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British solar power surges past 2024 total

Good weather and rapidly proliferating farms mean solar generation is at record levels

Solar power generation in Britain so far this year has surpassed the total for 2024 as panels are rapidly installed and amid favourable weather, underlining renewable energy’s increasing importance to the grid.

Some 14.08 terawatt hours of electricity was produced from solar in Great Britain by August 16, about one-third higher than at this time last year, a Financial Times analysis of University of Sheffield data has found. This is enough to power 5.2mn homes for a year, or the London Underground for more than a decade.

The figures underline the momentum of Britain’s clean energy push, but also make it more important that the grid can cope with greater variable power sources.

A rapid build-out of solar technology, with capacity increasing by a fifth since 2023, had allowed the UK to make the most of ideal weather conditions throughout much of the spring and summer, analysts said.

“Despite the UK’s reputation for gloomy weather, solar has been unstoppable in 2025, thanks to a powerful combination of very sunny weather and record capacity on the system,” said Josie Murdoch, policy analyst at energy think-tank Ember.

For one half-hour period on July 8, solar output was a record 14 gigawatts, meeting almost 40 per cent of Britain’s electricity demand during that period, according to the National Energy System Operator (Neso). Between January and July, solar supplied about 10 per cent of England and Wales’ electricity.

Energy minister Miatta Fahnbulleh said the findings were “a clear sign that our clean power mission is working”, and that the solar rollout would help lower energy bills, tackle the climate crisis and reduce the UK’s reliance on “volatile fossil fuel markets”.

The government aims to increase UK solar capacity to 45-47GW by 2030 in order to meet its goal of 95 per cent of generation coming from clean power sources by then.

It has unveiled a number of policies to encourage further investment, such as requiring new homes to have rooftop panels, funding for schools and hospitals to install solar and lengthening subsidy contracts for developers.

Changes to planning law will allow mid-sized projects of 50-100 megawatts capacity to be approved at local rather than national level.

Neso is also overhauling the grid connection process in an effort to prioritise clean power schemes and remove “zombie” projects with little hope of ever being built.

The move came after the developers of some proposed solar schemes had been told they would not be connected to the grid until the late 2030s. Neso said the change would “allow us to connect clean energy projects more quickly, creating a better environment for private investment”.

Investment by developers has nonetheless resulted in a big ramp-up in solar plants over the past five years, government data shows. Of the 18.1GW of solar capacity online in the UK as of the end of March, more than 12.4GW was supported by some government subsidies and 5.6GW was not.

Industry says the total capacity is higher than official government figures, at about 22GW.

In addition, since December 2021, solar developers have won government support deals — know as contracts for difference — covering about 7GW of new projects that are still being built. Long-term deals to supply specific big electricity customers are also becoming important sources of funding.

“There’s no question that solar is the cheapest form of power generation so there’s a real optimism for the economic opportunity,” said Chris Hewett, chief executive of trade body Solar Energy UK.

Developers are also increasingly looking to install batteries alongside solar farms, so as to allow a constant supply of power. This has been enabled by falling costs of batteries in recent years because of supply from China.

“There’s an enormous number of people wanting to build large scale solar-plus-battery projects,” said Adam Bell, policy director at advisory group Stonehaven. “Essentially, you produce solar during the day, you store it in the battery and you sell it at the winter peak. There’s very little not to like . . . the future for these projects is enormous.”

Bell added: “As costs continue to decline . . . it’ll just make more sense to install more and more until electricity during the middle of the day becomes essentially free as it already nearly is in Spain.”

Others question whether the UK can realistically double its solar capacity in just five years, as the government intends. Developers have warned of grid bottlenecks, local opposition to huge solar farms and international competition for skilled workers and equipment.

“It’s a huge, huge challenge,” said Keith Gains of Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners. The investment firm owns the UK’s largest solar farm, Cleve Hill Solar Park in Kent, which started supplying power to the grid this year.

With half a million solar panels over 900 acres and a capacity of 373MW, at peak output Cleve Hill can meet about 0.7 per cent of the country’s electricity demand.

But the development process took roughly 10 years, with three of them taken up by planning approvals. The project faced fierce opposition from locals over the scale of the facility and potential biodiversity loss.

“By our reckoning, we think [the UK] needs about 80 projects akin to Cleve Hill. So far, we’ve got one,” said Gains. “They are big projects and there’s a lot of groups of people, aspects [like] wildlife . . . that have to be taken into account.”

If all of the large solar farms of more than 50MW now seeking planning approval or yet to begin construction were completed, the UK would still be a third short of its 2030 goal, according to FT analysis of government planning data.

Reaching the target would also require unprecedented investment in transmission and distribution infrastructure. Variable power sources, such as solar and wind, can make the power system more complicated to manage. 

In Spain and some other countries, high solar output has led to an oversupply of power at times, which can send prices negative and even risk blackouts.

Ofgem, the energy regulator, approved up to £10bn for grid upgrades in July, part of a wider £80bn programme of spending to “significantly increase the grid’s capacity, through new power lines, substations and other technologies, to handle the flow of electricity from new renewable sources”.

Solar technology is also becoming more robust and resilient, said Marcel Suri, chief executive of data provider Solargis.

“Years ago, the solar power plant was a relatively simple device which just generated electricity as the sun was shining. Today it’s much smarter. You can build sophistication around reducing power when the grid is full or storing it in batteries . . . It’s unbelievable how many systems are running in the background.”

A handful of Nasdaq-listed Chinese companies crashed last month after heavy promotion on social media

Investors lost billions of dollars in July betting on a handful of small US-listed Chinese stocks that plunged in value shortly after being heavily promoted on social media.

Seven Nasdaq-listed microcap stocks — Concorde International, Ostin Technology, Top KingWin, Skyline Builders, Everbright Digital, Park Ha Biological Technology and Pheton Holdings — all dropped more than 80 per cent over a few trading sessions in recent weeks.

The declines wiped a cumulative $3.7bn off their market value, according to price data analysed by predictive analytics firm InvestorLink. All seven stocks had surged before their sudden sell offs, having been plugged to investors on WhatsApp groups and social media sites.

Analysts and investors said the moves bore many of the hallmarks of pump-and-dump scams. There is no suggestion that any of the companies named were involved in the unusual share price moves. None of the seven responded to requests for comment.

Stock pump and dumps — where people with a vested interest artificially inflate a company’s share price before abruptly selling their own holdings — have plagued US markets for decades but were last a major problem during the bull run of 2020 and 2021, when dozens of unprofitable Chinese groups rocketed higher then tumbled shortly after listing.

The FBI said last month it had seen a 300 per cent year-on-year increase in victim complaints “referencing ramp and dump stock fraud”. It added that investors were being targeted on social media by people impersonating “legitimate brokerage firms or well-known stock analysts”. 

Many scams are linked to the record number of Chinese companies that went public on US stock exchanges in 2024, a trend that has continued this year with China and Hong Kong-based companies dominating the otherwise sleepy US microcap IPO market.

Victims of the alleged pump and dump scams include first-time traders and a former diplomat, according to correspondence seen by the Financial Times. 

Tia Castagno runs her own executive coaching business from London, and was added to a WhatsApp group after she clicked on an advert on Facebook.

She eventually lost all of her savings after being encouraged to invest in Ostin Technology by what she said looked like a legitimate US investment firm.

“There’s a feeling of emptiness in my stomach, and shame. I keep questioning my judgment and remembering how I felt when the rug was pulled from under my feet,” she told the FT. 

Ryan Sweetnam, a UK-based lawyer at Cel Solicitors, said he had “more than a hundred clients involved in pump and dumps on Chinese penny stocks instruct me over the last couple of months”.

Analysts argue that US regulators have been repeatedly warned that certain stocks are being used as vehicles for fraud.

Almost every week for the past seven months, InvestorLink chief executive Matthew Michel has emailed contacts, including the Financial Times, to flag unusual social media activity around certain US-listed microcap stocks. 

One large Wall Street trading firm — which also utilises InvestorLink’s platform, and asked not to be named — has repeatedly warned the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Nasdaq, of the potential manipulation of shares in certain companies.

Nasdaq declined to comment. The SEC also declined to comment.

InvestorLink alerted the market, and the FT, to unusual online activity around Pheton in early July, almost three weeks before the company’s shares fell 95 per cent in a single trading session.

One European retail investor, who said they lost a “six-figure” amount on Pheton, and asked not to be named, was added to a WhatsApp investment group after clicking on a Facebook advert boasting an endorsement from a well-known US television pundit.

The WhatsApp group of around 40 participants, most with phone numbers from the UK and the US, appeared to be run by a legitimate US broker, which began recommending investments in the healthcare sector and companies working on cancer treatments, the person said.

“They asked if I was AI-bot early on . . . a good ruse. It looked like a kosher operation,” the person added. “I almost fell off my chair [when the stock was dumped], it was a chastening experience.”

The potential manipulation of Ostin’s shares was flagged by InvestorLink on June 9, two weeks before its shares dropped 94 per cent in one day.

Noushin Mirshokraei, who runs a food and drinks company in Italy, says she lost $70,000 after being convinced on a WhatsApp group to buy into Ostin ahead of a partnership the company was supposedly entering into with a large US-listed firm.

“All the information that was given to us on WhatsApp groups was from fake participants,” she said. “The only real people in there were the ones being manipulated.”

A Meta spokesperson said: “We don’t want this type of content on our platforms, which is why we’re continuing to invest in technology to aggressively enforce against scams; provide people with on-platform warnings and tools to protect themselves; and partner with banks, governments, and law enforcement to stop these criminals.”

Michel’s analysis of Ostin’s share price moves also revealed “clusters of co-ordinated activity” on Reddit, with 12 users posting similar promotional content about the stock within a two-hour window.

Geolocation metadata suggests that three of these users were based in Russia and Iran, according to Michel — a trend he said InvestorLink has identified in other pump and dumps, some of which are more extreme than others.

By June 17, shares of Chinese herbal medicine group Regencell Bioscience — which reported a net loss of $4.4mn in 2024 — were up almost 60,000 per cent for the year, giving the company a market value of around $38bn, more than Jefferies and Walgreens combined.

The stock has since fallen 83 per cent. There is no suggestion that Regencell was involved in its share price moves. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

Short positions in the Danish group build up as offshore wind developer undertakes $9bn cash call

Rasmus Errboe might have hoped to have more time to see through his first plan to turn round the fortunes of the world’s largest offshore wind developer following a bruising few years. 

The 46-year-old Dane was promoted to the top job at Ørsted at the end of January and shortly after slashed its investment plans by a quarter, in a bid to restore its finances without having to tap shareholders for more cash or lose its investment grade credit rating. 

In the past few years Copenhagen-listed Ørsted’s aggressive expansion has been battered as high interest rates deflated a bubble in green energy stocks and the US renewed its enthusiasm for fossil fuels.

But his plans were left in tatters after US President Donald Trump ordered in April that rival Equinor stop work on a vast wind project off the New York coast. It spooked investors and collapsed Ørsted’s plans sell a stake in its own nearby project, known as Sunrise Wind.

“Investors substantially increased their return requirements,” says Errboe.

That left a funding gap and this month Ørsted was forced to turn to shareholders after all. Errboe announced a DKr60bn ($9.4bn) rights issue to fund the offshore US project and provide a buffer for other projects. 

Shareholders scattered in the wake of the highly dilutive cash call. The Danish company’s shares suffered their worst week on record, falling more than 30 per cent and driving its market capitalisation down to $13.8bn. 

The proportion of the company’s stock on loan — a rough proxy for short interest, where investors bet the stock has further to fall — also surged to record levels.

It is a far cry from early 2021, when enthusiasm over green energy stocks pushed the company’s valuation to $90bn, more than FTSE 100 oil company BP.

Errboe and his bankers and advisers are now trying to drum up support for the cash call ahead of the critical shareholder vote at the start of September. Underwriters Morgan Stanley have yet to set the offer price.

The Danish state, which owns 50.1 per cent of Ørsted, has committed its support, in effect bailing out the company and underscoring the strategic importance of offshore wind to Europe.

Equinor, the Norwegian energy group which owns 10 per cent of Ørsted, says it will engage with Ørsted. Other large shareholders declined to comment.

Having aggressively expanded when interest rates were low, Ørsted is now trying to fund and finish a massive building programme against a very different economic and political backdrop.

The stop work order on Equinor’s Empire Wind project — which led to Ørsted’s rights issue — was lifted in May as part of a deal allowing a long-stalled gas pipeline in New York to go ahead. But for Ørsted, the damage had already been done. 

“We consider the delay in [the sale of Sunrise Wind] further evidence that Ørsted’s overall business environment has deteriorated,” said S&P Global Ratings, which on Thursday cut Ørsted’s credit rating to one notch above junk.

The company is retreating from onshore wind and hydrogen and carbon capture investments, to try and focus on offshore wind. 

That is despite Errboe’s warning in April that the industry was at risk of a “downward spiral” due to rising costs and supply chain strains. Several developers had to pull out of projects in the US even before Trump was re-elected, while some European countries have struggled to attract developers. 

Errboe believes things have now improved, pointing to more favourable terms in auctions for offshore wind leases or subsidy contracts, including in the UK where the government plans to lengthen new subsidy contracts.

“Across all scenarios, offshore wind will continue to be an essential part of the energy mix in Europe, in our view,” Errboe said last week. 

In particular, Ørsted is focused on finishing the mammoth 8.1 gigawatts of power generation from offshore wind farms it is currently building around the world, including projects off the coasts of Taiwan and Poland.

Ørsted has earmarked their completion by the end of 2027 and collectively they account for about $16.5bn of the $22.7bn in capital expenditure that it has committed to by the end of that year.

It plans to fund that spending mostly through a combination of the rights issue, cash flow and selling off assets such as stakes in wind farms and its entire European onshore wind business.

The offshore wind projects should boost earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation by $1.7bn-1.9bn a year, the company said last week.

Mark Freshney, an analyst at UBS, said there is a “hump” in Ørsted’s capital expenditure. “Net debt goes up substantially in the next two years. But then all of a sudden capex effectively stops in the second half of 2027.”

But significant construction delays or problems selling assets, such as the company suffered with Sunrise Wind, could renew investors’ jitters.

Ørsted transformed itself from an oil and gas driller to world’s largest offshore wind developer on the back of its so-called “farm-down” model, which involves selling stakes in projects in order to fund new ones.

But the model is more challenging in an era of higher interest rates, as investors need higher returns. The two largest projects, Hornsea 3 off England’s eastern coast, and Baltica 2 in the Polish part of the Baltic Sea, are only about 10 per cent complete. 

“The business model for operators like Ørsted relied on bringing in investors with cheap capital, but these investors are either no longer available or only with more expensive capital,” says Jérôme Guillet, managing director of energy fundraising specialist Snow.

Analysts and investors are watching particularly closely Ørsted’s efforts to sell a stake in Hornsea 3, which S&P calls “material” to the developer’s ratings. The company says it has a preferred bidder and talks are on track.

Trond Westlie, Ørsted’s chief financial officer, sought to reassure markets after S&P’s downgrade, saying it did not impact the company’s plans and the 8.1GW building programme is on track. Moody’s has maintained its Baa2 rating on Ørsted.

Investors are out there, experts say. “Offshore wind is attracting a lot of capital,” says Mortimer Menzel, managing partner at specialist advisory Augusta and Co. “It’s still the biggest place where you can spend renewable dollars.”

But shareholder confidence in Ørsted was damaged even before the rights issue, notably when it abandoned two major projects in the US and halted one in the UK.

“There is a question over what else can go wrong — and are they also not letting us in on something else they are worried about,” says Deepa Venkateswaran, a power and utilities analyst at Bernstein. 

Even so, there are signs of demand for the cash call. “It’s a bun fight,” said one banker.

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Spanish prime minister warns of ‘difficult days ahead’ as temperatures remain above 40C

Wildfires have triggered the largest ever deployment of the European Union firefighting force, Spain’s prime minister said, as the country prepares to battle blazes tearing across several regions in the days ahead.

Spanish leader Pedro Sánchez spoke publicly for the first time on Sunday since the wildfires advanced across the country following a heatwave which started more than 12 days ago.

Temperatures of a maximum of 44C were forecast on Sunday in some areas by the national weather agency, with several experiencing continued days of at least more than 40C.

“There are difficult days ahead. Unfortunately, the weather is not on our side,” said Sánchez at a press conference in the northwestern city of Ourense, Galicia, one of the areas most affected as several fires converged to force the closure of the highway and the main train line to Madrid.

The northern front of a fire in Extremadura was also advancing towards Castile and León, local officials warned, describing it as being “out of control”. Some 19 high-risk active fires were burning across the country.

“What is happening in Spain is probably the largest deployment in the history of the European civil protection mechanism,” Sánchez said, acknowledging the solidarity of countries such as France, Slovakia, Germany and the Netherlands and others which have sent assistance.

“The clear answer to having fires of this magnitude now . . . is that the climate emergency ravaging the world is accelerating, becoming more serious and more frequent, especially in places like the Iberian peninsula,” he added.

Southern Europe is experiencing one of its worst wildfire seasons on record, with Greece, Turkey, France, Slovakia and the Balkan nations continuing to battle blazes that have coincided with repeated heatwaves.

The EU’s civil protection mechanism, a supranational firefighting force established in 2001, has been called upon more than 16 times so far this year already — more than in the whole of 2024.

Spain requested assistance from the programme for the first time, while Bulgaria, Albania, Montenegro, Greece and Portugal also requested support.

Many larger European countries had already expanded their firefighting capabilities in response to the rise in risks as a consequence of global warming. But the spread of the latest fires has stretched their capabilities.

Europe is the world’s fastest warming continent, outpacing the global average since the 1980s.

Akshay Deoras, a research scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science and Department of Meteorology at Reading university, said the heatwaves were drying out soil and vegetation, “turning landscapes into tinderboxes”. 

“Heatwaves are becoming more intense and frequent due to climate change, which means climate change is directly fuelling wildfires. What we are seeing across Europe right now is a clear example of how extended hot and dry conditions are making wildfires fiercer and harder to control.”