The FT reported yesterday that ‘Funds worth $2.6tn pledge to dump coal’. So, where does the industry go from here? At the recent European Energy Venture Fair (http://bit.ly/1iwmyFU), I heard an excellent talk by Peter Tertzakian (http://bit.ly/1MpLEk7) during which he observed that the oil & gas lobby is doing as much as it can to…
Ok I’m going to start at the beginning, I joined Shell International in The Hague in 1985 as a young engineer because…. well why not and the pay was great. I have worked in the energy industry ever since and today I will not work for industries that develop new reserves of coal or oil…
Investors in the energy and environmental space know that, for better or worse, policy matters. Some examples are obvious, like direct government subsidies for renewable power generation. Others are equally recognisable but have a more indirect impact, like landfill tax. And then there is a large number of ‘micro’policies such as industry- and product-specific standards…
Music festivals have come a long way since the days of Woodstock and the Isle of Wight when, if they didn’t start free, they often became so half way through. These days they are a big business not just in the UK but also in Europe, America and further afield. Perhaps the best illustration of…
The challenge being to look at the chart above. I am all for celebrating successes, of which I can think of many in the renewable energy industry. But while the lowest, dark blue line is moving upwards, I cannot help but notice the red lines above are moving upwards also! Perhaps the only advantage, from…
Some of my colleagues have lived in China and one is fluent in Mandarin, but my recent 10 day trip to meet companies and investors was my first experience of the country. I knew that China was a big market, but this did not prepare me for the vast scale I encountered. In the UK,…
Backing automotive technologies is undoubtedly risky but has huge potential upside given the very large volumes involved. Investors looking at making venture capital investments in this sector will quickly find themselves faced with a choice between 3 types of innovation which can be simplified as: (1) the “evolutionary” process of making the internal combustion engine…
Suffice it to say, initially, that I believe the world’s present-day managed and semi-natural forest areas can sustainably produce a much greater biomass yield than they do, at present, and thus provide reliable energy, with some degree of carbon savings, while incurring no land use change at all. This is what the consultants’ reports tell…
From its origins in the coffee houses of London during the late seventeenth century until now, the modern insurance industry has always been affected by the vagaries of the weather. The Lutine Bell traditionally rang out in the Lloyd’s Building in London to alert underwriters to impending bad news like the sinking of a merchantman…
Climate-driven divestment is all the rage. Recent high-profile announcements by large investors, such as the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, that they are considering selling out of companies whose business relies on the production or consumption of coal has set the cat among the pigeons in the fossil fuels world. The coal lobby has denounced the…