintenance, the modularity of the system virtually eliminates downtime; should one module be offline, the others are still available.  Finally, the system includes its own backup; the turbines, by design, are capable of burning a variety of fuels to provide heat and power when neither sunlight nor stored heat are available.

No Longer ‘Hard to Abate’

Process heat, which comprises 60% of global industrial energy consumption, is well served by next-generation solar thermal. Growing numbers of heat-only technologies are emerging for industrial decarbonisation, especially in relatively low temperature realms. The plant developed by 247Solar is the first to provide a comprehensive solution for both high temperature clean heat and electricity around the clock.

Applications:

Converting from fossil fuels to CSP with integrated storage provides many environmental, economic, social and risk strategy benefits to mines that currently require onsite processing or are considering onsite processing but haven’t due to their remoteness and the difficulty or cost of getting fuels to the site.

Processes that can be decarbonized using solar thermal technology include:

 

• Low Temperature Processes
  Low temperature (<100°C) thermal process include heap leach heating for gold and copper ores, electrowinning and CIP/CIL for gold processing.
• Medium Temperature Processes
  Dryers are a good example of a Medium Temperature (100°C – 600°C) mining process and are utilized for such operations as drying ore, concentrates (copper, zinc, lead, gold, silver, PGM, lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese) and iron ore pellets.
• High Temperature ProcessesHigh temperature (600°C – 2000°C) processes in mining include roasting, smelting, calcining, iron ore pelletizing, aluminum electrolysis, ferroalloy and silicon, and rare earth and lithium processing.

Prior to this innovation, commercial and industrial heat consumers were left out of the energy transition.  At last, air-based concentrated solar thermal technology has arrived to decarbonise this critical sector, with simplicity, reliability and affordability that makes emissions from industrial heating no longer “hard to abate.”

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$12B U.S. CRITICAL MINERALS RESERVE COULD RESHAPE GLOBAL MINING FLOWS

VOA

U.S. President Donald Trump has announced a new U.S. critical minerals stockpile called “Project Vault,” to be funded with a $10 billion loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank, along with $2 billion in private-sector financing. Bloomberg reports that the initiative is intended “to insulate manufacturers from supply shocks as the U.S. works to slash its reliance on Chinese rare earths and other metals.”

The New York Times writes that the effort will involve procuring and storing minerals for American manufacturers, noting that Mr. Trump likened the endeavor to the government’s oil reserves and other emergency caches. The stockpile is for non-military civilian purposes. CBS News quotes Trump saying that “just as we have long had a strategic petroleum reserve and a stockpile of critical minerals for national defense, we’re now creating this reserve for American industry.”

According to CNBC, the stockpile can encompass any resources classified ‘critical’ by the U.S. Geological Survey, noting that the USGS identifies over 50 minerals as critical, including rare earth elements, lithium, uranium, and copper.

Implementation

According to Export-Import Bank officials, the U.S. stockpile will procure these minerals both domestically and internationally and house them in a network of storage facilities within the United States. CNBC describes Project Vault as part of a wider strategy in which the administration has also invested in various mining companies, including an equity and off-take deal with MP Materials and planned financing for USA Rare Earth, Lithium Americas, and Trilogy Metals.

CNBC notes that investors expect the reserve to tighten supply and support prices for some materials. However, details about which minerals will be prioritized and how contracts will be structured remain limited, suggesting that identifying specific beneficiaries is still “highly speculative” at this stage.

ENERGY THEMES DOMINATE 2026 MINING OUTLOOKS

Energy- and climate-related themes sit at the core of 2026 mining trend projections, often framed as both risks and opportunities for value creation. Mining Technology highlights four continuing sector-wide forces from 2025 that the authors expect to carry into 2026: digital acceleration, the energy transition, a stronger focus on responsible business/ESG, and growing government involvement in markets.

Milos Ruzicka/Shutterstock

Minetek’s 2026 Mining Outlook expands this into seven forces for 2026: sustainability and decarbonization, evolving ESG and regulatory pressure, technological advances and automation, workforce well‑being, escalating water scarcity, tighter capital discipline, and rising geopolitical influence on supply chains.

Taken together, the main trends projected for 2026 are:

1. Decarbonization and sustainability (including energy transition and climate targets).
2. Integration of renewables, electrification and low‑carbon mine power.
3. Digitalization, automation and AI‑enabled operations.
4. ESG, responsible mining and stricter regulation.
5. Water stress and environmental constraints beyond carbon.
6. Workforce, skills and safety, including “generational shift.”
7. Capital discipline and cost pressure amid volatile markets.
8. Geopolitics and critical‑minerals supply chains.

Energy at the core

Minetek explicitly opens its 2026 outlook with “Sustainability and Decarbonization,” noting that decarbonization is reshaping mining as companies scale supply of transition minerals while investing in renewables, electrification and energy‑efficient infrastructure at sites. In Minetek’s assessment, energy is not a peripheral topic but instead a structuring constraint on how mines are powered and designed.

Mining Technology also elevates “Energy transition in mining,” noting that mining’s role in supplying critical raw materials for renewables and batteries is reshaping sector attractiveness and workforce dynamics. Of all the trends it identifies, MT suggests that energy transition is unique in being tightly linked to talent, permitting and social licence. By contrast, other trends like water scarcity, workforce well‑being, and capital discipline, while prominent, are framed as interacting pressures rather than the central organizing logic for strategy.

Across both outlooks, energy‑related themes—decarbonization, power systems, electrification, and the broader energy transition—are presented as cross‑cutting drivers behind technology choices, regulatory responses and capital allocation. Digitalization, ESG, geopolitics and social factors are important, but they are often discussed in relation to meeting climate and energy‑transition goals, underscoring the salience of energy as perhaps the defining context for mining in 2026.

IEF: INTERNATIONAL TRADE KEY TO CRITICAL MINERALS SUPPLY

A new International Energy Forum (IEF) analysis, reported by Mining.com, shows that over 60% of global demand for critical minerals is currently satisfied through international trade, underscoring tight interdependence between resource‑rich producers and clean‑energy consuming economies. As clean energy deployment accelerates, this trade dependence makes supply chains acutely exposed to geopolitical tensions, export controls and mid‑stream refining bottlenecks.

Credit: IEF

The IEF’s report, A Critical Minerals Enabled Energy Future, projects demand for core transition minerals—copper, nickel, cobalt, lithium and rare earth elements—rising from 28 million tons in 2021 to nearly 41 million tons by 2040. Copper remains the largest single contributor in clean‑energy uses, more than doubling to over 12 million tons, while lithium and nickel see more than tenfold growth driven by batteries and storage. Rare earths and cobalt also grow strongly, as electrification, digital infrastructure and advanced manufacturing all compete for the same constrained mineral base.

Electric vehicles are a central demand engine: the IEF notes EVs use about four times more copper than internal‑combustion cars, with copper demand from EVs projected to jump from 200,000 tons in 2020 to 3.4 million tons by 2035, implying around 14% average annual growth between 2025 and 2035. At the same time, AI, data centers and semiconductor‑intensive industries add another layer of structural demand for these minerals.

The resulting supply risk is intensified by geographic concentration: Indonesia provides more than half of global nickel, the DRC about 70% of cobalt, and China over 90% of rare earth refining capacity, while lithium mining is dominated by Australia, Chile and China. Policy responses have surged, with more than 600 critical‑mineral‑related policies worldwide; OECD countries emphasize incentives for exploration, refining and recycling, while producer nations push in‑country value addition and export measures. But the IEF warns that poorly coordinated interventions and export controls can exacerbate volatility, arguing for more transparent markets, shared data and producer‑consumer dialogue, citing experience from oil markets.

For mining companies, the IEF study suggests focusing on social license and long‑term offtake agreements in a world of concentrated supply and politicized trade, while investing in new projects, mid‑stream processing and recycling to capture policy tailwinds and de‑risk revenue. For clean energy developers and OEMs, it underlines the urgency of diversifying supply, locking in strategic partnerships with miners, designing for material efficiency and recyclability, and supporting cooperative policy frameworks that keep mineral markets open and investable.

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China is emerging as the only country truly scaling concentrated solar power (CSP), treating it as a strategic complement to its vast wind and photovoltaic (PV) fleets rather than a niche curiosity. While much of the rest of the world has allowed CSP development to stall, China is using an all‑of‑the‑above approach to capture CSP’s dispatchable, storage‑rich value that cannot be replicated by PV and wind alone.

Rapid CSP growth in China

China has moved from demonstration plants to a sizeable CSP fleet with a rapidly expanding project pipeline. By late 2025, analysts reported that China’s installed CSP capacity had passed 1 GW, with “a pipeline exceeding 8 GW across the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang.” China Daily notes that between 2020 and 2024, “China’s installed CSP capacity grew at an annual compound rate of 11.7 percent, significantly higher than the global rate of 4.24 percent over the same period.”

Beijing is now locking this build‑out into medium‑term policy. In December 2025, an official guideline jointly issued by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and National Energy Administration set a target that “by 2030, the total installed capacity of CSP will strive to reach about 15 million kilowatts, and the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) will be basically equivalent to that of coal‑fired power.”

Why CSP matters in China’s mix

Chinese planners see CSP as a system resource that solves problems created by the explosive growth of PV and wind. A SolarPACES study on China’s CSP plans noted that “CSP with heat storage can offer greater adjustability” to balance the system as variable renewables penetration rises. According to another SolarPACES analysis, “CSP is key to China meeting its climate commitments. Wind and PV are lowest c6.%09https:/www.solarpaces.org/study-csp-will-help-china-cut-costs-of-climate-action/ost, but only deliver power when it’s windy or sunny,” while CSP “with heat storage can be dispatched when needed, cutting the costs of climate action by reducing curtailment and backup requirements.”

Chinese media and officials use similar language around grid support and energy security. China Daily emphasizes that CSP’s “unique advantage of built‑in thermal energy storage… allows it to generate dispatchable power, providing grid stability by supplying electricity even when the sun is not shining, a feature essential for national energy security.” The 2025 CSP development guideline explicitly links CSP to system adequacy, calling for projects that “effectively improve the safe and reliable replacement capacity of new energy” and strengthen the “system supporting and regulating role” of CSP plants.

Global retreat versus China’s push

Outside China, CSP has largely moved from frontrunner to afterthought. The U.S. and Europe led the last CSP wave, but new build has stagnated as PV and batteries have plummeted in cost and policy support has shifted. The U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s 2025 Solar Industry Update notes that from 2004 to 2024, global CSP capacity grew only modestly and that “90% of the increase came from China, with the remainder mostly coming from Laos, Thailand, and India,” implying near‑zero net expansion in North America and Europe.

In many OECD markets, CSP has been trapped by a combination of falling PV costs, permitting challenges for large thermal plants, and the lack of coherent long‑duration storage policy. China, by contrast, has deliberately preserved the option, adopting a domestic strategy in which CSP is one tool in a portfolio of large‑scale, controllable renewables integrated through ultra‑high‑voltage transmission.

All‑of‑the‑above benefits PV and wind cannot offer

China’s all‑of‑the‑above strategy is visible in the sheer scale of its variable renewables build‑out. Taiyang News reports that by October 2025, China had cumulatively installed about “1.14 TW AC of solar energy capacity and 590 GW AC of wind,” and has set a target to reach “a combined 3.6 TW AC solar and wind capacity by 2035.” In such a system, CSP’s ability to store heat and dispatch power at will offers benefits that PV and wind alone cannot provide.

First, CSP provides intrinsic, long‑duration thermal storage. A LinkedIn analysis of China’s CSP market notes that CSP “converting sunlight into thermal energy… can be stored and used to generate electricity even during non‑sunny periods,” and that this is “especially effective in regions with abundant sunlight, like China’s vast desert areas.” The NDRC–NEA guideline explicitly calls for “high‑parameter and large‑capacity CSP plants in areas with suitable resource conditions and high demand for power and heat loads,” underscoring the technology’s dual role in supplying both electricity and process heat. PV and wind can be paired with batteries, but they do not inherently offer high‑temperature heat that can be flexibly allocated between power and industrial uses.

Second, CSP offers system‑level flexibility at scale. The 2050 high‑renewables roadmap for China notes that CSP with storage “can offer greater adjustability” than other renewables, making it valuable for “high renewable energy penetration” scenarios. China Daily similarly frames CSP as improving grid stability and national energy security by providing firm, dispatchable capacity in evening peaks when PV output collapses. This grid‑service orientation contrasts with PV and wind, which are optimized for low marginal cost energy but require additional infrastructure—batteries, demand response, or flexible generation—to deliver comparable reliability.

In sum, where many countries have implicitly decided that PV plus batteries is “good enough,” China is deliberately keeping CSP in the mix as a dispatchable, storage‑rich pillar of its high‑renewables system. That choice reflects a view of energy transition in which diversity, flexibility, and industrial strategy matter as much as the cheapest marginal kilowatt‑hour of solar or wind.

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DATA CENTERS URGED TO BRING THEIR OWN POWER

Data center developers are being pushed to “bring your own power, or be left behind,” writes Melissa Reali in Data Center Frontier. As part of her Top 5 Data Center Industry Trends and Predictions for 2026, Reali notes how developers are turning AI campuses into integrated energy assets rather than passive utility customers. Power scarcity, new tariffs, slow interconnection, brittle equip

ment supply chains, and conditional policy incentives are converging to make self‑provisioned, often renewable, power the critical differentiator in who can actually deliver capacity. This creates opportunities for grid‑independent renewables and microgrids to emerge as practical solutions that can be deployed on data‑center timelines, not utility timelines.

Why developers can’t just rely on the grid

Reali frames power scarcity as “the defining structural limit on AI and hyperscale growth,” with U.S. data‑center load expected to nearly triple by 2030 and, in some territories, account for “more than half of forecasted demand growth.” Interconnection and grid‑upgrade delays are driven not only by permitting but also by “limited manufacturing capacity and long lead times on critical equipment,” especially high‑voltage transformers and switchgear with multi‑year backlogs.

Regulators are also shifting cost and risk onto large loads. In Ohio and parts of Virginia and Texas, Reali writes, new tariffs require big data‑center customers to accept firm‑load obligations and pay for a larger share of subscribed capacity regardless of actual usage, explicitly recognizing their grid impact. A Pennsylvania bill would require data centers to fund their own utility upgrades, previewing an expectation that operators co‑finance transmission extensions, new substations, and distribution reinforcement. These measures make it expensive and uncertain to sit in the interconnection queue and wait for utility‑built capacity.

On‑site and near‑site power: from stopgap to core strategy

In response, operators “are increasingly deploying on‑site or near‑site generation—gas turbines, diesel engines, fuel cells, and large‑scale battery energy storage—to bridge multi‑year delays in grid upgrades and interconnection queues.” Bloom Energy’s 2025 report, cited in the article, projects that roughly 30% of data center sites will use some form of on‑site power as a primary source by 2030 because grid upgrades are lagging. External forecasts go further, estimating that over a quarter of data centers could be fully powered by on‑site generation by 2030, up from about 1% today.

Reali predicts that by the end of 2026, “the most competitive AI campuses will behave less like data center loads and more like integrated energy assets, with dedicated microgrids, dispatch rights, and explicit carbon performance targets baked into financing and customer contracts.”

Renewables to the rescue

The need for self‑provisioned power aligns directly with renewable technologies that can be deployed today in grid‑independent or grid‑interactive microgrids. Modern data‑center microgrids combine local generation, batteries, and controls to “reduce dependence on centralized fossil fuel‑based power generation, increase resilience, and head off emerging community concerns of data centers’ thirst for power.”

Developers’ need to bring their own power creates a natural opening for grid‑independent renewables that can be built on the same schedule as AI campuses and integrated into microgrids. The same forces pushing data centers toward self‑provisioned energy—power scarcity, cost‑shifting tariffs, and long interconnection queues—make on‑site solar, wind, fuel cells and storage highly attractive.

Read more.

CLEAN ENERGY M&A READY TO REBOUND

Bloomberg reports that “Clean energy projects are poised for a revival in mergers and acquisitions activity due to a strengthening outlook for electricity demand and converging expectations on asset valuations.”

According to writer Ishika Mookerjee, M&A executives see potential for a fresh wave of project-level transactions as data centers and other industries support renewable energy.

This is because “asset owners are becoming more prepared to lower their price expectations,” Mookerjee says, “while buyers are becoming more willing to pay for clean energy generation capacity.”

Asset owners have struggled to complete project sales in the past year and are increasingly prepared to lower their price expectations, while buyers are becoming more willing to pay for clean energy generation capacity.

Mookerjee notes that solar, wind, and energy storage completed acquisitions of individual assets or project portfolios totaled 55.3 gigawatts of generation capacity last year, the lowest total since 2017. However, she quotes Nuveen Infrastructure’s Global Head of Clean Energy, Joost Bergsma, who says,  “Slowly we’re starting to see a little bit more confidence, and also the exit market starts to be a bit more fluid in the clean energy space.”

According to Mookerjee,  the International Energy Agency is forecasting renewable energy, particularly solar, to grow faster than any other major source of electricity generation through 2035. That’s being driven by an at least 40% increase in global demand spurred by adoption of data centers, electric vehicles and air conditioners.

Greg Zdun, JPMorgan’s Asia Pacific head of energy transition and natural resources, projects that as power demand, including for clean energy, “increases more than expected, we may find demand-supply tightening and a premium being paid for quality development assets.”

Read more.

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The mining industry faces a generational challenge. Older generations of leaders are retiring at the same time as there is a shortage of new entrants, leaving companies struggling to backfill critical roles just as demand for minerals increases. The problem is particularly acute with entry‑level and early‑career positions, where a 63% decrease in mining graduates from 2014 to 2020 in Australia and a 39% decline in the United States has contributed to a shrinking pipeline into professional and leadership roles.

Moreover, an article by Mongabay notes that “70% of respondents aged 15–30 years old said they definitely or probably wouldn’t work in mining,” while more than 70% of mining executives say talent shortages are constraining their ability to meet production and strategic goals. A growing body of work suggests that stronger ESG performance and accelerated decarbonization, particularly through renewables, can mitigate younger workers’ reluctance to consider mining careers.

Recruiting rides on reputation

Recent analyses describe a structural mismatch between what Gen Z expects from employers and how it perceives mining. The OECD’s Mining for talent: Addressing regional workforce challenges in a changing resources industry finds that workforce gaps arise not only from skills availability but also from “the attractiveness of the sector and regions where it exists,” highlighting image and place‑based factors alongside demographics. In Mining industry touts green pledges to attract talent, but Gen Z isn’t buying it, Mongabay concludes that “what’s holding potential workers back, particularly Gen Z, is their commitment to higher environmental and social standards,” which many do not see reflected in mining’s track record.

Cross‑sector surveys such as Deloitte’s work on Gen Z and sustainability indicate that large majorities of young respondents consider environmental performance and social impact important when choosing employers, and a significant share will reject or leave roles when these expectations are not met. A 2022 survey by BDO, quoted in the Mongabay piece, reports that 66% of Gen Z respondents considered “positively impacting local communities” important, and 59% said the same for positively impacting the environment.” Together, these findings suggest that perceived misalignment between mining’s ESG record and Gen Z’s values is a central barrier to recruitment.

The changing nature of mining work

On a more positive note, several reports link decarbonization to changes in both the technical content and perceived attractiveness of mining jobs. PwC’s Mine 2025: Concentrating on the future states that “a substantial portion of traditional mining jobs will be augmented or replaced by technology—with remote operations employing data scientists, AI and specialists to complement field labour.” This increased use of technology “will all make mining more appealing to a younger and more diverse workforce.” The same report expects automation, remote operations and electrification to create new, higher‑skilled roles that will be increasingly important in 21^st-century mining and also and more aligned with the high‑tech professional identity that younger workers embrace.

The OECD links the energy transition to new labour‑market demands, noting that rapid growth in critical minerals and low‑carbon technologies is “transforming job requirements and regional economies” and generating demand for competencies in digitalization and environmental performance. Large‑scale investments in on‑site solar and wind, storage, fleet electrification and process efficiency are emblematic of decarbonization pathways that require new technical and managerial skills. These developments can create career opportunities at the intersection of mining, renewables and data analytics, which align more closely with Gen Z graduates’ interests than traditional extraction‑only roles.

Building new career pathways

In Who will do the work?, the Swedish engineering company Sandvik emphasizes that attracting young professionals will depend on demonstrating “structured development paths” into responsible roles that connect everyday tasks to broader goals around safety, sustainability and innovation. Titan Recruitment’s Future‑Ready: How to Attract Gen‑Z to the Mining Jobs recommends making cutting‑edge technologies like autonomous haulage, AI‑driven maintenance, remote operations, and renewables projects visible elements of graduate and apprenticeship programs.

Globe 24‑7’s Gen Z doesn’t want to work in mining: It’s time to change that frames the issue as a long‑term pipeline problem and argues for early‑career hiring, education partnerships and community‑based talent funnels designed over a 10‑ to 20‑year horizon. In this context, decarbonization projects and ESG initiatives are presented as platforms through which young employees can gain cross‑functional experience and see a path from entry‑level roles into future leadership in a transforming industry.

The reluctance of Gen Z candidates to pursue mining careers seems closely tied to concerns about environmental and social performance, as well as to outdated perceptions of the work itself. However, credible ESG integration and accelerated decarbonization—particularly through the adoption of renewables, electrification and nature‑positive practices—can help reposition mining as both a high‑tech and values‑aligned field. Mines that demonstrate real progress on emissions and community outcomes and embed these themes into early‑career roles and leadership pathways are more likely to attract and retain the next generation of workers and leaders needed to sustain the sector in a net‑zero world.

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We remove the burden of ownership by assuming all responsibility for operations, maintenance, insurance and repair. We guarantee energy delivery – redundant systems ensure reliability and eliminate the need for gensets.

 

Here’s what that means for miners:

• Reduced energy costs by 25% or more
• Stable, predictable energy prices for decades
• Lower operating costs per ton
• Increased competitiveness
• Longer life-of-mine

 

Get in touch to learn more

FORTESCUE’S FORREST SAYS REAL ZERO IS THE GOAL

Fortescue

Fortescue’s Andrew Forrest says there is a compelling business case for the concept of Real Zero – completely eliminating fossil fuels instead of compensating for them with offsets, CO2 removal or carbon capture and storage.

As reported by Sophie Vorath in Renew Economy, a series of reports commissioned by Fortescue show that “real zero” is both technically feasible and economically preferable to “net zero” in numerous hard-to-abate sectors.

Vorath writes that Forrest’s company has already committed $6.2 billion to a plan to achieve real zero by 2030. “This means decarbonising Fortescue’s electricity supply, its road transport, its mining operations, and even the massive trains that transport the ore to port.”

“Forrest argues,” she says, “that roughly 90 per cent of Fortescue’s operations can be eliminated through the use of technology that already exists and is betting enough investment and intensive research and development can crack the nut on the remaining 10 per cent within less than five years.”

Opportunities in key sectors

The reports, published by Climate Analytics and commissioned by Fortescue – demonstrate that economically viable pathways exist to eliminate fossil fuels in key global sectors like power, shipping, and transport.

A  trucking report finds that in Europe, battery-electric long-haul trucks (BETs) are projected to reach cost parity with diesel equivalents by 2026, with the total cost of BETs expected to be 15-22% lower than diesel trucks by 2030.

A report on steelmaking finds that, in Japan, green hydrogen-based production could be cheaper than fossil routes by the early 2030s – even sooner with modest carbon pricing – while scrap-based electric arc furnace production is already cost-competitive.

A third report on green fertiliser finds that, in India, green ammonia for fertiliser production will carry only a marginal cost premium over grey ammonia (made from fossil fuels) in parts of the country by 2026, and by 2030 will undercut grey ammonia in renewables-rich regions.

Forrest says the reports provide clear evidence that real zero makes economic sense for businesses like Fortescue and that fossil fuels are rapidly changing from being an economic necessity to a “financial liability.”

“This research confirms what we see every day at Fortescue – that eliminating fossil fuels makes solid commercial sense, even in the hardest-to-abate sectors.”

“While politics has slowed the global energy transition, the economics have already overtaken it. Real Zero is the winning business case.”

Read the reports here.

HUGE NEW CRITICAL MINERALS DEPOSIT FOUND IN UTAH

Mining.com reports that a Utah-based mining company says it has discovered a massive deposit of rare earths and other critical minerals, calling it potentially “one of North America’s most significant” finds to date.

Ionic Mineral Technologies — also known as Ionic MT — revealed last week that assays from its fully permitted Silicon Ridge project in Utah confirmed it as a halloysite-hosted ion-adsorption clay (IAC) system, which, compared to the conventional “hard-rock” geological system, is easier to extract minerals from.

According to the company, IAC represents the same geological formation that supplies approximately 35-40% of China’s total rare earth production and over 70% of the world’s heavy rare earth elements.

Ionic MT characterized the deposit as an “IAC-Plus” profile, referring to the magmatically enriched grades of not only rare earths but also a suite of critical minerals including gallium, germanium, rubidium, cesium, scandium, lithium, vanadium, tungsten and niobium.

In a press release, Andre Zeitoun, founder and CEO of Ionic MT, called the discovery a “watershed moment” for America’s resource independence. “For the first time, we have a domestic, shovel-ready source for a full spectrum of critical minerals, all extractable with a faster, cleaner process than traditional hard rock mining and extraction.”

As reported, the project hosts as many as 16 different elements used in key applications, ranging from AI semiconductor chips and permanent magnets to defense surveillance systems and energy technologies.

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The year 2025 marks a historic turning point in the battle against climate change. For the first time, renewables have overtaken coal as the world’s largest source of electricity. This represents a profound shift in how societies generate power and serves as a clear signal that the energy transition is accelerating worldwide.

According to a recent analysis by energy think tank Ember, renewables—including wind, solar, and hydropower—now account for over 30% of total global electricity generation, overtaking the previous dominance of coal. As reported by the BBC, “For the first time ever, wind, solar, and hydropower combined are generating more electricity than coal plants worldwide.” This shift shows that clean technologies are no longer niche but are powering entire economies and offering a credible path away from fossil dependency.

Key Drivers

Several forces have converged to accelerate the rise of renewables. Falling technology costs, improving grid integration, supportive government policies, and mounting public demand for climate action have all played crucial roles. At the same time, innovations in solar and wind turbine design, along with the expansion of battery storage, have made renewables more reliable and cost-competitive.

This means that building new wind or solar farms is now cheaper than investing in new coal plants in much of the world. Fossil fuel divestment campaigns and carbon pricing mechanisms in developed nations further reinforce the financial risks of coal, while the plummeting cost of renewables unlocks clean energy pathways for developed and developing economies alike.

A Turning Point

Ember calls this moment a “crucial turning point”. The BBC quotes Ember senior analyst Malgorzata Wiatros-Motyka as saying it “marks the beginning of a shift where clean power is keeping pace with demand growth”.

The BBC cites specific, encouraging findings:

• solar power delivered the lion’s share of growth, meeting 83% of the increase in electricity demand. It has now been the largest source of new electricity globally for three years in a row.
• Most solar generation (58%) is now in lower-income countries, many of which have seen explosive growth in recent years.
• Solar has seen prices fall a staggering 99.9% since 1975.

Ember notes that solar is now so cheap that large markets for solar can emerge in a country in the space of a single year, especially in developing regions where grid electricity is expensive and unreliable.

As discussed in the following article, China is a major contributor. Ember reports that in August 2025, its clean tech exports hit a record $20bn, driven by surging sales of electric vehicles (up 26%) and batteries (up 23%). Together, China’s electric vehicles and batteries are now worth more than twice the value of its huge solar panel exports.

Diverging Trends

Unfortunately, Ember also points out that while China is making clean technologies ever more accessible and developing countries are rapidly embracing them, richer nations, including the US and EU, are relying more than before on fossil fuels

Per the BBC, in the US, electricity demand grew faster than clean energy output, increasing reliance on fossil fuels, while in the EU, months of weak wind and hydropower performance led to a rise in coal and gas generation. Moreover, even as China’s clean tech exports surge, the US is hindering clean technologies while encouraging the world buy more of its oil and gas.

Still, the surpassing of coal by renewables generates hope for the fight against climate change. Every gigawatt of renewable capacity added means less reliance on high-emission sources and fewer tons of CO₂ released into the atmosphere. As Ember’s states: “This tipping point in global energy generation is one of the surest signs yet that the world can collectively move toward climate goals if nations sustain and build upon this momentum”.

Read more.

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400kWe 247Solar Plants deployed at scale

247Solar Plants™ bridge the gap between conventional wind and solar and the need for round-the-clock utility power and industrial-grade heat. 247Solar Plants store the sun’s energy as heat instead of electricity, for 18 hours or more, at much less than the cost of batteries. No generators are required, and 247Solar’s turbines can also burn a variety of fuels, including hydrogen, to ensure 24/7/365 dispatchability.

Extensive Applications

On-grid or off-grid, 247Solar Plants offer a 24/7 alternative to fossil fuels for a broad range of applications:

• Industrial CHP: 24/7 low-carbon Combined Heat & Power for industry
• Data Centers: 247Solar’s hybrid clean solutions are ready to power your data centers as soon as you can build them. 247Solar’s solutions provide both electricity and chilling in a single turnkey package.
• Ultra Heat: Each 247Solar Plant can provide up to 1,500,000 Btu/hr. of heat at temperatures up 1000℃/1800℉ for industrial processes such as cement, glass, steel making, or minerals processing
• Microgrids: Always-on, emissions-free electricity and heat for islands, mines, communities, facilities
• 24/7 baseload power: 24/7 solar electricity, especially for emerging economies
• Green Hydrogen: 24/7 solar electricity and heat to power electrolysis around the clock
• Green Desalination: 24/7 solar electricity and heat to purify water around the clock

Learn more

HOW CHINA’S CLEAN ENERGY LEADERSHIP BENEFITS THE WORLD

Jenson-Shutterstock

China’s meteoric rise as the global leader in clean energy technology over the past decade is transforming not only its domestic landscape but also the global market and the geopolitics of the energy transition. With its technological prowess, scale, and policy ambition, China is reducing its own emissions footprint while also catalyzing renewable adoption around the world, especially in developing economies.

A special report in The Economist notes that China has produced what it calls a “revolution in global clean energy markets,” noting: “China’s commitment to clean technologies—solar, wind, batteries, and electric vehicles—has bent the cost curve downward, making renewables not just greener but also cheaper for the world.”

Decades of government-driven industrial policy, combined with aggressive investment in research, manufacturing, and infrastructure has led to a position of dominance. The Economist reports that as of 2025, China produces over 80% of the world’s solar panels and a majority of its batteries and wind turbines. This enables it to leverage mammoth economies of scale to drive down costs for domestic and foreign markets alike.

Benefits for the developing world

This reduction in clean technology costs is arguably the most significant benefit to emerging and developing economies. According to a 2025 analysis from Ember, global solar module prices have fallen by over 75% in the last decade, primarily because of China’s mass manufacturing. This affordability allows low- and middle-income countries to leapfrog fossil fuel dependency, expanding electrification and enabling sustainable development.

As The Economist notes, “The proliferation of affordable Chinese solar panels has brought electricity—often for the first time—to remote villages from India to Nigeria.” Such access has knock-on effects on education, health, and local economies, powering schools, clinics, and micro-enterprises that transform lives.

For developing countries, especially in Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, the impact is profound. These nations often face capital constraints, aging grids, and rising energy demand. Cheaper Chinese-made technologies mean they can expand clean power generation with smaller public budgets, reducing both their emissions intensity and exposure to volatile global fossil fuel prices.

The Economist writes, “In the global South, Chinese investment and trade in clean tech are driving electrification and creating green jobs.” Chinese firms now finance, build, and supply projects from Ethiopia’s massive solar parks to Brazil’s growing wind sector, exporting not only technology but also know-how, often at terms better suited to local conditions than those offered by Western firms.

Driving the global energy transition

While China’s economy clearly benefits from its dominance in clean tech manufacturing, perhaps its biggest dividend is the acceleration of the global energy transition. Falling costs for renewables make it possible for the world to shift away from fossil fuels faster than anyone anticipated a decade ago. The International Energy Agency and multiple reports in 2025 suggest that more countries can now deploy gigawatts of solar and wind for less capital outlay than investing in new coal or gas plants.

As the BBC writes, referencing global energy data: “For the first time, renewables have overtaken coal as the world’s biggest single source of electricity, a feat that would have been unimaginable ten years ago without China’s manufacturing muscle and policy leadership.”

Read more.

“REAL ECONOMY” DRIVES ENERGY TRANSITION DESPITE HEADWINDS

Despite nations repeatedly missing their climate decarbonization goals—including the ambitious 1.5C target set by the Paris Agreement—massive, continuing investment in clean technologies is reshaping the landscape and propelling the energy transition forward.

Bloomberg Green reports that Between 2014 and 2024, global investment in green transition technologies exceeded $10 trillion. Notably, annual energy transition investment surged past $2 trillion for the first time in 2024, more than doubling since 2020. Bloomberg says this influx of capital is “offering promise that progress can still rapidly accelerate” even as political setbacks and missed deadlines threaten to slow global progress.

Although dozens of major nations failed to meet the latest emissions strategy deadlines and even the most optimistic forecasts now concede that limiting planetary warming to 1.5C is “out of reach,” the ongoing flow of investment in technologies such as renewables, electric vehicles, nuclear power, and methane reduction measures continues to advance. Sectors from energy and transport to agriculture are seeing “changes to less polluting processes,” with clean power generation additions, such as solar and wind, finally beginning to catch up with demand.

A BloombergNEF analysis goes so far as to suggest the world may have already reached peak energy sector carbon emissions, with the possibility of decline going forward, although this could be challenged by stronger-than-anticipated fossil fuel demand.

Bloomberg contends the data suggests that exponential increases in technology deployment and efficiency are leading political and economic will, allowing “the real economy” to drive the transition even when global negotiations and diplomacy struggle.

Thus, record-breaking investment in clean technologies is offsetting shortfalls in formal climate goals and government action. This dynamic market-driven progress provides optimism for the energy transition and global decarbonization, with the “real economy” decisively moving forward.

Read more.

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The post Zero Carbon: Renewables Overtake Coal In Milestone for Climate Progress appeared first on 247Solar, Inc..

Over the past several years, the mining industry has experienced a dramatic rise in electricity costs, straining operational budgets and putting long-term profitability at risk. This upward trend—driven by fuel price volatility, increased regulatory pressures, and growing demand for sustainable mineral extraction—has forced mining companies to seek innovative solutions.

The numbers speak for themselves. A recent review of the mining sector by AgTech company Farmonaut observes, “Mining is notoriously energy-intensive. As global en1.%09https:/farmonaut.com/mining/mining-energy-efficiency-boost-efficiency-cut-costs-2025ergy prices remain vo1.%09https:/farmonaut.com/mining/mining-energy-efficiency-boost-efficiency-cut-costs-2025latile and emissions caps are enforced, the sector must find ways to boost efficiency without compromising output or worker safety.”

PwC’s Mine 2025 global mining report likewise notes that despite surging mineral demand, “higher costs and rising investment are eating into the top 40 global mining companies’ profits,” and that “EBITDA margins shrank to 22% fromhttps:/www.pwc.com/gx/en/industries/energy-utilities-resources/publications/mine.html 24% in 2023, largely due to increased operating expenses and utilities.”

Most acute off grid

Traditionally reliant on diesel generators—where the delivered cost of energy routinely reaches $150–200/MWh—mining companies with remote or off-grid operations have become acutely aware of their vulnerability to market fluctuations and diesel price spikes. Farmonaut notes that automation and process electrification, trends that promise operational efficiencies, can paradoxically add to electricity demand and exposure to rate risk.

Enter renewables for mines

The case for renewables in mining is no longer just about decarbonization goals or ESG ratings. It’s now central to long-term cost control. As an article from Australian mining investment website Discovery Alert observes, “Hybrid renewable systems in remote, arid mining locations reduce the reliance on diesel by 40-60%. This transformation not only enhances sustainability but also significantly cuts running costs.” The article notes that battery energy storage systems (BESS), solar microgrids, and wind farms have quickly evolved into mainstream options, citing real-world examples:

• Gold Fields’ Granny Smith mine, which deploys an 8MW solar array paired with a 2MW/1MWh BESS, has eliminated millions of litres of diesel use and achieved reliability on par with conventional power. “Their system’s 98.5% uptime matches that of conventional power sources.”
• Rio Tinto’s Amrun Project, where a 12.4MW solar farm has reduced annual diesel consumption by 37%, equivalent to about $4.4 million in fuel savings. “Levelized cost of energy from solar installations now ranges between $30–50/MWh … in stark contrast to diesel generation.”

Farmonaut found that from an operational perspective, “deploying energy efficient mining electrical systems is among the most impactful strategies for optimizing mining energy efficiency. In 2025, modern mines increasingly incorporate high-efficiency motors, variable frequency drives … and smart electrical grids that integrate on-site renewable energy with the main grid. This hybrid approach enables mines to optimize power supply and respond to grid demands efficiently, while cutting emissions.”

Addressing the reliability question

A persistent challenge—both real and perceived—has been the intermittent nature of wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) generation. Critics frequently claim that these sources are “unreliable,” particularly given the continuous, energy-intensive requirements of mineral processing and ore movement.

However, according to a 2025 study published in Applied Energy, “the reliability of renewable sources has significantly improved, making them more viable for remote mining operations where grid connectivity is a challenge” The research details how advances in hybrid systems, battery storage, and even emerging hydrogen power are transforming intermittency into a manageable—and often minor—factor. “Hybrid systems combine renewable sources with energy storage to provide more reliable power.”

Discovery Alert notes that energy management systems now enable seamless switching between sources and storage, achieving “98.5% uptime” at commercial-scale installations like Granny Smith. Data-driven optimization further ensures power quality and continuity that meet or exceed historical diesel generator benchmarks.

A business imperative for mining

The trajectory is clear: mining companies that invest early in renewables reap competitive value not only from direct energy cost savings but also from reduced emissions penalties, improved ESG ratings, and access to capital from sustainability-focused investors. Speaking to Farmonaut, one sector specialist concludes, “The mining sector’s transition to renewable energy isn’t solely about environmental responsibility. It is quickly becoming a business imperative, driven by investor demands, regulatory pressures, and operational economics.”

Read more.

ROUND-THE-CLOCK CLEAN HEAT AND POWER
WITH NO ADDITIONAL CAPITAL COST

247Solar builds, owns and operates our hybrid solutions and sells round-the-clock clean heat and power on a PPA basis. Mines pay only for the energy they use with no additional capital cost and no risk.

 

We remove the burden of ownership by assuming all responsibility for operations, maintenance, insurance and repair. We guarantee energy delivery – redundant systems ensure reliability and eliminate the need for gensets.

 

Here’s what that means for miners:

• Reduced energy costs by 25% or more
• Stable, predictable energy prices for decades
• Lower operating costs per ton
• Increased competitiveness
• Longer life-of-mine

 

Get in touch to learn more

U.S. FIRM TO PROVIDE RARE EARTHS FOR EV MOTORS

Credit: Energy Fuels

Mining.com reports that Colorado-based Energy Fuels (NYSE-A: UUUU) (TSX: EFR) has signed a memorandum of understanding with South Korea’s POSCO to supply high-purity neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) oxides for the manufacturing of rare earth permanent magnets.

POSCO is a global leader in the manufacturing of traction motor cores used in EVs and hybrids, and the largest supplier in South Korea. Per the MOU, POSCO intends to process NdPr oxides supplied by Energy Fuels into metal, alloy and finished magnets for use in its traction motor cores.

In a press release, Energy Fuels confirmed that the NdPr oxides have passed all quality assurance and quality control benchmarks for EV drive unit motors to be sold to major automotive manufacturers across North America, the EU, Japan and South Korea.

US-produced rare earths

According to mining.com, The NdPr oxides are produced at Energy Fuels’ White Mesa mill in Utah. In addition to producing neodymium and praseodymium, which are considered “light” rare earths, the White Mesa mill is also piloting the production of the more in-demand “heavy” rare earths, starting with dysprosium — also a key ingredient in permanent magnets.

In light of China’s recent announcement of expanded and tightened restrictions on rare earth exports, the successful production of rare earth permanent magnets from Energy Fuels’ NdPr oxides would represent a major step toward building a “mine-to-magnet” supply chain independent of China.

The press release quotes Mark Chalmers, CEO of Energy Fuels saying,  “We are excited to announce that rare earth oxides mined, processed and produced in America are expected to be powering EVs and hybrids for sale around the world very soon … We plan to construct ‘heavy’ rare earth oxide capacity in 2026 at our White Mesa mill in Utah, thereby ‘closing the loop’ on this important non-China supply chain.”

Read more.

ZIMBABWE URGES MINES TO BUILD OWN POWER STATIONS

Lidia Daskalova/Shutterstock

ZESA Holdings, Zimbabwe’s national power utility, is urging mining companies to invest in their own power generation facilities. As reported in Energy and Power Insider, electricity consumption in Zimbabwe is surging, with growth in demand being driven by new and expanding mines as well as an increasing number of households connecting to the grid.

At the same time, the country is experiencing electricity shortages due to various factors, including low water levels at the Kariba South hydroelectric plant and equipment challenges at the Hwange Power Station. According to EPI, reduced water allocations from the Zambezi River Authority due to regional drought conditions are further straining the country’s power generation capacity.

ZESA Holdings has also encountered funding issues for the maintenance of its aging generation and distribution infrastructure.

This has led ZESA to moves like a tariff agreement with Dinson Holdings, a company developing an iron and steel plant near Mvuma. Under this agreement, Dinson Holdings will construct three renewable energy plants with a combined capacity of 270MW to power its operations, in exchange for subsidised electricity from ZESA.

EPI cites other examples where mining companies like Caledonia Mining and Golden Valley Mine are proactively investing in solar power plants to supplement their energy requirements. Caledonia Mining has already completed a 12MW solar plant at its Blanket Mine in Gwanda, while Golden Valley Mine is in the process of constructing a 7MW solar facility at its gold mine in Kadoma

By self-generating their own power, mines can both insulate their operations from power challenges and relieve a burden on the grid as it struggles to ensure reliable electricity supply for industrial, commercial, and residential consumers alike.

Read more.

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The post Mine Power: Why Renewables Are Essential for Mines appeared first on 247Solar, Inc..

Rocky Mountain Institute

The explosive growth of data centers worldwide is compelling utilities and policymakers to balance reliability, affordability, and decarbonization in the face of rapidly changing demand patterns. Amid concerns about power shortages, the prevailing narrative often exaggerates the challenges posed by these facilities, A report from the Rocky Mountain Institute reveals that smart integration of renewables—particularly solar, wind, and battery storage—offers a clear path to resilient, affordable, and sustainable data center expansion.

A realistic look at demand

Data centers—critical hubs powering everything from cloud storage to AI—currently account for about 2% of global electricity demand and are projected to represent approximately 10% of electricity demand growth between 2024 and 2030. While media headlines frequently depict this expansion as “explosive and out of control,” the reality is more measured. Historically, forecasts have regularly overstated the impact. RMI notes that, “Globally, the share of electricity going to data centers has remained under 2 percent, and cryptocurrency today consumes just 0.5 percent of global electricity.”

The local impacts, however, are real. Concentration of hyperscale data centers in power-cheap regions can create notable spikes in load, challenging region-specific supply resilience and rates. In the U.S., this uncertainty is prompting utilities to build new generation—often fossil-based. Yet RMI found that “utilities over-forecast 10-year demand growth by more than 17 percent between 2006 and 2023,” resulting in billions spent on excess power plants and unnecessary ratepayer costs.

Overlooked risks of preferred approaches

Natural gas is often favored for its dispatchability and speed, but RMI’s analysis reveals major drawbacks in cost and risk. Planned gas capacity in U.S. utility resource plans jumped 20 percent (52 GW) in the past year, a response to speculative data center load that may never fully materialize. RMI cautions that if data center demand underperforms, ratepayers will be left paying for unused plants and volatile fuel costs.

Nuclear—especially small modular reactors (SMRs) and restarts—has attracted data center interest. Although SMRs promise shorter construction timelines than traditional nuclear, industry experience shows consistent cost and schedule overruns.

Geothermal’s scalability remains limited and price reduction is needed before widespread adoption is viable. As RMI cautions, “For these technologies to be commercially competitive, they will need to come down significantly in price.”

Data centers exploring carbon capture-equipped natural gas find themselves confronting operating complexity and high costs. “Carbon capture, use, and storage (CCUS) technologies considerably increase capital and operational costs and may also face challenges becoming an economically competitive option,” RMI writes.

Renewables: Fast, Flexible, Cost-Effective

Among supply-side technologies, renewables stand out as the fastest and most affordable new additions to the grid. RMI emphasizes that “solar and onshore wind, combined with battery storage, is the cheapest and fastest source, with a typical project lead time of less than two years. In comparison, natural gas plants take three to four years—a timeline that is now being set back even further due to turbine shortages.”

Solar and wind projects are also effective at keeping consumer electricity rates low, since they avoid exposing customers to fossil fuel price shocks. Colocation of data centers with renewable generation—either adjacent to new or existing wind/solar farms—enables direct integration and synergy, allowing data centers to absorb curtailed or surplus renewable output and thereby relieve grid stress while maintaining reliability.

Procurement via green tariffs and power purchase agreements (PPAs) helps operators achieve “100 percent renewable energy on an annual basis,” with tariffs allowing both utilities and data centers to manage investment and rate risks as new infrastructure is built out.

When combined with battery or thermal storage, especially in grid-interactive systems, renewables can add needed flexibility by providing spinning reserves, peak shaving, and backup for grid interruptions. Together with modular deployment approaches, these technologies create the basis for a responsive, demand-driven grid, where capacity is right-sized to confirmed loads instead of speculative forecasts.

Data Centers as Partners for a Clean, Robust Grid

The report concludes that rather than viewing data centers solely as a burden, utilities and policymakers should leverage their capital, flexibility, and appetite for innovation to drive “no-regrets” grid upgrades. As RMI puts it, “when data centers are seen as a burden on the electricity system, it makes utilities more prone to hasty decisions like overbuilding new natural gas capacity.”

By harnessing the advantages of renewables and advanced storage, the sector can manage peak demand, minimize stranded asset risks, and chart a path forward that fulfills reliability and affordability objectives while advancing the clean energy transition.

Read more here.

ROUND-THE-CLOCK CLEAN CLEAN ELECTRICITY AND HEAT

400kWe 247Solar Plants deployed at scale

247Solar Plants™ bridge the gap between conventional wind and solar and the need for round-the-clock utility power and industrial-grade heat. 247Solar Plants store the sun’s energy as heat instead of electricity, for 18 hours or more, at much less than the cost of batteries. No generators are required, and 247Solar’s turbines can also burn a variety of fuels, including hydrogen, to ensure 24/7/365 dispatchability.

Extensive Applications

On-grid or off-grid, 247Solar Plants offer a 24/7 alternative to fossil fuels for a broad range of applications:

• Industrial CHP: 24/7 low-carbon Combined Heat & Power for industry
• Data Centers: 247Solar’s hybrid clean solutions are ready to power your data centers as soon as you can build them. 247Solar’s solutions provide both electricity and chilling in a single turnkey package.
• Ultra Heat: Each 247Solar Plant can provide up to 1,500,000 Btu/hr. of heat at temperatures up 1000℃/1800℉ for industrial processes such as cement, glass, steel making, or minerals processing
• Microgrids: Always-on, emissions-free electricity and heat for islands, mines, communities, facilities
• 24/7 baseload power: 24/7 solar electricity, especially for emerging economies
• Green Hydrogen: 24/7 solar electricity and heat to power electrolysis around the clock
• Green Desalination: 24/7 solar electricity and heat to purify water around the clock

Learn more

MARKET FORCES TRUMP POLITICS AND PLEDGES AS BANKS SHIFT FROM FOSSIL FUELS

TippaPatt/Shutterstock

Wall Street’s biggest banks are rapidly reducing their exposure to fossil fuels, with market-driven pressures overpowering both political headwinds and public climate pledges. According to Bloomberg reporting, financing from the six leading US banks for oil, gas, and coal projects fell by 25% to $73 billion for the year through August 1, 2025, compared to the same period in 2024. The most dramatic decline came from Morgan Stanley, which cut fossil fuel lending by 54%, while Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase posted declines of 17% and 7% respectively.

Despite the perception that recent Wall Street exits from the Net Zero Banking Alliance were simple political reactions—especially after Trump’s reelection—actual lending trends reveal that economic fundamentals are steering bank strategy far more than political or ESG rhetoric. Oil and gas market volatility, thinning inventories, and rising asset valuations have increased risk for fossil investments and eroded their appeal. Upstream investment and M&A activity have also plummeted, with global transaction values dropping by 34% in H1 2025, as competitive bidding dried up and bid-ask spreads widened, especially in the US shale sector.

According to industry analysts quoted by Bloomberg, the pullback is a sign that “market risk, not emissions targets, is driving strategy.” Banks are increasingly passive, opting to reduce exposure to unpredictable hydrocarbons while seeking more scalable, compliant, and return-predictable alternatives in clean energy. Private equity and infrastructure funds, meanwhile, are pouring capital into renewables, with dedicated funds for clean technologies raising $134 billion in the first half of 2025 alone—outpacing allocations from the previous year and shifting the investment landscape.

Political rhetoric vs. real investment

The banking sector’s sharp retreat from fossil fuels comes despite noisy rollbacks of public climate commitments and the suspension of global climate alliances in August 2025. While banks have been publicly distancing themselves from net-zero obligations amid politicized backlash, especially in the US, the realignment of capital shows the sector is responding more to economic realities than to regulatory desire.

The outcome is clear: banks are redirecting capital in favor of opportunities aligned with technological maturity, regulatory coherence, and predictable returns. Despite the urgent need for further acceleration—a recent IEA analysis says the current clean-to-fossil investment ratio is still well below the 4:1 needed for a 1.5ºC pathway—the shift underway confirms market forces as the decisive driver. In this new landscape, fossil fuel dealmaking is shrinking not because of politics or green pledges, but because banks are following the money—and the money increasingly favors a future beyond oil and gas.

Read more.

UN: THE ENERGY TRANSITION IS UNSTOPPABLE

United Nations

As reported by CarbonCredits.com,  UN Secretary-General António Guterres has declared that the global energy transition has reached a point of no return. In a special address at UN Headquarters in New York, Mr. Guterres cited surging clean energy investment and plunging solar and wind costs that now outcompete fossil fuels. As clean energy investments pass $2 trillion in 2024, renewable energy is now more cost-competitive than fossil fuels. Guterres said we have entered the “clean energy age” and must act quickly to build on this progress.

With solar and wind becoming some of the cheapest sources of energy, countries and companies are shifting toward sustainable energy sources at a fast pace. Key points from the address include:

• Point of no return – The world has irreversibly shifted towards renewables, with fossil fuels entering their decline
• Clean energy surge – $2 trillion invested in clean energy last year, $800 billion more than fossil fuels
• Cost revolution – Solar now 41 per cent cheaper and offshore wind 53 per cent cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives.
• Global challenge – Calls on G20 nations to align new national climate plans with the 1.5°C target of the Paris Agreement
• Energy security – Renewables ensure “real energy sovereignty”
• Six opportunity areas – Climate plan ambition, modern grids, sustainable demand, just transition, trade reform, and finance for emerging markets.

Read more.

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The post Zero Carbon: Renewables Offer Advantages for Data Centers appeared first on 247Solar, Inc..

Milos Ruzicka/Shutterstock

As mining companies worldwide accelerate efforts to decarbonize and reduce their carbon footprint, Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) have emerged as a core strategy for reliably and affordably accessing renewable energy. An analysis in Mining Technology describes how PPAs offer miners a pragmatic alternative to the capital- and risk-intensive approach of building and owning on-site renewable power facilities.

Lower Capital Cost and De-Risked Investment

The most immediate advantage PPAs offer is a dramatic reduction in capital requirements. With a PPA, a miner signs a long-term contract to buy renewable electricity generated off-site, typically by a third-party developer, rather than financing and constructing its own renewable generation plant. MT writes, “PPAs allow miners to access renewable energy without the hefty upfront investment required for constructing and operating large-scale renewable power plants. Miners sign contracts with independent power producers who finance, build, and run the facilities, while miners only pay for the electricity consumed.”

This financial model significantly lowers risk. The external power producer, not the mining company, is responsible for construction, technology selection, and operational management. The mining company avoids direct exposure to project execution overruns, equipment obsolescence, and long-term performance risk.

Predictable, Stable Power Costs

Volatility in energy markets can create operational and financial challenges—especially as mines electrify fleets and processes to cut emissions. PPAs address this problem directly. Mining Technology notes that “long-term contracts fix electricity prices, ensuring cost savings in both the near and long term.” This stability enables more accurate budgeting and shields mining companies from sudden price swings or supply disruptions in conventional energy markets.

Accelerated Decarbonization and Regulatory Alignment

Mining companies also face growing expectations from investors, customers, and regulators to demonstrate real progress in cutting emissions. PPAs enable miners to fast-track sustainability goals without requiring [them] to develop renewable infrastructure themselves.

Mining Technology offers two compelling real-world examples:

• “Antofagasta achieved 100% renewable electricity usage in its operations after signing a PPA for its Centinela mine, reducing Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 30% by 2025.”
• “Lundin Mining increased renewable share from 74% to 81% between 2023 and 2024, with four out of six mines operating on 100% renewable purchased electricity due to PPAs.”

With growing pressure for credible climate action, the ability to achieve measurable emissions reductions—quickly and at lower risk—marks a decisive advantage.

Flexibility and Scalability for Operations

PPAs scale readily with expanding or evolving mining operations. Unlike permanent, on-site generation, which may be difficult or costly to size perfectly for long-term needs, PPAs can be structured to grow with operational demand or adapt as new renewable technologies become available.

Focus on Core Operations, Not Power Generation

By sourcing power externally, mining companies preserve capital and management bandwidth for their core business. Mining Technology points out: “By relying on external providers for power generation, miners can focus on their core activities rather than diverting resources and expertise to energy management.” Moreover, the PPA approach enables miners to access best-in-class renewable technologies—without being tied to a single technology path or equipment vintage.

By combining price predictability, flexibility, scalability, and reduced operational risk—with rapid, measurable progress toward decarbonization—PPAs are becoming a preferred strategy for renewable energy procurement.

Read more here.

ROUND-THE-CLOCK CLEAN HEAT AND POWER
WITH NO ADDITIONAL CAPITAL COST

247Solar builds, owns and operates our hybrid solutions and sells round-the-clock clean heat and power on a PPA basis. Mines pay only for the energy they use with no additional capital cost and no risk.

 

We remove the burden of ownership by assuming all responsibility for operations, maintenance, insurance and repair. We guarantee energy delivery – redundant systems ensure reliability and eliminate the need for gensets.

 

Here’s what that means for miners:

 

• Reduced energy costs by 25% or more
• Stable, predictable energy prices for decades
• Lower operating costs per ton
• Increased competitiveness
• Longer life-of-mine

Get in touch to learn more

THE NEXT BIG TARGET IN MINE DECARBONISATION

SMS Equipment

Decarbonizing a mine’s power sources is the first essential step toward lowering mine emissions. But what comes next? An article in Energy and Mines interviews leading miners and explores the complexities of fleet electrification – another mission-critical goal in mine decarbonization.

The authors quote Kevin Mascarenhas, National Product Manager, Sustainable Mining at Komatsu Australia, whose battery truck is planned for joint customer trials with BHP and Rio Tinto in 2026.

“One of the key insights for us,” he says, “has been just how much effort goes into setting up the necessary power infrastructure and the associated costs … It’s not just about the truck – it’s the entire ecosystem around it.”

Preparing the infrastructure

The first major consideration, says E&M, is ensuring sufficient electricity supply on-site. For example, Mascarenhas notes that adding that static chargers can require up to 6 MW each, while trolley lines may need as much as 12 MW.

“Upgrading the amount of power going into a mine requires large investments in transformers and other electrical infrastructure, such as cabling, reticulation, poles, and wires, which the industry doesn’t always anticipate.”

Darren Kwok, Head of Mining Electrification and Technology at global mining services firm Perenti, tells E&M, “The temptation is sometimes to be a little bit fixated on the machines because that’s effectively  the thing that we’re changing. But the supporting infrastructure, the energy density, from generation to distribution to charging location: all of those things require investment.”  Meanwhile, uncertainty around capital needs and electric fleets’ return on investment is limiting widespread adoption.

Change of equipment, change of mindset

E&M writes: “[W}hile the economic benefits of decarbonising mine  fleets are still being ironed out—and will forever depend on the type of mine, depth, and ore grade—  existing trials have made one thing clear: switching to electric equipment requires much more than a  purchase order.”

Brian Boitano, Executive General Manager of Sales, Marketing, Training and Solutions for Liebherr Australia, says, “The adjustments are extraordinary … Today [mine fleets] are operated through a lens of utilization and production, with energy as a kind of an afterthought. In the future, we’re going to have to manage battery and cable operated pieces of equipment through an energy lens, allocating equipment across the mine site based on their battery charge, which is something we’ve never done in the past.”

Read more

BEHIND GULF STATES’ HEAVY INVESTMENT IN AFRICA

We came across a fascinating piece in the newsletter from the African Mining Indaba, a large annual mining trade show. It’s a snapshot of the reasons why the Gulf States, particularly the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, are increasingly focusing investment on African mining, and the reasons why their outreach is being well-received.  Here is what they said:

“Gulf economies are investing heavily in African mining to secure long-term access to critical and strategic minerals.  These minerals are essential for clean energy, electric vehicles, and advanced technologies … [They also] want to diversify away from their oil dependency and control supply chains in the energy transition economy.

• Countries like Saudi Arabia (Vision 2030) and the UAE (Operation 300 BN) are aiming to become industrial powerhouses
• Partnerships secured in Africa support the ambitions regarding metallurgical processing, logistics, and manufacturing.
• The UAE and Saudi Arabia are becoming attractive alternatives to Western and Chinese partners for African nations
• The Gulf States are investing in African ports and corridors such as UAE’s DP World in Senegal, Mozambique, and Somaliland. These initiatives give them immense influence over export routes and trade infrastructure
• Gulf states often offer fast-track deals, less political friction, and Sharia-compliant financing options
• African countries see them as non-colonial, less interventionist partners. This makes them attractive players in mining agreements in fragile or emerging jurisdictions.”

For a country-by-country summary of Gulf States’ investment activity, see here.

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The post Mine Power: How PPAs Unlock Low-Risk Renewable Energy appeared first on 247Solar, Inc..