Decarbonising a developed economy is a difficult task, but it is especially challenging when that economy is a major producer of fossil fuels. For a long time the U.S.A. has been a major producer as well as the leading centre of expertise for the oil and gas industry, but in the last few years its [...]
Last week, BP published their latest Energy Outlook (for calendar year 2018). It does not make for comfortable reading because it shows that the actual speed of decarbonisation is not keeping up with the timetable and limits set by the Paris agreement. In 2018 global energy demand and carbon emissions from energy use grew at [...]
If you can’t produce it, why not import it? Such is the idea behind Atlantic Superconnection, the company that proposes to import electricity from power plants in Iceland that use renewable energy. Iceland produces nearly all its electricity from low carbon sources, about three quarters hydro-electric schemes and one quarter geothermal (hot water or steam [...]
Some of the 700,000 clients of the energy supplier First Utility were surprised when they received an email on 25 March stating that it would henceforth be known as Shell Energy. They should not have been surprised, because Shell had bought the company in 2018, but at that time there was no change of name [...]
This is the first of two articles on the chaos in the UK’s energy policy On 7 February the government announced that the energy bills of 15 million households could increase by more than £100 a year after the regulator Ofgem said it was raising the level of a price cap. Consumers on default tariffs, [...]
Scientists tell us that the earth is warming at the rate of 0.20C per decade because we emit too much CO2. Some people are sceptical while others wonder how one can be so precise about an object whose temperature varies from -500C to +500C in place and time. How far can we trust the scientists? [...]
On Wednesday 12 December, the Financial Times carried an article from Seoul, South Korea, stating that over the next ten years Hyundai, the world’s fifth largest car manufacturer, will commit US$6.7 Billion to the hydrogen economy. The article stated that this will raise their production capacity for fuel-cell systems and cars to 700,000 units a [...]
On Thursday 15 November 2018, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) surprised some observers by its ruling in favour of a case brought by a British clean energy technology company, Tempus Energy, against the European Commission and the British Government over the UK system of managing back-up power. Tempus did not call the capacity market [...]
The market seems to have welcomed last week’s announcement that Scottish Power Ltd (wholly owned by Iberdrola, the Spanish electric utility company) was to sell all its non-wind generating capacity to Drax for a consideration of £702 million. This in pursuance of Iberdrola’s expressed intention of lowering its carbon emissions. Iberdrola shares showed a modest, [...]
There have been many studies examining whether energy can be produced entirely by renewable sources. For example, two papers, one by Heard et al1arguing that it has not been proved, and another by Brown et al2arguing that it has, both give more than 150 references. It is worth considering some of the factors that frame [...]
