When the history books come to be written about America’s worst environmental disaster, Sunday 18 July may be seen as the day the cry went up that the oil had permanently stopped spewing into the Gulf of Mexico.

But things being the way they are, the announcement came in a cryptic statement from BP that was so shrouded in techno-garble and caveats that its huge significance was perilously close to being lost. “Right now there is no target set to open the well back up to flow,” said Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer, adding: “We’re hopeful that if the encouraging signs continue that we’ll be able to continue the integrity test all the way to the point that we get the well killed.”

Given their importance, Suttles’ words deserve to be translated into plain English. Tests over the weekend on the new cap placed over the broken well suggested that it was working, there were no leaks, the flow had been stopped and – wonder of wonders – it might stay that way until the well is finally and conclusively plugged, probably next month.

It is a sign of how cautious the main parties have become in the wake of numerous publicity gaffes that nobody was prepared even to hint that the nightmare of oil billowing into the clean waters of the Gulf was over.

I can understand how they feel – I’ve become so accustomed to them trying things that don’t work that it’s hard to believe that this time they might have finally stopped the leak.

Meanwhile, in the renewables world, one of the major limitations of wind turbines is that they only operate efficiently in a very narrow range of wind speeds, meaning much of the time they produce very little power, requiring expensive energy storage systems or backup generation to support them if they become a substantial fraction of an energy grid. There are already a number of ways to reduce this impact – turbine blades that adjust their pitch, mechanical gearboxes, and, most recently, fitting multiple generators to wind turbines, and only engaging some subset of them when the wind is weak. MIT Technology Review reports on a company developing a new approach – an a new generator design. Essentially, generators use the rotating shaft to move magnets past coils of wire to produce electricity. The new design has many independent coils, which can be switched on or off by electronic switches. If the wind is low, only a few coils are connected, allowing the blades to keep turning and generating at least some electriity. As wind speed increases, more coils can be enabled, requiring more energy to turn the blades, and thus generating more energy while the blades continue to operate at similar speeds. According to the company’s simulations, the new generators could increase annual power output by 50 to 100%, depending on the site – obviously, the more variable the winds at a site, the bigger the improvement. Now all they need is to actually deploy a prototype, scheduled for “early next year”. Sounds very promising, but as usual be prepared for a big gap between the press release and the reality.

Finally, the BP Solar cell factory in Sydney is closing because it’s too small to compete against plants overseas, and it’s too far away from its suppliers of things like ultrapure silicon. The government isn’t raising a finger to save this manufacturing facility. You might very well ask why the car industry deserves support and the solar cell industry doesn’t.