Energy in Demand News, August 24-25, 2025

Encouragingly, the Financial Times reports that solar power generation in Britain so far this year has surpassed the total for 2024 “as panels are rapidly installed amid favourable weather, underlining renewable energy’s increasing importance to the grid. . . . Some 14.08 terawatt hours of electricity was produced from solar in Great Britain by August 16, about one-third higher than at this time last year, a Financial Times analysis of University of Sheffield data has found. This is enough to power 5.2mn homes for a year, or the London Underground for more than a decade.” Did you have the same results in your country?

It is doubtful we will see much progress in clean energy in the United States, however. “Clean energy projects worth $18.6bn have been cancelled this year, compared with just $827mn in 2024, according to Atlas Public Policy’s Clean Economy Tracker. As the Financial Times reports about financing for renewable energy this year: Investment announcements fell by nearly 20 per cent to $15.8bn this year, compared to $20.9bn in the same period in 2024. The FT goes on: “BloombergNEF predicts that onshore wind additions by 2030 will total 30 gigawatts, down 50 per cent from its base case before the Trump bill.” To add to the misery, the New York Times reports that the Trump administration on Friday ordered that all construction stop on Revolution Wind, a $4 billion wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island that is already mostly built. And yet, the FT article goes on: “A spokesperson from the Department of Energy said that it was “leveraging all forms of energy that are affordable, reliable and secure to ensure the United States is able to win the AI race and reindustrialise”. It’s not obvious . . .

Don’t forget eceee’s Zero Carbon Industry event in Rome in February 2026. The deadline for submitting abstracts is coming up quickly – September 15th!

National Building Renovation Plans can help decarbonise EU buildings and make them healthier and more efficient. A new BPIE survey, focused on their development process, is open for a few more days until August 31st. Here is a Linkedin post about the survey. You can take the survey here.

To ensure that the zero carbon energy transition gains momentum we need a new generation of experts to continue the good work. EiD encourages all young researchers (born after 1990) in energy efficiency and biomass to submit contributions for next year’s Young Energy Researchers Conference next February 24th as part of World Sustainable Energy Days, February 24-27, 2026 in Wels, Austria. Altogether there are five dedicated conferences and a tradeshow packed into the four days. The theme of this year’s energy efficiency conference is “Energy transition = Energy independence.” The young energy researchers conference has 2 tracks, one for energy efficiency and one for biomass. Submissions (in English only) are welcome from all scientific fields (e.g. technology, engineering, economics, social sciences, architecture, law, arts). The deadline for submissions is October 10th.

In planning travel over the upcoming weeks, here are some useful ideas to help you along:

• Country Living Magazine provides 3 European train routes set to transform travel in 2025
• Check out the Good Night Train website for the unique way to travel through Europe while you sleep.
• World Walks provides us with walking holidays in Europe.
• For those who want to combine hiking with food and wine in Europe and Australia, check out the Hedonistic Hiking website.
• Cycling for Softies provides us with the 15 Best Cycling Holidays in Europe 2025.

James Carville (b. 1944), an American political consultant and author, provides us with a good message as we prepare to return from holidays: “The only person that ever stumbles is a guy moving forward. You don’t stumble backwards; you stumble forward, and you never stumble when you’re stationary. So don’t worry about stumbling. Keep pushing it forward.”

EiD welcomes your views about this week’s selection of posts on the zero-carbon energy transition:

• The EU’s non-financial reporting (NFR) regulations relating to sustainability have strong implications for the Majority World, the countries and territories outside Europe and North America where most people live
• Greenpeace report: in Europe, the train remains significantly more expensive than the plane
• Opportunity to create a new form of infrastructure: capturing, storing and sharing the massive amounts of heat lost from industry, electricity generation and communities
• America’s climate transition: a moment of crisis for the environmental community
• The benefits of AI audits of published scientific research
• Toronto uses Lake Ontario for its cooling network
• A change in the conception of construction can lead to much less waste
• New industrial energy efficiency database for Nigeria

Please send your comments on any of the posts. Please recommend EiD to your friends and colleagues.

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