Europe’s new renewable energy champion is Romania, according to The Economist. Energy storage as become a key feature of its deployment of renewables. “Unlike many western European countries, Romania is deploying storage relatively early in its solar build-out, rather than trying to catch up after large amounts of solar capacity have already been installed,” says Antonio Arruebo, an analyst at SolarPower Europe, an industry association. For several years, the government has been encouraging both large-scale operators and homeowners to install batteries wherever they add solar panels, leading to growth in both. Even as solar installations stagnated in Europe as a whole, those in Romania grew by 45% in 2025, driven by high demand and fast permitting. “Romania is encouraging its solar parks, some of the largest in Europe, to add batteries onsite. The most prominent is Ogrezeni, a development set to include a gigawatt-hour of battery storage alongside 762 megawatts of solar capacity. The project will be one of Europe’s largest solar-battery hybrids when it comes online in 2027. Romania is becoming one of Europe’s prime battery storage markets, according to Sina Heidari and Bart Stoffer of dnv, an international energy consulting firm.” The Economist notes that one of the big boosts for Romania’s solar industry was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The New York Times reports on the innovative solar farms in Switzerland. A pilot programme placing solar panels between the train tracks has proven successful enough that the idea is spreading to Italy, France and Korea. The article notes that Switzerland has more than 3000 miles (4828 km) of track, making it the most dense rail network in Europe. A start-up company, Sun-Ways, began running a test project on a short stretch of track that proved the idea can work. If fully rolled out, the company estimates it could power as much as 30% of Switzerland’s energy needs for public transportation. Interestingly, the French railway company SNCF has now asked Sun-Ways to evaluate the technology on its own tracks. SNCF wants to become a “big, big solar energy producer” and is testing at least 10 different solar designs and planning a “much bigger installation.”
“’Drill, baby, drill’ rings out in Norway”, ran a headline in Financial Times “The extreme heat of Europe’s summer has pushed many to look at green energy alternatives to the fossil fuel hegemony. But in one of the cooler parts of the continent, the refrain this August is a contrarian “drill, baby, drill”. Norway is western Europe’s largest petroleum producer, and in particular the EU’s biggest supplier of gas. Far from aiming to wean itself off its dependency, the rich Scandinavian country is looking to double down on oil and gas.” Norway had been positioning itself to be the ‘green battery’ of Europe. However, “Terje Aasland, Norway’s energy minister, told Reuters this week that the green battery aspiration had been canned, and instead Oslo was emphasising drilling for oil in its Arctic region, which it says is largely ice-free and therefore much lower risk than other countries’ polar areas.” No one said the energy transition would be easy.
The Guardian reports that two planned datacentres for the UK will exceed all of the fossil fuel company ExxonMobil’s UK emissions. “The former England and Wales Green party leader Caroline Lucas described the projected emissions from these projects as “absolutely horrifying”, and said it should be ringing alarm bells right across government.” The Guardian notes that “there are currently 315 datacentres in the queue to connect to the UK’s electricity grid, representing 73GW of demand. This is almost double the peak winter energy demand for the entire UK.”
Charles de Gaulle famously asked: “How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?” (France actually produces well more than 1,000 to 1,200 distinct types of cheese.) France has been under a “historic” drought this summer and that is having an impact on cheese, amongst many other agricultural products. BBC News reports that France has temporarily relaxed rules for making some of its best-known cheeses after the summer drought drastically reduced the amount of grass available to feed milk herds. Government decrees to grant dispensations to manufacturers of cheeses from mountains in eastern France were published this week. Several other cheeses are expected to receive similar waivers, allowing farmers to feed livestock with grass and hay brought in from outside their strict geographical zone. In case you want to rush to your closest cheese shop to buy the remaining ‘authentic’ version, these include Cantal, Bleu d’Auvergne, Fourme d’Ambert, Bleu du Vercors-Sassenage, Reblochon and the goats cheese Rocamadour. Other cheeses will also benefit from temporary changes to labels of origin. Now, the challenge to govern the country!
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 1991) in energy efficiency and biomass to submit contributions for next year’s Young Energy Researchers Conference next March 2nd as part of World Sustainable Energy Days, March 2-5, 2027 in Wels, Austria. Altogether there are five dedicated conferences and a tradeshow packed into the four days. See the overview of the conferences. 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 for all the events is October 9th.
In planning travel over the upcoming weeks, here are some useful ideas to help you along:
- Check out the Good Night Train website for the unique way to travel through Europe while you sleep.
- There’s never been a more important moment to travel right in Europe with masses of overdevelopment, cruise ships, walking pollution and captive cetaceans still hot topics when it comes to responsible tourism issues in Europe. Check out the Responsible Travel website.
- Wilderness Scotland encourages you to experience the beauty of Scotland in autumn.
- Autumn is the best time for a cycling trip in Europe because the summer heat is gone, the roads are quiet, and the trees turn bright red and gold. Check out Bike Tours in Europe for some inspiration.
Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885), an American poet and writer who became an activist for improved treatment of Native Americans by the US government, let’s us feel good about this seasonal transition: “September days are here, with summer’s best of weather and autumn’s best of cheer.”
EiD welcomes your views about this week’s selection of posts on the zero-carbon energy transition:
- Don’t trust the green claim — check the data
- The political backlash against climate disclosure reaches the Big Four
- Americans want data centres to pay their energy way
- When it comes to micro-enterprises and energy statistics, invisibility is no superpower
- Clean energy has the capital — but can it underwrite the risk?
- London is getting too hot for its trees
- When solar becomes the more productive crop
- Local heat, lower bills, stronger Europe
- The Odyssey’s climate warning for the modern world
Please send your comments on any of the posts. Please recommend EiD to your friends and colleagues.
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Energy in Demand - Sustainable Energy - Rod Janssen 