West Bengal 2026 will be remembered not just as the election in which the Bharatiya Janata Party displaced the Trinamool Congress after 15 years in the saddle, but also as the moment when a long-standing border question acquired a new electoral intensity
Coinbase cuts 14% of workforce. Read CEO Brian Armstrong’s full email to teamCoinbase CEO Brian Armstrong informed employees about the company’s decision to layoffs 14% of its staff in a morning email. Updated on: May 06, 2026 7:31 AM IST By Trisha Sengupta Share via Copy link Coinbase on
Neural Dispatch Google Translate’s longevity, Apple Intelligence and Meta’s robotsThe biggest AI developments, decoded. 06 May 2026. Published on: May 06, 2026 8:00 AM IST By Vishal Mathur Share via Copy link Cognitive warmup. The closer we get to the Apple iPhone keynote in September
It might seem odd to suggest an English club reaching a Champions League final have been in danger of going under the radar - but that has almost been the case for Arsenal this year. Such has been the immense pressure piled upon Mikel Arteta's side to end a 22-wait for a Premier League title
Opposition parties are on guard against defections and realignments within the INDIA bloc. Recent electoral losses and internal rifts have weakened morale. The BJP, buoyed by victories, is seen as an expansionist force. Allies are showcasing unwavering support for the NDA government
FOR MORE than a decade the Tamaya power station in the Atacama desert in northern Chile powered its local region using diesel. Today a shimmering array of solar panels stands in place of the dirty generator. Engie, the French utility that owns the power station, converted it into a solar-energy and battery-storage plant earlier this year. Juan Villavicencio, the company's boss in Chile, describes the site as a place where “the past and future of energy infrastructure meet”.
FOR MORE than a decade the Tamaya power station in the Atacama desert in northern Chile powered its local region using diesel. Today a shimmering array of solar panels stands in place of the dirty generator. Engie, the French utility that owns the power station, converted it into a solar-energy and battery-storage plant earlier this year. Juan Villavicencio, the company's boss in Chile, describes the site as a place where “the past and future of energy infrastructure meet”.
Others share his vision. Developers, governments, startups and utilities around the world are turning former fossil-fuel power stations, and old oil and gas wells, into renewable-energy plants and testbeds for green technology. This way the relics of the fossil-fuel era will be put to good use. “It makes no sense to just throw [them] away,” says Arash Dahi Taleghani, an engineer at Pennsylvania State University.
According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), a think-tank, there are around 170 ongoing or completed projects to transform old fossil-fuel power stations into renewable-energy plants. The trend is spreading across the world, says Milo McBride, a research fellow at the CEIP. China, for instance, recently announced its first project—parts of the Baotou coal power plant in Inner Mongolia will be turned over to wind and solar generation, as well as battery storage.
The sites offer connections to the grid, which can save developers looking to get renewable-energy projects online lengthy delays. Researchers led by Umed Paliwal at the University of Berkeley, California, have found that 1,000 gigawatts (GW) could be added to the American grid capacity if renewable-energy projects were hooked up to existing fossil-fuel plants and probably more if retired sites were exploited. According to the International Energy Agency, an official body, renewable-energy projects that could generate about 3,000 gigawatts (GW) worldwide are waiting for a grid connection. Repurposing could help resolve that issue.
Old oil and gas wells could also be attractive. A study by Mary Kang at McGill University found that most idle wells in America and Canada might be suitable for at least some kind of geothermal-energy production. Benjamin Burke, the boss of Gradient Geothermal, an American startup, says that the cost of drilling a new well deep enough to host the technology can be prohibitive. Using old wells is comparably cheap, even if their location and build are more suited to oil and gas production.
Yet repurposing facilities presents challenges. Some former fossil-fuel sites are too compact to host vast wind and solar farms. Many will not be able to generate as much power as they did before. Around 35% of projects in CEIP's database partly or wholly deploy technologies that produce carbon emissions, such as bioenergy (burning organic matter to produce heat) and hydrogen blending (mixing green hydrogen with natural gas).
What's more, regulatory roadblocks may limit progress. Alexandra Klass and Hannah Wiseman, legal scholars at the University of Michigan and Penn State Law, say that obtaining permits to develop brownfield sites in America is often costlier than getting permits for pristine land. And, although some support may exist at state level, President Donald Trump has axed federal renewable-energy tax credits that reduced the cost of repurposing.
Nevertheless, demand for more ambitious green projects should continue to grow. Over the next 15 years, 300GW of coal power capacity is set to be retired around the world, and the cost of producing renewable energy could fall by up to 49%, according to BloombergNEF, a data provider. Other countries have created a more nurturing environment than America. Keith Hirsche, founder of RenuWell Energy Solutions, a renewable-energy company, says Canadian authorities fast-tracked his firm's permit to build because it was on a brownfield site. In Indonesia the national energy-transition strategy includes plans to transform old fossil-fuel assets. Many more plants will soon be pumping out green power.
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Source: HindustanTimes
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