Banks are putting pressure on giant oil-and-gas companies to accelerate their renewable strategies. Credit Suisse has partnered with the Climate Bonds Initiative to accelerate the energy transition. The duo has established a pathway for companies to issue “transition bonds” as a bridge between their current business and greener offerings in the future.

The EU has offered its first social bond. The offering was oversubscribed 14 times over. Orders blew past 233 billion euros. It gives new issuers significant incentive to offer their own sustainable debt, companies and sovereign entities. A 14-times-oversubscribed sustainable debt offering also indicates a market that’s structurally underserved.

In the first nine months, new money going into climate-aware funds totalled €37bn out of sustainable fund inflows of €134bn. However, climate change funds can be confusing. There is not yet a standard classification. Iberdrola or Enel are often held in climate change funds though still derive significant revenue from emission-generating activities.

Manually initiated load shedding is a call for people to stop using electricity, at a certain period of time to stop the electricity system collapsing. These kinds of events are becoming more frequent, due to a combination of hotter summers and increased instability due to renewables forming a higher percentage of the electricity mix.

SEB AB expects to be the first to arrange a sustainability-linked bond in the Nordic region. The pipeline of deals would add supply to a market that has struggled to keep up with investor demand. Debt issuance for projects targeting climate neutrality now fall far short of the roughly €290 billion in investments needed annually, according to ECB estimates.

Alternatives to lithium-ion using materials such as zinc, vanadium, or sodium are well-suited for stationary storage used by utilities to capture renewable energy and deliver electricity to consumers hours later. The sector is poised for surging growth, with annual installations projected to rise from 6 GWh last year to about 155 GWh in 2030.

How to manage intermittency is one of the challenges of weather-dependent low-carbon electricity. It is not simply about paying for back-up for when nature refuses to play ball. It generates additional system costs. A report by the UK’s business and energy department shows how they change the economics of different low-carbon energy sources.

German Treasury attracted more than €33bn of bids for up to €6bn of 10-year debt. Issuance of green bonds has exploded in recent years, as fund managers hunt for assets linked to ESG criteria. Germany’s plan to become carbon neutral by 2050 could cost as much as an extra 1.1 per cent to 2.8 per cent of gross domestic product a year.

Companies around the world are developing a new generation of reactors. One model can even fit into a single-family house. These power plants are designed to make nuclear energy affordable. There is a growing awareness that closing coal or natural gas plants could lead to electricity shortfalls as seen in California’s rolling blackouts earlier this month.

Bitcoin-related power consumption has reached record highs this year. A study from the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance released on Monday estimates that the global bitcoin mining industry uses 7.46 GW, equivalent to around 63.32 TWh of energy per year. The study also notes that miners are paying around $0.03 to $0.05 per kWh this year.

The state plans rolling blackouts to deal with a heatwave that has pushed the power grid to the limit. California has vastly expanded the capacity of solar power. The drawbacks have been evident in the past week as temperatures soared daily above 100°F (38°C) and air-conditioner use leapt in the late afternoon and early evening, just as the sun set.

Impact investing is now all of a sudden having its moment. We must be very mindful though that this is done correctly to actually have impact as opposed to just moving capital around. With such a plethora of investing styles and funds on offer, not to mention the buzzwords, it is important that the impact market scales with integrity.