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A business case for continued investment in solar and adaptation to stay competitive. A recent Ember study on 24/7 solar, at the 97% benchmark towards full solar supply supported by battery storage forum, the LCOE is $104/MWh – 22% below last year’s global average and cheaper than coal ($118/MWh) or nuclear ($182/MWh), which in itself is a reason strong enough to continue the investment in solar. Mike Drop! the numbers alone tell the story
Renewable energy including nuclear power jointly overtook coal as the world's leading source of electricity in the first half of this year - a historic first, according to new data from the global energy think tank Ember.
Electricity demand is growing around the world but the growth in solar and wind was so strong it met 100% of the extra electricity demand, even helping drive a slight decline in coal and gas use.
However, Ember says the headlines mask a mixed global picture.
Developing countries, especially China, led the clean energy charge but richer nations including the US and EU relied more than before on planet-warming fossil fuels for electricity generation.
Coal, a major contributor to global warming, was still the world's largest individual source of energy generation in 2024, a position it has held for more than 50 years, according to the International Energy Agency.
China remains way ahead in clean energy growth, adding more solar and wind capacity than the rest of the world combined. This enabled the growth in renewable generation in China to outpace rising electricity demand and helped reduce its fossil fuel generation by 2%.
India experienced slower electricity demand growth and also added significant new solar and wind capacity, meaning it too cut back on coal and gas.
In contrast, developed nations like the US, and also the EU, saw the opposite trend.
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.
Despite these regional differences, Ember calls this moment a "crucial turning point".
Ember senior analyst Malgorzata Wiatros-Motyka said it "marks the beginning of a shift where clean power is keeping pace with demand growth".
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.
That's thanks to spectacular reductions in cost. Solar has seen prices fall a staggering 99.9% since 1975 and is now so cheap that large markets for solar can emerge in a country in the space of a single year, especially where grid electricity is expensive and unreliable, says Ember.
Pakistan, for example, imported solar panels capable of generating 17 gigawatts (GW) of solar power in 2024, double the previous year and the equivalent of roughly a third of the country's current electricity generation capacity.
Africa is also experiencing a solar boom with panel imports up 60% year on year, in the year to June. Coal-heavy South Africa led the way, while Nigeria overtook Egypt into second place with 1.7GW of solar generating capacity - that's enough to meet the electricity demand of roughly 1.8m homes in Europe.
Some smaller African nations have seen even more rapid growth with Algeria increasing imports 33-fold, Zambia eightfold and Botswana sevenfold.
In some countries the growth of solar has been so rapid it is creating unexpected challenges.
In Afghanistan, widespread use of solar-powered water pumps is lowering the water table, threatening long-term access to groundwater. A study by Dr David Mansfield and satellite data firm Alcis warns that some regions could run dry within five to ten years, endangering millions of livelihoods.
Adair Turner, chair of the UK's Energy Transitions Commission, says countries in the global "sun belt" and "wind belt" face very different energy challenges.
Sun belt nations - including much of Asia, Africa, and Latin America - need large amounts of electricity for daytime air conditioning. These countries can significantly reduce energy costs almost immediately by adopting solar-based systems, supported by increasingly affordable batteries that store energy from day to night.
Wind belt countries like the UK face tougher obstacles, however. Wind turbine costs have not come down by anything like as much as solar panels - down just a third or so in the last decade. Higher interest rates have also added to borrowing costs and raised the overall price of installing wind farms significantly in the last few years.
Balancing supply is harder too: winter wind lulls can last for weeks, requiring backup power sources that batteries alone can't provide - making the system more expensive to build and run.
But wherever you are in the world, China's overwhelming dominance in clean tech industries remains unchallenged, other new data from Ember shows.
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 solar panel exports.
The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) remains disconnected from the Ukrainian electricity grid and without external power for the 10th consecutive day, creating an increasingly "risky" situation, experts told the Kyiv Independent.
Russian President Vladimir Putin referenced the crisis at the ZNPP, which is under Russian control, in his Oct. 2 remarks at the Valdai International Discussion Club, again blaming Ukraine for the outage, despite evidence to the contrary, and threatening retaliatory strikes on Ukrainian nuclear power plants.
Beyond the escalating rhetoric, experts indicate that the danger at the plant, the largest nuclear power station in Europe, is real.
Ukraine’s state nuclear operator Energoatom warned that the diesel generators powering the plant are designed only for short-term emergency use and are not meant to sustain the plant’s operational needs for an extended period. A shutdown of these generators could result in a loss of control over the facility’s nuclear safety systems.
President Volodymyr Zelensky described the situation at the Zaporizhzhia plant as "critical" on Sept. 30. Diesel generators are now supplying power to the plant, but one has already failed, he said.
Najmedin Meshkati, a professor of civil/environmental engineering, industrial and systems engineering and international relations at the University of Southern California, also confirmed that diesel generators "are not designed to be run in such a sustained period of time."
"It’s a risky situation because emergency generators are big machines, and they could easily break down. They are reliable, but at the same time, (require) a high-maintenance type of machinery due to their wear and tear," Meshkati said.
"I would not be surprised if some of them break down after this length of period of being in operation," he added.
Ukraine’s Energy Ministry told the Kyiv Independent that the situation is further complicated by Russia’s failure to carry out scheduled repairs and maintenance, which increases the risk of diesel generator failure and threatens a shutdown of the nuclear fuel cooling system and failure of critical safety systems. This could lead to a nuclear or radiation accident.
"The potential consequences of the failure of safety systems at the ZNPP will be transboundary and pose a danger not only to Ukraine but also to many European countries," a spokesperson said.
"No nuclear power plant in the world has ever been in the same situation as the ZNPP, and it is impossible to predict anything," the spokesperson added.
’Very precise sabotage’
The ZNPP has been under Russian occupation since March 2022. The six reactors were shut down a month after Moscow’s occupation, but the facility still requires electricity to maintain cooling and prevent a nuclear incident.
Russian troops reportedly struck a power line on Sept. 23, severing the plant’s connection to Ukraine’s electrical grid. This marks the 10th and longest blackout at the plant since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022.
While Russian state media blame Ukraine for the strike, Greenpeace Ukraine published an investigation on Oct. 1, saying that there is no evidence of any military strikes around the pylons and power line network at the ZNPP. Greenpeace nuclear expert Jan Vande Putte told the Kyiv Independent that Russia can repair the line "in a matter of hours."
"But they don't do that. They created the crisis, and they want to manage it as a political strategy. It's a very precise sabotage," Vande Putte said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed a similar sentiment, writing in an Oct. 1 social post that "Russia is deliberately creating the threat of radiation incidents, taking advantage, unfortunately, of the weak position of the IAEA and its director, Rafael Grossi, as well as the distraction of global attention."
Zelensky's statements came after a Russian attack on an energy facility in the town of Slavutych in Kyiv Oblast, which caused a several-hour blackout at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant on Oct. 1.
’Nuclear blackmail’
While ZNPP "is not going to blow up tomorrow," the situation is serious in a long-term perspective, Vande Putte said.
"They (Russians) can let the crisis get worse. (...) They can move closer and closer to that point over the coming week, and to have that kind of nuclear blackmail. That's their strategy," he added.
Dmytro Orlov, Energodar mayor, who lives in Ukraine-controlled territory, told the Kyiv Independent that at the start of the Russian occupation, the power plant remained fully operational.
"But they pressured the staff to the point that there was almost no one left to work there," he said. "All the equipment was shut down, is not being repaired, and is deteriorating. And the station has been turned into a military base."
"The nuclear power plant is no longer used as an energy facility, but is used exclusively for military purposes, and the goal is clear — international pressure. The occupiers are doing this (provocations) to use nuclear blackmail against the whole world," Orlov added.
An investigation by the Truth Hounds and Greenpeace Ukraine published on Sept. 24 detailed Rosatom's role in pressuring plant staff, including torture, "including beatings, electrocution, sexual violence, mock executions, and threats to family members of detainees." Rosatom, the Russian nuclear giant, became ZNPP’s operator after the occupation.
The report indicated that 78 staff members were unlawfully detained, while six were "tortured to death."
Meshkati suggests that Russia’s actions at the power plant could be a negotiating tactic.
"Nuclear plants are too important to be used as a bargaining chip or for political horse-trading or power plays. They are really too dangerous. If something goes wrong, everybody, the friend and foe, will be hurt equally," Meshkati said.
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on Oct. 2 that Russia deliberately cut power to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as it's preparing to reconnect the facility to its own energy system.
Greenpeace Ukraine published a report on Sept. 27 that used satellite imagery and Rosatom’s reports indicating that Russia wants to restart one of the reactors, and reconnect the grid to the occupied territories and eventually to the Kremlin.
Vande Putte also suggests that Russia’s motivation is based "not so much for electricity reasons, but for military and political reasons."
It's the way for them to say clearly "this is Russian territory, it's our nuclear power plant," Vande Putte said.
EU reaction
In a statement issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), chief Rafael Grossi said that the U.N. agency is "in constant contact with the two sides with the aim to enable the plant’s swift re-connection to the electricity grid."
The EU has called on Russia to "immediately cease all military operations around the nuclear plant" and enable the repairs. In a Sept. 30 statement, the bloc's diplomatic service denounced Russian occupation of the plant as illegal and urged Moscow to withdraw its forces.
The Zaporizhzhia plant has faced repeated safety concerns since Russia’s invasion, including power outages, nearby shelling and staffing shortages. A monitoring mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been stationed at the ZNPP since September 2022, but Russian authorities have frequently restricted its access.
Constellation Energy Corporation (NASDAQ:CEG) factored into the discussion surrounding speculative stocks. Quantum computing and nuclear stocks were two categories that Cramer was worried about during the show. For nuclear power, he asserted that these projects have long development timelines. Constellation Energy Corporation (NASDAQ:CEG)’s shares have gained 37% year-to-date, and the firm has benefited from big tech’s push to use nuclear power for AI data centers. Cramer discussed the share price:
Investing.com -- Bank of America has downgraded Oklo and NuScale, warning that valuations for the two U.S. small modular reactor (SMR) developers have run “ahead of reality.”
In a research note, BofA cut Oklo to Neutral from Buy and lowered NuScale to Underperform from Neutral. “Valuations now embed deployment ramps and discount rates we view as unrealistic at this stage of SMR adoption,” the analysts wrote.
Their reverse discounted cash flow models, using a 14% discount rate, imply 15.5GW for Oklo and 34.7GW for NuScale by 2040, levels that are “44%/92% above each company’s base case forecast.”
BofA added that “on a combined basis, this totals ~50GW, or ~7% above the 47GW global unrisked SMR pipeline tracked by Wood Mackenzie.”
At current levels, Oklo trades at 16.9x/10.8x 2032/33E EV/EBITDA and NuScale at 11.9x/10.6x, with implied discount rates “well below our 14% sector assumption.”
Price objectives were revised to $117 for Oklo, up from $92, and to $34 for NuScale, down from $38.
“While we remain positive on the long-term nuclear theme, current valuations leave little room for error and the near-term risk/reward skews negative,” BofA said.
The bank also flagged execution and fuel risks. For Oklo, bulls point to “political backing and vertically integrated build-own-operate model,” but bears highlight capital intensity, fuel supply concerns, and questions over cost targets.
For NuScale, BofA cited concerns over supply chain costs, reliance on ENTRA1, and “credibility risk if no firm projects emerge.”
With short interest elevated in both stocks, BofA concluded that “cycle markers suggest the AI trade may be entering later stages.”
Democrats alarmed as Trump eyes weapons material to fuel nuclear reactors
The scramble to build new reactors to supply power to AI data centers may include plutonium from the nation’s nuclear deterrent.
An Air Force photo shows a test launch of an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile in 2019 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. | Staff Sgt. J.T. Armstrong/U.S. Air Force via AP
The Trump administration is considering a proposal to divert plutonium that plays a central role in the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile to fuel a new generation of power plants, according to an Energy Department official and previously undisclosed department documents.
The proposal calls for the department to alter the plutonium so it can be used by civilian power companies, including startups pitching advanced reactor designs. It’s part of a broader push by President Donald Trump to convert tons of the Energy Department’s plutonium to civilian use, a notion that some lawmakers argue would undermine the U.S. weapons program for the benefit of untested private companies.
The initiative would involve harvesting plutonium on a large scale: According to a department official and a July 31 DOE memo seen by POLITICO, more than a fifth of the plutonium needed to meet Trump’s mandates would come from the highly radioactive spheres manufactured for the cores of nuclear weapons. DOE already faces a crunch to make more of those spheres, known as plutonium pits — it’s lagging behind Congress’ demands that it boost pit production to modernize the country’s nuclear deterrence.
The department is “not meeting the current pit manufacturing schedule,” said a former DOE official who is familiar with the department’s plutonium reserves. “So to make pit plutonium available would be a huge shift, and I’d be shocked.”
Both the current and former officials were granted anonymity to share sensitive details about national security matters.
Trump didn’t mention the pits in a May executive order in which he directed DOE to draw from another source — its stores of surplus plutonium — to help revive the nuclear power industry and meet the soaring electricity demands of data centers used in artificial intelligence. The U.S. officially halted its program that made weapons-grade plutonium in 1992.
The department declined to confirm or deny any details of its plutonium plans in response to questions from POLITICO.
“The Department of Energy is evaluating a variety of strategies to build and strengthen domestic supply chains for nuclear fuel, including plutonium, as directed by President Trump’s Executive Orders,” the department said in a statement. “We have no announcements to share at this time.”
The White House referred POLITICO’s questions about the plutonium plans to DOE. The Defense Department referred questions to the White House.
Government watchdogs and congressional Democrats have spent weeks objecting to the entire notion of transferring government-owned plutonium to the power sector. Such a move “goes against long-standing, bipartisan U.S. nuclear security policy,” Democratic Sen. Ed Markey and Reps. Don Beyer and John Garamendi wrote in a Sept. 10 letter to Trump. “It raises serious weapons proliferation concerns, makes little economic sense, and may adversely affect the nation’s defense posture.”
In a separate Sept. 23 letter to Trump, Markey said he was concerned that Energy Secretary Chris Wright was pushing the plutonium proposals to help a Californian nuclear power startup named Oklo, on whose board Wright once sat.
DOE spokesperson Ben Dietderich said Wright has complied with ethics and financial disclosure requirements, divested assets and resigned from “board positions that may appear to present a conflict of interest.” He said Wright resigned from the Oklo board upon becoming DOE secretary, adding that Wright “has never and does not currently own any financial stake in Oklo.”
Oklo spokesperson Paul Day declined to comment on Markey’s concerns of a possible conflict of interest. He also declined to comment on how much plutonium the company intends or has agreed to acquire from DOE. He said DOE “has not, as far as we know, established a plutonium fuel program.”
One nuclear safety watchdog echoed many of the Democrats’ concerns in an interview, saying DOE’s proposal could hollow out the nation’s nuclear defenses and compromise the Pentagon’s long-term deterrence strategy. And it appears to be happening without coordination with the Defense Department, said Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists, a nonprofit group that focuses on global security.
“This is mainly a Department of Energy plan that is closely happening in collusion, essentially, with the nuclear power industry,” Kristensen said. “Some of the people that are involved in these recommendations are people that have very close ties to the nuclear power industry.”
DOE through its National Nuclear Security Administration is responsible for safeguarding the nuclear weapons supply and is the lead agency for detecting and stopping nuclear proliferation. The Defense Department manages the nuclear arsenal for strategic, military and defense purposes.
The hunt for plutonium
A July 31 DOE memo seen by POLITICO and prepared by Deputy Energy Secretary James Danly recommends delivering 25 metric tons of plutonium from U.S. government-held stockpiles to the nuclear power industry. More than one-fifth of that material would need to come from pits that the Defense Department relies upon for nuclear deterrence and national security, according to the current DOE official.
Reviving nuclear power is a central tenet of the Trump administration’s energy policy, driven in part by the need to generate rising amounts of electricity for artificial intelligence. Some tech companies are also eager to find carbon-free electricity sources, such as nuclear power, that meet their pledges for reducing greenhouse gas pollution.
U.S. civilian reactors now use only uranium for their nuclear fuel, but some reactors under development are planning to use plutonium. Spent plutonium from reactors is far more radioactive than uranium — and could pose a greater security risk than uranium if it were to fall into the hands of hostile nations or terrorist groups.
Several pilot programs for new kinds of nuclear reactors are underway, with hopes of achieving a sustained chain nuclear reaction next summer. One of Trump’s May orders called for revitalizing the nuclear power industry by supplying commercial power producers with reprocessed spent plutonium from DOE-managed stockpiles.
DOE has committed an initial 20 metric tons of plutonium for civilian use, Democrats noted in the Sept. 10 letter. But the internal July 31 memo showed the department has envisioned a larger goal.
The DOE memo called for delivering 18.5 metric tons of the government’s surplus plutonium and an additional 6.5 metric tons pulled from “material in classified form once it has been declassified.” That latter term, the current DOE official who spoke to POLITICO said, refers to the plutonium pits, whose shape and characteristics can reveal information about nuclear weapons.
The company where Wright was once a board member, Oklo, wants to take advantage of the plutonium fuel program. Unlike its competitors, Oklo’s fast-neutron reactors can use plutonium as a “bridge” fuel to get around the bottlenecks that exist in obtaining the more desirable grades of uranium, CEO Jacob DeWitte told POLITICO in an interview.
DeWitte said Oklo has not publicly revealed how much plutonium the company is seeking to run its new reactors, or from where precisely it plans to obtain that plutonium. He also said the Trump administration has not detailed exactly how much plutonium it will make available, noting that “there is disagreement” over how much surplus plutonium the federal government can hand off before harming nuclear deterrence.
“We’re waiting to see more, too,” he said. “It’s a worthwhile thing. But again, it depends on some details. And there’s going to be some details that we’re just not going to see.”
Adrienne Schweer, Oklo’s head of government relations, said she does not believe that the company’s history with Wright factored into Trump administration decisions, noting Wright has touted all sorts of nuclear power from his perch at DOE.
“Secretary Wright is really knowledgeable on nuclear and energy broadly,” she said in an interview. “I don’t imagine that he would ever play favorites. He’s not that kind of guy.”
Oklo is one of several companies that has pushed for more nuclear fuel supply, though it is one of the most public about its willingness and ability to use plutonium.
Oklo hired lobbying firm Holland & Knight in March to press on “nuclear and plutonium recyclability and access to feedstock,” among other issues. In January, it signed a memorandum of understanding with nuclear fuel developer Lightbridge Corp. to develop plutonium-based reactor fuel for its reactors. Oklo also inked a partnership in June with the Air Force to build a pilot reactor in Alaska that would use refined weapons-grade plutonium. “
Oklo official Ed Petit de Mange met with senior DOE officials, including Mark Senderling, on July 31, according to an internal DOE calendar obtained by POLITICO. The same day, the department partnered with the Nuclear Energy Institute and the United States Nuclear Industry Council for a “Fuel Industry Day” event at NEI’s Washington office to allow DOE “to engage directly with industry participants about potentially utilizing certain materials as a source of nuclear fuel,” according to a schedule of the event.
An Oklo official confirmed the company participated in the July 31 event. The Oklo official said its understanding was that the administration intended to commit only “surplus” plutonium for industry use.
“This is not interference with the weapons programs, at least from what I understand,” said the official, who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media. “This is the extra stuff that we were supposed to bury in the ground.”
‘No way to do that easily’
Congress has ordered DOE to produce 80 new pits annually by 2030 to modernize the nation’s weapons stockpile. For now, the Defense Department relies on 20,000 plutonium pits stored at DOE’s Pantex facility in Texas for its Minuteman III missiles.
The July 31 memo alluded to those needs in asking DOE to craft “a strategic plan to improve pit disassembly throughput without negatively impacting pit assembly.”
But new pits are slow coming. The Los Alamos National Laboratory, the nation’s only plutonium pit producer, made just one last year. A second facility, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, is under construction but won’t be finished until 2032.
It takes several months to make each pit, which is then placed into larger warheads for modern Sentinel missiles. The Sentinel program is over budget and being restructured, so new missiles are not expected to be completed for years.
The DOE plans have drawn concern from congressional Democrats such as Markey, Garamendi and Beyer, who questioned the wisdom of giving away plutonium at the same time that the government is trying to replenish its pits.
“[W]e are concerned that your plan would give away plutonium that could otherwise help to maintain the nuclear arsenal,” they wrote in the Sept. 10 letter. “We should not disassemble existing pits that might reduce the need to produce new ones in the future.”
DOE has struggled to gather enough excess plutonium stored at sites around the country to meet Trump’s goals, according to a July 25 email obtained by POLITICO. The message revealed increasing urgency to deliver on its commitment to provide plutonium to the power industry that may conflict with national defense capabilities.
Danly asked DOE to tally up how much plutonium it oversees to develop a plan for shipping it to the industry, Chimi Zacot, a senior adviser for nuclear security at the department, wrote in the email to several officials there. The goal, Zacot said, was to figure out how much plutonium it could offer industry while maintaining an adequate stockpile for defense and national security.
Zacot wrote that Danly was displeased with how much plutonium the agency said it needed to withhold for the weapons stockpile. Zacot asked what the agency could do to expedite disassembly of plutonium pits to ship the material to industry.
Zacot did not respond to a request from POLITICO for comment.
Danly dialed up the pressure in an Aug. 11 memo to John Dupuy, director of DOE’s office of enterprise assessments, and Teresa Robbins of the department’s National Nuclear Security Administration. That memo called for evaluating the department leadership that oversees plutonium pits.
Despite the administration’s urgency, it would take years to break down pits and refine the plutonium for civilian use, said Stephen Young, associate director of government affairs at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a science watchdog group. DOE tried to convert weapons grade plutonium into commercial fuel at its Savannah River site before abandoning the project in 2018 due to costs.
“There’s no way to do that easily. Plutonium has to be put into fuel in a process that I don’t think they have figured out quite yet,” he said. “It’s not a near-term thing that’s going to happen.”
This article has been updated to correct the date that Oklo signed the MOU with Lightbridge and to correct the employer of the Energy Department’s Mark Senderling. It also clarifies that weapons-grade plutonium program was officially halted in 1992
Trump's Department of Energy expected to issue a 202c order any day now, which would afford him the power to order Xcel and other electric utility companies to continue burning coal in our communities indefinitely, undoing years and years of work in which many of us were instrumental. This would unfortunately allow him to order Comanche units 2 and probably 3 to remain operational.
