South Korea is jeopardizing its ability to meet its 2030 methane reduction target under the Global Methane Pledge due to the country’s plans to massively expand fossil-based hydrogen, according to a recent study by Seoul-based Solutions for Our Climate (SFOC) led by legal, economic, financial, and environmental experts with experience in energy and climate policy. Jinny Kim explains.
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Africans taking the bull by the horn to Sharm El Shiekh
Africa will host international climate talks on 6-18 November 2022 and the African Union has been busy trying to get the rest of the world’s attention on the continent’s expectations in the lead up to COP27. Of course, COP27 expectations are matched only by their disappointments. However, Africans are not leaving the fate of its people to chance. Climate negotiations are not helped by the fact that trust remains low, after developed countries’ failure to come up with a climate finance obligation. At the last COP26, Africans were sent home with a Delivery Plan to a promise made more than a decade ago.
Colombia’s first ever left-green government shakes up nation’s energy sector
It was unthinkable that a leftist government could ever take office in Colombia – and then this summer it happened. Historically power has been held by the nation’s upper classes who used state violence to terrorize unions, minorities, indigenous groups and social reformers. But running on a platform promising a government dedicated towards waging civil peace and ensuring social and environmental justice, in June the progressive former senator and Bogotá mayor, Gustavo Petro and his running mate, the Afro-Colombian environmentalist, Francia Márquez, prevailed. As lead blogger and podcaster Michael Buchsbaum writes in this part of the Colombian Conundrum series, immediately topping Pedro’s agenda is re-writing regulations so the whole population can benefit from fossil fuel industry profits.
Colombian coal connections: German MEP Kathrin Henneberger works to phase it out on both sides of the Atlantic
After a year serving in Germany’s Bundestag, the climate-champion and Green MEP Kathrin Henneberger now finds herself struggling to defend the progress made by her predecessors. In response to Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz personally calling Colombia’s then president, Iván Duque to increase coal exports, despite well-known human rights violations associated with mining there, Henneberger traveled to the Latin American nation to tour its fossil fuel producing regions. Once there she immediately began forging ties with Colombia’s incoming leftist government, the first in its history, with the intent on forming a new climate alliance aimed at jointly phasing out coal production and burning in both nations. But back home, she remains committed to reducing coal dependency and preventing the destruction of villages around the edges of Germany’s still expanding mines.
What follows is the second part of an edited interview between her and lead blogger, Michael Buchsbaum. Listeners can enjoy a longer version in a companion podcast.
What’s the Next Big Thing in Energy Storage?
Energy storage becomes all the more indispensable to carbon-neutral transitions, the more wind and solar power enter the energy mix: to absorb excess supply and balance the grid at times of high demand. But there’s more than pumped hydro and batteries out there. Paul Hockenos with an overview on current and new energy storage options.
Local Energy Scotland: Generating Energy for the Community
Edinburgh, Scotland. On the rocky western coast of the remote Scottish island of North Uist, a link in the Outer Hebrides archipelago, loom two 250-foot-tall (76 meter) onshore wind turbines with a generation capacity of 1.8 MW that ceaselessly churn in the North Atlantic Ocean breeze. Paul Hockenos reports.
Russia’s war does not require returning to energy colonialism in Colombia
Elected to Germany’s Bundestag a year ago, Kathrin Henneberger entered Parliament on a clear mandate from Green Party voters to accelerate coal’s domestic phase out and speed up the energy transition. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed the narrative. When word leaked that, despite well-known human rights violations in Colombia, Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz had personally called then-president, Iván Duque, to ask if the Latin American country could increase coal exports to Europe and replace sanctioned Russian supplies, Henneberger was outraged. This summer she traveled to Colombia’s coal and oil producing regions, visited front line communities and met with impacted residents. She also took this opportunity to meet members of Colombia’s incoming leftist government, the first in its history, with the goal of forging a new climate alliance. What follows is part one of an edited excerpt of an interview she gave with lead blogger and podcaster, Michael Buchsbaum.
Note: listeners can enjoy a longer version in an upcoming podcast.
Colombian Conundrum: Cleaner energy or green extractivism poses another challenge for nation’s 1st Left-Green government
Battered by decades of bloody civil war, energy and resource development remain major flash points. But record fossil fuel market prices present a difficult choice for Colombia’s new environmental and social-justice oriented president, Gustavo Petro. Increasing production risks the nation’s fragile peace. But not taking advantage of the revenue, they risk economic collapse. Enjoying excellent wind and solar potential, new internationally funded projects are under construction nationwide. But often sited within the ancestral territories of indigenous peoples, development is happening in ways far too similar to how coal companies have long exploited these same regions. In the third part of a series focusing on Colombia, lead blogger and podcaster, Michael Buchsbaum, reviews the dilemma facing Petro’s government as they take office.
Will Dirty Nationalism Become the New Normal?
When I arrived in Berlin in August 2018, it was impossible to guess how different the world we are living in today would look compared to the summer four years ago. I had just started to work as a research assistant at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs – Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) in a project called the “Geopolitics of the Global Energy Transformation”. Building on two scenario workshops and deep-dive discussions with experts from all over the world, the key motivation back then was to better understand where the moving target of the global energy transformation is getting us and what geopolitics have to do with it. This resulted in four different scenarios published in a seminal Nature article in May 2019 with starkly contrasting realities. The point was not to exercise sophisticated crystal ball gazing, but rather to reflect on a deeper, more structural level, and paint the energy world of the future (2030) on a decidedly geopolitical canvas.
Colombian Conundrum: Banning Russian fossil fuels ups global demand for blood coal
Responding to sanctions leveled on Russia following its February invasion of Ukraine, Moscow throttled deliveries of its fossil gas to the European Union. Desperate to keep the lights on, regulators and power producers returned to coal. But with Russia mining almost 70% of EU imports, burners needed other suppliers. Despite widely acknowledged human rights abuses there, in early April, German Chancellor Scholz personally called president Iván Duque to request that Colombian miners ramp up production and exports to Europe. However in elections this summer Colombians voters swept in the nation’s first ever leftist government. The second in a series on this Latin American nation, lead blogger and podcaster, Michael Buchsbaum briefly reviews its struggles with coal and the situation Gustavo Petro’s environmentally focused administration faces.