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Energy Post

The best thinkers on energy

An open-source standardised toolkit for modelling Marine Energy

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New innovations need a lot of high quality modelling. That means collecting real world data, then coding the programs that run the models. This is labour intensive and takes time to do properly. The modelling needs to be standardised too, otherwise direct comparisons between competing ideas are virtually impossible. Caitlin McDermott-Murphy at NREL describes the latest version of their Marine and Hydrokinetic Toolkit (MHKiT) for modelling a wide … [Read more...]

Fossil Fuel divestment is premature: instead, enable investment to keep prices low, and tax consumption

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We need to shift investment from fossil fuels to other climate-friendly energy sources, but it must be done more intelligently than we’re doing it today, says Schalk Cloete. The rapid global economic development needed to uplift the 86% of the world’s population currently living below $1,000/month is inextricably linked to the continued and timely growth in an abundant supply of affordable energy. It would be unjust – and probably futile – to … [Read more...]

World’s biggest Carbon Capture project: Shute Creek’s “sell or vent” business model isn’t working

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ExxonMobil’s Shute Creek CCUS facility is the world’s largest carbon capture project. But since its launch in the 1980s half of that CO2 has been vented into the atmosphere, with most of the rest sold for pumping it underground to push out more oil from depleted wells (called Enhanced Oil Recovery). Only 3% has been sequestered underground, explain Bruce Robertson and Milad Mousavian at IEEFA, following their study based on publicly available … [Read more...]

Buildings Renovation: if Europe had started a decade ago it wouldn’t have a Russian oil & gas problem

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It’s a message we are starting to see a lot. If ambitious climate policies struggling to be implemented today had been launched a decade ago, Europe wouldn’t have a Russian oil and gas problem. Andreas RĂŒdinger at IDDRI looks at buildings renovations in France. Two missed targets, proposed in 2008, are a 38% reduction in energy consumption in existing buildings by 2020, and 400,000 “major” renovations annually. If they had been met, natural gas … [Read more...]

Price volatility and greenwashing: do Gas and LNG make economic or climate sense?

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While governments urgently rethink their gas policies, Christina Ng and Sam Reynolds at IEEFA summarise the evidence against the claim that gas and LNG can be green and have a sound economic future. Firstly, most measurements of emissions do not include the full life-cycle of production. For LNG that includes extraction, transport, liquefaction, and re-gasification. They point at studies that say it can be almost as much as the emissions produced … [Read more...]

Could nano-scale filters for isolating CO2, Hydrogen and Biogas accelerate the energy transition?

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Nano-scale filters have been developed to separate out molecules like CO2 and hydrogen from gaseous streams. The research, led by MIT, could open a new door to raising the efficiency of carbon capture, isolating hydrogen for fuel use, and the purification of biogas fuel from waste. David Chandler at MIT explains how it would replace century-old methods of separating gaseous molecules that use energy-intensive and hard-to-electrify high … [Read more...]

“Options to Reform the EU ETS”: coping with price volatility and speculation (event summary)

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Sara Stefanini provides a written summary of our panel discussion held on 31st March 2022, “Options to Reform the EU ETS”. It’s a full summary of the 90 minute discussion (with a link to the video), but it begins conveniently with a summary of the highlights, leading with the role of financial players, who they are, the causes of price volatility, what reforms can create stability, and the cost of decarbonisation. The main concern is speculation … [Read more...]

U.S. EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2022 reveals no reduction in emissions to 2050

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The U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) has released its influential 2022 “Annual Energy Outlook” (AEO2022) which projects the electricity mix over the next 30 years. (The modelling takes policies and global conditions as they were in November 2021, so the current Russia-Ukraine crisis is not accounted for, nor any future unforeseeable shocks, and assumes no new policies to 2050). Sandra Sattler at the Union of … [Read more...]

Lower driving speeds + more: behaviour change can make up for 2.7m barrels/day loss of Russian oil imports

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Russia normally exports 5m barrels of oil a day. Sanctions may now see Ukraine-supporting nations refuse to buy 3m of them. Can those nations cut their consumption by the same amount, immediately, and stop shortages and further price rises? Yes, says Lucas Davis at the Haas School of Business. Following the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the IEA has released a report “A 10-Point Plan to Cut Oil Use”, with ten ideas for immediate actions in advanced … [Read more...]

The metals sector should back global carbon taxes. It’ll be good for business

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Most of the metals mining sector has been opposing carbon taxes. This is a foolish mistake that works against their interests, argue Sally Innis, Benjamin Cox, John Steen and Nadja Kunz at the University of British Columbia. The tax on the carbon emissions from mining and producing most metals (with only aluminium and steel being outliers) are small compared to the price of the metal, so a carbon tax will add little to the selling price. But the … [Read more...]

“Floato-voltaics”: floating solar farms on existing municipal water reservoirs

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The municipality of Cohoes, population 17,000, in New York State, is building a floating solar farm on its 10-acre water reservoir. It should power all the city-owned buildings and streetlights, save $500,000/year in electricity costs and still leave 40% of the generated electricity remaining for other civic use. It will cost $6m. It will be a first for a U.S. city, explains Connor O'Neil at NREL. The case for city “floato-voltaics” is so … [Read more...]

All estimates of the ‘cost’ of climate action should include the savings and benefits

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Too many climate mitigation scenarios calculate the cost of that transition without measuring the savings and benefits, explain Alexandre Köberle and Joeri Rogelj at Imperial College London, Toon Vandyck at the EC's Joint Research Centre, and Celine Guivarch at the Centre International de Recherche sur l’Environnement et le Developpement, writing for Carbon Brief. This leads to a pessimistic view of the challenges ahead, and public aversion to … [Read more...]

Will turning down Europe’s thermostats ease the Gas supply crisis?

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To counter the extremely high gas prices caused by the Russia-Ukraine crisis the IEA has proposed turning thermostats down in households to use less gas. The IEA estimated lowering the heating by just 1°C would reduce gas demand by around 10 bn cubic metres a year, or 7% of Europe’s annual imports from Russia. Aurore Julien at the University of East London looks at quantifiable past attempts around the world to get citizens to cut their energy … [Read more...]

Russia-Ukraine: Support for U.S. Oil & Gas producers must tie them to low-emissions investments

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Like many countries, the U.S. is set to raise oil and gas production to compensate for cuts in Russian imports consequent to the war in Ukraine. The danger is that short-term solutions to sky rocketing fossil fuel prices will take precedence over climate targets. But Ben Cahill at CSIS explains how this is an opportunity for the Biden administration to give support to fossil energy producers with one hand and extract solid commitments on … [Read more...]

Why sustainable Buildings are critical for a resilient, healthier society

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Europe and its Member States are committing large sums to buildings renovations. The policy emphasis has been on insulation, energy savings and emissions reduction. The latest Healthy Homes Barometer 2022 by Velux draws attention to the health benefits of renovations that target damp, lack of daylight, excess noise or cold, and other indoor climate hazards. To get an idea of the scale of the problem, 34 million Europeans are unable to keep their … [Read more...]