The cost of wind and solar power will continue to fall massively over the next 25 years, bringing about a fundamental transformation of the global electricity sector, according to new reports from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Electric cars will boom, cheap batteries will be everywhere and there will no Golden Age of Gas, despite continued low gas prices, BNEF predicts. … [Read more...]
Energy crops have been a major flop with farmers – here’s why
In only a few years, biomass has become a major UK power source, supplying 3% of the total electricity supply. However, despite government incentives, UK farmers are largely unwilling to grow the feedstock for the biomass plants. Most of it has to be imported. Charles Warren, Senior Lecturer Geography and Sustainable Development at the University of St. Andrews, tried to find out why – and came to some very instructive conclusions. Courtesy The … [Read more...]
Europe can retrieve its lost clean energy leadership by moving away from subsidizing renewables
Europe can win back its lost clean energy leadership by moving away from subsidy-powered renewables, writes Christopher Burghardt, Vice-President Business Development Europe at First Solar and a member of the Board of Directors of Solar Power Europe. Rather than subsidizing renewables, Burghardt argues, Europe should stimulate utility-scale energy production by independent power producers, just as other markets around the world are … [Read more...]
TTIP and energy security: do Europeans still want US LNG?
When TTIP talks were launched in 2013, Europeans were keen to tap into the United States oil and gas bonanza resulting from the country’s shale revolution to help reduce prices and shake off the continent’s too-heavy reliance on Russian hydrocarbons. But now US shale gas is arrriving in Europe, regardless of TTIP, writes Iana Dreyer, editor of Borderlex, an independent newsletter on EU trade policy. According to Dreyer, national politics in … [Read more...]
On track for a Golden Age of Gas?
The global energy industry must overcome significant new challenges if natural gas development is to achieve the vision of a Golden Age of Gas, writes Geoffrey Styles, Managing Director of independent US-based consultancy GSW Strategy Group. Low energy prices and reduced investment are only half the battle as regulations complexify and organized opposition grows. … [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...]
Leading by example? Impacts of a domestic French carbon price floor
If enacted, France’s plan for a domestic carbon price floor will lower CO2 emissions and increase power prices in France, but it will only have a marginal impact on total EU CO2 emissions and European carbon prices, write Hæge Fjellheim, Yan Qin and Emil Dimantchev, senior analysts at Thomson Reuters. They surmise that for the French government the plan is a way to lead by example. It will also bring in extra government revenues and improve the … [Read more...]
Greener in Europe? Four reasons the EU can’t be trusted on the environment
Those in favour of Britain’s continued membership of the European Union – although strangely not the UK government’s official campaign to remain in – are increasingly highlighting the contribution Brussels has made to protecting the natural environment. There is some justification for this, writes Professor Steffen Böhm of the University of Exeter, but in several key areas the influence of the EU on UK's environmental policy has been negative … [Read more...]
Brexit likely to lead to higher not lower UK energy prices
If the UK electorate votes to leave the EU on 23rd June, will British households then face higher or lower energy bills? Nobody knows for sure, writes Stephen Tindale, Director of the Alvin Weinberg Foundation: it would depend on decisions taken by a post-Brexit government and the impact of a Leave victory on British politics. But according to Tindale claims from Brexiteers that leaving the UK would lead to lower energy prices are misleading. The … [Read more...]
Interview Joan MacNaughton, World Energy Council: “Policy is key – you can’t allow a free for all”
Focused, well-designed energy policy in a robust regulatory environment is key to achieve energy security, sustainability and affordability. That’s the major conclusion from the 2016 World Energy Trilemma report of the World Energy Council, presented at the Clean Energy Ministerial in San Francisco on 1 June. According to Joan MacNaughton, Executive Chair of the study, “it’s still hard for most countries to balance all three aspects of the energy … [Read more...]
The fight over the EU’s nuclear ambitions – and what it means for European energy research
A leaked “strategy paper” in the German media has thrown  up fresh questions over what Europe intends to spend its innovation budget on. In the paper the European Commission and member states set out broad goals for the nuclear industry, including developing small modular reactors. Nuclear opponents reacted furiously. In her new Brussels Insider column, for the Energy Post Weekly premium newsletter, Sonja van Renssen investigates the fight over … [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...]
Renewable energy versus nuclear: dispelling the myths
Don’t believe the spurious claims of nuclear shills constantly putting down renewables, writes Mark Diesendorf, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at UNSW Australia. Clean, safe renewable energy technologies have the potential to supply 100% of the world’s electricity demand – but the first hurdle is to refute the deliberately misleading myths designed to promote the politically powerful but ultimately doomed nuclear … [Read more...]
Renewables in China and India: two Asian giants struggling with inflexible power system operations
China and India are building huge amounts of solar and wind power, but a lot of this capacity is wasted as it cannot be integrated into the grid. In China the problems stem mostly from rigid planning processes and compensation systems. In India, the stumbling block is state-owned distribution operators that have an incentive not to increase access to electricity. In both countries, reforms are contemplated but will be difficult to achieve. This … [Read more...]
Can we save the algae biofuel industry?
Over the last decade or so, energy companies, including the likes of Shell and ExxonMobil, have invested large amounts of money in algal biofuels, only to find that the economics didn’t make sense, writes Christian Ridley, Research Associate in Plant Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge. However, according to Ridley, there still is a way forward for the industry, if the production of biodiesel from algae can be combined with production of … [Read more...]
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