What’s going on with coal in China? Already the world’s largest consumer of the stuff, China has been expected to continue on an upward trajectory in coal use. But last year the trend line turned down – and it appears to be continuing in that direction. The figures suggest the decline in China’s coal use… Keep reading →
Just a month after oil major Royal Dutch Shell announced that it would acquire BG Group, the UK’s third largest energy company, for $70 billion in cash and stock, making it the biggest energy deal in a decade, Shell’s CEO Ben Van Beurden was off to China to convince regulators there that the deal did… Keep reading →
Ten years ago, one could find almost all the Nike shoes labeled as “made-in-China”, but today the word “China” is replaced by “Vietnam”. China is going through immense transitions. Its competitive advantage of cheap labor is gone. Its investment is slowing down to the extent that the export sector hit a record low in the… Keep reading →
Speculation is in the air, but it’s not on Wall Street or at some commodity trader’s desk at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. It comes from China. Earlier this week, both foreign and domestic media reported that two of China’s national oil companies (NOCs), Sinopec and PetroChina, (the country’s two largest oil exploration companies) could merge.… Keep reading →
The gusher of liquefied natural gas ready to set sail on the world market in the next five years creates challenges for traditional gas suppliers, Russia’s Gazprom among them. State-owned Gazprom is Europe’s biggest natural gas supplier, and it has turned east to China in recent years for new growth and a rival market to… Keep reading →
China is in the throes of an environmental meltdown. Its major cities are shrouded in smog and pollution – who can forget images of Beijing leading up to the 2008 Olympics as authorities tried frantically to clear smog-filled skies before the world came calling? Meanwhile, a large portion of the country’s groundwater is contaminated. Not… Keep reading →
They just sit there most of the day and night, storehouses of electricity, doing nothing. So in an era of increasing renewable energy penetration, why not use electric vehicles and their batteries to help make way for more variable renewable energy? It’s an idea that’s been kicked around a lot, and now the Chinese are getting… Keep reading →
Apple’s renewable energy enthusiasm is spreading to China – that was big news last week. But the story’s more interesting player might be SunPower, with its efforts to expand deployment of concentrator photovoltaics (CPV). The two 20-megawatt plants that Apple and SunPower have partnered on in China will use CPV, long thought to be a… Keep reading →
In recent years, Qatar – with a population of only 2 million – has become the quintessential heavyweight in the global liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry. The small Middle Eastern country has been the world’s largest LNG exporter since 2006, and has made spectacular profits, particularly from 2011 to mid-last year, riding the crest of record… Keep reading →
News that China and Iran will try to resurrect their oil and gas relationship mostly took back stage this week to the Royal Dutch Shell-BG Group mega-energy deal of the decade. As a plethora of analysts, commentators and both print and online pundits waxed eloquent over Shell’s proposed $70 billion buyout of the British gas… Keep reading →
