europe

garbage or energy?

Norway, along with many other northern European countries, has built a network of co-generation plants that produce heat and electricity from recycled waste.[read more]

With an allowance surplus building up in the EU ETS and a resulting low carbon price, the urgent need for commercial deployment of CCS has diminished. Furthermore, with natural gas availability growing and renewable energy becoming a sizable factor in the EU electricity mix, it may be well into the 2020s before large scale deployment of CCS is necessary.[read more]

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Over the last five years the EU has put great effort into promoting CCS. The Commission has led this, creating a legislative framework for the technology to exist in the field. With such an effort and so much political capital spent, one would expect to see a burgeoning CCS industry, or at least the beginnings of it, appearing across the EU. Unfortunately this is not the case.[read more]

  European energy companies have come together to call for 2030 targets in emissions reductions, alternative energy and energy efficiency.    Formed by Acciona (Spain), DONG Energy (Denmark), EDP (Portugal), Eneco (the Netherlands), EWE (Germany), Public Power Corporation (Greece), Sorgenia (Italy) and SSE (UK), the...[read more]

A worrying trend is occurring as wholesale energy prices are on the rise again. In fact this time the wholesale prices for gas and electricity have reached a 6 year high. The London stock market has shown an increase of 28% taking it up to $520 per 1000 cubic metres. The sharp increase in gas prices has been caused by the rapid onset of...[read more]

As the sovereign debt crisis unfolds in Europe, onlookers have questioned whether the region will stay committed to renewable energy. The answer so far is “yes.” Even with a few countries pulling back on government support of the industry because of fiscal troubles, 2011 was still a huge year for deployment.[read more]

A pair of items in today's Financial Times could signal a longer run of high oil prices, even if Europe were to slip into recession and economic growth elsewhere slow. Geoffrey Styles explains how the combination of Saudi Arabia's increase of its target oil price and Venezuela's volatile leader will affect long run oil prices.[read more]

With the forward supply-demand picture of the EU ETS looking long and the prospect of low prices for the foreseeable future, what steps might be taken to address this? Certainly if nothing is done, the trading system will not drive the development of technologies such as carbon capture and storage, critical for the much deeper reductions to come in the 2020s and beyond.[read more]

Last Saturday (August 27, 2011) The Times featured the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) on its front page. Carbon markets are becomingly increasingly important and should appear in the mainstream media, but it’s also important that the media provide accurate context to fully explain often complex issues to the public. This particular story suggested that the EU ETS was being manipulated by power companies, enabling them to pass on to their consumers the full cost of carbon on the allowances that they are granted for free.[read more]

One of the big issues that has been debated in the EU since before the ink was even dry on the 2008/2009 Energy and Climate package (EU ETS Directive, CCS Directive, Renewable Fuel Directive etc.) is whether the EU emission reduction target should be adjusted up to 30% from the base 20% originally agreed. Formally, the shift to a 30% target is linked to the nature of an international agreement on climate change. However, there is now a case for rethinking this approach.[read more]

Why would a reauthorization bill for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have anything to say about the steps that Europe is taking to reduce carbon pollution from aviation?  The answer should be nothing.  But unfortunately the US Senate is considering language passed by the House of Representatives that would signal...[read more]

 As one of Europe’s largest production and research site, the Industriepark Höchst, (in Frankfurt Germany) is home to 90+ companies in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, basic and specialty chemicals, crop protection, food additives and services.The waste water these companies generate is treated in a double stage biological treatment...[read more]

The reason that oil company profits are so volatile is that sometimes the price of oil becomes pretty disconnected from the cost to produce it and convert it into finished products. This is because oil is a globally traded commodity, and like other commodities such as corn, iron, and pork bellies, the price is set by how much people are...[read more]

The move towards CSP yield optimisation has a number of causes and a number of solutions – and the opportunity now exists to give the technology long-term viability.  In the build-up to the CSP Yield Optimisation Europe Conference & Expo (31 May – 1 June, Seville), Solar Millennium explained to CSP Today exactly how the company...[read more]

Within the U.S., there are cities in which a large fraction of the population walks to work, cities in which almost everyone drives alone to work, and cities in which more than half of the working population takes public transportation to work. A reader recently called my attention to a database he has developed that compares the various modes of transportation for more than 2,100 U.S. cities. The database is called Modes of Transportation to Work.[read more]