Spotlight: Surging solar generation, fast-tracked major projects and the UK housing sector skills gaps

ENERGY

📰 British solar power surges past 2024 total | Financial Times (paywall)

📰 Thousands object to Tesla bid to supply energy to UK homes | EnergyVoice

📰 What Climate-Change Driven Wind Droughts Mean for Our Future | Renewable Energy Magazine

🗣️ Keith Bell, UK Energy Research Centre discusses heat waves and the energy system | BBC Radio Scotland

📰Energy Saving Trust Presses UK Government to Back £3.3 Billion Local Power Plan Investment | Sustainable Times

📰 ElectroRoute selects Arenko's Nimbus software to support entry to the UK BESS market | Renewable Energy Magazine

📰 Activ8 Energies Powers Up for UK Expansion | Renewable Energy Magazine

📰 UK Power Networks launches HeatScape | Transport + Energy

📰 Factcheck: Trump’s climate report includes more than 100 false or misleading claims | Carbon Brief

✒️ STEP Fusion is 'amazing' for Greater Lincolnshire | News story from the UK Industrial Fusion Solutions and Department for Energy Security and Net Zero

📰 UK Invests €13M in Sustainable Nuclear Graphite | Environment + Energy Leader

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INFRASTRUCTURE

📰 150 projects to be fast-tracked, including Hinkley and Heathrow | Construction News (paywall)

📰 Government announces plans to safeguard environment while accelerating infrastructure delivery | Water Magazine

📰 Environment secretary to monitor major infrastructure projects to stop delays | The Times (paywall)

🗣️Why the UK’s water infrastructure engineering is ready for a change | Water Magazine

📰 How Labour can build a stronger British economy | Guardian

📰 Government reveals ‘first major UK infrastructure project’ to benefit from new ‘streamlined’ environmental regulations process | Planning Resource (paywall)

📰 Construction remains worst-hit sector for insolvencies | Construction News (paywall)

📰 Major-project work ‘worryingly thin’ as construction starts fall | Construction News (paywall)

🗣️Mark Wild Shares His Formula For Improving Rail Infrastructure Delivery | Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE)

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DEVELOPMENT

✒️Environmental reforms to break planning system gridlock | Press Release from Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, The Rt Hon Steve Reed OBE MP and The Rt Hon Angela Rayner MP

📰 Angela Rayner hit with legal challenge over datacentre on green belt land | The Guardian

📰 Rachel Reeves to cut ‘bats and newts’ in boost to developers | The Times (paywall)

📰 Neighbourhood Watch: Residents vote to approve neighbourhood plan that restricts new-builds to principal residences in second home ‘hot spots’ | Planning Resource

🗣️ Adept president: ‘Place feels more important than ever’ | Local Government Chronicle (LGC)

📰 “No training, no new homes”: 66% of builders say they’re not trained | Building Design & Construction Business

📰London building houses at slowest rate in UK | The Times (paywall)

📰 Private new housing output up 1.5% in Q2, says ONS | Housing Today

📰 Build-to-Let Down | The Financial Times (paywall)

📰 England to sell eight times more council homes than it built last year, report finds | The Guardian

📰 Starmer aims to build 1.5 mn homes, but is the UK buying? London builders tell a slump story | First Post

📰 What are Rachel Reeves’ options for raising property taxes? | Financial Times (paywall)

📰 Inside Leeds’ new sustainable housing and net-zero neighbourhoods | The Times (paywall)

📰 Neighbourhood Watch: Residents vote to approve neighbourhood plan that restricts new-builds to principal residences in second home ‘hot spots’ | Planning Resource

📰 A vast new £450 million new town is being built in England – with 4,500 new homes | TimeOut