The Next Prize: Geopolitical Stakes In The Clean Hydrogen Race
Yergin could not have picked a better title for the book not just because he was awarded a Pulitzer for it, but because he masterfully exposed how oil was a game of huge risks and monumental rewards. Today, judging by all the excitement, hydrogen seems well positioned to become the next great prize, a zero-carbon version of oil.
Hardly a week goes by without a government or a company announcing a new hydrogen plan or project. The enthusiasm for hydrogen is understandable: whether it is used in a fuel cell to produce electricity or burned in an engine to produce heat, the only ‘exhaust’ it creates is water vapor. As more and more governments commit to net-zero-emission targets by mid-century, hydrogen becomes an appealing energy carrier to decarbonize hard-to-electrify sectors, such as heavy industry and long-haul transport.
Global Energy Governance: Meeting The Challenge Of The Energy Transition
Feb 19, 2021 10:15:am
Summary Policymakers worldwide face the Herculean task of making the energy system more sustainable and climate friendly. While the world has seen other energy transitions, this one is different. In the past the world switched from one energy source (wood, coal, oil, electricity) to another, and the fuel switch was driven by major inventions (steam engine, combustion engine, light bulb).
by: Kirsten Westphal, Oxford Institute For Energy Studies (OIES)
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Global Energy Governance: Meeting The Challenge Of The Energy Transition
These transitions happened organically, reflecting technological life and innovation cycles and without too much concern about lock-in effects. This time, a whole range of new, climate-friendly energy sources and applications must be deployed, and this must happen rapidly.
ESJ Insight: On Energy Security With Dr. James Henderson
Feb 14, 2021 9:30:am
Summary
by: European Security Journal
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ESJ Insight: On Energy Security With Dr. James Henderson
In the middle of this is the Nordstream 2 pipeline, which is still seen as necessary to meet Europe’s demand for gas. The Russian oil and gas are essential for maintaining not just everyday needs like electricity and heat, but also for maintaining economic production and manufacturing.
Dr. James Henderson is the Director of the Natural Gas Programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, joins us to discuss the future of energy security in Europe, and the recent arrest of Alexei Navalny.
DUBAI: Saudi Arabia’s New Year “present” to global oil markets has had an electrifying effect on the price of Brent crude, the global benchmark. Since Jan. 5, when Prince Abdul Aziz bin Salman, the Kingdom’s energy minister, announced a surprise extra production cut of 1 million barrels per day (bpd), Brent is up around 15 percent.
It touched $60 a barrel on Feb. 8, a level Brent crude last saw back in early 2020, when the coronavirus crisis was still just a distant and uncertain speck on the horizon of the world economy.
The “present” as Alexander Novak, Russia’s deputy prime minister, called the unilateral Saudi cut was all the more valuable because it came at a time when new variants of the virus were emerging, the second wave of infections was raging, and more economies were going into some form of renewed lockdown, further dampening oil demand.
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The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (OIES) with the support of Enel Foundation organized a webinar on the theme “Electricity Networks in a Carbon-Neutral Economy: Challenges and Policy Implications”. The webinar was held in two different sessions, on November 18 and 25 at 12CET in both days, and focused on what impact will policies to achieve net zero carbon targets have on electricity networks in terms of role, operation, investment, competition and regulation.
Growing urgency over climate change has resulted in stringent decarbonization targets established by governments and scientific community. The European Green Deal aims to make Europe the world first climate-neutral continent by 2050 and a study held by Enel Foundation, Compass-Lexecon and Enerdata offers a fact-based analysis to assess how even more ambitious decarbonization objectives to achieve net zero emissions in 2050 can be reached in Europe both on the supply and demand side, evaluating the ro