Energy

A year after the incoming Tory government cancelled carbon capture and storage (CCS) funding, a committee of MPs has argued that the new Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy should put CCS front and centre of UK energy policy. According to the MPs, previous problems with CCS stem from …

As the revamped UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy casts around for an energy policy that might just keep the lights on, they could do a lot worse than turn to the Tories’ favourite daily newspaper for a lead.  That’s the conclusion of climate campaigner and solar energy …

Fracking has made people stressed, divided communities and undermined public trust in police, government and the political process, according to Dean Kirby in i-News: “Residents near two proposed fracking sites in Lancashire have been ‘profoundly impacted’ by the plans even before a final decision on whether to approve them has …

One of the reasons fracking took off in the USA is that landowners also own the mineral rights beneath their land.  So when energy companies decided that oil and gas prices were high enough to make fracking possible, they had to pay landowners directly for the rights. The UK is …

Britain’s energy industry is dying.  That’s the stark conclusion reached by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph: “We have let matters drift for so long that half of our nuclear reactors will be phased out over the next nine years with nothing ready to replace them. North Sea oil and gas …

Tony Lodge from the right wing think-tank the Centre for Policy Studies has urged Teresa May to wake up to the desperate state of the British energy industry: “I spoke alongside [the new Secretary of State, Greg] Clark in 2009 at the Conservative Party Conference on a platform appropriately titled …

Heineken Chief Executive Jean-Francois van Boxmeer has told MSM Money that he is “praying for higher oil prices”.  But why should a brewery – albeit the third largest in the world – desire an increase in the price of a commodity that appears to have little to do with its …

Optimism that oil prices would rise above $50 per barrel has been dashed in recent weeks.  Supply disruptions in Canada, Nigeria and Libya have come to an end, while OPEC has increased its output.  The earlier glut in crude oil has now translated into a global oversupply of refined products.  …

Nintendo’s augmented reality (AR) game Pokemon-GO has become something of a craze around the world.  The game involves players using their smartphones to find and capture virtual creatures (Pokemon) that appear on screen as if they were in the same real-world location as the player. While much of the media …

The price of energy is at rock bottom in the face of global oversupply in oil.  However, despite oil and coal prices falling below the break-even price for many energy companies, the price of renewables is falling faster. Ed Crooks at the Financial Times provides several recent examples, including: “The …