The world's best thinkers on energy and climate
The European Investment Bank has approved a loan to the Southern Gas Corridor, in a move environmentalists described as a “historical mistake”, writes Karl Mathiesen of Climate Home News. The move brings the total public backing for Europe’s biggest fossil fuel project to $3.5 billion. … [Read more...]
Assessing Our Buildings: Financing Energy Efficiency through Mortgage Loans examines a number of real estate finance offerings that require or recommend a Property Condition Assessment (PCA)/Physical Needs Assessment (PNA) and why it’s important for a building owner or lender to request a building assessment that takes energy efficiency into consideration. … [Read more...]
The nation needs a government backed investment bank to secure capital at reasonable interest rates for development of advanced nuclear reactors. This blog post describes the kinds of mechanisms that could be developed to provide the capital and financing mechanisms that are the missing links in the chain of events that need to be completed for nuclear start-ups to get the one thing they need most – customers. There is a whole ecosystem of … [Read more...]
If you spend any time with the energy efficiency crowd, you will often hear us call it the lowest cost energy resource out there. What you will never hear us say is that energy efficiency is free. Efficiency can do many great things: It saves money, cuts pollution, increases productivity, and creates jobs. What it can’t do is defy one of the fundamental laws that governs all investments—it takes money to make money. We want to get money … [Read more...]
As the stock market soared to new heights after the Great Recession, so too did energy efficiency financing. Our new paper, Energy Efficiency Finance: A Market Reassessment provides an overview of structures that are working in the energy efficiency finance industry today, which markets still remain elusive, and what opportunities the future may hold.Energy efficiency financing has come a long way in the last few years. In a 2011 paper, … [Read more...]
Providing access to electricity is a pressing need for over a billion people on this planet. Off-grid solutions, such as small-scale micro-grids or individual solar home systems, can be attractive in areas where the centralized grid may not have reached. However, the high overhead and transaction costs associated with providing off-grid solutions can be problematic for these businesses. A common challenge cited by businesses in this sector … [Read more...]
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, based on Norwegian Petroleum DirectorateNorwegian petroleum and other liquids production, which had been declining since 2001, increased in 2014 and will likely continue increasing in 2015. The production growth in 2014 was mainly the result of new fields coming online, but also included a small increase in output from existing fields. Production has continued to grow in the first half of 2015 and … [Read more...]
Every few months — or constantly, depending on your attention span — we hear another round of passionate recommendations that fossil fuel subsidies be phased out to level the playing field for clean energy. Most recently, World Bank president Jim Yong Kim emphasized that “we need to get rid of fossil fuel subsidies now” in his agenda for promoting clean energy.Sounds like a sensible goal, but there’s reason to think that … [Read more...]
According to Ceres, the non-profit advocacy group dedicated to sustainability leadership, “In order to limit global warming to 2°C and avoid the worst effects of climate change, the world needs to invest an additional $44 trillion in clean energy—more than $1 trillion per year for the next 36 years.”Financing these investments at a nominal rate of only 5.3 % interest over 30 years would double their cost, making many projects unaffordable. It … [Read more...]
Randall Abramson, CFA, is CEO and portfolio manager of Trapeze Asset Management Inc., a firm he cofounded in 1999 shortly after founding its affiliate broker dealer, Trapeze Capital Corp. Abramson was named one of Canada's 'Stock Market Superstars' in Bob Thompson's Stock Market Superstars: Secrets of Canada's Top Stock Pickers (Insomniac Press, 2008). Trapeze's separately managed accounts are long/short or long only, and have either an all-cap … [Read more...]
IEEFA (Institute for Energy, Economics and Financial Analysis) has issued a new report on Teck Resources and Canadian oil sands investments. Energy Policy Forum collaborated.To read the full report:Teck Resources_Rough Road on Oil Sands Investments_April 2015Executive Summary Teck Resources, a Canadian company that dates from the early 1900s and that built its business on mining of minerals and metallurgical coal, has ventured more recently into … [Read more...]
As low energy prices in the United States continue to solidify the country’s position as an ideal investment location for companies, my company is on the ground making sure these investment projects flourish. Offering investment solutions ranging from advisory services to debt and equity capital, financing companies like mine help energy and natural resource markets address tomorrow’s energy needs by building solutions today. As we see huge … [Read more...]
Quite often we hear about the problem of attracting financing to support new build nuclear projects. In fact financing will be a topic of major interest at a number of upcoming nuclear conferences. While it is easy to agree that financing nuclear projects is a big challenge, in my view difficulty securing financing is not the issue – rather it is a symptom of a number of other very important issues that are the root cause. Necessary conditions to … [Read more...]
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