analysis
Danielle Lane, Head of Stakeholder & Regulatory Affairs at DONG Energy UK, outlines the shortcomings in the Energy Bill and explains how offshore wind could achieve price parity with gas and nuclear by 2020.
Ensuring a reliable, economically viable and environment-friendly energy supply is one of the great challenges of the 21st century. In 2011 Germany embarked on an ambitious programme to transform its energy system. In future, Germany’s energy supply will be generated primarily from renewables.
Shale gas you say? Where they drill underground to break up (‘frack’) the rocks, and get gas out? Well, we’ve all seen those less than comforting pictures coming out of the States, where it turns out that not everyone is thrilled about it (as a quick google will reveal).
What will it look like if we start doing it here?
Renaissance Hotel, Brussels. 25 September 2012. Twenty-four hours until a key vote next door at the European Parliament on how to regulate energy markets. Eighty suited and booted delegates, including a swathe of EC officials and MEPs who will take part in the ballot, lean back in their plush seats as the Shell lobbying machine cranks into gear.
Are your bills going to go up by £600 by 2020 (and dizzying incalculable amounts thereafter) to pay for renewable energy?
The tar sands of Canada had been the “almost” story of the global oil industry for decades, but the economics and technical challenges of turning a semi solid bitumen into a petrol and diesel prevented – until the last decade – the rapid expansion of one the biggest fossil fuel reserves on the planet.
Europe’s energy markets are in chaos. With Ofgem carrying out an investigation in the UK into the way the price of gas is set the European Commission (EC) has raided the offices of Shell, BP, Statoil and Platts as part of an investigation into rigging of the oil price.
As is too often the case in climate and energy issues, the real story is revealed by low-key documents not by up front debate.
In the next few days, and for the first time in human history, the concentration of CO2 in theatmosphere will hit 400 parts per million (ppm), a level long seen as critical in measuring the damagedone to the earth by man-made pollution.
