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Tag Archives: energy matters
European Floods and Fake Science
European Floods and Fake Science I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago targeting the BBC for biased reporting on energy and climate issues. It was never published because in writing it I realised that the the problem did not necessarily lie with the BBC but with the climate science fraternity. Another alarmist article […]
European Gas Security 2017
European Gas Security 2017 On 22nd June, The Telegraph published an interesting article called Germany’s gas pact with Putin’s Russia endangers Atlantic alliance where Ambrose Evans-Pritchard made many of the correct observations but also managed to make some odd comments too. The article focussed on proposals to build Nord Stream II that would pipe more Russian […]
Blowout Week 172
Blowout Week 172 In this week’s Blowout we return to Brexit and its impacts. It is now reported that following Brexit the UK will “scale down its concern over climate change” and scrap the EU’s 15%-of-total-energy-from-renewables-by-2020 target. Can outright repeal of the 2008 Climate Change Act be far behind? Telegraph: Britain preparing to scrap EU […]
The dream of 100% renewables assessed by Heard et al
The dream of 100% renewables assessed by Heard et al Posted on April 12, 2017 by Before the world can transition from fossil fuels to 100% renewables it must come up with a transition plan that has some realistic chance of working. So far Energy Matters has evaluated a few such plans, including ADEME and […]
Blowout Week 167
Blowout Week 167 There are some people you just can’t hold down. One of them is Elon Musk, who has offered to solve South Australia’s grid problems within a hundred days by installing Tesla utility-scale batteries and not to send a bill if the fix doesn’t work, thereby displaying true confidence in the future of […]
Oil Production Vital Statistics February 2017
Oil Production Vital Statistics February 2017 Joint post with Neil Mearns who made all the graphs (CV for Neil). January was the month that OPEC was supposed to reduce production by 1.2 Mbpd and Russia + others were supposed to cut a further 0.6 Mbpd. Now that the January production data are in we can see that […]
The causes of the recent decrease in US greenhouse gas emissions
The causes of the recent decrease in US greenhouse gas emissions Since their peak in 2007 GHG emissions in the USA have decreased more in absolute terms than in any other country. The results of this review suggest that approximately 40% of this decrease was caused by the replacement of coal with gas in generating […]
Blackout
Blackout Last week I gave a talk at The Scottish Oil Club in Edinburgh that was well received. The slide deck can be down loaded here. Since then we have been on high blackout alert since the UK weather has turned cold, wet and snowy with little wind at times. And there are 20 nuclear power stations […]
Emissions reductions and world energy demand growth
Emissions reductions and world energy demand growth A major obstacle to cutting global CO2 emissions is growth in world energy demand. In this post I examine world energy growth projections from a number of different sources and compare them with the growth trends that will be necessary to meet emissions reductions goals. It goes without saying […]
The Age and Future Size of the Global Nuclear Fleet
The Age and Future Size of the Global Nuclear Fleet This is the last in my mini-series on global nuclear power. There are 441 reactors operational world wide today with an average age of 29.3 years. The current fleet is ageing. The oldest reactors in service today are 47 years old. By assuming that reactors […]
Blackout California
Blackout California The shutdown of the leaking Aliso Canyon underground gas storage facility has caused a loss of about 70bcf of stored gas that Southern California utilities have historically counted on to see them through the hot, high-demand summer months. The California Independent Service Operator (CAISO), which manages the California grid, estimates that as a […]
More revelations on Venezuela’s “drought” and the Guri Dam
More revelations on Venezuela’s “drought” and the Guri Dam Just when I thought my recent post on the Venezuela drought was dead and buried a comment appeared. It was posted by Miguel Octavio, a physicist by training who lives in Miami but who visits Venezuela frequently, and it linked to a follow-up post on Miguel’s blog that contained a […]
Drought, El Niño, Blackouts and Venezuela
Drought, El Niño, Blackouts and Venezuela It’s fashionable these days to blame everything that goes wrong with anything on human interference with the climate, and we had yet another example last week when President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela fingered drought, El Niño and global warming as the reasons Venezuela’s lights keep going out. In this […]
Bond Cycles and the Role of The Sun in Shaping Climate
Bond Cycles and the Role of The Sun in Shaping Climate Bond cycles are defined by petrological tracers from core samples in the N Atlantic that link to the pattern of drift ice distribution. They provide a record of shifting ocean currents and winds, in particular periodic weakening of the North Atlantic current and strengthening of […]
Is large-scale energy storage dead?
Is large-scale energy storage dead? Many countries have committed to filling large percentages of their future electricity demand with intermittent renewable energy, and to do so they will need long-term energy storage in the terawatt-hours range. But the modules they are now installing store only megawatt-hours of energy. Why are they doing this? This post […]
