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Triple Crunch Log
© Jeremy Leggett
The triple crunch log
2010
…a log compiled by Jeremy Leggett emphasising matters
relevant to the energy-, climate-, and financial crises, and
issues pertinent to society’s response to this triple crunch
Editor’s note
This log represents one person’s reading experience of the unfolding dramas that most
preoccupy him, among the all-too numerous dramas inherent in the human condition. I have
compiled it while pursuing a full time day job in a solar energy company, and further parttime roles as a director in a private equity fund (throughout) and trustee of a charity (since
2006). Accordingly, there is far more source material from newspapers than academic
journals and books, most of it culled and processed in evenings, weekends, and journeys.
Unless otherwise stated, entries are from newspaper reports published the day after the
news event. Magazine and journal reports are on the day of publication, some time (days)
after the actual events referred to. Entries from monthlies appear on the first of each month.
After the creation of the website (June 2009), references use url format where available.
Abbreviations:
boe: barrels of oil equivalent; CCS: Carbon capture and storage; CTL: Coal to liquids; mbd:
million barrels per day; mcf: million cubic feet (bn: billion; tn: trillion etc); L: author’s library
copy for further detail (either digital or paper); mcm: million cubic metres; oe: oil
equivalent; p.a. per annum.
1.1.10.
3.1.10.
Head of FSA says next UK government must tax “bads” and spend on green stimulus. Adair Turner
says “If we have to raise taxes – and we will to some extent – we can deliberately design those to tax bad
environmental things, like overuse of fossil fuels, rather than good welfare-enhancing things, like employment
for people.”1
Arup heads industry consortium aiming to retrofit UK homes with energy efficiency and create tens
of thousands of jobs. GE and EDF are among the 25 companies involved in the Thames Gateway Institute for
Sustainability, which plans to use the Thames Gateway as a showcase for what can be done. Funding is a big
part of the project and the group is in “advanced talks with pension funds.”2
Oil company bosses will have to solve riddles to find success in 2010, a Petroleum Review editorial
asserts. Opec has more than 3 mbd of spare capacity, nearly 80% in the GCC, and if they can maintain
discipline €75 oil is here for a long while. So what do you do if your incremental cost of production is higher,
as so much IOC production is? And when exploration and development costs doubled between 2005 and 2008,
only falling back 20% in 2009? And when investment in the oil sector as a whole fell 19% in 2009, according
to the IEA?3
Total has completed Europe’s first complete CCS system at Lacq. The 30 MW capacity plant targets
sequestration of 60,000 tonnes of CO2 pa from a gas-fired power plant in a nearby depleted gas field. It uses
oxycombustion (where the fuel is burned pure oxygen rather than normal air) to see if the CO2 emissions can
be cut in half. The plant is intended to run for two years, at a rate of 200 tonnes captured per day (i.e.
120,000 tonnes in all). France has perhaps 400 mt of stored CO2 capacity in depleted oil and gas fields, and 125 billion tonnes of capacity including saline aquifers.4
Vattenfall’s Schwarze Pump CCS plant one year on has had a better than 90% capture rate in a
30MW capacity plant. Extracted gas is shipped 350km by lorry to a Gaz de France field for use in enhanced gas
production. Vattenfall’s head of communications does not reckon the plant can be commercial if scaled up to
service the 1 GW Schwarze Pumpe plant.5
World Bank accuses Shell of walking away from solar PV module warranties in Sri Lanka, leaving
thousands with no maintenance service as many Shell-manufactured modules display problems. Damian Miller
of Orb Solar: “in Sri Lanka, poor customers with average earnings of $1,500-$2,000 a month have bought
Shell's solar systems. The system is equivalent to 30% of their annual income,” he added. “They could only
afford a system because they could get a loan from microfinance institutions or other banks. But now there are
reports of thousands of Shell's [branded] solar panels failing in the field and Shell seemingly is not replacing
them.”6
UK manufacturing sector refutes UK Chancellor’s claim of a British "green" jobs revolution, thanks
to government support. Rather, the UK is in danger of “missing the boat”, the industry body, the EEF, says.
Over 90% of the €2bn earmarked for the London Array, the UK’s biggest project, is being spent abroad. A
Department of Business spokesperson says it is unfair to pick one project, albeit the world’s bigggest: "British
companies are successfully competing for work on schemes around the world such as the Masdar city project
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© Jeremy Leggett
in Abu Dhabi. The government has unveiled a range of new initiatives, such as support for the Dalton Nuclear
Institute in Manchester and the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in Rotherham.”7
Europe's first electricity grid dedicated to renewable power takes a step closer to reality this month
as nine countries formally draw up plans to link their renewables projects around the North Sea. The
thousands of kilometres of highly efficient undersea cables, designed to counter the influence of weather on
supply, could cost up to €30bn (£26.5bn). An EC working group will produce a plan by the end of 2010.8
Will Hutton sees an upbeat 2010 for the UK economy, thanks in part to government intervention.
“Over the last nine months, the stock market has recorded the third biggest rise since 1693, according to the
Bank of England, and if it carries on rising just a little more in January it will be the biggest sustained rise for
317 years. A stock market cannot jump on this scale and with this ferocity without matters quickly improving
on the ground.” Unemployment has risen less than expected and fell sharply in December. “The two great
students of the impact of credit crunches, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, calculate in their remarkable
book on 800 years of banking crises, This Time Is Different, that the average rise of unemployment in
countries experiencing major systemic banking crises since 1930 is 7% of the workforce. In Britain, this would
have meant an unemployment rise of around 1.75 million. It is not going to happen, catching everyone out,
including me. Unemployment will certainly carry on rising in 2010, but the eventual rise will be around 1.25m;
serious, but not as cataclysmic as it could have been.” “We have witnessed a powerful example of how public
policy can head off putative slumps.”9
City economists see fiscal deficit as main problem in a sluggish UK economy. 37 of the 79 economists
polled said the UK was threatened by a fiscal crisis that could derail any revival. Howard Davies: “The major
risk is the loss of confidence in the government’s ability to get the public finances back under control.” In that
case, investors would eschew the high priced government bonds, and interest rates would rise. Sir John Gieve,
former deputy governor of the central bank: inadequate plans for addressing the fiscal deficit could result in
sharp rate rises and a fall in the pound.10
Russia halts oil shipments to Belarus after a dispute on pricing similar to previous on in January 2007.
The Russians object to Belarus importing oil, refining it, and selling it on the Europe at lower price than
Russian oil. The knock-on worries in Europe about an oil price war between Russia and its former satellites are
less than for gas, because oil is more fingible than gas.11
Fed chief says tougher regulation is still needed. “Borrowers chose, and were extended, mortgages that
they could not be expected to service in the longer term,” Ben Bernanke says. “This description suggests that
regulatory and supervisory policies, rather than monetary policies, would have been more effective means of
addressing the run-up in house prices.”12
Beware the crisis around the corner, says Clive Crook in the FT. The rules have to be tightened, and
they aren’t being. Something must be done about moral hazard (though not via a new Forget Glass-Steagal
Act). “In good times, when lending is expanding quickly and financial institutions’ concerns about capital and
liquidity are at their least, the requirements should tighten. Under current rules, they do the opposite.” Banks
will oppose this of course, he notes.13
Oil price breaks $80 and FT’s Ed Crooks predicts $70-80 at the end of 2010. The current price rsie is
mainly down to a US cold spell, and Carola Hoyos predicts in the FT that the Iraqi election in March will be the
biggest determinant of the price ahead this year. 14 Some politicians are already saying they will reverse
contracts agreed with the IOCs. Ed Crooks’s forecast is based on Opec supply availability meeting Chinese
demand, but is offered with appropriate caveats.15
Cairn Energy prepares to drill its first oil well off Greenland, with shares riding high on hopes of a
find. Only 6 wells have been drilled in Greenland, all of them unsuccessful. But the USGS estimates many tens
of billions of barrels of available resources. FT: “Greenland is a true frontier, which is what makes it exciting;
‘romantic’, as one analyst put it. It is also nerve racking when you are spending an estimated $300m for four
wells – Cairn’s expected budget – and plan to drill for two or three years.”16
National Grid warns industrial customers their gas could be cut off as a cold spell intersects with the
return to work. This “gas balancing alert,” and a surge in gas prices, show once more how low UK gas storage
capacity is.17
Carbon Trust says UK offshore wind faces huge challenges, but they can be overcome. The
government’s announcement of the result of offshore wind licensing in a few days will see the UK emerge as
the biggest offshore wind market. But 5 MW turbines will have to be installed in 30 metres of water at the rate
of 2 a day to hit government targets. And the market-enablement regime beyond 2014 is in doubt, which
means the economics and investability is too.18 But the CT thinks it can be done, and would create 70,000 jobs
by 2020, 50,000 of them in the manufacturing that it hopes will come to the UK. The result would be
comparable to the opening up of the North Sea for oil in the 1970s and 80s.19
Why don’t governments talk about peak oil? Could it be because they know it is a huge problem? So
a researcher asks in a review on The Oil Drum. Shane Mulligan, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of
Waterloo, examines every explanation he can find referred to in the literature. They just don’t “get it”, or they
are overly committed to neoclassiocal economics, or they are hindered from realisation by cognitive biases, or
they have been misled by the IEA or EIA, or we can blame it on the media, or they get it but they can’t talk
about it, or they are actively avoiding the issue (as in the Wicks Review), or they’re on the case. He tends to
the view that they do know about peak oil, and not acknowledging it is part of their policy response. 20
FTSE rides on 16 month high, with RBS one of the star stock performers. The FTSE 100 benchmark
closes at 5,530.
BIS invites top bankers to Basle to discuss resurgance of “excessive” risk behaviour in banks. The
Bank of International Settlements – the central banks’ bank – says “financial firms are returning to the
aggressive behaviour that prevailed during the pre-crisis period”. Among those invited were the CEOs of
Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, and they do not plan to attend.21
Iceland’s President says he will take government’s EU reparation pledge to a referendum. By doing
this he effectively blocks legislation to repay Britain and the Netherlands more than €3.8bn ($5.5bn, £3.4bn)
lost to shareholders in Iceland’s banking collapse. He risks making Iceland a financial pariah nation.22
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Business leaders hail Scottish ministers green light for power line through the Highlands as vital for
onshore and offshore renewable energy, 4GW+ of which needs to be linked to the central belt. Scottish and
Southern Energy will upgrade the existing 137-mile electricity transmission line from Beauly, near Inverness,
to Denny, near Falkirk. 23
7.1.10.
Gas supplies cut to businesses in the British NW as freezing spell hits western Europe. 95 companies
on interruptible contracts are affected. EEF the manufacturers association, says: “unless we invest in gas
storage facilities to the same levels as other industrialised nations, this could have a very damaging effect on
manufacturing companies in the future.” The spot price of gas has risen sharply to 56p per therm, but still
well short of the 2006 peaks of over £2 per therm.24
Large parts of freezing China now face power cuts as gas is limited. Demand has gone up and coal
production has been disrupted.25
EDF boss says nuclear is essential, and will be cheaper than gas, coal with CCS, and renewables.
Vincent de Rivaz, CEO of EDF Energgy, says that “using gas, additional offshore wind or clean coal instead of
nuclear could cost consumers dearly. EDF Energy is among the companies developing renewables towards the
government’s target. But replacing the planned 16GW of new nuclear capacity with offshore wind beyond the
existing renewables targets could add about £100 a year to typical domestic energy bills (NB EDF says £40 for
nuclear …so less than half as expensive), or possibly more, according to our calculations. The impact of clean
coal would be only slightly lower. Gas-fired generation could also carry a high price. If fossil fuel prices return
to their 2008 peak, using gas to replace nuclear would add around £60 to annual household bills. Of course,
depressed fossil fuel prices could reduce this impact. But using more gas would do little to cut emissions and
would increase concerns about energy security. The message is clear: if we are to cut emissions and keep bills
affordable we need the cheapest low-carbon technology – nuclear.”26
Google asks for regulatory approval as an energy supplier. Last month the internet search company
created a subsidiary called Google Energy. Now it seeks approval from FERC to buy and sell power like utilities
do. Google says its primary goal was to gain flexibility for buying more renewable energy for its power-hungry
data centers. 27 But ….Google’s Green energy czar, Bill Wiehl: “We also saw a real gap in what I would describe
as “engineering innovation,” between what happens in a basic research lab and what happens in a typical
venture capital-funded company. From an engineering point of view, it seems like it ought to be possible to do
this, but no one’s actually ever designed this thing to really drive the costs down really low. What if we were to
try? What if we were to fund someone else to try?” His unit’s goal is to make renewable energy cheaper than
coal. The three most likely candidates for the breakthrough, he believes are CSP, enhanced geothermal, and
high altitude wind. B ut: “As a society, we have chosen to invest too little in alternative energy over the years,
and that has made some of the choices much harder than they should be. We should have been investing
much more in solar [photovoltaics] since the 1970s than we have.”28
8.1.10.
£40bn bonus pa outs to bankers show government efforts to have made no difference. The $65bn
handout by the world’s biggest banks means they have elected to take the UK Treasury's 50% tax hit
themselves rather than pass it on to their workers. An Illinois pension fund has argued in a lawsuit filed
yesterday that the payments harm shareholders. Goldman Sachs maintains the lawsuit is “completely without
merit”.29
German firms win most of the deals in the UK’s giant offshore wind licensing round. Nine consortia
sign agreements with the Crown Estate, the body with responsibility for renewable power in UK waters, to take
their proposals through the planning stage. Only three have British majority stakes, and only 5 involve British
firms. Eon, RWE and Siemens are big winners. Some $75bn in contracts and 70,000 jobs are at stake in the c
32GW of offshore wind (6,500 turbines) intended to generate 25% of UK electricity by 2020.30
UK imports electricity from France to meet demand in the cold spell. At 2.30pm today France was
sending 1,766 megawatts under the Channel.31
9.1.10.
Chinese renewables boss sees limited scope for CSP in China, preferring PV but Chinese companies
are pushing ahead developing plenty of CSP nonetheless. Li Jenfung says concentrating solar power works best
when cheap water, cheap land and lots of sun are available in the same place, and this is a rare combination in
China. he also expects it to prove more expensive per kilowatt-hour generated than PV. Li is a deputy director
general for energy research at the National Development and Reform Commission, the top economic planning
agency in China, and secretary general of the government-backed Chinese Renewable Energy Industries
Association.
10.1.10. US banks braced for bonus backlash. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and others prepare to be assailed by
protest as they hand out massive bonus packages. GS considers a programme that would oblige its top
executives to give a percentage of their package to charity. This would copy a policy at failed bank Bear
Stearns, with required a 4% charity contribution from 1,000 executives in a programme that ran for decades.
“Goldman set aside $16.7 billion for compensation in the first nine months of 2009, and in good years, the firm
dedicates about three-quarters of its compensation budget to year-end bonuses. The firm is expected to report
later this month what could be record profit of about $12 billion for 2009, according to analysts’ estimates,
compared with $11.7 billion in 2007.”32
New fears about future gas supplies, as UK government signs off on new gas power plants. This new
“dash for gas is fuelling concerns that Britain’s infrastructure may become more vulnerable to extreme
weather and supply disruption. Some 14,000 megawatts of new gas-fired generation have been approved.
Gas-fired capacity abailable this winter is about 25,000MW,33
Fear about nuclear radiation are irrational, says Oxford physics professor. The health dangers from
nuclear radiation have been oversold, according to Wade Allison, who argues that low levels of radiation can be
easily tolerated by the human body and that the government is right to promote nuclear power for climate
change, therefore.34
11.1.10. Deep within Gazprom’s HQ, an engineer in a control room explains how he could turn off the lights.
“An engineer explains how easy it would be to turn out the lights in a foreign city with the click of a button on
his desk,” Dan Roberts writes in the Guardian. Gazprom claims to have natural gas in Siberia equivalent to all
the oil and gas fields owned by western energy companies put together. 50.1% state owned, its taxes provide
some 20% of the Russian government’s income. “Rumours persist that senior government figures (including
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Vladimir Putin) have sizeable indirect holdings.” The gas giant has had a bad year, but is bouncing back, given
the return to $80 oil. Sergei Kupriyanov, Gazprom’s official spokesman, hopes Gazprom will sell to British
residential sector one day. "Yes, definitely. The British market offers ample opportunities of developing
downstream operations – we appreciate the fact that it's a liberalised market and all of the infrastructure is in
place." UK reserves near depletion in less than eight years at current extraction rates.35
Demand for oil is increasing at such a rate in Saudi Arabia that exports are likely to be constrained,
analysts fear.
Domestic consumption jumped 16.4 per cent year on year in August because of an
unprecedented surge in the burning of crude. Inefficient power plants and shortage of gas led the reasons. As
a result, the IEA has revised up its forecasts for Saudi domestic oil consumption to 2.8m barrels a day in 2010.
Last year’s production was a record 12.5m barrels a day. The government has postponed some energyintensive projects. Oil is sold for $5 a barrel in the Kingdom. “Even Saudis complain that subsidised fuel and
cheap cars encourage wasteful use of energy, especially by young people who have little means of
entertainment in the conservative kingdom except driving or participating in unofficial drag races.”36
UK wind farms produced “practically no electricity” during the cold snap. Low pressures cut the wind
out so that only 0.2pc of a possible 5pc of the UK's energy was generated by wind turbines in the last few
days.37
12.1.10. Geoengineering conference convened in March in wake of Copenhagen’s failure. Says Mike McCracken
of the US Climate Institute, convenor of the California event: “Most of the talk about these geoengineering
techniques says they should be saved until we get to an emergency situation. Well the people of the Arctic
might say they are in an emergency situation now.”38
Coal stockpiles fall to low levels in China’s cold spell. Supplies for 11 percent of power plants connected
to China State Grid’s network have fallen to less than three days’ worth and could be shut “any time,” Xinhua
news agency says.39
Investors are putting trillions at risk by ignoring climate change, Ceres report says. A survey of
leading asset managers shows the vast majority are not factoring climate-related trends into their short- and
long-term investment decision-making.40
EIA expects US gas output this year to be down 3% due to steep new-well production declines. In
its January Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA forecast consumption averaging about 62.44 bcf per day, versus
2009 demand of 62.45 bcf daily. Growth in residential, commercial and industrial use is offset by declining
demand from the electric power sector.41
13.1.10. Ofgem sees a “cliff edge” in UK gas supplies in 2015-16. Alistair Buchanan, head of Ofgem, tells the FT
he sees a risk that new Russian and the Caspian gas supplies might not be available in time to meet UK
demand as domestic gas production falls. UK gas production is down 40% since 2000. Buchanan questions
whether the ultra-competitive UK market is structured in the right way to guarantee security of supply.42
Russian gas bailed the UK out as Norwegian supplies faltered in the cold snap, the Major Energy
Users' Council says. Eddie Proffitt, chairman of the council's gas group: “The [British] gas industry has coped
very well but we have been lucky. It would have been desperate if we had seen the kind of disputes between
Russia and Ukraine that have reduced gas flows on the continent in the past two or three Januaries.” 43
Recession hit North Sea 2009 oil and gas production. An average of 600m barrels of new reserves were
brought on stream each year between 2004 and 2008. Wood Mackenzie reports only eight oil and gas fields –
expected to produce a combined lifetime total of 140m barrels of oil equivalent – began production in 2009.
Investment in exploration and appraisal drilling in the UK North Sea fell by 37 per cent in 2009, and the oil
price drop delayed projects as well. 43 companies were working in the UK North Sea in 2008. 24 are today.
Tax revenues from the North Sea were £6.9bn in 2009, down from £12.9bn in 2008.44
Russia seeks bilateral role in Indian solar expansion. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh launches
the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission, aiming for 20 GW of solar energy for India by 2022, alongside
Sergei Seredin, Russia's first deputy director general of economics and finance, who led a delegation from
Moscow in the inaugural ceremonies. He says Moscow was interested in playing a role in New Delhi's strategy
to construct solar power stations and manufacturing facilities.45
American consumerism threatens the planet, says the Worldwatch Institute. The average American
consumes more than his or her weight in products each day. This culture of of greed and excess and the
exporting of it is emerging as the biggest threat to the planet, according to the annual report of the
Worldwatch Institute. It could wipe out any gains from government action on climate change or a shift to a
clean energy economy. In the Noughties consumption of goods and services rose 28% to $30.5tn (£18.8bn). 46
Wall Street bosses apologise for mistakes but still defend bonuses. Leading Wall Street bankers tell the
US government’s Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that they underestimated the severity of the crisis and
apologise for making mistakes and needing to be bailed out with $360bn. Commissioner: “If you knew then
what you do now, what would you have done differently?” JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon: a crucial blunder was
“how we just missed that housing prices don't go up forever.”47
14.1.09. China Daily reports oil imports “hit alarming levels” in 2009. 52% came from abroad. “Analysts believe
that by 2020, nearly 65 percent of the oil consumed in China will have to be imported. China's oil dependency
reached 45 percent in 2006 and grew at two percent every year after that.” The country first became a net
importer of crude oil in 1993.48
US climate envoy US will not cede control to the UN. The UN process is too ponderous, and main emitters
need to negotiate as a group, Todd Stern says. The big test for the Accord comes on 31 st January, when
countries have to table their formal commitments. Copenhagen was a hair’s breadth from collapse, he says, in
his first public appearance since the summit. 49 Stern’s deputy Jonathon Persching says the UN should be
sidelined. Fewer than 30 of 192 countries have signed the Accord.50
Arctic permafrost leaking methane at record levels. New figures published in Science magazine show
emissions rising by almost a third in just 5 years, by around 1m tonnes of extra methane each year between
2003-2007, driven by rising temperatures. The study also shows just 2% of global emissions are from the
Arctic, but that is the fastest growing region. There is a clear positive feedback, says Paul Palmer of Edinburgh
University, one of the researchers.
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Targeting of US weather reporters on climate-change denial has been brutally effective and may
have been the most successful targeted campaign ever. Sea Kidney: “have a look at a story just published in
the Columbia Journalism Review on the extraordinarily powerful impact on US public opinion of pseudoscientist TV weather reporters.51 I first became aware of the assertive ignorance of some weather reporters
when my news monitoring kept turning up denialist stories on the Weather Channel website, and I dived in to
try and correct some of them. The Columbia Journalism Review story explains just how widespread the
problem is and, at the same time, just how central weather reporter views are to the understanding of climate
change by the US public. When asked in a national survey who they trusted for information about global
warming, 66 percent of respondents named television weather reporters! Unfortunately, most weather
reporters don't 'believe' in climate change. The underlying story is how the 'sceptic' Heartland Institute
targeted weather reporters some years back, giving them free tickets to sceptic's conferences and the like.
That would have to be one of the more successful targeted campaigns in history, helping block policy progress
for years; it needs to be reversed.” Targetting investors in coal is the way to do that.52
China’s growing coal imports begin to look costly as thermal coal price hit $100 a tonne, and the FT
speculates that long-term coal dependence could be under review. Domestic demand for coal began to catch
up with domestic production about 2008 and China began importing from new sources recently. More than half
of China’s coal imports come from Australia, Indonesia and Vietnam, with Russia, Mongolia, and Canada the
main second-tier suppliers. This month, for the first time, imports include Colombia coal. Prices for thermal
coal hit $100/tonne this week.53
Jim Hansen in open letter to carbon traders: you “are choosing the path of corporate greed.” Capand-trade allows energy companies to add the costs of the right to pollute to consumer’s fuel bills in a hidden
tax. The fee-and-dividend approach that he favours taxes fossil fuels at the point of extraction, and spreads
the proceeds among the public so they can reduce their carbon footprint and avoid high fuel prices.54
Obama announces a levy that will recover $90bn from the 50 largest US financial institutions. The
President calls the bankers’ bonuses “obscene” and tells them: “I’d urge you to cover the costs of the rescue
not by sticking it to your shareholders or your customers or your citizens but by rolling back bonuses.” He
urges other countries to follow suit.55 Obama needs to levy the fee to help cover a $117bn loss to the US
treasury from the $700bn TARP bailout, and wants it in place by June. He intends to apply a levy of 15 basis
points, or 0.15%, on the liabilities of 50 large financial institutions with assets of more than $50bn. Jamie
Dimon, JP Morgan CEO: “Using tax policy to punish people is a bad idea. All businesses tend to pass their costs
on to customers.”56
The world's biggest banks are flouting the Equator Principles, environment groups say. They
continue to lend to some of the most environmentally damaging energy and infrastructure projects despite the
protocol agreed to seven years ago that was meant to stem such practices, including the financing of huge
projects that fuel climate change. 86 campaign groups from 27 countries have sent a letter to 60 banks
pouring scorn on the way the Principles are being flouted.57
Green technologies pose “the investment opportunity of our lifetime” says Deutsche Bank.
Companies specializing in energy efficiency and renewable energy such as wind and solar power outperformed
peers across the wider global economy last year, a Deutsche Bank report finds in a study. The Bank expects
more of the same in 2010. Kevin Parker, global head of asset management: “The absolute imperative to
prevent climate change is therefore also, I believe, the economic and investment opportunity of our lifetime.” 58
15.1.10. FT editorial: “Obama is right to clobber Wall Street”. “Debate about the levy, however, must not distract
from the question of how to construct a financial system where banks can fail safely. In future, it must be
easier for bank debt to be turned into common equity in a crisis, and the fate of insolvent banks’
counterparties must be made clearer to prevent the panic that followed the Lehman bankruptcy. Capital
requirements must also be raised.”59
Paul Krugman on the testimony of the “clueless” Wall Street bosses. “The bankers’ testimony showed
a stunning failure, even now, to grasp the nature and extent of the current crisis. And that’s important: It tells
us that as Congress and the administration try to reform the financial system, they should ignore advice
coming from the supposed wise men of Wall Street, who have no wisdom to offer. There were two moments in
Wednesday’s hearing that stood out. One was when Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase declared that a financial
crisis is something that ‘happens every five to seven years. We shouldn’t be surprised.’ ….Goldman Sachs’s
Lloyd Blankfein, who compared the financial crisis to a hurricane nobody could have predicted.” 60
Areva weighs cheaper reactors after failure of Abu Dhabi bid. An internal review has been launched to
assess whether to reintroduce the simpler second-generation CPR1,000 reactors, which it stopped building 20
years ago. “Safety standards in the US and Europe would not allow a second-generation reactor to be built,”
an Areva executive acknowledges: but 20% of countries that would accept the lower safety standards. Areva's
third generation EPR reactor, marketed as an advance in safety technology, has features such as a double
shell reinforced to withstand an airline crash, and a secure chamber to contain waste from a core meltdown.
EDF estimates the cost at about €4bn ($5.8bn) or even higher. This seems to have been too much for Abu
Dhabi.61
17.1.10. A string of tech companies prepares IPOs in London after a drought of three years. “To float you
need scale and and a good growth story. Many companies are talking about floating this year but I think you
will be lucky if 20 per cent of them actually do,” says one analyst. In 2009 IPOs represented only 10 per cent
of venture-backed exits, with M&A 90 per cent.62
SRI may be holding back sustainable investment: FT op-ed. Assets under management rose by 9 per
cent a year to €53bn (£47bn, $77bn) by the end of June 2009. Some say this proves socially responsible
investing (SRI) is more than a fashion. Yet SRI remains a niche area with SRI assets reaching a mere 1.11 per
cent of total assets in Ucits funds this year. “We think part of the answer lies in the lopsided relationship
between SRI and risk. SRI is often considered a non-financial overlay to the investment process. It seeks to
protect the investor from making unethical, socially undesirable or environmentally unfriendly investments.
Sustainable investment, however, has an investment return focus that regards sustainable development as an
opportunity to invest based on a set of financial and non-financial criteria. These, therefore, are two very
different animals and SRI may be holding back sustainable investing.”63
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18.1.10. Goldman Sachs: oil shortages will reappear in 2011. By then supply demand will be outpacing supply
because of underinvestment. Analyst Jeffrey Currie forecasts demand exceeding pre-crash levels by Q3 this
year. “It’s as good as it’s going to get right now in terms of supply growth,” says Currie. Goldman predicted in
December that crude would average $90 a barrel in 2010 and $110 per barrel in 2011. Goldman’s outlook for
this year is joint-highest among 38 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.64
ITPOES Letter to FT: Gas crunch that will prove a wake-up call for consumers. Sir, Your report
“Ofggen foresees looming threat to gas supplies” (January 13) raises some serious concerns over national
energy security. The “gas crunch” identified in your report is probably going to be matched, or exceeded, in its
effect on the UK economy by a similar “oil crunch”. This prospect was first identified by the Industry Task
Force on Peak Oil and Energy Security (ITPOES) in its report dated October 2008. Oil supply has very similar
characteristics to gas, except that the run-down in indigenous production is more advanced and the availability
of oil is more limited with respect to future demand. (The ability to extract “tight” gas from shale, at economic
prices, has transformed the near-term international prospects for future gas supply.) A second report from
ITPOES, updating and reinforcing the case, will be published by us on February 10. For those interested in the
future security of UK energy supplies, it should be essential reading. From businesses to consumers, it is a
wake-up call to every one of us about the future implications for our daily lives.
Richard Branson, Founder, Virgin Group; Philip Dilley, Chairman, Arup; Jeremy Leggett, Chairman,
SolarCentury; Ian Marchant, Chief Executive, Scottish and Southern Energy; Brian Souter, Chief Executive,
Stagecoach Group65
BP joins with Sinopec in talks about shale gas exploration and development in China. Shell and
Petrochina already have a shale gas programme. The deal hinges on Chinese access to western technology.66
Shell faces renewed investor pressure over tar sands. A coalition has forced a resolution onto the
agenda of the May AGM calling for the Shell audit committee to do a review of risks. Catherine Howarth, chief
executive of FairPensions, coordinator of shareholder opposition to the tar sands investments: “All
(shareholders) are united in registering concern with the risks involved in Canadian oil sands. We expect that
Shell's 2010 AGM could prove a watershed in the history of corporate accountability.”67
French nuclear industry in crisis as EDF and Areva go to war. EDF says Areva has halted uranium
supplies and stopped removing spent fuel for treatment in an increasingly bitter row over their contractual
relationship. The heads of the two state operators are asking Sarkozy to adjudicate. Areva supplies 68 per cent
of the uranium used in EDF's reactors. EDF, which provides 77% of French electricity from its nuclear plants,
has stocks for several months. The row has been cited as one of the factors behind France's failure to secure
the contract to build reactors in Abu Dhabi.68
Germany removes nuclear waste from a salt dome repository that has “proven unstable”. Thousands
of barrels of low-level waste are to be removed from Germany's Asse radioactive waste disposal facility. The
country's Federal Office for Radiation Protection (Bundesamt für Strahlenshutz, BfS describes the job as a
“major scientific and technological challenge.”69
EON boss calls for rethink on retiring all coal fired power plants to make sure lights don’t go out.
“There is a question mark over keeping one or two of these oil or coal fired plants mothballed to secure
supplies for a few days per year when we get these conditions,” Paul Golby says.70
Coalition letter in Guardian urges higher solar UK feed-in-tariffs for UK. Signatories include the Home
Builders Federation, the Federation of Master Builders, the National Housing Federation, many companies, and
NGOs.71
Larry Elliot says “enjoy it while it lasts”: global credit bubble is far from over, and much depends on
China. “Everybody knows what should happen in theory: the Chinese need to boost domestic consumption
rather than relying on exports. Otherwise, with America unable to act as the world's consumer of last resort,
the world is going to be flooded with goods that nobody wants. The lack of global demand will force down
prices, making the threat of deflation extremely real and adding to pressure for trade barriers.”72
NY Times editorial describes “how retirees saved the banks”, and get a terrible deal in the process.
“Measly savings yields are central to the government effort to buy time for the banks to earn their way back to
health. It is important to rebuild the banks. But more attention must be paid to the collateral damage from
that effort. Here’s what’s happening: By lowering the short-term interest rate it controls to virtually zero and
creating lending programs, the Federal Reserve has enabled banks to borrow cheaply. The banks re-lend that
cheap money, but not necessarily to consumers and businesses. They can, for example, lend it to back to the
federal government by buying Treasury securities, and earn a nice spread between their cost of funds and
Treasury yields. At the same time, banks are awash in deposits, much of it from investors who have pulled
their money out of riskier investments. With money rolling in, big banks don’t need to compete with one
another for savers, which further depresses the interest on offer. The result is presumably healthier banks and
certainly poorer savers. Or, as William Gross, the legendary bond investor told The Times’s Stephanie Strom:
“It’s capitalism, I guess, but it’s not to be applauded.” 73
19.1.10. Could China be the next Enron, Thomas Friedman asks. Maybe, after the Google fiasco. James
Chanos, the investor who started the shorting of Enron stock and made a fortune, has said that China is akin
to Dubai only 1,000 times worse. On 12th of January, Friedman concluded he was unlikely to be right. The
reasons for his doubts started with the $2 trillion of foreign currency reserves.74 But today, he revises his view.
After the government-backed hacker raid on Google, Friedman thinks “Command China” is increasingly at
work with “Network China.” For this reason, Freidman thinks the Communist Party is worth shorting. 75
20.1.10. UN drops deadline for emissions commitments under Copenhagen Accord. With the 31 January
deadline looming, only 20 countries have filed. So the commitment becomes a “soft” target Un chief of climate
Yvo de Boer decides.76
China's renewable energy consumption accounted for 8.3 percent of the total in 2009. So says an
official from the National Energy Administration, Shi Lishan. China consumed 3 billion tonnes of standard coal
equivalent in 2009, more than 90 percent from traditional fossil fuel sources, with over 70 percent from coal.
China intends to raise total hydropower capacity to 300 gigawatts and wind power capacity to 150 gigawatts
by 2020, Shi says. Total installed nuclear capacity should reach 80 gigawatts by 2020, while solar capacity
should rise to 20 gigawatts.77
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IPCC leader has to back down from claims Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. “One paragraph,
buried in 3,000 pages of reports and published almost three years ago, has humbled the head of the UN's
IPCC. Facing global outcry, Rajendra Pachauri backed down and apologised today.” JL: So, another blow to
credibility that will reverberate endlessly around the world, while the torrent of scientific bad news passes the
the great majority by.78
Nature looks at “the real holes in climate science” and concludes they favour a worse outcome. The
science magazine recounts six common myths:
“- Climate models can't provide useful information about the real world. Models can reproduce much of the
climate variation over the past millennium, but projections for the future are subject to well-described
uncertainties, both in the understanding of climate and in estimates of future economic development. They
cannot therefore provide decision-makers with exact information of the rate of future changes, but they can
offer useful general information and they unconditionally predict a warmer world.
- Global warming stopped ten years ago. Climate is not weather. The climate is the multi-decade average of
the constantly changing state of the atmosphere. Natural variations can cause temperatures to rise and fall
from year to year or decade to decade. Although global temperatures did not rise as quickly in the past decade
as in previous ones, the most recent decade was the warmest on record.
- Temperatures were higher in pre-industrial times. The consensus of proxy-based reconstructions of preindustrial climate is that the second half of the twentieth century was probably warmer than any other halfcentury in more than a millennium. Warmer periods did occur in the more distant past, albeit under different
orbital and geological conditions. In any case, warm spells in the past do not disprove human influence on
climate today. The cause of any particular climate change needs to be investigated separately.
- Temperature records taken in the lower atmosphere indicate that the globe is not warming. A decade ago,
there seemed to be a discrepancy between surface and tropospheric temperatures. But this issue was resolved
when long-standing calibration problems with satellite sensors were discovered. Satellite measurements show
that the lower atmosphere is warming at a rate consistent with the predictions of climate models.
- A few degrees of warming are not a big deal. In the most recent ice age, the world was only a few degrees
cooler on average than it is today. The current rate of warming is in all likelihood unique in the history of
humankind. There may be no such thing as an 'optimum' temperature for the planet, but modern human
societies are adapted to the weather patterns and sea levels of the past millennia. The rapidity of global
warming substantially adds to the problem.
- Measured increases in temperature reflect the growth of cities around weather stations rather than global
warming. Climate researchers have taken great care to correct for the impact of urbanization in temperature
records by matching data from more-urban stations with data from rural ones. Moreover, some of the largest
temperature anomalies on Earth occur in the least populated areas, including around the Arctic and the
Antarctic Peninsula. Measurements also show warming of the surface ocean and deeper marine layers.”79
Bill Gates says nuclear is worth pursuing; solar and wind, though good, have limitations. This on his
Gates Notes web site, relaying his views about social problems, launched today. Gates has invested in a
Seattle-based nuclear company working on reactor design, TerraPower. Solar is “way, way, way out of line”
and has storage problems, he says in a podcast.80
21.1.10. Obama prepares for what he calls a “big fight with the banks” with limits on their trading. The day
after a shock defeat for the Democrats in the Massachusetts Senatorial by-election, Obama makes a populist
move. Proprietary trading operations, where banks use their own corporate funds to gamble in the markets,
will now be limited. “We’ve got a financial regulatory system that is completely inadequate to control the
excessive risks and irresponsible behaviour of financial players all around the world,” Obama says. “People are
angry and they’re frustrated. From their perspective, the only thing that happens is that we bail out the
banks... We’re about to get in a big fight with the banks.”81
The new banking regulation will be called “the Volcker Rule,” after its architect in the White House,
Paul Volcker, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve under Carter and Reagan.82 It prohibits any bank
holding deposits guaranteed by the government from operating hedge funds, private equity funds, or from
proprietary trading. On top of this will come a limit on the size of any bank.83
Goldman Sachs, announcing results, says it is exercising “restraint” in lowering bonus payouts to
$16bn, so that the average pay packet is fractionally less than half a million dollars per employee. The
proportion of revenue allocated to pay falls from 48% to 35.8%, the lowest proportion since the bank went
public in 1999. Its compensation pool is reduced by a $500m donation taken from the pay of Goldman's 400
senior partners and given to a charitable foundation, Goldman Sachs Gives. CFO David Viniar: “We are
certainly appreciative of the policies governments around the world put in place to help stabilise the world's
financial system. We think they did a really, really good job.”84
UK could follow Obama lead on bank constraints. US officials will come to London to discuss co-ordinated
action.85 But Darling has opposed a return to Glass-Steagal-type regulation, whereas the Conservatives say
what Obama intends “needs to be done.”86
UK begins a programme to repatriate all radioactive waste from abroad. A cargo set sail for Japan last
night, under an agreement that will cut Britain’s high-level waste stockpile by almost 40 per cent over the next
ten years. All 925 tonnes of foreign atomic waste from Japan and four other countries will go. 28 steel
canisters of waste, each weighing half a tonne but sheathed in 100-tonne steel flasks and under heavy
security, are moved by rail from Sellafield, where they have been in temporary storage since the 1990s, to
Barrow-in-Furness, there to be loaded on to the Pacific Sandpiper, a custom-built, double-hulled ship. Armed
guards will protect the canister on their six to eight-week sea journey. The other countries involved are
Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Contracts from the 1970s and 1980s brought the spent
nuclear fuel rods to Britain for reprocessing. But problems with the Sellafield plant and commercial
disagreements led to lengthy delays. Some 5,000 steel canisters have been held at Sellafield. Direct exposure
would kill a human being instantly. Japan will store the first shipment of canisters temporarily at the Rokkasho
nuclear facility. It has not yet built a permanent-storage repository.87
22.1.10. FTSE and Dow Jones fall as investors fret over Obama’s move. Banks are the biggest losers of course,
but Google’s spat with China isn’t helping.88
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Brown to push for a Tobin Tax in wake of Obama’s gear change. But the City Minister Myners says the
UK does not to copy the US because we already have a tax and requirement for living wills.89
Barclays elects to defer bonuses for top bosses in face of public pressure. Up to 100% will be deferred
for three years.90
National Audit Office doubts ministers can deliver on promise of no public subsidy for nuclear. In a
new report, the government’s own accountant doubts whether companies will be able to pay the full costs.91
VC investment down 37% in 2009, PWC reports. $17.7 billion went to 2,795 start-ups — 37 percent less
cash and 30 percent fewer deals than in 2008. VC funds raised $15.2 billion, a 47 percent decline from the
year before. Roger McNamee, co-founder of Elevation Partners: “the venture capital industry’s just lost its
way, and it needs to reinvent itself. A very cynical game has developed where they make enough money off
the fees to support a lovely lifestyle and they don’t have to work very hard.” Ten-year returns for the industry
have dropped to 14 percent, from 36 percent in 2000, according to Cambridge Associates. Initial public
offerings and sales of venture-backed companies were both sharply down: just 13 and 262 respectively.92
A quarter of the US grain crop is now being fed to cars, not people. So new 2009 figures from the
Department of Agriculture show. This is enough to feed 330m people at average world consumption levels.
Lester Brown: “Continuing to divert more food to fuel, as is now mandated by the US federal government in its
renewable fuel standard, will likely only reinforce the disturbing rise in world hunger. By subsidising the
production of ethanol to the tune of some $6bn each year, US taxpayers are in effect subsidising rising food
bills at home and around the world.” 93
Prosperity without growth: it is possible, and imperative, Tim Jackson argues in his new book.
“Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries. But question it we
must,” says Jackson in “Prosperity Without growth.” JL Review in Guardian: “For what it's worth, as a creature
of capitalism – a venture-capital-backed energy industry boss, a private equity investor, and an Institute of
Directors director of the month – I am convinced that capitalism as we know it is torpedoing our prosperity,
killing our economies and threatening our children with an unlivable world. Tim Jackson has written the best
book yet making this case, and showing the generalities of the escape route. The specifics, post-Copenhagen,
are all down to us.”94
Banking lobbyists gear up to fight Obama’s reforms. The top 8 US banks spent $26m on lobbying last
year – up 6% despite the crisis. They gave $78.2m to federal candidates and party committees in the first 10
months: more than any other business sector. 95 They have a successful track record. A $300m lobbying
assault during the Clinton administration saw the 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagal. Citigroup was a big
beneficiary, and hired Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin soon after the appeal. 96 An IMF paper has
shown that the more a bank spends on lobbying, the bigger the risks it takes. 97
If bankers had paid just 20% less in bonuses 2000-8, they would have had £75bn more capital –
more than the taxpayer put in. So the Bank of England has shown, according to Will Hutton. Averting the crisis
required £1.3 trillion of liquidity, guarantees and capital injections.98
Banks and investors are pulling out of carbon markets in the wake of the failure in Copenhagen. So
Anthony Hobley, head of climate change and carbon finance at Norton Rose, and others, report.99
Shell CEO says Shell’s expansion in the tar sands will be “very much slower” in years ahead. The
company is making a strategic shift away from unconventional oil, and rely more on conventional oil and gas
for growth.100
Saudi lead climate negotiator says climate talks are a worse threat than rival oil producers, and says
the Kingdown will build a solar capacity quickly. “It's one of the biggest threats that we are facing,” says
Muhammed al-Sabban, head of the Saudi delegation to the U.N. talks on climate change. “We are worried
about future demand ... oil is being singled out. We are heavily dependent on one commodity.” The kingdom
sees “some truth” in studies that point to demand peaking in 2016. Saudi Arabia plans to invest heavily in
solar, al-Sabban says, hoping to begin exporting solar electricity by 2020. Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi has
also said the government aims to make solar a major contributor to energy supply in the next five to 10
years.101
Economic growth cannot be achieved while limiting global warming to 2 degees C, a new Economics
Foundation report concludes. The levels of carbon intensity required are probably impossible to achieve.102
EPA may tighten anti-SO2 rules as another route to cutting US coal use. Bernstein analyst Hugh Wynne
sees such an approach forcing coal into “secular decline” in the US, because the tightening proposed would
require a cut in emissions of 50% by 2015.103
China is setting the oil price, Goldman Sachs analysts think. They point in their weekly review to a
1.6mb/d rise in Chinese demand more than offsetting the 1.5 mb/d fall in the US.104
More and more families are falling into debt with energy companies in the wake of the cold spell.105
Meanwhile, the cold spell has put £100m of additional profits for energy companies, analysts report.106
Recovery of public trust in business is patchy, and working with NGOs will help, a global survey for
Davos shows. Trust in business has risen from 49 per cent to 53 per cent around the world, according to
Edelman’s annual “trust barometer” of well-educated, highly paid and engaged “informed publics.” Trust in
government rose from 44 per cent to 46 per cent globally (up from 30 per cent to 43 per cent in the US but
down from 41 per cent to 35 per cent in the UK). China, in contrasts, score 77%. Trust in US banks is just 29
per cent, down from 36 per cent in 2008, and 69 per cent in 2007, when US banking was the number three
most trusted industry. Now it’s second lowest after insurance. “The survey draws the clearest picture yet of an
emerging ‘stakeholder society’, in which delivering financial returns for shareholders is no longer seen as
executives’ sole priority,” the FT reports. Just over half of those polled saw service to “society at large” as
equally important. A clear majority say they are more likely to trust companies that work with NGOs to tackle
global issues.107
Cyber attacks on oil majors include reserves details. Christian Science Monitor reports that at least three
US oil companies - ExxonMobil, Marathon Oil and ConocoPhilips - have been targeted by hackers, possibly in
China. The hackers have accessed ‘bid data’: highly sensitive commercial information discoveries and reserve
estimates.108
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27.1.10. Obama singles out green energy and infrastructure jobs in his State of the Union address. $30bn of
the money repaid by Wall Street will go to community banks for lending to small businesses. Large numbers of
jobs can be created in infrastructure projects such as higgh-speed rail, and clean energy, the President says.109
He briefly refers to the world pushing ahead with a climate change agenda, but does not mention global
warming or the cap and trade bill.110
Barclays President Bob Diamond lashes out at Obama measures in Davos. “If you say that large is bad
and we move to narrow banks the impact on jobs and the global economy will be very negative.” 111
Darling has secret talks with bankers in Davos as top City bankers try to head off Obama-style measures
in the UK. But FSA boss Turner says policymakers need more than interest rates to tame asset-price booms
and calls for the creation a new macro-prudential body in Britain with the power to take pre-emptive action.112
FT commentariat split on the Volcker plan. Martin Wolf points to a number of difficulties, but John Gapper
welcomes it, even though the investment banks escaape lightly.113
US courts set to become a major battleground on climate change as three cases progress. Three
lawsuits have been filed around the US, and are gaining ground. Two federal appeals courts, one in
Connecticut and one in Mississippi, have reversed decisions by federal district courts to dismiss climate-change
lawsuits, allowing the cases to go forward. The third, an Innuit lawsuit in Alaska over eroding shoreline, is
going to appeal. The American Justice Partnership argues that the conspiracy accusations on this case make it
“the most dangerous litigation in America.”114 In a report last year, Swiss Re compared the suits to those that
led dozens of companies in asbestos industries to file for bankruptcy. The reinsurance giant predicted that
“climate change-related liability will develop more quickly than asbestos-related claims,” and said that
pressure from the cases “could become a significant issue within the next couple of years.” 115
UK opinion poll shows huge public support for feed-in tariffs. A survey of more than 2,000 people
carried out for the Cooperative Group and others shows that two-thirds of people think that the government's
feed-in tariff plans should be more ambitious, and that 71% of homeowners would consider installing green
energy systems if the tariffs give a good return. JL: says that the new government scheme could yet deliver
hundreds of thousands of jobs in solar photovoltaics and other small-scale renewables. “It could also cut
significantly our country's increasing dependence on imported fossil fuels,” he added.116
Up to £160bn per field tax relief available for oil companies on the North Sea frontier, the
Government announces. This applies to companies planning to exploit the estimated 4bn barrels of oil and gas
equivalent lying in deep waters as far as 100 km off the west coast of the Shetland Isles. Total claims the
projects will be uneconomic with support because of the long distance transportation requirements.117
Areva and GDF-Suez negotiate a partnership to develop the next generation nuclear reactor. Not yet
signed, it will surely be opposed by EDF’s new boss. The deal will give EDF’s rival privileged access to the
design and operation of the Areva/Mitsubishi 1110MW Atmea reactor, a smaller version of Areva’s flagship
1600MW EPR reactor.118
Toyota wins the Zayeed Prize, and then has to recall millions of cars in the US with faulty accelerators.
More may need to be recalled in Europe and China.119
28.1.10. Saudi Aramco and Total bosses disagree on the peak oil threat in Davos. “The concern about peak oil is
behind us,” Aramco chief executive Khalid al-Falih tells a forum of oil bosses at the World Economic Forum.
Total chief executive Thierry Desmarest says 95 million barrels per day will be the cap -- 10 percent above
present levels in “about 10 years ….The problem of peak oil remains.” Falih: “Of the 4 trillion (barrels) of oil
the planet is endowed with, only 1 has been produced. Granted most of what remains is more difficult and
complex (to exploit) ... there's no doubt we can do a lot more than the 95, 100 (million barrels) that are
projected in the next few decades.”120
Global demand will be >100mbd by 2030, says Tony Hayward in the same forum. This will be a
“supply challenge.” He pins major hopes on Iraq growing to . 10mbd. Peter Voser of Shell agrees, and says the
investment needed will be up to $27 trillion ….> $1.3 trillion a year. PWC estimates that only a third of global
supply will go to the OECD by 2030. China sold 13m cars last year.
Unconventional gas is a “complete game changer in the US,” says Hayward. “It probably transforms
the US energy outlook for the next 100 years. It's yet to seen if it can be applied globally.” Gazprom seems
un-nerved. A board meeting in Moscow this week apparently centred on the implications of US shale gas on its
own investment plans for the northern Yamal peninsula, with export by ship to the US partly in mind.
Meanwhile, the EPA is airing “serious reservations” about allowing shale gas drilling in parts of New
York state in case NYC water supplies are affected. The EPA identifies 14 “contaminants of concern” in 11
private wells surveyed in the Pavillion farming community of Wyoming. Contamination has also been found in
in Pennsylvania. Bills are under preparation in Congress that would tighten restrictions on unconventionals. In
Taking over gas company XTO, Exxon inserted a clause enabling it to scrap the transaction if there were
changes to the law that made hydraulic fracturing “illegal or commercially impracticable.”121
Environmental problems of fracking in shale gas production include air quality: elevated benzene.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has found elevated levels of benzene, a carcinogen, at 19 of
94 sites saampled above the Barnett Shale.122
29.1.10 Scientists say almost one third of warming in 1990s was down to stratospheric water vapour, an
effect that had been underestimated. Susan Solomon’s NOAA team says their research does not invalidate
projections of climate change, but it seems certain to be used by sceptics. Water vapour has dropped 10%
since 2000. Solomon says: “We call this the 10, 10, 10 problem. A 10% drop in water vapour, 10 miles up has
had an effect on global warming over the last 10 years.” She is not sure if this is a negative feedback or a
natural effect.123
30.1.10. China is moving ahead so fast with green energy that dependency for West may be an issue. China
became the largest manufacturer of wind turbines last year and of solar cells the year before. An article in the
New York Times posits: “These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the
West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines
and other gear manufactured in China.” Renewables jobs were 1.12 million jobs in 2008 and are climbing by
100,000 a year, says the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association. China’s domestic demand for
electricity is rising 15 percent a year, and the International Energy Agency says China will need to add nearly
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nine times as much electricity generation capacity as the United States will. The government announced the
creation of a National Energy Commission this week, composed of cabinet ministers in a “superministry” led by
the Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. 124
31.1.10. Senior negotiators around the world say a climate deal in 2010 is impossible. A senior British diplomat
said ahead of Copenhagen: “we can go into extra time, but we can’t afford a replay.” And he is proving
right.125
1.2.10.
Shale gas boom may leave US as a gas exporter, some independent producers are saying. How fast
things change. In 2006, Wood Mackenzie predicted the US would be the biggest importer of LNG by 2010. Ths
industry says it now has enough supply for 100 years.126
UK renewables industry welcomes microgeneration feed-in tariffs announcement. JL: “Feed-in tariffs
are going to be a big boost for the industry and for the first-time, homeowners can see a decent financial
return. We estimate homeowners can save and earn more than £1,000 per year for 25 years, increasing with
inflation (of energy bills), giving a payback in around 10 years.”127 “That’s a better return on investment than
you’d get from a bank.”128 “The scheme could lead to 100,000 new jobs in the UK solar industry by 2020.”129
UEA scientist hid climate data flaws, Guardian investigation by Fred Pearce shows. Chinese data used
in 1990 to demonstrate only a small warming contribution from cities were inadequate - the locations having
been lost - and Phil Jones of UEA withheld the information when it was requested under Freedom of
Information. Jones also asked other climatologists to delete e-mails relevant to FOI requests.130
Nonetheless, concludes Fred Pearce, “the ‘climategate’ scandal is bogus and based on climate sceptics
lies. Claims based on e-mail soundabites are demonstrably false – there is manifastly no evidence of
clandestine data manipulation.” Palin, Inhofe and others have quoted “evidence” cut-and-paste together by
professional sceptics who have used two devices: quoting out of context, and juxtaposing quotes from e-mails
sometimes written ten years apart, as though related.131
US deficit will be nearly 11% of GNP this year, and more shockingly isn’t projected to get below 5%
before 2020. NYT: “For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless
miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next
decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors. Beyond that
lies the possibility that the United States could begin to suffer the same disease that has afflicted Japan over
the past decade. As debt grew more rapidly than income, that country’s influence around the world eroded.”132
“Old Davos” is in retreat, Gideon Rachman argues in the FT. At the World Economic Forum, confidence
has been shaken in the old belief – firmly held since the end of the cold war - that globalisation is good.
Protectionist ideas are returning, and now it is the eastern nations that try to persuade the western that free
trade is essential. Sarkhozy’s keynote address was an attack on financial capitalism. He made one Russian
delegate nostalgic for the old days he remembered in the Soviet Union. Sarkhozy argues for a “carbon frontier
tax” on the goods of countries that don’t act on climate change. Also, says Rachman: “Banker bashing rivalled
skiing as the most popular sport at this year’s forum.”133
Petroleum Review assesses risk of “rapid rise in criminality in the oilfields” to Iraqi production,
which the oil minister hopes will rise from 2.5mbd now to 12 mnd by 2016: more than Saudi Arabia and Russia.
There are 13 regiments of the Oilfield Protection Force in the Basra region alone. Gun battles between this oil
police force and local militias are now “frequent.” Locals are going to have to do most of the work: BP’s expats
are expected to number only in the tens. Also in this ussue: OPEC spare capacity is not certain: it may be as
low as 3 or as high as 6 mbd, 50-80% of it in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Chinese buyers of new cars face a
three month delay despite round the clock shifts in factories.134 (L)
Even promoters of new more efficient tar sands technology are sceptical of lifting production much:
water use and gas use remain huge issues, with even CERA saying it could take up to 15 years to
commercialise new more efficient technologies. 1.7 mbd of projects have been cancelled or delayed indefinitely
since the oil price fell for $147.135 (L)
Flawed arguments underly carbon trading, and massive fraud will be inevitable if it takes off. So an
article in Petroleum Review argues. The value of total transacted carbon trades in 2008 was $126bn - $92bn of
that in the EU ETS – up from $63 bn in 2007. If the US and others follow the EU, the market would be four
times higher by 2014, en route to being bigger than oil and gas trading. Enron- and sub-prime-type
malfeasance would then be inevitable. Traders have moved effortlessly from Enron to the property market to
the carbon market. Fraudulent deals have already started: in Asia, Austrlia and most notably in Europe, where
taxpayers lost €5bn in a so-called carousel fraud involving VAT. When governments changed their tax laws to
close the VAT loophole, carbon trading dropped as much as 90% in some countries.136 (L)
2.2.10.
Paul Volcker issues a plea direct to Congress to support his Wall Street reforms. No member of the
Senate Banking Committee has yet voiced outright opposition.137
IPCC chief Pachauri refuses to apologise for one mistake in a 3,000 page report (an un-peer-reviewed
reference to Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035). To do so would a “populist” measure, genuflecting to a
“factory” of sceptics looking for harmful “pinpricks” in the massively comprehensive and professional work of
the IPCC, he asserts, for which the mistake was completely out of character. 138 In another interview he
accuses un-named companies of backing sceptics who are guilty of “skullduggery of the worse kind.”139 And
note: the Himalayan claim never made it to the Summary for Policymakers – the gold standard for negotiators,
and was barely referred to in the press.140
3.2.10.
Ofgem warns that only state intervention can keep the lights on. Energy bills may go up by 25% by
2020, as energy companies raise £200bn to invest in essential new generation. Many will be unable to afford
to heat homes as a consequence. There is also a real risk of the lights going out by mid decade. Reform is
urgently need: deregulation has failed, a free market approach is “no longer an option,” obligations may be to
supply may be required of energy companies (just as banks face capital requirements), and nationalisation of
power may be required. All this comes in Ofgem’s Project Discovery report, published today, after a
consultation that began in October 2009. Already some are supportive of Ofgem’s proposal that there should
be a central buyer for energy. Andrew Watkin, head of energy at property consultancy, Carter Jonas: “a
centralised renewables market might sound Stalinesque but it may be what is required to bring a structure and
concerted strategy to the major campaign of the coming years – creating energy and protecting its supply.” 141
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Ofgem once enthusiastically advocated dergulation, but the financial crisis has changed regulator Alistair
Buchanan’s mind. The big energy companies are not making the investments needed to replace old coal and
nuclear plants.143
Ofgem’s forecasts could mean average energy bills of more than £2,000 by 2020. The consumer
group u-switch says the figure could £4,000 if events conspire against markets. Now 4.6m households are in
fuel poverty (spending >10% of income on energy).144
The Guardian takes a dim view of the state of UK energy, saying nationalisation is overdue. Terry
Macalister: “The privatisation of the gas sector in 1986 and electricity in 1989 brought little in the way of
strategic, long-term thinking and when the privatisation of the nuclear industry came in 1996 it swiftly brought
problems, with British Energy having to be bailed out by the taxpayer within six years. Now ministers once
again are being called on to intervene because companies left to their own devices will not invest in new
nuclear, wind and other low-carbon technologies. Having sucked profits out of the industry when government
"interference" was a dirty word, they are – like the banks, railways and even car industry before them – keen
to see the state step in and help them out with a greener and more secure agenda. The government should
seize its chance.”145
Moody’s warns that the US sovereign credit rating of AAA is under threat unless the deficit is cut or
economic growth increases.146
German solar industry calls for protests as Merkel’s government dithers over cuts to feed-in tariff.
As many as 10,000 workers from Solarworld, Q-Cells, First Solar and other companies will take to the streets
tomorrow.147
Kuwaiti scientists forecast world conventional crude oil production will peak in 2014. The Kuait
Univerisity / Kuwait Petroleum Company study, published in the journal Energy & Fuels, describes the
development of a new version of the original “single cyle” Hubbert model that accounts for individual
production trends (i.e. a “multi-cycle” model) to provide a global oil production forecast. The researchers
analyse production trends of the 47 oil-producing countries supplying most of the world’s conventional crude
oil.148
Petrobras CEO infers oil capacity, including biofuels, will peak in 2010 and drop rapidly, at 5% pa. A
1 December 2009 presentation Jose Gabrielli gave in Sao Paulo is translated on The Oil Drum. In it, he says
that the world needs oil volumes to replace the equivalent of one Saudi Arabia every two years to offset future
world oil decline rates …just to keep production constant at less tham 90 mbd. TOD analysis shows Gabrielli’s
additions exclude additions from unsanctioned projects and from oil yet to be discovered, so many potential
Iraq projects and Brazilian Santos basin projects are not included. BP professes Iraq might produce another 8
mbd by 2020. Petrobras forecasts an additional 2 mbd from Brazil by 2020, making another 10 mbd capacity
by 2020. That still leaves a required lower capacity addition of 19 to 24 mbd in 2020 to come from other
sources: equivalent to production from about two Saudi Arabias. SA production was an average 9.3 mbd in
2008 and new capacity addition over two years 2008&9 was less than this (9.2 mbd).149
Petrobras says that it does not predict peak in 2010. The above article makes an erroneous
interpretation of a graph presented by Petrobras in December 2009. the slide was intending to show a
reasonable estimate of the “challenges” that oil supply will face in the long term. “Although unsanctioned
projects and oil yet to be discovered are not represented in the graph, this fact does not mean that we do not
believe that these projects will add production capacity in the long run. Once again, we do not believe it is
possible to predict a peak oil date. In particular, we do not believe it will happen in 2010.”150
Tony Hayward sees peak demand before peak supply – beyond 2020. “I personally – and BP – have
never believed we will see peak oil because of supply. We always believed we would see peak oil because of
demand. There will come a time – I believe it is beyond 2020 – when because of the changes in the energy
portfolio, because of the drive for energy efficiency, because of the introduction of biofuels, demand for oil will
peak.” There is plenty of oil in the world, not least in Iraq, expecting as he does production to grow from a
couple of million barrels a day today to close to 10m. This makes it “a big part of oil security for the world.” he
dismisses fears over dependence on Russian gas as “paranoic.”151
Shell will slow down tar sands operations in face of profits drop of 75% in fourth quarter. And more
job losses, of course.152
Gazprom postpones giant Shtokman gas field as global demand drops in face of US shale gas.
Shtokman is an LNG venture between Gazprom, Total, and Statoil and had expected the project to produce its
first gas in 2013, with LNG shipments to North America beginning in 2014.153
IEA and other experts expect global gas glut to last until around 2015, and then for supply to tighten
quickly. The new LNG production capacity in the Middle East plus new non-conventional sources of gas in the
US, plus the recession, which has depressed demand in Europe by some 10 per cent. The International Energy
Agency expects this glut to continue until around 2015, but many analysts predict the market will then tighten
sharply. “Around the middle of the decade we expect a perfect storm of falling domestic gas production,
economic recovery and tightness in the global LNG market,” says Professor Jonathan Stern, “and we might not
get very much warning. It could flip in a matter of weeks.”154
NY Attorney general alleges two top BoA execs duped shareholders during Merrill Lynch takeover.
Ken Lewis and Joe Price now face fraud charges.155
UK industry taskforce will warn this week of premature global peak oil by 2015. JL: “We are heading
for a steep decline in oil production in a few years’ time and we are completely unprepared. Most people just
assume this is not a scenario that can happen, but it can, and it will, unless we do something now.” Ian
Marchant, SSE CEO: “Unless we acknowledge a shock may come, then a shock will come,” said Marchant. “The
unit cost of energy will go up. The only way to offset it is to bring overall consumption down.”156
Further positive coverage of UK solar feed-in tariffs in Sunday papers. “These tariffs are going to
generate rates of return that will beat high-street savings accounts by a mile, at the same time as they save
carbon and generate jobs in a new fast growing, British industry. We reckon as many as 100,000 jobs by 2020,
at the rates announced."157
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UEA professor at centre of leaked e-mail scandal says he has considered suicide and is receiving
death threats. Phil Jones is on beta blockers and sleeping tablets. Conservatives waver on climate in face of
“climategate”: most MPs are now sceptical.158
Polls show the number of Britons who believe climate-change science of has fallen in the last year.
A BBC poll, which surveyed 1,000 people, reveals that 25% of adults do not believe in global warming, up of
8% since a similar November. 75% believe climate change is a reality but of these one in three feel climate
change has been exaggerated. Only 26% of people think climate change is “established as largely manmade.”
An Ipsos poll of 1,048 people suggests those who believe in climate change has dropped from 44% to 31% in
the past year.159
Most Tory MPs now have doubts about climate change in face of leaked e-mail scandal. Tim
Montgomerie, founder and editor of the ConservativeHome website, says the issue could be as divisive for the
party as Europe once was. “You have got 80% or 90% of the party just not signed up to this.” This includes at
least six members of the Shadow Cabinet. “No one minded at the beginning, but people are starting to realise
this could be quite expensive, so opinion is hardening.”160
8.2.10.
Richard Branson and other UK business leaders warn of oil crunch within five years. “The next five
years will see us face another crunch – the oil crunch. This time, we do have the chance to prepare. The
challenge is to use that time well. ….Our message to government and businesses is clear: act. Don't let the oil
crunch catch us out in the way that the credit crunch did.” There are signs that the UK government is already
beginning to listen, and move away from the narrative given on peak oil by BP, Exxon and the Saudis. JL:
“[We are] in regular contact with government; we have reason to believe their risk thinking on peak oil may be
evolving away from BP et al's and we await the results of further consultations with keen interest.”161
BP joins Shell on investors’ tar sands target list. The Co-operative Asset Management, the UNISON Staff
Pension Scheme, a group of clients from Rathbone Greenbank and the COIF Charities Investment Fund file a
motion asking BP not to commit $10bn to its Sunrise oil sands development for carbon reasons.162 Unlike Shell,
BP seems to press ahead. It is upgrading a refinery near Chicago to take tar sands oil. John Browne has
expressed disapproval.163
Areva buys a US solar thermal company. Ausra, a linear Fresnel company founded in 2006, has no
revenues, and yet the price is believed to be $200m.164 Areva lobbied Sarkozy to oppose Desertec.
9.2.10.
World’s first retail carbon credit made in Pennsylvania. A homeowner with a PV system earns $17 a
tonne from a company in Ohio. The sale was brokered by a website, My Emissions Exchange. 165
Gazprom boss says UK wind plans are irrational, and more gas plants is the answer. Alexander
Medvedev: "If we do not want to see the authors of the 2020 strategy decapitated in a public square, I do not
think they can forget about gas. We at Gazprom believe gas should be treated on an equal footing as
renewables. I just hope that after the disappointment post-Copenhagen that the decision-makers will take a
more pragmatic and rational approach to this.”166
Gazprom boss says shale gas developmeny in Europe is “unimaginable.” The US Environmental
Protection Agency will raise concerns about its potential contamination of drinking water in a forthcoming
report, Alexander Medvedev says. 167
10.2.10. UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security releases its second report in a press
conference at the Royal Society.168
Peak oil: The lessons from the financial crash ought to be stark. JL: The prevailing culture mocked the
disbelievers, ahead of the crash. Gillian Tett, capital markets editor at the FT, saw the crisis coming because
she was a trained anthropologist and knew how to recognise a cult when she saw one. She was accused of
scaremongering from the stage of the World Economic Forum. The pattern is the same this time. BP, in
particular, has a tendency to mock the concept of peak oil and its advocates. Meanwhile, as with the climate
crisis, there is a general desperation to believe the comforting narrative ahead of the uncomfortable one. This
is why it is so important that companies who understand risk speak out, as the taskforce companies have. It is
why governments – who must lead in matters of national security – should listen to the uncomfortable
arguments and, given the stakes, buy insurance against them. History is going to judge us all on how we
manage the risk of premature peak oil. And soon.169 170
Wall Street Journal headline “The next crisis: prepare for peak oil” “The work of the Industry Taskforce
on Peak Oil and Energy Security shouldn't be disparagingly dismissed. Its arguments are well founded and lead
it to the conclusion that, while the global downturn may have delayed it by a couple of years, peak oil—the
point at which global production reaches its maximum—is no more than five years away. Governments and
corporations need to use the intervening years to speed up the development of and move toward other energy
sources and increased energy efficiency.” “….even if the gloomsters should turn out to be wrong, the core of
their message surely deserves attention. Governments should be doing all in their power to encourage
developments that lessen oil dependency. That will also enhance their energy security for, as Russia's Vladimir
Putin has demonstrated with use of the on/off switch on the pipeline to Ukraine, it can be uncomfortable being
dependent on other countries for energy.”171
Two big US companies decide to boycott suppliers sourcing fuel from Canada’s oil sands. Whole
Foods Market, an organic grocery chain, and Bed, Bath and Beyond a household goods company, are
responding to ForestEthics, a non-governmental organisation campaigning to lead the US corporate sector
away from oil sands fuel because of its higher carbon content. “Companies are moving with lightning speed,”
says Todd Paglia, ForestEthics’ executive director. “It’s a core issue they know they need to move on. The
failure of Copenhagen makes companies more willing to do this; leadership must come from somewhere.”172
Vitol, the world’s largest oil trader says oil will trade in the current $70-80 band for the rest of the
year. Goldman, in contrast, forecasts $95 a barrel by the end of the year, and above $100 in early 2011. The
five largest oil traders – Vitol, Glencore, Trafigura, Gunvor and Mercuria – are believed to have achieved record
profits of $3.5 - $4bn collectively last year. They make large sums of money on the back of volatile oil
prices.173
11.2.10. Dynamics of the peak oil debate can be expected to change after UK government move. JL: “The
head of international energy security at Britain's department of energy and climate change, Chris Barton, said:
"We need to work together (with industry) to do more - eg to consider recommendations in the report that
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we're not currently acting on." His department will set up a forum for doing this. The outcome of this forum
should be followed closely by every company that is not manufacturing its products with its own renewable
power supply and distributing them by means of transport other than the internal combustion engine.”174
Around 60% of Germans still favour nuclear reactor shutdowns. The current legal obligation is to phase
out nuclear reactors after 32 years of service. The latest public opinion polls show around 60 per cent
favouring the current phase-out legislation, passed by the former coalition of Social Democrats and Greens. At
least two of the country's 17 nuclear reactors would have to be shut down this year, and nuclear reactors
provide about a quarter of the country's electricity.175
Lobby group including BP and Shell challenge California’s tar sands legislation in court. The National
Petrochemical and Refiners Association says it is illegal for reasons including “undue and unconstituional
burdens on interstate commerce.”176
Sellafield has similarities to Texas City, new ex-BP chief executive of NDA says. Tony Fountain admits
there is still a long way to go. “If you look at Texas City, there were many kinds of practices, operating
practices among them, where people had become habituated to a state of affairs that, if you stepped in from
outside and took a look, was not appropriate for the nature of the activity. I think that is absolutely true of
what happened at Sellafield… Legacy companies had a different set of priorities. There was clearly a set of
practices that developed round those [untreated waste] silos that, if you stepped in there, did not have the
right level of priority, did not have the right level of challenge, did not have the right level of spend – which is
why it is where it is now and needs to be dealt with with the priority it is getting.” Asked if he has been
shocked by anything he has seen so far, he says: “Shock is a strong word. But it would be right to say that the
ponds and silos at Sellafield are attention-grabbing; striking in nature.” Sellafield consumes almost half of the
total NDA budget.177
UK issues first licence to build a storage cavern for gas under the Irish Sea. Twenty salt caverns each
around the size of the Albert Hall will be filled with 1.5 bn cubic metres, about 2 days supply, 750m below the
seabed. When complete in 2014, the nations storage will have risen by a third.
BP and ConocoPhillips quit US Climate Action Partnership lobbying Congress to pass climate law,
undercutting Obama's efforts to cast his climate and energy agenda as a pro-business, job-creation plan.
“Cap-and-trade legislation is dead in the US Congress and that global warming alarmism is collapsing rapidly,”
says Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.178
Obama announces $8.3bn (£5.3bn) loan guarantees for nuclear: a company building the first new
nuclear reactors in America in nearly 30 years. The pledge to the nuclear industry (made just a couple of hours
before the oil companies quit the CAP) is seen as part of a strategy to win Republican support for the climate
and energy bill. 179
Barclays top bosses forego bonuses and say they want to be part of the bank regulation debate. But
Varley and Diamond made huge amounts the previous year.
Steven Chu is finding it hard to sway Congress with rational arguments. Describing how companies are
not making investments and banks are not supplying loans because of the uncertainty about when, or whether,
a cap on carbon will be imposed, he says: “We’re in a crazy never-never land situation. Let’s recognise that
we’re postponing an inevitability,” and “[The Chinese] missed the first industrial revolution. They missed in
large part the computer and biotech revolutions. They don’t want to miss this one.” 180
San Francisco now require all homes and offices to be wired for electric car chargers. This is written
into new building codes. Obama will be able to deliver on his promise to put 1m electric vehicles on the road
by 2015.But beyond Washington, a number of American cities and states are driving ahead. Nissan's
president, Carlos Ghosn, has predicted that as many as 10% of sales will be electric vehicles by 2020. At
Google, employees can already drive to work in one of the modified Priuses owned by the company – and then
pull into one of 100 solar-powered parking spots and charge up.181
NII says AP1000 needs to be able to withstand a crashing airliner to get a licence. This is a blow to
the Toshiba-Westinghouse group.182
French nuclear watchdog says EDF would face “massive investment” in extending life of reactors
beyond 40 years. EDF is hoping to secure 60-year life-cycles for its plants, a term that is already applied in the
US. Even then, he says, the plants might not be able to actually keep going that long. EDF has already been
forced to invest hundreds of millions of euros replacing ageing steam generators on 34 of its 58 reactors.
There is no set term for the life of reactors in France, where extensions are granted or not after inspections
every 10 years. At the beginning of next year the two oldest plants in operation come up for a review to take
them to 40 years. 183
Most US utility executives favour nuclear power and are climate sceptics, a poll suggests. More than
70 percent a survey of 329 executives oppose the current Obama legislation and 52 percent say the United
States cannot afford the proposal. More than 75 percent think there is a future for coal-fired power plants. 44
percent don’t believe global warming is caused by human activity, and 7 percent don’t believe the planet is
warming at all.184
Michael Grunwald in Time magazine describes “Why Obama’s nuclear bet won’t pay off.” “If you
want to understand why the U.S. hasn't built a nuclear reactor in three decades, the Vogtle power plant
outside Atlanta is an excellent reminder of the insanity of nuclear economics. The plant's original cost estimate
was less than $1 billion for four reactors. Its eventual price tag in 1989 was nearly $9 billion, for only two
reactors. But now there's widespread chatter about a nuclear renaissance, so the Southern Co. is finally trying
to build the other two reactors at Vogtle. The estimated cost: $14 billion. And you can be sure that number is
way too low, because nuclear cost estimates are always way too low.”185
Fourth generation nuclear reactors are “no clean energy secret bullet,” FT notes. Fourth generation
reactors are those targeting the idea that reactors use spent nuclear fuel as a feedstock depends. One version,
fast reactors, relies on sodium cooling. The International Panel on Fissile materials has produced a resport on
these saying that risk of sodium fire is very high.186
Polls and evidence favour carbon tax over cap and trade. Robert Shapiro, a principal economic advisor
to Bill Clinton in 1991-2: “A national poll by Hart Research found that two out of every three U.S. voters now
favor a straight carbon tax over a cap-and-trade system. And the record shows clearly that it works. Sweden
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adopted a carbon-based tax in 1990; today, the Swedish economy is about 50 percent larger (adjusted for
inflation), and the nation's carbon emissions are 8 percent less than they were in 1990. By contrast, emissions
have risen sharply across the European Union over the last five years, despite its adoption of a cap-and-trade
program.”187
China’s Saudi oil imports now exceed those of the US. In 2009, the US sank below 1 mbd for the first
time in 20 years, and China’s exceeded 1 mbd for the first time.188
RBS CEO is forced to forego his bonus for 2009, echoing the Barclays duo last week. State-owned RBS
will still pay its investment bankers £1.3 bn 28% of revenues (compared to 30-40% in competitors cases).189
UK public scepticism about climate change threat drops rapidly. Only 31% now think it is “definitely” a
reality, down from 44% in the last year, according to the latest Ipsos Mori poll. Only one in five believe it is
caused by people, down from one in three last year. 9 in 10 still think some kind of warming is happening. A
recent BBC poll showed 31% thinking the extent of climate science has been exaggerated.190
Oil & Gas UK survey shows fewer North Sea projects are being developed. There are 11bn barrels of
oil and gas in existing projects, up 15pc from the previous year – enough to meet half the UK's demand in
2020. But companies will need to raise £60bn to extract this oil, but this is not likely under the current
incentives.191
First British company begins wildcat drilling off the Falklands. Four small independent oil companies, all
single asset plays, have raised considered sums for their punts. Argentina express outrage and other Latin
American and Caribbean governments issue a statement agreeing with them.192
Putin threatens Russian oligarchs with fines and bans if they don’t invest in electricity generation
like they promised to do at the time of liberalisation. Record demand during a severe winter is putting capacity
under strain. Oligarchs could face huge fines or even be barred from markets.193
Chinese government refuses to let Chinese company buy the Hummer brand from GM. Fuel
consumption is at least part of the reason. GM will now wind the brand down.194
Blame OPEC, not China, for high oil consumption, says CIBC’s Jeff Rubin. “Last year OPEC, Mexico, and
Russia consumed 14 million barrels a day of oil -- two Chinas!” Rubin railed in a recent speech. “Have you ever
filled your tank up in Caracas or Riyadh? If you did, you'll soon know. It's 25 cents in Caracas, it's about 50
cents in Saudi Arabia, but the point is it's 50 cents whether oil is $20 a barrel or whether oil is $200 a barrel,
because that's just the way things are over there. OPEC is a very disparate place separated by history, religion,
geography, but there's one common denominator: everybody has a God-given right to consume as much
cheap fuel as they bloody well feel like.”195
World Bank has raised over $1 billion with Green Bonds. A day after launching a 600m Swedish Kroner
Green Bond, the World Bank has launched another 10 new Green Bonds denominated in different currencies.
The 10 bonds are primarily for the new, open-ended, Nikko World Bank Green Bond fund.196
Vermont Senate votes to close a nuclear power plant when its licence expires in 2012, on the
grounds of aging problems: 3 radioactive leaks, a burst pipe and a collapsed cooling tower. California took
such action in 1989, but no state has in the 20 years since. With its original 40-year operating licence expired
in two years, Entergy’s Yankee plant in Vermont had applied for a 20-year extension to keep it open once, as
many of the US’s 103 nuclcear plants will have to do.197
Bloom Energy Corp. unveils its fuel-cell “power plant in a box” server unit. Bloom, a fuel cell company
with $400m of venture capital to its name, has been one of Silicon Valley's most secretive startups. The size of
a pickup truck, the 100 kW unit’s solid oxide cells are made mostly of sand, with no platinum or other precious
metals thrown in as catalysts. K.R. Sridhar, Bloom's co-founder and chief executive officer, says the server will
change the energy industry in much the same way that cell phones changed communications. The servers cost
$700,000 to $800,000 apiece, but some have been solar already to companies including Coca-Cola, FedEx
Corp. and Google Inc. e-Bay, who have bought five, hosted the launch event. Critics doubt that energy
production can be maintained, but Sridhar says the servers can provide electricity at 9 to 10 cents per kilowatt
hour, compared with 14 cents for power from the grid, with payback in three to five years, including 50%
financial incentives from the federal and California governments. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who
sits on Bloom's board of directors, says: “We want to move this product forward to the point where we can put
it in an African village ... and they can have power, they can have light. Think of the potential."198
Centrica boss says “vast cost” could cause scrappage of UK offshore wind plans. Sam Laidlaw syas it
is unclear whether the scheme to build an estimated 10,000 wind turbines will ever go ahead. Cenrica, owner
of BG, would proceed only “if the economic conditions are right.” The problems are high costs for turbines and
other equipment as well as limited government financial support. BWEA estimates the wind farms would cost
an estimated £100 billion and create 70,000 jobs in the UK. The total generating capacity of all the projects in
the latest, Round Three, would be 40 gigawatts. But Citigroup estimates the cost of installing one megawatt of
offshore wind is about £3.5 million — roughly five times the cost of the same gas-fired capacity.199
Al Gore editorial in the NYT: “We can’t wish climate change away.” And if we did, we’d still have to
tackle dependency on foreign oil and China’s lead in cleantech.200
Bank of America and Barclays Capital tell clients to brace for crude above $100 (£64) a barrel by
next year, then relentlessly higher prices over the decade. “Oil has the potential to flirt with $100 this year.
We forecast an average price of $137 by 2015,” says Amrita Sen of BarCap. “The groundwork for the next
sustained step up in oil prices is now almost complete. Global spare capacity is likely to be reduced to low
levels within a relatively short time. The global economic crisis has postponed, but not cancelled, a crunch
which would otherwise be starting to bite now.” Francisco Blanch of Bank of America Merrill Lynch says crude
may touch $105 next year, with $150 in sight by 2014. “Approximately 1.7bn consumers in emerging markets
with a per capita income of $5,000 to $20,000 are eagerly waiting to buy cars, air-conditioning units, or white
goods.” He expects demand to rise by a further 2.8m barrels per day (bpd) in China and 2.5m bpd in India by
2015. Global use will increase by 8.8m bpd to 95m bpd.201
Competitive gas may be as bad for BP as Gazprom, Ed Crooks reasons in the FT: the more
nonconventional gas there is in the market, and more the shift to spot-price selling – the two big trends in the
gas market - the smaller the size of the long-term oil-linked lgas market.202
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Oil companies not investing enough on exploration, Bernstein Research says. They have been overly
optimistic about production from the discoveries made in the late 1990s.203
George Monbiot labels the UK solar feed-in tariff scheme a scam. The Guardian columnist writes:
“Those who hate environmentalism have spent years looking for the definitive example of a great green ripoff. Finally it arrives, and nobody notices. The government is about to shift £8.6bn from the poor to the middle
classes. It expects a loss on this scheme of £8.2bn, or 95%. Yet the media is silent. The opposition urges only
that the scam should be expanded.”204
US consumers are dipping into their savings to pay for gasoline. There is a “supertrend” since 2000 of
personal consumption expenditure (including gasoline) rising 0.14% per month. Within that, spending on food
is rising only slowly, but spending on gasoline faster. How sustainable is that? Stephen Schtork of the Schtork
Report: “The bottom line is that we consider yesterday’s PCE numbers very bearish. Consumers managed to
pull savings out to pay for higher energy costs, but spending from your savings is rarely preferable and never
sustainable. Consumer spending could collapse - thus refiners will not be able to pass higher crude oil costs on
to consumers as they did during 2007 and 2008.”205
Big European companies could share a surplus of EETS pollution permits worth €3.2 billion by
2012. So the Carnon Fat Cats study by Sandbag shows. The list is dominated by steel and cement companies.
€3.2bn is more than double the EU's investment of €1.5 billion in renewable energy and clean technology as
part of the economic recovery plan.
JL response to the Monbiot attack on solar: Solar panels are not fashion accessories. Economies of
scale in manufacturing are causing rapid reductions in costs. Feed-in tariffs work, and there will be no net
transfer of funds from the poor in the UK scheme.206
Investors have filed a record 95 resolutions involving climate change this year, up 40% on last year.
Ceres says that the resolutions have been filed with 82 US and Canadian companies who financial institutions
and other businesses investors believe are not adequately disclosing and managing potential climate-related
business impacts.207
Underground coal gasification questioned on environmental impact. Clean Coal Ltd has licences from
the UK Coal Authority to perform UCG at five sites round Britain's coast. The first could be operational by 2014.
The underground fire will generate carbon dioxide, methane and hydrogen. By converting coal to methane,
you reduce the carbon dioxide emissions at the power station by more than half. The CO2 will be captured at
the wellhead. As much as 30% can go direct back to space where the burning took place. The remaining 70%
will have to find another home. “We are talking to people about what the options are, but it will be difficult. We
want to be clean. But we may not be capturing all the CO2 from day one,” says a spokeswoman.208
Saudi Arabia is having trouble meeting its own needs for natural gas, much of which come from the oil
industry itself. The state utility wants to add another 2,500MW this year, and 12,043MW by 2015. Some
analysts believe it won’t be able to hit that target. The Kingdom has generous subsidies which bring prices to
around US$0.015 - $US0.04 per kilowatt, promoting huge ineffficiency. Demand is growing by a massive 8 per
cent per. Oil is used for much of the national electricity generation.209
Financial speculators are driving oil markets, the FT shows. “10 or 15 years ago would have been that
spot prices drove the forward markets. But in recent years it is the forward markets - dominated, incidentally,
by hedge funds and swaps dealers - that are the cart pulling the horse. ….The big break occurred in 2004,
when correlations between forward prices and spot prices strengthened considerably. This change…coincided
with the explosion in futures and options trading, that was particularly focused on longer-dated contracts.
….This all means that expectations about the future is driving prices - rather than fundamentals of supply and
demand - which is really a here-and-now thing, after all. And that, Kemp concludes, all goes a long way
towards explaining why oil prices plummeted in the second half of 2008 as expected (when sentiment was
focused on the financial crisis) and recovered extremely strongly in 2009, despite the persistent lack of
demand (future sentiment focused on the recovery and possible medium-term shortfall due to an investment
slump and resulting production squeeze).210
Alan Simpson MP response to Monbiot: you are wrong. The German feed-in tariffs work well. “Over
the three-year period from 2004 to 2007, the effect of FiTs in Germany was to add two to three euros to the
average monthly electricity bill. Look at the changes in your own domestic electricity bills during this period
and decide which you would prefer. The most staggering of the Deutsche Bank conclusions, however, is that
the savings made by the scheme outstripped the total cost of payments made to households. Between 2004
and 2006, German FiT payments came to a total of €8.6bn. Deutsche Bank then looked at what it would have
cost for this amount of electricity to have come from additional, conventional generation. What they found was
that the avoided costs (of fossil fuel energy generation) came to €9.4bn.”211
Monbiot response to Leggett: “We do not have a moral obligation to blindly support inefficient,
expensive renewable technologies.” And £100 bet that solar PV won’t reach grid parity in the UK by 2013.212
Alberta is losing the PR battle on tar sands. The FT reports that the perception is growing that they do
more harm than good. Alan Knight of Virgin argues that surface mining will need to be closed, if they are to
have any chance of carrying the argument. 213
Ten leading companies launch a plan for a European super grid in the North Sea connecting Germany,
UK and Norway. The expected cost is €34bn. The group includes Seimens and Areva. Bård Mikkelsen, chief
executive of Statkraft, Norway’s state-owned power company: “Hydro power in Norway should be valuable for
compensating for the irregularity of wind power. That position – being a swing producer to the European
market – is a very important role for us.”214
Oil companies hunt shale gas all across Europe. FT: “Unlike unconventional oil, some unconventional gas
can now be developed more cheaply than its conventional counterpart. This is one reason why ExxonMobil
spent $41bn acquiring XTO, the shale gas specialist, last December, despite the collapse in the price of gas.
The deal is the biggest the industry has seen in almost a decade and is the clearest sign yet that big oil
companies see shale as the next big thing.” BP, Statoil and Total similarly have taken smaller deals out with
Chesapeake Energy. Helge Lund, chief executive of Statoil of Norway: “It is far too early to conclude whether
shale will make as much of an impact outside the US as it has done inside the US.” 215
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11.3.10.
16.3.10.
18.3.10.
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Environmental concerns over fracking are pivotal for shale gas development. Alexander Medvedev,
deputy chief executive of Gazprom: “Every housewife in the US has heard of the term shale gas. Not every
housewife is aware of the environmental consequences of the use of shale gas...I don’t know who would take
the risk of endangering drinking water reservoirs.”216 John Dizard in the FT: “ I think it might not be a bad idea
to examine the faith-based assumption that the US has a virtually unlimited supply of natural gas from shale
formations that can be extracted at a low price for the indefinite future. Perhaps the few people who think
shale gas will be produced at a higher cost, and more slowly, than generally believed should be heard out,
rather than be executed or sentenced to work in the salt mines.”
E&Y says up to £50bn of investment at risk in ost-election uncertainty. In the next three years £35bn£50bn of investment will be needed in power stations, wind farms and gas storage, to hit government
objectives for cutting carbon dioxide emissions while guaranteeing reliable electricity supplies. Ian Marchant,
chief executive of SSE, who commissioned the report, says it is “a timely re-minder to all policymakers of the
need to maintain a pro-investment climate in which investors can have confidence.”217
French anti-nuclear NGO holds leaked documents admitting crash risk to new reactors. The Sortir du
Nucléaire Group, an alliance of 725 associations, says in a press release that it “has in its possession a secret
defence document of EDF, the French Electricity Board, which clearly admits the danger to pressurised water
reactors (PWR) in the event of a suicide crash. Because Madame Lauvergeon, Director General of AREVA,
constructor of the reactor, maintains that it is built to resist to a commercial plane suicide crash, the group
considers imperative to reveal the truth of the situation by publishing the contents of the secret defence
document.”218
Danish environment minister says climate treaty is unlikely this year. This pessimism, from the
chairperson in Copenhagen, adds to that of the FCCC219
Leggett response to Monbiot 2: I accept George Monbiot’s £100 solar PV bet. “I wish to make nine
points in my response to George Monbiot's latest round in our disagreement about the importance of solar
photovoltaics (PV) and the UK government's upcoming feed-in tariffs.” 220
Sarkhozy appeals to World Bank to finance nuclear reactors, ending a 50 year abstention, as part of a
major international nuclear financing push. “Industry insiders believe no more than a handful will be built in
the next decade,” the FT reports. “According to the Nuclear Energy Agency, a reactor costs roughly $4,600 per
kilowatt to build, taking a mid-sized 1000MW reactor to $4.6bn (€3.38bn, £3.02bn). The NEA estimates
between 100 and 400 new reactors could be built by 2030.” Roger Morier, World Bank spokesman, says there
is no plan to change the ban on financing of nuclear set in in 1996, because it is "still not the least cost option
in many areas."221
Lithium supplies uncertain as S Korea strives to extract the crucial battery element from seawater.
They seem confident of an industrial process by 2014, but are hedging their bets, seeking – like Japan (who
both have no domestic supplies, unlike China - deals in Chile and Bolivia in the past few years. Chile is the
biggest producer, but Bolivia has the world’s biggest reserves - although they are not yet assessed as being
economically recoverable.222
Synthetic Genomics optimistic about being able to bring algal biofuel to scale. Ina WSJ interview,
Craig Ventor thinks Exxon’s $300m funding can make all the difference, and fuel could be in tanks within a
decade, with all fuel from algae perhaps within 20-30 years.
Another assault from Monbiot on PV: no corrections despite many errors pointed out to him. “Solar
PV has failed in Germany and it will fail in the UK.”223
Ten sites named in £4bn UK marine energy push. Up to 1.2GW will be generated, by devices including the
Pelamis wave machine, and the SeaGen tidal machine. Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister, hopes Scotland
can produce 60GW, 10 times its electricity needs, and become the “Saudi Arabia” of marine energy.224
Sheffield steelmaker wins £170m to make nuclear forges. Sheffield Forgemasters has been in funding
negotiations for more than six months, including a government soft loan of £65m, and now has secured the
last remaining £20m from bank loans enabling it to build “a 15,000-tonne press to make large forgings used in
modern reactors being built in the UK and overseas.”225
Germany will add 5GW of solar PV in 2010, government says. Up from 3GW in 2009, which was fully
half the global installations in the €18bn ($24 bn) global market. The cumulative installed capacity in Germany
at end 2009 was 9 GW. A 16-percent July cut in the deed-in tariff will be followed by a further 11-13 percent
cut in January. “The crucial point will be the cuts of another 11 percent in January 2011,” a government
spokesman says. The FIT was already cut by 9 percent in January.226
Leggett response to Monbiot 3: “George Monbiot's third article on government grants for domestic solar
panels ignores the errors that I and others have protested about in the opening assertion in his first article. He
alleged that the UK government's feed-in tariff regime is "about to transfer £8.6bn from the poor to the middle
classes". In saying that, he managed to get three things wrong. The actual sum raised from the tariff levy
from all electricity consumers, not just households, to 2030 will be £6.7bn; it will be spread over 20 years; and
it will be more than offset – if the government is true to its word – by energy efficiency savings stimulated in
parallel market-building schemes. Yet we see no retraction in George's latest, much less an apology for trying
to turn feed-in tariffs into a new form of class war on a false premise. That was just where the problems began
in the first article. In his third, he rewords many of his original mistaken views. I address those one by one
on my website.227
Jonathon Porritt offers an adjudication on the feed-in tariffs debate: “I’m sorry to say, on this
occasion, that he (Monbiot) is way out of line. Jeremy Leggett’s detailed refutation of so much of what he was
claiming in the original article demonstrates just how poor George’s initial research was, and how (on this
occasion, at least) his love of adopting deliberately controversialist positions simply overwhelmed basic
journalistic standards.”228
Government meets UK industry on peak oil: “it certainly felt like a pretty historic occasion to me”,
says Rob Hopkins, a participant: “an event which could potentially be the day people look back to as the day
when UK government finally starting to ‘get’ peak oil.” Summary for the minister: The exact date of peak oil is
an academic extraction, what matters is its inevitability. There is a high risk of its happening as soon as we
come out of recession, in 3 or 4 years time. Prices will inevitably be higher. In the near term we will be able to
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rely on more natural gas thanks to unconventional gas (not sure about that one at all, I suspect that is one of
that speaker’s pet techno fantasies!!). Government intervention will be inevitable. That behaviour change will
be key, and government will need to message this carefully, stating that things will be different but no worse.
We need improvements in public transport, including electrification. The land use planning system needs to
bear this in mind, and we may, at some point, be forced to consider rationing. “Although Chatham House rules
prevent me from stating what the Minister said, there is clearly a desire to continue this dialogue on peak oil.
229
24.3.10.
25.3.10.
26.3.10.
28.3.10.
29.3.10.
Engyco flotation seeks to raise up to €1bn to invest in existing Spanish solar farms. The model is to
buy them cheap from distressed owners, and run them more cheaply than existing owners. John Roberts is
non-executive Chairman. Former Solon CEO Thomas Krupke is a director.. A Q-cells founder is also aboard.230
Green Investment Bank announced in UK Budget will match RBS tar sands lending. It will be
“throwing good money after bad,” says the World Development Movement. £2bn is not enough to transform
UK into a low carbon economy, and the Government should take RBS in hand to increase its renewable
investments and phase out its financing of fossil fuel companies. RBS has scaled back its lending to renewables
since the bail out: it was lead arranger on six loans worth $499 million in 2009 having extended at least $2
billion in the previous three years. Platform meanwhile says the bank has underwritten $7.5 billion of loans to
tar sands related companies.231
US Department of Energy official admits that peak oil may come as early as 2011. “A chance exists
that we may experience a decline” of world liquid fuels production between 2011 and 2015 “if the investment
is not there.” So says Glen Sweetnam, main official expert on oil market in the Obama administration, in an
interview with Le Monde. Sweetnam is director of the International, Economic and Greenhouse Gas division of
the Energy Information Administration at the DoE says the investments needed ar as yet “unidentified.” The
DoE predicts decline of identified sources of supply at 2 percent a year, from 87 million barrels per day in 2011
to just 80 mbpd in 2015. But by then global demand is expected to be 90 Mbpd, meaning “unidentified”
additional liquid fuels projects would have to fill in a 10 mbpd gap within less than 5 years.232
ConocoPhillips CEO Jim Mulva admits that pursuing new oil reserves no longer pays. Chris Nelder of
Energy & Capital: “The remaining resources have become too marginal and too expensive, and the competition
for them has become too intense. Rather than keep slugging it out with bigger and better-funded players in
pursuit of growth, Conoco has decided to sell $10 billion worth of its assets over the next two years, all of
them in the marginal category, and concentrate on producing its core assets. The proceeds will be used to buy
back its stock, reduce its debt, and raise dividends — just as rival ExxonMobil has been doing for the last five
years or so. When I inferred in Profit from the Peak that the oil majors were spending vastly more money on
buying back stock than investing in new exploration because reserves were getting too expensive and risky,
veterans of the Street greeted the idea with extreme skepticism. Now it's a plain fact. A Rice University study
released in July 2008 found that the five largest international oil companies spent about 55% of their profits on
stock buybacks and dividends in 2007, but only about 6% on new exploration and production. “Could we
spend $20 billion or $25 billion [on exploration]? Absolutely,” Conoco spokesman Gary Russell said at the time.
“Could we do it effectively, in a way that provides ultimate value to our shareholders? Probably not.” 233
FTSE sees growing re-allocation of capital to low carbon sectors. FTSE Global All Cap is valued at $28.9
trn. Carbon Intensive Sectors are $8.9 trn of that. Environmental Opportunities All Share (companies need
20% or more revenue from EO to qualify) $1.8 trn, and growing. There are six sectors in EO, of which
Renewable and Alternative Energy is one. There are 18 EO indices, and all of them out perform the FTSE All
Share.234
Editor of Money Week compares UK feed-in tariffs to Mao’s Chinese steel production crusade. The
government’s “backyard bribes” are akin to the failed “backyard furnaces of Mao’s China. Merryn Wed quotes
Monbiot.com as evidence.235
Cleantech IPOs set for a comeback, Jefferies tells the FT. New Energy Finance reported $14bn (£9.3bn,
€10.3bn) worth of clean energy IPOs in 2007, $4.3bn in 2008 and $3.4bn in 2009, with none in the first
quarter of this year. But there are now 78 IPO prospects in the US alone, looking to raise $13.7bn. Rooftop
solar is particularly attractive, Bruce Huber of Jefferies says.236
Tesco joins the “stampede” to supply DIY electricity, as solar panels go on sale this week. Lucy
Neville-Rolfe, executive director at Tesco, said: “Tesco has always led the way by bringing affordable green
products to the mass market. With low-energy lightbulbs, we cut the price and demand went through the roof.
Now we are making solar power mainstream by giving customers a simple, high-quality product at the right
price.” But “Tom Murley of HG Capital warns that if the scheme is too successful — in encouraging a flood of
small-scale generators — it could depress prices and have a detrimental effect on the wholesale electricity
market, making life hard for big nuclear and wind suppliers.”237
Power crunch looms for Britain, warns new RWE Npower CEO Volker Beckers¸and his company may
not invest if conditions are not to their liking. “The country has to build two large plants or more every single
year.” He infers RWE might invest in plants overseas: “The UK needs to make sure it has the highest level of
attraction for investors.” And “Why discriminate against nuclear in favour of renewables? Why give offshore
wind ROCs and make nuclear stand on its own feet?” Ofgem predicts a £200 billion bill for pipes, plants and
turbines predicted by Ofgem, the regulator, translates to a cost of £8,000 for each of Britain’s 25m households.
Times: “Npower’s German parent company could ultimately choose to put its money elsewhere. For example,
53 new nuclear plants are under construction round the world, with another 469 planned or proposed. In
Britain, eight are on the drawing board. Half are planned by Horizon, the joint venture formed by Npower and
its rival Eon last year. EDF Energy, the French giant, and its partner Centrica want to build the rest.” 238
Siemens becomes the fourth wind turbine manufacturer to announce it will manufacture in the UK,
with an £80m investment in a plant to build offshore wind turbines. The others are Mitsubishi, GE and Clipper.
These plans have been greeted as a vote of confidence in the offshore wind business, which currently
accounts.239
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30.3.10. UK to rule out national gas storage to secure supply. DT: “A spokesman for the Department of Energy
and Climate Change declined to comment, but added that it had been reluctant to sanction national storage in
the past for fear of discouraging commercial investment.”240
Further delays at Okiluoto fuel talk of Areva chief's sacking. The new nuclear plant is already three
years behind schedule and more than €2bn ($2.6bn) over its €3bn budget, and now the ongoing dispute
between Areva and the Finnish regulator – on top of the defeat in Abu Dhabi - is causing talk in the French
media of “Atomic Anne”’s departure.241
31.3.10. Businesses unsure how new UK commitment to carbon reduction will work. Indi: “Businesses are
confused about and unprepared for the implementation of the Government's Carbon Reduction Commitment
(CRC), the energy efficiency scheme which starts tomorrow. Nearly half of companies surveyed by the power
supplier Npower said official advice about the new legislation had been "inadequate". About 49 per cent said
they did not understand how to buy the necessary carbon allowances and 44 per cent said they do not know
how to forecast their carbon emissions, according to a report published this morning. Some 5,000 businesses –
between them accounting for about 10 per cent of the UK's harmful carbon dioxide emissions – will form the
core of the scheme, with another 25,000 expected to register but unlikely to have to participate fully. Those
affected have up to six months from tomorrow to register, and another 12 months to establish the necessary
monitoring systems. The CRC is a variation of a cap-and-trade scheme. All organisations with half-hourly
electricity consumption of more than 6,000 megawatt hours are required to submit annual carbon footprint
audits and buy carbon permits for the following 12 months. Any surplus permits can be traded and any
shortfall bought in the market. …The CRC does not make money for the Treasury. All the payments are
refunded to those taking part six months later, with either a bonus or a deduction depending on the company's
position in a league table ranked by reduced power use.”242
President Obama proposes oil drilling off US East coast, setting himself on course for confrontation with
Democratic senators from coastal states. The Air Force had the first successful biofuel-powered test flight just
last week, the president says.243
1.4.10.
Oil reaches $87. It has been trading between $70 and $80 per barrel since summer 2009. Chinese demand is
up more than 21% over last year's levels. Supertanker rates have risen, and nearly 13 million barrels of crude
oil are sent every day to Asia from the Middle East. The US does everything it can to stem to descent, and
production is actually up on last year. 502 rigs that are currently operating across the U.S, an 18 year high.
With 103 rigs currently drilling in North Dakota, where the Bakken oil boom is in full swing. 244
PWC show how Europe and North Africa could get to 100% renewable electricity by 2050. To do
this would require policy substantial investment, but the reports’ authors profess that experience with other
large infrastructure programmes shows the financing capacity “is there.” Such a system would result in a net
decrease in power imports among the countries concerned.245 246
Natural gas not such a good idea when lifecycle emissions are measured. So says Robert Howarth, a
professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University, His preliminary calculations suggest to
him that natural gas recovered from new hydrofracturing techniques appears to have higher emissions than
combustion emissions alone would suggest: at least as bad as coal from mountaintop removal and perhaps
worse. He suggests leakage of methane associated with shale gas is probably far more important than normal
gas production. FT: “what’s most striking about Howarth’s paper is not the alarming implications of his very
rough estimates, but his statement that rigorous estimates of the emissions from developing, processing, and
transporting natural gas are not available - nor are such estimates available, he says, for coal-fired power. It
would be interesting to see just how detailed lifecycle studies of different energy sources would need to be in
order to be fully comprehensive - and how different sources, from fossil fuels to renewables, would stack up.
Perhaps none of them are what they seem.”247
Photon magazine recommends regional feed-in tariffs in Germany as solar PV market soars. PV
supply including inventories was 12.4 GW in 2009, 77% up YoY, and installations of 8.8 GW, up 36%.
Germany installed 3.8 GW of c 9 GW globally in 2009. 2010 will be c 10 according to EPIA, and pressing 20 if
you believe Photon. Total global PV installed is now 21 GW, c 10 of it in Germany. But over half is in in the two
sunny southern states. Also: at 20 GW, Photon foresees major issues for utilities, not least on their
profitability.248
2.4.10.
Areva guilty of lethal uranium pollution in Niger mining operation, local activists claim. Der Spiegel:
“Sherpa, a lawyers' organization from Paris that fights for the rights of workers. When a Sherpa attorney
interviewed more than 80 mine workers, she heard the same stories again and again: There was allegedly no
safety equipment until the mid-1980s, not even dust masks. One family claimed that doctors had sent a
coughing mine worker home from the Areva hospital in Arlit after diagnosing him with diabetes. When the man
went to see a doctor in a larger city, Agadez, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in an advanced stage. The
Sherpa attorney confronted the chief physician at the hospital. He reportedly defended himself by saying that
doctors never tell patients that they have lung cancer. Another hospital employee allegedly admitted that
when cancer diagnoses were given, if at all, it was only to patients who didn't work in the mine. "When
workers exhibit these symptoms, we talk about malaria or AIDS," he allegedly said. Areva says that the
company doctors are "independent" and calls the charges "practically slanderous." The company also insists
that the doctors have "all equipment required to carry out their work."” The Greenpeace activists showed up
last November and stayed for nine days. They found elevated levels of radiation everywhere. A sand sample
taken near the mine in Akokan contained 100 times more radioactive material than normal sand. In the streets
of Akokan, the Greenpeace team apparently even measured radiation levels that were 500 times normal
levels. 249
3.4.10.
Kuwait Times: Kuwait needs to be more aware of peak oil and global warming. Staff writer. Abdullah
Al-Qattan, speaking of the February report by Kuwaiti scientists that peak oil might be as close as 2014,
writes: “If Peak Oil is this close, then, why are we failing to adapt? One reason might be widespread ignorance
of the basics of environmentalism. Some people might not realize what terms such as 'green building' actually
mean, with such critically important terminology missing from even our modern textbooks. This has led to a
common unawareness of the global ecological crises and a consequent lack of any consideration for these
urgent problems, such as global warming and pollution, which in turn will lead to further amplification of these
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problems.” If it wanted to, Kuwait could be a green country, developing plentiful renewables including solar,
Al-Qattan says.250
Silane gas dangers in solar cell manufacture addressed with new chemical. Workers have died and
been injured in silane gas explosions at manufacturing plants for solar cells and semiconductors. Scientific
American: “But there is an alternative. Quebec-based manufacturer Sixtron Advanced Materials has developed
a way to make a more stable gas with similar properties via gasifying polymer pellets. The idea is to hook the
SiXtron "Sunbox" to existing silicon photovoltaic manufacturing lines to provide a methyl silane gaseous
mixture via the same pipes that would normally deliver silane from a canister. "The methyl silane gases are
not pyrophoric, they are simply a flammable gas," says Bates Marshall, SiXtron's executive vice president of
sales and marketing. "But a leak does not mean an explosion."251
4.4.10.
“Modern capitalism is at a moral dead end. And the bosses are to blame:” Will Hutton op-ed title.
“Capitalism will be continue to be demonised while our CEOs refuse to put their own corrupt house in order.”
“Chief executives were paid 47 times average pay in 2000; today, they are paid 81 times the average. And all
directly or indirectly colluded in the change that triggered the greatest economic calamity since the 1930s.
None blew a whistle, raised a doubt or suggested strategic options. All trousered the bonuses. Nor was there
any noteworthy collective improvement, despite all the dealing, in the performance of the firms they ran over
and above what one might expect from reasonable stewardship.” The CEOs’ organisation, the CBI is opposing
a national insurance tax proposed by Labour in the run up to the election: it will effect bottom lines nd
therefore bonuses. Contrast Ove Arup and John Lewis. They believed in the notion that firms were essentially
moral enterprises and that the point of profit was to serve the business purpose of the firm. Lewis said "it is all
wrong to have millionaires before you have ceased to have slums". "The present state of affairs is really a
perversion of the proper working of capitalism," he thundered in 1957. "Capitalism has done enormous good
and suits human nature far too well to be given up as long as human nature remains the same. But the
perversion has given us too unstable a society.”252
Unilever CEO adds voice to business leaders saying “shareholder value” is a flawed concept, with all
its implications of short-termism. Paul Polman: “I do not work for the shareholder, to be honest; I work for the
consumer, the customer . . . I’m not driven and I don’t drive this business model by driving shareholder
value.” “It’s easy to be a short-term hero. It is very easy for me to get tremendous results very short term,
get that translated into compensation and be off sailing in the Bahamas.”253
BP lobbies to limit controls on shale gas drilling, trying to head off rising concerns about fracing at the
US Environmental Protection Agency. BP also opposes public disclosure of the chemicals used in fracturing, on
the basis that the information is commercially sensitive.254
5.4.10.
Trial of Project Better Place network begins in Tokyo this month: a key step in the Californian firm's bid
to build the world's first infrastructure networks for electric cars by next year. PBP’s model involves building
networks of charging points and battery-switch stations, with a robotic mechanism to swap the empty battery
in a car for a fully charged one, meaning "refilled" in minutes, rather than several hours to charge the batteries.
Copenhagen already has a network of 100 public charging points, is already being trialed in Copenhagen. The
first commercial network, based on data from the two trials, will launch in Israel at the end of the year.
Renault Fluence electric vehicles will be used. PBP has raised about £460m in investment in the past three
years.255
7.4.10.
Private equity boss gives dire warning. Guy Hands, chairman of Terra Firma, says Britain faces a decade
of pain, social unrest and unemployment.256
Goldman Sachs denies betting against clients. An eight-page letter to shareholders, signed by chief
executive Lloyd Blankfein and president Gary Cohn, denies accusations that Goldman had repeatedly profited
by inflating unsustainable financial bubbles. They admit that Goldman “went short” in the housing market
while simultaneously continuing to trade mortgage-backed securities to its clients but argue that various
sophisticated investors simply took differing views.257
BNFL memoir revives nuclear safety fears. Former British Nuclear Fuels director Harold Bolter publishes
an autobiography recalling industry panic over 1990 report on clusters of illness surrounding the Sellafield
plant. At the time, workers at Sellafield were advised not to have children.258
8.4.10.
Petrol price reaches an all time high in the UK of £1.20 a litre. The average was £1.19 at its highest in
July 2008. The RAC says “it is a dark day for motorists.” The weak pound and tax rises have contributed. 259
9.4.10.
World Bank approves a $3.75bn loan to build one of the world's largest coal plants in South Africa.
An official says: “It was not an easy decision. Everybody recognised the concerns about climate change, but
this was a balancing act.”260
Russia and Germany start work on £8bn Nord Stream pipeline under the Baltic. Its 55 billion cu
metres a year from 2012 will give Russia a third of the EU gas market. The first leg of the project will carry
27.5bcm starting from 2011.261
Tories and Labour agree with industry that there is no need for strategic gas storage in UK. Industry
argues it would take 4-10 years, and in that period nothing would be done by the commercial sector to build
its own gas storage. 22 such projects are in planning, which would quadruple Brtain’s storage by 2020 as
effective North Sea storage in gas fields depletes.262
First shale gas drilling in the UK. Igas will drill one of Europe’s first wells east of Liverpool, having as taken
leases on 300,000 acres of shale. As in the US companies face two main problems. One is political resistance;
the other is the danger of pollution and associated reputational risk. Wolfgang Ruttenstorfer, chief executive of
Austria’s OMV, one of the companies exploring the potential of shale gas in Europe: “I don’t want to create
these kind of hopes and fantasies that lack final results, so I’m extremely cautious whether [shale gas] will be
an option at all”.263
11.4.10. US military warns oil output may drop unexpectedly, with missive shortages by 2015. The warning
comes in Joint Operating Environment report from the US Joint Foreces Command: “By 2012, surplus oil
production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly
10 million barrels per day. While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects
such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and
developed worlds. Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate other unresolved tensions, push fragile and
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failing states further down the path toward collapse, and perhaps have serious economic impact on both China
dn India.” “…..One should not forget that the Great Depression spawned a number of totalitarian regimes that
sought economic prosperity for their nations by ruthless conquest.”264
13.4.10. IEA forecasts oil will hit record levels this year and threaten recovery: 86.6 million barrels of oil per
day, 2% higher, up 1.67 million barrels a day. “Ultimately things might turn messy for producers if $80-$100
per barrel is merely seen as the new $60-$80, stunting economic recovery while prompting resurgent non-oil
and non-Opec supply investment. A recovery in oil demand is moving apace. The return of economic growth
and hence oil demand growth is fuelling the increase.” OECD recovery could be blighted, the monthly report
concludes.265
McKinsey foresees no tariff rises if Europe switches to green electricity. The Roadmap 2050 report
examined ways of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by more than 80 per cent by investing in renewables,
such as wind and solar power, finding that the impact of this on electricity prices in the long term would be
little different to "business as usual". Reasons: the operating costs of renewables are far lower than for fossilfuel power stations; and Europe's existing high-carbon electricity infrastructure will need to be replaced in
coming decades. The report, for the European Climate Foundation, says a supergrid will be needed.266
Toulouse tests renewable pedestrian power. The weight of people on pavements will be tested for street
lighting. The modules will be the same as used in Dutch nightclubs.267
As microfinance grows, big banks are increasingly making big profits from tiny loans. 60% of all
microloans now come from banks and finance firms, rather than NGOs (35%), credit unions and rural banks
(5%). Some banks charge 100% or more. Mohamed Yunus: “We created microcredit to fight the loan sharks;
we didn’t create microcredit to encourage new loan sharks. Microcredit should be seen as an opportunity to
help people get out of poverty in a business way, but not as an opportunity to make money out of poor
people.” Chuck Waterfield, who runs mftransparency.org, a Web site that promotes transparency: “They call it
‘social investing,’ but nobody has a definition for social investing, nobody is saying, for example, that you have
to make less than 10 percent profit.” The microfinance industry now has over $60 billion in assets The rush
was started when Compartamos, a Mexican firm that began life as a tiny nonprofit organization, generated
$458 million through a public stock sale in 2007. Mr. Yunus says interest rates should be 10 to 15 percent
above the cost of raising the money. 75 percent of microfinance institutions would exceed that. NYT:
“Questions had already been raised about Kiva because the Web site once promised that loans would go to
specific borrowers identified on the site, but later backtracked, clarifying that the money went to organizations
rather than individuals.” These sometimes are high rate chargers.268
15.4.10. Goldman Sachs charged by SEC with $1bn fraud over toxic sub-prime securities. The 22-page charges
Goldman Sachs with working with a US hedge fund, Paulson & Co, to structure and sell a complex package of
mortgages to clients knowing Paulson would take a “short” position betting that the very same mortgages
would fail. Investors lost €1bn and Paulson gained around the same.269
Goldman Sachs prosecution threatens to open the floodgates on Wall Street as Geithner says banks
must be made to pay. The case against Goldman could be the tip of an iceberg. Rabobank is accusing Merrill
Lynch of a similar misdemeanour: marketing of a collateralised debt obligation (CDO) while omitting to
mention a relationship with a hedge fund betting against the product's success. Bill Clinton meanwhile
expresses regret, saying he should not have listened to the former treasury secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry
Summers when they opposed tight protection when derivatives were gaining popularity during the 1990s.270
BP Shareholders reject a call to investigate the tar sands project. BP expects to make a final decision
on its $2.4bn (£1.6bn) Sunrise project by next year. About 140 institutions backed the call for a review.271
Citi analysts, concerned about tar sands emissions, warn that shareholder action will grow. This is a
setback, given that CalPers, the US’s largest public pension fund, has already joined the tar sands
campaign.272
18.4.10. “Labour and the Tories are just too scared to take on the bankers,” Ruth Sutherland writes. Whereas
SEC investigators are feeling Goldman Sachs’s collar in the States, and the Volcker Rule which would in effect
restore Glass-Steagall and limit the size of banks so that their failure would not imperil the entire financial
system. the Labour manifesto, however, simply proposes making banks keep more capital as a cushion against
losses, a global levy on financial services and "living wills" to help wind down failed institutions without putting
the entire system at risk. The Tories have promised a levy on banks, even if other countries do not do the
same, clamping down on bankers' bonuses, and says he will seek international agreement on separating
banks' speculative activities from their useful ones. “But the two main parties remain horribly in thrall to a
powerful cabal of financiers and corporate executives, and are terrified of being accused of banker-bashing. It
is so obvious that it should not need saying, but the financial elite to which they genuflect is both unelected
and unaccountable.”273
“Now we know the truth. The financial meltdown wasn't a mistake – it was a con.” So writes Will
Hutton in The Observer. “The global financial crisis, it is now clear, was caused not just by the bankers'
colossal mismanagement. No, it was due also to the new financial complexity offering up the opportunity for
widespread, systemic fraud.” “Just consider the roll call beyond Goldman Sachs. In Ireland Sean FitzPatrick,
the ex-chair of the Anglo Irish bank – a bank which looks after the Post Office's financial services – was
arrested last month and questioned over alleged fraud. In Iceland last week a dossier assembled by its
parliament on the Icelandic banks – huge lenders in Britain – was handed to its public prosecution service. A
court-appointed examiner found that collapsed investment bank Lehman knowingly manipulated its balance
sheet to make it look stronger than it was – accounts originally audited by the British firm Ernst and Young
and given the legal green light by the British firm Linklaters. In Switzerland UBS has been defending itself from
the US's Inland Revenue Service for allegedly running 17,000 offshore accounts to evade tax. Be sure there
are more revelations to come – except in saintly Britain.” “….The Icelandic banks, Anglo Irish bank and
Lehman were all involved in opaque deals and rank bad lending decisions – but Goldman allegedly went one
step further, according to the SEC actively creating a financial instrument that transferred wealth to one
favoured client from others less favoured.” “….Brutally, the banks knowingly gamed the system to grow their
balance sheets ever faster and with even less capital underpinning them in the full knowledge that everything
rested on the bogus claim that their lending was now much less risky. That was not all they were doing. As
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Michael Lewis describes in The Big Short, credit default swaps had been deliberately created as an asset class
by the big investment banks to allow hedge funds to speculate against collateralised debt obligations. The
banks were gaming the regulators and investors alike – and they knew full well what they were doing.” “….We
need to break up our banks, limit their capacity to speculate and bring them back to earth. Britain should also
launch an official investigation into what went wrong – and hand the findings to the Serious Fraud Office. This
needs to become this election campaign's number one issue.”
Crisis timetable
September 2007 Funding problems at Northern Rock triggers the first run on a British bank. It is nationalised
in February 2008.
April 2008 Bear Stern faces bankruptcy after a run on the company wipes out cash reserves in less than two
days. Backed by the Federal Reserve, JPMorgan buys up shares at far below market value.
September 2008 Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy protection, becoming the first major bank to collapse
since the start of the credit crisis.
December 2008 Bernard Madoff arrested for operating the largest Ponzi scheme in history.
January 2009 The Bank of England launches £200bn quantitative easing.
March 2010 Former chairman of Anglo Irish bank Sean Fitzpatrick is arrested in Dublin after failing to disclose
details of loans worth millions from the bank.
April 2010 Northern Rock former directors, David Baker and Richard Barclay, are fined £504,000 and £140,000
for deliberately misleading analysts prior to nationalisation.
April 2010 The US Securities and Exchange Commission accuses Goldman Sachs of "defrauding investors by
misstating and omitting key facts".274
20.4.10. The Deepwater Horizon rig, working for BP explodes 50 miles off Louisiana, killing 11. The 1,500
metre riser collapses, and the wellhead begins pouring oil into the water.
IMF proposes tough measures to cut banks down to size, taxing both profits and pay in a so-called
Financial Activities Tax (FAT), stopping short of a Tobin tax. Gordon Brown claims credit for it. 275
IMF says banks are more powerful now than they were before the crisis, and time is running out to
deal with them. “The future financial regulatory reform agenda is still a work in progress, but will need to
move forward with at least the main ingredients soon”, the IMF’s Global Financial Stability Review notes. “The
window of opportunity for dealing with too-important-to-fail institutions may be closing and should not be
squandered, all the more so because some of these institutions have become bigger and more dominant than
before the crisis erupted.”276
21.4.10. FT.com suspects policymakers, economists and peak-oilists are starting to speak same language.
“It’s still the rare politician or industry executive who would use the phrase ‘peak oil’. But in the UK, a country
for whom domestic oil production decline is very much a concern, the issue has become almost
mainstream.”277
None of the UK political party manifestos mention peak oil going into the election. And when asked
about at the Guardian debate on the environment, the three environmental spokespeople - Miliband, Hughes
and Clark – show varying degrees of complacency, Miliband worst.278
25.4.10. Chevron CEO sees no future for his company in the shale gas rush. John Watson that the “price tag is
too high” to justify the investments required, a big contrast with those who insist that new drilling techniques
are a “game changer” and lift projections of reserves of shale gas from 30 years’ worth of supplies to 100
years.279
29.4.10. US mobilises military as BP’s oil spill approaches Lousiana coast. BP’s value falls by £13bn as share
price falls Some 5,000 barrels a day are still spilling beneath the rig and BP’s efforts to cap the well could take
four weeks, by which time 150,000 barrels would have escaped. If that doesn’t work, a relief well would be
needed, needing maybe 3 months, and meaning 300,000 barrels – bigger than the Exxon Valdez at 258,000
barrels.
30.4.10. White House bans offshore drilling until further notice as US Navy joins the effort to contain the spill (on
the surface, that is).280
Costs of Gulf oilspill likely to exceed Exxon Valdez as backlash builds against BP. Brent Coon &
Associates, an American law firm playing a large role in bringing cases against BP for the Texas City refinery
fire in 2005, files a lawsuit on behalf of a rig worker injured in last week's blast, and argues that criminal
charges should be brought against the company for its repeated failure to act after a series of industrial
accidents in the US. “They don't learn their lessons, they are the most arrogant bunch of bastards I've ever
dealt with,” says lawyer Brent Coon. “It's like they just don't care. At some point, we are going to have to put
some of these executives in jail and withdraw their right to exploit our natural resources.”281
Goldman Sachs faces a criminal investigation. Federal prosecutors have opened a preliminary criminal
investigation. The news sent Goldman shares down 9%.282
22 arrested in carbon trading inquiry, all but one in the UK, although Deutsche Bank has been raided in a
German arm of the operation, involving 2,450 British and German tax officers. The issue is carousel fraud
involving VAT, as result of which criminals have pocketed an estimated €5bn. A total of 58 have now been
arrested across Europe. 283
1.5.10.
British H&S watchdog has warned BP over safety on North Sea oil rigs. The HSE has issued an
“improvement notice on the Schiehallion Field saying that the oil group “failed to ensure the safety of your
employees and others not in your employment by not providing and maintaining a system of work for the
control of that operation that was, so far as reasonably practicable, safe.” Another notice pertains to Magnus.
After the Piper Alpha (167 dead) investigation, pipeline emergency shut down valves were made madatory.
One failed on one field and others have been found to be at risk. The HSE has called on all operators to check
ESDVs. Saftety stats in the North Sea showed a marked deterioration in 2009 on 2008.284
Warren Buffett defends Goldman Sachs, saying at the Berkshire Hathaway AGM that the losers on their
suspect deal “made a dumb credit decision.” Though he adds a successful criminal prosecution would be
“something more serious, and we’d look at that at the time.”285
2.5.10.
“Virtually impossible” spill larger than previously estimated, experts say: 3,850 sq miles. BP’s safety
analysis had suggested the spill was “virtually impossible.” Obama flies to meet Hayward in Louisiana. 286
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6.5.10.
7.5.10.
8.5.10.
9.5.10.
© Jeremy Leggett
Three die in Athens as anarchists torch a bank during protests against the IMF / EU austerity
programme, a condition of the €110bn bailout extended to the Greek government. The euro falls to a 14
month low against the dollar.287
Investors bet on a Tory win in UK election as they pile into gilts. The expectation seems to be that
Cameron will deal best with the nation’s £163bn deficit – 11% of GDP, higher than Greece’s – and provide
something of a safe haven in the troubled Eurozone.288
BP admits in a private congressional briefing that the oil escape could reach 40,000 barrels a day as
White House backs a move by Senators back to put oil companies on the hook for $10bn for a spill. It could be
retroactive, because under current laws (20 years old) BP’s liability is capped at $75m. BP faces 20 lawsuits to
date.289
Moody’s changes BP’s Aa1 debt status from “stable” to “negative” on the basis of oil-spill fears,
because it is “remains impossible to assess the full extent of the costs and business impact on BP’s results”.
Equity analysts are more sanguine, having opined that the total exposure will be “limited” to $3-10bn.290
CBIC’s Jeff Rubin likens the Deepwater Horizon to Three Mile Island. Writing in the Globe and Mail, he
says: “Will the unfolding environmental catastrophe from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of
Mexico become deep-water oil’s equivalent to the Three Mile Island accident? In terms of environmental
degradation and economic cost, it’s already become much more. The real legacy of Three Mile Island wasn’t
what happened back in 1979, though, but rather what happened, or more precisely didn’t happen, over the
course of the next 40 years in the United States. Literally overnight, the near-meltdown of the reactor core
changed public acceptance of nuclear power plants. No company in the U.S. has built a new one since.”291
Blind voting on policies puts the Greens as the most popular UK political party. The website
VoteForPolicies.org.uk lists policies and asks people to vote for those they prefer. A quarter of the 245,000
people who took the test ended up voting for the policies of the Greens, about 18% each for the LibDems and
Labour, and 16% for the Tories.292
Hung Parliament in the UK. Meanwhile, Wall street is gripped by panic that Greek crisis will spread.
Stliglitz and Roubini are doubtful that the Euro can survive. They do not think governments can or should
squeeze their spending to the degree the IMF and EU stipulate. Professor David Blanchflower, former Bank of
England monetary policy committee member, says it is "crazy" for highly indebted countries such as Greece,
Spain, Portugal and Britain to enter a “death spiral” of spending cuts : “All anyone is talking about is austerity,
but all you get is more unemployment and low growth. Then you find yourself in a spiral of debt as low growth
forces you to cut spending further.”293
Citywire website: “Would you put up with what is being asked of the Greek people?” As part of the
IMF/ EU bailout Greek leaders are proposing the following measures: Public sector pay to be frozen till 2014;
Public sector salary bonuses – equivalent to two months’ extra pay – to be scrapped or capped; Public sector
allowances to be cut by 20%; State pensions to be frozen or cut, with the contribution period up from 37 to 40
years; average retirement age raised from 61 to 63, and early retirement restricted; VAT to be increased from
19% to 23%; Taxes on fuel, alcohol and tobacco raised to 10%; A new one-off tax on profits to be introduced,
plus new gambling, property and green taxes. 294
Dome to stem the oil flow moved into place. The leak is now 5,000 barrels a day. The structure weighs
almost 100 tonnes. Such a capping has never been undertaken in waters this deep.295
EU crisis goes global. European shares finish at a 6 month low as more shares change hands in London than
at any time since the credit crisis in autumn 2008. Other exchanges are down too.296
EU drops new emissions regulations that could have shut Drax. Pressure from the utilities, arguing that
they cannot get enough new generating capcity onstream until 2020. makes a key committee put off the
industrial emissions directive from 2016 until 2019. The parliament is likely to ratify this in July. The Large
Combustion Plants Directive remains in place.297
Critics turn their attention on the rigs watchdog: a pattern repeated from the credit crunch? FT:
“Just as the financial crisis revealed that US regulators were often too cosy with institutions that they were
meant to supervise, BP's huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has shone an unflattering light on the agency
charged with regulating US oil resources. For more than a decade, the Minerals Management Service, a federal
agency within the interior department, has been accused by government watchdogs of failing to inspect
offshore oil leases and relying too heavily on industry data in collecting royalties and other fees related to oil
and gas. In a low point for the agency, a scathing 2008 report by the inspector-general of the interior
described a culture of "substance abuse and promiscuity" within the MMS department charged with collecting
royalties on leases and revealed that two MMS employees had, literally, been in bed with industry contacts.”298
Hydrate crystals block the cofferdome as oil hits shore for first time. BP now plans to do a “junk shot”:
blast the blow-out preventer with debris (shredded rubber etc) under pressure, hoping to block the leak.
Deep-water oil’s ability to offset depletion may hinge on the Macondo cofferdam operation. If it
succeeds, it should capture around 85 per cent of the leaking oil, then the spill (around 100,000 barrels, 4.2 m
gallons so far) will end up at less than half the amount spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster and won't
even make it into the top 100 oil spills by volume. But if it fails, the relief well might take three months, and
the spill could reach 450,000 barrels, just under twice the Exxon Valdez (into the top 50 spills). Douglas
Westwood says deepwater oil production has soared from under two million barrels per day in 2000 to 8 mb/d
in 2010, almost 10 per cent of global consumption, and must rise further. Chairman John Westwood: “They
can't ban deepwater because the industry has nowhere else to go.” 500 deepwater wells were drilled in 2009,
costing up to $100m each. The Macondo field probably contains less than 50 million barrels – an oilfield
minnow. Analysts Newedge USA say that if Obama’s moratorium is in place for long, oil supply could suffer a
shortfall of up to one mb/d by 2016 to 2018.299
Solar printing-press company suggests it can cut PV costs by 90%. Omar Cheema, co-founder and
chief executive of Solar Press, claims a breakthrough at Imperial College that produces an “ink” made from
three electrical materials dissolved in a solvent. Deposited on to panels by a high-speed printing machine,
passed through an oven, the solvents evaporate, leaving behind circuits that react with sunlight to generate
electric currents. Cheema estimates cost reduction by as much as 80%, and the ability to produce between
200 and 400 square metres of solar cells in one hour and 24,000 square metres of solar panels in 12 days.
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That would mean production of nine to ten gigawatts a year: around the current output of the solar power
industry. The Carbon Trust invested £1.5m a year ago to fund its spinout from Imperial College. Cheema is
looking for several million more to ramp up production. “We believe we can be profitable by the end of next
year,” he says. “We we need only $10m [£6.8m] in total before investors start to see a return. That’s because
there is no capital outlay.” Solar Press aims to start commercial operations with lighting in the developing
world.300
10.5.10. €750bn Eurozone resecue package agreed by Finance Ministers. Stock markets leap across Europe as
the ECB emraces quantitative easing.301
Mood at annual Offshore Technology Conference unaffected by oil spill. FT.com “Perhaps ironically, the
same week saw a big offshore drilling conference in Houston pull in record crowds. Although the organisers of
OTC said the Deepwater Horizon event affected the “mood and tone of the event,” it didn’t appear to put a
huge dampener on things, judging from the Houston Chronicle’s extensive coverage. On the first day,
“discussion centered on what went wrong rather than concern about the future of deep water drilling” and that
there was no indication of companies being “spooked” by the incident enough to reconsider offshore drilling
and production. Attendees were getting their shoes shined and fending off strip club promotions, while the
disaster was undoubtedly a big topic of conversation, a small protest outside the conference on Thursday
elicited little response.”302
BP spill may have been due to methane hydrates: escaping gas blowing out steel casing cement. A
presentation by Halliburton last month pointed to the dangers.303
11.5.10. BP, Transocean and Halliburton execs try to blame each other each in Congressional testimony.
They are ticked off by Lisa Murkowski, the ranking Republican on the committee and senator from Alaska. “I
would suggest to all three of you that we are all in this together because this incident will have an impact on
the energy policy of our country,” she ys. “If you can’t convince people that you can operate safely, not only
will BP not be out there, but the Transoceans won’t be out there to drill the rigs and the Halliburtons won’t be
out there cementing.304 FT: “Essentially, the testimonies go something like this: BP: Why did the BOP fail?
Transocean: Were there problems with the cementing and casings? Halliburton: We did what BP asked us to
The regulator: Better testing standards needed for shear ram, cementing and other factors The academic: Why
did multiple blowout barriers fail, and was there human error?305
Methane explosions in Russia’s largest coal mine kill 52 with 38 still missing. FT: “One miner
interviewed at the scene said he didn’t understand how the blast could have happened as they had just
installed new German ventilators and British methane detectors. The Raspadskaya Coal Company’s mine is the
highest-producing coal mine in Russia, but also one of the deepest, with 311km of tunnels, which makes it
especially vulnerable to methane gas build up. Despite government pledges to compensate families of dead
miners with roughly 1m roubles apiece, many relatives were bitter about the way they have been treated. “We
send our sons to die in these holes, and for kopeks,” said the mother of one miner who declined to give her
name. “There is no other work to do here. Only the mine. They have no choice.”306
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/01/fsa-adair-turner-green-economy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/01/business-academia-institute-sustainability-technology
3
Petroleum Review, Editorial, January 2010, no url.
4
“Laq links up full-chain CCS in France,” Recharge, January 1010, no url.
5
“Germany’s Schwarze Pumpe: one year on,” Recharge, January 1010, no url.
6
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/03/shell-sri-lanka-solar-warranty-row#start-of-comments
7
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/03/manufacturing-sector-slams-darling-claim-governmentsupports-green-jobs
8
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/03/european-unites-renewable-energy-supergrid
9
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/03/uk-economic-recovery
10
http://.ft.com/cms/s/0/e7b2258a-f8af-11de-beb8-00144feab49a.html
1
2
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http://www.ft.ccms/s/0/45e87598-f863-11de-beb8-00144feab49a.html
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a8fe3a18-f8af-11de-beb8-00144feab49a.html
13
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/46d725b0-f897-11de-beb8-00144feab49a.html
14
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/01/04/oil-price-rallies-to-more-than-80-but-will-it-stay-thatway/#more-38666
15
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dd836182-f57b-11de-90ab-00144feab49a.html
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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/233587c0-f962-11de-80dc-00144feab49a.html
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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6990fba0-f999-11de-8085-00144feab49a.html
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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4742578a-fa37-11de-beed-00144feab49a.html
19
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bc088e70-fa34-11de-beed-00144feab49a.html
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http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6100
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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/310b5c88-fb0d-11de-94d8-00144feab49a.html
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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2019f466-faea-11de-94d8-00144feab49a.html
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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e792283a-fade-11de-94d8-00144feab49a.html
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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/98d6049a-fbca-11de-9c29-00144feab49a.html
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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a08bea5e-fbb3-11de-9c29-00144feab49a.html
26
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c970c97c-fbc1-11de-9c29-00144feab49a.html
27
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/google-applies-to-become-power-marketer/?th&emc=th
28
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/qa-googles-green-energy-czar/
29
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/08/bonus-time-city-banks
30
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/08/north-sea-wind-contracts
31
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/09/energy-supplies-offshore-wind-power
32
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/business/economy/11goldman.html?th&emc=th
33
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cd32ec4e-fe40-11de-9340-00144feab49a.html
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/10/nuclear-power-irrational-fears
35
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/dan-roberts-on-business-blog/2010/jan/11/gas-oilandgascompanies
36
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/04bc672c-fed1-11de-a677-00144feab49a.html
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/6957501/Wind-farms-produced-practically-noelectricity-during-Britains-cold-snap.html
38
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/12/geo-engineering-summit
39
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601072&sid=aqX2L6dP3z1g
40
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/01/12/climate-change-isnt-making-inroads-necessary/
41
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1219634020100112
42
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1cde9d3a-ffe3-11de-ad8c-00144feabdc0.html
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/13/russia-aids-gas-uk-gas-supply
44
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e0db0b90-0099-11df-ae8d-00144feabdc0.html
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http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Resource-Wars/2010/01/13/Moscow-eyes-role-in-Indias-solarplans/UPI-17341263401397/
46
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/12/climate-change-greed-environment-threat
47
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/13/financial-crisis-inquiry-mistakes
48
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-01/14/content_9317561.htm
49
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/14/climate-change-us-envoy-copenhagen
50
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/14/climate-talks-un-sidelined
51
http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/hot_air.php?page=all
52
e-mail from Sean Kidney to undisclosed recipients, 14 January 2010.
53
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/01/14/could-china-fall-out-of-love-with-coal/
54
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/12/james-hansen-carbon-emissions
55
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b11ad8ea-013e-11df-8c54-00144feabdc0.html
56
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/14/barack-obama-tax-wall-street
57
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/14/equator-principles-banks-environment-campaigners
58
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE60D48F20100114?sp=true
59
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/54b1a434-0211-11df-8b56-00144feabdc0.html
60
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/opinion/15krugman.html
61
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b51161ae-0174-11df-8c54-00144feabdc0.html
62
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ed07a246-038e-11df-a601-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
63
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/029259ae-0203-11df-8b56-00144feabdc0.html
64
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601207&sid=axnm2BeGMveI#
65
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/53d59b84-03d2-11df-a601-00144feabdc0.html
66
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/39ba8172-0460-11df-8603-00144feabdc0.html
67
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/18/shell-shareholders-fury-tar-sands
68
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article6992750.ece
69
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/WR_Germanys_waste_removal_decision_1801101.html
70
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/18/eon-coal-plant-plea
71
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/18/rnewables-feedin-tariffs-drax-nuclear
72
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/18/recovery-china-economic-reform
73
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/opinion/18mon3.html?th&emc=th
74
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/opinion/13friedman.html?ref=opinion
75
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/opinion/20friedman.html?th&emc=th
76
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/20/copenhagen-accord-deadline-climate-change
77
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTOE60J03Y20100120
78
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/20/himalayan-glaciers-melt-claims-false-ipcc
79
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100120/full/463284a.html
80
http://www.thegatesnotes.com/
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© Jeremy Leggett
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/af927fe4-0640-11df-8c97-00144feabdc0.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/21/profile-us-economist-paul-volcker
83
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/21/obama-banking-restrictions-reform-wall-street
84
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/21/goldman-sachs-bonus-cut
85
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/21/uk-considers-obama-banking-rules
86
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/34722f64-06de-11df-b058-00144feabdc0.html
87
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6995925.ece
88
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/59a631a8-0720-11df-a9b7-00144feabdc0.html
89
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/22/gordon-brown-tobin-tax-banking
90
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6cb023c8-07aa-11df-915f-00144feabdc0.html
91
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7046958/National-Audit-Office-raise-prospect-of-publicsubsidies-for-nuclear.html
92
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/technology/start-ups/22venture.html?th&emc=th
93
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/22/quarter-us-grain-biofuels-food
94
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/23/properity-without-growth-tim-jackson
95
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/24/wall-street-lobbyists-banks-obama
96
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/24/obama-banks-reform
97
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/24/boris-johnson-will-hutton-bankers
98
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/24/boris-johnson-will-hutton-bankers
99
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/24/carbon-emissions-green-copenhagen-banks
100
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f7283aa8-0927-11df-ba88-00144feabdc0.html
101
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60N0YE20100124
102
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/25/world-economic-growth-climate-change
103
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/01/25/the-death-of-us-coal/
104
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/01/25/china-setting-the-worlds-oil-prices/
105
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/more-families-cannot-pay-their-fuel-bills1878031.html
106
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilities/article7000918.ece
107
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5d3466e8-09ee-11df-8b23-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=91d7b52e-0527-11dfa85e-00144feabdc0.html
108
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/01/26/cyber-attacks-on-oil-majors/
109
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d2d709ae-0b8e-11df-8232-00144feabdc0.html
110
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/28/obama-job-tour-state-union
111
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f58ce0bc-0b30-11df-9109-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=91d7b52e-0527-11dfa85e-00144feabdc0.html
112
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/27/davos-alistairdarling
113
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f00aa3dc-0b7a-11df-8232-00144feabdc0.html
114
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/business/energy-environment/27lawsuits.html?th&emc=th
115
http://www.swissre.com/resources/7249eb804e42012db8a8bcb8626ab849Publ09_FR_Globalisation_en.pdf
116
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/27/feed-in-tariffs-renewable-energy
117
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/27/oil-firms-shetland-tax-breaks
118
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ff68e8da-0b83-11df-8232-00144feabdc0.html
119
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/28/toyota-recall-widens-europe-china
120
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE60R1LZ20100128?type=marketsNews
121
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business /2010/jan/28/bp-tony-hayward-gas-shale-rocks
122
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/01/28/how-healthy-is-barnett-shale/
123
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/29/water-vapour-climate-change
124
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/energy-environment/31renew.html?th&emc=th
125
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/climate-change-deal-impossible-2010
126
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/02/01/shale-boom-leaves-industry-considering-us-gas-exports/
127
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/feb/06/solar-power-bright-investment
128
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b37099b6-0ea1-11df-bd79-00144feabdc0.html
129
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/26fb8a42-0f62-11df-a450-00144feabdc0.html
130
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/leaked-emails-climate-jones-chinese
131
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/climate-emails-sceptics
132
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/us/politics/02deficit.html?th&emc=th
133
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fec07306-0f68-11df-a450-00144feabdc0.html
134
Petroleum Review, February 2010.
135
David Starchan, “Non-conventional oil: can it fill the gap?” Petroleum Review, February 2010.
136
Maria Kelmaas, “Crunching credit and climate,” Petroleum Review, February 2010.
137
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/db6a9ed8-101f-11df-841f-00144feab49a.html
138
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/02/climate-change-pachauri-un-glaciers
139
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f9f86ef0-10cb-11df-975e-00144feab49a.html
140
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/02/03/much-ado-about-climate-change/
141
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/03/energy-bills-unaffordable-system-overhaul
142
http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Media/PressRel/Documents1/Ofgem%20%20Discovery%20phase%20II%20Draft%20v15.pdf
143
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/03/ofgem-uk-energy-supplies
144
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/03/ofgem-investment-energy-bills-rise
145
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/03/ofgem-report-analysis
146
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a82cfe04-10f5-11df-9a9e-00144feab49a.html
147
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=aKR8zOS.OF6w
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http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef901240p
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6169
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https://www.theoildrum.com/pdf/theoildrum_6206.pdf
151
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/04/tony-hayward-bp-interview
152
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/04/shell-job-cuts-profits-fall
153
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c414ed56-11b9-11df-9d45-00144feab49a.html
154
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/7153724/How-long-before-the-lights-goout.html
155
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2d0110e8-11af-11df-bceb-00144feab49a.html
156
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article7017865.ece
157
http://money.independentminds.livejournal.com/239030.html
158
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017922.ece
159
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/07/climate-change-science-public-trust
160
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/07/climate-scepticism-grows-tories
161
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/07/branson-warns-peak-oil-close
162
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/7182811/BP-faces-investor-revolt-overCanadian-oil-sands-project.html
163
“BP claims green credentials as it prepares for tar sands project,” Recharge, 12 February 2010. no url
164
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/babefaae-14e2-11df-8f1d-00144feab49a.html
165
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/09/world-first-personal-carbon-trading
166
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/09/scrap-windfarms-says-gazprom/print
167
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7199259/Gazprom-scorns-shale-gasas-danger-to-drinking-water.html
168
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/02/10/peak-oil-or-oil-crunch-richard-branson-puts-the-case-foruk-business/
169
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/feb/10/oil-crunch-peril
170
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaxJum8FD5g
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704140104575057260398292350.html?mod=googlenews_w
sj
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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a9713b16-15e3-11df-b65b-00144feab49a.html
173
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d588a942-1669-11df-bf44-00144feab49a.html
174
http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/11/peak-oil-crunch-opinions-contributors-jeremy-leggett_2.html
175
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e4a2dad0-16ad-11df-aa09-00144feab49a.html
176
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/14/oil-sands-ban-legal-challenge
177
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/14/sellafield-texas-city-nda
178
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/844be172-1b3a-11df-953f-00144feab49a.html
179
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/16/barack-obama-climate-change-laws
180
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6f9abaa0-1c02-11df-a5e1-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1
181
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/17/san-francisco-electric-cars
182
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilities/article7029697.ece
183
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a27d78ee-1b63-11df-838f-00144feab49a.html
184
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/utility-executives-like-nuclear-power-climate-science-notso-much/
185
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1964846,00.html
186
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/02/18/fourth-generation-nuclear-power-may-not-be-the-cleanenergy-silver-bullet/
187
http://www.aolnews.com/opinion/article/opinion-global-warming-scandals-offer-opportunity-forprogress/19362813
188
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ba370018-1f19-11df-9584-00144feab49a.html
189
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a4643e02-1efd-11df-9584-00144feab49a.html
190
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/23/british-public-belief-climate-poll
191
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7301602/Companies-cant-afford-todrill-for-North-Sea-oil-and-gas.html
192
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/02/24/falklands-oil-questions-are-about-payloads-not-conflict/
193
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cb51016a-217f-11df-830e-00144feab49a.html
194
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/02/25/hummer-has-no-home-thanks-to-chinas-gas-guzzlingaversion/
195
http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-rudin-i-know-a-place-where-demand-for-oil-grows-even-faster-thanchina-2010-2
196
http://climatebonds.net/2010/02/wb-over_1billion/
197
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f523bb7a-2235-11df-9a72-00144feab49a.html
198
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/24/MNIO1C6M96.DTL
199
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article7041904.ece
200
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28gore.html?th&emc=th
201
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7266837/Barclays-and-Bank-ofAmerica-see-looming-oil-crunch.html
202
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/03/01/a-more-competitive-gas-market-may-be-bad-news-for-bpas-well-as-gazprom/
203
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/03/01/oil-majors-taking-the-wrong-kinds-of-risks/
204
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/01/solar-panel-feed-in-tariff
205
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/03/02/us-consumers-spending-their-savings-on-energy/
206
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/03/solar-panel-workable-future
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© Jeremy Leggett
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/03/04/investors-increasingly-concerned-about-climate-change/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/04/coal-gasification-ccs
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/03/05/saudi-arabia-struggling-with-gas-needs/
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/03/05/how-financial-traders-changed-oil-markets/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/mar/05/solar-panel-feed-in-tariff-benefits
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/mar/05/solar-feed-in-tariff
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a917b8d2-2a0d-11df-b940-00144feabdc0.html
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b686ad54-2a15-11df-b940-00144feabdc0.html
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ccd8412a-2a11-11df-b940-00144feabdc0.html
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f15da07c-2a51-11df-b940-00144feabdc0.html
http://www.sortirdunucleaire.org/index.php?menu=actualites&sousmenu=dossiers&soussousmenu=EPRrevelat
ions&page=index
219
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d4fe86d0-2ace-11df-886b-00144feabdc0.html
220
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/mar/09/george-monbiot-bet-solarpv?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments
221
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4bd746ca-2b1a-11df-93d8-00144feabdc0.html
222
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/03/09/copper-and-lithium-scramble-to-power-the-energy-future/
223
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/mar/11/solar-power-germany-feed-intariff?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments
224
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/16/wave-and-tidal-power-scotland
225
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/16/industrial-strategy-nuclear-manufacturing-forgemasters
226
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLDE62H0ZF20100318?pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=0
227
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/18/solar-energy-feed-in-tariffs-monbiot
228
http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2010/03/the_war_of_words_over_homeprod.html
229
http://transitionculture.org/2010/03/24/government-‘peak-oil-summit’-starts-the-process-of-governmentacknowledging-peak-oil/
230
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/03edba14-35e8-11df-aa43-00144feabdc0.html
231
http://www.wdm.org.uk/cashing-tar-sands-rbs-uk-banks-and-canada’s-“blood-oil”
232
http://petrole.blog.lemonde.fr/2010/03/25/washington-considers-a-decline-of-world-oil-production-as-of2011/
233
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/the-end-of-peak-oil-denial/1111
234
David Harris, Head of Responsible Investment, FTSE group, “Understanding environmental markets, London
Stock Exchange, Environmental Opportunities Forum, 25 March 2010 (L).
235
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/143af718-390a-11df-8970-00144feabdc0.html
236
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/05645be6-3908-11df-8970-00144feabdc0.html
237
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/retailing/article7078855.ece
238
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article7078858.ece
239
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9adb2b90-3b2a-11df-a1e7-00144feabdc0.html
240
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7536076/UK-to-rule-out-national-gasstorage-to-secure-supply.html
241
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3ef33692-3b93-11df-a4c0-00144feabdc0.html
242
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/new-regulations-on-energy-efficiency-mired-inconfusion-1931580.html
243
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601207&sid=aI1saltlKjvM#
244
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/energy-and-capitals-weekend-edition/1112
245
http://www.pwc.co.uk/pdf/100_percent_renewable_electricity.pdf
246
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/04/01/a-gameplan-for-getting-to-100-renewables/
247
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/04/01/how-good-is-natural-gas-when-lifecycle-emissions-aremeasured/
248
Photon magazine, April 2010. And see JL notes on the April 2010 Photon conference, Stuttgart.
249
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,686774-3,00.html
250
http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=NDU0MTk4MjMw
251
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=explosive-gas-silane-used-to-makephotovoltaics&sc=CAT_BS_20100402
252
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/04/will-hutton-capitalism
253
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/72d68b60-4009-11df-8d23-00144feabdc0.html
254
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/04/bp-shale-gas-environment-protection-agency
255
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/05/tokyo-electric-cars-better-place
256
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/07/private-equity-boss-predicts-painful-decade
257
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/07/goldman-sachs-letter-shareholders
258
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/07/bnfl-director-book-sellafield-cancer-concerns
259
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/08/petrol-price-all-time-high
260
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/09/world-bank-criticised-over-power-station
261
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/09/russia-launch-baltic-gas-pipeline
262
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/04/09/labors-energy-platform-emerges/
263
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/39c9ebf6-2d48-11df-9c5b-00144feabdc0.html
264
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/11/peak-oil-production-supply
265
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article7096486.ece
266
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/88d5231c-4695-11df-9713-00144feab49a.html
267
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/13/pavement-power-toulouse-streets
268
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/world/14microfinance.html?pagewanted=all
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Triple Crunch Log
© Jeremy Leggett
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/16/goldman-sachs-fraud-charges
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/18/goldman-sachs-prosecution-wall-street-crackdown
271
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ab8872e0-48bd-11df-8af4-00144feab49a.html
272
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/04/15/oil-sands-citi-gives-a-tick-for-carbon-costs-but-a-cross-foremissions/
273
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/18/uk-politicians-afraid-regulate-bankers
274
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/18/goldman-sachs-regulators-civil-charges
275
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2010/apr/20/imf-tax-global-banks
276
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/banking+uk/uk
277
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/04/21/are-policymakers-economists-and-peak-oilists-starting-tospeak-the-same-language/
278
http://www.davidstrahan.com/blog/?p=577
279
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/272d6046-5088-11df-bc86-00144feab49a.html
280
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/30/oil-spill-reaches-us-coastline
281
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/30/bp-cost-deepwater-horizon-spill
282
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/30/goldman-sachs-faces-criminal-investigation
283
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/7659747/Tax-officers-arrest-22-in-UK-carbonfraud-probe.html
284
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/01/bp-shell-north-sea-oil-rigs-health-and-safety-executive
285
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/01/warren-buffett-defends-goldman-sachs
286
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/02/barack-obama-deepwater-oil-spill
287
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fa96b574-5838-11df-9eaf-00144feab49a.html
288
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7817a4fc-5881-11df-9921-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1
289
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/04/deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-backlash-bp
290
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/05/05/oil-spill-cost-uncertainty-gives-moodys-pause-for-thought/
291
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/jeff-rubins-smaller-world/oil-disastermay-prove-tipping-point-for-world-oil-production/article1557220/
292
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/05/05/are-you-a-secret-green-party-sympathiser/
293
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/06/debt-crisis-ecb-refuses-to-soften
294
http://www.citywire.co.uk/personal/-/blogs/money-blog/content.aspx?ID=398084
295
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e3282f4e-591e-11df-adc3-00144feab49a.html
296
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/blog/2010/may/07/market-turmoil-live-coverage
297
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/07/energy-pollution-drax-environment-regulations
298
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/832382bc-5980-11df-99ba-00144feab49a.html
299
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/oil-production-hit-for-decades-after-bp-spill1968931.html
300
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/article7120555.ece
301
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/10/eu-debt-crisis-bailout-imf-ecb
302
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/05/10/not-such-a-good-year-for-solar-so-far/
303
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/05/10/bps-oil-spill-fight-plagued-by-methane-hydrates-a-hazardof-deep-water/
304
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/05/11/bp-oil-spill-senate-hearings-live-blog/
305
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/05/11/the-blame-game-whos-saying-what-at-the-oil-spill-hearing/
306
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/41f2f21e-5d18-11df-8373-00144feab49a.html
269
270
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