Mercury

Green and renewable energy markets are bringing power to millions with virtually no adverse environmental impacts, but before we can count on renewables for widespread reliability, one critical innovation must arrive: storage. Source: Is reliable energy storage on the horizon? In my previous posts I talked several times about storage, grid, system integration of variable renewable energies, and so on. However, I never shared non-technical articles where these issues are discussed in an accessible way for non-experts: I decided to…

Read More Read More

2017 was the third consecutive year of decline in global energy investment Source: World Energy Investment 2018: Key Findings The International Energy Agency (IEA) regularly releases very interesting reports on the global energy landscape. A new document was produced in the past days, this time focusing on energy investment. News is not good, actually. The following statement by Fatih Birol, IEA Executive Director, clearly summarizes the main outcome of the report: “The decline in global investment for renewables and energy…

Read More Read More

Latest five-year market forecast highlights deep transformations in natural gas markets Source: The gas industry’s future looks bright over next five years, according to IEA analysis Natural gas is notoriously the least CO2-emitting fuel among fossil fuels. For this reason, in the medium run it will likely drive the transition phase of the decarbonization of the energy system. It is more difficult to make a forecast for the long run, instead: models in fact show conflicting results because if it…

Read More Read More

Next edition includes special focus on electricity, producer economies, and the role of innovation Source: Preview of World Energy Outlook 2018 As I wrote in the previous posts, the World Energy Outlook released annually by the International Energy Agency (IEA) is the world most authoritative overview on the energy sector. The report is published in November, but in the past weeks the IEA anticipated some key topics that will be explored in depth in this year’s issue: so let us…

Read More Read More

At the 9th Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM9) meeting today, a new nuclear innovation partnership, called “Nuclear Innovation: Clean Energy Future (NICE Future), was announced under the leadership of the United States, Canada, and Japan. Source: Countries Launch a Nuclear Innovation Initiative under the Clean Energy Ministerial Is a new nuclear rise to come? The US, Canada, and Japan are leading an initiative that might be highly impacting on the future energy landscape: let us monitor how this will evolve. More…

Read More Read More

New IEA analysis shows urgent need to improve cooling efficiency as global energy demand for ACs to triple by 2050 Source: Air conditioning use emerges as one of the key drivers of global electricity-demand growth “The issue is particularly sensitive in the fastest-growing nations, with the biggest increase happening in hot countries like India – where the share of AC in peak electricity load could reach 45% in 2050, up from 10% today without action.” These figures are really impressive!…

Read More Read More

The world is not on track to meet the global energy targets for 2030 set as part of the Sustainable Development Goals Source: Progress on global energy goals slow, but strong gains in countries show promise In 2015, the United Nations launched the 2030 Agenda and its relevant Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with the aim of addressing the global socio-economic challenges over the following fifteen years. SDG7 is the goal referred to energy: ‘Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and…

Read More Read More

Source: Key Electricity Trends 2017, Key Oil Trends 2017, Key Natural Gas Trends 2017 At the beginning of the year, I had published a post regarding the trends in 2017 for coal as depicted by the International Energy Agency. In the past days the IEA released similar reports concerning the status of electricity, oil, and natural gas, so I thought it could be nice to share these documents in order to have a complete picture including all the main energy…

Read More Read More

Fossil fuels accounted for over 70% of the growth in world energy demand last year Source: Global energy demand grew by 2.1% in 2017, and carbon emissions rose for the first time since 2014 About one year ago, commenting on the trend in carbon dioxide emissions in a similar post in the News section, I wrote: “The stop in the global emissions growth appears consolidated at this point: now the goal is to reverse the growing trend of the past…

Read More Read More

Report launched today outlines how increasing share of renewables to 34% can boost economy, and help meet emission reductions goals. Source: EU Doubling Renewables by 2030 Positive for Economy, Key to Emission Reductions – IRENA The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has recently published a report titled “Renewable Energy Prospects for the European Union”. This is literally one of the tasks of my MERCURY project, so I will read it very carefully. In the meantime, the page that I linked to…

Read More Read More