Search results for: “renewables”

January 11, 2024

Energy market volatility: climate change?

This 14-page note predicts a staggering increase in global energy market volatility, which doubles by 2050, while extreme events that sway energy balances by +/- 2% will become 250x more frequent. A key reason is that the annual output from wind, solar and hydro all vary by +/- 3-5% each year, while wind and solar…
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February 1, 2024

Enhanced geothermal: digging deeper?

Momentum behind enhanced geothermal has accelerated 3x in the past half-decade, especially in energy-short Europe, and as pilot projects have de-risked novel well designs. This 18-page report re-evaluates the energy economics of geothermal from first principles. Is there a path to cost-competitive, zero-carbon baseload heat?
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August 29, 2024

Purchasing power: what are generation assets worth?

There has never been more controversy over the fair values of power generation assets, which hinge on their remaining life, utilization, flexibility, power prices, rising grid volatility and CO2 credentials. This 16-page guide covers the fair values of generation assets, hidden opportunities and potential pitfalls.
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Power generation: asset lives?

Power generation asset lives average c70-years for large hydro, 55-years for new nuclear, 45-years for coal, 33-years for gas, 20-25 years for wind/solar and 15-years for batteries. This flows through to LCOE models. However, each asset type follows a distribution of possible asset lives, as tabulated and contrasted in this data-file. Asset lives of power…
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March 13, 2025

European energy: the burial of the dead?

Europe’s energy ambitions are now intractable: It is just not feasible to satisfy former climate goals, new geopolitical realities, and also power future AI data centers. Hence this 18-page report evaluates Europe’s energy options; predicts how policies are going to change; and re-forecasts Europe’s gas and power balances, both to 2030 and to 2050.
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March 20, 2025

Wind energy: beyond good and evil?

Wind economics are not good or bad in absolute terms. They depend on capacity factors, which average 26% globally, but can range from 10% to 60%. In the best locations, levelized costs are below 4c/kWh. Hence this 16-page note explores global wind capacity factors and updates our wind outlook by region throgh 2050.
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