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Anyone who thinks rapid global decarbonization is out of reach should take a look at the floating wind turbine sector. Floating wind seemingly popped up out of nowhere in just the past couple of years, and it has already hooked up with the splashy new green hydrogen trend. Too bad those pesky cryptocurrency speculators are sucking up all the clean kilowatts, but that’s another new trend and a whole ‘nother can of worms.

Floating Wind & Green Hydrogen To The Rescue

For those of you new to the topic, putting a wind turbine on a platform that floats is a technologically difficult exercise, but the payoff is huge in terms of rapid decarbonization. Floating platforms can be tethered to the seabed in deeper waters and/or farther from shore, which takes advantage of prime wind speeds while minimizing opposition from coastal communities.

The green hydrogen angle comes in for squeezing the most available juice possible from wind turbines. Hydrogen is a zero emission fuel that can be combusted to run turbines, or deployed in a fuel cell to generate electricity. At the present time, though, almost all of the global hydrogen supply comes from natural gas. That’s going to change because low-cost renewable energy has upended the economics of hydrogen production, making it financially feasible to “split” hydrogen gas from water with an electrical current.

Since hydrogen acts as a transportable energy storage medium, water-splitting provides a way to salvage excess energy from wind turbines or solar panels. The case for wind turbines is especially strong because winds generally pick up at night, when electricity demand goes down.

Other sustainable hydrogen pathways include biogas, industrial waste gas, wastewater, and waste plastics, but water-splitting seems to be attracting the most attention these days.

Pie In The Sky? No, Wind Turbines That Float

Into this picture steps a venture called Cerulean Winds, which has come up with a financing formula for scaling the floating wind-plus-hydrogen connection to the national level.

The idea would have seemed far fetched just a few years ago, but both the floating wind industry and the green hydrogen industry are rapidly maturing.

“Cerulean utilises a tuned infrastructure project finance (IPF) construct with integrated delivery and finance that is proven for the offshore floating environment,” Cerulean explains. “At its core is the comprehensive understanding of risk for floating infrastructure and the most appropriate allocation of these risks across our partner and stakeholder ecosystem,” the company states.

Cerulean’s “Blueprint” model is aimed at cutting the timeline between applying for a license and producing clean kilowatts. According to the company, its Blueprint platform also provides for more flexibility than the conventional centralized power plant structure, which is a key point in the distributed energy landscape of today. Energy storage and cross-border trading are also in the mix.

Serial Oil & Gas Developers Turn To Green Hydrogen

The new Cerulean proposal is billed as the “UK’s largest offshore decarbonisation development.” At a cost of £10 billion, it would sport at least 200 wind turbines floating wind turbines with integrated green hydrogen systems, in two North Sea areas, West of Shetland and Central North Sea.

Before you get too excited, one leading aim of the project is to provide clean electricity to existing offshore facilities, namely, offshore oil and gas drilling sites. Cerulean projects that 3 gigawatts in hourly capacity will go to the oil and gas industry. Still, that leaves 1.5 gigawatts per hour in capacity for green hydrogen production systems to be located on shore.

If the offshore oil and gas angle sounds rather unappealing, it is. However, the reality is that switching millions of automobiles, buildings, and other systems over to clean power is a time consuming process. A movement is already afoot to replace diesel and gas generators on offshore drilling platforms with clean power. The Cerulean proposal is part of that trend, ramped up with the green hydrogen angle.

Cerulean has just submitted a seabed lease request to Marine Scotland, so if anything happens out there in the North Sea it could be a long way off. However, Cerulean has already set the contractor and financial wheels in motion, and in that regard the project does demonstrate that the oil and gas industry could pivot rapidly into low carbon mode, if it chose to do that.

“Cerulean Winds is led by serial entrepreneurs Dan Jackson and Mark Dixon, who have more than 25 years’ experience working together on large-scale offshore infrastructure developments in the oil and gas industry,” the company explains. “They believe the risk of not moving quickly on basin wide decarbonisation would wholly undermine the objectives set out in the recent North Sea Transition Deal.”

To sweeten the pot, Cerulean anticipates undercutting the cost of conventional gas turbine power for offshore platforms. According to the company, oil and gas operators would not incur any up-front costs from the switchover.

Floating Wind, Green Hydrogen, & Green Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

To make the case for speeding up the lease approval process, Jackson and Dixon are appealing to the potential for the wind-plus-hydrogen project to create thousands of new green jobs. Ideally the fossil energy jobs will phase out over time, but in the meanwhile Cerulean aims to show that the floating wind plus green hydrogen combo can maintain employment in the fossil sector while adding new green jobs to the economy, at scale. According to the company’s analysis, over the next five years the project will help preserve 160,000 oil and gas jobs while adding 200,000 new green jobs.

More Bad News For ExxonMobil

“The development of green hydrogen at scale and £1 billion hydrogen export potential” is another key pot-sweetener offered by Cerulean, and that should really give gas stakeholders the heebie-jeebies.

Looking at you, ExxonMobil. In terms of making global decarbonization happen, the company has lagged far behind Shell, BP, and other legacy fossil energy companies. Instead of pumping more money into proven clean tech fields like wind and solar, ExxonMobil banked on algae biofuel while doubling down on shale gas in recent years, apparently with the idea that it could continue making fossil energy relevant by comparing gas emissions to coal emissions.

The idea of natural gas as a “bridge fuel” has fallen flat for a number of reasons, including evidence that the recent spike in natural gas emissions may have offset any gains from pushing coal out of the power generation picture.

Now that hydrogen fuel cell demand is up, ExxonMobil and other natural gas stakeholders are been banking on increased demand for hydrogen to fuel the global economy’s thirst for natural gas. However, schemes like the Cerulean floating wind proposal are quickly shutting that window.

Gas stakeholders could try leaning on the exploding cryptocurrency market to pitch their wares. Speculative crypto mining is an energy intensive process that could help prop up both gas and coal producers for years to come.

To be clear, not all cryptocurrency is speculative. The firm Power Ledger, for example, is deploying a crypto-plus-blockchain model that helps electricity users share excess clean kilowatts.

It’s the speculative crypto market that has become a huge public relations problem for industries looking to decarbonize. Banking, real estate, auto sales and other high-dollar sectors have been getting cryptocurrency-curious, but energy consumption by crypto mining systems has become a public relations ball-and-chain.

As leading global corporations move into the supply chain phase of decarbonization, crypto miners are vulnerable. Switching to renewable energy is one solution, but in the context of the urgent need for climate action, any sector that adds to the global energy demand load will have to make the case that it is not simply playing carbon whack-a-mole with clean energy resources.

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Image: Floating wind turbines via US Department of Energy (credit: Josh Bauer, NREL).


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E-quipment highlight: Liebherr R 920 G8-E electric crawler excavator

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E-quipment highlight: Liebherr R 920 G8-E electric crawler excavator

Global mining and construction equipment giant Liebherr recently rolled out its first-ever battery electric crawler excavator, setting a new standard in heavy earth-moving equipment capabilities with low noise levels and zero local emissions.

Liebherr has made headlines in the sustainability space with its massive electric haul trucks and stupefyingly quick 6MW cryo-cooled DC fast chargers, but its conventional mid-sized equipment lines haven’t electrified as quickly, leaning instead on hydrogen combustion and fuel cell efforts. That seems to be changing, however, with the launch of the 20-ton R 920 G8-E – the brand’s first-ever factory fresh HDEV.

The company’s official copy is characteristically low-key, with an emphasis on the facts and features instead of hype:

The new model completes the product range of Liebherr crawler excavators produced in Colmar (France). It is particularly quiet and emission-free. It generates the same output as a diesel machine in the same category and is particularly suitable for building sites that require low noise levels and avoiding exhaust gas emissions, such as in cities or underground operating locations.

LIEBHERR

Despite the lack of excitement in the release copy, there is a lot of excitement about the R 920 G8-E’s innovative new control cab philosophy.

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Liebherr INTUSI controls


Dubbed INTUSI (for INTuitive USer Interface), the system integrates intelligent control logic with advanced machine learning capabilities to give operators a highly customizable interface that can follow them from asset to asset, from wheel loader to excavator to haul truck, dramatically flattening the learning curve for operators on a given job site.

Liebherr says INTUSI improves both operational efficiency and user comfort on Liebherr job sites through the integration of a number of new features. From the press release:

  • Haptic feedback – vibrations alert the operator to critical conditions—such as reaching dynamic device limits—enhancing situational awareness and speeding up reaction times.
  • Optical feedback – integrated RGB LEDs on the joystick provide real-time visual cues about device status and servo control, ensuring clear communication without distraction.
  • Functional safety – control elements with status LEDs allow safe operation of critical functions—without requiring two-handed input—streamlining workflow while maintaining safety standards.
  • Hand detection – capacitive proximity sensor detects the operator’s hand automatically, enabling seamless activation of controls only when needed.
  • Display navigation – a mini-joystick embedded in the handle allows for quick and efficient navigation of the display interface, reducing the need to reach for external controls.
  • Ergonomics – multi-stage handle height adjustment ensures optimal comfort and usability, adapting to different operator preferences and working conditions

In addition to the INTUSI-powered custom cockpit, the new Liebherr R 920 G8-E electric excavator ships with your choice of either a 188 or 282 kWh high capacity li-ion battery, which is capable of 150 kW DC fast charging. Fast enough, in other words, to power up the machine during shift changes, if needed.

Electrek’s Take


R 920 G8-E electric crawler excavator; via Liebherr.

If the notion of a battery electric Liebherr excavator seems familiar, that’s because it should – the company first converted one of its ultramassive R9400 mining excavators last year, as a proof of concept co-developed with global mining giants Fortescue as they invest in new technology to decarbonize their mines.

Since then, Fortescue has used the machine to move millions of tons of dirt, and has ordered several more. And, because everything from excavators to loaders to heavy trucks are built to be powertrain agnostic, and manufacturers will often offer the same basic vehicle with Cummins, Detroit Diesel, or Volvo power, so there’s a degree of openness baked into those systems already. Liebherr is just taking that to the next level by installing an electric drive motor in place of an internal combustion engine, and I expect this excavator will be the first of many such machines from the brand.

SOURCE | IMAGES: Liebherr.


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Looks like Rivian is working on a steer-by-wire system

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Looks like Rivian is working on a steer-by-wire system

Rivian has posted a job listing for a steering engineer, specifically mentioning work on a future steer-by-wire system for the company.

Steer-by-wire is an automotive concept that has been around for a long time, but hasn’t yet reached mass adoption. The idea is to replace (or supplement) mechanical linkages between the steering wheel and the wheels with electronic actuators instead.

There are a number of potential benefits to this, like allowing more customizability or adaptability to a steering system, reducing mechanical complexity, or adding speed-sensitive variable steering ratios.

Although there are also disadvantages, like a reduction in steering feel (although, since most cars are moving to electronic power steering, that was already gone anyway).

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But few cars have implemented steer-by-wire systems, or at least not fully committed to them, given that mechanical steering racks are a relatively solved problem and the general inertia of the car industry which would rather stick with a solution they know than switch to something better (haven’t we here, at this EV publication, heard *that* one before…). There’s also the matter of regulations, which have often been written to require mechanical steering systems, and may need updating to allow for steer by wire.

But, steer by wire made it into mass production with the release of the Tesla Cybertruck. This was big news when Tesla committed to this – at the time, it was the only thing on the road to exclusively use a steer by wire system, though there are other cars with partial steer by wire (for example, mechanical front wheel steering, and steer by wire rear-wheel steering).

But it seems to have opened the floodgates, as a number of other companies are working on or have since released steer by wire systems (Lexus, for example).

And now, it looks like Rivian is one of those companies – though we don’t know if it’s for the front or rear.

The company posted a job listing for “Sr. Staff Technical Program Manager, Steering Actuator System,” based at its Irvine, CA headquarters (spotted by Rivianforums). This wouldn’t be so exceptional, except that the job posting also specifically points out that “you’ll have full cradle-to-grave ownership of the SBW subsystem.”

So – we know they’re working on steer by wire, to some extent.

But a few other EVs, particularly large EVs like the Rivian R1 platform is, use steer by wire just for the rear wheels – for example the Hummer EV and Rolls-Royce Spectre. These systems are particularly helpful for giant vehicles, because it allows them to be more nimble and make turns that otherwise would require a lot more… negotiation in a giant land yacht.

So it’s possible that Rivian is only working on rear wheel steer by wire here, but we’d like to think there’s a chance it’s working on steer by wire for the full vehicle.

We also don’t know if this would show up on all of Rivian’s vehicles, or only on certain models – the R2 and R3 are in development, and the R1 just got a big refresh. But, perhaps even more interestingly (and very speculatively), VW has invested heavily in Rivian for technology help, so we wonder if we might end up seeing this in VW group vehicles, or Scout vehicles eventually…


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Hyundai cuts IONIQ 5 N lease prices by $150 a month

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Hyundai cuts IONIQ 5 N lease prices by 0 a month

Hyundai’s electric sports car just got a whole lot cheaper. The 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 N now costs $150 less per month to lease after another unexpected price cut.

How much is it to lease the 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 N?

The new and improved 2025 IONIQ 5 is coming off its best US sales month yet in July, but that isn’t stopping Hyundai from wanting more.

After Hyundai cut lease prices on all trims last month to as low as $179 per month, it’s now offering even more savings.

The 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 N is now listed for lease at just $549 per month. The offer is for 36 months, with $3,999 due at signing. At an effective monthly rate of $660, Hyundai’s EV is $150 cheaper a month than it was in July.

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Hyundai is currently offering some of the best deals on electric cars, with the 2025 IONIQ 5 SE Standard Range listed for lease at just $179 per month.

Hyundai-IONIQ-5-lease
2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 at a Tesla Supercharger (Source: Hyundai)

The Standard Range model has a driving range of 245 miles. If you’re looking for more, the Extended
Range SE, with a range of 318 miles, is available to lease from $199 per month.

You can even lease the rugged new XRT trim right now for under $300 a month. All deals are for 24 months with $3,999 due at signing and end on September 2

2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 Trim EV Powertrain Driving Range (miles) Starting Price*  Monthly lease price July 2025
IONIQ 5 SE RWD Standard Range 168-horsepower rear motor 245 $42,500 $179
IONIQ 5 SE RWD 225-horsepower rear motor 318 $46,550 $199
IONIQ 5 SEL RWD 225-horsepower rear motor 318 $49,500 $209
IONIQ 5 Limited RWD 225-horsepower rear motor 318 $54,200 $309
IONIQ 5 SE Dual Motor AWD 320-horsepower dual motor 290 $50,050 $249
IONIQ 5 SEL Dual Motor AWD 320-horsepower dual motor 290 $53,000 $259
IONIQ 5 XRT Dual Motor  AWD 320 horsepower dual motor 259 $55,400 $359
IONIQ 5 Limited Dual Motor AWD 320-horsepower dual motor 269 $58,100 $299
IONIQ 5 N Dual Motor AWD Up to 601-horsepower
dual motor
221 $66,200 $549
2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 price, range, and lease price

With the $7,500 EV tax set to expire at the end of September, Hyundai is offering savings across its entire electric car lineup.

Even Hyundai’s new three-row electric SUV is surprisingly affordable. The 2026 INIQ 9 is listed with monthly lease prices as low as $419 per month.

Looking to test drive one out for yourself? We can help you get started. You can use our link to find deals on the 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 at a dealer near you (trusted affiliate link).

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