Reuters reported on July 8 that Brussels plans to let industry keep emitting into the 2040s and hand out an extra €6 billion in free carbon permits when it publishes its Emissions Trading System revision on July 17. The same week, Poland's Baltic Power delivered the country's first offshore wind electricity to the grid, and Denmark's Energinet published a capacity map showing connection requests running at roughly eight times what the network can currently carry.
One clock is political, ticking toward a carbon market rulebook still being negotiated line by line. The other is physical, and it's already running behind.
Energy Transition
Baltic Power delivers Poland's first offshore wind electricity
Baltic Power, the Orlen and Northland Power joint venture, delivered Poland's first-ever offshore wind electricity to the grid on July 10. Fifty-four of its 76 turbines near Choczewo are installed, and full output should power 1.5 million households, a first for a grid that still leans heavily on coal. (CEENERGYNEWS)
Denmark's grid queue is worse than forecast, especially in the north
Energinet's new capacity map shows grid connection requests running at around 60 GW against a network that handles roughly 7 GW at peak. Northern Jutland came out marked red, the most constrained rating, and the shortage has already blocked new employers from setting up there.
"It is worse for Northern Jutland than we had feared," said Magnus Hansen of local grid operator Nord Energi Net. Energinet is also responding: nearly 200 grid projects worth 100 billion kroner are underway, alongside an emergency package meant to speed up connections. (Nordjyske)
Solar keeps setting records; prices climb anyway
France, Spain, Italy and Portugal all set daily solar generation records between July 6 and July 10, and Germany logged its highest-ever July output. None of it stopped weekly average prices from climbing, led by Italy at €144.09/MWh.
AleaSoft blamed higher demand in France and Britain plus a wind lull further south. Record solar is necessary for the transition; this week showed it isn't sufficient once wind drops and demand climbs. (PV Magazine)
Climate Tech
Brussels clears EWE and Verbund's green hydrogen venture
The European Commission approved a joint venture between German utility EWE and Austrian utility Verbund on July 9 to produce and sell green hydrogen, citing its contribution to EU decarbonisation goals. Two national utilities teaming up rather than building parallel projects is the kind of consolidation the sector needs to hit scale before the 2030s. (Fuel Cells Works)
Eni breaks ground on an Italian battery gigafactory
Eni Storage Systems, a joint venture between Eni Industrial Evolution and Seri Industrial, held a groundbreaking ceremony on July 6 for a lithium-iron-phosphate battery plant in Brindisi, on a former polymer storage site. Combined with a sister plant in Teverola, the two sites target 16 GWh of annual production by 2030, more than a tenth of Europe's stationary storage market.
An oil and gas major building battery capacity on former petrochemical land is its own small sign of where the balance sheet is heading. (Eni)
Policy & Regulation
Leaked ETS plan: slower cuts, more free permits, emissions into the 2040s
Reuters reported on July 8, citing officials briefed on the draft, that the Commission's Emissions Trading System revision will extend the scheme's effective cutoff from 2039 into the 2040s. Industry would get roughly €6 billion in extra free permits, funded partly by lowering the annual 4.3% cut to the emissions cap, and free allocation for carbon-border-tax sectors would extend past the current 2034 phase-out.
It follows weeks of lobbying by the centre-right EPP for exactly this kind of extension. Not every industry player wants it: several heavy-industry groups say softening the phase-out would penalise companies that already spent billions decarbonising early. (Euronext)
Britain's incoming PM keeps net-zero, opens the door to new North Sea drilling
Andy Burnham has won the Labour leadership race and is set to become UK prime minister after Keir Starmer's June 22 resignation. He has called net-zero non-negotiable, but has also told the New Statesman he now has an open mind on new North Sea oil and gas licences, a reversal of Labour's manifesto pledge.
Burnham is said to support closer UK-EU ties and has kept an emissions trading linkage inside his negotiating red lines, the deal both sides hope to confirm at the July 22 Brussels summit. (Carbon Brief)
Science
Copernicus: western Europe just had its hottest June on record
The Copernicus Climate Change Service's monthly bulletin, published July 9, confirmed June was the second-warmest June globally and the warmest ever recorded for western Europe specifically, shaped by an intense heatwave in the month's second half. The global ranking sits at second place; the more telling number is which region set its own record. (Copernicus)
One to Watch
The ETS revision, due July 17
The Commission's formal Emissions Trading System proposal is due July 17, two days after this briefing publishes. Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra and DG Climate Action will decide how much of the leaked draft survives contact with first-mover industry groups pushing the other way.
Watch whether the published text matches what Reuters described on July 8, or whether that pushback claws some of it back before signature.