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Energy Post

The best thinkers on energy

BP’s world energy review: 2019 saw clean electricity match coal

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Simon Evans at Carbon Brief summarises BP’s 69th edition of its influential annual statistical review of world energy, looking at 2019. Overall, total energy demand rose, though slower than usual. Renewables were the largest source of new energy, but were closely followed by oil and gas. Coal use dropped again, the fourth drop in six years, thanks to historic declines in the EU and the US. But continued growth in SE Asia, China and India leaves … [Read more...]

Batteries’ next challenges: fast charging, vehicle-to-grid, long duration, second life

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Li-ion battery storage costs continue to fall dramatically. But for batteries to fulfil their potential, particularly for grid storage, developers need to focus on fast charging, electric vehicle-to-grid capability, long duration storage and second-life batteries, explains Madeline Tyson at Rocky Mountain Institute. She runs through the different types of Li-ion batteries, their strengths and weaknesses, how they can be harnessed to address these … [Read more...]

Buildings Efficiency: France must embed deep retrofits into its market

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France’s energy efficiency ambitions for buildings are well off target. Buildings account for 28% of the nation’s emissions and they’ve hardly reduced since 1990 – only by 3%. It’s because of the lack of development of the buildings renovation sector, explains Andreas Rüdinger at IDDRI. Without it, there’s little chance of renovating 500,000 housing units per year and bringing the entire housing stock up to the "low-energy building" (BBC) … [Read more...]

Russia and U.S. are backing next generation Nuclear

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Russia’s Rosatom is positioning itself to lead research and testing for Generation IV fast neutron reactors, including high temperature gas-cooled, molten salt, and lead-bismuth designs. Following an update of plans released by Rosatom in June, Dan Yurman fills in the details. It is creating an International Research Centre and has signed up four partnering nations so far – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. The R&D facility … [Read more...]

Optimising Cyanobacteria for carbon fixation and biofuels

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The landscape can be changed for energy transition technologies by research breakthroughs, and that includes work on bacteria and proteins. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and its partners have been running experiments on cyanobacteria. These single-cell organisms, also using photosynthesis, fix carbon dioxide twice as efficiently as plants. They grow rapidly, doubling their numbers in three hours. The first step is to understand … [Read more...]

The PAC Scenario: net-zero by 2040 to meet Europe’s Paris goals

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The EU is not on track to meet its Paris Agreement obligations on emissions and limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5°C. CAN Europe and the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) present their Paris Agreement Compatible (PAC) scenario, designed to do just that. It’s been created through the careful analysis of contributions from more than 150 stakeholders including NGOs, scientists, industry and grid operators. Jörg Mühlenhoff at CAN Europe … [Read more...]

German Geothermal: from 1.2TWh to 100TWh by 2050?

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The IEA’s Sustainable Development Scenario sees the world's geothermal power generation tripling to almost 300 TWh by 2030. That’s because there’s an almost unlimited supply that can provide power, heating and cooling. It’s also a continuous supply uninterrupted by the weather, unlike solar and wind. The plants are small and quiet. For heating, ground-source heat pumps use significantly less electricity than other technologies. Writing for CLEW, … [Read more...]

The nexus between data centres, efficiency and renewables: a role model for the energy transition

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How much will electricity consumption from data centres grow from today’s 1% of the global total? 40-fold by 2030? Or a more manageable 5-fold? Or less? Sean Ratka and Francisco Boshell at IRENA try to answer this question by looking at the innovations being made by the tech industry to drive down power costs and emissions. The evidence is promising. Though data centre computing output jumped 6- fold between 2010 and 2018, their energy … [Read more...]

Do black households in the U.S. pay more for their energy?

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The “Black Lives Matter” movement, sparked by the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police at the end of May, has reverberated around the world. Particularly in North America and Europe it has gone well beyond the behaviour of the police and prompted calls to identify and root out structural racism wherever it is found. Maximilian Auffhammer at the Energy Institute at Haas looks at U.S. research that asks: “Do black households spend more on … [Read more...]

“Green” chemical plants that ramp up and down with wind, solar

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One solution to variable renewables is to create customers that have no problem with ramping up and down production along with the power. In fact, when the wind and solar is producing too much power for the grid it can be bought very cheaply, making intermittent customers very happy. Jim Conca describes a new design for a Chlor-Alkali Chemical Plant that can “idle” without critical components of the plant degrading – the main reason for a plant … [Read more...]

Will the Just Transition Fund deliver the Green Deal? [VIDEO]

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Last week 390 Energy Post readers registered for our latest online panel discussion sponsored by PGE Poland. Our speakers included Wojciech Dabrowski - President of PGE Poland, Aleksandra Tomczak of the European Commission's dedicated Green Deal cabinet, Henrike Hahn MEP for the Greens, Corinna Zierold of European trade union IndustriAll and Jerzy Buzek MEP, former Prime Minister of Poland and President of the European Parliament 2009 to 2012. … [Read more...]

Ukraine’s integration into the EU gas market is a positive lesson for the region

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Ukraine is shaping its gas infrastructure and regulations to integrate into the EU market. On the infrastructure front, its interconnectors with neighbours, extensive pipeline network and storage facilities are making it an increasingly important European player, explains Aura Sabadus writing for the Atlantic Council. The gradual opening up to EU free market rules are evidenced by its gas prices following those of the EU. Ukraine's attractive … [Read more...]

Germany’s Corona stimulus package: what’s in it for energy, climate?

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€30bn of Germany’s €130bn Corona economic stimulus package is dedicated to the energy sector and the climate. Simon Göss at Energy Brainpool runs through the four main areas of focus. There’s €11bn to fund a reduction in the EEG levy (renewables surcharge) to help electricity consumers. €9bn goes to creating a hydrogen industry for Germany. There’s €7bn to promote e-mobility (tax exemptions, subsidies, co-financing of charging stations and … [Read more...]

Calculating the energy saved if home working becomes the norm, globally

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The global lockdown has resulted in a jump in home working and a collapse in commuting. If, post-lockdown, this new lifestyle is widely embraced, will it mean a reduction in total energy consumption and, if so, by how much? Daniel Crow and Ariane Millot at the IEA have crunched the numbers to attempt to answer this question. The first observation is that although car use will drop, residential energy consumption will rise. This is what makes the … [Read more...]

How to cut Full Life-cycle Buildings Emissions

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Most efforts to decarbonise buildings are focused on “operational” emissions. That’s because, once constructed, buildings are responsible for a massive 30% of global final energy use and 28% of carbon emissions. But that focus has meant the “embodied” carbon – from the materials, construction, demolition, and recycling of buildings – has received little attention, explain Meng Wang and Yihan Hao at RMI. That’s despite the numbers still being … [Read more...]