Oil price slump to trigger new US debt default crisis as Opec waits
Andrew Critchlow, The Daily Telegraph
Remember the global financial crisis, triggered six years ago when billions of dollars of dodgy loans – doled out by banks to subprime borrowers and then resold numerous times on international debt markets – began to unravel and default?…
Based on recent stress tests of subprime borrowers in the energy sector in the US produced by Deutsche Bank, should the price of US crude fall by a further 20pc to $60 per barrel, it could result in up to a 30pc default rate among B and CCC rated high-yield US borrowers in the industry. West Texas Intermediate crude is currently trading at multi-year lows of around $75 per barrel, down from $107 per barrel in June…
Tackling climate while maximising oil extraction: UK-Canada meeting glosses the paradox
Simon Evans, Carbon Brief
Ministers from the UK and Canada came together for a roundtable meeting on energy security on Tuesday to discuss issues including exports from the Canadian oil sands, oil sector regulation and carbon capture and storage.
The Canada Europe Energy Summit was held in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s opulent Locarno Suite. It was sponsored by energy firms including the UK’s Centrica, owner of British Gas, and was attended by chief executives and chairmen of oil and gas players from Europe and North America, as well as Carbon Brief…
Solar and Wind Energy Start to Win on Price vs. Conventional Fuels
Diane Cardwell, New York Times
For the solar and wind industries in the United States, it has been a long-held dream: to produce energy at a cost equal to conventional sources like coal and natural gas.
That day appears to be dawning.
The cost of providing electricity from wind and solar power plants has plummeted over the last five years, so much so that in some markets renewable generation is now cheaper than coal or natural gas…
Brave little Denmark leads war against coal
Paul Hockenos, AlJazeera
Germany has been credited for paving Europe’s way to a renewables-led, zero-carbon future. But the world’s true climate champion is Denmark, which has just set the bar another notch higher than Germany by proposing to accelerate its phase-out of coal-fired power plants. Denmark could be coal-free by 2025 — five years ahead of schedule — and generate more than 70 percent of its energy from renewable sources.
The small Nordic nation of 5.6 million strives to be completely fossil-free by 2050, including even its transportation sector. Yet in pursuing such impressive goals, Denmark could stoke Germany’s prodigious coal use — the Achilles’ heel of its heralded Energiewende (clean-energy transition) — to make up for shortfalls in the Danish market. In order to make Denmark’s green energy policies worth emulating, this must be avoided…
The Downside of the Boom
Deborah Sontag and Robert Gebeloff, New York Times
North Dakota took on the oversight of a multibillion-dollar oil industry with a regulatory system built on trust, warnings and second chances.
Oil at $75 Means Patches of Texas Shale Turn Unprofitable
Isaac Arnsdorf, Bloomberg
With crude at $75 a barrel, the price Goldman Sachs Group Inc. says will be the average in the first three months of next year, 19 U.S. shale regions are no longer profitable, according to data compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Those areas, which include parts of the Eaglebine and Eagle Ford in East and South Texas, pumped about 413,000 barrels a day, according to the latest data available from Drillinginfo Inc. and company presentations. That compares with the 1.03 million-barrel gain in daily national output over the past year, government figures show…
Beijing’s flagship coal-to-gas plan to cut smog breaks China’s rules on water and air pollution
Energydesk team, Greenpeace
China’s flagship coal-to-gas pilot project is already breaking national standards on air and water pollution – according to an on-the-ground investigation by Greenpeace China. China is considering more than 50 new coal-to-gas projects in a move mostly designed to reduce air pollution. The process is extremely carbon intensive and recent analysis published on Energydesk suggests the projects undermine a recent China-US agreement on tackling climate change Domestically the plans have sparked concerns about water use and local pollution.
Google rejects renewables
Roger Andrews, Energy Matters
Here at Energy Matters we pride ourselves on writing original posts that aren’t just rehashes of what someone else has written, but once in a while along comes an article of sufficient interest to justify putting it up for discussion. This article is one.
It’s a post-mortem on a project initiated by Google – a master of innovation if ever there was one and a company with impeccable green credentials (see photo below) – the goal of which was to scope out an innovative renewable energy system that could compete economically with coal and other fossil fuels and which could be deployed quickly enough to stave off the worst impacts of climate change…
And if Google’s summation is right we are left with only one option – to enforce the adoption of renewables through legislation, meaning that politicians must weigh the perceived risks of burning fossil fuels against the perceived costs of replacing them with renewables and come up with a balanced solution. Is this too much to ask of them? I’ll leave that question hanging.
Does ‘Clean Coal’ Technology Have a Future?
Howard Herzog, Richard Heinberg, Wall Street Journal
Howard Herzog Says Innovation Will Deliver; Richard Heinberg Says the Economics Won’t Work…
Can Climate Change Cure Capitalism?
Elizabeth Kolbert, New York Review of Books
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate by Naomi Klein
Every fall, an international team of scientists announces how much carbon dioxide humanity has dumped into the atmosphere the previous year. This fall, the news wasn’t good. It almost never is. The only time the group reported a drop in emissions was 2009, when the global economy seemed on the verge of collapse. The following year, emissions jumped again, by almost 6 percent.
According to the team’s latest report, in 2013 global emissions rose by 2.3 percent. Contributing to this increase were countries like the United States, which has some of the world’s highest per capita emissions, and also countries like India, which has some of the lowest. “There is no more time,” one of the scientists who worked on the analysis, Glen P. Peters of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, told The New York Times. “It needs to be all hands on deck now.”…
“There is a huge mismatch between the magnitude of the challenge and the response we heard here today,” Graça Machel, Nelson Mandela’s widow, told the summit in the final speech of the gathering. “The scale is much more than we have achieved.” This mismatch, which grows ever more disproportionate year after year, summit after summit, raises questions both about our future and about our character. What explains our collective failure on climate change? Why is it that instead of dealing with the problem, all we seem to do is make it worse?
These questions lie at the center of Naomi Klein’s ambitious new polemic, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. “What is wrong with us?” Klein asks near the start of the book. Her answer turns upside-down the narrative that the country’s largest environmental groups have been telling….
Reflecting sunlight into space has terrifying consequences, say scientists
Damian Carrington, The Guardian
Fighting global warming by reflecting sunlight back into space risks “terrifying” consequences including droughts and conflicts, according to three major new analyses of the promise and perils of geoengineering. But research into deliberately interfering with the climate system must continue in search of technology to use as a last resort in combating climate change, scientists have concluded.
Billions of people would suffer worse floods and droughts if technology was used to block warming sunlight, the research found. Technology that sucks carbon dioxide from the air was less risky, the analysis concluded, but will take many more decades to develop and take effect…
Lean times ahead: Preparing for an energy-constrained future
Jim Erickson, University of Michigan News
…Having ignored many opportunities for voluntary simplicity, industrial society may now face involuntary simplicity, he said.
"This is not at all what the popular folk mythology of resource apocalypse predicts," he said. "It lacks Hollywood’s sudden and catastrophic collapse motif. The change is more likely to emerge slowly over many decades—a persistent step-wise downshift to a new normal."
The job for behavioral scientists will be "to help people cope with the realization that everyday life may soon differ substantially from conventional expectations and to help them envision an alternative to their current relationship with resources," De Young said.
Finding solutions for urban resilience on a farm in Vermont
Lloyd Alter, The Guardian
This series may be about building resilient cities, but it starts on a farm near Brattleboro, Vermont. That’s where Alex Wilson has renovated an old farmhouse into – as he calls it – a “passively resilient home”. Alex is a pioneer in the green building movement, starting the highly respected website BuildingGreen in 1992. BuildingGreen preaches largely to the converted – those in the sustainable building industry – but that’s a pretty small group, not nearly enough to make a difference. As flooding, ice storms and hurricanes start making people very anxious, the issue of resilience has to reach a much wider audience.
So, in 2012, Alex founded the Resilient Design Institute to broaden the reach of the sustainable building movement. “I want even climate change deniers to boost the energy performance of their homes. Doing so will keep their families safer during power outages and other disturbances, and it will benefit all of us,” Alex explains. “The motivation of safety, for many people, will be a stronger motivation than ‘doing the right thing’ or trying to mitigate climate change. But the benefit in reducing carbon emissions will be the same.”…
Over 1,400 Endangered Species Are Threatened By Climate Change, Says New ‘Red List’
Amelia Rosch, Think Progress
Following a new update to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List, over 22,000 species of animals are threatened with extinction, an increase of 310 species from the last update. Around 12 percent of animals on the list that are either endangered or critically endangered are threatened because of climate change.
The IUCN’s Red List is considered to be one of the most comprehensive resources on animal conservation status. There are currently over 76,000 species on it.
Many different animals are more at risk due to climate change in the United States. Here is a sample of the over 1,400 endangered species on the Red List that are currently threatened by climate change worldwide…
Growth: the destructive god that can never be appeased
George Monbiot, The Guardian
Another crash is coming. We all know it, now even David Cameron acknowledges it. The only questions are what the immediate catalyst will be, and when it begins.
You can take your pick. The Financial Times reported yesterday that China now resembles the US in 2007. Domestic bank loans have risen 40% since 2008, while “the ability to repay that debt has deteriorated dramatically”. Property prices are falling and the companies that run China’s shadow banking system provide “virtually no disclosure” of their liabilities. Just two days ago the G20 leaders announced that growth in China “is robust and is becoming more sustainable”. You can judge the value of their assurances for yourself…
Why we need financial doomsayers
Carlo Rotella, Boston Globe
There’s no shortage of local writers adding to Boston’s rich literary tradition, but the one whose latest opus I read most eagerly these days is Jeremy Grantham. This is a continuing surprise to me because Grantham — cofounder of GMO, a global investment management firm that handles $120 billion in client assets — writes for an audience I don’t belong to: people who think a lot about investing. I confess to having little native curiosity about even the most elementary aspects of the stock market’s functioning or Fed policy.
My interest in finance hits the wall at adequate shelter and food plus a decent school for the kids, and I don’t really know what happens to my paycheck after I turn it over to the missus.
So why do I pounce on and devour Grantham’s quarterly letter to investors the moment it shows up in my inbox?…
Grantham’s latest quarterly letter.
Global importance of urban agriculture ‘underestimated’
Mark Kinver, BBC
Urban agriculture is playing an increasingly important role in global food security, a study has suggested.
Researchers, using satellite data, found that agricultural activities within 20km of urban areas occupy an area equivalent to the 28-nation EU.
The international team of scientists says the results should challenge the focus on rural areas of agricultural research and development work…
Environmental good deeds give people a ‘warm glow’
Press Association, The Daily Telegraph
Doing an environmentally good deed gives you a warm feeling – quite literally.
Psychologists found that when volunteers thought they were helping the environment their perception of temperature changed.
It was as if they were enveloped in a ”warm glow”, said the scientists…
How a small British garden became a mature food forest
Sami Grover, Treehugger
Many years ago I picked up a book called The Permaculture Garden, by Graham Bell. I was more than a little hooked by the practical tips and inspiring visions of urban and suburban gardens turned into food forests…
In a video for Permaculture Magazine, Graham talks us through how he and his wife Nancy developed a mature permaculture food forest over the course of 25 years…
