Energy, Climate, New Economic Thinking​

Category: Energy Transition

How Oil and Gasoline Prices Actually Work

At some point in their lives, most people learn some version, no matter how rudimentary, of the supply and demand curve. At some later point in their lives, nearly all of those people conclude none of that applies to oil markets, which are, they claim, manipulated by politicians, or a cartel of Western oil companies, or OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, with 13 members mostly from the Middle East and Africa. But that is a mistake, Clark Williams-Derry, an energy analyst for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told Motherboard. He said oil markets are

Weaning Europe off Russian energy will mean making changes

Europe wants to cut imports of gas from Russia by two-thirds within a year. Behind the scenes, politicians and companies are already scrambling to work out how to cope next winter. The obvious upshot, one might expect, would be a change in consumer behaviour not seen since the 1970s, when dizzying oil prices caused a rethink of how the West lived. Not so. While European leaders exude an air of war-time concern, the public is living as if nothing were amiss in a continent at peace. The Economist

New Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has advice for Texas — and for the oil industry

Jennifer Granholm, who was confirmed as secretary of energy by the Senate on Thursday, takes over a department with a $35 billion budget for an administration that has enthusiastically promoted the further development of clean energy. Even as the Senate vote was tallied, state legislators in Texas were holding hearings on the colossal power failures there of the week before. In a Friday interview with The Washington Post, Granholm had some advice for Texas. But with General Motors vowing to build only electric vehicles by 2035, the former governor of Michigan comes to office on the cusp of national transition.

BP Reports a Huge Loss and Vows to Increase Renewable Investment

What caught the attention of analysts and, apparently, investors, was the ambitious plan that Bernard Looney, the chief executive, set out for making over the London-based oil giant into a diversified purveyor of cleaner energy within a decade. On a webcast with analysts Mr. Looney described a transformation plan that Stuart Joyner, an analyst at the market research firm Redburn, said in a note to clients was “major, positive, thoughtful and largely unexpected.” New York Times

Accelerating the Low Carbon Transition – The case for stronger, more targeted and coordinated international action

Stopping emissions requires fundamental innova-tion, rapid diffusion of new technologies, and the reshaping of markets and socioeconomic systems. This requires actions far beyond simply putting a price on carbon or adopting bold emissions goals. A more targeted, hands-on and strategic approach to policymaking is required to reconfigure the tech-nologies, business models, infrastructure and mar-kets in each of the greenhouse gas-emitting eco-nomic sectors. The Energy Transitions Commission

A Decade of Urban Transformation, Seen From Above

To grasp the scale of transformation to many communities, The Upshot worked with Tim Wallace and Krishna Karra from Descartes Labs, a geospatial analytics company, using a tool that has itself evolved significantly over this time: satellite imagery. With its growing power and precision, we can see both intimate details — a single home, bulldozed; a tennis court, reinvented — and big patterns that recur across the country. New York Times