Category: Opinion

December 16 2015

Liebreich: Energy in 2015 – what we got right, and what we got wrong

Michael Liebreich, Chairman of the Advisory Board Bloomberg New Energy Finance Twitter: @MLiebreich In January, as I looked ahead to what we at Bloomberg New Energy Finance thought the year might bring, I wrote about fossil fuel dinosaurs and clean energy mammals. The front pages were full of the battle that had broken out between […]

November 24 2015

McCrone: What is a nation’s real cost of renewables support?

Angus McCrone, Chief Editor Bloomberg New Energy Finance   What do the minerals tourmaline and cordierite, and the much-discussed contemporary garment #TheDress have in common? The answer is that they look different depending on who you are and where you are standing. It is rather the same with energy policy. Subsidy support for renewables is […]

October 27 2015

McCrone: Paris – This time the private sector is playing the good cop

Angus McCrone, Chief Editor Bloomberg New Energy Finance   Climate change conferences, by repute, go as follows: scientists issue grim warnings, NGOs shout out grimmer ones, bureaucrats in stuffy rooms debate the wording of paragraph 38b on page 84, heads of government fly in and take the credit for agreements, or “accords”, that sound important […]

September 29 2015

Liebreich and Blanchard: Thinking about energy – the lure of laziness

By Michael Liebreich, Chairman of the Advisory Board and Charles Blanchard, Head of Gas Analysis Bloomberg New Energy Finance   Forecasting oil prices, as I have noted before, is hard. You build huge data sets of supply curves and stocks; you create complicated demand models; you overlay geopolitical analysis at the deepest level of granularity you […]

August 18 2015

Liebreich: An energy sector transformed must be an energy sector reformed

Michael Liebreich, Chairman of the Advisory Board Bloomberg New Energy Finance Twitter: @MLiebreich   That the world’s energy system has begun a grand transformation to a cleaner, more local future is no longer a controversial statement. The transformation may be furthest advanced in electricity, where renewable energy has made huge strides in the past few […]

July 30 2015

McCrone and Liebreich: Yieldcos – two big questions

By Angus McCrone, Chief Editor and Michael Liebreich, Chairman of the Advisory Board Bloomberg New Energy Finance   One of the big stories in clean energy in recent times has been the emergence of the “yieldco”. In the past 30 months, 15 quoted US and European renewable power ownership vehicles have raised a total of […]

June 29 2015

McCrone: Waking up to 25 years of bewildering change in global power system

Angus McCrone, Chief Editor Bloomberg New Energy Finance   In Woody Allen’s 1973 film Sleeper, the hero – a health food shop owner – wakes up after 200 years in a deep freeze. He is taken aback by many things in the world of 2173, not least as a doctor puts a cigarette in front […]

May 27 2015

McCrone: Electricity demand – the blue whale in the room

Angus McCrone, Chief Editor Bloomberg New Energy Finance As an eight year-old schoolboy, I learned that a judicious flick of a fountain pen can produce a lavish trail of dots of blue ink – done purely for artistic reasons, I assure you. A grown-up version of this was tried by US artist Jackson Pollock during […]

April 27 2015

McCrone: Upbeat Summit hears of the “age of plenty but also competition”

Angus McCrone, Chief Editor Bloomberg New Energy Finance   The barometer has been rising at Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summits. In 2012, the pressure reading signalled that there would be a role for renewables but that it would be constrained by politics and would be as second-fiddle to cheap gas. In 2013, it indicated that […]

March 31 2015

Henbest: Fix the EU ETS, and carbon markets can be serious business

Seb Henbest Bloomberg New Energy Finance Twitter: @SebHenbest   What do the following have in common: New Zealand, South Korea, Switzerland, Kazakhstan, Quebec, Alberta, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, California, Beijing, Guangdong, Hubei, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Tianjin, Tokyo, Kyoto, Saitama and 28 countries in Europe? The answer is, […]