Climate change: A giant donut-shaped machine just proved a near ...

In a giant donut-shaped machine known as a tokamak, scientists working in the English village of Culham, near Oxford, were able to generate a record-breaking 59 megajoules of sustained fusion energy over five seconds on December 21 last year. Five seconds is the limit the machine can sustain the power before its magnets overheat.

The JET tokamak near Oxford, England, produced a record amount of sustained energy from nuclear fusion. Credit: EUROFusion.

A magnetic field is required to contain the high temperatures needed to carry out the fusion process, which can be as high as 150 million degrees Celsius, 10 times hotter than the center of the sun.

"Our experiment showed for the first time that it's possible to have a sustained fusion process using exactly the same fuel mix planned for future fusion power plants," Tony Donné, CEO of EUROfusion, said at a press conference.

EUROfusion, a consortium that includes 4,800 experts, students and staff from across Europe, carried out the project in partnership with the UK Atomic Energy Authority. The European Commission also contributed funding.

The potential for fusion energy is enormous. The experiment used the elements deuterium and tritium -- which are isotopes of hydrogen -- to fuel the fusion. Those elements are likely to be used in commercial-scale fusion, and can be found in seawater.

"The energy you can get out of the fuel deuterium and tritium is massive. For example, powering the whole of current UK electrical demand for a day would require 0.5 tonnes of deuterium, which could be extracted from seawater -- where its concentration is low but plentiful," Tony Roulstone from the University of Cambridge's Department of Engineering told CNN.

He said the fusion generated by the tokamak -- called the Joint European Torus (JET) -- was around the same as a wind turbine, and could power one house's energy for a day.

A view of Torus Hall, where the JET tokamak machine lies.

"But if generated repeatedly, it could power thousands of houses."

Experts say the results prove that nuclear fusion is possible, and no longer a pipedream solution for the climate crisis.

"These landmark results have taken us a huge step closer to conquering one of the biggest scientific and engineering challenges of them all," said Ian Chapman, CEO of the UK Atomic Energy Authority.

Mark Wenman, a nuclear materials researcher at Imperial College London, said in a statement that the experiment's results are "exciting," and that they show "fusion energy really is no longer just a dream of the far future -- the engineering to make it a useful, clean power source is achievable and happening now."

JET has been subject to such extreme heat and pressure that this experiment is likely the last it will cope with.

But its results are seen as a huge boon for ITER, a fusion megaproject in the south of France supported by the US, China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea and Russia. The ITER project is 80% built and aims to begin nuclear fusion sometime in 2025-26.

While JET's goal was to prove that nuclear fusion could be generated and sustained, ITER's aim is to produce a tenfold return on energy, or 500 MW of fusion power from 50 MW of energy put in.

The results are promising, but mastering nuclear fusion as an everyday energy source is still likely a long way off.

"The JET results are impressive and probably will get better as they proceed through their experiments. They are producing high power 12 MW, but right now just for five seconds. Much longer fusion burn is what is required," Roulstone said.

The most recent report from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the latest science shows that the world must nearly halve its greenhouse gas emissions this decade and reach zero net emissions by 2050 to keep global warming in check. That means making a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, like coal, oil and gas.

Those actions are required to have any hope of containing warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, seen as a threshold to substantially worsening climate impacts, according to the IPCC.

France announces plans to build up to 14 nuclear reactors | CNN ...

Paris (CNN Business) France has announced plans to build up to 14 new nuclear reactors in a move that could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide a buffer against volatile energy prices.

President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that France would construct six nuclear reactors, and study the possibility of commissioning a further eight.

"Given the electricity needs, the need to also anticipate the transition and the end of the existing fleet, which cannot be extended indefinitely, we are going to launch today a program of new nuclear reactors," Macron said.

Construction will commence in 2028, and the first new reactor could be commissioned by 2035.

The push deeper into nuclear marks a policy reversal for Macron, who promised four years ago to close 12 nuclear reactors as part of a move away from the power source. France was forced to turn to coal power this winter to meet its energy needs after more than a fifth of the country's nuclear reactors went offline.

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Gas prices could soar if Russia invades Ukraine - CNN

New York (CNN Business) If Russia invades Ukraine, inflation-weary Americans will likely pay even higher prices at the pump .

That's because Russia is the No. 2 oil producer on the planet , behind only the United States. And Ukraine is a key energy transit hub, where a large amount of Russian natural gas exports to Europe flow through.

An invasion of Ukraine would trigger immediate fears of sanctions from Washington on Russia's vast energy resources, damage to the region's energy infrastructure and raise the specter of Vladimir Putin weaponizing exports of natural gas and crude oil.

Investors would buy first and ask questions later.

"There is a very good chance we would reach $100. That's going to be inflationary with an exclamation point," said Robert Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho Securities. "We don't need that at all. We can't afford that at all."

A conflict between Russia and Ukraine would boost gas prices, the head of the International Energy Agency said on Thursday.

"Such a huge geopolitical event would [have] major implications on the gas prices, if not leading to turmoil," IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol told CNNI's Julia Chatterley on First Move.

'All bets are off'

It's impossible to say how high prices would go — and how long they would stay high. But $100 oil would surely lift prices at the pump. And that means a Russia-Ukraine conflict has the potential to impact most Americans.

Gasoline prices, which move with a lag to oil, have already started to creep higher in recent days. The national average hit $3.32 a gallon on Wednesday, up from the recent low of $3.28, according to AAA.

"If there is a war with Russia, then all bets are off," said Claudio Galimberti, senior vice president of analysis at Rystad Energy.

Oil prices are up sharply this week and analysts say concerns about a Russia-Ukraine conflict have contributed to those gains.

"The market has been really slow to appreciate the risks of an invasion," said Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets. "Putin is not really a bluffer. He's known for backing words with action."

The White House is talking to energy companies and countries

All of this underscores the difficult situation the White House finds itself in, economically, politically and of course from a national security standpoint.

Inflation is already a major political and economic problem for President Joe Biden. The recent rebound in gasoline prices threatens to further aggravate inflation. And $100 oil in a Russia-Ukraine conflict would make it even worse.

"Whatever we decide is the right course for our collective interest and security," a spokesperson for the National Security Council told CNN in a statement, "we are prepared to deliver severe costs to the Russian economy including its financial system and sectors deemed critical to the Kremlin and President Putin's ambitions -- while minimizing unwanted spillover."

That last part -- mitigating the impact -- could be tricky.

A senior administration official told CNN that officials are taking contingency planning very seriously "to make sure we are prepared to mitigate any impact and assess potential spillovers." That contingency planning, the official said, includes conversations with energy companies and countries.

The administration official added that the White House has been "very clear" about how it would respond to an invasion and "that should already start being priced into the markets."

Natural gas prices could spike

Europeans would pay the biggest price in a conflict. That's because Europe relies on Russia for natural gas. Heating costs in Europe skyrocketed last fall as natural gas futures spiked.

The impact to American consumers is less direct.

Russia ships relatively modest amounts of oil to the United States, totaling just 200,000 barrels per day as of October. That represents just 3% of total US oil imports of 6 million barrels.

However, crude is a globally traded commodity and prices at the pump are based off world oil prices. An oil shock anywhere is felt everywhere.

Not just that, but a spike in natural gas prices overseas would have significant ripple effects.

That's because very high natural gas prices would force some power plants and factories in Europe and Asia to switch away from gas to oil. In other words, demand would go higher for oil.

'Weaponize energy'

At the same time, supply would be in doubt.

First, a military conflict would threaten energy infrastructure in the region.

But even if pipelines and refineries are spared, Russia could decide to slash its supply of natural gas -- or even crude oil.

"Russia can weaponize energy exports -- to make everyone feel the pain," said Croft, the RBC strategist. "A lot of people believe Russia will respond by withholding supply, to make us pay the price."

And then there's the risk that the White House responds to an invasion by slapping sanctions on Russian oil and natural gas.

President Biden warned Wednesday of imposing "severe costs and significant harm" on the Russian economy if Putin invades Ukraine.

"It's going to be heavy, it's going to be real and it's going to be consequential," Biden said.

Biden noted that Russia relies on its oil-and-gas exports for its economy. However, he stopped short of threatening to impose energy sanctions.

Croft, a former CIA analyst, suggested the reluctance of US officials to threaten energy sanctions on Russia is telegraphing a vulnerability to Putin.

"If you carve out energy, you are signaling you're concerned about energy," she said.

Any conflict could work against Russia's future as a dominant gas supplier.

"When you make long-term contracts, you have to trust your partner that under any conditions you will get this gas," noted IEA's Birol.

Sanctions could make inflation worse

Leveling sanctions would be a difficult decision for Biden.

On the one hand, energy is vital to Russia's economy, making it an obvious target for sanctions and a way to make Putin face real consequences.

Crude oil and natural gas made up about 43%, on average, of the Russian government's annual revenue between 2011 and 2020, according to the US Energy Information Administration . Oil and gas revenue spiked by 60% during the first nine months of last year, making them the biggest growth driver for government revenue, according to the World Bank.

"Russia is a one-pony town. Energy is the only thing they have. It's the glaring weakness in their economy," said Mizuho's Yawger.

And yet seizing on that weakness by limiting the supply of Russia's natural gas and oil would drive prices higher at a time when they are already elevated.

"This war situation would be bad enough. But if you start putting sanctions on energy, it just super-sizes the whole inflation story and takes it to the next level," said Yawger. "You would be committing economic, and political, suicide by doing that."

Will OPEC and Big Oil come to the rescue?

Croft, the RBC analyst, said the Biden administration would likely respond to a price spike by releasing more barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, likely in a coordinated fashion with other nations. That could help cushion the blow.

Biden could also try to convince Saudi Arabia-led OPEC to open the spigots, arguing that very high prices aren't good for producers if they destroy demand.

Analysts say US oil companies, which have up until recently been reluctant to significantly increase production, would respond to $100-plus oil by cranking output.

But that wouldn't translate to more gasoline overnight. And in the meantime, prices at the pump would remain high.

-- CNN's Chris Liakos contributed to this report

Cop26: how the UK is doing on three key net zero pledges | The ...

Experts Ashley Fly, Grant Wilson and Ljubomir Jankovic assess whether the prime minister is delivering on his climate promises The UK is hosting the 26th annual UN climate summit in Glasgow. Boris Johnson’s government boasts of having the most ambitious climate change targets in the world. But how is the country’s progress to net zero emissions by 2050 going? Three experts look at three key pledges. Transport Pledge: to phase out sales of petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030. Progress: electric vehicles, or EVs, accounted for 15.2% of all new UK vehicle registrations in September 2021, up from an average of 6.6% in 2020 and 1.6% in 2019. There are now almost 100 different EV models to choose from and a growing network of nearly 5,000 rapid chargers, up from 2,000 in 2018. In Norway, a country which is aiming for a more ambitious 2025 ban on petrol and diesel vehicles, nearly 80% of all vehicle sales in September were electric, up from 54.3% in 2020. Norway has demonstrated that a transition to electric vehicles is possible with current technologies if attractive policies, such as EV tax exemptions, are in place. There are lots of hurdles which the UK must overcome to achieve its own 100% EV sales target by 2030, such as households which lack driveways to charge their EVs at home and the commercial van sector, which will also fall under the ban. The government can help by installing more on-street charging points, simplifying the use of rapid charging points so they can all take contactless payment, and working with manufacturers to offer test drives. Electric vans currently qualify for government grants worth up to £6,000, but businesses may need more generous incentives. As the rest of the world rushes to meet their own EV targets, there could be a shortage of materials, parts and skills to make enough to keep up with demand. This could cause the price of EVs to rise or overwhelm waiting lists. One solution is to invest in the UK’s automotive sector and develop a flexible domestic supply chain with a network of gigafactories to produce the millions of batteries needed. Skip advert

Overall, the signs are looking good for high levels of EV purchasing in the near future, but it’s not time to take the foot off the zero emission gas just yet. Electricity Pledge: to stop burning coal to generate electricity by 1 October 2024. Progress: the UK’s rapid elimination of coal-fired power since 2015 has been possible due to three factors: a fall in electricity demand, an increase in renewable generation (wind and to a lesser degree solar) and a shift from coal to gas generation. However, there is still a residual amount of coal generation that has supplied between 1% and 2% of electricity demand at an annual level from 2019 to 2021. Coal is on track to generate around six terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2021. The drop in wind generation from 2020 to 2021 alone (largely due to an unusually calm summer) has been around 6-8 TWh. Coal remains a flexible source of generation that can be called upon to fill gaps when other sources are struggling or to help with unforeseen outages. This happened in September when the interconnector cable that imports electricity from France was taken offline due to a fire. A new electrical interconnector to Norway could further reduce the country’s dependence on generation from coal. Energy companies are also introducing time of use tariffs which nudge customers to shift electrical demand away from expensive peak periods such as weekday evenings – when coal is traditionally used to fill short-term gaps in supply – by passing on the higher cost of electricity at these times. The shift from coal is merely a step towards fully decarbonising the electrical system. The next is to remove natural gas. It’s entirely plausible that Britain will remove coal-generated electricity by October 2024, but keeping it out will depend on finding low-carbon means of balancing electricity supply and demand. That will mean making the electrical system more resilient to shocks, such as the sudden loss of power or high demand. EVs can help, by supplying electricity back to the grid when needed – effectively acting as small, distributed batteries. But by the time meaningful levels of controllable demand (and potentially supply) from EV charging are available to the system, coal generation will be long gone. Skip advert The other major challenge is balancing the system between seasons and years. Britain uses much more energy in winter than summer. As more energy generation (as well as demand) becomes dependent on the weather, Britain will have to prepare for years with significantly lower output from wind in particular. Coal excels here, with cost-effective stockpiles which can be turned into months of electricity supply. Batteries, pumped water and other forms of short-term electrical storage will never reach these sorts of scales. Without coal, energy system operators must find low-carbon solutions to this challenge of seasonal balancing. It will be surprising if coal generation lasts quite as long as October 2024 in Britain, and the milestone is one that should be rightly celebrated when it happens. However, the longer term storage that coal provided (and gas and nuclear still do) is something that Britain’s needs to address for a low-carbon electrical sector that is resilient to sustained low wind weather events. Heating Pledge: to ensure all new heating systems installed in UK homes are low-carbon from 2035.

Heat pumps: is it worth replacing your gas boiler? | The Week UK

In October last year, during the run-up to the Cop26 climate change conference, the UK government announced plans to subsidise the introduction of low-carbon heat pumps in order to cut reliance on fossil-fuel heating. As part of a “home heating revolution” in Britain, the government set out plans to start phasing out gas boilers by offering £5,000 grants to help 90,000 households install home heat pumps, The Guardian said. For 50 years the gas boiler has been “the mainstay of central heating”, said The Times. “Its days, however, are numbered” as new gas-reliant boilers will be banned from UK homes by 2035. Although the government is considering a number of green alternatives to heat homes, including the use of hydrogen boilers, the most “viable” alternative for the majority of households will be electric-powered heat pumps. Climate change is not the only crisis that Britain is battling – there’s also the cost of living crisis, too. The three-year boiler upgrade scheme will help “reduce the cost of more environmentally-friendly heating systems”, the BBC reported. And in his Spring Statement last month, Chancellor Rishi Sunak also announced that households will now pay 0% VAT on energy-saving equipment such as heat pumps and solar panels. With energy bills going through the roof, can households afford to make the switch from gas boilers to heat pumps? What are heat pumps and how do they work? An electric heat pump works like “a reverse fridge, extracting warmth from the outside air, the ground or a nearby water source before concentrating the heat and transferring it indoors”, The Guardian explained. Heat pumps are “nothing new”, said The Times, but very few are installed each year – roughly 27,000. The number of heat pumps being installed in UK homes will have to be scaled up considerably, with Boris Johnson’s climate advisers recommending that “by 2030 there should be 5.5 million heat pumps in British homes”. Skip advert Heat pumps work even when outside temperatures are very low and near freezing. They are also “much more efficient than a gas boiler” as they are able to produce “around three times the energy they use”, said the i news site.

“Crucially, heat pumps are also clean”, The Times added. Gas-reliant boilers produce masses of carbon dioxide: the gas boilers in British homes “produce twice as much CO2 as the nation’s gas-fired power stations”. But if we can ensure the electricity used to power heat pumps comes from “truly green sources” then “water is the only byproduct” of using a heat pump. How much do heat pumps cost to install? The cost of installing a heat pump can be significant and depends on the type installed and the size of a property, the BBC said. The installation can also prove to be “difficult and expensive”. For example, you may need to install “bigger radiators or dig into floors”. Heat pump prices are “usually high, taking into account the installation”, said GreenMatch.co.uk. The typical price range for a complete installation is “between £8,000 and £45,000, to which the running costs have to be considered”. The cost for an air to water heat pump range from £7,000 to £18,000, while ground source heat pumps can cost up to £45,000. “The running costs of heat pumps depend on your household, its insulation properties and size.” What grants are available and who is eligible? Through the boiler upgrade scheme, government grants will be provided to encourage property owners to install low-carbon heating systems such as heat pumps, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy explained. The scheme is open to domestic and small non-domestic properties in England and Wales and runs from 2022 to 2025. “These grants will help property owners overcome the upfront cost of low carbon heating technologies.” From 1 April, if the installation and system set-up of a low-carbon heating system is completed then support will be entitled under the scheme. From 11 April installers will be able to open an account for the scheme with administrator Ofgem, and from 23 May the scheme opens for grant applications and payments. Entitlements include: £5,000 off the cost and installation of an air source heat pump

£5,000 off the cost and installation of a biomass boiler

£6,000 off the cost and installation of a ground source heat pump What are the advantages of heat pumps? Heat pumps are “normally three times more efficient than gas boilers but they use electricity to run, and electricity prices are typically more expensive than gas”, the BBC said. However, given the current high price of gas, “heat pumps could still be cheaper”. The government has said it will look at ways to ensure heat pumps are “no more expensive to run than a gas boiler in the long run”. Skip advert

Europe sets 2027 deadline to end reliance on Russian oil and gas ...

London (CNN Business) Europe has given itself just five years to break its addiction to Russian oil and gas .

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Friday that EU leaders had agreed to spend the next two months drafting proposals for eliminating the bloc's dependency on Russian energy imports by 2027.

"By mid-May we will come up with a proposal to phase out our dependency on Russian gas, oil and coal by 2027, backed by the necessary national and European resources," Von der Leyen said after an emergency summit of EU leaders called to discuss Russia's war in Ukraine.

The European Union has promised to diversify its energy supplies before, notably back in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine. Little progress was made, partly because Germany — Russia's biggest energy customer in Europe — didn't want to rock the boat with Moscow.

But President Vladimir Putin's decision to order last month's invasion changed all that. Within days, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had killed off the Nord Stream 2 pipeline , a project co-financed by German companies that would have vastly increased Russia's capacity to send gas directly to Europe, bypassing Ukraine.

And earlier this week, Von der Leyen and her officials outlined plans to slash EU gas imports from Russia this year by finding alternative suppliers, speeding up the shift to renewable energy, reducing consumption through energy efficiency improvements and extending the life of coal and nuclear power plants that would otherwise have been shut down.

Frans Timmermans, EU climate policy chief, said Tuesday that Europe could replace 100 billion cubic meters of Russian gas imports by the end of 2022.

"That is two thirds of what we import from them," he told reporters. "Two thirds by the end of this year. It's hard, bloody hard but it's possible if we're willing to go further and faster than we've done before," he added.

The European Union depends on Russia for about 40% of its natural gas. Russia also supplies about 27% of its oil imports, and 46% of its coal imports. Taken together, that trade is worth tens of billions of dollars a year to Russia.

EU leaders have made clear this week that the bloc can't yet join the United States in banning Russian oil, because of the impact that would have on households and businesses already grappling with record high prices. A giant fertilizer company this week slashed European production because of record high natural gas prices.

But Europe knows it needs to act fast to reduce the potential for Moscow to use energy as a weapon in the economic warfare unleashed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Russian deputy prime minister Alexander Novak said Monday Russia could cut off the supply of gas to Germany via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline in retaliation for Berlin blocking the new Nord Stream 2 pipeline project.

Speaking alongside EU Council President Charles Michel and French President Emmanuel Macron after the summit in Versailles, near Paris, von der Leyen said the Commission would bring forward a proposal requiring underground gas storage facilities to be 90% full by the beginning of October each year.

"This will be our insurance policy against supply disruption," she said.

Power stations in space: how this science fiction concept is being ...

Power stations in space sounds like an idea from science fiction – and in fact it is an idea from science fiction: in 1941, Isaac Asimov’s story Reason described a space station that transmits energy collected from the Sun to other planets using microwave beams. Today, the technology required to do this exists, and space-based solar power (SBSP) is being taken seriously.

The idea is that a vast satellite, miles in length, would generate electricity via thousands of photovoltaic panels. This would then be transmitted to Earth using high-frequency radio waves. On the ground, this beam of microwave energy would be intercepted by a field of ellipse-shaped radio antennae, converted into electricity, and distributed to the grid.

But is this actually a realistic prospect?

Brian Ryan, vice-president of innovation for National Grid, admits that people think he’s “mad” when he talks about it. “It is a little bit out there,” he says, “but it’s not that far out there. I think we will see space-based solar power playing a huge role in our energy ecosystem in the next 20 years... The potential is unlimited.”

A report for the UK Government published last year by the engineering consultancy Frazer-Nash described SBSP as “technically feasible” and potentially affordable, compared with other sources of clean electricity. The US also believes SBSP technology is worth investigating: a military project is under way, as is one at the world-respected California Institute of Technology. Japan’s space agency is working on a space solar farm. China reportedly aims to launch its first station by 2035, and has already started construction in the city of Chongqing.

Why is it thought to be a good idea?

SBSP could potentially solve various knotty energy problems. It is estimated that global energy demand will double by 2050, and the search is on for sources that don’t use fossil fuels or originate from objectionable regimes. There’s a lot of clean power available in space: a narrow strip around the Earth could provide more than 100 times the forecast global energy demands of humanity in 2050, the Frazer-Nash report noted.

Unlike renewable power sources on our planet’s surface, SBSP would not be intermittent. It’s always sunny in space, and power stations would be in high geostationary orbit – i.e. remaining in a fixed position relative to the Earth – providing power near-continuously. This would mean both more energy in absolute terms, and also that SBSP would be able to provide baseload power – the minimum amount of electric power required by the electrical grid at any given time. At present, renewable sources cannot provide baseload power; only fossil fuels and nuclear power stations can do so. Finally, SBSP could be beamed to different parts of the world, as required.

How much energy could it give?

Prototype designs for SBSP stations envisage each one sending at least one gigawatt of power to Earth. One gigawatt is enough to power approximately 750,000 homes, and is comparable to the output of a nuclear power station. John Mankins, a former Nasa scientist who is a leading expert in SBSP, thinks that his design would generate three gigawatts, but that one gigawatt would be lost in the process of being beamed back to Earth.

Wouldn’t it be very expensive?

Yes, the main costs being the need for multiple rocket launches to blast the components into space, and for robotic assembly of the SBSP station in orbit. A solar power satellite would need to be “an order of magnitude larger in mass and extent than any spacecraft currently in orbit”, the Frazer-Nash report acknowledges.

Is Bosnia on the brink of a civil war? | The Week UK

For four years after the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, western powers decided against intervention as ethnic conflict gripped Bosnia. More than 100,000 people were killed during the 1992-95 war, which led to mass murder on a scale not witnessed in Europe since the Second World War. Now, a quarter of a century on from the peace deal that ended the war, those powers are again being confronted by the potential for deadly sectarian fighting. The latest Liz Truss is meeting members of Bosnia’s multiethnic armed forces in Sarajevo today during a visit to underline the UK’s continuing commitment to peace in the Western Balkans. The foreign secretary is also unveiling plans to deepen “security and economic partnership with Bosnia in the face of secessionists and Russian attempts to influence and destabilise”, the Foreign Office said in a statement. These plans include a bid “to mobilise $100m of UK-backed investment in the Western Balkans by 2025”. Addressing military personnel at Sarajevo’s Army Hall, Truss was due to warn that Russia’s aggression “cannot be appeased” and that Bosnia’s “future lies in sovereignty and self-determination, in greater partnership with Nato and countries like the UK”. Sarajevo last month called for Nato to accelerate its bid to become a member of the alliance in order to preserve regional security following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Bosnia’s Defence Minister Sifet Podzic told Al Jazeera that his country was participating in the Membership Action Plan, which he described as “the last step before gaining [Nato] membership”. But if the alliance insisted that Bosnia “fulfils all criteria”, he warned, gaining membership “will take a while”, because “we will need a lot of time to modernise our army”. Uneasy truce The Bosnian War was triggered when Bosnia and Herzegovina joined several republics of the former Yugoslavia and declared independence. After three and a half years of bloodshed, the conflict was ended by the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Skip advert By early 2008, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia had convicted 45 Serbs, 12 Croats, and four Bosniaks of war crimes committed during the war.

Many thousands of Bosniaks and Croats died in concentration camps run by Serb forces at sites including Omarska and Trnopolje. But the Srebrenica massacre, in which 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were murdered, was the most notorious act of genocide. Better known as the Dayton Accords, the peace deal saw the majority Muslim Bosniaks and Serb separatists, who fought under the flag of the Republika Srpska, agree to a single sovereign state. But in what The Washington Post described as “a complex compromise”, this state was divided into two parts: the largely Serb-populated Republika Srpska and mainly Croat-Bosniak-populated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The deal “reestablished Bosnia as a unified state and granted the right of return for victims of ethnic cleansing”, a move that ran contrary to the “wishes of Serb and Croat ultra-nationalists”, the paper continued. But it also “adopted ethnic federal structures recognising Republika Srpska as a political entity with self-governing rights”, something Bosniaks opposed. The uneasy peace has been maintained ever since. But a report by UN High Representative Christian Schmidt in November warned that threats by Milorad Dodik, the Serb member of the presidency as part of a triumvirate power-sharing agreement, to “pull out of state-level institutions” is ”tantamount to secession”. The suggestion that Serbs could form their own military “endangers not only the peace and stability of the country and the region, but – if unanswered by the international community – could lead to the undoing of the [Dayton] agreement itself”, Schmidt wrote in his first report since becoming Bosnian overseer. A splintering of the military “into two or more armies” would mean “the level of international military presence would require reassessment”, he added. “A lack of response to the current situation would endanger the [Dayton Accord], while instability in BiH would have wider regional implications.” ‘Shopping spree’ Schmidt’s report came shortly after Bosnian Serb police held what they described as an “anti-terrorist” drill just outside the capital Sarajevo. The move was “seen by many as another provocation by the Serb separatist leadership”, reported Al Jazeera. Skip advert The exercise took place on 22 October in a ski resort at Mount Jahorina, an “area from where the Bosnian Serb military relentlessly shelled and sniped Sarajevo” during the conflict three decades ago. The drill “involved armoured vehicles, helicopters, and special police force personnel in camouflage uniforms and armed with assault rifles”, the broadcaster added, and prompted the EU peacekeeping force that has remained in the country since the 1990s to deploy “an aircraft to monitor the exercise”.

The geopolitical implications of renewable energy

Todd Royal

OIlprice.com

An October report from BlackRock (BLK) — the world’s largest publicly traded investment management firm — wisely states, “markets are calm but geopolitics are anything but.”

Wind and solar energy — two leading renewable energy options — could possibly become a dangerous part of an energy mix as the world continues on a downward geopolitical slope.

Both are intermittent and unreliable, and can only produce consistent energy under certain weather parameters, and neither, at this time, can be stored at scale. Renewable energy options are also tough on the environment because wind and solar energy requires large amounts of land compared to conventional, reliable fossil fuel energy.

However, renewables are consistently publicized as growing faster than fossil fuels, but that’s misleading. Unless hydroelectricity is being produced under a controlled scenario with dammed water then renewable energy is inferior to coal, nuclear and natural gas powered electricity.

While renewables don’t emit carbon dioxide, they may not, unfortunately, be the solution to lower emissions. This is where renewables can create a dangerous geopolitical climate for nations pursuing them wholeheartedly.

More:Production quotas in question: Is $60 oil too tempting for OPEC to cheat?

More:Analysis: Two undeniable shifts in today’s energy markets

More:Why can't Millennials bank on clean energy jobs? Low-cost oil

A new paper by the Center of the American Experiment, “Energy Policy in Minnesota the High Cost of Failure,” chronicles Minnesota’s $15 billion experiment with wind energy over traditional fossil fuels, which didn’t lower CO2 emissions and caused Minnesota’s price of electricity to rise above the national average for the first time on record.

Imagine this on a larger scale. Think Africa — where 635 million citizens are without any form of modern energy at this time. This lack of scalable, affordable energy that fossil fuels and nuclear energy provide can be construed as a direct correlation for the inherent instability of Africa, its lower economic growth, higher rates of overpopulation and lacking the wherewithal to combat radicalization by groups like ISIS throughout the continent.

The geopolitical nightmare of the reliable energy problem grows when you include figures by the International Energy Agency (IEA) that states 1.2 billion worldwide are also without power.

People like hip-hop artist Akon mean well when they make big plans like attempting to install solar solutions for 14 African countries, but there seems to be a lack of understanding some critical environmental implications of those actions, like not addressing the problems and higher costs that renewables cause. If the United States still can’t figure out how to lower electricity costs using renewable energy, then it’s doubtful that Africa can right now.

This could doom over a billion people to higher costs they can’t afford, unreliable energy and more than likely needing high emitting, coal-fired power plants as an energy backup. The smarter decision is to follow Warren Buffet's lead by investing in fossil fuel to help avert the geopolitical disasters that renewables could cause fragile nations in need of scalable, reliable energy options. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that 77% of the world’s energy needs by 2040 will still be met by fossil fuels.

Electric vehicles (EVs) also run into the same geopolitical problems as renewable energy, while also requiring enormous government subsidies. This is something that Buffet discovered when he bought a controlling stake in Pilot Flying J, the truck-stop chain that sells food, coffee and diesel to truckers on U.S. cross-country hauls.

Buffet believes that EVs or autonomous vehicles won’t replace combustible engines powered by gasoline. He reiterated this stance on a Bloomberg Television appearance, stating, “Who knows when driverless trucks are going to come along and what level of penetration they have?”

Bloomberg and Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) have said that EVs will overtake cars run on gasoline by 2025 in affordability. Buffet may have read that in BNEFs fine print in these reports that explains for EV forecasts to be true, government regulators have to push taxes, mandates and publicly-funded rebates to make EVs as cost effective as a gasoline-powered vehicle.

Fiat loses $20,000 on every EV, General Motors loses $9,000 on every Chevy Bolt, and Tesla sustains profits by selling zero-emission credits to conventional car companies. If California and other countries ban gasoline-powered cars, then where would the profits be replaced? If you consider what Russia did once oil crashed in 2014, it’s not hard to imagine other countries going this EV path to make hegemonic movements the way Russia did when it annexed Crimea and pushed into Syria while aligning with Iran.

Where this becomes geopolitically troubling is when China, India, the U.K., France and even California talk of banning the combustible engine between 2030-2040. As an example, it will be difficult for California to ban gasoline-powered cars the same way it will be nearly impossible in the coming decades for the other above-mentioned countries to accomplish that goal. This British EV push is particularly troubling since they implemented Brexit and are moving away from the European Union along with the security of the post World War II order of economic prosperity.

Going back to that example, and the massive amount of energy needed to match a typical filling station, along with what an EV-only station would require when gasoline-powered cars are banned, Canadian engineer David Booth reported, “An electric filling station would have to have the 30 megawatts of capacity available, equivalent to the electricity use of 20,000 homes to supply electricity to charge 25 or 30 million vehicles in California.”

Thinking geopolitically, what happens to energy legacy industries (coal, natural gas, gasoline) during the phasing-out process? The Chinese example is particularly troubling, as they’re building the dirtiest emitting coal-fired power plants in Pakistan. India counters the China-Pakistan alliance by building the largest coal-fired power plant in recent memory on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

These type of energy policies lead to environmental degradation that causes wars, water shortages and business decisions that seem to be more about establishing green credibility instead of energy stability. China, Pakistan and India going back and forth using energy as a weapon is similar to how Russian state-owned energy firm Rosneft is the Kremlin’s weaponized, foreign policy instrument against the west.

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Rosneft has used what the New York Times called, “Rosneft’s Venezuela model,” to support belligerent governments in Syria and Iran while driving a wedge between NATO, Turkey and the West. Going with unstable, intermittent energy (renewables) and costly transportation options (EVs) is a means for geopolitical influence and counter pressure points to be used against peaceful nations and governments.

Energy is the building block for thriving, human flourishing to exist. Stable, reliable, scalable energy that coal, nuclear and natural gas provides can be used as a counter to nations like China, Iran, and Russia (CIR) that seem to be on a hegemonic march to acquire additional energy resources. As popular as renewable energy and electric vehicles are at this time, they can be used geopolitically against peaceful nations. This weaponization of energy can be stopped by western-aligned nations embracing the abundance that fossil fuel provides and bringing over a billion people out of energy poverty.

Let’s keep working on futuristic energy and transportation, but stop playing energy checkers while CIR-nations play energy chess.

Oilprice.com is a USA TODAY content partner offering energy industry news and commentary. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.

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2018: A Breakout Year For Clean Energy | OilPrice.com

Nick Cunningham

Oilprice.com

The bullish momentum for global clean energy investment, which rose 3% to $333.5 billion in 2017, will continue this year.

There was significant progress in the transition to cleaner energy in 2017, and 2018 should see more of the same. New solar installations will top 100 GW this year, with China likely to make up about half of that total, according to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), which lays out some key predictions for 2018.

However, beginning this year, BNEF says that new countries will become relevant in the race for clean energy, including sizable solar installations slated for Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Falling costs and proliferating installations of wind and solar are underpinning the sector’s growth. At the same time, cheaper inputs mean that developers can get more gigawatts of clean energy per dollar invested, which explains why the headline investment figure appears to not be growing by all that much.

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There were some eye-popping figures and notable progress for new renewable energy projects in 2017. For instance, the tariffs for some onshore wind projects in Mexico dropped to a whopping $18.60 per MWh, a price that “would have been unthinkable only two or three years ago,” Angus McCrone, Chief Editor at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, wrote in the report.

Meanwhile, the cost of lithium-ion batteries plunged by an additional 24% last year, which raises the odds that by the mid-to-late 2020s, EVs could beat out conventional gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles not just on the lifetime cost, but even on upfront cost.

Battery costs will continue to decline this year, but at a slower rate than in the past. Soaring prices for cobalt and lithium carbonate will offset some of the declines in cost, to be sure, but BNEF still sees the average cost of battery packs falling by an additional 10% to 15%. Economies of scale, larger average battery pack size, and an additional 5% to 7% improvement in energy density will continue to boost the economics of batteries, BNEF argues.

EV sales will hit 1.5 million units in 2018, and again, China will lead the way with more than half of that total.

The recent rally in oil prices (and somewhat for gas) will aid in the transition to cleaner energy, making wind, solar and EVs more competitive.

It isn’t all clear skies for clean energy, however, as there are some pitfalls on the horizon. Geopolitical surprises could run headlong into the aggressive bull rally in global stock markets, leading to a selloff. BNEF says that a war in the Middle East, or on the Korean peninsula, or even political turmoil in the U.S., could upset financial markets, which would spell trouble for clean energy.

On top of that, the ongoing withdrawal of monetary stimulus from the U.S., Europe and Japan could raise interest rates, raising the cost of capital and hurting the economics for clean energy, which is an industry characterized by low operating costs, but high capital costs.

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In the U.S., the Trump administration could decide to slap tariffs on imported solar panels, a decision that is expected as soon as this week. If onerous, the solar tariffs could “boost local prices for PV modules and render a meaningful portion of the U.S. solar project pipeline economically unviable,” BNEF wrote.

Still, the Trump administration will be unable to arrest the decline of coal, regardless of what it says. Cold weather has led to a slight uptick in natural gas prices and may have temporarily boosted coal-fired generation a bit, but the sector is in structural decline. Natural gas production is expected to break new records this year, and BNEF forecasts Nymex prices to average about $3/MMBtu. Ultimately, 2018 is shaping up to be the second largest year for coal plant retirements, with an estimated 13 GW of capacity expected to be shut down.

With coal on the way out in the U.S., coal will make its “last stand” in India. Coal producers around the world have pinned their long-term hopes on India, but from 2019 onward, BNEF predicts, renewable energy will surpass fossil fuels in terms of new electricity generation. “This will be a major milestone for a country that most see as a key battleground for the fight to stabilize global greenhouse emissions growth,” BNEF says.

Overall, while the usual caveats about uncertainty regarding policy, regulation and the performance of financial markets apply, 2018 is shaping up to be another great one for renewable energy.

Oilprice.com is a USA TODAY content partner offering energy industry news and commentary. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.

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