Coal is cheap. In countries historically reliant on it, as well as emerging economies still building plants, switching to cleaner energy just doesn’t seem to add up. That’s when you’re only looking at your national energy system costs. But the externality costs of air pollution, public health and a degraded local environment are rarely factored in to the equation. When they are, explains Sebastian Rauner writing for Carbon Brief, abandoning coal … [Read more...]
Electricity pricing: shifting costs on to households that can afford it
Utilities need to invest in the future, and the Transition needs to be paid for by their customers. The less painful that is to each customer, the more publicly acceptable it will be. Maximilian Auffhammer at the Energy Institute at Haas explains how electricity pricing usually combines a fixed monthly charge with a block rate price (the charge for each additional unit of energy). Here he reviews a new report that scrutinises how different firms … [Read more...]
Global ‘sectoral’ treaties, legally binding corporate targets can turn around emissions rise
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change started with a top-down legally binding Kyoto Protocol and ended up with a bottom-up ‘self-determined’ voluntary Paris Agreement, says Chandra Bhushan. As a result, nobody has the tools to drive global collective action to combat climate change. The author says that’s why emissions are at record levels. He recommends international ‘sectoral’ treaties to achieve real transition in energy, … [Read more...]
A record year for big corporates buying renewable energy to run their operations
In the U.S. 2018 set a new record for total capacity of announced corporate renewable energy (RE) purchases. Facebook, AT&T, Walmart, ExxonMobil and Microsoft top the list. This unprecedented demand has been met with robust supply from renewable energy project developers as well as from utilities, which have demonstrated their willingness to work with these buyers in finding new solutions in the market. The Rocky Mountain Institute’s Lily … [Read more...]
