The energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables will likely be faster than the International Energy Agency predicts in its recent World Energy Outlook, writes Peter Simon Vargha, Chief Economist at Hungarian oil and gas company MOL. According to Vargha, we are at a point when renewables are getting cheaper than fossil fuels in many areas, and that means a whole different game. … [Read more...]
Archives for November 2015
The Chinese dream: Jeremy Rifkin and the economic conquest of Eurasia
While the EU is mired in conflicts between east, south and west over over finance, climate policy and refugees, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is wooing 16 Central and Eastern European leaders at a China-CEE summit in Suzhou. It is all part of the Chinese dream of creating a Jeremy Rifkin-esque infrastructurally and digitally integrated economic space spanning the vast Eurasian continent, writes journalist Pepe Escobar. Some years from now German … [Read more...]
The curse of lignite: the long-term underdevelopment of Germany´s second largest mining region
The government of the German State of Brandenburg wanted to buy the lignite mines and power plants from Vattenfall in the Lusatia region to keep them open. The left-far-left coalition was motivated by economic reasons: to prevent job losses and de-industrialisation. But statistics show that Lusatia is actually worse off both economically and socially because of the presence of lignite mining, write Conrad Kunze and Anika Zorn, Social Scientists … [Read more...]
Carbon Tracker: fossil fuel companies risk wasting up to $2.2 trillion in the next decade
Carbon Tracker Initiative (CTI), the NGO that invented the concept of “stranded assets” (or “the carbon bubble”) has today published a new report warning that, as a result of climate policies, “no new coal will be needed, oil demand will peak around 2020 and growth in gas will disappoint industry expectations”. According to CTI, over $2 trillion of new and existing investment is in danger of being wasted over the coming decade if governments and … [Read more...]
What Paris is likely to deliver
Prospects look bright for the Paris Climate Summit. The sole fact that this year’s COP (Conference of the Parties) will start with the government leaders meeting instead of finishing with it, as was usual in the past, is promising, writes Rolf de Vos of Ecofys. According to De Vos, if the more than 80 world leaders who will gather in Paris, including Obama, Xi Jinping, Modi and Putin, will get the Summit off to a good start, the work of two … [Read more...]
Kirill Komarov, First Deputy Chief Rosatom: “The future belongs to fast-neutron reactors with closed fuel-cycle”
"Globally there are no alternatives that can replace nuclear power", but with the growth of renewables, "the demand for very large nuclear reactors will drop". That is the view of Kirill Komarov, First Deputy CEO of the Russian nuclear giant Rosatom. "Fast-neutron reactors with a closed fuel cycle will secure baseload and low and medium capacity reactors will serve balancing needs", says Rosatom's "number two" man in an exclusive wide-ranging … [Read more...]
The case against Nord Stream 2
By opening up an additional route for cheap Russian gas to Germany, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project may look like a good deal for Europe. However, its advantages are primarily short term, writes Agata Loskot-Strachota of the Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW) in Poland. In the longer term the pipeline increases the possibilities for Russia’s excessive influence on the European gas market, undermines the policy goals of the Energy Union, and … [Read more...]
EU’s first State of the Energy Union report: how it will deliver on climate and energy goals for 2030
The EU’s first-ever “State of the Energy Union” report is determinedly optimistic on progress, but offers little new information and appears to take just a small step towards resolving the biggest challenge of all: uniting national interests around EU priorities. Published by the European Commission on 18 November, the report is accompanied by a whole suite of studies in areas from energy security to climate action. The package sets out … [Read more...]
Saudis battle Russia in European oil market
Russia depends largely on Europe for its oil revenues. But it is forced to sell its oil at a steep discount in Europe as a result of increasing Saudi competition, writes Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com. According to Cunningham, there are few signs the oil price will recover in 2016. … [Read more...]
Security alert: Europe needs more grids, more power plants – say grid operators and generators
Under any decarbonisation scenario, whether dominated by fossil fuels or renewables, centralised or decentralised, €10 to €20 billion  in annual investments in grid infrastructure will be needed in Europe in the decades out to 2050, concludes a multi-stakeholder consortium led by European Transmission  System Operators in a landmark report. In another report, the European technical association for electricity and heat generation VGB PowerTech, … [Read more...]
The future of coal: the long comedown
A new report by a consortium of 14 leading research institutions from Europe, the US, Japan, China, India, and Brazil has investigated future energy sector trends, in part based on the climate plans submitted by countries to the UNFCCC before the Paris climate summit, but also based on other drivers such as economic development and local air pollution. One of the key takeaways: the global coal sector is faced with a bleak future, writes Thomas … [Read more...]
Interview Hoesung Lee, new Chairman IPCC: “There is enormous value in carbon capture and storage”
The new chairman of the IPCC, Hoesung Lee, wants to interact more with the energy industry. “We are prepared to broaden our scope of collaboration”, he says, in an exclusive interview with World Energy Focus, the magazine of the World Energy Council produced by Energy Post. Lee says “industry, the energy sector in particular, needs to be part of the solution to climate change”. He sees “enormous value” in “large-scale” use of carbon capture and … [Read more...]
The great oil shake-out: how far will it go?
Low oil prices are shaking up the global oil industry. Will they stay low? For how long? And how low is low anyway? These are some of the crucial questions hanging over the global energy sector. We spoke to three experts and the IEA’s Executive Director Fatih Birol, who put the current market in perspective – and offer a view of the future. Some say we are in a fairly normal cycle. Others see fundamental changes coming.This article was first … [Read more...]
Why Ukraine should phase out coal
As a result of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, the government has lost control over the coal heartlands of the country. But regardless of the outcome of the conflict, there is no reason for Kiev to restore or maintain coal mining the way it has operated before, writes Oleg Savitsky of the National Ecological Centre of Ukraine in a new report. As the mines are only able to survive with subsidies, the government should develop a phase-out strategy … [Read more...]
Solar energy costs continue to plunge across the world
(Reneweconomy) Two stunning auction results in India and Chile in the last week have underscored the extraordinary gains that large-scale solar has made against its fossil fuel competitors, writes Giles Parkinson of Reneweconomy.com. Parkinson takes stock of the latest developments in prices for unsubsidised solar energy, based on auctions across the world and comes to pretty spectacular findings. … [Read more...]