Another gloomy week in energy

It has in all honesty been another rather gloomy week for energy. For starters the IEA have told that it will cost $45 trillion to halve world emissions, which is a lot of money in anyone’s book. More worryingly, despite our efforts it appears that energy consumption by UK businesses has been increasing and more widely EU industries within the EU emissions trading scheme have increased their emissions slightly. It would be unfair if I didn’t point out that businesses have been growing economically faster than their emissions, so to some extent growth is being decoupled from emissions.

High fuel prices continue to make motorists grumpy, and evidence emerges that fuel demand in Europe will drop for the first time in a decade this in 2008. Amidst the gloom, it appears that motorists should be having celebrating as the cost of motoring has actually reduced by 4% since 2005. The high cost of fossil fuels does appear to be having a positive effect on the price of carbon under the EU ETS which has shot up by 25% over the past three months.

There have been several proclamations of note over the past week. WWF have launched a report that examines the meaning of carbon ready. It appears that some tension has developed between environmental groups over carbon capture and storage. The UK Government has announced that up to 7,000 off-shore wind turbines could be deployed by 2020. Finally, GM has claimed that they will be launching their all-electric Chevrolet Volt in 2010.

Ending on a positive note, two stories have caught my eye this week. Firstly, the first green TV cable channel, Planet Green, has been launched by Discovery that will deliver eco-tainment to our living rooms. Secondly, Origo Industries claim to have invented a technology that not only captures and stores the CO2 from a vehicle but also uses the same CO2 to feed algae and produce a biofuel that you can use to fuel your car. It sounds too good to be true, but then again…