nuclear-news

Opinion:

¶ “Peak Oil Demand: Time To Get Agile Or Get Left Behind In The Race To Low-Carbon Fuels” • As low oil prices persist, global oil and gas companies are undertaking some serious self-examination. “Peak oil supply” concerns have been replaced by worries about “peak oil demand.” Anxiety is not about whether the peak will come, but when. [Forbes]

Oil exploration (Geoz, Wikimedia Commons)

World:

¶ At a briefing on profit results, AGL’s Energy CEO made a point in its presentation that the most economic option to replace the 2000-MW Liddell coal-burning plant in New South Wales would not be coal or baseload gas, but a mix of energy from wind and solar, and various load shaping and firming capacity from other sources. [CleanTechnica]

¶ A new floating solar farm went live in the Chinese city of Huainan above a retired coal mine, China Daily reported…

Opinion:

¶ “Why solar towers and storage plants will reshape energy markets” • The 150-MW solar tower and molten salt storage plant to be built in Port Augusta has been made possible by a ground-breaking pricing and contract structure that could help completely reshape Australian power markets, including the end of “baseload” power as we know it. [RenewEconomy]

Visitors at a solar thermal power plant

¶ “How Nigeria Can Cure Its Oil Addiction” • Nigeria is addicted to oil. The oil industry contributes over 90% of export earnings and around 70% of Nigeria’s government revenue. Successive governments have sought to diversify the economy with limited success. But global moves toward electric cars and renewable energy signal the decline of oil. [Newsweek]

World:

¶ The developer of a large-scale Queensland renewable energy hub has struck a “critical” new agreement as the project powers towards production. The agreement between…

The fiscal incentives extended by newly drafted Renewable Energy Policy is likely to attract Individual Power Producers (IPPs) in the renewable energy sector of Zimbabwe.

The new policy issued by the Ministry of Energy and Power Development announced tax exemptions, reduced license fee and offered robust financing measures to encourage IPPs’ participation in renewable energy sector.

The government’s announcement came in such dire situation when the entire country is battling against severe power deficit. At present, the supply of electricity in Zimbabwe is at around 1,000 MW which is less than half of its peak power requirement—2,200 MW.

The IPP’s investment in renewable energy sector is expected to address country’s domestic demand for electricity in near future. According to the policy, IPP in renewable sector of energy is estimated to contribute more than 16% of total power production by 2025. The investment estimates to generate 1 GW electricity from…

Earlier this month, The Economist prophetically declared that the “death of the internal combustion engine” is at hand. That the end for this inefficient fossil fuel burning monstrosity was “in sight.” And that, ultimately, “days were numbered” for a design that has so efficiently and so harmfully injected billions of tons of pollution into the Earth’s atmosphere.

(Gigafactories like this one being built in Nevada and numerous others being built in Southeast Asia are helping to enable a combined electrical vehicle and grid based renewable power revolution. Note that the Tesla gigafactory is still far from complete even though it is currently producing 5 GWh of lithium batteries per year. Production by end 2018 is expected to hit 35 GWh per year and ultimate production could hit as high as 150 GWh per year.)

The Economist notes that performance gains for electrical vehicles are quickly outpacing those of internal…