In what could already be described as stunning news – and would become a stunning development if it materialized – is a report by Reuters that the United Arab Emirates (UAE), an OPEC oil producer situated in the Persian Gulf, is “said to be looking at the possibility of importing natural gas from North America.”… Keep reading →
Opec member United Arab Emirates is reportedly considering investing in North American energy assets and possibly importing natural gas as part of the deal. Major oil producers across the Arabian Gulf region – including the Saudis – face tightening gas production and consumption fundamentals, as their domestic energy use soars, greater volumes of associated gas… Keep reading →
Breaking Energy had the honor of touring Masdar City in Abu Dhabi last year – a UAE government-supported initiative to build the world’s most sustainable city – which will house research centers and corporations doing cutting-edge sustainable energy work. Masdar City reached a milestone with the opening of GE’s Ecomagination Clean Tech Hub. “The new… Keep reading →
Amid all the uproar over the US’s surprising oil production growth of the last few years, some oil market watchers may have inflated expectations of just how well-supplied the market is. US onshore oil supply growth has helped to boost global oil market supply, helping to insulate prices from the impact of disruptions, such as… Keep reading →
Companies and engineers worldwide are pursuing grid-scale energy storage technology that would allow distributed renewable energy sources to easily and efficiently feed electricity into centralized power grids. Once economically commercialized, such technology would find a gargantuan market. And a US-based company will jump ahead of the competition next year with its molten salt storage technique.… Keep reading →
Energy companies love to brag about being the world’s largest, first or producing the most of something and the bragging is about to begin. The Shams 1 concentrated solar plant located in the UAE’s Western Region is currently the world’s largest, but not for long, as an enormous project in the US western desert is… Keep reading →
An enormous solar power plant is taking shape in the desert, and Breaking Energy is there to see it.
The project’s importance to the country and region, as growing economies and populations in the Middle East and North Africa require increasing amounts of energy, is self-evident. The fact that an Opec country has taken this step underscores the need to generate electricity from all available sources, particularly sources other than valuable hydrocarbons. Keep reading →
Recently, the U.S. Department of Energy released startling statistics. Not only did last year’s global levels of greenhouse gases jump by the biggest amount on record, but the output was also higher than the worst case scenario outlined by experts just four years ago. The world pumped about 564 million more tons of carbon dioxide into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009. That is a 6% increase.
Against this backdrop, November’s Conference of Parties 17 (COP17) in Durban – the last round of international negotiations ahead of the Rio +20 earth summit next year – could not come at a better time. South Africa’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, this year’s rotating president of the COP series, has stressed that COP17 will be a challenging meeting and seeks to focus the conference on two primary issues: first, how to finance the costs of combating climate change; and second, how to get 194 countries to agree to a second period of the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Keep reading →
