7 Top Cleantech Stories: 44.7% Renewables in Europe, Chinese EV Tariffs in EU, Unbelievably Huge Solar Farm – CleanTechnica

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Another week is wrapped up, and we’re here for a rundown of 7 of the biggest stories of the week. Scroll on, read along, and chime in with any big stories you think I missed.

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1. Chinese EV tariffs: I think it’s clear the biggest story lately has been tariffs on electric vehicles produced in China. In particular, in the past week, the European Union began implementing tariffs on such electric cars, with ongoing dialogue and a final decision on the figures to be made within 4 months. Here are the various stories we wrote on this topic just in the past week:

1. EU Tariffs on Chinese Electric Vehicles Commence, But Discussions Ongoing
2. Electric Car Companies Push Back Against Restrictive Trade Policies
3. Xpeng & NIO Respond to EU Tariffs
4. 5 Best Selling Electric Cars in Europe — 2 Produced in China, 3 in Germany
5. Chinese Electric Cars Disrupting Auto Market In Thailand?
6. AlixPartners Predicts Chinese Automakers Will Have 33% Market Share By 2030
7. Chinese Car Innovation Rate Is Kind Of Bonkers — Where’s Tesla On This?
8. Counterpoints on Chinese Electric Cars Taking Over the World?
9. Why Chinese Automakers Deserve to Win the EV Race

2. Tesla sales: Tesla released its Q2 2024 production and delivery numbers, and the deliveries were higher than Wall Street was expecting. They were also an increase over Q1 2024. However, they were still down year over year. More details and charts are here:

1. Tesla Quarterly Sales Over The Years — 13 Charts
2. Tesla Tremors In The Q2 Force Make Us Wonder What’s Next

3. EV sales growth around the world: Despite all the hype about EV sales supposedly not growing or not growing as much as previously anticipated, well, EV sales are growing strongly (except in a handful of European countries for various reason). We published several articles on EV sales growth in markets around the world. Here are those stories from the past week:

1. What Falling Sales? Global EV Sales Grew 23% in May!
2. Top Selling Electric Vehicle Automakers in the World
3. 47% Plugin Vehicle Market Share In China — EV Sales Report
4. Europe EV Sales Report — Volkswagen Is Recovering Its Mojo
5. Chile EV Sales Report: Tesla & BYD Join Forces to Bring the EV Market to New Highs with 500% Growth YoY in May
6. Portugal Has 28% Plugin Vehicle Share — Market Share Report
7. EVs Take 85.3% Share in Norway — Tesla Takes Top Spots
8. EVs At 24.1% Share In France — Down YoY As Trade Barriers Kick In
9. EVs Take 56.5% Share In Sweden — Going Nowhere, Backwards
10. EVs Take 28.2% Share In The UK — Tesla Still Leads
11. EVs Take 19.8% Share In Germany — Triple Trouble Hits EV Transition
12. GM, Kia Report Strong EV Sales In First Half Of 2024 As Jim Farley Begs People To Drive Smaller Cars
13. Ford Electric Vehicle Sales Report: Take That, Haters!
14. What the Heck is Going on with Ford Electric Car Demand & Forecasting?
15. 48% of Volvo Cars’ Sales Now Plugin Vehicles — Globally

4. Labour Party wins big in UK: The Labour Party won big in the UK to kick the Tories out of power after a rather long tenure there. As Carolyn Fortuna notes, that’s a big win for the climate.

5. Electricity from renewable energy approaches 50%: Europe continues plowing forward with its energy transition, and the European Union (EU) reached 44.7% of electricity from renewable resources last year according to the latest data. Great work, Europe.

6. Largest solar power plant in the world: We’ve got a new largest solar power plant in the world, and the numbers are bonkers — absolutely bonkers.

7. Offshore wind power on a roll: Tina Casey wrote up a great roundup of positive offshore wind power news from the US and Europe, while the Biden administration approved its 9th offshore wind farm for the US and the Global Wind Energy Council released a report showing that offshore wind power grew 24% worldwide in 2023.

As a bonus, it’s not cleantech, but Hurricane Beryl deserves a shoutout: It’s the earliest Category 5 hurricane ever in this region, it’s slamming Texas now, and it’s just another example of the extreme weather we can expect more and more of in the coming decades thanks to global heating and our lame response to it.

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