In the United States, the official “social cost of carbon” (SCC) enters into many rules and regulations, such as fuel economy standards. According to Amir Jina, the SCC, which currently is calculated to be $36 per ton, shows that the U.S. fossil fuel sector gets $200 billion a year in hidden subsidies. The government should use the SCC to increase the carbon price, argues Jina, but the Trump administration is hardly inclined to do so. First … [Read more...]
States, not Trump, will decide future of U.S. electricity sector
The new US president Donald Trump has quickly removed any reference to former president Obama’s Climate Action Plan on the website of the White House. It is not clear yet whether Trump will be able to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, which was part of Obama’s wider climate action program. According to Frederick Weston of the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP) policies in the electricity sector have always been determined by the US States rather … [Read more...]
The geopolitics of energy: renewables are not in the race yet
At the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi on 12-13 January, oil executives, Middle Eastern energy ministers and experts in the geopolitics of energy came together to discuss the geopolitical implications of “the energy transformation”. Yet no one presented a vision of what a new global order, based on renewable energy, would look like, writes Karel Beckman, Energy Post’s editor-in-chief. The oil players all embrace renewable … [Read more...]
Australians can have zero-emission electricity, without blowing the bill
Australia, which already has the highest solar PV concentration in the world but still relies heavily on fossil fuels, can move to a zero-emission electricity system while keeping prices low, writes Paul Graham, Chief Economist at CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation). Courtesy The Conversation. … [Read more...]
The burning issue
Fire is at the root of our climate problems and it is time we put it out, writes Walt Patterson, Associate Fellow at Chatham House. “We need to switch from using fire to using electricity.” … [Read more...]
“Negative emissions”: the next challenge for climate policy
If the Paris climate objectives are upheld, policymakers will soon be facing calls to set emission-reduction targets of much more than 100 percent, write Oliver Geden of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin and Stefan Schäfer of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam. But the debate about how to achieve “negative emissions” – and who will have to achieve them – has not even … [Read more...]
Dutch government: only EVs and hydrogen cars from 2035, phase-out natural gas
The Dutch government has presented a long-term energy plan that stipulates that no new cars with combustion engines may be sold from 2035 on. In addition, in the Netherlands – for over 50 years the largest natural gas producer in the EU – all houses will be disconnected from the gas grid by 2050. The plan has broad parliamentary support – in fact, many political parties believe it does not go far enough. … [Read more...]
A carbon pricing scheme that works
The UK’s carbon price floor mechanism has proved very effective at securing cost-effective emissions reductions, writes energy and climate change economist Adam Whitmore. It offers lessons for other carbon pricing schemes, such as the EU Emission Trading System. … [Read more...]
Why China’s new coal plants won’t stop it from meeting its climate goals
In a fascinating article, Collin Smith, graduate student at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center in China, explains why China has been building a large amount of new coal-fired capacity the past two years, despite its climate commitments and drive for renewable energy. He also explains why this capacity does not necessarily translate into more coal power production: the power plants are and will be heavily underutilised. There is a danger though that the … [Read more...]
Why the future belongs to decentralised renewables, not centralised hydrogen and giga-scale nuclear
What the future of our energy system will look like continues to be a subject of heated debate. According to one well-established tradition, writes Professor John Mathews of Macquarie University in Australia, the route to decarbonisation will run via massive nuclear power systems to the hydrogen economy. But China and to some extent India are emerging as the principal practitioners of an alternative vision of energy growth, underpinning their … [Read more...]
We can’t simply bet on renewable energy to stop global warming
Simply switching to renewables alone will not solve the climate change problem, writes Steffen Böhm, Professor in Organisation and Sustainability at the University of Exeter. We need to start removing carbon from the atmosphere. And we need to tackle the demand side. We cannot simply assume that relentless economic growth is compatible with a green future. Courtesy of The Conversation. … [Read more...]
Oil companies’ climate initiative lacks initiative
The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) formed by ten of the world’s largest oil companies including Shell, BP, Total, Statoil and Saudi Aramco, has announced it will spend $1 billion over the next ten years “to accelerate the development of innovative low-emission technologies”. According to Stuart Haszeldine, Professor of Carbon Capture and Storage, at the University of Edinburgh, this is “small change compared to the size of the problem. … [Read more...]
The energy prescriptions of The Atlantic Council: “There’s a direction relation between climate change and geopolitics”
The implications of climate change targets not being met are massive migration, the potential for resource wars and “a further disintegrating of the international order”, according to Richard L. Morningstar, Founding Director and Chairman of the Global Energy Center and David Koranyi, Director of the Eurasian Energy Futures Initiative, both part of the Washington DC based think tank The Atlantic Council. Morningstar and Koranyi see a “direct … [Read more...]
Corporate America’s huge appetite for clean energy
An increasing number of corporations are directly buying or building their own clean electricity, writes Elias Hinckley, a US-based strategic energy advisor. Companies across the business spectrum, ranging from Apple to Dow, General Motors and Bank of America, have set goals for 100% renewable power. Hinckley explains the reasons for this trend and notes that energy suppliers and investors cannot afford to ignore this huge new market. … [Read more...]
What’s holding Russia back from ratifying the Paris Climate Agreement
Russia is now the largest greenhouse gas emitter not to have ratified the Paris Climate Agreement and it is unlikely to do so this year. The country is still deeply divided on climate policy, explains Angelina Davydova, Senior Lecturer at St Petersburg State University, in a fascinating article highlighting the forces in Russian society that are working against and in favour of the Paris Agreement. Courtesy of The Conversation. … [Read more...]
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