Denmark invites Norway to set an end date
Every Friday, the editorial staff of Energy and Climate presents five international news items from last week. Here are my chosen ones.
Oil and gas become a theme in Glasgow
During the climate summit in Glasgow in November, Denmark and Costa Rica will launch an alliance to halt oil and gas production – Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA).
This is not the first time BOGA has been mentioned for the public, but the case as Reuters published on Wednesday this week provides the most comprehensive presentation of the initiative to no. Countries such as New Zealand, Portugal and Spain all have membership for consideration and will probably join the new initiative. Norway is also mentioned in the article as a potential country that the initiative will target. The draft statutes, which Reuters has had access to, show that full membership required fulfilling obligations:
- End date for all oil and gas production.
- Stop allocating new licenses on the shelf.
Denmark itself has set 2050 as the end date for its own production.
The initiators are also considering opening up for a B-membership for those who do not want to set an end date, but are “only” willing to do something about the public financing of oil and gas.
The purpose of BOGA must be to set a new standard for climate leadership, follow the initiators. Climate Minister Dan Jørgensen from Denmark tells Reuters that it is a paradox that many countries set goals for carbon neutrality, but still plan to produce oil and gas long after the goal has been reached.
Although it does not cost much for small oil countries such as Denmark and Costa Rica to set an end date, the initiative will force a new issue on the agenda in international climate work. It will not be easy for civilized oil-producing countries – such as Norway and the United Kingdom – to flatly reject the Danish-leased initiative. The latter even hosts this autumn’s important climate summit.
Maersk opens for the use of green methanol
Danske Mærsk has ordered eight new container vessels that everyone should be able to run on green methanol – in addition to traditional fossil fuels. The ships will be built in South Korea and be at sea in 2024. The extra cost of preparing the ships for methanol is 10-15 percent.
It is already known that Maersk has ordered a new feeder ship (a smaller container ship that runs on a fixed route) which will run on green methanol in 2023. Maersk also entered into a recent partnership with Danish REintegrate and European Energy on the supply of green methanol to this ship.
The container market is growing rapidly and many new ships have been contracted. But Maersk is quite alone in ordering that can go on more climate-friendly fuel alternatives than LNG, write Financial Times.
Maersk, for its part, points out that large product owners such as Amazon and Microsoft are in the process of setting climate targets for the entire value chain – which in turn will put pressure on shipping to cut emissions. Maersk itself has set goals carbon neutrality in 2050 – and expressed a clear ambition that commercial zero-emission technologies must be ready by 2030.
It is still a big BUT: Without a sufficient supply of green methanol, Maersk’s new ships will also run on fossil fuels.
Small-scale nuclear power in Wales?
Could the answer to the growing need for clean power in industrial areas be small, modular nuclear power reactors? It is hoped Welsh authorities that no one has taken new steps on the road to realization small-scale nuclear power in Trawsfynydd – an area in the far north of the country where until 1991 there was traditional nuclear power production on a large scale. The advantage of the technology that no one is considering – for small-scale nuclear power – is that the reactors can be built on existing industrial sites. This also reduces costs.
Small modular reactors was one in ten green industrial initiatives which Boris Johnson launched at the end of 2020 and which the British government will spend millions of pounds on realizing.
Former owner this summer, it also became known at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates is helping to support the building of small-scale nuclear power reactors in the coal state of Wyoming in the United States.
Carbon black restart after the pandemic
Greenhouse gas emissions from the world’s electricity production have risen sharply in the first half of 2021 – compared with the first half of 2019. It shows updated data from the British think tank EMBER (formerly Sandbag). The emissions week is a result of us using more TWh of electricity before the pandemic, and that this consumption growth is greater than the growth in new solar and wind power capacity. Combined with probably reduced nuclear power production, this has contributed to strong carbon growth.
The main problem is China. 90 percent of the global growth in electricity consumption has taken place here – which in turn has given more hours of use for Chinese coal-fired power plants. From the first half of 2019 to the second half of 2021, China’s coal power production has grown by 337 TWh, while the world without China as a whole has reduced production by 84 TWh. Also in other Asian countries, from Mongolia to Bangladesh, the growth in electricity consumption has been covered by increased coal power.
Unfortunately, there is little to suggest that China is changing course immediately. In the last six months alone, 24 new coal-fired power plants have been approved by Chinese provincial authorities. Collectively, China has approved over 100 GW with new coal power capacity, write Reuters.
Want to read more?
- Almost every party in Germany will phase out coal power long before 2038, while renewable energy accounted for 92 percent of all new power capacity in USA in the first half of 2021.
Climate change makes extreme floods more likely
The Oxford-leia research initiative World Weather Attribution has the task of assessing specific extreme weather events in the light of climate change. This week published the result of the analysis of the heavy rain which this summer caused extreme floods in Germany and Belgium – and which took the lives of several hundred people. Conclusion: Man-made climate change has made such weather events in Western Europe up to gongar more likely.
Want to read more? BBC is one of many international newsrooms that have covered this news.