EMC Working Papers

Are We Creating a Compromise?

Every year in the United Kingdom and Australia, thousands of incidents involving devastating fires linked to batteries in waste management facilities or vehicles are reported. Paradoxically, these are facilities meant to contain such hazardous activities. Furthermore, headlines such as “Batteries Starting Fires at Yellowknife’s Landfill, City Says,” posted by Cabin Radio, report unreported hazardous incidents potentially linked to batteries, and are becoming more common around the globe. These reports and news are increasingly alarming because they come at the cost of life, property damage, and monetary losses, and given the fact that we heavily rely on batteries for the energy transition, they could lead to safety and environmental compromises if not treated properly.

Driving the Paris Agreement

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement includes provisions allowing countries to cooperate to achieve National Determined Contributions (NDCs), specifically through carbon pricing, to meet mitigation commitments. Carbon markets are an emerging tool that incentivises businesses to pollute less and invest in clean technologies by putting a price on carbon emissions. As this article explores further, compliance and voluntary carbon markets are poised to reshape the energy landscape and contribute to achieving the ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement.

Compliance Carbon Markets

Compliance carbon markets are a key tool in the fight against climate change, and they aim to establish a carbon price by laws or regulations which control the supply of allowances distributed by national, regional and global regimes through the following compliance mechanisms: (1) Cap and Trade: Sets a pollution limit (the cap) and lets companies buy or sell allowances to meet their obligations, creating a market for carbon credits with a price driven by supply and demand; (2) Carbon Tax: A fixed price is set per ton of carbon emitted. Companies must pay tax for their emissions, incentivising them to reduce pollution.

The fundamental idea of this technical paper is to understand the feasibility and present the robustness of removing the need to decommission an offshore jacket and instead installing an offshore wind tower (with nacelle, rotor blades and generator) on top of it, thereby saving the costs of decommissioning as well as entirely removing the need to design, build and install a substructure for the new offshore wind tower. The economics of scalability are particularly interesting.

The world is currently experiencing one of the worst energy crises in history. Countries all over the world are beginning to adopt greener strategies by funding and covering their energy needs with green and renewable energy sources. Each of these countries has its own rate of development, but they all share a common goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. In comparison, the European Union appears to have a faster development rate and a different goal, particularly regarding neutrality, of covering all its member states' energy needs with shareable green energy.

The United Kingdom is in the right place to become a global leader in the industrial Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) sector. Specific, UK associated industrial development has set a great potential for Industrial Carbon Capture (ICC) application. In fact, the operation of Oil and Gas (O&G) offshore fields has allowed for decades of data on suitable carbon storage sites to be collected, determining that the North Sea’s saline aquifers and depleted reservoirs have a 78,000 MtCO₂ capacity. Figure 1 exhibits the distribution of both CO₂ emission sources from industrial clusters and offshore storage points.

On Thursday 24 November 2022, Renault signed a contract with Voltalia to supply 350 MW of renewable energy over 15 years from 2027, which should account for half the company’s electricity consumption. This type of contract, also known as a corporate Power Purchase Agreement (cPPAs), is an unprecedented commitment in France in terms of power. On the same day, Engie announced a contract to purchase 100MW with Google in the United Kingdom for 12 years from the Moray West offshore wind project off Scotland. Whilst solar and wind remain dominant, contracts are now emerging for biogas, geothermal, and even hydrogen

Funding for the energy industry has historically been dominated by major private or state-controlled institutions. Conventional energies such as fossil fuels require capital outlays of millions and sometimes billions of euros, and hence, understandably, citizens or cooperatives have never fully financed a nuclear powerplant or an offshore oil rig. As the urgency of tackling climate change increases, the energy sector is being reconfigured by financing alternatives made possible by renewable energy technologies that are adaptable to local and community investment. Society is simultaneously becoming increasingly electrified, with global electricity consumption forecast to double from 2021 levels, reaching 50,000 TWh by 2050. Rapid growth in the renewables sector will be crucial for meeting this steady increase in demand.

A closer look at ESG investing

Halfway between traditional philanthropy and return-driven financial investment, ESG investing – i.e. directing capital to companies which yield environmental, social and governance benefits in addition to profits – enables investors to “do well by doing good”. Lying within the broad range of responsible investments, ESG can be virtually any asset class or investment vehicle.

In order to reach net zero emissions, do we alter the electricity infrastructure to increase electric vehicle market penetration or promote the adoption of electric vehicles?

The Paris Agreement at COP21 highlighted that, despite the reductions in carbon emissions recorded in other sectors, in the transport sector they have steadily increased, trending toward a 50% increase by 2030. Globally, the transport sector is still heavily dependent on fossil fuels, accounting for around 17% of the world’s emissions. Thus, the topic of electric vehicles (EVs) has been the focal point of discussions in decarbonising the sector. However, there have been many critiques of the plausibility of transitioning to EVs and whether we should, (1) change the electricity generation grid, or (2) facilitate the transition to EVs by dismissing the emissions of the unchanged electricity generation mix. Will the transition be of environmental benefit? And what comes first: introducing large-scale EV adoption to facilitate decarbonisation through fiscal policies, or changing the infrastructure to stimulate the adoption of electric vehicles?

Within the debate around climate change, renewable energy sources (RES) hold an important place, some of which are perhaps more widely known than others. Next to solar and wind, biomethane is less well known and often even classified in “other renewable power”. However, it has a bright future as solar and wind showed their limitations in Autumn 2021, being partially responsible for the increase of gas prices in Europe.

More than ever, our growing dependence on intermittent energy sources makes it crucial to diversify the energy mix. It should be noted that, even though Europe is moving towards a system that heavily relies on electricity as an energy carrier, many industries such as iron or cement making are not yet ready to be powered by electricity, and hence rely heavily on fossil fuels.

Unlike other RES, biomethane shares almost all its characteristics with natural gas, making it interchangeable and suitable for industry applications, whilst using the existing gas transmission network.

As part of the quest to diversify its energy mix and increase its energy independence, the European Union is encouraging the development of methanation. Germany was the first country to get on board, and France is now joining its neighbour on this path. However, the urgent need for decarbonisation framed by the Paris Agreement seems to push all stakeholders into acting too quickly, leaving space for abusive practices and for things to get out of hand, to the detriment of sustainable agriculture practices.

The potential for blockchain technology to profoundly disrupt the world as we know it is enormous. The financial system is often seen as the most vulnerable industry primed for disruption. This technology has the potential to disrupt a variety of industries, including aerospace and defence, supply chain and logistics, and energy management, most notably decentralised micro-grid systems.

Background

• Examine the common misconceptions about the environmental impact of Blockchain mining
• Analyse the options for transitioning blockchain mining away from fossil fuels and towards variable renewable energy sources (vRES)

For years, experts and pundits have predicted that conflicts will increase over an ever scarcer and more vulnerable commodity: water. The fear has been that as populations grow and development spreads, vicious battles will erupt between water-rich and water-poor nations, particularly in major river basins where upstream nations control the flow of water to those downstream. To the doomsayers, global warming will only make those battles worse by decreasing rainfall and increasing evaporation in critical areas.

The argument has certain logic and examples abound. Take the case of the Nile. Three days after the fall of Egypt's President Husni Mubarak, the then Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, announced the start of the construction of a dam on the Nile's main tributary. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will be the first Ethiopia has built on the river, despite more than three-quarters of the Nile's flow falling as rain within the highlands. The move is a direct challenge to downstream Egypt's 'hydro-hegemony', which had ensured that it and Sudan enjoy essentially exclusive use of the river, thanks to favourable colonial and post-colonial agreements.

This paper details a methodology to manage the long term Reputation of an International Oil Company with respect to key Stakeholders. Reputation is defined with three major components: responsibility (respect HSE rules, national laws, local content target, social responsibility), reliability (deliver project on time, schedule and quality) and trustability (be honest and transparent with stakeholders).

Growth has been the driving force for most countries and organizations. Global economy has grown over the last thirty years. Although the growth rate varied, but overall the global economy has got a rate of over 2 % as measured by GNP. During the last ten years we are seeing a new phenomenon; the emerging markets have grown at a much faster rate. The balance of global economy has radically changed. But where does energy come in? The growth means demand for energy. Energy production has to grow to sustain the growth.

This paper evaluates the energy efficiency of EU countries over the period 2000-2010. At the first stage, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is employed, combining multiple energy consumption data, economic outputs, structural indicators, and environmental factors. The efficiency estimates obtained from the analysis are evaluated in a second stage through a multiple criteria decision aiding methodology (MCDA). The proposed non-parametric approach combining DEA with MCDA enables the modeling of the problem in an integrated manner, providing not only energy efficiency estimates, but also supporting the analysis of the main contributing factors, as well as the development of a benchmarking model for energy efficiency evaluation in country level.

In this paper we present an empirical study to verify the assertion of a negative impact of economic growth on carbon efficiency using a cross country analysis. More precisely we are concerned with the relation between past growth and CO2 emissions, assuming that rapid growth in the past may explain lower carbon efficiency today. The central idea tested is that hasty growth is likely to slow down the improvement of energy and carbon efficiency. In other words, using an ordinary least square multifactor model to explain carbon intensity, we verify that the coefficient for an exogenous variable measuring the average past growth rate (apgr) for each country in our sample, is significantly positive.

The flame of oil is not eternal. The horizon carries all signs of peak oil.Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest crude oil producer and exporter risks becoming an oil importer probably by 2025 if current economic, demographic and security trends continue into the future. Saudi oil production peaked in 2005 and has been in steady decline since then with domestic oil demand rising at an alarming rate and accounting for 37% of crude production in 2012. As a result, Saudi crude exports have already declined by 32% between 2005 and 2012 and are projected to decline further by 9% by 2015. Population growth and robust economic development and also fuel subsidies drive that demand.

By 2025 Saudi oil consumption is projected to exceed production by 610,000 barrels a day (b/d) and Saudi Arabia would have ceased, to all intents and purposes, to remain a net oil exporter. This paper will argue forcefully that even a drastic cut, if not elimination, of subsidies altogether and a determined shift from oil use in power generation and desalination to nuclear and renewable energy sources starting immediately will not delay the inevitable day when Saudi Arabia will become a net oil importer. The paper will also assess the implications of this eventuality for the global economy, energy security and the price of oil