As I started to read this year’s World Energy Outlook (WEO 2013) from the International Energy Agency (IEA), it was the very first line in the executive summary that caught my interest. The report starts out with “Many of the long–held tenets of the energy sector are being rewritten.” It Read more…
I have just done my first pass of the Word Energy Outlook 2012 issued by the IEA this November. Many of you will have seen some of the headlines – one of the most intriguing is that the US is expected to become the world’s largest oil producer by 2017 Read more…
I started writing this while sitting on the very long plane ride on my way to China. The Rio+20 conference had just started, the largest ever UN conference and yet it was receiving relatively little press. I remember the first Rio conference 20 years ago when there was so much Read more…
The good news is that as 2011 comes to a close, Fukushima has achieved cold shutdown and the recovery is moving to the next stage. The emphasis is now on decontamination and getting the dislocated people back into their homes as soon as possible. Does this mean that nuclear will Read more…
System operators have recently seen something rather new – SBG – or “Surplus Baseload Generation”. This is due to falling demand related to the current economic situation and a newer phenomenon; the displacement of base load by variable load renewable generation. With governments everywhere and the public strongly supporting new Read more…