Category: Opinion

February 24 2015

Young: Summit 2015 to focus on the “four pillars” of the electric utility

William Young, Director of Summit Bloomberg New Energy Finance Twitter: @wr_young “So when any of the four pillars of government, are mainly shaken, or weakened (which are religion, justice, counsel, and treasure), men had need to pray for fair weather.” So said Francis Bacon, the eminent Seventeenth Century scientist and philosopher and, according to one […]

January 27 2015

Liebreich: 10 predictions for clean energy in 2015

Michael Liebreich, Chairman of the Advisory Board Bloomberg New Energy Finance Twitter: @MLiebreich   For the last two years, I have drawn on Russian imagery to illustrate the state of the clean energy industry. In 2013, it was the battle of Borodino: the clean energy sector had suffered a bruising time, but it had survived […]

January 27 2015

Liebreich: Predicting oil prices is difficult, particularly ones in the future

Michael Liebreich, Chairman of the Advisory Board Bloomberg New Energy Finance Twitter: @MLiebreich The single question I have been asked more than any other over the past few months is what effect the recent collapse in oil prices will have on clean energy. Bloomberg New Energy Finance remains of the view that the impact will […]

December 16 2014

Liebreich: The energy system in 2014 – did the ice really crack?

Michael Liebreich, Chairman of the Advisory Board Bloomberg New Energy Finance For my “10 Predictions” VIP Comment article in January, I used a metaphor borrowed from the end of winter in Russia, talking of cracking ice on the River Neva in St Petersburg. I pointed out that systemic change, like the breaking-up and melting of […]

November 25 2014

McCrone and Bullard: Fossil Fuel Divestment – Slippery transition or financial shock?

By Angus McCrone, Chief Editor and Nathaniel Bullard, Director of Content Bloomberg New Energy Finance   Market economies have two, apparently contradictory, characteristics. One is the ability to prosper despite periods of hectic transition. The other is to slip on banana skins on a regular basis. Frequently, those banana skins can be spotted in advance […]

October 28 2014

Liebreich: Nuclear – the thin end of a failing wedge

By Michael Liebreich, Chairman of the Advisory Board Bloomberg New Energy Finance Just over a decade ago, Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow of Princeton University published “Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies”. They postulated that if sufficient investment was made in a number of technology “wedges”, a […]

September 29 2014

McCrone: Green bonds – Where’s the beef?

Angus McCrone, Chief Editor Bloomberg New Energy Finance In the race for the Democratic Party nomination in the 1984 US Presidential election, Senator Gary Hart was the up-and-coming man: good-looking, bouffant-haired, cowboy boot wearing, and full of “new ideas”. His candidature was eventually punctured when his rival, Walter Mondale, borrowed a line from a Wendy’s […]

August 26 2014

Liebreich: Climate change talks – the rocky road to Paris

By Michael Liebreich Chairman of the Advisory Board Bloomberg New Energy Finance To download the full VIP Comment in PDF format, click here. Albert Einstein once said that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome was the definition of insanity. How then are we to view the continuing attempts […]

July 31 2014

McCrone: Six eye-catchers in our 2030 picture of world energy

By Angus McCrone Chief Editor Bloomberg New Energy Finance To download the full VIP Comment in PDF format, click here. Spotting important details on a large canvas can be difficult, whether it is Suleiman The Magnificent sitting anachronistically at a table in Paolo Veronese’s The Wedding at Cana or, in a different art form, Elon […]

July 4 2014

Bhavnagri: What the world can learn from Australia’s low-carbon agonies

By Kobad Bhavnagri Head of Australia Bloomberg New Energy Finance To download the full VIP Comment in PDF format, click here. Australia is home to a whole host of weird and wonderful animals. Enormous, flightless birds. Mammals that lay eggs. Trees that only germinate saplings after fires and stocky birds that love to swim. Its […]