Jeremy Leggett's Triple Crunch Log

UK shale gas drillers confirm they will flare methane.

jeremyl — Thu, 09 May 2013 14:23:05 +0000

Guardian: “The two companies exploring for shale gas in the UK have confirmed that they intend to flare methane gas from their wells in a move that has been condemned by environmentalists.” “….In the US, where fracking wells are now widespread, flaring is so prevalent that the light from the flames can be seen from space, rivalling street lamps from cities.”

European Commission recommends tariffs up to 67% on Chinese solar.

jeremyl — Thu, 09 May 2013 08:52:18 +0000

REW: “ Wall Street Journal reports that the tariffs will affect more than 100 companies, and be implemented at a range from 37.3 to 67.9 percent at an average of 47.6 percent, close to projections earlier this week.” “Companies will face tariffs as follows: Suntech and its subsidiaries: 48.6 percen, LDK Solar: 55.9 percent, Trina Solar.: 51.5 percent, JA Solar: 58.7 percent

Other companies that cooperated with the investigation will likely be hit with a 47.6 percent tariff, while those that did not cooperate will face a 67.9 percent tariff. China strongly opposes the tariffs and is calling for extended dialogue to resolve the situation, according to Bloomberg. The Alliance for Affordable Solar Energy (AFASE) also expressed its concern in a statement, claiming that punititve tariffs at any level will cause “irreversible damage to the entire European Photovoltaic value chain. ….The EC’s preliminary decision on antidumping was scheduled for early June, followed by a preliminary ruling on antisubsidies in August. Both are expected to be finalized in December. ….And China has repeatedly suggested it might retaliate with its own probe into US and European polysilicon suppliers. ….Chong Quan, deputy international trade representative with China’s Ministry of Commerce, has suggested 400,000 Chinese workers could be affected by Europe’s solar trade decision. The STA acknowledges the European Photovoltaic Industry Association’s calculation of a €39.4 billion value in the PV value chain and “no less than 265,000 jobs — but that the companies behind Europe’s antidumping investigations “represent no more than a maximum of 8,700 jobs,” or at most 3 percent of all jobs in the PV value chain, according to the STA.”

Oxford alumni condemn choice of Shell to fund earth sciences lab.

jeremyl — Wed, 08 May 2013 13:32:21 +0000

Guardian: “Jeremy Leggett among 100 signatories to letter opposing oil firm’s likely influence over university’s climate change studies.” “The veteran environmental campaigners Jonathon Porritt and Jeremy Leggett are among 100 past and present students and staff who are accusing Oxford University of hypocrisy for accepting funding from Shell for a new earth sciences laboratory. In a letter published in the Guardian on Thursday, the group maintains that Shell is a “particularly inappropriate choice of funder for an earth sciences laboratory. ….As Oxford alumni, staff and students, we are united in our opposition to this new partnership and the growing trend of oil companies funding, and thus influencing, the research agenda of our universities,” the signatories write. ….”Oxford’s own climate scientists are warning us that we need to leave the majority of known fossil fuels in the ground, and yet this new partnership will undertake research that will help Shell to find and extract even more hydrocarbons”.”
JL: My full statment of support: ” “Shell has abandoned all pretence at playing a role in saving civilisation from the ruin of six degree global warming. Universities are increasingly part of the problem too. Most have become complicit seekers of funding, for short-term perceived interests, when a liveable future is at stake for the very students they educate. This union of my alma mater with Shell is a potent symbol of the suicide pact we are all now part of. I have such fond memories of my time in this department. Now I am almost as ashamed of it as I am appalled by Shell’s desperate defence of a deadly status quo, despite everything climate scientists know and warn of.”

“Call a truce in the no-winners solar war.”

jeremyl — Tue, 07 May 2013 08:49:11 +0000

Jeremy Leggett in the FT: Europe is on the brink of a trade war with China in one of the fastest-growing global industries. America and China are already engaged in battle. The job-rich and emissions-low solar photovoltaics industry is heading for severe impairment, at best.”“The solar PV industry grew tenfold globally between 2007 and 2012. The average cost of buying a panel fell more than 75 per cent. Unless there is a trade war, many analysts expect solar electricity to be cheaper than any other alternative in most markets by 2015. Renewable-energy advocates enthuse, based on recent experience in Germany, about its potential, in conjunction with wind, across a nation or a continent.
Reading scientists’ dire forecasts of climate change, and writing this in a smog-bound Chinese city, an analogy springs to mind. A planet faces an asteroid strike. Its inhabitants manufacture rockets with which to head off the threat. But, as the rock nears, they descend into international bickering over who pockets what from rocket-making.
Last year the world had 60 gigawatts of PV manufacturing capacity. Less than 30GW were produced. That was before the spectre appeared of a no-winners trade war between Brussels and Beijing, alongside the Washington-Beijing face-off. The hobbling of growth potential arose from severe cuts in governmental market-building regimes, largely the product of a campaign by the companies that dominate energy markets, seeking to hold back renewables in defence of their interests.
So the incumbents in carbon fuels and nuclear are the root cause of the trade war. They have managed to curb soaring demand for solar, accelerating global price-cutting beyond what manufacturing economies of scale would have produced. It did not take long for manufacturers in the US to complain of Chinese companies dumping their products. Washington responded in 2012 with tariffs on Chinese modules.
European manufacturers have made the same complaint; the EU trade commissioner last week recommended Brussels impose a tariff of 40 per cent. This would wipe out thousands of jobs across the continent because most are not in manufacturing but in the companies that install the modules, regardless of where they are made.
This is a no-winners war because globalisation has spread the solar supply chain unevenly around the world. Solar ingots, the upstream feedstock, are mostly made in Europe and America. The midstream products, cells and modules, are mostly made in China. It is easy to predict what the Chinese will do next: retaliatory tariffs upstream. Downstream, the many companies installing solar at scale can only watch in horror. Everybody loses.
In principle, this madness is easily fixed. Brussels could yet say no to tariffs. If not, resolution would require a conference call of the leaders of the few nations where most solar is manufactured. The outcome would be instructions to their ministries to think of common global energy security rather than narrow national energy insecurity. If nations can negotiate an effective treaty to avoid destruction of the Earth’s ozone layer, they can negotiate a deal that fosters an effective global solar infrastructure. One of the tools they would have to hand is international co-ordination of subsidies required for the few years some countries need to bring the price of solar to parity with that of conventional energy.
At some stage, the world will have to embrace common security on a bigger scale. Engaging in international competition while clinging to the illusion that markets always work will never solve our common problems of energy insecurity, poor air quality and resource depletion, never mind development. We will keep on maiming industries that can save us.
Solar markets would be a great place to start, and now is the time.”

EDF CEO ready to quit if he can’t get his way with Hinkley Point reactor..

jeremyl — Mon, 06 May 2013 12:21:05 +0000

Times: “The chief executive of EDF Energy will leave Britain if the French company’s £14 billion Hinkley Point reactor project collapses.” “Vincent de Rivaz, the longest-serving boss of Britain’s Big Six energy companies, has staked his credibility on getting the plan to build Britain’s first new reactors for decades off the ground. However, the chances of the project going ahead are receding, with EDF Energy and the Government in a stand-off over the level of subsidies – funded by levies on consumers’ bills – that the company will receive. One source said that the Government had made several minor concessions in recent days, but the two sides remained far apart. ….Hinkley Point costs have risen by about 40 per cent to £14 billion, which means that EDF Energy must secure bigger subsidies from the Government to make the plan viable. The company wants a guaranteed fixed price of £100 per megawatt hour (MWh) for about 35 years for the electricity generated by Hinkley Point, almost twice the present wholesale rate, which would give it a 10 per cent rate of return. ….With EDF Energy spending £1 million a day to keep the project going, it is thought that the group will walk away if no deal is struck by the summer. Last month EDF announced job cuts, believed to amount to about 150 out of the project’s 800-strong workforce, but insisted that talks with the Government were making progress.”

EU trade commissioner favours 40% tariffs on Chinese solar panel imports.

jeremyl — Sun, 05 May 2013 11:34:58 +0000

FT: “Europe’s trade chief is pushing to impose provisional duties of about 40 per cent on Chinese solar panels in a move that risks stirring wider trade tensions with Beijing and dividing the EU industry.” “Karel De Gucht, the trade commissioner, has arrived at the provisional duties figure after concluding that Chinese manufacturers benefited from illegal government subsidies and then dumped their products – or sold them below cost – in the EU, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Bet on Obama backing the Keystone XL pipeline: John Dizard.

jeremyl — Fri, 03 May 2013 13:15:18 +0000

In the FT: “Many, if not most, of the headline-dominating Washington political fights are less significant than they appear to be. ….However, the fight between TransCanada, the sponsor of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from the Alberta tar sands to the US Gulf coast, and the North American environmental movement is a lot of noise about a very important matter.” “And Keystone XL’s fate really does rest in the hands of one man, President Barack Obama, who gets to decide whether its construction is allowed to proceed. Mind you, he seems to be one very suggestible man. ….The tar sands have high fixed costs, but don’t deplete as rapidly as even the best conventional oilfields. Given that much, if not all, the remainder could be covered by Mexico and other western-hemisphere exporters, the US would face much less demanding military requirements to secure its sea lines of communication – as in defence budget, current account and reserve currency sustainability.
Against that view, which appeals to the strategy and finance freaks, the most committed opponents among the enviros contend that Keystone XL will lead to an irreversible US commitment to a carbon-fuelled economy. I had thought that was sensationalism pour la galerie, but now I think they have a point. ….If the president or John Kerry, the US secretary of state, really wanted to drag this out for a couple of years, they could. The president, however, has told the (largely pro-pipeline) congressional leadership that they will have his decision by the end of the year. Political leaders can change their minds, but even those enviro-activist lawyers who would like a drawn-out process believe that the presidential decision is likely to come in months, not a year. ….Goodbye permanent carrier task force in the Indian Ocean; we’ll find out how those climate models work over a longer term.”

The vital role of foundations in the retreat from fossil fuels.

jeremyl — Wed, 01 May 2013 12:46:18 +0000

Alliance magazine: “On 18 April Carbon Tracker, a UK-based foundation-led initiative, released its second report, Unburnable Carbon: Avoiding wasted capital and stranded assets. We need a managed, rapid and complete retreat from the use of fossil fuels if disastrous global warming is to be avoided, Jeremy Leggett, chair of Carbon Tracker, tells Caroline Hartnell.” “We need to replace these high-carbon fuels with renewable energy, and we need to do it fast, as though preparing for war. And yes, foundations do have a huge role to play.
Extract:
How important is investment of foundation assets as opposed to their grantmaking?
It’s very important. Foundations can lead from the front in this regard. I know that there are different views in the foundation community, but it is absolutely imperative that foundation portfolios look beyond short-term rates of return.
But I would go much further than where they invest their assets. I would say now is the time for them to table the whole lot or an appreciable amount of the actual endowment, and really go for it because we are in the last chance saloon. We really need to turn things around this decade or I fear we are going to lose this battle and our civilization will collapse. I know it sounds dramatic but that’s what I genuinely believe. And I’m far from alone of course.
If you’re a foundation, what is the point of sitting on all this money, deploying it in small parcels of the whole every year, if you find that by the time we get to 2020 global warming is accelerating so fast that we’ve passed the point of no return?
What are you actually suggesting? Should they be spending down their money or investing their assets in things like development of renewable energies?
It’s not one thing or another. I think they should be tabling all their money. It’s not necessarily spending it down because a lot of this could be investment. If there really is a green industrial revolution, for example; if we can team up to find new ways to mobilize capital, like massive-scale crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending; if we can take the capitalization of the future out of the hands of these short-term bonus culture banks and mobilize people power, foundation capital could really create seismic change. I’ve written a book called The Energy of Nations: Risk blindness and the road to renaissance which talks about how we do this incredibly difficult thing of turning around what is a suicidal system. I’m not just talking about energy but the way we are glued to the financial system. Foundations could do a better job by acting in a way that’s appropriate to the degree of danger that civilization is in.”

FERC Chairman: Solar roofs help a US grid vulnerable to terrorist attack.

jeremyl — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:37:49 +0000

Bloomberg: “The U.S. power grid is vulnerable to terrorist attacks, and the growing use of rooftop solar panels will provide protection against lengthy blackouts, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said.” “It wouldn’t take that much to take the bulk of the power system down,” FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff said today at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance summit in New York. “If you took down the transformers and the substations so they’re out permanently, we could be out for a long, long time.”
Distributing generation units more widely on the grid, such as by deploying fuel cells and rooftop solar panels will help consumers avoid blackouts. The trend also threatens to cut into revenue that utilities count on to maintain the transmission system, he said. ….“Consumers are starting to understand they want control,” Wellinghoff said. “They want some ability to keep their lights on when that next storm comes along”.”

Mosaic rolls out its third solar crowdfunding offer.

jeremyl — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 19:18:50 +0000

REW: “Barely three years old, the company has attracted over 1,200 investors to finance solar power generation projects, with contributions ranging from $25 to $10,000.” “Mosaic offers investment opportunities to individuals who can earn a return between 4.5 percent and 6.38 percent over five to 10 years. It’s akin to a bond or annuity, and the interest rates are more attractive than what you can score with CD and Treasury bills these days. The startup, founded in 2010, rolled out a new investment opportunity last week, a roughly $700,000 project to install 487 kW at the Wildwoods Convention Center in New Jersey. That is the third financing round for the same project, which raised about $597,000 during the first two rounds. ….The average investment is $1,000. ….Mosaic makes money mainly in two ways: an upfront origination fee that is typically 2 percent to 5 percent of the loan, and a 1 percent fee from the payment made by the borrower throughout the term of the loan. The rest of that payment then goes to the investors that funded the project.”