All posts tagged: Electricity


EU Climate Law: business as usual or blueprint for climate action?

by Michael Davies-Venn
December 10, 2020

In what may seem a last ditch effort, the European Union has turned to the slow churning wheels of the law to stimulate climate action in 27 Member States (MS) towards a single goal: a carbon neutral Europe by 2050. European Commission (EC) president Ursula von der Leyen puts on a warm smile to say the text of the proposed European Union Climate Law is “actually rather short and it is rather simple.” We leave simplicity to constitutional lawyers, who may find “simple” an amusing word to describe a law with massive implications for national constitutions and EU treaties. Michael Davies-Venn has the story.

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Amidst coronavirus, conditions in South Africa are ideal to fast-track renewables

by Leonie Joubert
July 20, 2020

As the South African government prepares to inject a stimulus package equivalent to 10 per cent of its GDP into the economy to aid recovery from the coronavirus recession, energy analysts say the time is right to fast-track renewable energy. More than state-funded investment, though, this will need political will and policy that builds private-sector confidence. Leonie Joubert reports.

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Mexico’s strange corona response: putting a brake on energy transition

by Rebecca Bertram
June 15, 2020

Mexico’s government has had a bad corona run. The pandemic hit the country when the economy was already shrinking. But instead of profiting from the resulting drop in electricity demand of 9 percent in order to speed up the expansion of renewables and the much needed modernization of his country’s energy sector, President Lopez Obrador – widely referred to as AMLO – is instead sticking to the country’s outdated and failing CO2-heavy energy system. Rebecca Bertram takes a look.

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Will Coronavirus Improve Poland’s Chances of Meeting Its 2020 RES Target?

by Agata Skrzypczyk
April 27, 2020

For the last two weeks of March, while Poland was experiencing the difficulties created by Covid-19, electricity demand dropped by as much as 8.5 percent. This drop has effectively increased the share of renewable energy sources within the national energy mix. How will the crisis provoked by the new virus affect Poland’s energy and climate policy? Will changes in the energy market make it possible to meet the EU’s 2020 renewable energy targets on the home straight? Agata Skrzypczyk takes a look behind the scenes.

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Renewables: The End of Energy Globalization?

by Energiewende Team
April 22, 2020

Over the last two centuries, energy trade has become increasingly global. Where wood was found and used locally, coal was mined and transported nationally, and oil emerged as a global commodity. Natural gas is also moving from regional markets to the global shipping of LNG. The same holds for energy demand, which is growing and shifting Southward, away from traditional OECD markets, to China, India, South-East Asia and Africa, as the International Energy Agency (IEA) confirms in its findings. Renewable energy harbors a number of characteristics that could potentially end this trend of increasingly global energy trade. Just Voskuyl and Daniel Scholten take a critical look at the bigger picture.

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Bleak prospects for an energy giant

by Rebecca Bertram
March 9, 2020

Venezuela has been facing political deadlock since its controversial President Maduro first came to power in 2013 following the death of his predecessor Chávez. International media reports have highlighted the crisis by pointing to the country’s hyperinflation, government pressure and shortages of food and medicine. These have indeed had a devastating effect on the country’s population, and since 2015, an estimated 4 million people have fled the country. Rebecca Bertram reports

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