Follow us on twitter!News Flash 13 June 2011
The Economist
New figures show extraordinary growth in energy use last year
GLOBAL oil production posted its biggest increase since 2004 last year but it was a relatively weak performer in a bumper year for energy growth, according to BP’s latest annual Statistical Review of World Energy. Although oil production grew by 2.2% in 2010, oil consumption grew by 3.1% and energy demand across the board shot ahead by 5.6%, the biggest annual gain since 1973. Growth was above its long-term trend in every region of the world and almost every fuel reached record levels of use……. Coal consumption grew by 7.6%; gas by 7.4%; hydroelectricity by 5.3%; other renewables by 15.5%. Read More.....
Platts
Thermal coal hits 40-year high at 29.6% of global energy mix: BP
Thermal coal consumption in the global energy mix in 2010 rose to 29.6%, its highest level since 1970, according to the BP 2011 Statistical Review of World Energy. In 2001, coal accounted for 25.6% of the global energy market. Last year, total global coal consumption grew 7.6% year-on-year to 3.55 billion mt, its highest growth rate since 2003, with China accounting for over 66% of the growth rate. Total global production rose by 6.3% to 3.73 billion mt with the Asia-Pacific region accounting for 2.5 billion mt of output, according to the review. The Asia-Pacific region also accounted for 88.6% of all coal production growth. Read More.....
The Wall Street Journal
Merkel: Need Up To 20GW In Additional Fossil Generation Capacity
Germany needs to build at least 10 gigawatts and preferably up to 20 gigawatts of additional coal- and gas-fired electricity generating capacity in the next ten years in order to secure energy security, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday.
The government had previously only spoken of a need for an additional 10 gigawatts of fossil fuel generation capacity. Read More.....
Huffington Post
Filling Your Tank With... Coal?
"I believe that coal is America's most affordable, available, reliable and secure source of energy," declared Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), whose own coal-friendly American Alternative Fuels Act of 2011, introduced two weeks ago, was on the committee's morning agenda. "And using America's coal resources as a transportation fuel will decrease our dependence on foreign sources of oil and really strengthen our national security." Read More.....
R&D on-line
Beyond oil and shale gas, another fossil fuel may anchor the energy resources of the United States: gas hydrates.
In the early 1970s, researchers identified another hydrocarbon resource, the gas hydrate. Gas hydrates form wherever appropriately-sized molecules of gas (usually methane) and water occur together under specific conditions of low temperature and high pressure. These conditions exist in areas of permafrost and within shallow sediments of continental shelves where water depth exceeds about 500 m.
By the late 1990s, experts agreed in general that gas hydrates existed in vast quantities, perhaps holding more organic carbon than all of the world’s coal, oil, and natural gas deposits combined. According to the testimony given to U.S. Congress in 2009 by the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), Pittsburgh, Pa., the total resource estimates are massive. The estimate for the global abundance of methane stored in gas hydrate form is commonly cited as 20,000 trillion cubic meters. Read More.....
Daily Mail
The Coalition's absurd energy policy is damaging industry and adding hundreds of pounds to every family's fuel bills
The economy is already recovering, slowly but incontrovertibly, from the recession. However, there is a threat to that recovery — and the bitter irony is that this is of the Government’s own making. It is not the very necessary reduction and eventual elimination of the budget deficit. It is the Government’s so-called climate-change policy of ‘decarbonising’ the British economy — the replacement of carbon-based energy with substantially more expensive non-carbon energy, in particular wind power. Read More.....
Gizmag
A winning solution for renewable energy and CO2 reduction?
A promising new innovation in geothermal technology, that offers a novel solution to climate change, has been created by two researchers from the University of Minnesota's Department of Earth Sciences. The technology focuses on tapping heat from beneath the Earth's surface. By using high-pressure carbon dioxide (CO2) instead of water to extract the heat, the system has the potential to produce significantly more efficient renewable energy. At the same time, by sequestering CO2 deep underground, it actively reduces atmospheric CO2. It's being hailed as a two in one solution for climate change. Read More.....
