The IMF has just published a working paper on the future price of oil. It concludes that: a) the price of oil in real terms will most likely double over the next ten years, and b) there is a large degree of uncertainty in how things might actually turn out.
Category archives: Energy
Renewable energy investment finally passes fossil fuels
The amount of investment in renewable energy has passed that in fossil fuels for the first time. Electricity from the wind, sun, waves and biomass drew $187 billion last year compared with $157 billion for natural gas, oil and coal, according to calculations by Bloomberg. Source, LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-renewables-20111125,0,2421278.story This related story has a nice graphic …
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Small milestones
Oil remains volatile, with prices falling despite low US stocks. UK-based banks are swapping their liquid assets for the illiquid assets of European lenders — but does the resulting mix have a lower or higher risk of contagion? Use of the renminbi to settle cross-border trades fell.
The next agro-industrial revolution
The Earth is full and over the past ten years increasing demand from emerging markets has erased all the resource-price declines of the last century. A new report from McKinsey says three key trends look set to make this situation more difficult and more volatile: people in developing nations are looking to increase their standards of living, …
Why BBC’s Panorama got it wrong on Green Energy
A BBC Panorama programme recently put out some figures on the UK’s up-coming energy crisis and the need to build new capacity. This short film explains how the programme got its figures wrong, and how within a few years (by 2020) renewable energy is expected to be cheaper, and more reliable, than fossil-fuel alternatives. If …
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As financial systems and economies worsen, innovation comes from an unlikely source
After some apparently good news yesterday, the news today has turned distinctly sour. As stories in the FT show: The world’s financial systems still seem to be getting worse, not better European solutions seem to be tinkering at the edges The ‘real’ economy is becoming increasingly volatile Innovation is needed
Turning the corner?
A generally upbeat set of stories in the FT this morning: The Bank of England’s executive director of financial stability has called for risk rules for lending to small businesses to be temporarily relaxed. Although counterintuitive in some ways, it would help to smooth business cycles: encouraging activity in a downturn and reducing the support given …
How much fossil fuel remains?
This page shows visualisations of known reserves of oil, gas, and coal. http://visualization.geblogs.com/visualization/gas/ Click “In Comparison”. Drag the pointers and you will see that although the initial estimates look good, with only minimal annual growth of say 3-4%/year (compared with China’s economic growth of around 10%) we only have a generation of all three fuels …
Drivers of change
Chris Luebkeman, Director of Global Innovation and Foresight at Arup, talks about some of the key drivers of change in our world: Key drivers of change that he mentions, to varying levels of detail, include: Congestion Genetic screening Sea level rise Affluence Ageing populations Single person households Connectivity Clickizens Trans-generational exchange Authenticity Accountability for externalities …
Peak oil? What peak oil?
An interesting article here talking about north America (including Canada)’s resurgence in home-grown energy, mostly from ‘tight oil’ — extracted with gas from shale rock formations, using the fracking process.