“Distributed energy refers to a range of technologies that generate electricity at or near the place of use…

Latin America and the Caribbean has seen a huge expansion of distributed energy, driven mostly by Brazil, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Chile and Colombia. The region went from just one gigawatt installed capacity of distributed systems in 2017 to 31.8 GW by 2023, the year with the latest available data, according to energy consultancy Onred. Virtually all of these installations use solar panels.”

From Dialogue Earth.

“Ontario officials have given final approval to construct a GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy small modular reactor (SMR) that the company predicts will be the first SMR operating in the ‘Western world.’

Early site preparation is complete and construction will start soon, GE Vernova said. The reactor is expected to be online by 2030.

• Four total units are eventually planned for the site. All four units are expected to be operating by 2035.
• The total project cost for all the units would be $20.9 billion Canadian ($15.06 USD), Stephen Lecce, the province’s energy minister, said at a news event. 

State of play: The planned reactors will help meet what provincial officials expect to be a 75% rise in Ontario’s power demand by 2050, Lecce said.”

From Axios.

“Pakistan, home to more than 240 million people, is experiencing one of the most rapid solar revolutions on the planet, even as it grapples with poverty and economic instability.

The country has become a huge new market for solar as super-cheap Chinese solar panels flood in. It imported 17 gigawatts of solar panels in 2024, more than double the previous year, making it the world’s third-biggest importer, according to data from the climate think tank Ember.

Pakistan’s story is unique, said Mustafa Amjad, program director at Renewables First, an energy think tank based in Islamabad. Solar has been adopted at mass scale in countries including Vietnam and South Africa, ‘but none have had the speed and scale that Pakistan has had,’ he told CNN.

There’s one particular aspect fascinating experts: The solar boom is a grassroots revolution and almost none of it is in the form of big solar farms. ‘There is no policy push that is driving this; this is essentially people-led and market driven,’ Amjad said.”

From CNN.

“A much-delayed nuclear fusion project involving more than 30 countries is ready to assemble the world’s most powerful magnet – a key part of efforts to generate clean energy by smashing atoms together at super-high temperatures.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, based in southern France and backed by the United States, China, Japan, Russia and the European Union, needs the magnetic system to create an ‘invisible cage’ to confine super-hot plasma particles that combine and fuse to release energy.

ITER said late on Wednesday that the final component of the system – the central solenoid – had been completed and tested by the United States, and assembly was now underway.”

From Reuters.