Google has a habit of surprising its competitors. The fast moving company is known for launching into new forays not always knowing where it may end up. In this sense, it is not only the competitors who are trying to read what the company’s latest move may entail.
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Nothing has altered the North American natural gas market and its appetite for LNG as severe as the discovery and development of significant unconventional gas sources. Within a couple of years, the supply-demand balance has changed from one of continuous production declines to one of an upcoming surplus.
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On January 1st, 2010, the Spanish Government took over the presidency of the European Union. Shaping the future political agenda at a European level is especially important in the field of energy and sustainability. The current unsustainable energy models, both European and global, and especially their consequences on climate change, need an urgent action on this field, which must be agreed at a European level from a long-term approach.
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Whether you like it or not, for the time being the most important product of the December meeting in Copenhagen of the Fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP-15) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the “Copenhagen Accord”. Continue reading »
A survey by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that the top 50 US purchasers bought more than 12.5 TWh of green power in 2008 with Intel Corporation holding the top spot, again.
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The oddly plural phrase “European Communities” is not, as one might think, a reference to the 27 member states of the European Union, but to an anachronistic constitutional anomaly. Continue reading »
California has been leading the rest of the US in many areas, but the one area the policymakers are most proud of is that the state has managed to keep its per capita electricity consumption virtually flat for 30 years – a feat that is the envy of the rest of the country.
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The pump-storage technology allows the transformation of low-altitude water into high-altitude water using off-peak electricity, and then the production of electricity at peak periods releasing water through turbines like in any hydroelectric plant. Because of large energy losses in the transformation of electricity into water and then of water into electricity (the cycle efficiency is of the order of 80%), this process is not generically good at saving energy but it can be profitable on economic grounds, both by decreasing production costs and by increasing consumers’ surplus.
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The debate about the true level of nuclear electricity generation cost is far to be closed. The estimates are regularly reviewed and updated. In the same time, new nuclear builds provide new data. The newest observations stimulate a question about the possible impact of the recurrent cost overruns and delays in on-going construction of EPRs on the electricity generation cost and the competitiveness of nuclear power.
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Demand for gas is on the rise in Europe, yet its indigenous production is in decline. The need for imports from remote sources will grow. At the same time, a pan-European market for natural gas is expected to develop, leading to new movements of gas in addition to the traditional direct flows from production facilities to consumers. Continue reading »