According to a new report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) the UK’s government capacity market is not working. With a consultation from the UK Department of Energy and Climage Change (DECC) just finished, Byron Orme, research fellow in energy, transport and climate policy at IPRR explains what the capacity market was supposed to achieve, where it has gone wrong and how it could be fixed. Courtesy of Carbon Brief. … [Read more...]
Archives for April 2016
Global coal power: capacity keeps going up, utilisation goes down
While the amount of electricity generated from coal has declined for two years in a row, and utilisation rates of coal power plants have been going down, energy companies continue to build new coal-fired generating plants “at a rapid pace, creating an increasingly severe capacity bubble”, according a new report based on the Global Coal Plant Tracker published by the NGO’s CoalSwarm, Sierra Club and Greenpeace. Worldwide the equivalent of 1500 … [Read more...]
Wind and solar’s Achilles heel: what the methane meltdown at Porter Ranch means for the energy transition
Utitlity-scale wind and solar power are typically backed up on-site by gas peakers, or backed up indirectly by gas-fired power plants. These gas plants lead to significant greenhouse gas emissions in the form of methane. So at what point does a renewable-plus-gas combination become worse for the climate than coal-fired power? Mike Conley and Tim Maloney, long-time members of the Thorium Energy Alliance, have calculated what they call a “Worth-It … [Read more...]
Injecting energy into the agenda of trade negotiators
Barriers to trade and investment in energy goods and services, long neglected, are starting to  be addressed by trade negotiators in the World Trade Organisation and outside of it. The process of integrating the energy dimension to trade policy is however still in its infancy. An upcoming report from the World Energy Council aims to offer trade officials a policy agenda. Iana Dreyer, editor of Borderlex.eu, a newsletter specialised in EU trade … [Read more...]
Why the EU’s electricity market redesign misses the mark
To address the crisis in the EU power sector, the European Commission has embarked on a fundamental reform process – the Market Design Initiative. However, according to Michael Hogan, Senior Advisor at the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP), the problem with the EU power sector today is not so much market design as a glut of old, inflexible baseload generation. … [Read more...]
The world’s biggest oil bribery scandal
Last week, a sweeping investigative report published by The Huffington Post and Fairfax Media put a little known Monaco-based company, Unaoil, at the center of a wide-ranging bribery scandal that involved dozens of corporate giants from around the world. Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com tells the story. … [Read more...]
Jeroen van der Veer, ex-CEO Shell, Chairman ING: “Moving away from fossil fuels presents great opportunities for oil companies”
“The energy transition presents great opportunities for oil and gas companies to develop new forms of energy and gradually move away from fossil fuels”, says Jeroen van der Veer, former CEO and Chairman of Shell in an exclusive interview for World Energy Focus, a monthly publication of the World Energy Council produced by Energy Post. But the former Shell boss rejects the idea that the oil companies are in danger of ending up with large “stranded … [Read more...]
A Fukushima on the Hudson?
Entergy’s Indian Point nuclear power plant, located just 30 miles from Manhattan, has long been a cause for public concern. A major accident at this plant could make the entire area of New York City uninhabitable. Now a new high-pressure natural gas pipeline will be built within 105 feet of critical structures of the plant. Journalists Ellen Cantarow and Alison Rose Levy believe the authorities should take action. Courtesy of Tomdispatch. … [Read more...]
Is Belgium’s nuclear security up to scratch?
In recent months a series of unusual and suspicious occurrences have taken place in and around nuclear power facilities in Belgium, some of them involving individuals linked to Islamic State (IS), write Robert J Downes and Daniel Salisbury, researchers at the Centre for Science and Security Studies (CSSS), King’s College London. According to Downes and Salisbury, there are doubts whether Belgian authorities are taking the threat to their nuclear … [Read more...]
National climate policies undermine European Emissions Trading Scheme
National subsidies and other forms of support for renewable energy and energy efficiency have seriously undermined the functioning of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), writes Arnold Mulder of the University of Groningen. His PhD research, supervised by professors Catrinus Jepma, Steven Brakman and Erik Dietzenbacher, shows that current efforts to reform the system and increase CO2 allowance prices will not work if this adverse policy … [Read more...]