5.3 GW of newly installed capacity in 2017, 2.4 GW in 2018, 0.5 GW in the first nine months of 2019. Germany’s onshore wind power expansion has seen a dramatic slump. That’s completely against the trend in total renewables growth which saw its share of gross power consumption reached a record of almost 43% in 2019, up 5% on the previous year. Clearly, onshore wind is facing obstacles the other technologies aren’t, and that is the rules around how … [Read more...]
Creating a market to trade excess wind/solar between states (without outsourcing your emissions!)
How do you get neighbouring states, with different renewables mixes, and different emissions targets and penalties, to trade their surplus energy? It’s one of the biggest challenges to face the rapid growth of intermittent wind and solar. Meredith Fowlie at the Energy Institute at Haas describes how an “Energy Imbalance Market” (EIM) is operating across eight states in the west of the U.S. Bidding for your neighbour’s excess renewable energy is … [Read more...]
Why renewables need gas: case study USA
Everyone is predicting the continued expansion of gas through to 2050. Jim Conca reviews the state of play in the U.S. to explain why that projection makes sense. The welcome and rapid growth of renewables still needs something to provide backup load-following to a growing and increasingly intermittent electric grid. Gas is the cheapest to roll out and can keep prices low for decades. The other two contenders, hydro and nuclear, just can’t match … [Read more...]
DNV-GL: energy’s shrinking share of growing global GDP shows how we can afford Transition
At the current rate of progress higher energy efficiency, more renewables, and carbon capture will not be enough to keep the global temperature rise to well below 2°C. So to point the way, DNV-GL has condensed its Energy Transition Outlook 2019 into 10 ways technology can meet the COP21 targets. This article gives figures on how much solar and wind we really need, battery production, annual investment in grids, and energy efficiency. It further … [Read more...]
The rapid liberalisation of China’s domestic gas market
China’s coal-to-gas ambitions are driving big changes to its internal gas markets, says a report “China’s Quest for Blue Skies: The Astonishing Transformation of the Domestic Gas Market” by the IFRI Centre for Energy & Climate, authored by Sylvie Cornot-Gandolphe. To cope with a doubling of gas demand by 2030, market reforms are liberalising the downstream gas market. Nobody wants a repeat of the winter shortages of 2017-18. And air … [Read more...]
1.2TW: cost reductions, policy advances will drive 50% renewables growth to 2024, says IEA
Carbon Brief’s Simon Evans runs through their analysis of the updated forecasts in the International Energy Agency (IEA) Renewables 2019 report, released this week. In its “base case” global renewable energy capacity will increase by 50% over 6 years. Rising from 2,501GW in 2018 to 3,721GW in 2024, it will add the equivalent of the entire US electricity system. In the “accelerated case” it’s 60%, further adding the equivalent of Japan’s. 85% of … [Read more...]
Hydrogen Fuel Cell trucks can decarbonise heavy transport
Patrick Molloy at Rocky Mountain Institute runs through the pros and cons of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCEVs). The big pluses are that hydrogen has an energy density of around 120 MJ/kg, almost three times more than diesel or gasoline. Half the energy generated by an internal combustion engine is wasted as heat, whereas electric drivetrains used by FCEVs only lose 10%. Nikola Motors, a U.S. maker of hydrogen trucks, claims its vehicles can get … [Read more...]
Extract CO2 from our air, use it to create synthetic fuels
Carbon Capture needs to take off, but nobody knows how it’s going to happen. We need innovation, scrutinised, tested and funded. Jim Conca looks at a method of extracting CO2 directly from the air that’s being pioneered by Carbon Engineering in Canada, backed by private investors and government agencies. It grew out of academic work at the University of Calgary and Carnegie Mellon University. It’s “Direct Air Capture” system can remove a ton of … [Read more...]
Will the German Climate Protection Programme 2030 miss its own targets?
On Friday, 20 September, the German Climate Cabinet agreed on the guidelines for German climate policy for the coming decade, set against the backdrop of EU targets. The core topic was additional CO2-pricing in the mobility and heating sectors. From 2021 a CO2-price of €10/ton will apply to the German transport and buildings sectors. The price will rise to €35/ton until 2025. But Simon Göss says the national emission trading system and new … [Read more...]
Calculating the effect of $50/tonne CO2 on energy prices
Despite much debate, governments are hesitant to raise – or even impose – carbon pricing, worried about the direct impact it will have on businesses and consumers.To help understand its effect Severin Borenstein at the Energy Institute at Haas has crunched the numbers of a $50/tonne CO2 price, very expensive by today’s standards. He’s calculated the actual price increases on a gallon of petrol/gasoline, gas- and coal-fired generation, and natural … [Read more...]
Rising green taxes: making them acceptable to all
Environmental taxes hurt low-income households the most because they spend a much higher proportion of their income on heating oil, natural gas, and electricity. It’s why Spain has low green taxes, far below the EU average. Mark Dwortzan at MIT explains how researchers from the U.S., Germany and Spain teamed up to show that low-income households can benefit from environmental taxes provided those tax revenues are carefully redistributed in their … [Read more...]
Private finance must invest in carbon asset retirement, not just clean energy
The Climate Finance Leadership Initiative (CFLI) is laying out concrete plans for the private sector to finance the low-carbon transition, say Tyeler Matsuo and Lucy Kessler of Rocky Mountain Institute. One important insight of their new report “Financing the Low-Carbon Future” is that it’s not enough to back clean energy. Climate finance also needs to accelerate the retirement and transformation of the carbon assets that are responsible for 78% … [Read more...]
Energy security v Transition in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Turkey
Like most developing countries, the challenge of growing economies, increasing population and rapid urbanisation puts energy security above emissions reductions. So it is for Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Turkey, says Duygu Sever in her report for IFRI Centre for Energy & Climate. In this article she explains that all four countries nevertheless have high renewables deployment potential, and have already embraced wind and solar. To accelerate … [Read more...]
Shipping: commercially viable zero emission deep sea vessels by 2030
Last year the International Maritime Organization, recognising the slow progress the sector had made, set ambitious targets to reduce shipping emissions by at least 50% by 2050 compared to 2008. Companies started lining up to face the challenge. But the shipping sector is very energy intensive. Bunker fuel costs can account for 24 - 41% of total shipping costs, so any clean fuel transition must be competitively priced. The fact that alternatives … [Read more...]
EU policing of Member State gas plans not consistent
Elisa Giannelli at E3G explains why the European Commission’s assessment of Member States’ natural gas plans is not consistent, on three fronts. Firstly, with its own EU climate targets: many nations are planning to increase their consumption of and investment in gas regardless of EU-wide targets to cut emissions. Secondly, the Commission is critical of some of these nations but actually supportive of others. Thirdly, even the EU’s own policies … [Read more...]
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