Meetings of the influential Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, collectively known as OPEC+, have been rescheduled from Nov. 25-26 to Nov. 30, sending prices down by over $3 per barrel in Thursday intraday trade.

The Ice Brent contract with January delivery was trading at $79.05 per barrel at 13:50 London time, down by $3.40 per barrel. The Nymex WTI contract with January expiry was at $74.40 per barrel, down by $3.37 per barrel.

The OPEC Secretariat, which made the announcement, did not disclose the reason for the postponement.

It was not immediately clear whether the OPEC+ group would be holding a virtual or in-person meeting on Thursday, or whether ministers would still adjourn at the OPEC secretarial headquarters in Vienna.

The new date of the OPEC+ meetings coincides with the first day of the Conference of the Parties climate summit (COP28) in Dubai and represents a key event for both the host United Arab Emirates — the third-largest OPEC producer — and for other Arab energy providers that are tackling the green transition.

Earlier in the day, Bloomberg News issued a report saying the meeting of Sunday could be delayed amid Saudi dissatisfaction over the oil production levels of some countries. A senior OPEC+ delegate, who asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussion, agreed with the premise, with reference to the compliance levels of some alliance member countries with their respective output pledges.

Saudi Arabia is itself enforcing a 1 million barrel-per-day voluntary production decline until the end of this year, alongside contributing to a separate spate of voluntary output cuts from several OPEC+ members that totals 1.66 million barrels per day and will stretch until the end of next year.

The upcoming meeting faced a challenging market environment, defined by depressed oil prices, a slower-than-expected Chinese demand recovery and petropolitics amid conflict in the Middle East.

High interest rates and banking turmoil largely slumped oil prices in the first half of the year, before a sharp boost from several voluntary supply declines announced independently of OPEC+ strategy. Several OPEC+ members pledged to reduce output by a total of 1.66 million barrels per day until the end of 2024, with Saudi Arabia and Russia topping that with additional respective supply drops of 1 million barrels per day and 300,000 barrels per day until the end of this year.

Prices briefly surpassed $90 per barrel, but have since withdrawn amid a fainter-than-expected recovery in China — the world’s largest crude importer — and resurging tensions in the Middle East.

Prior to the meeting postponement, two OPEC+ delegates, who could only speak under condition of anonymity, faulted the recent price pressures on liquidations in the future markets amid geopolitical risks, with a third attributing market concerns less to supply-demand fundamentals than to global politics, including developments in Israel.

The OPEC+ alliance, including chairman and Saudi energy minister Abdulaziz bin Salman, have been previously frustrated by a perceived disconnect between supply-demand and prices. Famously, the Saudi prince has been at war with market speculators, warning they would “ouch” and should “watch out” in May.

One of the three delegate sources said that the OPEC+ group would have to make an announcement to “support the market” at its upcoming meeting, with a fourth delegate also suggesting cuts could be discussed. The alliance will also discuss baselines —  the level from which quotas are determined and a frequent subject of contention — for certain countries, the last source said.

A fifth delegate meanwhile assessed it is unlikely that the coalition will change its production policy, given uncertainty in the outlook for flows from Iran and Venezuela, where the U.S. has signaled tightening and easing its oil sanctions, respectively.

Source : CNBC

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The influential Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries coalition and its allies, collectively known as OPEC+, on Thursday opted against formally deepening production cuts, while de facto leader Saudi Arabia extended its 1 million barrel per day voluntary trim into the first quarter, and other members announced further reductions.

The policy steps were decided in a virtual meeting delayed by internal disagreements over the baselines — the levels off which quotas are decided — of the OPEC group’s largest West African members, Nigeria and Angola. The spat postponed talks initially scheduled to be held in person in Vienna over the weekend of Nov. 25-26. The baselines of Angola, Nigeria and Congo remain under study.

The OPEC+ alliance had already instituted a 2 million barrel per day cut in place until the end of 2024, with several coalition members voluntarily pledging a further 1.66 million barrel per day decline over that same period.

While OPEC+ has not formally endorsed production reductions, market participants are following the possibility of further voluntary cuts announced by key participants to the coalition. Already, Saudi state media has announced that Riyadh will extend its voluntary reduction of 1 million barrels per day, which it has had in place since July, until the end of the first quarter of 2024.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who represents his country in OPEC+ affairs, has said Moscow will implement a voluntary supply cut totaling 300,000 barrels per day of crude and 200,000 barrels per day of petroleum products over that same period, according to a Google-translated statement on Telegram.

Close Saudi ally Kuwait will enforce a 135,000 barrel per day reduction in the first quarter, while the Energy Ministry of OPEC member Algeria said it would trim a further 51,000 barrels per day. Oman said it will also reduce output by 42,000 barrels per day in that same period.

Source : CNBC

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As yet another United Nations climate summit approaches in the shape of COP28, which kicks off in Dubai this week, signs of public exasperation with the failure of climate policymaking are plain to see. After three decades of negotiations, greenhouse-gas emissions are still rising and time is running out to stop global heating from reaching catastrophic levels. In response, people around the world are trying to work out how best to get their voices heard.

September, for example, saw protests across more than 65 countries. Demonstrators demanded “less talk, more action” outside the first Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi, Kenya — a nation where climate change has already exacerbated insecurities in water and food supplies. In Libya, where flooding killed thousands of people after dams burst, protesters demanded accountability. Worldwide, more than 600,000 people took part in actions linked to the Global Fight to End Fossil Fuels, including 75,000 people marching in New York City.

Protest and activism have the potential to motivate the type of “rapid, disruptive and transformative changes” that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has called for to address climate change. Social movements will play an important part in achieving a sustainable future for people and nature. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to think of historical examples of transformative progressive change that did not involve activism.

But how does a movement best effect change and convert citizens’ concerns into policies that address the problem? To answer that in the case of climate activism requires further research in three key areas: what motivates some people to join protests while others do not? What are the pros and cons of the tactics that protesters use? And what can researchers do to understand and counter the increasingly repressive measures being used against climate activists in many parts of the world?

What drives people to become climate protesters?

Research has revealed many, often overlapping, reasons why individuals demonstrate and join social movements: attempting to voice a political message, expressing anxiety or concern about a situation, seeking to build a movement aimed at deeper societal transformation or asserting their group identity. Such diversity was tangible, for example, among the people who joined the March to End Fossil Fuels in New York City on 17 September — the largest climate-focused protest in the United States in years, where one of us (D.R.F.) spent the day in the crowd talking to participants.

In the march, clusters of young people were interspersed with groups of older activists, who related how the climate crisis had brought them back on to the streets for the first time since the Vietnam war protests in the 1970s. Young members of the Sunrise Movement — a US group calling for political action to achieve a Green New Deal — marched through the crowd chanting with a megaphone: “they try to stop us, but we keep coming back.”

But what factors determine who takes to the streets over climate change? Studies show that individuals who experience psychological distress about the climate crisis are more likely than others to take action (see go.nature.com/3syscj7). At the New York City march, D.R.F’s survey of 170 randomly sampled participants provided more evidence. A majority reported strongly or very strongly experiencing sadness (81%) or anger (75%) in relation to climate change. For many, those emotions were associated with their lived experience in the previous six months: 87% reported having personally experienced extreme heat, 85% had been affected by wildfires or smoke from wildfires, and 60% by frequent and powerful storms (for a summary, see go.nature.com/3unvs9d).

Researchers know much less about the thresholds for mobilization. What are the tipping points that transform individuals from sympathizers of a movement to activists within it? For example, what parts do people in social networks or personal connections to civic and environmental organizations play? How does emotion affect the tactics an activist chooses? Barriers to joining movements also need to be examined; for example, whether they are largely systemic (reflecting a lack of time or capacity among people who are genuinely concerned) or psychological (individuals being reluctant to identify as an activist because of negative stereotypes).

What tactics should activists choose?

Protesters have a broad choice of tactics. Political scientist Gene Sharp listed 198 methods of non-violent direct action, and climate activists have drawn on many of them. Not only do protesters march in the streets and sit in public squares, but they also march slowly, throw food or paint and block roads or access to buildings and pipeline projects. They might also disrupt sporting and cultural events, disrobe in public, block the distribution of newspapers and even engage in hunger strikes and self-immolation.

It is rare for any of these tactics to influence public policy directly, however. Successful examples include the global wave of protests in 2011 that challenged the inevitability of economic austerity, which led to stronger institutional contestation of austerity in countries and municipalities across Europe, and the Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd was murdered in 2020, which led to changes in the ways cities and states police the public.

Protesters cannot tell people what to think, but they might be able to influence what people are thinking about. Moreover, protests can set news agendas. When a UK poll in June 2019 found that the environment appeared in the public’s top three issues for the first time, the pollsters YouGov concluded that the “sudden surge in concern is undoubtedly boosted by the publicity raised for the environmental cause by Extinction Rebellion” — an activist group that had occupied prominent central London sites for two weeks around that time (see go.nature.com/3uaprq5). A similar effect was seen in the months after protests by Insulate Britain, a campaign group advocating government action to improve home insulation and save energy, began in September 2021: the number of mentions of the word ‘insulation’ (but, notably, not ‘insulate’) in the UK print media doubled (see go.nature.com/47g6twr). People took notice of the issue, if not the specific climate group.

However, rallies and marches alone — even those with high attendance — are generally not seen as newsworthy. News media are more likely to report on protests that include some sort of disruption or shocking action, such as defacing a building, a fountain or a work of art. As a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion put it: “Only through disruption, the breaking of laws, do you get the attention you need.”

The shift to confrontational tactics is a common trajectory for a social movement. When some participants perceive that they do not have enough access to power to make change through the legal and political systems, they decide to get more disruptive and form a ‘radical flank’. The women’s movement and the US civil-rights movement are well documented to have included radical elements that co-existed alongside moderate ones working to effect social change.

Yet confrontational tactics are also often unpopular. Opinion polls show that only 10–20% of a sample of the British and German populations hold a positive opinion of climate groups, such as Just Stop Oil and Letzte Generation, that have used disruptive protests over the past two years (for polling data, see https://osf.io/r2qhn). Less is known about how different types of activist tactic affect public attitudes.

The unpopularity of confrontational protest stems not just from its illegality, but also from its often unclear logic. Blocking oil terminals is easy to explain — the means and ends are congruent. Soup-throwing and road-blocking, by contrast, are performative — they are stunts designed to attract the media, but are not directly connected to the goals of the protesters and come across as incongruent.

Some scholars argue that groups face an ‘activist’s dilemma’, in which they must make a conscious choice between their desire to attract media attention and their popularity. But the importance of popularity is often exaggerated and in itself is not an aim for protesters: they are, after all, not running for election. The public might see confrontational activism as a nuisance, but it is wrong to assume that unpopular actions turn people away from the cause. Experiments show that people’s attitudes to an issue and to a group’s demands are distinct from, and not determined by, how they feel about the group and its tactics.

YouGov polling across Europe documents that there has been little shift in public opinions around climate change since the large 2019 protests raised awareness (see go.nature.com/3sg8sgg). Thus, so far, confrontational climate activism has neither deterred nor encouraged the general public. The real dilemma is that it is difficult to recruit large numbers to join risky and unpopular disruptive protests, and the increased publicity does not necessarily translate into greater public concern. There is reason to think that both large numbers and disruptive actions are necessary components for more direct outcomes from climate protest, although more research is needed in this area.

Researchers therefore need to explore in more detail the specific impacts of particular protest tactics. Are some more effective than others in provoking behavioural change, and in what contexts? What are the pros and cons of narrow or broad demands?

For example, Insulate Britain made a clear, narrow demand aimed at reducing emissions by insulating social housing. By contrast, Extinction Rebellion has avoided making specific policy demands, preferring to advocate much broader changes in democratic governance, notably through the use of citizens’ assemblies to decide on policy questions. Narrow demands are easier to convey and achieving success can attract more activists. But they might not be as effective in communicating a positive vision of a future in which the worst impacts of the climate crisis are avoided.

What motivates repression of protests?

The natural trajectory of a social movement that has not yet achieved its goals is to lose popularity (the issue goes away or public interest wanes) or to become increasingly confrontational until its demands are met. There are numerous historical examples. Decades into the struggle for women’s suffrage, which started in the nineteenth century, for instance, the suffragettes were undertaking, on average, 20 bombings and arson attacks per month in 1913¹⁶.

By comparison, contemporary climate activism seems rather mild. Yet that could change as more people become personally affected by climate impacts and as political demands remain unmet.

Meanwhile, the political climate for such activism is becoming increasingly hostile, to the point at which some governments seem more concerned with criminalizing non-violent protesters than acting on climate. In the past two years, for example, the United Kingdom has increased maximum sentences as well as police and government powers to declare protests illegal. And globally, there is a wave of similar anti-protest legislation, with more draconian sentencing and laws to curb protests. Such moves have been called out by UN secretary-general António Guterres. In April 2022, he declared that “the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels”.

There is growing evidence that this wave of legislation is not driven by public opinion. Two of us (C.J.D. and O.B.) have run polls in the United Kingdom and Germany showing that less than one-third of people surveyed want to see non-violent protesters imprisoned (for polling data, see https://osf.io/r2qhn). Researchers need to explore what is driving this policy trend, including the actors involved and the role of the fossil-fuel lobby. Such pressures are likely to grow as more people are affected by climate change, and as vested interests that benefit from fossil-fuel expansion operate inside and outside political systems to stop protesters drawing negative attention to their work.

In 2021, 400 academics working in climate-related fields pointed out in an open letter that combating the criminalization of protest is an essential part of the fight for a habitable planet. As the climate crisis worsens, climate activism and its repression will become increasingly common. Research is needed to understand how climate activism could provide a more effective conduit for channelling public concerns to policymakers and changing policies. Although we cannot predict how bad the climate crisis will get, research has the potential to provide valuable insights into how civil society and social movements can enable the transitions required to respond meaningfully to the crisis.

Source : Nature

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Momentum behind carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) is reaching unprecedented levels, but implementation continues to lag behind, a new IEA report finds.

With over 400 new carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) projects announced globally in the past three years in more than 45 countries, the IEA’s new toolkit sets out the policies that can turn developer ambitions into reality.

The report, CCUS Policies and Business Models – Building a Commercial Market, finds that new business models for CCUS are emerging, driven by new players entering the market. This is reshaping the framework for future CCUS projects and can open the door to investment opportunities. Still, many challenges remain on the path for CCUS to contribute to global efforts to reach net zero emissions at the level envisaged in the IEA’s Net Zero Roadmap.

CCUS deployment in this decade will be critical to get it on track for its role in enabling the global energy sector to reach net zero emissions by mid-century. When world leaders gather for the COP28 climate conference that begins this week in Dubai, there will not only be an opportunity for governments to raise their ambitions on CCUS – the meeting will also be an important opening for the oil and gas industry to demonstrate a meaningful commitment to curbing emissions and moving beyond the status quo. CCUS can play an important role in these discussions.

Existing CCUS policies – commonly aimed at reducing costs – have helped move early projects into operation, but they have also skewed deployment toward low-cost applications. These types of policies alone are not sufficient to scale up CCUS across other applications. Governments around the world are now taking different policy approaches, drawing from lessons in other parts of the energy system to adapt to these new business models.

Many early CCUS projects have been characterised by a full-chain business model, with a single project framework across the CCUS value chain from CO2 capture to transport and storage. The oil and gas industry has led these efforts, thanks to its expertise in operating large-scale projects and knowledge of the geological subsurface. However, the industry’s historical focus has been on using the captured CO2 to extract more oil. This needs to shift to a focus on dedicated CO2 storage.

Today, new “part-chain” business models are emerging, with separate entities specialising in different parts of the CCUS value chain. While the oil and gas sector continues to play a role, the market entrance of new specialised players can facilitate access to the expertise and infrastructure needed to support decarbonisation, as well as bolster innovation and reduce costs across the value chain.

And innovation in CCUS projects is urgently needed: Around three-quarters of capture capacity by 2050 envisaged in the IEA’s Net Zero Roadmap relies on technologies and applications that are still at demonstration or prototype scale. There’s also a need to reduce energy use and costs for CCUS applications, which are still high compared with unabated technologies for most applications. Long lead times can further impede progress, particularly for CO2 storage. While new business models can mitigate some of these challenges, by reducing costs and lead times, they also bring new complexities, creating a need for governments to coordinate across the value chain.

The IEA’s new report and policy toolkit aims to provide useful guidance to governments seeking to create the conditions necessary to attract long-term private investment in CCUS, and to address the overarching economic, lead time, innovation and complexity challenges to deployment.

Source : IEA

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Calling Indonesia ‘the Saudi Arabia of nickel’, one of the metals underpinning global steel production and ambitions to decarbonise energy and transport systems, would be an insult to Indonesia’s market dominance.

Indonesia’s mines accounted for nearly half of global nickel production in 2022. It has banned raw nickel exports since 2020 as the country pushes to move up global value chains for renewable energy. Indonesia is a G20 member, a developing democracy and has an enormous potential home market for both steel and electric vehicles (EV).

But despite the seeming centrality of nickel to net-zero ambitions, Indonesia may find itself in a situation eerily similar to that of Saudi Arabia and its oil reserves — sitting atop plentiful resources whose value is set to wane as the EV sector booms. The challenge lies in navigating two landscapes, one geopolitical and one chemical.

In a shifting geopolitical environment, Indonesia is attempting to secure a more prominent place in the EV battery supply chain. This involves moving beyond mining ore and benefaction to battery assembly at a time when major EV battery importers like the United States and the European Union (EU) are onshoring battery assembly.

In the United States, these attempts include enticing tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). In Europe, they include government loans via the InvestEU program, independent member-state initiatives and an anti-subsidy investigation into Chinese automakers. The investigation aimed to prevent Chinese EV makers who source nickel from Indonesia from flooding the European market with cheap imports. In both instances, Indonesia’s reliance on Chinese manufacturers and finance in the nickel sector creates vulnerabilities for its EV ambitions.

The second challenge is more fundamental. Indonesia’s nickel reserves and industrial ambitions are at risk of being rendered less valuable by changes in battery chemistry, or the combination of materials and technologies used in the batteries themselves. Nickel is a key component in nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) batteries, which currently dominate the market due to advantages in range and power-to-weight. But this dominance may be fleeting.

As with most things EV-related, Tesla is the bellwether. In 2021, Tesla adopted lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, with nearly half of its production models using them by the first quarter of 2022. In August of this year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that the company would be transitioning most of its entry-level vehicles — Model 3 and Model Y — and its shorter-range semi-trucks to using LFP batteries. For a regional hub, Tesla chose to set up shop in neighbouring Malaysia rather than in the nickel giant.

Tesla did not invent or even bring to market the first EVs, but it popularised and democratised them. Its move toward LFP batteries is one major reason that S&P Global forecasts that after 2030 the dominance of NMC batteries will wane in favour of LFP batteries. LFP batteries offer less range and high-end performance. But they are also less prone to catching fire and are made of much more globally abundant and cheaper raw materials. For most EV users, LFP batteries provide more than enough range and power.

This forecast does not include the effects of potentially market-disrupting frontier technologies like sodium-ion and solid-state batteries, upon which Toyota has placed a heavy bet. These technologies would further depress the relative demand for nickel. There will still be a market for NMC batteries in performance-oriented EVs offering pavement-wrinkling torque and acceleration. But the global market in the future may be smaller than the current one – and with technology, disruption is rarely linear. The market may change even more quickly than S&P anticipates

For Indonesia to sustain nickel as an engine for growth and development within these landscapes, its priority should be to cultivate closer relationships with the United States and the EU. These markets and their comparatively affluent consumer bases will drive an appetite for higher-performance, NMC-based EVs. Indonesia’s relationship with the EU is seemingly on track to expand, with shared ambitions to conclude negotiations on a comprehensive Indonesia–EU free trade agreement (FTA) before Indonesia’s 2024 election.

The outlook regarding the United States is less straightforward. In September, Indonesian President Joko Widodo proposed a critical minerals trade agreement with the United States during talks with Vice President Kamala Harris. A limited, critical minerals-specific FTA would allow Indonesian materials to qualify for the IRA’s domestic and FTA partner tax incentives. The FTA would seemingly be consistent with the US Biden administration’s desire to avoid creating more comprehensive, multi-sector and multi-issue FTAs.

Cultivating tighter US and EU relationships should not come at the expense of partnerships with Asian firms, including those in China and Korea. And EU and US partnerships will not be cost-free. Both the EU and the United States are concerned about Indonesia’s use of export bans as a tool of economic policy. The EU has already challenged Indonesia’s ban and won at the World Trade Organization.

The text of the IRA also specifically requires any minerals-specific FTA to commit parties to ‘reduce or eliminate restrictions on exports’ while allowing less extreme policies, like export taxes. And agreements with the EU and US will bring heightened scrutiny on the environmental impacts of open-pit mining and new business rules that some in Indonesia’s opposition view as too capital-friendly, allowing provincial governors to set minimum wages without input from trade unions and experts from civil society.

For Indonesia, the price of stronger EU-US partnerships may be substantial. But it would be preferable to seeing its nickel and related industrial ambitions become a casualty of changing chemistry and a shifting geopolitical landscape.

Source : East Asia Forum

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The UK offshore energy industry has reinforced the key role it can play to help the country boost jobs, grow the economy, cut emissions and provide energy security following a speech by the Prime Minister from Downing Street on Wednesday.

While much of the focus remains on consumer measures, the leading representative body for the sector, Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), said an enduring consensus is needed across parties if it is to unlock £200 billion of company investment in oil, gas, wind, hydrogen and carbon capture over the next decade.

OEUK’s recent Economic Report found that with the right support, the UK sector could commit up to £80 billion of offshore wind investment, of which OEUK members are helping to develop 13 GW of the offshore wind pipeline capacity by 2030. These projects alone require almost £30 billion of private investment

OEUK members are also developing the UK’s first wave of carbon capture and hydrogen cluster projects – with a possible spend of up to £20 billion.

OEUK has sight of around £35 billion of potential oil and gas capital investment over the next 10 years, of which about half will go on projects in existing fields and half on new fields. This is part of wider oil and gas expenditure that could be £90 billion through to 2030.

To unlock these funds, OEUK has identified concerted policy support, a stable and globally competitive tax regime and improved planning and regulatory timelines as critical. The report details the key moves necessary across all areas of the energy mix to make the UK globally competitive.

OEUK is calling for pragmatic policy across all political parties ahead of the next General Election to safeguard energy security and the homegrown jobs and supply chains needed to build the low carbon future here in the UK.

Mike Tholen, OEUK sustainability and policy director, said, “Today, we heard the Prime Minister confirm his commitment to net zero. In recent months we have felt the direct impact of underinvestment in homegrown energy on job security for our workers, the competitiveness of our firms internationally, and our future energy bills.

“We know this sector can and must be a big part of the answer to the challenges the country faces on the cost of living, energy security, economic growth and tackling climate change.

“The Prime Minister is right that we need to take people with us, and that includes the 200,000 people working in this industry, as well as the industries and consumers which need an enduring consensus and collaboration if we are to continue  building  energy security as well as the  low carbon energy system in the UK, for the UK.

“With the right frameworks in place, this industry can make the long-term investments to help the UK tackle these challenges head-on.

“The UK mustn’t just become a good place to do energy business, it must become irresistible. Our Economic Report shows that as the global race for energy investment accelerates, the UK must compete by making the most of its diverse homegrown industry, from oil and gas to offshore wind, hydrogen and carbon capture. Globally, this is the lesson other countries have learnt.”

Source : World Oil

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Saudi Arabia’s oil policy is based purely on supply and demand, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said Sept. 20, in an interview broadcast on Fox News.

“We just watch supply, demand. If there is a shortage of supply, our role in OPEC+ is to fill the shortage. If there is oversupply our role is to measure that for stability of the market,” he said, when asked about OPEC+ supply cuts benefiting Russia.

Saudi Arabia has faced criticism for sticking to its cooperation with Russia and introducing major cuts, at a time when Western countries have imposed wide-ranging sanctions in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Production cuts have boosted prices, helping Russia to deal with sanctions, spiraling war costs and discounts on its crude.

The Crown Prince said that invading a country is really bad, but Saudi Arabia has a good relationship with both Russia and Ukraine. He pointed to cooperation with Iran continuing within OPEC, despite political tensions, as a further example of how supply and demand, rather than geopolitics, governs Saudi production policy.

Saudi Arabia is pursuing a policy of significant crude production cuts, despite expectations of a supply squeeze at the end of 2023 and a significant increase in oil prices in recent months. It is cutting alongside other OPEC+ producers, including Russia, the largest non-OPEC producer in the group.

OPEC’s latest forecast is for global oil demand to outstrip supply by more than 3 million b/d in the fourth quarter of 2023. Oil prices have also seen a significant rise in recent months. OPEC+ producers have not yet indicated that these two factors require any adjustment to current quotas.

Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said Sept. 18 that OPEC and its allies will continue to be “proactive, preemptive and precautious” in managing the market.

Oil prices have risen significantly since Saudi Arabia announced its latest voluntary cuts. Platts, part of S&P Global Commodity Insights, assessed Dated Brent at $95.725/b on Sept. 20, up from $74.605/b at the start of June.

Saudi Arabia’s production is now at a two-year low of 9 million b/d — a level it expects to maintain until the end of 2023. S&P Global expects Saudi Arabia to maintain its 1 million b/d cut until the end of the year.

Russia is also curtailing production, with its latest pledge to cut 300,000 b/d of supply up to the end of 2023. Both countries have said that output plans will be reviewed on a monthly basis.

The next meeting of the committee that oversees the OPEC+ agreement is due to meet on Oct. 4 to discuss market conditions and production volumes. A full OPEC+ ministerial meeting is scheduled for Nov. 26. The deal also includes the option to hold extraordinary meetings if necessary.

Source : S&P Global

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Germany and France are the most populous countries in the EU and also the bloc’s largest energy consumers. The neighbours therefore wield enormous influence over EU energy policy and are pivotal to implementing a sustainable transformation of the European energy system. This factsheet provides an overview of both’ countries’ national energy systems and their approaches to meet joint European policy landmarks.

Contents

1. Geography, Politics, Economy: Different Landscapes Along the Rhine River
2. How Energy Systems Compare: Primary Energy & Electricity Production
3. Energy Consumption Declines in Both Countries
4. Renewables set to grow fast across Europe
5. Heating
6. Electric mobility
7. Energy storage
8. Power grid
9. Nuclear power: Phase-Out for Germany, Renaissance for France 
10. Fossil fuels: Germany Leads Consumption with Gas as Key Driver

Germany and France are the two largest economies in the European Union and both play a key role in the bloc’s goal to become greenhouse gas neutral by 2050. France also aims to achieve net zero emissions in that year, while Germany plans to reach the target five years earlier, in 2045. Whether or not these ambitious goals can be met will for the most part rely on their governments’ policy decisions in various sectors, especially the most energy-intensive, and subsequently on their swift implementation. But with roughly 25 years left to radically change their energy systems, meeting those targets also depends on the current reality in energy policy prevailing in each country.

Highlighting the two countries’ structural similarities and discrepancies allows a better understanding of where both of them stand as of 2023 and where they are headed given current trends. A caveat is that an entirely accurate comparison of available  datasets is not always feasible between the two countries. This is due to the intrinsic complexities of counting emissions, investments and other developments in climate and energy policy, as well as the countries using different definitions, framings and accounting procedures to quantify their efforts. However, comparing available data can still offer an overview of the state of affairs in each country, where this can lead to contradictions, but also where synergies exist in the two approaches. 

Geography, Politics, Economy: Different Landscapes Along the Rhine River

Situated on either side of western Europe’s central waterway the Rhine River, France and Germany constitute the European Union’s core region – not only geographically and historically, but also in terms of population, economic size and diplomatic weight. The two EU founding members share a wide range of cultural, institutional and political characteristics, and superficially may look quite alike on many accounts. However, they often are further apart on policy issues  than their similarities suggest, in particular regarding organisational practices and ideological approaches.

France is the EU’s largest state by area. Its European territory (metropolitan France) covers some 544.000 km2. By contrast, Germany’s area is roughly 358.000 km2, only about two thirds the size of its neighbour. In terms of population, the picture is reversed: with about 83 million people registered in the country, Germany is the EU’s most populous member state. France comes second, with nearly 66 million inhabitants. Consequently, Germany has almost twice its population density.

France is a highly centralised state with the capital Paris as its unrivaled economic, cultural and political centre. Consequently, the French president is endowed with a high degree of direct decisional power that is compounded by the fact that coalition governments are uncommon in France. Germany, on the other hand, has a strong federal political structure for its 16 states. Several cultural and economic centres are scattered across the country and state governments enjoy relative autonomy vis-à-vis with the federal government Berlin. Moreover, coalition governments have been the norm for decades, meaning the German chancellor regularly has to rely on negotiating compromises before taking a decision.

Germany boasts the EU’s largest gross domestic product (GDP) ahead of France by a considerable margin – it is estimated at some 4.3 trillion dollars against 2.9 trillion dollars for its western neighbour (IMF, 2023). For income per capita, Germany leads France with about 51,000 to 44,000 dollars per year. Together, the two countries account for about one third of the EU population and for more than 42 percent of the bloc’s total GDP.

Regarding economic composition, the share of industry is much higher in Germany than it is in France: 23.5 percent (2021) and 13 percent (2022), respectively. This difference in part results from how both the countries navigated the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis, as well as the ensuing sovereign debt and Euro crisis, culminating in 2012. While French industrial production took a deep hit and remained significantly lower throughout the following decade, Germany’s economy emerged strengthened from the crisis not least thanks to its strong export-driven industrial sector.  

France had some 259,300 companies in the industry sector in 2020, with 1,1 trillion euros of total revenue. The sector employed more than 3 million people in 2021. In Germany, the around 217,100 industrial companies registered as of 2021 generated a turnover of about 2.1 trillion euros and employed roughly 7 million people. 

How Energy Systems Compare

Together, the two countries accounted for roughly 38 percent of total EU energy consumption in 2021. Of the roughly 1,300 million tons of oil equivalent used in the EU in 2021, Germany consumed 267 million tons and France some 224 million tons.

Apart from a heavy reliance on oil, the countries boast two rather different usage patterns with other energy carriers, especially regarding nuclear and coal power. Germany was the biggest coal producer in Europe in 2022 and accounted for 45 percent of its brown coal (lignite) and 25 percent of hard coal use. France, on the other hand, is by far the largest nuclear power producer in the bloc and accounted for 52 percent of total production in 2021.

Conversely, Germany opted to phase out nuclear power already in the year 2000 and completed its ‘nuclear exit‘ in April 2023, after a short delay caused by the energy crisis. In France, coal-fired power generation also has been reduced greatly in the past decades and as of 2023, only four plants were in operation in the country.

Primary Energy Production

In Germany, renewable energy accounted for some 17 percent of primary energy consumption in 2022. Total renewable energy use was 489 TWh, of which a little over half came in the form of electricity, some 40 percent in renewable heating and 7 percent in the transport sector, the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) said. The three last operating nuclear plants provided roughly 3 percent to the mix while the remaining 80 percent were mostly composed of fossil fuels, clearly led by oil (35%), followed by natural gas (24%), and coal (20%).

In France, the primary energy mix was composed mainly of nuclear power (40%) Primary production of renewable energies in 2022 in France amounted to 345 TWh, the ministry said, including biomass (38%), hydropower (17%), heat pumps (12%), wind power (11%) and biofuels (6%). Fossil fuels accounted for 46 percent of primary production, mainly with oil (28%) as well, followed by gas (15%) and a marginal share of coal (3%).

Electricity Production

Both countries covered roughly a quarter of their final 2021 energy consumption with electricity, which is supposed to replace the bulk of fossil fuel use: About 23 percent in Germany and 25 percent in France.

Regarding electricity generation, nuclear power dominated in France with a share of 63 percent, the highest share of any country in the world. Nuclear was followed by renewable power installations, with a combined share of about 26 percent. Hydro power accounted for the bulk of that share (11%) – followed by onshore wind power (8.5%), solar PV (4%), and biomass and waste (2.4%). Gas (10%) was far ahead of oil and coal (<1% each) in electricity production. Offshore wind still lurked at a share of 0.1 percent.

In Germany, renewables accounted for 44 percent of electricity production in 2022, dominated by onshore wind power (17.5%), followed by solar PV (10.5%), biomass (7.5%), offshore wind (4.5%) and hydro power (3%). The remainder was overwhelmingly composed of fossil fuels: Coal (hard coal & lignite) still accounted for over 31 percent and gas for nearly 14 percent, followed by nuclear (6%) and oil (<1%).

Energy Consumption Declines in Both Countries

Consumption has generally been declining in both France and Germany since 1990, at a somewhat faster pace than in the then re-unified Germany, where many industrial sites in the formerly communist eastern states were shuttered in the decade following reunification – while its strong recovery in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis delayed further cuts.

The German government has set itself the goal of reducing primary energy consumption by 30 percent by 2030 and by 50 percent by 2050 compared to 2008 levels. (Govt’ Energy Efficiency Strategy 2050). In 2022, it had achieved slightly over 18 percent reduction, less than the 20 percent-target envisaged already for 2020.

The latest addition to the French government’s sufficiency plan was announced in mid-2023, by the Ministry of Energy Transition. It called for a long-term sufficiency approach among the largest companies and across sectors. Alongside efficiency efforts, the current national low-carbon strategy calls for a 40 percent reduction in energy consumption by 2050.

While total energy demand is set to fall in each country, the demand for electricity will increase as industrial processes, heat generation and transport become more and more electrified. By 2030, Germany estimates a demand of 600 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity from renewable energies – based on higher gross electricity consumption of about 750 TWh.
French grid operator RTE estimates a demand of about 645 TWh of  decarbonised electricity demand in 2050, pointing out it already stood at some 500 TWh in 2021.

Renewables Set to Grow Fast Across Europe

On a European scale, EU states agreed to increase the share of renewables in the overall energy mix to 42.5 percent by 2030, leaving an option open to possibly reach 45 percent – which would almost double the 2023 share of renewable energy in the bloc.

In 2022, total renewable capacity in Germany stood at roughly 148 GW (139 GW in 2021). About 58 GW of onshore wind capacity was installed, roughly 8 GW of offshore turbines, about 67 GW of solar PV arrays, 5 GW renewable hydro power and nearly 10 GW bioenergy (IRENA 2023). Together they produced about 244 TWh of net electricity, some 7.4 percent more than in the previous year, according to research institute Fraunhofer ISE.

In order to achieve the national goal of 30 percent renewable energy in gross final energy consumption formulated in its energy concept (from 20.4% in 2022) – and of 80 percent in electricity production fixed in the latest reform of its Renewable Energy Act – the government in Berlin plans to implement an expansion of wind power to 115 GW by 2030. According to the government, this translates to a fast scale-up and ultimately the construction of four to five new onshore turbines per day. Offshore wind capacity is supposed to increase more than threefold to 30 GW by the end of the decade, while the projected 2030 capacity for solar PV is 215 GW.  

Total installed renewable power capacity in France was 65 GW in 2022 (60 GW in 2021), composed of 25 GW hydro power, roughly 21 GW onshore wind,  17 GW solar PV, 0.5 GW offshore wind (with a further  8 GW already projected). In total, they contributed about 136 TWh to gross power consumption, also around 7 percent more than in the previous year, the French Energy Transition Ministry informed.

Paris wishes to develop its capacity gradually to reach a 33 percent share of renewable energy in gross final energy consumption until 2030  (it had reached 20.7% in gross final consumption in 2022), as fixed by the French Climate and Energy Law of November 2019. The long-term goal up to 2050 is to significantly increase installed renewable energy capacity, as set by French President Emmanuel Macron in his Belfort speech on energy policy in early 2022. He stated that solar PV production should be increased tenfold to over 100 gigawatts (GW), with 50 offshore wind farms to be deployed to reach a capacity of 40 GW, and that onshore wind power should be doubled to 40 GW.  

While electricity generation with renewable power installations in France thus lagged  behind that of its neighbours in 2021, the renewable energy share in energy consumption was closer to the European average.

Nuclear Power: Phase-Out for Germany, Renaissance for France

As far as nuclear power is concerned, Germany closed its last plant in April 2023, following a short delay caused by the energy crisis, while France plans to invest significantly in the sector. France and other European neighbours had appealed to Germany to further postpone the shutdown of its remaining three reactors to serve as a backup-capacity in the energy crisis. However, the German government ultimately completed the phase-out that had been prepared for more than 20 years, arguing the additional capacity provided by the reactors is of little use in stabilising the system. The shutdown did not impact power prices negatively in the immediate aftermath, as critics had warned. There is no agreement on building a nuclear waste repository for the radioactive legacy of Germany’s nuclear power era and the deadline for an ongoing search that was planned for 2031 was has been postponed in 2022. 

In France, by contrast, 61 GW of nuclear capacity was installed in the same year (SGPL) in 56 reactors, and one novel EPR (European Pressurised Reactor) was under construction (Flamanville). However, twenty-six of the 56 French nuclear reactors will reach the end of their fifty-year operating life in 2035. They then will have to pass an in-depth safety inspection in order to receive a runtime extension for another ten years. President Macron also announced his plan to not only extend the operation of existing plants but launch a “nucelar renaissance” with the construction of a series (at list six and possibly eight more by 2050) of new second-generation EPR. 

Even without a renaissance, France dominates the EU’s nuclear power industry, boasting 52 percent of the bloc’s total capacity in 2021, when Germany still had several reactors operating. France also boasts the second largest nuclear power capacity in the world, ranking behind the U.S. and slightly ahead of China af of 2023.

Different nuclear scenarios exist for France, with more or less renewable energy, considering that at least 20 to 60 percent more electricity (compared with 2020) shall have to be generated by 2050 to meet growing electrification needs, according to France’s Transmission System Operator (RTE) 2021 report.

Difficulties in the French reactor fleet led to a sharp reversal in Franco-German electricity trading. While France had been Germany’s most important foreign supplier in 2021, exports decreased 62 percent in the following year – marking the first year since 1990 when France had a negative export balance with its neighbour, according to Germany’s statistical office Destatis. 

Fossil Fuels: Germany Leads Consumption with Gas as Key Driver

As of 2022, fossil fuels still cover over three quarters of Germany’s gross energy consumption – with oil providing about 35 percent, coal 20 percent and gas nearly 24 percent. However despite redeploying some of its already retired coal plants during the energy crisis, so far the country seems prepared to achieve its 2038 deadline to complete the phase-out of coal – or perhaps even faster, if eastern coal regions can be made to follow their western counterpart’s example and attempt an exit as early as 2030. However, to replace gas, coal in 2022 fed almost 8.5 percent more electricity into the grid than in the previous year.

While the use of oil (-24%) and coal (lignite -63%, hard coal -50%) has shrunk between 1990 and 2022, that of natural gas has increased markedly. In 2022, due to the supply cut from Russia, consumption was only 21 percent higher than 1990 – while in 2021 it was 41 percent higher.  There currently is no exit date in Germany, although the 2045 climate neutrality target greatly limits the extent to which it can be used until then. The government currently plans to even expand gas-fired power production but aims to make new facilities ready to work on hydrogen as well, to supply industry processes and other sectors that are difficult to decarbonise otherwise.

Regarding oil consumption, mainly for transport and heating, there are no phase-out plans and neither any concrete proposals to exit combustion engines. However, a mix of carbon pricing in transport and heating and subsidies for electric cars and renewable heating are supposed to deliver a gradual transition away from oil.

Germany’s energy import dependency, mainly consisting of fossil fuels, was higher than the EU average in 2020, with 63.7 percent of all energy consumed, compared to 57.5 percent on average for member states. The figure for France was 44.5 percent. 

Since 1990 France’s consumption of coal and oil has decreased by 72 percent and 27 percent, respectively. Conversely, natural gas use increased by 44 percent. With nuclear and hydroelectric production declining in 2022, gas-fired power plants were also called upon at an unprecedented level (+34% in metropolitan France). 

France in 2021 affirmed that it would end all funding for oil projects by 2025 and gas projects by 2035. According to all the transition scenarios studied, fossil fuel investments will have to be halved before 2030, and disappear almost entirely by 2040, the I4CE think tank underlines.

Source: Clean Energy Wire

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The sides intend to consider and study possibility of cooperation in construction and operation of wind farms in Kyrgyzstan.

“Our country has a big potential in electricity generation. I am convinced that development of wind energy projects will not only diversify national energy portfolio and will enhance reliability of electricity supplies, but will also increase tax receipts for the budget and create new work places. I am confident our cooperation will allow to use natural resources for the benefit of our country and its people,” Minister Talaibek Ibraev said.

Director General of NovaWind JSC Grigory Nazarov said despite external restrictions, cooperation with friendly countries keeps growing.

“The signed agreement paves the way for new prospects for wind energy projects. We have a big experience in construction and operation of wind farms. 7 wind farms successfully operate in 3 regions in the south of Russia already. Emergence of wind farms in Kyrgyzstan will not only enhance reliability of electricity supplies in the region and improve its quality, but will also make contribution into increase of green energy share. Hopefully, our cooperation will be successful,” Grigory Nazarov said.

NovaWnd JSC is wind energy division of Rosatom Corporation. The company was founded in September 2017.

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A bipartisan group of state lawmakers plans to spend part of its time in Austin this year highlighting the state’s increasingly fragile water infrastructure.

Texas Water Foundation, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on creating a sustainable water system in Texas, announced the new group, called the Texas House Water Caucus, this week.

The caucus, believed to be the first of its kind at the Capitol, includes 38 legislators from the Texas House of Representatives, led by Rep. Tracy King, D-Batesville. King chaired the House Natural Resources Committee during the last regular legislative session. The caucus won’t focus on passing or advocating for any specific pieces of legislation, those familiar with the group say. Instead, it will prioritize educating fellow state lawmakers about water security issues.

“The caucus was really informed by a recognition of the amount of turnover at the Capitol and how many of our Texas water champions were leaving office,” said Sarah Schlessinger, CEO of Texas Water Foundation. “It’s about getting folks comfortable and knowledgeable about what’s happening and to prioritize water as an important topic this session.”

Aging infrastructure and limited investments have left Texas’ water infrastructure fragile, especially in rural communities, where a lack of human resources compounds the problem.

Last year, there were more than 3,000 boil-water notices issued across the state. Such warnings are often issued when water quality is in doubt. Contributing factors can include water main breaks and drops in water pressure. According to a Texas Tribune analysis of data from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, seven of the 10 water entities that issued the most boil-water notices last year were in rural parts of East Texas.

The pace of boil-water notices has not slowed.. Since the new year, there have been at least 79 of them, or about six notices per day, according to a spokesperson from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Texas’ water supply is also becoming less reliable as the state’s population continues to grow and strain already limited resources. Hotter temperatures caused by climate change accelerate water evaporation from Texas rivers and reservoirs, which account for roughly half of Texas’ existing water supply.

“Water security is critically important to all Texans and our economy,” King said in a statement. “We must continue to innovate, invest and strategize long-term to manage our water resources efficiently.”

The House Water Caucus was formed through a transparent process, where any representative could participate, Schlessinger said. She added that she expects more members to join as the legislative session progresses.

“Water is one of those topics where it’s easy to get bipartisan support around,” she said. “It’s a topic that is very unifying.”

But a challenge is understanding the complexities of Texas’ water supply and funding systems in different regions of a geographically diverse state. To address this knowledge gap, the group plans to launch a website for finding water resources. The tool will include legislative reports related to water and publications from nonprofits and research institutes, as well as maps and visualizations.

The caucus will also hold meetings at the Capitol to educate legislative staff about water infrastructure and conservation.

Historically, water-related policies have been passed in the wake of disasters such as floods or droughts. The caucus is intended to elevate water issues to the forefront so lawmakers prioritize water policy even when there is no discernable disaster.

“Water is one of the most important policy issues facing the state,” said state Rep. Four Price, R-Amarillo, one of the members of the caucus. “Hopefully we’re not just reactive to droughts and we can really make good headway in preparing Texas for the future.”

Perry Fowler, executive director of the Texas Water Infrastructure Network, said he is hopeful that the legislature will use some of the historic state budget to address water issues, including staffing shortages.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, one-third of employees in the water sector will be eligible to retire in the next 10 years.

“We’re going to need to have more personnel on the water board,” Perry said. “There are significant workforce concerns that are out there.”

Source : Texas Tribune

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