China’s Bold Energy Vision

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is Director of Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Development and of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. His books include The End of Poverty, Common Wealth, The Age of Sustainable Development, and, most recently, Building the New American Economy.

Apr 2, 2018 Jeffrey D. Sachs, Project Syndicate

China’s proposed Global Energy Interconnection – based on renewables, ultra-high-voltage transmission, and an AI-powered smart grid – represents the boldest global initiative by any government to achieve the goals of the Paris climate agreement. It is a strategy fit for the scale of the most important challenge the world faces today.

BEIJING – The boldest plan to achieve the targets set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement comes from China. The Paris accord commits the world’s governments to keeping global warming to well below 2º Celsius (3.6º Fahrenheit) relative to the pre-industrial level. This can be accomplished mainly by shifting the world’s primary energy sources from carbon-based fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) to zero-carbon, renewable (wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, ocean, biomass), and nuclear energy by the year 2050. China’s Global Energy Interconnection (GEI) offers a breathtaking vision of how to achieve this energy transformation.

Few governments appreciate the scale of this transformation. Climate scientists speak of the “carbon budget” – the total amount of carbon dioxide that humanity can emit in the coming years while still keeping global warming to under 2º. Current estimates put the mid-point estimate of the world’s carbon budget at around 600 billion tons. Humanity currently emits around 40 billion tons of CO₂ per year, implying that the world has only until mid-century or even sooner to phase out fossil fuels and move entirely to zero-emission sources of primary energy.

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Making finance serve the energy transition

 Zur Info. Vor dem Hintergrund der Diskussion in Deutschland rund um den Hub for Sustainable Finance (H4SF) und die Empfehlungen der High Lebel Expert Group (HLEG) der Europäischen Kommission gibt es nun wieder eine Diskussion zur Rolle (und den beschränkten Fähigkeiten) der Finanzwirtschaft in Bezug auf die Finanzierung der Energiewende: http://www.finance-watch.org/hot-topics/blog/1497-finance-energy-transition Der Autor des Artikels arbeitet bei der französischen Caritas.Wer mehr zu den Empfehlungen der HLEG wissen möchte: wir haben bei CRIC die Empfehlungen der HLEG kommentiert (siehe hier) und ein Dossier zu den wichtigsten Dokumenten, Stellungnahmen und Texten erstellt (siehe hier). (KG)

Date published: 5 January 2018, Finance Watch

Grégoire Niaudet from our member Caritas France offers this ambitious overview of available sustainable finance policy tools. The original publication can be found in English and in French on Caritas‘ website.

Key energy transition data

It is estimated that US$6,200 billion per year will be needed worldwide through to 2030, two thirds of it for developing countries, for the adaptation of their production, consumption and transportation systems.

Between US$140 billion and US$300 billion per year will be needed through to 2030, and US$280 to US$500 per year through to 2050, to help vulnerable countries deal with the consequences of climate change.

Key financial sector data

For Europe, Trump Is a Blessing in Disguise

Date: 20-02-2018
Source: The Wall Street Journal By Walter Russell Mead

His policies promote energy independence and balance between France and Germany.

French president Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The Trump administration is turning out to be a blessing in disguise for the European Union. While many of the president’s rhetorical statements offend European sensibilities, and while dramatic acts like the withdrawal from the Paris climate accord prompt talk of a “crisis” in trans-Atlantic relations, the actual consequences of the administration’s policies are shoring up Europe’s foundations in surprising ways.

A year ago, fears that an allegedly pro-Russia Trump administration would ditch the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and throw Europe to the wolves had delicate Europeans trembling. These days those fears seem quaint. But few in Europe have yet grasped how anti-Russian and pro-European the Trump foreign policy is at its core.

This is partly because European reflexes, especially German ones, are so often nonstrategic. Fine words and noble resolutions are mistaken for hard facts, and the wrapping paper matters more than the gift.

Mehr Strom für Bitcoin als für Häuser

orf.on, 12/2/2018

Initiative für Besteuerung

Indien, China, Russland und Südkorea haben bereits angekündigt, den Handel mit Kryptowährungen wie Bitcoin zu beschränken oder gar zu verbieten. In Island droht den Bitcoin-Schürfern, die via geballte Computerpower gezielt Bictoin erschaffen, dagegen Ungemach der anderen Art.

Denn Island hat sich in den letzten Monaten zu einem wahren Hub für die Kryptowährungsindustrie entwickelt. Das hat zur Folge, dass laut Nachrichtenagentur AP in Island heuer wohl erstmals mehr Strom für die energieintensive Gewinnung von Bitcoin und Co. verbraucht werden wird als für alle Haushalte des Inselstaates zusammen.

Dass Island ein logisches Ziel für die Industrie ist, liegt eigentlich auf der Hand: Es gibt auf der Insel erneuerbare Energie in Hülle und Fülle – dank Geothermie- und Wasserkraftwerken. Zudem sorgt das kalte Klima dafür, dass die Kühlkosten für die Serveranlagen der Kryptomining-Firmen besonders niedrig sind.

Germany’s Transition from Coal to Renewables Offers Lessons for the World

Date: 06-09-2017
Source: Scientific American

How to retrain coal miners and create new jobs

August 1, 2017—Seventy-seven-year-old Heinz Spahn—whose blue eyes are both twinkling and stern—vividly recalls his younger days. The Zollverein coal mine, where he worked in the area of Essen, Germany, was so clogged with coal dust, he remembers, that people would stir up a black cloud whenever they moved. “It was no pony farm,” he says—using the sardonic German phrase to describe the harsh conditions: The roar of machines was at a constant 110 decibels, and the men were nicknamed waschbär, or “raccoons,” for the black smudges that permanently adorned their faces.

Today, the scene at Zollverein is very different. Inside the coal washery where Spahn once worked—the largest building in the Zollverein mining complex—the air is clean, and its up to 8,000 miners have been replaced by one-and-a-half million tourists annually. The whole complex is now a UNESCO world heritage site: Spahn, who worked here as a fusion welder until the mine shut down on December 23, 1986, is employed as a guide to teach tourists about its history. “I know this building in and out. I know every screw,” he says fondly.

The Big Name in Coal’s Resurgence: China

Date: 28-08-2017
Source: The Wall Street Journal

American coal producers filling voids created by overseas producers shifting exports to China

China’s reemergence as a coal importer has boosted the fortunes of U.S. producers who are now shipping more coal abroad than any time in the last two years.

The trend has helped solidify a business that at the beginning of last year was suffering through a spate of bankruptcies and threatened with more. Revenue at publicly traded U.S. coal companies grew 19% in the first half of this year compared with the same period a year ago, and the biggest gains came at companies helped the most by exports, according to data compiled by Doyle Trading Consultants, a coal-market-analysis firm.

That growth comes at a time when President Donald Trump has vowed to end a long decline in the U.S. coal business. Hundreds of mines have closed in recent years largely because of increasing competition from other fuels, and the Trump administration has pushed to cut regulations that make coal even less competitive.

Nuclear energy: Atomic power stations out at sea may be better than inland ones

Date: 10-08-2017
Source: The Economist

Floating reactors are on their way. Submarine ones may follow

AFTER the events of March 11th 2011, when an earthquake and tsunami led to a meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant in Japan, you might be forgiven for concluding that atomic power and seawater don’t mix. Many engineers, though, do not agree. They would like to see more seawater involved, not less. In fact, they have plans to site nuclear power plants in the ocean rather than on land—either floating on the surface or moored beneath it.

At first, this sounds a mad idea. It is not. Land-based power stations are bespoke structures, built by the techniques of civil engineering, in which each is slightly different and teams of specialists come and go according to the phase of the project. Marine stations, by contrast, could be mass-produced in factories using, if not the techniques of the assembly line, then at least those of the shipyard, with crews constantly employed.

Alphabet Sees Power in Molten Salt, a New Moonshot

Date: 01-08-2017
Source: The Wall Street Journal

Google parent developed plans to store electricity from solar panels or wind turbines as thermal energy in hot salt and cold liquids, such as antifreeze

X engineers work on designs for an energy system that stores electricity as thermal energy in high-temperature molten salt and a low-temperature liquid. X is a “moonshot” research and development lab under Google’s parent, Alphabet.

Google parent Alphabet Inc. is pitching an idea to store power from renewable energy in tanks of molten salt and cold liquid, an example of the tech giant trying to marry its far-reaching ambitions with business demand.

Alphabet’s research lab, dubbed X, said Monday that it has developed plans to store electricity generated from solar panels or wind turbines as thermal energy in hot salt and cold liquids, such as antifreeze. The lab is seeking partners in the energy industry, including power-plant developers and utilities, to build a prototype to plug into the electrical grid.

The Next Energy Revolution

Date: 23-07-2017
Source: Foreign Affairs By David G. Victor and Kassia Yanosek

The Promise and Peril of High-Tech Innovation

The technology revolution has transformed one industry after another, from retail to manufacturing to transportation. Its most far-reaching effects, however, may be playing out in the unlikeliest of places: the traditional industries of oil, gas, and electricity.

Over the past decade, innovation has upended the energy industry. First came the shale revolution. Starting around 2005, companies began to unlock massive new supplies of natural gas, and then oil, from shale basins, thanks to two new technologies: horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (or fracking). Engineers worked out how to drill shafts vertically and then turn their drills sideways to travel along a shale seam; they then blasted the shale with high-pressure water, sand, and chemicals to pry open the rock and allow the hydrocarbons to flow. These technologies have helped drive oil prices down from an all-time high of $145 per barrel in July 2008 to less than a third of that today, and supply has become much more responsive to market conditions, undercutting the ability of OPEC, a group of the world’s major oil-exporting nations, to influence global oil prices.

Transformative Changes in World Energy Production and Trade

By Thomas Grennes on July 16, 2017   RGE EconoMonitor

Major changes in oil production have transformed the US from a major importer to a major producer and sometime exporter of oil. The market power of OPEC and its non-member collaborators has been weakened (Libya and Nigeria have been exempted from current quotas). In addition to new sources of oil production, we are now hearing increasingly about limits to oil demand and when the peak oil DEMAND will be reached (Bloomberg). Increased production and trade in natural gas and growth in renewables decrease the demand for oil. The timing of peak oil demand will depend on improvements in batteries that power electric cars (Covert et al). Although batteries continue to limit the range of electric cars, auto producers, such as Volvo have recently made major commitments to introduce electric models. Volvo will phase out gas cars and go all electric or hybrid by 2019 (Wall Street Journal 2017a). India has announced that the nation will go all electric for new car sales by 2030(CNN). The result of fast growth in oil supply and slower growth in demand has been persistently low oil prices since December 2014.

US OIL PRODUCTION AND EXPORTS