Drive to make energy cleaner has stalled. Shale gas could help.
Average unit of energy is 'basically as dirty' as two decades ago, says new IEA report, despite boom in renewables. Among its recommendations: Encourage move from coal to gas by developing unconventional gas.
Average unit of energy is 'basically as dirty' as two decades ago, says new IEA report, despite boom in renewables. Among its recommendations: Encourage move from coal to gas by developing unconventional gas.
As usual, the real news belongs to a couple of things you may have missed this week.
One, at first completely unrelated to energy, but of major consequence to everything else was the 聽discovery that the Reinhart/Rogoff聽economic study that underpinned austerity economics world-wise had a key error in it.You couldn鈥檛 make this up. Reinhart and Rogoff certainly didn鈥檛 but they did make two key errors in the 2010 economic study that was cited world-wide as the reason why governments should cut back spending during the recession instead of spending their way out. In short, it was all down to an Excel error and leaving some key information out. This was easy to miss due to the newsflow from Boston and Texas, but seek this amazing story out or go directly to Paul Krugman in the NY Times聽or just one of several places in the FT. Think of this as paradigm shift equal to that of shale energy, only bigger and quicker.
The second story was within an IEA report last week Tracking Clean Energy Progress Reduction. Or, as we see from聽the Guardian, the complete lack of it:
Stalled? Try drove into a ditch:
The report provides a valuable reality check, although dark greens drew the wrong conclusions and felt that the fact that renewables haven鈥檛 penetrated the generation mix for 20 years is only due to lack of effort or failure to understand the true consequences of the looming apocalypse and so on. In short, the same response as When Prophecy Fails.
The IEA did point that renewable investment was steaming ahead, but so too is coal outside the United States, which as we know has been the bright green alternative since the US has cut carbon levels below what their commitments would have been under the Kyoto Accords. If they had ever signed them.
What hasn鈥檛 been reported anywhere else as far I鈥檝e seen, is cunningly hidden from the press on page 45 under Advice to Governments, reproduced in full with the obvious highlight
The IEA at least, points out the obvious, even if dark greens choose to ignore this inconvenient truth: Replacing coal with natural gas reduces emissions and we should all develop gas resources so that they compete better on price with coal as what has happened in the US. Development of unconventional gas resources, i.e. increasing supply,will 聽help bring down gas prices via the fairly obvious law of supply and demand.
As we see from places like Texas聽and Oklahoma, where wind supplies up to 30% of all generation,聽shale gas and renewables can work together聽to build a low carbon future.
But there鈥檚 hope on the horizon. Going back to the Guardian story:
Global clean energy investment in the first quarter fell to its lowest level in four years, driven by cuts in tax incentives at a time of austerity, according to a separate report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance this week.
Will austerity be permanent? That returns us to the story which wasn鈥檛 about energy but the economy: A world where austerity is less severe at least, or chucked out the window entirely, can be the best of both worlds. All of a sudden, government subsidies of renewable, among boring things like education and health, may return. We鈥檒l even be able to pay them off ultimately via the benefit of economic expansion from shale energy.聽
The best of all possible worlds.That鈥檚 ironic. I鈥檝e often described the battle between pragmatists and purists, or Bright Green v Dark Green, as dark greens making the perfect the enemy of the good, a quote from Voltaire via Barack Obama.
When I was a kid in the United States every one in high school聽heard about Voltaire鈥檚 Candide where his mentor Pangloss talks of 鈥渁ll is for the best in the best of all possible worlds鈥�. This was often the only French thing an American high school student might ever hear, and in these fear of socialism days they may not hear it at all. My kids in the UK today, of course, say Voltaire who?
With a bit of luck, and abandoning outdated concepts, I think we could be in the best of all possible worlds. But since I鈥檓 an optimist, and there are thousands of others who make a good living聽describing and most important of all,聽perpetuating, problems, it will be a slow road. Slow, but inevitable.