Energy

A surge in new supplies of liquefied natural gas (LNG) is about to hit the global market over the next several years. LNG export projects already under construction worldwide will add up to 175 billion cubic meters (bcm) of LNG capacity by 2020, mainly from Australia and the United States, and additional projects will move ahead as developers line up more customers.
The rise in LNG supplies will encounter substantially lower gas prices than in recent years and a slowdown in global gas demand, raising questions about the economics of LNG projects. For US exporters, liquefaction and tanker transport will add about $5.30 per million British thermal units (mbtu) in costs for LNG sent to Japan. The cost is similar to liquefy, transport, and regasify LNG sent to Europe, where the cost of regasifying LNG needs to be included to compare its price with pipeline gas.1 With average prices for LNG falling below $8 per mbtu in Japan and even lower in Europe, there is little margin for profit even with Henry Hub prices currently at about $2.40 per mbtu.2 However, LNG exporters are likely to continue selling as long as their variable costs can be covered.
For US exporters, the outlook is more favorable for companies who have concluded a final investment decision to go ahead with an LNG export project. Most of these projects are under construction and have much of their planned output already contracted to sell over twenty years. Most of the US sales will not begin until after the next two years, when demand may be stronger.
The majority of Australia’s projects will already be up and running by 2018 and therefore pose less competition for US exporters seeking to acquire new LNG customers. US projects are also ahead of proposed projects offshore East Africa and in the Eastern Mediterranean, which may not come online until after 2020.

After a surge in prosperity over the past decade fueled by rising oil prices, Saudi Arabia’s economy is at an inflection point. We see a real opportunity for the country to inject new dynamism into its economy through a productivity- and investment-led transformation that could help ensure future growth, employment, and prosperity. In a new McKinsey Global Institute report, Saudi Arabia beyond oil: The investment and productivity transformation, we discuss how the country has significant opportunities to transform its economy to become more sustainable and less dependent on oil. Among our findings:

- The oil price boom from 2003 to 2013 fueled rising prosperity in Saudi Arabia, which became the world’s 19th-largest economy. GDP doubled, household income rose by 75 percent, and 1.7 million jobs were created, including jobs for a growing number of Saudi women. The government invested heavily in education, health, and infrastructure and built up reserves amounting to almost 100 percent of GDP in 2014.
- The country can no longer rely on oil revenue and public spending for growth, in the face of a changing global energy market and a demographic transition that will significantly increase the number of working-age Saudis by 2030. The current labor participation rate is 41 percent, and productivity growth of 0.8 percent annually from 2003 to 2013 trailed many emerging economies.
- Our model integrating Saudi Arabia’s economic, labor-market, and fiscal perspectives shows that even if the country responds to these challenging conditions with policy changes such as a budget freeze or immigration curbs, unemployment will rise rapidly, household income will fall, and the fiscal position of the national government will deteriorate sharply.
- However, a productivity-led economic transformation could enable Saudi Arabia to double its GDP again and create as many as six million new jobs by 2030 (exhibit). We estimate this would require about $4 trillion in investment. Eight sectors—mining and metals, petrochemicals, manufacturing, retail and wholesale trade, tourism and hospitality, healthcare, finance, and construction—have the potential to generate more than 60 percent of this growth opportunity.

Vegetation is a threat for electricity transmission when overhead high-tension lines are crossing forest areas. For this reason, Transmission System Operators (TSO) often proceed by regular vegetation destruction in order to prevent any electrical blackout that could be triggered by trees, by contact or by fall.

The innovative LIFE Elia-RTE project (funded partly by EU) decided to think about alternative methods that could ensure not only electrical safety, but also enhance biodiversity ! These methods should aim at protecting species and natural habitats encompassed by the European Natura 2000 legislation. Indeed, for a good ecological state, we need core areas and connection corridors. This is where high-tension lines have a strong potential to be converted as green corridor for biodiversity.

On a 30 years timescale, biodiversity-friendly vegetation management has been estimated to be 1.4 to 3.9 cheaper than traditional vegetation management ! And not only for its cost savings, it also brings many other benefits.

London is not on pace to meet its current emissions target, a 60 per cent reduction by 2025. We call on the next mayor of London to pick up the pace – and provide a plan for how they could pursue an ambitious new target, for London to be a zero-carbon city by 2050.

This presentation-style report sets out nine 'Essentials' and 12 'Desirables' for the next mayor to deliver, if the 2050 emissions target is to be achieved. As well as providing benefits in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, many of these policies and investments will benefit Londoners by promoting economic growth, creating jobs, improving health and life expectancy, saving residents and businesses money and energy, and making London a nicer city to live in.

At the same time, London has a great opportunity to take a global leadership role in city-led climate change action, sharing with and learning from major towns and cities across the UK and internationally.

An annual collection of wide-ranging essays by CSIS experts, 2016 Global Forecast discusses the issues that will matter most to America and the world’s security and prosperity in the year ahead.

Human societies have always been climate dependent, but we are only now coming to grips with the fact that our climate also depends on us. As the second decade of the 21st century gets underway, we now recognize that we are faced with two challenges created by our ever-increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. First, the atmosphere is warming, setting the stage for a host of problems from droughts, extreme weather events, coastal erosion and inundation, to which we have to adapt. And second, we must begin implementing strategies to slow down our greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate the scale of these impacts while putting in place corresponding adaptation measures.

These challenges are particularly problematic for countries and economies in the Asia Pacific. On the one hand, the region is slated to face some of the greatest climate related impacts relative to other regions of the world. On the other, developing economies in the region will see substantial expansions of their middle classes and the greenhouse gas emissions their lifestyles generate.

The future scenario(s) aimed to illustrate how social, economical and political demand could be harnessed to move the Asia Pacific along a path toward putting far less carbon into the atmosphere by 2050. Science and technology development, including technology transfer, that respond to such demand was seen a key driver of this transition and thus was a major focus of the project. The future scenarios and policy recommendations developed from this project were meant to reflect the economic and social conditions among APEC economies and be consistent with their common but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities. While the project’s main focus was on longer-term perspectives, recommendations were to be developed for APEC and member economies that spell out short-term actions that could be taken to more quickly reduce the region’s carbon
footprint.

The low-carbon cities in the APEC region differentiate from each other in terms ways and focuses of development due to their distinctive natural conditions, economic development, industrial structure and cultural tradition. Drawing from the experiences from all the member economies, this report offers suggestions for the development models and toolkit of low-carbon cities.
The concept of Low Carbon City originates in Low Carbon Economy, which was put forward in the context of coping with the global climate change and advocating less greenhouse gases emission during human production and living activities. In 2003, the government of United Kingdom published its "Energy White Paper" entitled "Our Energy Future: Creating a Low Carbon Economy", in which the concept of Low Carbon Economy was first put forward. The White Paper pointed out that Low Carbon Economy means to achieve more economic output by less natural resources consumption and environmental pollution, in order to create approaches and opportunities for a higher living standard and better living conditions, and to provide new business opportunities and more job opportunities for the development, application and output of advanced technologies. Low Carbon Economy gives consideration to both "Low Carbon" and "Economy", of which Low Carbon is a model that humans respond to the climate change to realize sustainable economic and social development. Low Carbon means we must reduce or even stop depending on carbon-based fuel to the greatest extent and realize energy utilization transition and economic transition in the pursuit of economic development; Economy, means we need to maintain a stable and sustainable economic development on the basis and in the course of energy utilization transition, however this concept should not exclude the maximum of development, output, and long-term economic growth.

This report summarizes recent research concerning the major forces and underlying trends that are likely to shape the environment of North America in 2030. The intention of this report is not to present a prediction of the future. Rather, it is to consider the possibilities that the future might hold in light of the environmental and social stresses facing North America and the world at this time.

The report has been produced in response to a request by the Council of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). It complements the CEC’s 2008 report, The North American Mosaic (CEC 2008), which focused on recent environmental trends and divided issues by subject or medium—air and atmosphere, biodiversity and ecosystems, pollutants, and water. This allows for the telling of a coherent story for each issue, but can hide the interconnections among issues. This report takes a more systems approach, following a Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response model. Thus, it follows more directly from the discussion paper prepared for the June 2008 conference, North America 2030: An Environmental Outlook, hosted by the CEC’s Joint Public Advisory Committee (Stratos Inc. and IISD 2008), upon which it expands. Together, these and other initiatives are intended to assist the CEC in the consideration and development of its work program by highlighting possible areas for cooperative action to support environmental mitigation, adaptation and innovation strategies across all three countries.

Several factors restrict the scope of this report. First, as a review, it is necessarily limited to available work to-date. Second, because it takes a North American perspective, the choice was to focus primarily, although not exclusively, on cases where consistent and comparable information is available for Canada, Mexico, and the United States. This precluded using some country-specific data, which provide greater within-country detail and may differ from similar data presented in international data sets. Third, there are numerous aspects of the environment for which historic data are available, but for which there has been no effort to make forward-looking projections. Fourth, each of these restrictions is exacerbated by the desire to include quantitative information as much as possible. Finally, most studies, including those explored here, have tended not to consider in detail the possibility of dramatic, albeit imaginable, surprises that would alter their projections significantly.

How should Europe respond to the increased demands on our food and agriculture systems arising from global population growth, changing diets, and competing demands on agricultural land? This report offers a view on how the EU could play a role in meeting these challenges in the coming decades and sets out some of the options which merit particular attention. It focuses on options for increasing agricultural productivity whilst adapting to the effects of climate change and reducing emissions from agriculture, the means of reversing continued declines in farmland biodiversity, the reduction of food wastage, ways to achieve a more resource-efficient food sector, and the options for using wastes and residues to meet biomaterial and bioenergy needs in a sustainable way. It brings together some of the analysis and results of five commissioned studies in a synthesis, considering the state of play today and some of the key developments on the horizon moving towards 2050. The European Union has strongly developed common environmental and agricultural policies, and a recently reformed Common Agricultural Policy with a greater emphasis on both the environment and innovation, providing Member States with an opportunity to initiate a change in direction. At the same time, there are major challenges to increasing productivity in an appropriate way whilst reducing damage to European agricultural and natural resources and biodiversity. It will be important to produce more with less in Europe and to cut wastage.

The report Future of cohesion policy examines the main issues of debate around the cohesion policy in order to set up the political framework of discussion. Methodologically, this first report is based on an analysis of past debates, predominantly in regional EU fora. Desk-based research was supplemented by thematic discussions with other EU institutions, experts and key stakeholders in the scope of a seminar. Furthermore this study series on the Future of cohesion policy should provide a new impetus to the work of the Committee of the Regions and its members in the policy debates on the efficiency and effectiveness of Cohesion Policy from the perspective of local and regional authorities as well as the main topic of the research: The Cohesion Policy beyond 2020.