What's Changing? - Energy

 

Please see below selected recent energy-related change.

 

See also:

• What's New? - Energy
• What's Changing? - Climate
• What's Changing? - Sustainability (includes latest headlines on UN Sustainable Development Goal 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy)

 

In figures:

• The cost of renewables is falling fast 
• The sun can supply all our energy needs

 

October 2024

• After 142 years, the UK government closed the country’s last coal-fired power plant. Coal power was a critical factor in the British-born Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, but it wasn’t until 1882 that the British opened the first public coal power plant. The cessation - the first of its kind in the developed world - is part of the government’s plan to generate 100% of Britain’s energy from renewable sources by 2030.

 

July 2024

• Solar power is the world’s fastest-growing source of energy. In 2024 it provideds 6% of the world’s electricity but, by the mid-2030s, solar cells will probably be the planet’s single biggest source of electricity. A decade later they may be the world’s largest source of energy. Access to this cheap, abundant power could make nearly everything else cheaper, too. 

 

June 2024

• Fossil fuel consumption hit an all-time high in 2023, despite a record rise in renewable energy production at the same time, according to the Energy Institute. Coal and oil use pushed fossil fuel emissions to record levels, up 1.5% on the previous year. Renewable energy generation, however, rose by 13%: wind and solar drove this increase, accounting for 74% of all additional renewable energy generated. Despite the global increase in fossil fuel use, the reliance of advanced economies on them has peaked, the Energy Institute believes. For example, solar power is officially bigger than oil for the first time. China’s huge investment in panels fuelled much of the growth.

 

May 2024

• The G7 group of democracies gave itself until 2035 to all but stop using coal in their energy systems. The G7 - which includes Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the US - accounts for about a fifth of global emissions, but it does not include China and India, the world’s top two coal polluters.
• Renewables are now driving more than 30% of the world’s electricity. Much of the increase is coming from solar and wind power expansion spearheaded by China.

 

April 2024

• The electricity used by data centres, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence represented nearly 2% of global energy use in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency. That number looked likely to double to 4% by 2026 if current trends continued.

 

December 2023

• Tangible initiatives to accelerate renewable energy are underway in many countries. The International Renewable Energy Agency’s Energy Transition Accelerator Financing Platform ), established to scale up renewable energy in developing countries, surpassed its original target fourfold. Advancements in nuclear energy are particularly evident. The US, along with 35 nations, is fast-tracking efforts to harness nuclear fusion: US Climate Envoy John Kerry underscored fusion’s climate change mitigation potential and announced plans for international collaboration to expedite its development.

 

November 2023

• Portugal ran entirely on renewable energy for almost a week. Wind, solar, and hydro power met the energy needs of the country of 10 million for six days from October 31 to November 6 2023.

 

October 2023

• In 2003, the International Energy Agency published a report quantifying global energy investment needs: “the global financial system has the capacity to fund the required investment, but are the conditions right?”. 20 years later, the IEA showcased the emergence of a new clean energy economy, led by solar and EVs. The pace of change is very fast, with a reported more than US$1bn a day now spent on solar deployment alone.
• Indeed, The International Energy Agency said the global shift towards renewable energy is now ‘unstoppable’. The Agency’s latest World Energy Outlook report said renewables - mainly solar and wind - will provide half the world’s electricity by 2030.
• Solar power may be the dominant force in global energy markets by 2050 after the renewable source passed a "tipping point", according to the journal Nature. Climate policies already in place will facilitate this, the authors said. However, solar dominance, and that of renewables generally, may be disrupted due to weaknesses in grid stability, supply chain capacity, and funding availability in developing countries. Governmental involvement through new policies could address these issues though, the study argued. Renewables are projected to require 40% of all mineral demand for copper, 60%-70% of nickel and cobalt, and 90% of lithium by 2040. 

 

September 2023

• GZERO noted that, despite Africa's abundance of natural resources, it accounted for just 3% of global energy investments in 2023. The US pledged $30 million to help the continent deal with climate-induced food insecurity, while the EU pledged €1 billion to make emerging African markets more attractive for foreign energy investors. Meanwhile, investors in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates announced a deal to buy US$4.5 billion worth of carbon credits from the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative, formed to expand the continent’s involvement in the voluntary carbon trade market. The goal is to develop 15 GW of clean power in Africa by 2030,

 

July 2023

• Global energy consumption increased by 1.1% in 2022, only slightly below the 1.2% average of the past 10 years. Fossil fuels still constitute 82% of supply, and coal consumption reached its highest since 2014, according to the Statistical Review of World Energy 2023, At the same time, however, renewable energy is poise is on an exponential growth curve: solar energy, for instance, is growing at the fastest rate ever seen for any energy technology.
• A sunny day in Europe pushed power prices below zero. It’s becoming an increasingly common occurrence at times when solar panels are most productive but demand for energy is low.
• Europe hoarding US$8 billion worth of Chinese solar panels in 2023. Europe bought a record amount of the devices - 90% of which came from China - to reduce dependence on Russian fuels.

 

June 2023

• To decarbonise effectively, the world is going to need a lot more energy storage capacity. It’s looking increasingly likely that it will get it: research firm Rystad Energy now predicts that annual installations of battery energy storage systems will grow tenfold between 2022 and 2030 (equivalent to 33% CAGR).
• According to Exponential View,  the growth in demand for electric vehicles and batteries is putting pressure on the lithium industry to scale up more rapidly than any extractive industry in history. But economics can help: shortages can increase the appeal of alternatives, including for batteries: e,g, sodium-ion chemistries are forecast to quintuple by 2028, thereby alleviating some of the pressure on lithium.
• Homegrown solar and wind components in the US are now cheaper than imports. It’s the first time this has happened in the country’s history. Meanwhile, in May 2023 the EU’s combined wind and solar power generation surpassed fossil fuels for the first time.

 

May 2023

• An IEA assessment revealed that the growth of clean energy production is escalating so rapidly that we’re finally on track to meet the 2030 objectives to get to the 2050 net zero goal. Solar and battery are the main drivers.
• Investment in the solar energy sector increased from US$1.9bn in 2021 to US$2.1bn in 2022, and solar energy usage rose 25% across the EU as installation costs came down.

 

April 2023

• If the world’s climate is to be stabilised, stopping electricity generation from producing fossil-fuel-derived emissions is crucial. So is greatly increasing the amount of electricity available. With more generating capacity, it will be possible to power motor vehicles and warm homes with electricity, rather than by burning dirty fuels. Expanding access to power for people in the poorest countries will reduce emissions from biomass burning and greatly improve living standards, believes The Economist. 

 

February 2023

• One of the biggest impacts of the war in Ukraine was been on energy. High prices, concerns about energy security, and the continuing drive to decarbonise economies snowballed into momentum for energy efficiency and a sizeable advantage for renewables. The Economist estimated that the global decarbonisation of the energy system could have been fast-tracked multiple years by the war and all that ensued.
• Heat pumps use electricity to move heat from outside air, water, or ground to heat inside air or water. They’re highly efficient, which makes them a low-carbon technology, even when the electricity used to run them comes from burning fossil fuels. Governments across the world are incentivising the transition to heat pumps, especially when they benefit from renewable energy subsidies. 2021 alone saw 13% global growth in heat pump sales.
• Asia will use half of global electricity by 2025. The International Energy Agency predicted that China will use more electricity than the EU, US, and India combined by mid-decade.

 

January 2023

• Exponential View warned the clean energy transition has a mountain to climb. Contrary to past energy transitions, we now not only have to add to an energy mix to meet growing demand, but do this while also phasing out fossil sources. Energy demand is set to increase by nearly 50% in 2050 (compared with 2020) according to America’s Energy Information, while McKinsey reckons a tripling by 2050. Major drivers of this transition are the declining energy costs of from clean sources (which depend on technological innovation, learning and sufficient supply), and increasingly, concerns about energy security.

 

December 2022

• Growth in carbon emissions is slowing down. In the early 2000s, the global rate of emissions produced increased by 3% each year. However, over the past decade, this rate has only increased 0.5% year-over-year. Two factors that have brought emissions growth to a near plateau are: (1) our global economy has become less carbon intensive; and (2) reforestation has picked up to partially offset deforestation.
• Africa could make up to $1.1 trillion from selling and using solar-powered "green" hydrogen by 2035, according to a report. It's cheaper to produce than fossil fuels and could help cut the continent's greenhouse gas emissions by 40%.
• Solar energy generation in the EU surged by 47% in 2022 compared with 2021, as the renewable source is fast becoming an affordable solution to high energy prices across the bloc. Germany added the most solar power, closely followed by Spain.
• US government scientists announced they’d successfully carried out a burst of nuclear fusion, a clean energy process that generates more energy than it requires. The long-term implications for energy, climate, and geopolitics are potentially huge, argued GZERO.

 

November 2022

• France wants car parks to soak up sunshine. A solar panel covering will be mandatory for lots that can park 80 vehicles or more.

 

October 2022

• Analysis by the think tank RethinkX suggested that 100% clean electricity from the combination of solar, wind, and batteries is both possible and economically affordable across the majority of the global population by 2030. Their report sets out how this rapid growth of renewables has the same kind of disruptive potential on society as the advent of the internet, where the barriers to information and connection were drastically reduced over time. 
• Clean energy and electric cars are hitting tipping points for global mass adoption, with many countries witnessing tipping points in renewable energy, electric vehicles and grid-scale storage. Heat pumps, which will be critical for domestic warmth, have already replaced a fifth of the boilers in Europe.
• The amount of power the sun sends to Earth in a single hour is more than all of the earth's inhabitants consume in a year, hence solar energy showing unprecedented growth and expected to account for 60% of the increase in global renewable capacity in 2022. Aiming to turn photovoltaic technology into objects people want to surround themselves with, a solar designer created Sunne, a self-powering lamp with integrated photovoltaic cells that harvest energy when the sun is out. Stored in a battery, that energy is released when night falls - as plain light as well as with the pink, orange and yellow hues of sunset and sunrise.   

 

September 2022

• Wind and solar power provided more than 10% of the entire world’s power generation for the first time in 2021, Bloomberg NEF reported. 50% of the new power generation added in 2021 was from solar, 14% from wind. The bad news was that coal grew faster, too. Meanwhile, a meta study by 15 academic institutions demonstrated that it is now effectively a global scientific consensus that 100% of the world’s energy needs could be filled by renewable sources by 2050.
• A study from Oxford and Monash universities in the energy journal Joule said that transitioning to a decarbonised energy system by around 2050 is expected to save the world at least US$18 trillion compared to continuing our current levels of fossil fuel use.” The faster the transition occurs, the bigger the savings, the study claimed, based on historical and newly expected cost declines in solar, wind, and energy storage resources. While inflation-adjusted costs of fossil fuels have remained steady for 140 years, costs of wind, solar, and batteries have dropped approximately 10% every year. 
• In the International Energy Agency’s 2022 Africa Outlook report, the continent’s rich solar and onshore wind resources were cited as sufficient to separate enough hydrogen from water to produce 5,000 megatonnes of emissions-free hydrogen fuel a year at less than US$2 per kilogramme - equivalent to “global total energy supply today.” The IEA report and the continent’s electricity generation and transmission capacity challenges have also been highlighted by the World Economic Forum.
• China’s LONGi Green Energy, perhaps the world’s largest solar company, announced that it was going to launch solar panels into space. The experimental system would capture sunlight high above the ground and convert it into microwave beams. Then it would shoot those beams through the air to a receiver station on the ground, where they could be converted back to electricity.

 

July 2022

• In response to growing energy insecurity, significant innovations are attracting attention, e.g.
  • A massive water battery built into a cavern in the Swiss canton of Valais started operations. The battery consists of two pools of water, which sit at different heights. Energy is stored by pumping water to the raised pool; it is released by allowing the water to drop back into the lower pool, causing it to rotate a turbine. Developers claimed their creation would help secure European energy supplies during periods of high demand.
  • Meanwhile, Finnish energy startup Polar Night Energy announced that the world’s first sand-based thermal energy storage plant was now operational. The plant stores energy from wind turbines and solar panels by using it to heat large amounts of sand - which is exceptionally good at retaining heat - to around 500C. The researchers behind the new plant say the technique could help ensure energy stability as we transition to wind and solar.

 

June 2022

• For The Economist, the 2022 energy shock is the most serious since the Middle Eastern oil crises of 1973 and 1979. Like those calamities, it promises to inflict short-term pain and in the longer term to transform the energy industry. The pain is all but guaranteed: owing to high fuel and power prices, most countries are facing soggy growth, inflation, squeezed living standards and a savage political backlash. But the long-run consequences are far from preordained. If governments respond ineptly, they could trigger a relapse towards fossil fuels that makes it even harder to stabilise the climate. Instead they must follow a perilous path that combines security of energy supply with climate security
• The Renewables 2022 Global Status Report, published by the REN21 energy policy network, warned that across the last decade the share of total energy use provided by renewables had risen hardly at all, from 10.6% to 11.7%.
• Japan successfully tested a giant deep-ocean turbine that could provide an endless supply of clean energy. The 330-ton turbine, created by IHI Corp, converts deep ocean currents into electricity, and has been tested in the waters surrounding the Tokara Islands in southwestern Japan.
• The European Parliament voted to completely phase out the sale of gasoline-powered cars by 2035, but the EU will have its work cut out in balancing the economic impact of the shift: the EU’s auto industry accounted for 14.6 million jobs and 7% of total GDP in 2022.

 

May 2022

• A record-breaking amount of of new renewable power capacity was added in 2021, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Factors like incentives and more permits could further speed up the use of renewables in order to address today’s energy security and market challenges, China led the way, adding roughly half of the globe's new renewable capacity last year.

 

April 2022

• A UN climate report called for quick fossil fuel cuts. Although climate scientists say the world needs to reduce oil and gas production, the war in Ukraine prompted governments to do the opposite.
• Climate policy is poised to erase US$4 trillion off the books of energy companies by 2050, according to the April 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. That’s not just a problem for those companies: if they suddenly collapsed, it could send shockwaves across the global economy and trigger a major financial crisis.
• Scientists designed a solar panel that can produce electricity at night, creating a 24-hour source of green power. The team used a device called a thermoelectric generator that acts like a hydroelectric dam, producing electricity from the heat that flows from the warmer nighttime air to the cooler panel. This technology generates only a small amount of power, enough to light some LEDs or charge a cellphone. But it could be used by the roughly 1 billion people who are not on the grid, some of whom rely on solar but lack a source of nighttime electricity.

 

March 2022

• Solar and wind energy powered 10% of global electricity in 2021. This was a new milestone in the use of renewable sources, but coal use rose too. Still, all clean energy sources - such as solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, and bioenergy - generated 38% of the world’s electricity in 2021. It’s the first time renewables jumped ahead of coal, which accounted for 36% of global electricity generation in 2021.
• Governments rapidly upped investment in new energy sources in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which pushed up prices of oil and gas. In the UK, the government planned to change restrictive planning rules to allow for more wind farms to be built, with the business secretary calling clean energy “a matter of national security”. Italy approved new wind farms in efforts to become more self-sufficient in energy, while Germany announced plans to boost spending on renewables, as part of an “urgent investment in [its] energy sovereignty”.

 

February 2022

• Global energy deals and investment reached record highs in 2021. Funding grew 260% year-over-year as investors poured money into startups across sectors like renewable energy, oil and gas technology, energy storage, and more.
• European scientists claimed a major breakthrough in their quest to develop practical nuclear fusion - the energy process that powers the stars. The UK-based JET laboratory smashed its own world record for the amount of energy it could extract by squeezing together two forms of hydrogen. If nuclear fusion can be successfully recreated on Earth it holds out the potential of virtually unlimited supplies of low-carbon, low-radiation energy.
• Records were set in the energy sector in early 2022. The Joint European Torus (JET) was able to release 59 megajoules of energy for 5 seconds using a tokamak fusion reactor. This is double the previous record set by JET in 1997. For context, an average American home uses about 108 megajoules of energy per day.

 

January 2022

• Germany closed three of its remaining six nuclear power plants as it hastened its withdrawal from nuclear in favour of renewable sources of energy. Berlin decided to speed up its shift away from nuclear power after Japan's Fukushima disaster in 2011.

 

December 2021

• Wind became Spain's top energy source in 2021, accounting for 23.1 percent of the total energy mix and overtaking nuclear for the first time. Half of the country's energy now comes from renewable sources, which the government hoped would help bring down sky-high power prices.

 

November 2021

• Quartz noted that the global fuel ecosystem is slated to undergo significant change in the decades leading up to 2050:
  • By 2030, the cost of green hydrogen is projected to fall by 30%.
  • By 2040, the demand for energy storage is expected to grow to 10,000 gigawatt-hours, and the market could overtake the value of the oil market.
  • By 2050, green hydrogen could supply up to 20% of total global energy, and total biofuel demand could more than double, and power 40% of aircraft.
• Portugal became the fourth European country to stop burning coal to generate electricity. It invested heavily in green energy and joined Belgium, Sweden, and Austria in ditching coal, by far the biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

 

October 2021

• In a six month period of 2021, the price of a basket of oil, coal and gas soared by 95%. For The Economist, this was a reminder that modern life needs abundant energy: without it, bills become unaffordable, homes freeze and businesses stall. The panic exposed deeper problems as the world shifts to a cleaner energy system, including inadequate investment in renewables and some transition fossil fuels, rising geopolitical risks and flimsy safety buffers in power markets. Without rapid reforms there will be more energy crises and, perhaps, a popular revolt against climate policies, warned The Economist.

 

September 2021

• Lower-income nations will struggle to go green quickly. U.N. Development Programme chief Achim Steiner told a Devex panel it was “damn unfair” for lower-income countries to be penalised for developing gas power, adding that he was sympathetic to calls for a more “just transition.”

 

August 2021

• Renewables edged out coal for the first time in 2020, generating 21% of all US electricity compared to coal's 19%. Investment to startups in the renewable energy ecosystem also reached new heights in 2020, with investors eyeing companies in the power generation space in particular.
• In the US, the levelised cost of electricity generated by land-based wind declined by 40% between 2016 and 2020 (or the equivalent of 12% per annum), according to NREL.

 

July 2021

• The FT believes that energy is on the cusp of a new era and that the key elements of a climate revolution have been slotting into place behind the scenes.
• Forecasters suggest carbon prices will climb through 2030, even as countries chart their own emissions path. Researchers estimate putting the world on the path to net-zero emissions by 2050 means prices will need to exceed $100 per ton in major economies within a decade.

 

May 2021

• The International Energy Agency dramatically revised its forecast for solar and wind energy. The IEA now says that solar energy will offer “the cheapest electricity in history”, which will lead to a “new normal” with exceptional levels of ongoing deployment. Meanwhile. researchers at University College London explained why solar and other renewables are on this path.
• New fossil fuel projects should be abandoned if the world wants to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, the International Energy Agency warned in a new report. It's a big shift for the IEA, which environmental groups have long accused of underestimating the importance of renewable energy in the fight against climate change.
• However, the declining cost of renewable energy is accelerating political fissures between cities and national governments around the world. As cities seek to carve out more independence, some are securing their own power supply outside of the confines of national political dynamics, according to MIT Technology Review. 
• China’s carbon emissions grew at the fastest rate for more than a decade in the first quarter of 2021. 

 

March 2021

• GZERO Media argued that nuclear is greener than many people think. It's not renewable like solar or wind, but nuclear's direct carbon dioxide emissions output is zero. Over its lifecycle, a nuclear plant produces about the same volume of indirect emissions per unit of electricity (mainly to extract and process uranium, to build and operate the facilities, and store the waste) as wind, and one-third of solar. However, nuclear is also very expensive, and  unpopular. Generating electricity from nuclear now costs about $112-189 per megawatt hour, much more than solar ($36-44) and wind ($29-56). Also, while the total lifetime cost of building and running a plant has declined for solar and wind over the last decade, it has increased for nuclear, so poorer countries can't afford it.
• European companies will have to collectively cut carbon emissions in half over the next decade to limit global warming to 1.5°C by 2100, according to a report from non-profit CDP Europe and consultancy Oliver Wyman. The current climate plans of Europe’s 1,000 largest firms put the continent on track for a 2.7°C increase by the end of the century. Fewer than one in 10 businesses have a strategy that aligns with the Paris agreement. The report says banks can galvanise companies by rewarding ambitious firms with better lending terms.

 

February 2021

• A study released by researchers at Cambridge University estimates that bitcoin mining is responsible for more electricity use than Argentina. Indeed, if bitcoin were a country it would be in the top 30 energy consumers worldwide.

 

January 2021

• The International Energy Agency promised to publish a road map in May to help the global industry reach net-zero emissions by 2050, the IEA’s executive director told the FT. That long-term target will only be met if “decisive action” is taken over the next decade, while tracking progress and accountability will also play a key role, he warned.
• Energy-producing countries in the Middle East and North Africa faced a collapse in global energy demand in 2020 that left governments from Algeria to Iran with less cash flowing into their coffers as the pandemic sickened citizens and weakened economies. 2021 may be worse, because energy prices will remain low. Reforms will slow, and protests will grow.
• France’s central bank will start limiting fossil-fuel investments. By 2024, it will no longer invest in firms that generate revenue from coal, and divest from companies making more than 10% and 50% of revenue from oil and gas, respectively, reported Quartz.

 

December 2020

• About 90% of the new electricity generation added to the grid globally in 2020 was renewable energy, with the price for building solar hitting 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour. Clean energy will displace coal as the largest source by 2025, predicted Harvard Business Review.
• The Economist analysed coal, the main source of greenhouse gases. In America and Europe consumption has fallen by 34% since 2009. The International Energy Agency reckons that global coal use will never again surpass its pre-Covid peak. Yet coal still accounts for 27% of the raw energy used to power everything from cars to electric grids. More important, unlike natural gas and oil, it is concentrated carbon, and thus it accounts for  39% of annual emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels. If global emissions are to fall far enough, fast enough, the task now is to replicate the West’s success and repeat it in Asia. Technology will help. Solar farms and onshore wind are now the cheapest source of new electricity for at least two-thirds of the world’s population.

 

November 2020

• South Korea pledged that it will be carbon neutral by 2050, and will be spending $7 billion in order to get there. 95% of South Korea’s electricity comes from fossil fuels; part of the pledge includes phasing out nuclear power by 2060 too. Japan and China have made similar promises towards carbon neutrality.

 

October 2020

• Solar power is now the cheapest energy in history, according to the International Energy Agency. As a result the IEA forecast 43 per cent more new solar capacity worldwide by 2040 in 2020 than it did in 2018, and is talking up a solar-based path to 1.5 degrees of warming – as opposed to 2 degrees or more - see details. The IEA, which traditionally underestimated uptake of solar power, now sees a plausible path to global net zero carbon emissions by 2050 as long as we take full advantage of it. Solar panels have plummeted in price, largely because of China’s decision in 2010 to mass-produce them.
• China has 99 per cent of the world’s battery electric buses. As of 2019 it had more than 400,000 including 16,000 in Shenzhen alone. They’re starting to catch on elsewhere, including some of the smoggier parts of California and now also in the UK.

 

September 2020

• Global oil demand plummeted amid the pandemic, with BP warning that oil consumption may never return to its pre-pandemic peak. Similarly, OPEC said any recovery in demand would be longer than previously forecast. The drop (along with a falling price per barrel that preceded the pandemic) hit U.S. energy companies particularly hard, with Chevron and Exxon posting losses. The latter doubled down on oil and gas while rivals have invested in renewable energies, reported The Wall Street Journal -  a gamble when potentially facing climate change-related regulation.
• Indeed, oil fuelled the 20th century—its cars, its wars, its economy and its geopolitics. Now the world is in the midst of an energy shock that is speeding up the shift to a new order. As covid-19 struck the global economy earlier this year, demand for oil dropped by more than a fifth and prices collapsed. There have been oil slumps before, but this one is different. As the public, governments and investors wake up to climate change, the clean-energy industry is gaining momentum, noted The Economist. 
• China, the world's top producer of greenhouse gas emissions, pledged to become carbon-neutral by 2060. It's the first time that Beijing has made a concrete "net zero" carbon commitment, which will entail scaling up its (voluntary) national emissions cuts under the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
• Royal Dutch Shell said it planned to cut 7,000 to 9,000 jobs as it responds to challenges including the slump in oil demand amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The oil giant said the cuts would be implemented by 2022 and included 1,500 people who were taking voluntary redundancy. It gave no indication of where the job losses would happen. The move came months after it cut its dividend for the first time since World War Two.

 

August 2020

• The cost of electricity from a solar power plant has fallen 83% in the last decade.

 

July 2020

• After decades of investment, speculation, and slow advancement of renewable energy it appears that renewables are finally taking centre stage as competitive, reliable, and viable in many of the world’s largest economies. Although there are already some countries using 100% renewable energy, and many more approaching this feat, most in this group are low in population. However, some regions like parts of Brazil, Denmark, Canada, China, and Germany are proving that their populous, diverse economies can be supported by 100% renewables as well. 
• The 2010s decade saw 3x more investment in renewables than the previous 2000s decade. Solar, wind and hydro are becoming the cheapest option for new generation. Billions of tonnes of emissions could be avoided, helping to fight the climate crisis.
• Some, countries are doing more with with less energy. For most of the 20th century, there was a strong correlation between a country’s economic growth and its energy demands. But in the last two decades, for example, GDP has more than doubled in the US while electricity generation has barely budged, rising 40% since 1990. 
• Wind is free, so perhaps it was only a matter of time before wind power became genuinely cheap, argued Tortoise Media. The Carbon Brief blog said the era of negative wind power subsidies – in which wind farms pay the government over their lifetime rather than vice versa – is nearly upon us. Power from wind farms due to be built in 2020 alone in the UK, Germany and Denmark sold for €50-55 per kilowatt-hour, which is less than from all but the cheapest fossil fuel sources. 

 

June 2020

• The FT reported that Big Oil faces a future where it may not be so big, and may have less to do with oil. The industry has faced an increasingly uncertain future as climate change has moved to the forefront of the public’s consciousness. Investors, too, have stepped up their calls for action. Now the coronavirus pandemic, by radically cutting demand for oil and gas and giving governments the whip hand in directing the revival of their economies, looks likely to accelerate the long-term shift away from fossil fuels in many nations.
• An unusually mild winter, coupled with worldwide coronavirus-related economic shutdowns, have drastically reduced global demand for natural gas in recent months. The International Energy Agency said consumption would fall by 4 percent in 2020, the largest annual drop in history.
• Coronavirus’s impact on oil companies, from the biggest supermajors to small independent producers, was swift and devastating. In a matter of weeks, the world’s most valuable commodity had become practically impossible to sell. Is the crisis proof of the need to accelerate a transition away from fossil fuels, asked  Quartz in its field guide to the future of fossil fuels.

 

May 2020

• The International Energy Agency said that global industrial greenhouse emissions in 2020 would drop by 8 percent as a result of coronavirus-related quarantines, the largest one-year drop since World War Two.

 

April 2020

• More than 100 cities across the globe report that as much as 70% of their energy production now comes from renewables, and at least 40 cities and 158 companies committed to dial that up to 100%. Hundreds more—both cities and countries—pledged to move to renewable energy production. Even oil-rich Saudi Arabia is working on a detailed, long-term plan to help diversify its economy and move away from oil. Renewables will take on greater importance in the coming decade. The International Energy Agency projects renewables will account for about 40% of energy distributed through the global power grid by 2040. In the next five years, we should see faster growth in green tech than ever seen previously, according the Future Today Institute.
• Prices for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) a US crude oil benchmark went below zero in April 2020 for the first time in history. Coronavirus-lockdowns destroyed so much demand for oil that sellers were left with more oil than they can store, forcing them to pay buyers to take the stuff off their hands. The international oil benchmark, Brent, stayed in positive territory for the time being, in part because it is shipped primarily by tankers which can respond more flexibly to ups and downs in demand around the world.

 

February 2020

• Wind and solar provided 18 per cent of the EU’s electricity in 2019. In comparison, electricity generation from coal collapsed by 24 per cent in a single year, creating a 12 per cent fall in European power sector CO2 emissions, the biggest fall since at least 1990.

 

January 2020

• Batteries are on track to overtake fossil fuels as the primary way we power the world, but significant hurdles remain on the road to an all-electric future. Quartz analysed the history, science, and business behind batteries and looked inside the race to replace Big Oil.
• The European Union wants to attract $1.1 trillion of public and private money to support its ambitious plans to reach carbon neutrality over the next ten years. Some member states are also boosting the money they're spending to go green. Germany's government this week said it would spend up to 44 billion euros to offset the impact of abandoning coal as a power source by 2038.

 

September 2019

• China’s data centre industry consumed over 2 percent of the country’s power in 2018 and emitted as much carbon dioxide as 21 million cars on the road. Despite the growing push for renewables in China, the data centre industry continues to rely heavily on coal-fired power. 

 

June 2019

• Energy trackers at BloombergNEF estimated that a 62% increase in electricity demand over the next three decades will bring in $13.3 trillion in new investments by 2050, with $5.3 trillion going to wind and $4.2 trillion to solar. 

 

May 2019

• IMF research found that, globally, energy-related subsidies remained large at $5.2 trillion (6.5% GDP) as recently as in 2017. About three quarters of global subsidies are due to domestic factors - energy pricing reform thus remains largely in countries’ own national interest - while coal and petroleum together accounted for 85% of global subsidies. Efficient fossil fuel pricing in  would have lowered global carbon emissions by 28% and fossil fuel air pollution deaths by 46%, and increased government revenue by 3.8% of GDP.
• Nature further warned that energy is at the root of many political ructions. President Donald Trump’s intention to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement in 2020, the European Union’s restrictive policies against importing Chinese photovoltaic cells and the political hostility towards the school strikes over climate-change inaction are all reactions to attempts to shift the world to a low-carbon economy.

 

February 2019

• Energy systems around the world are going through rapid transitions that affect many aspects of our lives, said McKinsey. The continuation and acceleration of these shifts will bring important changes to the way we fuel our cars, heat our homes, and power our industries in the coming decades.

 

January 2019

• For the past 25 years, natural gas has played an increasingly important role in global electricity generation. Around 22% of the world’s electricity now comes from natural gas power plants, while the use of the fuel is predicted to rise by 45% globally by 2040.
• Arguing that it’s possible to bring electricity to the last billion and cut emissions. Quartz pointed to mini-grids made up of solar panels and cheap batteries that are helping remote people in Africa and Asia access some of the features of modern life.

 

December 2018

• According to the International Energy Agency, the world got nearly 25% of its electricity from renewables in 2017, and that number should jump to 30% within the next few years.
• In the energy industry, always-on transformation is rapidly becoming the default state. Few other industries contend with such a wide variety of shifting dynamics, including huge swings in the prices of natural resources, ever-changing government regulations, and new technologies that upend established models. In this environment, any company that wants to stay on top will have to continuously adapt its practices and portfolio to meet ever-shifting demands, claimed BCG.
• Less than 35 percent of the world’s electricity was generated from non-carbon sources, according to BP. In order for the world to produce all its electricity via renewables by 2050, the use of solar and wind power would have to increase massively each year between now and then.
• The share of global energy that came from renewables passed 10% in 2018.

 

November 2018

• The oil price plunged on fears of slower global demand in 2019. The American oil price suffered its longest losing streak - 12 straight days - since 1984. The price of the global benchmark, Brent crude, fell by 7% on November 13th to just below $65 a barrel. Prices stabilisedafter reports that producers were planning to discuss cutting output, noted The Economist.
• Most energy projects have long lives, noted EY. They are favoured by pension funds and other investors interested in long-term and stable returns. But ask which energy sources will be the main fuel source 30 years from now, and you will not get a definitive answer. For energy companies to diversify into low-carbon and renewable technologies and spread the risks of their portfolios; for them to innovate and discover new energy sources; for them to transition from large and lumbering to lean and flexible, they need serious amounts of risk-friendly financing.
• Saudi Arabia extracted by the end of 2018 a historic high of 11.2 million barrels of crude per day. The Saudi crude surge has contributed to a recent drop in global oil prices.

 

October 2018

• Quartz reported that the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development now says solar- and wind-power plants are cheaper to build than fossil-fuel plants, almost everywhere in the world, while the World Bank has vowed not to fund coal-power projects.
• Eni’s researchers are planning to eliminate the carbon dioxide produced by oil wells by transforming it into bio-oil (and then into vehicle fuel) using just solar energy and algae - read more.
• Further viewing:
  • Halcyon Future - Fuel

 

September 2018

• This summer, the United States became the world’s largest crude oil producer for the first time since 1973, according to the Energy Information Agency. EIA estimates that US crude oil production averaged 10.9 million barrels per day in August.
• Oil prices hit a four-year high. Brent crude continued its rise after crossing the $80 mark. The gains follow OPEC’s decision over the weekend to not increase production, as the oil market surged on fears of new US sanctions on Iran and continued production problems in Venezuela.
• The Kardashev scale, designed by astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev, was created to assess how advanced a civilisation is by taking into consideration multiple factors, including population growth, technology, and energy demands. The idea is that the more advanced the people are, the higher and more complex their energy usage will be.

 

August 2018

• While an international consensus on the need for a fast and orderly coal phase out is forming, exporters of coal and related technologies continue to hold hopes of a future market for coal in these countries. Chatham House warned that the risk is that despite the disruption that coal is facing in established markets, new coal supply and demand infrastructure continues to be developed, and that once in place, it will lock out cheaper and cleaner energy technologies.

 

July 2018

• The Global Innovation Index 2018 focused on the theme of ‘Energising the World with Innovation’. Energy demand is reaching unprecedented levels as a result of a growing world population, rapid urbanisation, and industrialisation. Higher levels of technological and non-technological innovation are required to meet this demand, both on the production side of the energy equation (alternative sources, smart grids, and new advanced energy storage technologies) and on the consumption side (smart cities, homes, and buildings; energy-efficient industries; and transport and future mobility). Innovation plays key roles in addressing both sides of that equation.

 

June 2018

• The huge oversupply in photovoltaic modules could result in price declines of 34% this year.

• Shaping Tomorrow noted that, since its robot's last look at energy futures in November 2017, oil prices have shifted upwards. The short-term, forward look contains a lot of energy -related uncertainties given increasing geopolitical and other national policy issues and these will have long-term effects too.

• The World Bank’s 2017 State of Electricity Access report emphasised that UN Sustainable Development Goals like health, education, food security, and employment are all largely dependent on consistent, reliable access to energy. For rural communities in Africa that lack electrical grids, the belief was that, in time, American-style grids would be built. But thanks to the rise of renewable energy, grids may not end up being as necessary. 

• For rural communities in Africa that lack electrical grids, the belief was that, in time, American-style grids would be built. But thanks to the rise of renewable energy, grids may not end up being as necessary. Startups like Off Grid Electricand Black Star Energy have made a business out of installing solar panels on private homes. 

• The way to reach the world’s climate goals is straightforward, believes Quartz: reduce our greenhouse-gas emissions to zero within the next few decades. But the energy technologies that can help us get there tend to need lots of money and long lead times to develop. 
• The costs of energy-storage systems are dropping too fast for inefficient players to hide. The winners in this market will be those that aggressively pursue and achieve operational improvements, argued McKinsey.
• Global oil prices rose to nearly US$80/barrel in late May, up by almost 20% compared with the start of 2018. A number of factors are behind this rapid growth, including efforts by OPEC and its allies to rein in crude production and rising geopolitical risks. But how far are prices likely to rise, asked the EIU?

 

May 2018

• Oil prices have risen 65% since last June, touching a four year high of $75 a barrel in April 2018. Three things are driving up prices, according to GZEROMedia: ongoing production restraint from Russia and Saudi Arabia, dwindling production in Venezuela and Libya, and the prospect that US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal will mean fresh sanctions on Iranian oil exports.

 

April 2018

• In April 2016, Britain went 55 hours without burning any coal, a new record.

 

January-March 2018

• Nearly 80% of our energy still comes from fossil fuels, a figure that hasn’t changed since the first Earth Day.
• In 2017-18, activist shareholders have forced fossil-fuel companies to reveal the risks to their investments from climate change.
• In the US, local governments have become stewards of the environment. The UK went 55 hours without burning coal, which hasn’t happened since before the Industrial Revolution, while Portugal produced more renewable energy in March than energy it consumed. Meanwhile, poor countries are investing billions more in renewable energy than rich ones.
• Forecasters keep revising electric-vehicles sales figures upwards. Even technologies that were considered fanciful, such as carbon capture, are making a comeback.
• The Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment report found that China, India and Brazil accounted for just over half of global investment in renewables excluding large hydro in 2017 with China alone representing 45%, up from 35% in 2016. Despite this, China bets heavily on coal abroad, with involvement in 240 coal-fired power projects in 25 countries of the Belt and Road. (Sources included Exponential View and Quartz.)