Risk, double-edged swords and imagining the worst
Those who can imagine the worst ought to be regarded as prudent planners rather than overwrought Cassandras. After all, Cassandra turned out to be right. Her curse was that no one would believe her.
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Two Charts Show how Fossil Fuels could Peak by 2020
According to fossil fuel companies, the world will continue to rely on their products for decades. They even have sophisticated scenarios, outlooks and modelling to prove it.
Alternative Geologies: Trump’s “America First Energy Plan”
Donald Trump’s official Energy Plan envisions cheap fossil fuel, profitable fossil fuel and abundant fossil fuel. The evidence shows that from now on, only two of those three goals can be met – briefly – at any one time.
Renewable Electricity Generation In North America – A Realistic Assessment
Taking into account fugitive methane emissions from the production and distribution of natural gas, the U.S. electricity-generating sector may not reduce overall climate-warming emissions at all during the foreseeable future.
End of the “Oilocene”: The Demise of the Global Oil Industry and of the Global Economic System as we know it
Reserves of conventional “easy” oil have mostly been used up. How likely is it that remaining reserves will be produced at the rate projected?
Green Bonds
What are green bonds, and how can they help mobilize private capital to fund energy transition and climate change mitigation measures? What kinds of things can green bonds be used to fund?
Energy from Waste, or Waste from Energy?
NOTE: Images in this archived article have been removed. Biking along the Lake Ontario shoreline one autumn afternoon, I passed the new and just-barely operational Durham-York Energy Centre and a question popped into mind. If this incinerator produces a lot of electricity, where are all the wires? The question was prompted in part by the … Read more
Expanding Tar Sands Will Kill Paris Targets and Climate Stability, Report Finds
Canada can’t increase tar sands production or build more pipelines if the world is to achieve the targets on global carbon emissions set by the Paris Agreement on climate. That’s the central conclusion of a new report by Oil Change International(OCI), a U.S. research and advocacy group dedicated to exposing the full costs of fossil fuel extraction.
How NREL Supports Energy Transition
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) based in Golden, Colorado provides a wide range of research, guidance, and policy support to the whole government stack in the U.S., from the local and city level all the way up to the federal and tribal level.
G20 Climate Risk Report is a Wake-up Call for Fossil-Fuel Investors
It is rare for a report to hold the potential to change the world, but one study published last month may do just that. The Recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD — a group of experts assembled by the G20’s Financial Stability Board) aims to give investors, lenders and insurers visibility of how climate-change risk will affect individual businesses, and a road map for reacting to it.
Analysis: UK Wind Generated More Electricity than Coal in 2016
The UK generated more electricity from wind than from coal in the full calendar year of 2016, Carbon Brief analysis shows. The milestone is a first for the UK and reflects a collapse in coal generation, which contributed just 9.2% of UK electricity last year, with 11.5% from wind. The coal decline saw its output fall to the lowest level since 1935.
Peak Uranium: The Uncertain Future of Nuclear Energy
Declining uranium production will make it impossible to obtain a significant increase in electrical power from nuclear plants in the coming decades.
