Category Archives: The Mitigation Battle

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11 June 2015, World Resources Institute, Bonn Climate Talks Outpaced by Progress Outside the Negotiations: As negotiators leave Bonn, Germany after two weeks of talks on the international climate agreement that will be concluded in Paris at the COP 21 summit later this year, one thing is clear: The pace of negotiations must speed up considerably. Most importantly, that pace must catch up to what’s happening outside the negotiating halls.Actors around the world sent strong signals this past week for ambitious climate action. The G7 made historic pledgesto decarbonize the global economy over the course of the century and significantly increase the number of people around the world covered by climate disaster insurance. Norway’s $900 billion sovereign wealth fund announced that it will divest from coal-related investments. Ethiopia and Morocco were the latest countries to submit national climate plans – known as intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) – to the UN climate process, demonstrating their intent to tackle climate change and build low-carbon and resilient economies.Inside the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in Bonn, however, the talks did not match the momentum of outside developments. Negotiators focused on how to consolidate a lengthy text of the draft agreement and made only modest progress in discussing key, substantive issues. As nearly all negotiators said themselves, they will have to move the process forward quickly now and find ways to focus on the central questions at hand. Read More here
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11 June 2015, Energy Post, Canada will find US shale oil revolution hard act to follow:The new edition of the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, just released, reports that the US recorded the largest increase in oil production in the world, surpassing Saudi Arabia, thanks to its shale revolution. Can Canada follow the US example now that huge new shale oil deposits have been identified in the country’s remote Northwest Territories? Andrew Topf of Oilprice.com reports that the oil may well be there, but the external conditions are very different from those in the famous Bakken Formation in the US. There are many hurdles to overcome before the Northwest Territories become another Bakken. Read More here

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8 June 2015 Energy Post, Going for gas: the risky strategy of the world’s largest companies: They are the biggest companies in the world and they are making a huge bet: they are staking their – and our – future on natural gas. At the World Gas Conference in Paris, the major oil companies all avowed their belief that gas will be the world’s “fuel of choice”, because it is “the cleanest fossil fuel”, “abundant” and “competitive”. But Karel Beckman argues they are overstating the case for gas. And may even be betting on the wrong horse. “The question before us today defines our industry and perhaps our society in the 21st Century.” The “question” that Robert Franklin, President of Exxon Mobil’s Gas and Power Marketing Company, was referring to, during a panel debate at the World Gas Conference in Paris (1-5 June), was that of “how to meet the world’s energy demand while reducing the risk of climate change”. The answer to both sides of this question, he said, increasingly was: natural gas. Franklin was not alone. At the 26th edition of their triennial global gathering, the gas industry made it abundantly clear that they believe gas is the foremost solution to the world’s energy problems. One CEO after the other sang the praises of what Gazprom lovingly calls the “blue fuel”. Read More here

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5 June 2015, New York Times, OPEC, Keeping Quotas Intact, Adjusts to Oil’s New Normal (what world do these men live in!!): The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to keep the oil pumping, with no change in its production quotas, at the group’s meeting here on Friday. Even though oil prices are about 40 percent lower than a year ago,OPEC decided to keep its output target at 30 million barrels a day in an effort to maintain market share and respond to robust production in the United States. The Qatari minister of energy and industry, Mohammed bin Saleh al-Sada, who presided over the meeting, told reporters after the gathering that the decision had been unanimous and that the 12-country group was confident that “both demand and supply were of a healthy nature.” Read More here