A growing number of EU nations are announcing laws to phase out the sale of new fossil fuel cars within the next 20 years. But are the proposed bans compatible with EU laws, or even workable given cross border trade and movement rights? If you are Dutch, why not buy your new petrol car in Belgium, then drive it back to the Netherlands? How do you enforce CO2 targets with foreign haulage fleets transiting through your nation? Eoin Bannon at … [Read more...]
Two new designs, GSR and MA-ATR, to make “blue” Hydrogen cheaper
What’s the best way to make clean hydrogen? Steam Methane Reforming (SMR) is the most common and cheapest way of producing hydrogen, but it also produces CO2 emissions. Capturing that CO2 is complex and costly. Schalk Cloete presents research on two new designs for “blue” hydrogen (blue = derived from natural gas/coal with carbon capture/CCS). He describes in detail Gas Switching Reforming (GSR) and Membrane-Assisted Autothermal Reforming … [Read more...]
Methane emissions underestimated by 25-40%, says new study
The methane in our atmosphere comes from natural biogenic (plants, animals) and fossil sources. By telling the difference we can know how much we humans are responsible for. It matters because methane is a potent greenhouse gas, second only to CO2. Previous “bottom-up” estimates came from multiplying the number of sources (livestock, natural gas operations, landfills) by their likely emissions. Robert McSweeney at Carbon Brief describes a new … [Read more...]
UK’s COP26 Presidency will be the first big test of its post-Brexit diplomatic skills
November’s COP26 will arguably be the most important since the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015. By then, all signatory nations are required to submit their new and improved nationally determined contributions (NDCs) that set a credible pathway towards reducing their emissions. So far only the Marshall Islands, Suriname, and Norway have done so. Lucien Chabason and Lola Vallejo at IDDRI ask whether the UK teams behind their new COP26 President, … [Read more...]
BP’s zero-carbon pledge: three major challenges
This month BP, one of the world’s largest oil and gas firms, announced its ambition to be a net zero emissions company by 2050. The promise extends to cutting the emissions of its customers too; after all, they’re the ones who are actually burning the fuel, not BP. So it aims to reduce the carbon intensity of its products by 50% by 2050 or sooner. Jules Kortenhorst, Tyeler Matsuo and Raghav Muralidharan at Rocky Mountain Institute take a look at … [Read more...]
What if Germany wasn’t shutting down Nuclear? Modelling Coal, Gas, Renewables, emissions, prices
Germany plans to shut down its entire nuclear fleet by 2022. Right now, of the original 17, only 7 are still running. The Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan of 2011 was the trigger for Germany’s abandonment of emissions-free nuclear as part of its clean energy goals. Maximilian Auffhammer at the Energy Institute at Haas reviews a paper by his colleagues that has modelled the whole-system effects of the shutdowns, then compared the results with a … [Read more...]
Canada is launching methane emissions rules for Oil and Gas
January 2020 marked the first time the Canadian government has targeted methane emissions from the oil and gas sector. They’ve committed to reduce oil and gas methane emissions by 40% to 45% below 2012 levels by 2025. Reducing methane emissions is considered one of the most cost-effective ways to cut global emissions. Methane equates to around 5.4% of the country’s total emissions of 716 Mt CO2-eq. The IEA estimates global methane emissions from … [Read more...]
60 years on, OPEC should take control again, cut supply, raise prices to fund its Transition
OPEC is often seen as no friend of the Transition. But Greg Muttitt points out that, although it did take an anti-climate stance in the 1990s, by the 2000s it had stepped back from climate negotiations, while some OPEC members became supporters. Muttitt says that, celebrating its 60th anniversary, it’s time for OPEC to remember its roots and organise its members to take control of their own destiny in the face of the inevitable rise of clean … [Read more...]
Germany must put CCS back on the table, says Merkel
Carbon Capture has not been popular in Germany. The public are largely opposed, political parties are split, and Federal States are not approving new projects. Germany has only four operations, and only one has injected anything (not much) into the ground. Now Chancellor Merkel wants it back on the table, along with a public debate. Julian Wettengel at Clean Energy Wire runs through the reasons for the opposition (an excuse to keep coal plants … [Read more...]
Norway’s “Northern Lights” project: creating the CCS business model
Northern Lights, a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project backed by the Norwegian government, is drilling test wells in the North Sea to find suitable places to store CO2. Project partners include Shell and Total, and others are joining them. CO2 will be shipped to an onshore terminal from which it is piped to the subsea wells. Once established, the plan is for other European countries to send their CO2 too. The project will also create the … [Read more...]
$7tn investor BlackRock announces Coal divestment, but not across all funds
BlackRock’s decision to divest from coal, as the world's largest asset manager with a long shareholder history of voting against climate action, sends a powerful signal. By mid-2020 BlackRock’s $1.8tn of actively managed funds will divest from any firm generating more than 25% of revenue from thermal coal. Further reviews of sectors heavily reliant on thermal coal will also take place. Tim Buckley, Tom Sanzillo and Melissa Brown at IEEFA welcome … [Read more...]
U.S. Presidential Election: for the first time, climate is a top priority
Another climate action “first” this year will be the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. Never before has climate change featured as a top priority for American politicians and voters, says Arnault Barichella writing for the IFRI Centre for Energy & Climate. It’s thanks to the growing evidence of human-caused global warming in collision with a current President who calls it all a hoax and has been rolling back the regulations of his predecessor. … [Read more...]
Can emissions trading work without Article 6 of the Paris Agreement?
Article 6 of the Paris Agreement creates the framework for mechanisms that will allow nations and sub-national actors to trade emissions. Executed correctly, it must raise ambitions and reduce total emissions. It must also ensure there is transparent and accurate accounting for emissions, with no double-counting. It made little progress at December’s COP25. This was partly due to some countries “insisting on accounting loopholes”, writes Isabella … [Read more...]
Gas infrastructure leaks methane: fix it, or accelerate to clean energy
Natural gas, because it’s low-carbon, is being used as a bridge fuel away from the old fossil fuel world. But there are two main problems. The infrastructure leaks methane (the main component of the gas) which is 25 times more potent than CO2 over a 100-year period (and 86 times over a 20-year period!). And, crucially, nobody is properly measuring those leaks. That means policy makers are growing the gas mix without knowing by how much it’s … [Read more...]
Is Germany’s emissions drop thanks to the EU ETS, not Berlin?
The good news is that 2019 saw a big decrease in Germany’s emissions, meaning a 35% reduction since 1990. It was only 30.8% by 2018, so the acceleration was thanks to a sharp drop in coal use. But emissions rose in transport and buildings, making the 2020 target of 40% more daunting. Add to that the slump in wind installations (permit problems) and the planned nuclear exit by 2022 (will more fossil fuels be needed to fill that big gap?), … [Read more...]
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