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Daily Update — February 4, 2026

US Renewables in 2025; Supercomputing and AI; and Tighter European Sanctions on Refined Petroleum

Today is Wednesday, February 4, 2026, and here’s your curated selection of Essential Intelligence on global markets from S&P Global. Subscribe to be notified of each new Daily Update.

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Energy Transition & Sustainability

Wind gusts, sunshine gains: US' clean energy finish to 2025

 

US renewables ended 2025 with a mixed performance: Wind power rose late in the season, while solar continued its steady growth. Nationally, wind speeds were 3.7% above seasonal norms across 159,398 megawatts of tracked operating capacity, although the annual average was 1.2% below normal. Solar radiation was 3.5% above normal in December, ending the year with a 1.6% increase in its annual average across 156,290 MW of operating capacity.

 

Texas led the country in renewables capacity, with 44,800 MW of wind and 34,856 MW of solar. Washington recorded the highest wind speeds in December, at 30.9% above the 20-year average between 2004 and 2023, but had the lowest solar ouput at 9.0% below the average, highlighting the effect of active winter storm tracks. Wind speeds were the lowest in Hawaii, at 21.8% below normal, and solar radiation was highest in Maine, at 17.3% above normal.

Artificial Intelligence

AI, quantum and high-performance computing join forces at SC25

 

Supercomputing has shifted into the mainstream, driven by AI advancements and adoption. The result is a thriving ecosystem that blends historical supercomputing players with their counterparts in AI, photonics and quantum computing. At the SC25 super- and high-performance computing conference, held in St. Louis in 2025, the compute ecosystem of the future began to take shape, with shared capability and long-term potential tying once-disparate disciplines together.

 

As individual supercomputing functions, quantum computing and AI continue to mature, the next step in enterprise adoption is to determine how all these rapidly progressing pieces will work together. AI is tackling many complex problems, and the addition of quantum technology could address new classes of computing tasks, particularly as quantum computing continues to scale. Quantum computing is not part of the typical computing portfolio, but techniques such as quantum annealing are finding practical applications, and pure-play quantum approaches are progressing toward quantum advantage — the point at which quantum computers are doing things that classical computers cannot. Progress isn't constrained to quantum and AI: New areas such as photonic computing and improvements to underlying infrastructure are also converging.

Global Trade

Listen: Forced flows: How new European sanctions are reshaping Asian gasoil and jet fuel markets

 

Tighter European sanctions targeting refined products made from Russian crude are accelerating shifts in global middle distillate trade flows, with Asia increasingly at the center. By closing loopholes that previously allowed barrels processed outside Russia to reenter Europe, the latest measures are forcing market participants to reassess compliance risk, arbitrage economics and regional supply balances.

 

In this episode of the “Oil Markets” podcast, S&P Global Energy middle distillate reporters Mei Huey and Rachelle Teo joined host and associate editorial director Jonathan Nonis to examine how the new sanctions are disrupting established trade patterns. They discussed whether barrels could be displaced back into Asia, how Europe may compete for non-Russian origin supply, and what this means for benchmarks such as FOB Arab Gulf and FOB Singapore gasoil and jet fuel.

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