Energy featured

A critical component strategy for creating a viable future energy system and addressing climate change, must surely be energy demand reduction (minimisation), e.g. through relocalisation, retrofitting buildings, local food growing, and reducing waste, to curb the size of resource [very much plural] demands, get us below overshoot and avoid collapse (if we can). 

Canadians clearly want to turn the page on Trudeau’s image-infatuated tenure. However, it would be a grave mistake for the Liberal party to also assume they need to jettison climate policy under the mistaken assumption that being too progressive is what led to the party’s current decline.

As Malm and Carton explain, if firm policies were put in place to “leave fossil fuels in the ground”, stranding the assets of fossil fuel companies, there would be “layer upon layer” of value destruction.

When the University of Toronto’s School of the Environment announced in October that it will no longer accept donations from the fossil fuel industry, the news sent waves through the growing movement to get coal, oil and gas companies off campuses. Among other things, that means banning fossil fuel corporations from financing academic research.

The UK’s electricity was the cleanest ever in 2024, new Carbon Brief analysis shows, with carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per unit falling by more than two-thirds in a decade.

In Power Metal, Beiser explains why we would need drastic increases in mining of critical metals – including copper, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and the so-called “rare earths” – if we were to run anything like the current global economy solely on renewable electricity.

The much-vaunted “energy transition” that promised a great leap forward from fossil fuels to renewables along with a cornucopia of technologies is now struggling with history and complexity. A few facts tell the story.