January 13, 2020 by David Chandler, via Energy Post Natural gas, because it’s low-carbon, is being used as a bridge fuel away from the old fossil fuel world. But there are two main problems. The infrastructure leaks methane (the main component of the gas) which is 25 times more potent than CO2 over a 100-year period (and 86 times over a 20-year period!). And, crucially, nobody is properly measuring those leaks. That means policy makers are growing the gas mix without knowing by how much it’s reducing emiss

January 29, 2020 by NREL, via Energy Post The costs of wind turbines is dropping. But that means all the other capital costs – site preparation, foundations, infrastructure, tower construction – will become a bigger part of the total. In the U.S. they currently account for around 30% of the capital expenditures needed to install a land-based wind plant. To keep those costs under control the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has created a comprehensive open-source

January 6, 2020 by David Victor, via Energy Post December’s COP25 in Madrid showed how difficult it is proving to get agreement between nations on how to ramp up the deep decarbonisation the world needs. David Victor at the University of California, San Diego, writing for Rocky Mountain Institute, accepts that international consensus is never going to be easy. Instead, he recommends that individual sectors take control of their destiny. His co-authored report “Accelerating The Low Carbon

December 19, 2019 by Sverre Alvik, via Energy Post We can’t afford the energy transition? Next time you hear that from someone, perhaps you can show them this. Sverre Alvik at DNV GL explains that, according to their latest Energy Transition Outlook, although annual global energy expenditure will have to increase from $4.6tn in 2017 to $5.5tn in 2050, its share of growing world GDP will almost halve from 3.6% to 1.9%. That’s because continuing energy efficiency gains are making sure that total global en