Top Stories of the Week & New Substack

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Numerous times — at public cleantech events, in normal daily life, and online — people have asked us if we have a Substack. Now, to me, that has always been a strange question to ask. We’ve had this website for almost two decades, where we publish article after article after article of course. We also have various newsletters you can sign up for. So, why would we have a separate Substack?

Well, people are all over Substack these days. All sorts of famous writers and people have their own Substacks, and people have gotten accustomed to subscribing to their favorite writers over on Substack. So, if that’s where people are and what people are used to, sometimes it’s just about going with the times. As such, here is our new Substack page. We’ve added our existing newsletter subscribers there to kick things off.

Of course, it would be weird and probably a bit counterproductive if we published the same stuff here as we publish there. So, right now, the plan is to publish weekly reflection articles where I (or perhaps sometimes someone else) reflects on a few of the biggest cleantech stories of the week. I will do my best to make it interesting, supplementary to what we do here, and humorous.

If you’d like to check out our weekly column on Substack, if you’re not already subscribed, you can subscribe here. Of course, any financial support there helps us do all of our normal work. In an increasingly squeezed media market, it’s not an exaggeration to say that we can use all the help we can get!

Thank you. The first column will be coming soon.

Top CleanTechnica Stories of the Week

Along with that announcement, I am reviving our weekly “top stories of the week” article and newsletter. Since it’s been awhile, though, I’m going to highlight some of the top stories of recent weeks.

Electric Vehicles

On the positive side, I think you have to start with BYD’s rapid rise up the sales charts and expansion into more and more markets. You can catch up on numerous stories on that topic in our BYD sales archives. (BYD has also released a hot new 1000-volt EV architecture that will help propel sales that much further. And BYD’s big news on rolling its “God’s Eye” driver-assist tech into all models, even super cheap ones.)

On a much smaller scale but also extremely impressive, there’s the strong ongoing rise in sales of Xiaomi sales, XPENG sales, and NIO sales.

On the not-so-positive side, one has to highlight the obvious — Tesla’s sales decline in 2024 and even further, more dramatic sales decline in 2025. It’s not looking good. (And neither is Tesla depreciation.) That said, we have to wait a bit longer to be more clear on sales trends. Tesla has spent time changing the production lines for the Model Y due to the new version of Tesla’s cash cow, and it’s still unclear how much of the 2025 sales decline is due to those production line changes versus broader demand issues. You can catch up on all kinds of trends and details on this topic via our Tesla sales archives.

Also on the negative side, a top story has been the EU’s decision to water down its CO2 emissions reduction requirements for automakers. You can read some analyses and commentary on this change, which just went into place this week, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

While we may be suffering from some backwards policy changes in the US and the EU, there’s a lot of good EV momentum building in South America, Africa, and Asia. For much more on that, you can check out the archives of Juan Diego Celemín Mojica, Remeredzai Joseph Kuhudzai, and Raymond Tribdino. They are doing great work covering those markets.

In the US, on the positive side, Hyundai has just opened a massive EV and EV battery factory in Georgia — stimulated in large part by Biden and Democratic policies.

Also, despite the decline in Tesla sales, EV sales rose 22% in California in 2024 compared to 2023. There’s a fast growing number of electric models on the US market, and many of them are doing very well in California and beating their gas-fueld competitors.

To close out the EV category, I just love looking back at how much EV specs (i.e., range per dollar) has improved in the past decade. Here’s a piece on that brought about by some big recent news: “Increase in Nissan LEAF Range from 73 Miles to 373 Miles Shows Astounding Improvements in Electric Cars.”

Solar & Wind Power

A whopping 92.5% of new power capacity added worldwide in 2024 came from renewables, almost entirely solar power and wind power.

In a wonderful milestone, the UK got more than 50% of its electricity from renewable energy sources in 2024.

On the solar power topic, the Sunshine State, Florida, has passed up California for new solar power installations. Florida is doing okay in this regard, but the bigger matter is that net metering changes in California have really hit that market.

Nonetheless, the California does continue to power itself more and more from solar power, and it’s now getting to the point where there are hours in some days when solar, wind, and water power account for more than 100% of electricity demand in the Golden State!

Also, more broadly, across the United States, there were several hours recently in which solar power was the #2 source of electricity!

Backing up rooftop solar has gotten easier and easier over the years, and you can now get 30-year warranties on home battery systems.

There’s been a lot of progress in terms of agrivoltaics. You can check recent stories on that fun new-ish topic at that link.

I’ll wrap up with a couple of big battery storage stories. First of all, U.S. battery capacity increased a whopping 66% in 2024! (Thanks, Biden.) Secondly, BYD (yes, that company again) recently won the contract for the largest utility-scale battery storage project in the world. If you missed that news, see if you can guess what country that’s in before clicking the link.