By Barney Smith The new Boss of BP, Bernard Looney, has announced a major change of direction for BP. The company will now deliver energy solutions for customers, rather than producing from its own resources, the traditional role of an oil and gas company. He has introduced some radical targets. They have major implications for [...]
By Barney Smith One of the Renewables’ success stories is undoubtedly off-shore wind, on which the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), has just issued an interesting report. This shows that off-shore wind has grown from 1 per cent of global wind installation by capacity ten years ago (2009) to 10 per cent last year (2019). [...]
By Barney Smith When I wrote recently about Biofuels in rather general terms. (See Greenbarrel of 16 July), my interest was aroused by an aspect of Biofuels, namely Biodiesel, which is usually seen as an element in renewables. But, if truth were told, its importance lies more in its decarbonisation attributes than in the claims [...]
By Barney Smith The other great debate of our times is about the future of the planet and global warming. In this, an important place goes to “decarbonisation”, where there is an undoubted place for Biofuels; the question is how important that place is, or should be. (An obvious distinction has to be made between [...]
By Barney Smith The last French local elections held a clear message: a large number of voters deserted their old allegiances and voted for the environmentalists. The "deserters" seem to have included former socialists and, to a lesser degree, former conservatives. This trend could also be seen to be the result of the local elections [...]
By Barney Smith It is good to see that the Virus has not changed absolutely everything: for cometh mid-June, cometh the BP Annual Statistical Energy Survey for 2019. Bearing in mind that the Survey is essentially backward-looking because it is supposed to be about last year, it is scarcely surprising that in his introduction the [...]
By Barney Smith Having commented recently on some climate change aspects of the Shell annual report (Greenbarrel May 5) it seemed on reflection only reasonable to do the same for BP’s annual report, which also came out last month. The BP annual report, entitled “Energy with Purpose” runs to over three hundred pages, and again [...]
By Barney Smith TPI Composites makes composite blades for wind turbines, just the blades, not the whole turbine. It claims it is the only “ US-based independent manufacturer of composite wind blades with a global footprint”. The company’s headquarters are in Scottsdale, Arizona and it operates factories in the U.S., China, Mexico, Turkey and India –global [...]
By Barney Smith Earlier this week, GWEC released its supply-side analysis for windpower for 2019. Supply-side means that the data refers to the total capacity of wind turbines installed based on wind turbine manufacturers figures. (Demand-side data refers to total capacity connected to the Grid and is used, eg in GWEC’s analysis of windpower in [...]
By Barney Smith Fishing nets are specifically designed to catch marine wildlife, but since modern nets are made of plastic a new threat has emerged: when nets, pots and other gear is discarded, lost or abandoned in the sea, these so-called “ghost nets” form aimless but deadly floating death traps for ocean wildlife. At least [...]