Energy Update | Week 4 – Oct 2025: Nuclear Revival, UAE Solar Boom & China’s Battery Surge

In this week’s Energy Update, I take a look at some of the biggest developments shaping the global energy landscape — from a nuclear revival in South Carolina to solar and battery breakthroughs overseas.

South Carolina’s Santee Cooper has selected Brookfield as its partner to restart the long-abandoned 2.3 GW V.C. Summer nuclear plant, signaling renewed U.S. interest in large-scale baseload power. Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates has begun building a $6 billion, 5.2 GW solar + 19 GWh battery hybrid project — the largest of its kind — designed to deliver a full gigawatt of continuous renewable energy.

Back in New York, The Mobility House and Itron are teaming up to support fleet electrification using smart-charging systems that respond to grid capacity in real time. Redwood Materials has raised $350 million to grow its energy-storage and recycling operations, and in China, CATL now operates more than 700 battery-swap stations while Mingyang Smart Energy unveils a twin-rotor 50 MW floating wind turbine.

I wrap up this week’s update with news that the BP / JERA joint venture has canceled its 2.4 GW Beacon Wind project off Massachusetts — a reminder of the challenges still facing U.S. offshore wind.

Chapters

• 0:00 Nuclear Comeback In South Carolina
• 1:25 World’s Largest Solar Plus Storage
• 1:46 Smarter Fleet Charging In New York
• 2:43 Redwood’s Second-Life Battery Push
• 3:32 China’s Battery Swap Network Scales
• 4:19 Offshore Wind Diverges: China Vs U.S.
• 5:18 Wrap-Up And Sign-Off

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

I've got your energy stories for this, the fourth week of October, and for our Halloween story, a half-constructed defunct nuclear plant may now be back from the dead. South Carolina's government-owned power company, Santi Cooper, announced that it had selected Canadian private equity firm Brookfield as its partner in resuming construction of the abandoned 2200 megawatt VC summer nuclear plant. The twin reactors were to have been commissioned in 2017, but after massive cost overruns, delays, and$10 billion spent, the project was eventually scrapped. One of the bidders in the selection process, the nuclear company, strongly protested the proceeding and withdrew its proposal at the last minute, alleging that Santi Cooper's bidding process, quote, may have been fundamentally compromised by the evaluation of bids outside the established framework by parties previously involved in the VC Summer project and with access to information that the other parties did not have, unquote. For its part, Brookfield is committed to paying off$2.7 billion of the$3.6 billion obligation that Santee Cooper had incurred in the project, as well as sharing 25% of ownership and output. Brookfield is a majority owner of Westinghouse, which owns the underlying AP1000 reactor technology. Now the parties have six weeks for an initial feasibility period in which to select a project manager and review potential builders, with the eventual goal of arriving at an MOU. The United Arab Emirates has started building a$6 billion 5,200 megawatt solar PV plant joined with a 19,000 megawatt-hour battery storage system that aims to provide 1,000 megawatts of continuous renewable baseload power at competitive rates. This will be the world's largest solar storage hybrid. And in New York State, the Mobility House, a company that offers smart charging and energy management systems, and iTron, the smart meter company, have announced an initiative to accelerate fleet electrification using flexible service connections that will take distribution capacity into account to prevent delays in fleet charging. The project will integrate iTron's distributed energy resource management system solution with the automated load management from Mobility House. This will enable fleets to electrify while minimizing needs for infrastructure upgrades in the distribution system. This will be done by managing charging capacity limits at specific times based on existing limitations. An interconnection of fleet charging systems with distribution grids has long been a problem, so this approach may help. Phase one will see the technology deployed with five chargers at a school bus site in Staten Island, while phase two will see ten additional chargers deployed at designated sites elsewhere in New York State. Redwood Materials, the battery recycling and cathode production company, has raised another$350 million, with funds to be used to support the company's growing energy storage business and expand its refining and materials production capacity. Redwood recently initiated an energy storage business using its enormous supply of used EV batteries, which still have considerable life left in them, largely to help data centers and industrial customers. It combines used batteries with renewables to create off-grid power systems. Redwood covers over 70% of all used or discarded EV battery packs in North America, and as of June, the company had over 1,000 megawatt hours worth of batteries on site. It eventually plans to deploy 20,000 megawatt hours of grid scale storage by 2028. Well, last week we reported on all of Chinese EV maker NEO's millions of battery swaps. That company's not alone. Global Chinese market leader CATL just announced it has deployed 700 battery replacement stations in 39 cities across China, and it's on target to hit a thousand stations by year's end. Most of the swap stations are for cars, but well over 100 serve heavy-duty vehicles. And by 2026, CATL plans to operate over 2,500 swap stations in more than 120 Chinese cities. In those initial 39 cities, drivers should find it possible to reach a swap station within 10 minutes and exchange the battery within 100 seconds. So take that gas station experience. Also in China, offshore wind manufacturer Minyang Smart Energy just rolled out plans for a twin-headed 50 megawatt, that's right, 50 megawatt floating offshore wind turbine, supported by a V-shaped tower with twin 290-meter rotors. So China continues to forge ahead with offshore wind, while in this country we've done a strong 180. The JV between BP and JIRA just called a quits on its 2,430 megawatt beacon wind project off the coast of Massachusetts and laid off all staff team members. That JV was launched last August, and it still has a potential generating capacity worldwide of 13,000 megawatts. But the Beacon Wind project, which phase one involved 1230 megawatts, that's done. It had already secured a 25 year energy off take agreement with New York State, but the approval from the feds of the construction and operation plan was still pending, and we know where that was likely headed. Well, that's all for this week. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you again soon.