Financial Times (June 13, 2023) – In this film, the FT’s Simon Mundy explores how hydrogen – the lightest, most abundant element in the universe – could play a crucial role in the global push for net zero carbon emissions.
Video timeline:00:00 What is Hydrogen 00:50 Green Hydrogen 02:50 Current uses of hydrogen 04:10 The concerns 05:00 The Hydrogen rainbow 05:51 Emerald Hydrogen 07.35 The investors 10:50 The policymakers 13:40 Green steel 17:35 Cleaning up aviation 22:15 The hydrogen economy of the future
From southern Spain to Swedish Lapland, we meet those at the forefront of this fast-growing space – all seeking a share of the billions to be made in the emerging hydrogen economy.
For the first time, US scientists have achieved a fusion reaction with net energy gain. But the dream of limitless zero-carbon energy is still a long way from reality.
Video timeline: 00:00 – What powers the universe 01:04 – ITER: the biggest experiment in human history 04:28 – What is fusion? 06:38 – Replicating the sun 08:38 – The US breakthrough 13:46 – The investors 20:40 – A new class of magnet 24:30 – Dream or reality?
The FT’s Simon Mundy meets scientists and investors in the UK, France and US, to see how close we really are to commercial fusion power.
DW Documentary – Energy is life – these days, Europeans are experiencing that first-hand. For far too long, Europe has depended on coal, oil and gas imports from around the world. Not only have these fuels been driving the climate catastrophe, but they also serve as a dangerous bargaining chip for geopolitical interests.
Energy is essential — and it is a major problem. The war in Ukraine has shown just how dependent Europe is on fossil fuels. This has weakened Europe and given export countries – frequently governed by authoritarian rule – a geopolitical means of leverage. Now, war on the European continent has eclipsed concerns over the climate Crisis. The increased consumption of harmful fuels is creating economic and political problems.
Yet, against the odds, decarbonizing Europe remains a widespread priority, and alternative solutions are already available. In France, Denmark and Ukraine, civil initiatives are taking energy supplies into their own hands and investing in the joint production of their own solar energy. In some cases, privately produced solar energy has proven much cheaper than what national solar energy providers offer.
These initiatives show that decentralizing energy production could be the key to transforming our energy supply. Poland still depends heavily on coal, but is offering re-training programs for employees in the mining business to help them transition to green jobs. An estimated one million such green jobs are expected to be created in Europe by 2030. Green hydrogen, currently still in the development stages, could be a sustainable and profitable alternative for industries in the future.
Across the continent, workable alternatives are emerging. The current quick succession of political crises has now joined the ongoing climate crisis to show just how important it is to act now.
Financial Times – Wind power is the number one source of renewable energy in the US, but nearly all this stems from onshore wind. The US offshore wind industry is underdeveloped and, with only two small offshore operations to date, it lags far behind Europe and China by comparison. The FT’s Derek Brower looks at why progress is slow, and what the White House is trying to do about it.
In the beginning, there was energy. Everything since then, has been an exercise in transforming energy from one state into another – food becomes labour, gas becomes electricity, fossil fuels become architecture.
In this month’s keynote essay, Barnabas Calder writes: ‘In the millennia before fossil fuels, the circular economy was the only economically viable way to operate’. Recognising that architecture is formed from the fuel we extract to create and sustain it could be a transformative way of thinking about our built environment.
This issue seeks to make visible the often obscured links between buildings and the energy sources they are built from, and around.
Nuclear projects are getting a boost of investment as countries try to tackle an energy crisis sparked by the Ukraine war, while also pursuing emissions targets. WSJ looks at how start-ups say their alternative designs can help solve past issues.
As the planet gets hotter, engineers are racing to find ways to store energy on a massive scale, clearing the way for a transition to renewable electricity.
This year’s energy shock is the most serious since the Middle Eastern oil crises of 1973 and 1979. We explain how to fix this global emergency without wrecking the climate https://t.co/DeoOlfLvT1pic.twitter.com/BumLDUreWI
How to fix the world’s energy emergency without wrecking the environment
Even as they firefight, governments must resolve the conflict between safe supply and a safe climate.
This year’s energy shock is the most serious since the Middle Eastern oil crises of 1973 and 1979. Like those calamities, it promises to inflict short-term pain and in the longer term to transform the energy industry. The pain is all but guaranteed: owing to high fuel and power prices, most countries are facing soggy growth, inflation, squeezed living standards and a savage political backlash. But the long-run consequences are far from preordained. If governments respond ineptly, they could trigger a relapse towards fossil fuels that makes it even harder to stabilise the climate. Instead they must follow a perilous path that combines security of energy supply with climate security.
For some, nuclear power may conjure images of mushroom clouds or bring back memories of disturbing nuclear disasters like Chernobyle and Fukushima. But despite public fear around nuclear power, the technology has proved to be an emission-free, reliable way to produce large amounts of electricity on a small footprint.
As a result, sentiments about the technology are beginning to change. Both the U.S. government and private companies including X Energy, NuScale and, Bill Gates-backed, TerraPower are pouring money into developing, what they say will be smaller, safer nuclear reactors. CNBC visited Idaho National Laboratory to see the Marvel microreactor firsthand and learn what such developments could mean for the future of nuclear power.
After humankind discovered nuclear fission, the first applied use was the atomic bomb. The study of fission for electricity production came later. In December 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his fateful Atoms for Peace speech, an impassioned plea to reconstitute the power of the atomic bombs dropped in World War II for a more noble cause.
“Against the dark background of the atomic bomb, the United States does not wish merely to present strength, but also the desire and the hope for peace,” Eisenhower told the United Nations. Almost 70 years later, the tension between those end uses still underlies the space today. From the 1950s through the 1970s, the United States dramatically increased its nuclear energy generation.
But the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and Chornobyl meltdown in 1986 changed the landscape, spurring fear that nuclear energy could not be controlled safely. Since the 1980s, nuclear energy capacity and generation in the U.S. has largely stayed flat. Today, the country’s fleet of nuclear power reactors produces only 19% of the country’s electricity, according to the government’s Energy Information Administration.
In more recent times, the Fukushima Daiichi accident in Japan in 2011 — and earlier this year the capture of nuclear power plants in Ukraine by invading Russian forces — have added to public concerns. But despite its fraught origin story and the psychological effect of high-profile accidents, nuclear energy is getting a second look. That’s largely because nuclear energy is clean energy, releasing no greenhouse gasses.
Meanwhile, the world is seeing more of the effects of climate change, including rising global temperatures, increased pollution, wildfires, and more intense and deadly storms. “We need to change course — now — and end our senseless and suicidal war against nature,” Antonio Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, said in Stockholm on Thursday. “There is one thing that threatens all our progress. The climate crisis. Unless we act now, we will not have a livable planet,” Guterres said. “Scientists recently reported that there is a 50-50 chance that we could temporarily breach the Paris Agreement limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next five years.”
The price of #renewable energy is dropping, but are more countries picking up these sources?
Well, we still have a long way to go, but figures covered by @OurWorldInData reveal that at least when it comes to cost, things are certainly moving in the right direction.#COP26
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