The Top 8 Energy Stories For 2018: Are Cities, States And Companies More Consequential Than Trump?

The world energy news continues to be dominated by Donald Trump. His doubters have hesitated to speak out as there is certainly something to said for going over the nation’s regulatory regime and reconsidering its configuration. However, critics still stand by the fact that Trump’s primary initiative is to undo Obama’s progress and undermine the science that underpins the research relating to climate change.

Fortunately, cities and states are taking matters into their own hands and are backed by American enterprise. Hopefully, their actions will outlast those of the president.

1. The Trump Organisation looks like it is going to pay out millions of dollars towards the clean up of a polluted site. The site was overseen by Donald Jr. and is known as Titan Atlas Manufacturing. The industrial site began in 2010 and failed two years later. This shows the president’s attitude towards the link between environment and business. If there is money to be made then environmental concerns are secondary.

2. In January 2017, the president signed an order to launch the Keystone XL Pipeline into action. The project has been on standby since 2008 and there were doubts about how many permanent jobs the pipeline would create. The drop in the price of oil also caused speculation as to the economics of the project, given that it was to cost in excess of $7 billion.

3. In July OFAC fined Exxon Mobil $2 million for violating sanctions on Russia. The breach was considered a reckless disregard for the sanctions, which barred U.S. entities from dealing financially with Igor Sechin, CEO of Rosneft, a Russian state-owner oil company.

4. Scott Pruitt, an EPA administrator, announced on Halloween that scientists who receive research grants from the EPA will no longer have a seat on the agency’s board. This means that hundreds of independent scientists will no longer be able to sit on the board but it will not stop scientists from private enterprise from doing so. Critics have blasted the move saying it is a blatant purging of independent scientists who may conflict with corporate interests.

5. Trump sent ripples through the world when he decided to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, making the U.S. the only country in that world that is not participating. The aim of the pact was to keep temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius. Trump’s reasoning is flawed. He argued that he cannot create jobs and build an economy if he has to worry about a healthy environment. However, the U.S. economy has flourished recently whilst making great environment strides and renewable energy technologies are creating jobs.

6. Trump also ditched the Clean Power Plan and is attempting to resurrect the coal industry. However, market forces are proving stronger than the plan to roll back the proposed emission cuts. CO2 emissions were 18% less than in 2005 according to the EIA.

7. California has been busy creating and implementing a strategy to reduce carbon emissions by 40% by 2030 from 1990 levels. The move is in direct contrast with Trump’s position. By 2050 the state hopes to have reduced emissions by 80% and it believes that this initiative will create jobs.

8. Cities and states are certainly accelerating the low-carbon trend but it is the corporate world that is making things happen. Companies are listening to customers and investors and adopting technologies that will reduce emissions. Over 365 businesses have signed a letter asking Trump to go back to the Paris climate and Clean Power Plan.

Exam Dates and Fees for the Global Energy Certification

Have you decided to gain an extra qualification and expand your CV before you enter the job market? If the answer to this is yes then congratulations, you have made a very wise choice. Nowadays, the job market is more competitive than ever so standing out is vital – especially if you want to bag your dream career straight out of university.

The Global Energy Certification (GEC) is an online qualification created by the energy experts at NRG Expert. The carefully crafted course is designed to give you a comprehensive overview of the global energy market and is a great way to boost your knowledge of the industry. Once you have completed the course, you will be able to add the designation to your CV and show potential employers that you mean business.

Interested to know more about the GEC and how it works? Read on and find out all about the course’s exam dates and fees.

When Do I Take the GEC Exam?

Once you sign up for the course, you will have to wait a minimum of six weeks before you are able to take the exam. This is because the creators of the course feel that this is the least amount of time needed to be able to learn all of the material and have a good chance of passing the exam. Once this period of time has finished, you will be able to take the exam on the 10^th of any month. This means you need to have registered for the course by the 1^st of the previous month. So, if you want to take the exam on May 10^th, you will need to have registered for the course no later than April 1^st.

Once you register, you have 12 months to take the exam, which is two hours long and can be completed online from the comfort of your own home. The exam is laid out as a multiple choice test and will assess your knowledge of all the modules you have studied as part of the GEC. If you are unable to take the exam within 12 months you will need to contact NRG Expert so that arrangements can be made for you to take the exam at a later date.

How Much Will the GEC Cost?

The GEC costs £330, which is payable as a one-off payment when you submit your application. This cost covers the application process as well as your materials and the exam. Take note that only 200 students can register worldwide each quarter – this protects the integrity of the course. Once you have been accepted onto the course, you will be given online access to all of the materials you need to complete the exam.

If you are unsuccessful on your first attempt taking the exam, you can take the exam again at a cost of £175. You will also be charged this amount if you fail to take the exam within 12 months, unless you contact NRG Expert prior to the expiry date of your exam period. If you contact NRG Expert they are usually more than happy to make alternative arrangements for you at no extra cost. You will also be entitled to a full refund if you pay for the course and then change your mind, provided that you have not yet downloaded the course materials. 

Gas Firms Lobby EU into Committing to ‘Clean’ Gas Projects

Despite rising concerns about fossil fuels and a global push towards cleaner energy, the EU is currently at risk of continuing its dependency of fossil fuel for another 50 years. This risk has come from lobbying done by the gas industry for a new infrastructure.
The Corporate Europe Observatory claims that a number of gas firms poured over £88 million into their efforts to lobby EU decision makes last year. These funds were spent employing over a thousand professional lobbyists to back their campaign which promotes gas as a ‘bridge fuel’ that is clean and capable of assisting the European transition over to renewables.
Over the last three years, this lobbying has given gas firms the chance to sit down with top dogs of the EU’s climate and energy departments. The Corporate Europe Observatory claims that there has been over 460 of these meetings.
The Observatory goes on to explain that as a result of these meetings, the EU and its member states have encouraged a range of new gas infrastructure projects, which have been identified as controversial. These projects include the Euro-Caspian Mega-Pipeline and the Franco-Spanish MidCat Pipeline.
Belén Balanyá, the Climate Policy Campaigner at the Corporate Europe Observatory is sceptical of the claim made by the gas lobbyists with regards to gas being a clean source of energy. She said: “As a result of intense industry lobbying, the EU Commission has swallowed the gas lobby’s false claim that their fuel is a ‘clean’ complement to renewables and is now planning a new generation of pipelines and other gas infrastructure on this basis.”

What are oil prices?

Oil, it provides gasoline for our cars, diesel for our trucks, and other materials we use every day for energy and manufacturing. It is also no surprise to many that the oil price is a very often-discussed topic. Whether oil is below $50 a barrel, or over $100, the cost of oil determines what we pay for everyday routines.

You or I can’t just go to the store and buy a barrel of oil. Oil producers on the other hand also don’t just put a price tag on their oil and hope a buyer comes along either. Oil is often traded at exchanges. These exchanges bring the buyers and sellers together and this mechanism of supply and demand is what will set the price at that exchange.

The exchange acts as an auction and will sell what the producers are offering at the price the bidders are willing to pay for oil at that moment. It could very well be that the producer doesn’t want to sell at the prices being offered because it cost them more to produce the oil, so they’d be taking a loss and decide not to sell. Often when this is the case, producers will store oil until the price is right.

On the other hand, when the price is high, many producers will want to sell their oil, and the buyers might not be willing to pay that price, because they can get the oil cheaper from another location and ship it to where they need it to be. In this case they won’t buy, and the producers will start offering lower prices to the exchange where the buyers can buy.

What ends up happening is a finely tuned balance between the buyers and the sellers all looking to have the black gold change hands. On the world market, this is what determines the price of oil, and you or I don’t have any say in it; but we can definitely feel it in our pockets. 

European Transmission Network Collaboration

Through the ENTSO-E, the European NetworkOf Transmission System Operators, 43 Transmission system operators are represented in a single organisation. ENTSO-E is tasked and given legal mandates by the EU’s Third Legislative Package for the Internal Energy Market to further liberalise the electricity markets in Europe to allow for greater competition and better use of the scale of networks to deliver reliable supplies to European consumers of Electricity.

The direct objectives of ENTSO-E comprise of setting up the internal energy market, and implementing the EU’s ambitious goals of greenhouse gas reductions in which electricity generation plays a major part. Allowing for renewables to be integrated into the grid requires a lot of planning and coordination, and is most efficient in large-scale networks.

The 43 current members of ENTSO-E paint the picture of how fragmented electricity transmission in Europe is, despite the common goal of creating the world’s largest electricity market. ENTSO-E was set up to facilitate the dialogue and to work together towards common standards and objectives.

Transparancy is a key pillar within the association, and members are required by law to provide ENTSO-E with information related to generation, load, transmission, and outages through a common platform. Not only does this knowledge help with the functioning of the network; it allows for collaboration between parties outside of their networks and presents learning opportunities for all stakeholders.

As there is no true direct competition among TSOs, and each is tasked with the management of a fixed network, this collaborative space and the cooperation with one another has led to one of the most reliable and well connected grid systems in the world.

As Europe’s interconnectedness continues to grow, so too will the tasks of ENTSO-E relaying feedback and ensuring oversight of the world’s largest transmission networks. 

Technological Barriers to grid Integration

One of the major hurdles to overcome in harmonising and combining separately operating grids is making sure that the systems are compatible and that the necessary fail-safes are in place to make sure that there is not a cascading catastrophic failure of the grid. All components of the grid must operate in unison and to within set frequency parameters.

Short, localised outages occur on power systems frequently. System wide disturbances that affect many customers across a broad geographic area are rare, but they occur more frequently than a normal distribution of probabilities would predict. Electric power systems are robust and are capable of withstanding one or two contingency events, but they are fragile with respect to multiple contingency events unless the systems are readjusted between contingencies. With the shrinking margin in the current transmission system, it is likely to be more vulnerable to cascading outages than it was in the past, unless effective countermeasures are taken.

A cascade is a dynamic phenomenon that cannot be stopped by human intervention once started. It occurs when there is a sequential tripping of numerous transmission lines and generators in a widening geographic area. A cascade can be triggered by just a few initiating events, as was seen on August 14th. Power swings and voltage fluctuations caused by these initial events can cause other lines to detect high currents and low voltages that appear to be faults, even if faults do not actually exist on those other lines. Generators are tripped off during a cascade to protect them from severe power and voltage swings. Protective relay systems work well to protect lines and generators from damage and to isolate them from the system under normal and abnormal system conditions

The largest hydroelectricity plants in the world

One of the most common forms of renewable energy has, for quite a while, been hydroelectricity. Sites such as the Hoover Dam and the Three Gorges Dam have become landmarks in their own right, however, they serve a purpose that is more than what makes a great tourist attraction. Harnessing the flow of the water, great turbines convert the steady deluge into electricity which has powered the grid for over a century. Below is a listing of some of the largest dams by electricity generation capacity in the world.

Three Gorges Dam

Completed in 2008, this dam was not without controversy in its scale and the sheer size of the lake that it would create displacing many people. A total of 1084 square kilometers was flooded to be able to generate 22,500 MW of power from the Yangtze river in China.

Itaipu Dam

Straddling the border between Brazil and Paraguay, the Itaipu Dam has a capacity of 14,000 MW and comes in as the world’s second largest hydroelectric generation station.

Xiluodu

The Xiluodu project is the newest of the world’s super dams; able to generate 13,860MW of power, this dam on the Jinsha river in china was completed in 2014. China is one of the fastest growing electricity producers in the world and much of its capacity is being gained from Hydro-electricity with four of the top 10 hydroelectric power plants in the world being located in china.

Baihetan

Though this dam is not yet complete, or supplying power to the grid yet, in 2021 this dam sill overtake the Itaipu dam to become the world’s second largest hydro power plant with a capacity of 16,000 MW. Giving China the number one and number two spots.