Latest Sectors News

A small Finnish town has turned to the world's largest commercial sand battery to tackle a major hurdle in the energy transition: intermittency. View More

The industrial-scale sand battery in Finland's Pornainen can cover almost one month of the town's heating demands in the summer and as much as one week in the winter.Polar Night Energy A small town in southern Finland has turned to the world's largest commercial sand battery to fix what many see as the most critical problem facing renewable energy: intermittency.Standing at 13 meters tall and 15 meters wide, the eye-catching facility uses 2,000 metric tons of crushed soapstone to store clean energy in the form of heat to provide 100 megawatt-hours of thermal energy.That's enough to provide the 5,000 residents of Pornainen with nearly one month of heat demand through the summer — and roughly one week of demand in the winter.Commissioned by Finnish district heating company Loviisan Lämpö and developed by Polar Night Energy, the giant sand battery launched last year as part of a push to introduce a flexible heat production technology and reduce carbon emissions generated by the local district heating network. Polar Night Energy said the project is estimated to have slashed greenhouse gas emissions from the heating network by almost 70% and reduced the use of wood chips by about 60%. An existing wood-chip power plant remains in operation as a backup and peak-load facility.Tommi Eronen, CEO of Polar Night Energy, said Pornainen had previously relied on burning oil and wood chips for its heating needs — but the town's sand battery was now able to provide combustion-free heating for the majority of the year. watch nowVIDEO4:5504:55Statkraft CEO: Electricity generation in Europe to double by 2050Squawk Box Europe "We're changing from a world where big power plants were doing the energy production to where solar and wind are producing the energy, then we need a massive amount of storage," Eronen told CNBC on a video call. "Hopefully a big portion of those storages could be sand battery-type of storages where we don't need rare earth materials, like in many chemical batteries, such as lithium-ion batteries." The Pornainen project is about 10 times larger than an earlier version launched in the country in 2022, reinforcing the potential for sand batteries to play a more prominent role in cutting emissions both domestically and abroad. Battery storage is widely expected to play a pivotal role in the energy transition — and sand batteries in particular have shown promise for regional heat storage, but scaling up this technology faces significant hurdles. Some notable criticisms include their ability to efficiently convert heat back to electricity and their relatively low energy density compared to traditional batteries. How does it work? Essentially, the sand battery technology operates as something akin to a giant thermos with heat-storing material.The first step is to get electricity off the grid when there is plenty of wind or solar power, before then heating up the sand to very high temperatures. The heavily insulated silo keeps that heat trapped for days or weeks before being discharged via heat exchangers to warm water for the local district heating network. "Three steps — and the key to the whole thing is the sand enables you to have a delay between the time you use electricity, and you use the steam," Polar Night Energy's Chief Commercial Officer Annette Höglund-Dönnes told CNBC by video call. "That delay is your business advantage because you can heat up the sand when the electricity is cheap, and you use the steam when normally it would be very expensive to produce steam off the grid, which is the daytime when everybody else is using it," she added. The industrial-scale sand battery in Finland's Pornainen stands at 13 meters tall and 15 meters wide. The facility uses 2,000 metric tons of crushed soapstone to store clean energy in the form of heat.Polar Night Energy Höglund-Dönnes compared the process to charging a cell phone overnight given that this can be less expensive than during the day. Asked whether the project could be replicated internationally, Höglund-Dönnes said Polar Night Energy had been contacted by teams from "every single continent," particularly by communities dependent on fossil fuels, such as coal and oil. Climate scientists have repeatedly warned that a substantial reduction in fossil fuel use will be necessary to curb global heating, with the burning of coal, oil, and gas identified as the chief driver of the climate crisis. Renewable intermittency Jan Rosenow, professor of energy and climate policy at the U.K.'s University of Oxford, agreed that electrothermal storage technologies, such as sand batteries, were likely to be replicated across the globe."You don't need rare earths, critical raw materials and the beauty is you can also charge up the battery when the electricity is cheap and discharge whenever you need the heat," Rosenow told CNBC."And you can store it for long periods, not just two hours or four hours like lithium-ion batteries, but potentially for days and maybe even weeks." Read moreFinland's Stubb says EU should expand to 40 states — including CanadaThe world's happiest countries are targeting net-negative emissions — despite a growing 'greenlash'Finland will soon bury nuclear waste in a geological tomb that’s built to last for 100,000 years Critics of renewable energy, for example, often point out that technologies such as solar and wind only produce energy when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. Energy storage systems such as batteries play a pivotal role in smoothing renewable intermittency by absorbing excess solar and wind generation and dispatching it when production dips. Mikko Paajanen, CEO of Loviisan Lämpö, said the sand battery helps to clear this energy transition hurdle."The main thing is that we can separate the electricity procurement from the district heating production because now we are able to deliver this heating during the wintertime for one week, with one charge of the battery, and during the summertime, it even lasts as long as one month," Paajanen told CNBC by video call."So, we can utilize the low spot prices very well." Loviisan Lämpö's' CEO said the company was aiming to produce between 55% to 60% of the municipality's district heating production from the sand battery through the first few months of this year, up from roughly 30% in 2025. Finland's Climate Minister Sari Multala described the sand battery project in Pornainen as a "very inspiring" and innovative example of how to solve the challenge of energy storage."I understood when I also visited the plant when it was opened that they are now also developing solutions for maybe using electricity as well in the future, which would be, of course, groundbreaking — and this would be something that a lot of people would see value in," Multala told CNBC. Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

Elon Musk's rocket maker is conducting the first test fight for its massive Starship rocket since the company's IPO last month. View More

In this articleSPCXFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNT The SpaceX Starship and Super Heavy v3 Booster lift off on its 13th test flight from the SpaceX launch complex in Starbase, Texas, U.S., July 24, 2026. Steve Nesius | Reuters SpaceX launched its massive Starship rocket Friday evening from its company town and launch facility in Starbase, Texas, in a 13th test flight and the first since the company's record IPO last month. The rocket's Super Heavy booster detached from the Starship spacecraft about two minutes into the flight, and made a controlled splashdown in the Gulf. The upper stage of the rocket made a "soft splashdown" in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX employees called the test flight "lucky number 13," in a livestream of the event.Elon Musk's aerospace and defense contractor designed Starship, the largest rocket ever built or flown, to be fully reusable and to lift more cargo for less cost into orbit. Starship is considered crucial for the company's goal to vastly expand its Starlink satellite network, among other missions.About 18 minutes into Friday's test flight, SpaceX successfully deployed 20 of its new Starlink V3 satellites into orbit, a first chance for the company to see how they performed in flight. The satellites were intended to burn up after about 20 minutes.The new satellites, produced at a SpaceX facility in Redmond, Washington, are built to be larger, and more powerful than Starlink's earlier satellites. They're also equipped with solar arrays that generate twice as much power as prior generations, a SpaceX business analyst explained in a livestream. SpaceX is now developing Starmind satellites, which the company intends to launch and eventually use as orbital data centers. Besides using their largest rockets to launch the new, larger satellites, SpaceX wants to use the Starship rocket to bring U.S. astronauts back to the moon's surface, and to eventually power manned missions to Mars. The company is preparing Starship for a major NASA test flight next year.Friday's test flight marked the second for Starship V3, the latest version of the rocket. In a post on X, which is owned by SpaceX, the company said it delayed an earlier test flight planned for Thursday "due to weather." It also previously scrubbed a test flight on July 16, after the rocket's booster triggered a hold, which "shut down the engines right as they were starting to ignite," a SpaceX employee said during a livestream of the earlier event.SpaceX's stock has dropped in four of the past five weeks, slumping 43% from its peak close on June 16. WATCH: SpaceX falls below IPO prices watch nowVIDEO5:2605:26SpaceX falls below its IPO price: Investor's next moveHalftime Report Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

With this addition, the company's total operational BESS capacity has reached 3.62 GWh (gigawatt hour) across three project sites in Rajasthan View More

While some of India's solar module manufacturers are benefitting from selling to cell-less competitors, a push for localization is reshaping the market dynamics ahead of mandatory domestic cell use in 2027. View More

Juniper Green Energy will launch its Rs 1,800-crore initial public offering on July 30. The company plans to raise funds through a fresh issue of equity shares. Proceeds will be used for debt repayment and investments in subsidiaries. Juniper Green Energy develops and operates renewable energy projects across India. The company is backed by Singapore-based AT Capital Group. View More

Renewable energy company Juniper Green Energy on Friday said it will open its Rs 1,800-crore initial public offering (IPO) for public subscription on July 30, with the issue closing on August 3. The IPO is entirely a fresh issue of equity shares with no offer-for-sale (OFS) component, according to the company's red herring prospectus (RHP) filed on Thursday. The anchor investor bidding will open on July 29. At the time of filing its draft papers with Sebi, the company had proposed to raise up to Rs 3,000 crore through the public issue. Of the IPO proceeds, the company will use Rs 683.24 crore to repay or prepay some of its borrowings. It will also invest Rs 728.69 crore in its subsidiaries -- Juniper Green Gamma One, Juniper Green Kite, and Juniper Green Power Five -- to help them repay or prepay their outstanding loans. The remaining funds will be used for general corporate purposes. Live Events Juniper Green Energy develops, builds, and operates utility-scale solar, wind, hybrid and battery energy storage projects across India. Backed by Singapore-based AT Capital Group, the company has been expanding its renewable energy portfolio, including commissioning India's first merchant 100 MWh Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) project in Rajasthan and beginning phased commissioning of an integrated Firm and Dispatchable Renewable Energy (FDRE) project combining solar, wind and battery storage. The Gurugram-based company has an integrated platform spanning project development, engineering, procurement, construction and operations, and is focused on expanding its presence in renewable energy and energy storage solutions. ICICI Securities, HSBC Securities, and Capital Markets (India), JM Financial , and Kotak Mahindra Capital Company are the book-running lead managers to the issue, while KFin Technologies is the registrar. The company's equity shares are proposed to be listed on the BSE and the NSE. .Pbanner{display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;background-color:#ec1c40;margin-top:20px;padding:5px 10px;border-radius:4px;color:#fff;line-height:10px;width: 100%;box-sizing: border-box} .Pbannertext{display:flex;align-items:center;font-size:16px;font-weight:600;font-family:'Montserrat';} .Pbannertext img{height:20px;margin:0 6px} .Pbannerbutton a{display:flex;align-items:center;background-color:#fff;color:#ec1c40;text-decoration:none;font-weight:600;padding:4px 8px;border-radius:6px;font-size:15px;font-family:'Montserrat';} .Pbannerbutton img{height:20px;margin-right:6px} .Pbannerbutton a:hover{background-color:#f7f7f7} Add as a Reliable and Trusted News Source Add Now! (You can now subscribe to our ETMarkets WhatsApp channel) (You can now subscribe to our ETMarkets WhatsApp channel)

Hindalco Industries is evaluating investments up to fifty thousand crore rupees. This potential investment pipeline will support the company's ambitious global expansion programs. Aluminium consumption in India is expected to increase five-fold by twenty forty-seven. Copper consumption is also projected to rise four-fold over the same period. The company aims to meet India's growing demands for metal solutions. View More

Hindalco Industries is evaluating investment opportunities worth up to Rs 50,000 crore to support its next phase of growth, chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla said on Thursday. The proposed investments are in addition to the $10 billion global capital expenditure programme over five years that the company announced in August last year. “This potential ₹1 lakh crore investment pipeline will lift our growth trajectory and put us in a strong position to meet India’s demands for metal solutions,” Birla told shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting on Thursday. Aluminium consumption in India is expected to increase five-fold to nearly 28 million tonnes by 2047, while copper consumption is projected to rise four-fold to 3.6 million tonnes over the same period, Birla said, citing a government vision document. “The coming decades will be defined not only by higher demand for metals, but by the need for scale, resource security, efficiency and reliability. All of this plays into our roadmap for integrated manufacturing capabilities,” said Birla. Live Events The company is in the midst of its “most ambitious global capacity expansion programmes”, he said. The Aditya Birla Group company, India's second-largest aluminium producer, supplies metal to automobile and electronics manufacturers and is increasingly focusing on downstream operations. In its copper business, Hindalco is developing copper-magnesium and copper-silver alloys for high-speed rail infrastructure. It is also developing products aimed at import substitution in cooling systems and solar manufacturing. Vedanta Aluminium Metal , which is the largest producer of aluminium in the country, plans to double its production capacity to 6 million tonnes, while Hindalco is planning expansions at its plants, which will take its capacity to over 2 million tonnes. The Adani Group has also announced plans to enter aluminium production with a capacity of 2 million tonnes, while global materials major Rio Tinto has proposed setting up a 1 million-tonne smelter in Andhra Pradesh. For 2025-26, Hindalco reported a record consolidated revenue of Rs 2.74 lakh crore. EBITDA rose 10% to an all-time high of Rs 38,097 crore, while adjusting for exceptional items, profit also reached a record Rs 18,733 crore. .Pbanner{display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;background-color:#ec1c40;margin-top:20px;padding:5px 10px;border-radius:4px;color:#fff;line-height:10px;width: 100%;box-sizing: border-box} .Pbannertext{display:flex;align-items:center;font-size:16px;font-weight:600;font-family:'Montserrat';} .Pbannertext img{height:20px;margin:0 6px} .Pbannerbutton a{display:flex;align-items:center;background-color:#fff;color:#ec1c40;text-decoration:none;font-weight:600;padding:4px 8px;border-radius:6px;font-size:15px;font-family:'Montserrat';} .Pbannerbutton img{height:20px;margin-right:6px} .Pbannerbutton a:hover{background-color:#f7f7f7} Add as a Reliable and Trusted News Source Add Now! (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel) (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel)

Manufacturers lacking facilities to make their own cells said they face waiting periods of up to six to eight months for domestic cells View More

Tesla's earnings report lands in the midst of a slide in the company's stock price even as its core auto business is rebounding. View More

In this articleTSLAFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNT watch nowVIDEO1:2701:27Tesla shares slide on mixed Q2 resultsClosing Bell: Overtime Tesla reported weaker-than-expected earnings for the second quarter even as revenue topped estimates. The stock slid about 4% in extended trading on Wednesday.Here's how the company did compared to Wall Street expectations, according to estimates from analysts polled by LSEGEarnings per share: 33 cents adjusted vs. 51 cents expectedRevenue: $28.24 billion vs. $25.71 billion expectedTesla's earnings report lands in the midst of a steep decline in its stock price, which is down about 11% this month and 17% for the year as of Wednesday's close. That slide has coincided with a drop in SpaceX, Elon Musk's other trillion-dollar company, which held a record market debut in June and has lost more than 40% of its value since its peak close.Revenue at Tesla jumped jumped 26% in the period from $22.5 billion a year earlier, the company said in a statement. Net income fell 5% to $1.11 billion, or 32 cents a share, from $1.17 billion, or 33 cents per share, a year earlier. Tesla's core automotive segment generated $20.52 billion in revenue, up 23% from a year ago. Revenue in the energy business, which consists of solar and battery energy storage systems, increased 13% to $3.14 billion. In its services and other business, which includes fees for repairing vehicles out of warranty, revenue jumped 50% to $4.58 billion. Despite better-than-expected revenue in its auto business, the company's gross margin dropped and missed estimates as average selling price per vehicle fell and regulatory credit revenue declined. Gross margin, or the profit left after accounting for the cost of goods sold, slid to 16.8% from 17.2% a year earlier. Analysts expected 19.4%, according to StreetAccount. During the quarter, Tesla sold lower-cost version of its popular Model 3 and Y vehicles after retiring its more expensive, flagship Model S and X vehicles. Tesla Model 3 electric vehicles (EV) on a vehicle transport truck at the company's store in Colma, California, US, on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026.David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images Operating expenses climbed much faster than revenue, as the company poured money into artificial intelligence and other research and development projects. The 47% increase in operating expenses brought the total to $4.35 billion in the second quarter. Tesla's operating margin plunged to 1.4% from 4.1% a year ago. Musk has shifted the focus of the company away from vehicle sales and toward its driverless Robotaxi service, ramping production of the company's driverless Cybercab, and remaking older factory lines in Fremont, California, to start manufacturing Optimus humanoid robots. He's promised shareholders and fans an AI-powered robot that will be able to step in as a babysitter, factory worker or world-class surgeon. Skyrocketing costs Free cash flow at Tesla turned negative in the quarter. The deficit of $1.1 billion comes after the company generated $146 million in free cash flow a year ago and $1.44 billion in the first quarter of 2026. Tesla said in its shareholder deck that it "will manage the business such that we ensure a strong balance sheet, maintaining sufficient liquidity to fund our product roadmap, long-term capacity expansion plans – including further vertical integration – and other expenses."Capital expenditures, meanwhile, soared 142% to $5.79 billion from $2.39 billion in the same quarter last year. CFO Vaibhav Taneja told shareholders during the company's last earnings call in April that capex would top $25 billion this year. "Capacity build out and ramp related to our multi-year infrastructure initiatives, including AI compute, solar, battery material and semiconductor manufacturing are underway," the company said in the earnings deck. Tesla is trying to recover from consecutive years of declining deliveries, largely due to competition from Chinese automakers, including BYD, Nio and Xiaomi, that are offering affordable but high-tech EVs in markets beyond the U.S. Some car buyers have boycotted Tesla in response to Musk's incendiary political rhetoric and work with the Trump administration.Rising gas prices resulting from the U.S. war in Iran boosted Tesla sales in the first half of the year, with European car buyers purchasing more EVs.Taneja told investors on Wednesday that operating expenditures will "grow in 2026 and beyond." He also said, "commodity price increases and interest rate changes" will all continue to add to Tesla's costs. watch nowVIDEO4:0204:02Tesla stock likely sliding on EPS miss, says Morningstar's Seth GoldsteinClosing Bell: Overtime Musk said on the earnings call that Tesla would soon disclose more details about the chip plant and had already ordered equipment for a "development fab," but declined to discuss other details for the "high-risk, high-payoff bets" the company is making around AI chips. The company said in its earnings presentation that it's "installing the first-generation lines for Optimus," and will "start production soon." Tesla also said its initial Optimus robots will be used for "training data collection and further functionality development," not deployed to customers."This is going to be the hardest product to scale manufacturing that we've ever made at Tesla, because everything on the robot is new," Musk said on the call. He added that there is "no existing supply chain" for it.Tesla said "active FSD subscriptions" rose 56% in the quarter, and the company now has 1.48 million subscribers total to that product. The full name for FSD in the U.S. is Full Self-Driving (Supervised), and in every market, it requires a human driver ready to steer or brake at all times. Tesla is lagging far behind driverless ride-hailing companies including Alphabet's Waymo, and Baidu's Apollo Go, but the company is now "ramping unsupervised" Robotaxi rides in several U.S. markets.The company has started production of a two-seater driverless vehicle called Cybercab, but it's not clear when it will be deemed safe and available for use by individuals. "We need to be cautious about causing any accidents or causing any harm to anyone," Musk said. "If we injure even one person, it will be worldwide headline news, and regulators will immediately clamp down on our activities."Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla's vice president of Autopilot, added during the call that Tesla's Robotaxi fleet is now running with the "v. 15" build of its FSD software. The forthcoming Cybercab will use the same version of the FSD software used in its Robotaxi fleet, he said.Musk was asked on the call if Tesla and SpaceX would ever merge. "There more and more overlap especially with Terafab. That's really going to be a gigantic project," he said. "But obviously, we can't talk about combining companies and that kind of thing on an earnings call." Musk and other Tesla execs noted that Grok, an AI chatbot available in Tesla vehicles, is made by SpaceXAI (formerly known as xAI). Cybercab will rely on SpaceX's Starlink for connectivity, Musk noted. And SpaceXAI is also developing an AI model intended to serve as a "manager" of Optimus.WATCH: Chinese EVs push into UK market watch nowVIDEO6:0606:06Chinese EVs push into the UK marketAutos Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

The unusual planetary system, 71 light-years from Earth, is unlike anything previously observed in the Milky Way View More

The project was awarded under SECI's tariff-based global competitive bidding for the supply of 1,500 MW / 12,000 MWh of power from pumped hydro storage projects being set up in the country View More