Energy News Monitoring

Batteries are a very important factor when it comes to de-carbonizing electric power, which is in ever increasing demand for smart phones, laptops, cars and the power grid. The Li-ion technology is currently among the technologies most frequently employed for energy storage on batteries. It is used in electronic devices as well as electric cars. However, there are several drawbacks associated with the use of Li-ion batteries, the most...

Imperial Oil Limited is one of Canada’s largest integrated oil companies. It is occupied with the production and sale of crude oil and natural gas. In Canada, it is a major producer of crude oil and petrochemicals, the largest petroleum refiner and a leading marketer of petroleum products. The company has three main segments: Upstream, Downstream and Chemical. Upstream operations stand for the exploration for and production of crude...

When wind energy blades reach the end of their lifetime they cannot simply be decommissioned and taken to the nearest landfill. Most are as large as the wings of an airplane and need to be cut into several pieces small enough to be loaded onto a truck. Once deposited at the landfill, they remain there because the blades, as they are currently constructed, cannot be recycled.  This is why the number of spent turbine blades is...

Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020 published by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations provides a complete picture of the world's forests and an understanding of how this resource was changing in the period from 1990 to 2020 in 236 countries and territories. According to the report, forested area on the planet is 4.06 billion hectares (ha), which is 31% of the total land area. The largest proportion of...

The 15th edition of the Global Wind Report 2019 released by the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) provides comprehensive datasets on wind industry around the world, based on the newest market data, country profiles and global trends. According to the report, 2019 became the second-best year for wind power historically, with 60.4 GW of wind energy installations globally. This is 19% more than in 2018, when 51.3 GW of new wind energy...

Scientists have been searching for years to find materials which do not need precious metals to produce active and stable reactions in order to discover alternatives to fossil fuel in energy production. The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is a vital part of many of these reactions where water is split in electrolysers to produce hydrogen that can power fuel cells. Now (2020), scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne...

The Global Energy Review 2020 by the International Energy Agency (IEA) analyses the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on global energy demand and emissions, describing it as “the biggest shock since the Second World War”.  According to the released report, overall energy demand will decline 6% in 2020, while global carbon dioxide emissions are projected to fall by about 8%, compared with 2019. In the first quarter of 2020, compared...

Scientists have known for quite some time that when resistance to the flow of ions in solid electrolytes is reduced the efficiency of fuel cells and batteries can be improved. The only obstacle to achieving this goal is that so far, science has failed to discover which material properties are responsible for the resistance. It is common knowledge that solid electrolyte materials consist of many small crystalline regions, so-called...

An independent climate think-tank, Ember, focused on accelerating the global electricity transition from coal to fossil-free has published its new Global Electricity Review, giving insights into electricity generation & demand worldwide. The report presents data for 2019 across 217 countries covering 85% of the world’s electricity production. First and foremost, the report focuses on coal-fired electricity, which fell by 3% (-259 TWh)...

Many processes where electricity is produced also release heat into the atmosphere. This potentially important energy resource often simply evaporates into the air without being put to any further use. Thermal energy storage (TES) is a technology that stores thermal energy by heating or cooling a storage medium so that the stored energy can be used for heating and cooling applications and power generation at a later time. Currently,...