Shell intends to sell German solar storage firm sonnen

Shell is reportedly considering the sale of sonnen, a German solar storage manufacturer that it acquired around four years ago for roughly €500 million. This potential divestment comes as Shell, like many other energy companies, faces challenges due to shrinking retail profit margins amid rising wholesale energy prices following supply disruptions.

Sources familiar with the matter suggest that sonnen could be valued at €1.35 billion to €1.8 billion, which is three to four times its expected 2023 sales of €450 million. However, neither Shell nor sonnen has officially confirmed these reports.

Sonnen specializes in providing storage batteries for rooftop solar systems. Last month, the company celebrated connecting 25,000 homes to the grid, accumulating a capacity of 250 megawatt-hours (MWh). While 250 MWh represents a relatively small portion of total power demand in Western countries, it positions sonnen as a notable player in the European electricity storage sector.

While sonnen has refrained from commenting on these reports, the company emphasizes its ongoing global expansion strategy in the growing energy storage market.

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EU, EIB plan grid finance push to cut power costs

The Commission and the European Investment Bank are moving toward a more explicitly “industrial-policy” role for European public finance in energy, by designing new facilities meant to pull private banks and capital markets deeper into the grid buildout.

The trigger is straightforward: Europe’s high power costs have become a competitiveness problem, and leaders are now treating electricity networks and efficiency upgrades less as climate-adjacent infrastructure and more as core economic security assets.

U.S. hits semi-finished copper imports with 50% tariff, spares refined cathodes

President Donald Trump’s decision to impose a sweeping 50% tariff on all semi-finished copper products entering the United States, while sparing refined copper, has sent a shockwave through global metals markets, upended trade flows, and signaled a new, more strategic direction in U.S. industrial policy under his second term.

The tariffs, effective August 1, were issued under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, a national security statute also used during Trump’s first term to justify levies on steel and aluminum. However, this time the White House added a more forceful economic intervention: invoking the Defense Production Act (DPA) to compel U.S. copper producers to sell a rising share of high-quality scrap and raw copper within the country, 25% initially, increasing to 40% by 2029.

Trump’s tariffs deepen petrochemical slump but force industry shakeout

The global petrochemicals industry is in the midst of one of its most severe downturns in decades, a slump that has been amplified by President Donald Trump’s tariff wars but rooted in a deeper structural imbalance: massive overcapacity. The sector, which converts oil-derived feedstocks such as naphtha, propane and ethane into plastics, has seen production expand far faster than consumption since 2022, dragging margins into negative territory and leaving even the largest producers struggling to break even.

The stakes are enormous. Plastics demand, for packaging, autos, electronics, and even renewable energy infrastructure like solar panels and wind turbine blades, is still expected to climb for decades as Asia’s middle class expands. That growth underpins forecasts from the International Energy Agency showing petrochemicals accounting for 95% of net oil demand growth between 2019 and 2024 and an additional 2.1 million barrels per day of feedstock demand growth by 2030.

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