The world will find it difficult to meet the 2°C target set in the Paris Agreement unless it goes down a path of strong enforcement by national governments of international agreements to curb greenhouse gas emissions. That's one of the key conclusions of the World Energy Scenarios 2016 report from the World Energy Council, which looks at how global trends will shape the energy industry over the next 45 years. The report was launched today at the … [Read more...]
Climate change becomes prime investment driver
BlackRock, the world’s largest private investment fund, has announced that it will include climate change as an important factor in how it assigns risks to its investment portfolio, writes Fereidoon Sionshansi, president of Menlo Energy Economics and publisher of the newsletter EEnergy Informer. According to Sionshansi, this decision has huge implications for the energy sector. … [Read more...]
Chinese national oil companies: giants built on shaky foundations
Chinese state-owned enterprises, China’s national oil companies foremost among them, have incurred phenomenal debts – higher than the country’s total GDP. So far they have been bailed out by the government, but this just shifts the problem one level up,  to China Inc as a whole, writes geophysicist  (ex-Shell) Jilles van den Beukel. Van den Beukel explains how China’s national oil companies Sinopec, CNPC and CNOOC got into this fix and why the … [Read more...]
Will Trumpism, Brexit, and geopolitical exceptionalism sink the planet?Â
The future pace of climate change will be determined as much by geopolitical factors as by technological developments in the energy sector, writes energy expert and author Michael T. Klare. While immense progress is being made in bringing down the price of wind and solar power, the political will to turn such developments into meaningful global change may be diminishing. Article courtesy of Tomdispatch.com. … [Read more...]
IEA sees “major shift” – but not major enough
“A major shift in investment towards low-carbon sources of power generation is underway”, according to a first-ever detailed analysis of investment across the global energy system from the International Energy Agency (IEA). Yet, in non-OECD countries, “investment in conventional generation remains strong”, with over 75 GW of coal-fired power plants starting operation in 2015 in “developing Asia” – “as much as all renewable capacity additions in … [Read more...]
Slashing dividends: only option left for Big Oil?
The oil majors will have an extraordinarily difficult time trying to maintain their hefty dividends in today’s oil market environment, writes Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com. Already they are piling on huge debts to enable them to keep up payouts to shareholders. Unless oil prices rebound substantially, they may have no choice but to slash them. Which would be a major blow to their reputation as cash generators. … [Read more...]
Paris deal, rapid transition means deepening doldrums for energy incumbents
Even as the earth is heating up, established oil, gas and nuclear companies are increasingly feeling the heat of the energy transition, writes famous author and entrepreneur Jeremy Leggett. Signs are everywhere that the fossil fuels game is almost up. This article was republished from Leggett's blog. … [Read more...]
The Age of the Lithium Barons has arrived
We've gone electric, and there's no going back at this point, writes James Stafford of Oilprice.com. Lithium is our new fuel, which will power pretty much everything on which our economy is built. But like fossil fuels, the reserves we're currently tapping into are finite. Those who start tapping into them now will be extremely well positioned in the future. … [Read more...]
Britain is only just beginning to exploit its vast resources of offshore wind
A new study finds that the UK can install up to 675 GW of economically feasible offshore wind, writes Simon Watson, Professor of Wind Energy at Loughborough University. This could provide more than six times the UK’s present national electricity demand.  As current capacity is only 5 GW, there is ample room for growth. Yet there are also still major challenges to overcome. Article courtesy of The Conversation. … [Read more...]
Christoph Frei, World Energy Council: “Grand transition” requires new vision of energy security
The energy sector is going through a “grand transition” that will radically change the way energy security should be approached, says Christoph Frei, Secretary General of the World Energy Council, on the eve of the ONS Summit, a high-level meeting on energy security in Stavanger‎ on August 28-29, hosted by the Munich Security Conference and the ONS Foundation‎. In particular, the role of gas in the European energy system will change, says Frei. … [Read more...]
Oil companies and climate change: their assets are not at risk, their long-term business model is
Global warming has fundamentally changed the business environment for oil companies, writes geophysicist Jilles van den Beukel (ex-Shell). But they will not sink under “stranded assets” or a “carbon bubble”, as some environmentalists claim. Such notions, argues Van den Beukel, are based on a lack of understanding of the value of different types of reserves. It is rather their long-term business model that is at stake. And there is probably not … [Read more...]
Vieuws Video: EU far from meeting Paris climate goals
Sonja van Renssen, energy and environment journalist, is joined by Tom van Ierland, Deputy and Acting Head of Unit C1. Strategy and Economic Assessment DG Climate Action, Jonathan Gaventa, Director, Third Generation Environmentalism (E3G) and EirikWærness, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, Statoil to debate the question: “Did Paris deliver the low-carbon investment signal Europe needs?”. This highlight video presents the core … [Read more...]
“Paris Climate Agreement requires huge economic turnaround in Europe”
The targets agreed to at the Paris climate summit in late 2015 imply a radical change to our economies, a new report by consultancy CE Delft shows. CO2-prices will need to rise to €250/ton in 2050 (compared to some €6 per ton now) and most of the existing industrial installations and infrastructure will need to be replaced. CE Delft compares the scale and impact of the transformation to the one that occurred in Eastern Europe post-1989. … [Read more...]
The ill-fated gas strategy of the oil majors
The recent focus of major oil companies on gas (and LNG in particular) may be ill-fated, writes geophysicist Jilles van den Beukel. Gas is systematically less profitable than oil. And the oversupply of LNG (and resulting low prices) is likely to last much longer than the oversupply of oil. … [Read more...]
With a busted business model, oil economies head for the unknown
Until recently, petro-states like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Russia were able to use their wealth to spread their influence abroad, writes author Michael T. Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in the US. Now with their business model busted, he wonders what will come next: will they cling to reliance on fossil fuels and descend into chaos, or follow a path that will speed up the conclusion of the fossil fuel … [Read more...]
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