Energy - Climate
In the face of the climate emergency and geopolitical confrontations, how can we reconcile security of supply, competitiveness, accessibility, decarbonization and acceptability? What policies are needed?
Related Subjects
Solar Photovoltaic Energy Policy in Europe: Losing Sight of What is Right: Current Developments and Lessons Learned for Policymakers and Industry
Europe has set ambitious but drastic targets in order to fight climate change. The 20-20-20 objectives demonstrate this. By 2020, emissions are to be reduced by 20%, the share of renewable energy sources (RES) in energy consumption is targeted to rise to 20%, and energy efficiency is planned to increase by 20% in comparison to the 1990 levels in Europe.
What Role for the EU in Doha?
Historical leader of the fight against climate change, the European Union’s influence declined in Copenhagen. This opened the way to the so-called BASIC countries to show their willingness to become a driving force in the international climate agenda. Interestingly enough, the Copenhagen conference also introduced a welcome shift in the traditional UN separation between developed and non-developed countries.
Towards Gas-on-Gas Competition in Europe from Trends to Reality?
Last week Centrica announced having signed a three-year gas supply contract with Gazprom Marketing and Trading UK entirely priced against UK spot gas market (NBP). This move follows other announcements in the sector, such as EON long-term gas supply contracts renegotiation, which allowed it to almost double its net-profit forecasts for 2012, or BP intention to sell Shaz Deniz II gas with spot-indexed contracts. All major European suppliers have been able to renegotiate long-term oil-indexed contracts with Gazprom lately and, more generally, contracts are increasingly being based on some spot-indexed price formula. How could that happen and what does it mean?
The European Coal Market: Will Coal survive the EC's Energy and Climate Policy?
The European coal industry is at a crossroads. The European Commission (EC) Energy Policy by 2020, the 20/20/20 targets, is not favourable to coal:
a 20% decrease in CO2 emissions does not favour coal compared with natural gas, its main competitor in electricity generation;
a 20% increase in energy efficiency will lead to a decrease in energy/coal consumption;
a 20% increase in renewables will displace other energy sources, including coal.
Capacity Mechanisms : EU or National Issue? Are Capacity Remuneration Mechanisms Helping to Build the Market or Just a Symptom of What Does Not Work ?
In a competitive energy system, generation investment choices are let to investors. It is then the responsibility of the market actors to invest and ensure peak, medium and base load generation, based on market perspectives and trends. If through actors" investments the stability of the system cannot be ensured (because, for example, peak generation is not sufficient to satisfy demand), some measures have to be taken. These can have economic and system integrity impacts on neighboring systems, especially if they are connected. This is precisely what is happening in the European electricity market.
Powering Kuwait into the 21st Century: Adopting a Sustainable Strategy
Over the last ten years, Kuwait's power consumption has doubled. This rising need for electricity has been mainly driven by the fast population growth rate, the increasing need for desalinated water, accounting for 93% of water consumption, and the economic development of the country.
The GCC States of the Persian Gulf and Asia Energy Relation
Since the 2000s, China and India's needs for hydrocarbons, coming on top of those of older industrialized Asian countries (Japan and South Korea), have considerably strengthened customer-supplier links between Asia in general and the Persian Gulf, in the energy field.
Towards a New Geopolitics of Energy?
First of all, shale oil is starting to take the same dimension as shale gas in the US. Already 51% of US production comes presently from unconventional gas (shale, tight gas and coal-bed methane), and outlooks predict that the US will produce more gas than Russia by 2020. Oil imports have already diminished from 60 to 45%. As domestic unconventional oil production tends to increase, - it is now around 15% - imports will probably decline even more.
The Gulf Countries' Energy Strategies: What's on the Menu for the Power Sector?
The futuristic green city of Masdar in the United Arab Emirates or the latest announcements of Saudi Arabia which might now well become the new Eldorado for solar energy companies have a clear marketing varnish. But if they are showcases of green ambitions, they nonetheless reflect the situation the Gulf States face today driven by the development of heavy industry and petrochemicals but first and foremost by the rapid population growth (around 2% for Saudi Arabia and 3% for Kuwait; Qatar and the Emirates have higher population growth rate due to immigrants).
Positioning of Nuclear in the Japanese Energy Mix
Nuclear fission was discovered in the late 1930s. The first application went towards military use, and gradually expanded to civil use such as power generation. Power generation gained importance in two stages: firstly, to shift away from oil in power generation after the oil shocks in the 1970s, and second, to arrest climate change due to CO2-free nature of nuclear power more recently. This typically applies to Japan, which has become the world third largest in nuclear power generation. However, nuclear power is violent by nature, and major accidents of nuclear power plants shook the public confidence in nuclear safety. Japan has been put into such situation in a most radical way due to the Fukushima nuclear disaster of March 2011.
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Related centers and programs
Center for Energy & Climate
Ifri's Energy and Climate Center carries out activities and research on the geopolitical and geoeconomic issues of energy transitions such as energy security, competitiveness, control of value chains, and acceptability. Specialized in the study of European energy/climate policies as well as energy markets in Europe and around the world, its work also focuses on the energy and climate strategies of major powers such as the United States, China or India. It offers recognized expertise, enriched by international collaborations and events, particularly in Paris and Brussels.