While the Middle East advances its solar capacity and manufacturing capabilities, substantial fossil fuel investments and policy gaps highlight the region’s complex journey towards net zero by 2060, balancing ambition with economic reliance on hydrocarbons. The Middle East’s pathway to decarbonisation is gathering momentum in its power systems and manufacturing base, even as broader economic incentives and ongoing fossil fuel investment leave the region far from the emission trajectories implied by many national pledges. According to Wood Mackenzie’s Energy Transition Outlook, closing that gap would demand roughly US$5.3 trillion of cumulative spending to hit net zero by 2060; under the…

Cornwall’s United Downs plant marks a significant breakthrough by producing continuous electricity and recovering lithium from geothermal brine, signalling a new era for UK deep geothermal power and critical mineral supply amid ambitions to decarbonise. Geothermal Engineering Ltd’s United Downs project in Cornwall has begun steady electricity production and on‑site lithium recovery, marking a practical first for deep geothermal power in Britain and a novel fusion of baseload renewable generation with critical mineral supply. The plant is delivering around 3 megawatts of continuous electrical output to the national system, a level the developer says will meet the annual electricity demand…

Industry leaders warn that delays and policy uncertainty are threatening the UK’s nascent hydrogen sector, risking economic and environmental gains unless ministers act swiftly to unlock investment and streamline regulation. Energy sector leaders are pressing UK ministers to remove bottlenecks that threaten to stall the country’s nascent hydrogen industry at a critical moment for decarbonisation and industrial competitiveness. Industry groups, developers and investors say momentum built around low‑carbon hydrogen is being undermined by repeated delays and policy uncertainty, particularly around the government’s Hydrogen Allocation Rounds and the long‑promised refresh of the national Hydrogen Strategy. The Hydrogen Energy Association (HEA), which…

As global chip manufacturing expands rapidly, industry leaders emphasise the need for innovative methods to reduce water and energy use, integrating circularity and efficiency to ensure supply chain resilience and environmental sustainability. Semiconductor manufacturing’s rapid advance is colliding with hard limits in energy and water resources, forcing fabs and equipment suppliers to reframe production priorities around conservation, reuse and operational efficiency. Ryan Zrno, chief executive of JST, argues that addressing water and energy demands in wet processing and cleanroom systems is now central to sustaining both output and supply‑chain resilience. Water is the industry’s most conspicuous constraint. The sector already…

A groundbreaking German study introduces a polymer-based technology capable of capturing sunlight, storing chemical energy for days, and releasing hydrogen on demand, potentially transforming industrial green hydrogen supply chains. Researchers in Germany have demonstrated a polymer-based system that captures sunlight, stores the resulting chemical energy for days and then releases it as hydrogen on demand, offering a novel route for time‑decoupled green hydrogen production with potential industrial applications. According to a report by TechXplore summarising the paper published in Nature Communications, the team from Ulm University and Friedrich Schiller University Jena synthesised a water‑soluble redox‑active copolymer that functions as a…

A shift towards systemic redesign in heavy industry focus on sector coupling and hydrogen integration to create a low-carbon, flexible energy system that benefits both power grids and industrial processes. The push to decarbonise heavy industry is shifting from isolated actions to systemic redesign, with the power sector and industrial processes increasingly treated as components of a single energy ecosystem. Where earlier strategies relied largely on expanding renewable electricity generation, a new emphasis on sector coupling seeks to harness industrial demand as a stabilising and enabling force for a renewable-led grid, while the power system supplies the low-carbon energy carriers…

Forecasts indicate a dramatic shift towards electrolyser‑based ‘green’ hydrogen, potentially constituting over 88% of low‑carbon hydrogen production by 2030, driven by falling renewable costs and policy support. New analysis of the low‑carbon hydrogen market points to a dramatic shift towards electrolyser‑based “green” hydrogen over the remainder of the decade, with industry forecasters predicting it will supply the vast majority of certified low‑carbon hydrogen by 2030. According to GlobalData’s Low‑Carbon Hydrogen Market Report, Update 2025, green hydrogen produced by renewable‑powered electrolysers is expected to expand rapidly and account for about 88.6% of global low‑carbon hydrogen production by 2030, up from roughly…

Schneider Electric prepares to host its second Innovation Summit in Abu Dhabi, focusing on integrating electrification, automation, and digital services to meet rising electricity demand and accelerate AI-driven energy solutions across the Middle East and Africa. Schneider Electric will stage the second Innovation Summit for the Middle East and Africa in Abu Dhabi on April 28–29, 2026, positioning the event as a focal point for policymakers, utilities, data centre operators and industrial energy managers wrestling with surging electricity demand and the rapid rollout of AI and digital infrastructure. According to the company, the Summit will showcase how tighter integration of…

Manufacturers are leveraging IIoT sensors and data analytics to expose inefficiencies hidden within the ‘hidden factory,’ offering significant gains in cost reduction, throughput, and sustainability. According to a Schneider Electric blog post, many manufacturers are still quietly siphoning capacity and margin into what industry practitioners call the “hidden factory” , the unrecorded rework, inspections, workarounds and failure investigations that do not create value but consume people, material and machine time. Industry analyses and practitioner guides note that these activities can represent a sizeable share of a plant’s productive capacity and materially inflate the cost of poor quality. According to OEE.com…

Emerging applications of graphene in cement and concrete could significantly cut carbon emissions, with commercial trials demonstrating performance and environmental benefits in large-scale projects. Cement and concrete remain among the largest sources of industrial greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for roughly 8% of the world’s CO2 output. That scale, comparable to and in some measures exceeding other major sectors, has prompted a search for transformative materials and processes that can cut the carbon intensity of construction without undermining performance or inflating costs. According to a World Cement feature by Michael Bell of First Graphene, one route gaining traction is the incorporation…