The IEA’s 2019 “accelerated case” for renewables is turning into this year’s “main case”. It predicts that Wind and Solar capacity combined will overtake both Gas and Coal globally by 2024. Josh Gabbatiss at Carbon Brief summarises the IEA’s Renewables 2020 report. Within five years, renewables will constitute 1/3 of all electricity generation, equivalent to the combined demand of China and the EU. Virtually all global growth in electricity … [Read more...]
The Road Transport Transition: a policy toolkit for electrification
For the electrification of road transport, planning, incentives, the removal of barriers, and the right regulatory framework are all needed. But different regions with different rural and urban lifestyles will each need their own solution. Camille Kadoch at RAP summarises their RAP EV Roadmap for the U.S. which provides a toolkit for assembling your unique solution. It includes targets, funding sources, policy coordination, incentives (including … [Read more...]
Study identifies causes of soaring Nuclear plant cost overruns
Why does nuclear power cost so much when the technology has had decades to get it right? MIT’s David Chandler explains how researchers there have identified the main causes of the cost overruns in the U.S. It turns out that building new plants by copying existing designs actually costs more. That’s because site-specific constraints mean problems are being fixed during construction, adding to costs and delays. New types of concrete are being … [Read more...]
Create new laws to help bring Battery manufacturing to Europe
Europe should start leading battery manufacturing instead of leaving it to China, argue Alex Keynes and Cecilia Mattea at Transport & Environment. With laws spreading across the continent to make electric vehicles compulsory for new car purchases, this is a growing and strategic market. But a firm grip on battery manufacture emissions, as well as ethical sourcing and recycling, has to be part of the plan. The authors give a template of what … [Read more...]
Solar power stations in space that beam uninterruptible power back to Earth
It’s still on the drawing board, but putting solar farms into orbit has obvious advantages. The power is 24/7, and no sunlight is lost through the atmosphere. But there are two big challenges. Amanda Jane Hughes and Stefania Soldini at the University of Liverpool explain how the European Space Agency, the California Institute of Technology, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Xidian University in China, among others, are attempting to … [Read more...]
Rolling out EV charging infrastructure beyond cities
“Range anxiety” causes people not to buy EVs because they’re afraid they won’t be able to travel very far if charging facilities don’t extend beyond metropolitan centres. Jimmy Gilman at RMI describes their study of what infrastructure exists on the outskirts of U.S. cities, and at tourist destinations and airports outside the cities. 60 cities, encompassing more than 57% of the U.S. population, have been given scores. The coastal areas perform … [Read more...]
Accelerating renewables in Central and South East Europe
What is the potential for renewables in Central and South East Europe? Luis Janeiro, Seán Collins and Ricardo Gorini at IRENA summarise their clean energy pathway for CESEC (the Central and South Eastern Europe energy connectivity initiative). The region has very good resource conditions to scale up renewables. Spectacular cost reductions in wind and solar over the last few years can provide a cheaper source of new electricity than the least-cost … [Read more...]
A pathway for profitable CCS in California
A study from the energy departments of Stanford University, from where Kara Glenwright writes, lays out a pathway for California to capture and store up to 60 Mt (million tonnes) of CO2 a year. 76 site locations have been identified where work could start immediately to store 20 Mt/yr profitably under the existing low carbon rules. But first a raft of clarifications on the laws is needed, showing that the success of CCS doesn’t just depend on the … [Read more...]
Solar is displacing Coal in India’s electricity market
India is the world’s third largest electricity market and as a fast-growing economy can, according to the IEA, lead the recovery of global energy demand out of the pandemic for the coming decade. Kashish Shah at IEEFA runs through solar’s prospects in India, which hopes to build 450GW of renewable energy by 2030. Solar is getting cheaper. A 2GW auction in June delivered India’s lowest-yet renewable energy tariff at US$31/MWh. That figure could … [Read more...]
Only giving tax breaks to zero-emission company cars will accelerate e-mobility
Subsidies and tax breaks for company cars in Europe cost €32bn a year, a hangover from the days when governments were happy to encourage driving. Chris Bowers at T&E reviews a study that explores the issue in a wide range of European nations and reveals that 96% of company cars are petrol and diesel. As an indicator of the scale of emissions, the study says Europe’s 10 largest leasing companies alone – which include BMW’s Alphabet and … [Read more...]
Which sectors need Hydrogen, which don’t: Transport, Heating, Electricity, Storage, Industry?
Which sectors are most suited to hydrogen, and which are not? For the answer, six academics from the UK and the Netherlands - Tom Baxter, Ernst Worrell, Hu Li, Petra de Jongh, Stephen Carr, and Valeska Ting – use their areas of expertise to neatly summarise hydrogen’s pros and cons in Road and Rail, Aviation, Heating, Electricity and Energy Storage, and Heavy Industry. Their general message seems clear: hydrogen is still very expensive, so it can … [Read more...]
5 charts show the rapid fall in costs of renewable energy
Plenty in the energy sector already know about the impressive declines in renewable energy costs since 2010, particularly solar (down 82%), concentrated solar (47%), onshore (39%) and offshore wind (29%). For those of you putting together presentations to people whose buy-in you need - citizens, public officials, investors, customers, etc. - these graphics should come in useful. It looks like a tipping point is being reached, says Douglas Broom … [Read more...]
The benefits of Peer-To-Peer Electricity Trading for communities and grid expansion
The adoption of peer-to-peer (P2P) electricity trading will turn individual consumers from passive to active managers of their networks. Such a marketplace can relieve constraints on the growing system and offer an alternative to costly grid reinforcements. Arina Anisie and Francisco Boshell at IRENA run through the benefits, including investment costs, bills, resilience, congestion, mini-grids, energy access, and more. They note that very few … [Read more...]
Rooftop Solar: economies of scale can challenge the centralised grid
One of our recent articles explained how rooftop solar PV is more expensive that a centralised supply, and that the transmission and distribution cost savings of the rooftop system, on their own, do not make up for this cost difference. Here, Javier López Prol at the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change, University of Graz, responds to those challenges. First, the economies of scale of distributed rooftop solar are yet to be realised. … [Read more...]
Waste-to-Energy is underperforming. Whole-energy-system simulator can uncover the bottlenecks
The potential for Waste-to-Energy (WTE) in the U.S. is 674 TWh/year, roughly 8% of the energy used by the transportation sector. However, for reasons not easily understood, many WTE technologies struggle to make it to commercial scale. Researchers at NREL have built a first-of-a-kind simulation model, WESyS, to create scenarios and understand where the bottlenecks are. The whole-energy system is always complex. The WESyS simulation modules … [Read more...]
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