16 Apr in 5:00 Eurasianet
Central Asia’s vast green energy potential is beginning to attract international suitors. With the know-how and the financing, next-door China is primed to take advantage. But is it interested? “It sounds like a cliché that one might hear about many places in the world, but Central Asia’s potential for renewable energy is truly huge and underutilized,” Indra Overland of the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs told
Eurasianet. “However, so far, developments have been very slow.”
Hydropower is the dominant renewable source in Central Asia. But hydropower can rouse cross-border tensions. It is also criticized for its environmental impact. Another resource Central Asia has in abundance is sunshine. With the region’s ample free space, solar and wind – which currently contribute negligible power – appear an attractive way to ease outages, energy poverty, and emissions.
News
While Joe Biden looks set to double America’s emissions reduction target at a meeting of world leaders next week, Australia’s ‘gas-fired recovery’ sees it increasingly isolated.
By
Mike Seccombe.
US president Joe Biden.
Credit: Joshua Roberts / Getty Images
Just months after the Coalition dumped Malcolm Turnbull, the new prime minister, Scott Morrison, went on Sydney radio to pour scorn on international efforts to prevent catastrophic global warming.
It was October 8, 2018, and a new report had just come out from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, saying nations must greatly increase their efforts if the world were to avoid warming of 1.5 degrees.
Fossil Fuel Companies’ Tough Sell: Oil and Gas Sites With Costly Environmental Clean-up
The total cost of decommission offshore oil wells around the world is expected to be over $100 billion by 2030.
Analysis
Image: The Birds! Platform Holly, offshore from Goleta. Credit: Glenn Beltz (CC BY 2.0)
Last year was rough for major oil companies. BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Total suffered a combined $77 billion in losses for 2020. And now, as Reuters reports, many are trying to sell-off “dozens of oil and gas fields and refineries worth more than $110 billion to curb both their ballooning debt and their carbon footprints.”
Typically, when major oil companies decide to sell off assets, they like to make a “clean-break”. Meaning the new buyers are the ones to not only take on the management of these assets but also all associated decommissioning costs and environmental liabilities when the assets reach the end of their economic life.
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