Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The offshore wind farms auctioned last September in the UK will most likely be the world’s first “negative subsidy” projects – wind farms that will pay money back to the government over their lifetime.
By understanding the key reasons why the global economy behaves as it does today, we will be in a better position to discern the core patterns underlying economic behaviour and, if we choose, to change them. Two key drivers of today’s global economy are externalities and subsidies.
Researchers estimate that the global fossil fuel industry is subsidised to a tune of $5.3 trillion (6.5% of global GDP) every year yet this raises few eyebrows. We believe that subsidies for energy access related projects are not an outlandish proposition and in fact, if implemented correctly could be the catalyst that tips the nascent rural off-grid sector into rapid scalability.
This week, the Queen’s speech assured us that the new government would “seek effective global collaboration to sustain economic recovery and to combat climate change”.
On May 18 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a report titled “How Large are Global Energy Subsidies?” The question is a bit misleading…
What are the lessons from the failed nuclear energy revolution?
I’ve suggested in several previous posts that the peak oil debate may be approaching a turning point—one of those shifts in the collective conversation in which topics that have been shut out for years or decades finally succeed in crashing the party, and other topics that have gotten more than their quota of attention during that time get put out to pasture or sent to the glue factory.
