Documents energy economics 89 results

"Following a prolonged and broad-based stagnation, the EU economy resumed growth in the first quarter of this year. As projected in spring, the expansion continued at a subdued, yet steady, pace throughout the second and third quarters, amidst further abating inflationary pressures. The conditions for a mild acceleration of domestic demand appear in place, despite heightened uncertainty. This Autumn Forecast projects real GDP growth in 2024 at 0.9% in the EU and 0.8% in the euro area. For the EU, this is 0.1 pps. lower with respect to spring, while it is unchanged for the euro area. Growth in the EU is expected to pick up to 1.5% in 2025, as consumption is shifting up a gear and investment is set to rebound from the contraction of 2024. In 2026, economic activity is projected to expand by 1.8%, on the back of continued expansion of demand. Growth in the euro area is set to follow similar dynamics and attain 1.3% in 2025 and 1.6% in 2026. The disinflationary process that started towards end-2022 continued over the summer. Notwithstanding a slight pick-up in October, largely driven by energy prices, headline inflation in the euro area is set to more than halve in 2024, from 5.4% in 2023 to 2.4%, before easing more gradually to 2.1% in 2025 and 1.9% in 2026. In the EU, the disinflation process is set to be even sharper in 2024, with headline inflation falling to 2.6%, from 6.4% in 2023, and to continue easing to 2.4% in 2025 and 2.0% in 2026."

"Depuis les premiers puits désormais à sec jusqu'à la quête frénétique d'un après-pétrole, du cartel secret des firmes anglo-saxonnes (les "Sept Soeurs") jusqu'au pétrole de schiste, Or noir retrace l'irrésistible ascension de la plus puissante des industries. Dans cette fresque passionnante, on croise les personnages centraux des cent dernières années - Churchill, Clemenceau, Roosevelt, Staline, Hitler, De Gaulle, Kissinger, sans oublier les présidents George Bush père et fils mais aussi John Rockefeller, probablement l'homme le plus riche de tous les temps, ainsi que des personnalités moins connues ayant joué des rôles décisifs, tels Calouste Gulbenkian, Abdullah al-Tariki ou Marion King Hubbert.
Ce livre éclaire d'un jour inattendu des événements cruciaux- l'émergence de l'URSS, la crise de 1929, les deux guerres mondiales, les chocs pétroliers, les guerres d'Irak, la crise de 2008, etc. -, bousculant au passage beaucoup de fausses certitudes. Le pétrole, notre source primordiale et tarissable de puissance, est présent à l'origine des plus grands déchaînements du siècle passé, comme du sucre versé sur une fourmilière.
Jusqu'à une date récente, l'emprise du pétrole s'oubliait ; elle allait tellement de soi. Croissance, climat, guerre, terrorisme ; cette emprise ressurgit aujourd'hui à travers de gigantesques menaces. Or notre avenir dépend de celui que nous donnerons au pétrole, ou bien de celui qu'il nous imposera. La fin du pétrole, en tant que carburant de l'essor de l'humanité, devrait se produire bien avant que ce siècle ne s'achève.
De gré ou de force. Et nul ne peut dire où cette fin va nous conduire..."

"The number of countries announcing pledges to achieve net-zero emissions over the coming decades continues to grow. But the pledges by governments to date – even if fully achieved – fall well short of what is required to bring global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050 and give the world an even chance of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 °C.

This special report is the world's first comprehensive study of how to transition to a net zero energy system by 2050 while ensuring stable and affordable energy supplies, providing universal energy access, and enabling robust economic growth. It sets out a cost-effective and economically productive pathway, resulting in a clean, dynamic and resilient energy economy dominated by renewables like solar and wind instead of fossil fuels. The report also examines key uncertainties, such as the roles of bioenergy, carbon capture and behavioural changes in reaching net zero."

"The paper investigates how a carbon price could halt the comeback of coal, which started in the early 2000s. Since the year 2000, coal has provided roughly 40 per cent of global primary energy growth. The success of coal in the primary energy mix is due to the fact that it is abundant, cheap, and most often a domestic resource. However, global coal reserves, if burnt, would surpass the remaining carbon budget for a 2°C target by a factor of two. The paper shows that a carbon price of 25–100 USD per tonne of CO2 would be needed to phase out coal in the power sector, depending on the technology and the world region, even when assuming significant technological progress."

"Mientras nos golpea la crisis económica y social, en el horizonte asoma otra aún mayor: la crisis energética. El actual modelo, basado en la explotación intensiva e irresponsable de las fuentes de energía, y que ha hecho posible el desarrollo capitalista, toca a su fin por el agotamiento de los recursos fósiles, la competencia por los mismos, su mayor coste y los efectos ambientales derivados de un sistema ecológicamente insostenible. Las consecuencias de esta crisis serán enormes en términos económicos y sociales, pero también naturales y humanos. En el caso español se agrava por la dependencia del exterior y el mantenimiento de un modelo energético irracional e ineficiente. Estamos obligados a un cambio radical, y la salida de la actual crisis pasa también por construir una nueva cultura energética, que permita otro modelo productivo, una alternativa sostenible basada en las energías renovables, y una democratización de los recursos."

"Due to their initial lack of emphasis on energy and natural resources, exogenous and endogenous growth models have suffered the same critic regarding the limits to economic growth imposed by finite Earth resources. Thus, various optimal control models that incorporate energy or natural resources have been developed during the last decades. However, in all these models the importance of the Energy Return On Energy Investment (EROI) has never been raised. The EROI is the ratio of the quantity of energy delivered by a given process to the quantity of energy consumed in this same process. Hence, the EROI is a measure of the accessibility of a resource, meaning that the higher the EROI the greater the amount of net energy delivered to society in order to support economic growth. The present article build a bridge upon the vacuum lying between the different literatures related to endogenous economic growth, the EROI and the necessary transition from nonrenewable to renewable energy. We provide an endogenous economic growth model subject to the physical limits of the real world (i.e. fossil and renewable energy production costs have functional forms that respect physical constraints). The model is able to reproduce (based on world data) an increasing reliance on fossil fuels from an early renewable era and the subsequent inevitable transition towards complete renewable energy that human will have to deal with in a not-too-far future. Through simulation we define the conditions for having a smooth transition from fossil to renewable energy and we study in which circumstances this transition can have negative impacts on economic growth (peak followed by a degrowth phase). In such cases, the implementation of a carbon tax can partially smooth this unfortunate dynamics depending on the ways of use of the carbon tax income."

"La synthèse issue du débat sur la transition énergétique a établi que l'objectif de réduction des consommations d'énergie ne peut être atteint uniquement par le recours à l'innovation technologique. Non seulement cette dernière n'est pas d'emblée appropriable, mais les gains qu'elle génère ont des effets de rebonds – plus la technique est économe, plus l'usage s'amplifie. Par ailleurs, la progression du confort est une dynamique collective qui fait progresser la demande d'électricité. Dans ce contexte, la montée en puissance des énergies renouvelables et l'amélioration des performances énergétiques ne suffisent pas. Les pouvoirs publics misent ainsi sur une évolution des comportements des consommateurs. Après les écogestes, c'est la sobriété énergétique qui devient le nouvel impératif. L'objectif est un mode de vie global moins consommateur d'énergie."

"It has been shown that international cooperation in achieving renewable energy targets, e.g., via a common tradable green certi ficate market, increases overall welfare. However, cooperation in the support of electricity from renewable energy sources also leads to regional price effects, from which some groups benefit while others lose. On a regional level, the introduction of cross-border cooperation in RES-E support generally has an opposite effect on support expenditures and wholesale electricity prices, as long as grid congestion between the diff erent regions exists. In this paper, a theoretical model is used to analyze under which conditions different groups benefi t or suff er from the introduction of cooperation. Findings of the analysis include that eff ects on consumers and total producers per country can only be clearly determined if no grid congestions between the countries exist. If bottlenecks in the transmission system exist, the relationship between the slopes of the renewable and the non-renewable marginal generation cost curves for electricity generation as well as the level of the RES-E target essentially determine whether these groups benefi t or lose from the introduction of green certi ficate trading. In contrast, system-wide welfare always increases once cooperation in RES-E support is introduced. Similarly, welfare on the country level always increases (compared to a situation without RES-E cooperation) if the countries are perfectly or not at all physically interconnected. In the case of congested interconnectors, each country always at least potentially benefi ts from the introduction of certi ficate trade, taking into account possible distributions of congestion rents between the countries."

"La plupart des efforts actuels visant à contrer la catastrophe écologique appréhendée se concentrent sur la recherche de gains d'efficacité énergétique. Voitures hybrides, transports collectifs électriques et autres éoliennes, même s'ils sont encore très marginaux, incarnent l'espoir que le progrès technique permette le maintien d'une croissance capitaliste durable. Selon le journaliste David Owen, la popularité de ces solutions tient surtout au fait qu'elles ouvrent de nouvelles frontières à notre soif perpétuelle de consommer des produits à la fine pointe de la technologie. Car la cible, elle, s'éloigne de plus en plus : en effet, chaque gain d'efficacité énergétique apporté par la science et l'industrie se traduit en réalité par une consommation globale surmultipliée. Ce phénomène, l'"effet rebond" des gains d'efficacité, est connu depuis le XIXe siècle, mais encore largement ignoré. Dans "Vert paradoxe", l'auteur multiplie les exemples, rencontres et anecdotes pour illustrer le piège dans lequel nous nous enferrons et décortique les nombreux paradoxes des prétendues solutions vertes. Le problème central n'est pas de modifier notre consommation, mais de la réduire. Sous la plume alerte de ce journaliste du "New Yorker", "Vert Paradoxe" dissipe un à un les mirages du développement durable."