At the end of October, Ministers and Director-Generals of Energy and Mobility from the Pentalateral Region (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France and Germany), CEOs and experts came together to understand how electro-mobility can accelerate the energy transition. Reducing vehicle emissions is one thing, but a vast number of “batteries on wheels” can also enable rapid grid expansion. IRENA were one of the experts, and their analysis says … [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...]
Germany 2021: when fixed feed-in tariffs end, how will renewables fare?
Starting in 2021 many of Germany’s existing “pioneer” wind turbines, solar PV installations and biogas plants – launched with generous price guarantees - will stop receiving fixed feed-in tariffs. That means renewable capacity may be shut down if they can’t find a new business model to run on. The new rules comes at a decisive time for Germany’s energy transition as it tries to increase renewables to meet emissions targets and gradually increase … [Read more...]
India: coal plummets, renewables stepping in
In 2018, 80% of India’s total energy lending went to renewables. Coal got the rest, a major fall compared to 2017. No wonder, given coal plants have been running at below 60% utilisation for two years with the operators suffering huge losses. Renewables are now undercutting coal and getting cheaper. And shortages in water – needed for plant cooling – just add to their woes. Vibhuti Garg at IEEFA catalogues the problems, then describes the … [Read more...]
Accelerating electromobility in east Europe (part 2): buses
Sarah Keay-Bright plots an affordable pathway for low income nations to reduce the cost of bus electrification and scale up private investment. The first step is to put a true figure on the total cost of ownership (TCO) for electric buses versus existing conventional fossil fuel ones. Externalities such as air pollution are often left out. Subsidies, fuel and vehicle taxes also play a role. Every country is different, because of matters that … [Read more...]
IEA: Big energy firms cannot ignore the Transition
Alessandro Blasi and Alberto Toril of the IEA look at how oil and gas majors are still investing very little - of the order of a single percentage point - in clean energy projects. What they are doing in response to new anti-fossil climate policies is increasing investment in short cycle projects that generate cash and returns quickly, minimising risk. This is a questionable strategy, given the fundamental shift away from thermal power and fossil … [Read more...]
Accelerating electromobility in east Europe: a how-to guide (part 1)
While record electric vehicle (EV) sales in high income countries keep making headlines they’re struggling to take off anywhere else. Sarah Keay-Bright plots a pathway for change. Like anywhere else, public investment must come first, carefully paving the way for private to follow. So that means getting the tax regime right. As taxes rise to disincentivise fossil cars those revenues will fall as people go electric. So they need to be replaced. … [Read more...]
Can other technologies replicate Solar PV price reductions?
Catherine Wolfram at the Haas School of Business reviews the new book “How Solar Energy Became Cheap” by Greg Nemet. It traces Solar PV’s history from Bell Labs in 1954 through to the present. The phenomenal price drops mean today’s cost/kWh is 1,000 times lower than in the 1970s. The analysis is split into four epochs when output was dominated by US, Japanese, then German and finally Chinese production. How much were improvements thanks to sheer … [Read more...]
China’s Solar Paradox: why invest today when prices keep dropping?
Josh Gabbatiss at Carbon Brief reviews a paper published in Nature Energy, showing how grid parity is already achievable today, subsidy-free, across all China’s 344 biggest cities. Consequently, China is already reducing solar subsidies and realigning policy to de-emphasise scale and re-focus on quality. So far, so good. But China now joins those developed nations where cheaper solar has thrown up another problem: why spend now when it’ll be … [Read more...]
Biogas and Biomethane in Europe: Denmark, Germany, Italy lead
Over and again, legislators worldwide are confronting the same question: which technologies do we subsidise and support, when, by how much, and for how long. Get it right and those costs will reduce and should disappear once scale is reached. Solar and wind are on their way to proving that. What about biofuels? Marc-Antoine Eyl-Mazzega and Carole Mathieu of the Institut Français des Relations Internationales (IFRI) look at the last 10 years. The … [Read more...]
IEA: Renewables growth worldwide is stalling
It’s bad enough that 2018 net capacity additions did not exceed 2017’s after two decades of strong growth. It is far more troubling that nobody saw it coming, says the IEA, who have laid out the data and main cause: stop-go policies. 2018's 180 GW is only 60% of what needs to be added each year to meet climate goals. China, the EU, India and Japan all fell back. Only emerging economies, developing countries and the US (slightly) saw growth. … [Read more...]
Less politically centralised, can the EU remain a transition leader?
As a region the EU is a transition leader. Its primary energy consumption increased by only 0.2% in 2018 (globally it rose by 2.6%) and its CO2 emissions dropped by 1.7% (globally, up 1.7%). But the EU’s move towards greater “subsidiarity” and devolution of power, to counterbalance too much centralisation, has made it harder for the EU to act quickly and act big, says Lucien Chabason, Senior Advisor at the IDDRI. One example: how easily can … [Read more...]
1.5°C: IEA’s scenarios will fail, need urgent review says letter from experts, business leaders
The letter’s signatories – experts, business leaders, politicians and more - call on the IEA to make the 1.5°C target the central scenario in its highly influential annual World Energy Outlook. At present, its “New Policies Scenario” puts us on track for between 2.7°C and 3.3°C. That's a problem, because too many energy decision-makers cite it as an acceptable guide, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even the “Sustainable Development … [Read more...]
U.S. buildings electrification hindered by “new” renovation policies that are already out of date
U.S. buildings renovation policies are not keeping up with technological progress and therefore risk slowing down electrification and the uptake of cleaner fuels, say Jessica Shipley and Donna Brutkoski of the think tank Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP). For example, there are policies and incentives that favour the installation of more energy efficient appliances, but ignore whether the appliance is greener. Put simply, policies need to … [Read more...]
What’s next for the geopolitics of energy transformation?
January’s IRENA report “A New World” has kick-started the debate on how the accelerating deployment of renewables will affect and alter the global distribution of political and economic power. Jan Frederik Braun and Daniel Scholten review its findings and build on the list of issues that must be faced. For example, although the IRENA report focuses on electrification the authors say power-to-gas is likely to play a major role, and we must face up … [Read more...]
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