31 March 2016, Energy Post, The end of coal: good riddance or dangerous gamble? Scotland has become the first part of the UK to stop burning coal to supply electricity following the closure of Longannet, its largest power station, on March 24. According to Paul Younger, Professor of Energy Engineering at University of Glasgow, the closure of coal-fired power plants in the UK may lead to serious problems with voltage control. Prepare for power interruptions and flickering lights. The closure of Longannet is a sign of the times, with the rest of the UK’s coal-fired power stations on death row after energy secretary Amber Rudd announced late last year that they will all be forced to close by 2025. For many reasons, it is hard to mourn the demise of coal-fired power. Around 12,000 miners are killed around the world each year, most of them digging for coal; abandoned mines cause widespread water pollution; and coal-fired plants pollute the air with the likes of nitrogen and sulphur compounds, as well as the highest greenhouse-gas emissions of any major source of energy generation. In the absence of carbon capture and storage, a technology which would be ready more quickly if the government backed it properly, plant closure may therefore seem sensible – even while we should help those that lose their jobs and regret the loss of skills from the workforce.If we are going to manage without Longannet and all the other gas-fired and coal-fired power stations, we would need at least 970 GWh of storage – more than a hundred pumped hydropower stations of comparable size to those we already have. That would be all there was to say were it not for a few harsh realities of electricity supply. There are two reasons why coal-fired power plants have survived so long. Coal is cheap; only since the US shale-gas boom has it been consistently beaten on price. And coal-fired plants are particularly suited to providing power on demand at short notice, as well as providing crucial stabilisation services for frequency and voltage across the grid. Read More here
Category Archives: Fossil Fuel Reduction
30 March 2016, Energy Post, European dash for gas at odds with climate ambitions. European energy and European climate policies, although often portrayed as being two sides of the same coin, are still not sufficiently harmonised, writes Stefan Bößner, Research Fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute. The EU’s new LNG and gas storage strategy serves as a prime example where EU energy security concerns work against climate protection efforts. The strategy is likely to lead to costly investments into infrastructure which may not be needed and which come at the cost of other options to enhance climate protection and energy security. The European Union often claims leadership on climate change. The EU not only saved the Kyoto Protocol by convincing Russia to join but also pushed for an ambitious climate agreement prior to the Paris Climate Conference (COP 21) last December. It is the only developed economy of comparable size that sources 26% of its energy needs from low-carbon sources and its 2030 goals to reduce emissions by 40% are among the most ambitious in the world. So far so good. The European Commission acknowledges the importance of “avoiding the ‘lock-in’ of high emissions infrastructure and assets.” But tis is exactly what might happen when one looks at the EU’s recent LNG and gas strategy. But despite those ambitions, the EU is likely to miss its contribution to limit global warming to two degrees (as decided upon in the Paris Agreement). And while some member states demand to raise the EU’s climate ambitions others refuse to do so, illustrating existing frictions between EU and member state policy making. But the EU itself is not without fault either. The European Commission also pursues conflicting aims sometimes in its climate and energy policies. Read More here
28 March 2016, Energy Post, Wake up call for oil companies: electric vehicles will deflate oil demand. The major oil companies greatly underestimate the impact electric vehicles will have on their market, write independent energy advisors Salman Ghouri and Andreas de Vries. According to Ghouri and De Vries, the trends currently underway in the auto industry are likely to have a substantial impact on oil demand in the medium term, and even a devastating impact in the longer term. If there is one event in history that has shaped the crude oil industry, it is the popularization of the internal combustion engine (ICE) by the auto industry. At the beginning of the 20th century, coal and wood were the dominant sources of energy, together providing more than 90% of global energy consumption. From 1910 onward, however, the Automotive Revolution triggered by Henry Ford spurred on demand for liquid fuels, causing crude oil’s contribution to global energy supply to more than double every decade. Consequently, by 1970 crude oil had taken top-spot in the global energy mix. Continued growth in the transportation sector ever since has provided the world’s oil companies with plenty of organic growth opportunities. And judging by the energy outlooks the major oil companies have published, they appear to expect this status quo to continue. For example, BP’s most recent Energy Outlook 2035 assumes that non-oil based transport will grow just 5% per annum for the next 20 years, and that essentially all of this growth will be in the gas-powered transport segment. Similarly, The Outlook for Energy: A View to 2040 published by ExxonMobil assumes that by 2040 “plug in” electric vehicles (EVs) and fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) will have no more than a 4% market share. Chevron, meanwhile, has indicated that it plans on the basis of the assumption that the auto industry will remain fundamentally the same for at least another 50 years. Alternative assumptions However, as we documented elsewhere, the auto industry itself expects its future to be radically different from its present. To assess how the new vision of the auto industry would impact crude oil demand, we have developed an Alternative Energy Outlook (AEO). Read More here
25 March 2016, Climate News Network, Past emissions cause mounting climate havoc. Despite signs that the world will cut its future fossil fuel use, greenhouse gases already emitted are still driving accelerating climate change.Climate change has reached the point where it may outstrip the quickening efforts to slow it by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, scientists say. They say humans are now releasing CO2 into the atmosphere 10 times faster than natural processes have ever done in the last 66 million years, before the extinction of the dinosaurs. The disclosure comes in the World Meteorological Organisation’s State of the Climate report, published in the journal Nature Geoscience. The lead author, Professor Richard Zeebe of the University of Hawaii, said: “Our carbon release rate is unprecedented over such a long time period [and] means that we have effectively entered a ‘no-analogue’ state. “The present and future rate of climate change and ocean acidification is too fast for many species to adapt, which is likely to result in widespread future extinctions.” “The window of opportunity for limiting global temperature rise to well below 2°C . . . is narrow and rapidly shrinking. The effects of a warming planet will be felt by all” The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, said: “Climate change is accelerating at an alarming rate. The window of opportunity for limiting global temperature rise to well below 2°C – the threshold agreed by world governments in Paris in December last year – is narrow and rapidly shrinking. The effects of a warming planet will be felt by all.” The WMO secretary-general, Petteri Taalas, said the present “alarming” rate of climate change as a result of greenhouse gas emissions was “unprecedented in modern records”. “The future is now”, he said. Yet less than a week ago the International Energy Agency announced that global energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide had shown no increase for the second year in a row. The announcement was widely hailed as significant good news, with the IEA’s executive director, Fatih Birol, describing it as “yet another boost to the global fight against climate change”.Read More here