Energy

Wireless charging is moving forward by integrating inductive charging into smartphones and wearables…

United States is leading a decline in energy use amongst advanced economies – with use down 2% last year despite GDP growth. The previous year (2013-2014) EU countries saw a 10% drop in energy use – partly due to economic chaos in Greece, Spain and Italy.

Th uneexpected fall is due to greater efficiency, new materials and the rise of renewables — all the standard projections still predict ever rising demand driven by population growth and the spread of prosperity in emerging economies. That assumption, however, begins to look too simplistic. The reality is more complex. Forget the old debate about peak oil. Now it seems we are approaching peak energy.

The data speak for themselves and are summarised here by Enerdata. It covers the 20 nations which represent more than 80 per cent of global gross “democratic” product.

Economic growth. Energy consumption

2015 + 2.8 % + 0.5 %

2014 + 3.4 % + 1.1 %

2003-13 + 3.7 % + 2.1 %

Within this aggregate data there are a number of different national stories reflecting the influence of different patterns of economic activity and of course the very different resource bases.

In the EU total primary energy demand is down by almost 11 per cent in the past decade. Oil consumption has fallen by 17 per cent; natural gas by almost a fifth.

In China demand growth has slowed in the past three years — as a result of the recession but also because of the changes in industrial structure. Coal remains the dominant fuel but falls in steel and cement production, and in efficiency gains, appear to have decoupled energy demand from GDP. The caution, as ever, is the quality of Chinese statistics.

In the US total energy consumption has been flat for the past decade, with a strong shift in the mix in favour of gas as a result of domestic shale developments.

India is in many ways the outlier. Strong economic growth is fully reflected in increased energy use, and in growing use of coal as the primary source of energy. Coal in India, as the Enerdata commentary puts it, is privileged and low cost. Some 35GW of new coal-fired power plants have been installed in the past two years alone.

Even though coal use fell in almost every other country, Indian consumption was sufficient (along with high levels of use in nations such as Germany) to allow coal to remain the largest single source of primary energy across the G20. The strongest growth in GDP and energy consumption is in areas still heavily reliant on coal in the absence of any readily available low-cost alternative for the production of power and heat. This tempers the impact of the slowdown in energy use on CO2 emissions. The trend is positive — emissions barely increased in 2015 — but not sufficient to meet the targets set …

Handelsblatt Global Edition

Germany’s massive push into renewable energy has a dark side. As green policies drive up the cost of power, entire industries are shrinking.

Germany is a world leader in green power is by now familiar. Much less familiar is the price the country is paying for it, not just in cold hard cash, but in growing losses and dislocations across the entire economy.

A vast economic upheaval began when Germany launched its energy transition that simultaneously phases out all nuclear power, winds down coal and other fossil fuels, accelerates the push towards alternative sources of energy, and builds the new grid infrastructure to make it all possible.

The losers include once-stalwart utility giants like E.ON and RWE that are struggling with rising debt and falling shares. Manufacturing companies, from chemicals maker BASF to carbon fiber producer SGL Carbon, have shifted investments abroad, where energy costs are often a fraction of Germany’s.
Losers include laid-off workers in these industries, but also millions of ordinary consumers. Their utility bills have skyrocketed, largely driven by subsidies for eco-friendly fuels. As much as the transition creates new jobs building wind turbines, farming biofuels or installing solar panels on rooftops, the changes are cutting a deep swathe through other parts of the economy. Germany’s “green” revolution has a dark shadow.
The reengineering of Germany’s economy is of course deliberate. When the environmentalist Green party first began co-governing at the national level in 1998, Berlin quickly drafted plans to exit nuclear energy. Generous subsidies to support wind and solar power, tacked on to consumers’ electricity bills, got their start in 2000.
Already struggling to expand renewable energy fast enough to compensate for the nuclear phaseout, Germany had to move even faster after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s surprise decision to accelerate the shift just days after the news from Fukushima. Now, the country is rushing to replace what was once 35 percent of German electricity generation by 2022.

Hit hardest, of course, are the traditional utilities. After all, the energy transition was designed to seal their coffin. Once the proverbial investment for widows and orphans because their revenue streams were considered rock-solid — these companies have been nothing short of decimated. With 77 nuclear and fossil-fuel power plants taken off the grid in recent years, Germany’s four big utilities — E.ON, RWE, Vattenfall and EnBW — have had to write off a total of €46.2 billion since 2011.
RWE and E.ON alone have debt piles of €28.2 billion and €25.8 billion, respectively, according to the latest company data. Losses at Düsseldorf-based E.ON rose to €6.1 billion for the first three quarters of 2015. Both companies have slashed the dividends on their shares, which have lost up to 76 percent of their value. Regional municipalities, which hold 24 percent of RWE’s shares, are scrambling to plug the holes left in their budgets by the missing dividends.…