Energize Weekly, January 23, 2019 Brent oil prices will rise to $61 a barrel in 2019 and $65 a barrel in 2020, while natural gas prices will remain below 2018 levels for both years, according to federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts. West Texas Intermediate crude oil prices will average about $8 a barrel lower…
Energize Weekly, January 23, 2019 The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has launched programs to find new markets for coal and boost oil recovery from shale plays. Under the Maximizing the Coal Value Chain program, $9.5 million in federal cost-sharing funds will be available for developing ways to improve coal as a fuel, as a…
Energize Weekly, January 23, 2019 New York Gov. Mario Cuomo has begun to roll out specifics of his proposed “Green New Deal,” including $1.5 billion in grants for large-scale renewable energy projects and a $70 million fund to help communities absorb tax losses from shuttered coal-fired power plants. The programs were outlined in Cuomo’s State…
Energize Weekly, January 16, 2019 The wind industry’s practice of end-loading projects to the fourth quarter of each year could lead to serious bottlenecks and jeopardize some of the 23 gigawatts in the pipeline over the next two years, according to a Wood Mackenzie study. Nearly a quarter of the 23 gigawatts (GW) projected to…
Energize Weekly, January 16, 2019 New natural gas-fired generation capacity in 2018 accounted for nearly three-quarters of the total 24,808 megawatts (MW) installed for the year—and was double the amount of gas-fired capacity installed in 2017, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data. The 18,550 MW of natural gas-fired capacity more than offset the 16,900…
Energize Weekly, January 16, 2019 Electric vehicle (EV) sales soared in 2018, surpassing record-breaking 2017 by 81 percent with 361,307 vehicles sold, according to Inside EVs, a market-tracking website. December also set a monthly record with 49,900 plug-in vehicles sold, nearly double the number sold in December 2017. Each of the last three months of…
Energize Weekly, January 16, 2019 U.S. carbon dioxide emissions linked to energy use rose for the first time in three years in 2018—with all sectors from power generation to manufacturing to home heating—posting increases. There was a 3.4 percent increase in emissions, according to a study by the Rhodium Group, an energy and economic analytics…
Energize Weekly, January 16, 2019 Natural disasters worldwide caused $160 billion in damage and killed 10,400 people in 2018, making it the fourth mostly costly year for the insurance industry since 1980, according to the international insurer Swiss Re Group. “The indications at the start of 2018 were that it would be a more moderate…
Energize Weekly, January 9, 2019 Floating solar panels on 24,000 man-made reservoirs in the U.S. could generate 10 percent of the nation’s electricity and avoid gobbling up 8,100 square miles of land with ground installations. One of the challenges with large-scale deployment of wind and solar generation is the land requirements but shifting to floating…
Energize Weekly, January 9, 2019 Energy commodity prices—hit by a weak oil market—fell 21 percent in the last quarter of 2018 after having been strong for most of the year, according to in the S&P Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI). It was the first time since 2015 that crude oil prices ended the year lower…
Energize Weekly, January 9, 2019 Texas—by taking advantage of its geographical diversity—could deploy enough wind and solar generation to meet the state’s electricity demand with little storage or fossil fuel backup, according to Rice University researchers. “One way to reduce the need for costly storage and for polluting fossil generation is to deploy wind and…
Energize Weekly, January 2, 2019 Minnesota can economically reach a mix of 70 percent wind and solar electric generation with storage by 2050, according to a U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored report. The report done by Clean Power Research for MN Solar Pathways, a group of non-profit clean energy advocacy organizations and the Minnesota Department of…
Processing…please wait
