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Seduced Pt. II: Looking under Carbon Capture & Sequestration’s oily hood
Touted as a key component within many emerging national net-zero emissions strategies, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) received a huge credibility boost from several recent IPCC and IEA studies. But CCS’ greatest advantage is that it enables oil majors to have a market in an otherwise decarbonized economy. What it doesn’t do is stop the pollution stream. Framed as a climate solution, in fact...
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Just Transition in Greek Lignite Regions: The Clock’s Ticking
In September 2019, at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York, the newly-elected Prime minister Mitsotakis announced that Greece would phase out the use of lignite in its energy system by 2028, 10 years faster than Germany. Consequently, the National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) drafted by the previous SYRIZA-led government was revised to reflect this and other commitments before the plan was...
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Natural Gas is a Bridge to Nowhere
Natural gas has long been touted as the climate-friendly, carbon-low interim fuel in the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. And the recent fall in its price has made gas a go-to fuel for many countries, including Germany. But experts say this is no reason to build ever more pipelines or to see gas as anything more than another fossil fuel that must be...
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Seduced: Climate moderates worldwide are getting sold on big oil’s carbon capture fantasies
The last few months have seen a rivulet of announcements around proposed carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) plans. Long trumpeted by the fossil fuels industry and given a recent boost by the scientists at the EIA and IPCC, it has become a favored climate change solution by policymakers in the EU, Johnson’s UK and plays a key role in the new Biden Administration energy...
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Good riddance to 2020, but there was still cause for cheer
Given the flood of media we all experienced in 2020, in particular as we were stuck inside our homes, one of the challenges is finding and holding onto some of the good and positive developments in the stream. For his first blog post in 2021, our leader writer, L. Michael Buchsbaum reviews some of his energy transition highlights from 2020. This is by no...
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Vaca Muerta: Holding on to fracking subsidies instead of boosting the energy transition
The major shale oil and shale gas deposit Vaca Muerta (in English also: Dead Cow) covers a 30,000 square kilometers area located in three Argentinian provinces Neuquén, Mendoza and Rio Negro. According to the US Energy Information Administration, Vaca Muerta has a total of recoverable gas resources of 308 tcf (8.7 billion m3) and a recoverable oil and condensate of 16 billion barrels (2.5...
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Gender-Responsive Climate Policy as a chance for a Colombian coal phase-out?
The recent publication “Gender-Responsive Climate Policy – a Case Study of the Colombian Coal Sector” showed that climate policies must take gender into account not only to limit the destructiveness of the current climate crisis but also to achieve a just transformation of the Colombian coal sector. Kathrin Meyer explains the advantages of this approach and its international relevance.
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Europe to hit decarbonation target but has its energy rules changed much in Member States
Ten years after implementing EU rules to reduce carbon emissions by 20 percent, improve energy efficiency equally so and consume renewable energy by that same number, the European Commission will now look at the results from Member States (MS) implementing its 2009 Renewable Energy Directive (RED). The RED was supposed to establish “a common framework” to promote and use renewable energy. Crucially, the results...
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Coal collapse in Western Europe: Nations accelerate closure plans
We are all looking for some good news. Here’s some: coal is tanking globally, nowhere faster than in the EU including the UK. With over 8.3GW of generation capacity coming offline during the first half of the year, coal-fired energy has fallen by almost a third across Europe. Even better: at least another 6 GW of capacity is scheduled to shutter during the second...
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Free falling: Coal crashes throughout Trump’s America in 2020
Though Trump promised to save America’s coal industry, the latter appears to be in worse shape than ever. Over a dozen coal companies have filed for bankruptcy over the past two years and as investors pour resources into green energy instead, the U.S. Energy Information Agency now projects that renewables will overtake coal this year for the first time. However, cheap fracked gas is...
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