Low crude oil and gasoline prices create an opportunity for all governments to reform the way they tax or subsidise these important fuels. In general, richer importing nations have high gasoline taxes to generate substantial revenues. Poorer nations subsidise them to cut the bill for their citizens and industries. Oil producing nations do little of either. Domenico Lattanzio and Alexandre Bizeul at the IEA explain how nations that use subsidies … [Read more...]
U.S. supports carbon capture R&D and commercialisation
Many are hoping that the new U.S. administration becomes a climate leader. Nowhere is leadership needed more than in the field of carbon capture. Most net zero pathways give it an essential and major role, yet the possible solutions are still in their infancy. Anne Canavati at the Atlantic Council looks at the new bills being passed in Washington that appear to be the beginnings of a serious push to develop and commercialise Carbon Dioxide … [Read more...]
Washington State (U.S.) bill could make it the home for next generation Nuclear
Nuclear may soon be getting a boost from Washington State in the north-west of the U.S. There, a bill is being presented to promote the manufacture and deployment of new nuclear reactors. It will provide generous tax incentives to nuclear investments in the state. It’s the sort of support that renewable energy technology is used to, yet nuclear struggles to get because of critics of nuclear energy. That opposition is very frustrating, explains … [Read more...]
Wide variations in National Energy and Climate Plans: how can the EU seriously budget for emissions reductions?
The EU has big and growing ambitions for emissions reductions by 2030: down 40% below 1990 levels, increasing the share of renewables to 32% of final energy consumption and improving energy efficiency by 32.5% above business-as-usual. These targets will be further revised as the more ambitious goal of cutting emissions by 55% by 2030 becomes legally binding. This means the EU as well as individual nations must estimate the cost of meeting these … [Read more...]
The Energy Charter Treaty makes the transition easier. Don’t scrap it, reform it
Energy and climate experts as well as national and EU parliamentarians are lining up to press their governments to withdraw from the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) if insufficient progress is made in its modernisation. Their main argument is that it gives protection to fossil investments in a world where policies are changing in order to constrain or phase them out. Here, Frank Umbach at EUCERS sternly warns against abandoning the ECT. The treaty … [Read more...]
Nine advantages small-scale solutions have for reducing global emissions
Which is best? Spending your budget on a million 1 KW solar panels or a single 1 GW nuclear/hydro/gas plant? Lots of electric bikes or a single tram system? Lots of smart thermostats or whole-building retrofits? Charlie Wilson (University of East Anglia), Caroline Zimm (IIASA) and Simon De Stercke (Imperial College London) summarise their study that lists the advantages of small-scale “granular” solutions over large-scale “lumpy” ones. Granular … [Read more...]
The top Clean Energy developments of 2020
The world is still a long way off the pathway to meeting our emissions goals. But 2020 saw a number of major steps in the right direction. Laurie Stone at RMI presents a list of what has been achieved and which trends and new policy commitments are pointing us towards a much needed faster transition. They include coal’s decline, wind and solar’s growing competitiveness (even compared to gas), the promise of green hydrogen, bans on gas/petrol … [Read more...]
How can Europe help build China’s Hydrogen economy?
On 18th November Energy Post, in partnership with the EU-China Energy Cooperation Platform, hosted a series of online workshops under the theme “China: Carbon Neutral by 2060”. The purpose was to understand the Chinese landscape and uncover opportunities for Europe. Here, the moderator for our “Hydrogen” panel, Gökçe Mete, summarises the workshop which included an expert panel discussion and questions from the audience. Taking part were Tudor … [Read more...]
A pathway for profitable CCS in California
A study from the energy departments of Stanford University, from where Kara Glenwright writes, lays out a pathway for California to capture and store up to 60 Mt (million tonnes) of CO2 a year. 76 site locations have been identified where work could start immediately to store 20 Mt/yr profitably under the existing low carbon rules. But first a raft of clarifications on the laws is needed, showing that the success of CCS doesn’t just depend on the … [Read more...]
Which sectors need Hydrogen, which don’t: Transport, Heating, Electricity, Storage, Industry?
Which sectors are most suited to hydrogen, and which are not? For the answer, six academics from the UK and the Netherlands - Tom Baxter, Ernst Worrell, Hu Li, Petra de Jongh, Stephen Carr, and Valeska Ting – use their areas of expertise to neatly summarise hydrogen’s pros and cons in Road and Rail, Aviation, Heating, Electricity and Energy Storage, and Heavy Industry. Their general message seems clear: hydrogen is still very expensive, so it can … [Read more...]
5 charts show the rapid fall in costs of renewable energy
Plenty in the energy sector already know about the impressive declines in renewable energy costs since 2010, particularly solar (down 82%), concentrated solar (47%), onshore (39%) and offshore wind (29%). For those of you putting together presentations to people whose buy-in you need - citizens, public officials, investors, customers, etc. - these graphics should come in useful. It looks like a tipping point is being reached, says Douglas Broom … [Read more...]
The benefits of Peer-To-Peer Electricity Trading for communities and grid expansion
The adoption of peer-to-peer (P2P) electricity trading will turn individual consumers from passive to active managers of their networks. Such a marketplace can relieve constraints on the growing system and offer an alternative to costly grid reinforcements. Arina Anisie and Francisco Boshell at IRENA run through the benefits, including investment costs, bills, resilience, congestion, mini-grids, energy access, and more. They note that very few … [Read more...]
Rooftop Solar: economies of scale can challenge the centralised grid
One of our recent articles explained how rooftop solar PV is more expensive that a centralised supply, and that the transmission and distribution cost savings of the rooftop system, on their own, do not make up for this cost difference. Here, Javier López Prol at the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change, University of Graz, responds to those challenges. First, the economies of scale of distributed rooftop solar are yet to be realised. … [Read more...]
Rural America needs investment, jobs. $82bn/yr of Wind and Solar can deliver it
The build out of wind and solar in the U.S. – to rise from 165GW today to over 500GW in 2035 – will overwhelmingly happen in the open spaces of rural America, explains Kevin Brehm at RMI. It should result in a major boost to stagnating communities. The $82bn/year of clean energy investment will take second spot to the current three big rural spends: highways ($90bn), water utilities ($57bn) and mass transit ($45bn). By 2030 rural clean energy … [Read more...]
Are 1.5°C scenarios supplanting “Business As Usual” as the new benchmark?
The world energy outlooks published annually by the IEA, BP and DNV GL look very different this year. 1.5°C scenarios are being taken much more seriously. Could it be because of the trauma of Covid-19, or the extraordinary – though still insufficient – success of renewables coupled with the rising ambition of climate-aware governments and their policies? Either way, they are helping to shift the debate away from the mainstream “business as usual” … [Read more...]
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