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Photo: Alenka Lena KlopčičSTORY Confirms Storage Technology Maturity; Cost and Reliability Still Unclear
August 3, 2020 | Alenka Lena KlopčičElectricity | RES and EE | New technologies
Two years into the Slovenia-based demonstration case of STORY, one of the projects currently underway in the country to demonstrate the technological solutions needed for the operation of local energy communities, its key achievements include successful integration of the storage unit into the grid, its operation, and its connection to the power distributor Elektro Gorenjska’s remote control...
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Photo: Roman PeklajAI in Energy: Data Becoming More Valuable Than Energy
July 31, 2020 | Alenka Lena KlopčičRES and EE | New technologies | Economy | Startup
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been receiving renewed interest from businesses and academia in recent years. In 2017 the thought-leader NBER held a conference to set a research agenda on the economics of AI, while the tech giant Google announced its ‘AI first’ strategy. The following year, McKinsey counted more than 400 use cases of AI and this number is continuing to grow rapidly. This was...
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Photo: Ana Vučina VršnakSustainable Recovery Demands Low-Carbon Energy Technologies
July 29, 2020 | Alenka Lena KlopčičEnergy policy | CO2 emissions | New technologies | Economy
“As the levels and rates of global decarbonisation increase in order to meet international goals, carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) is becoming an even more vital clean energy technology. The wide-spread deployment of CCUS across the power and industrial sectors is critical in meeting various global carbon emission reduction targets.” This was the message conveyed in a recent...
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Photo: Roman PeklajEmber: Renewables Beat Fossil Fuels in EU Power Generation For the First Time
July 28, 2020 | Tanja SrnovršnikElectricity | Natural gas | RES and EE | Coal
Renewable electricity generation exceeded fossil fuel generation in Europe in the first half of 2020 for the first time ever. Thus, in the first half of 2020, renewables – wind, solar, hydro and bioenergy – generated 40% of the EU-27’s electricity, whereas fossil fuels generated 34%, said the climate policy think tank Ember in a report last week....
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Photo: Roman PeklajDynamic Regulation and Digitalisation for a Renewable-Powered Future
July 27, 2020 | Alenka Lena KlopčičElectricity | RES and EE | New technologies
Peer-to-peer power trading will contribute 36% to the so-called smart contracts for decentralised renewables, which are part of the blockchain technologies, grid management and system operation will account for 24%, financing renewable energy development will have a 12% share, while electric mobility as well as the management of renewable energy certificates will both contribute 11%, enumerated...
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Photo: GCAEU Gas Import Bill Fell to Under EUR 10bn in Q1 2020
July 21, 2020 | Tanja SrnovršnikNatural gas
The EU's estimated gas import bill fell to the lowest in the last six years, amounting to EUR 9.8 billion in the first quarter of 2020, down from EUR 18.7 billion (by 48%) from Q1 2019, principally owing to falling import prices (-44%) and decreasing imports, wrote the European Commission in its latest quarterly report on European gas markets....
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Photo: © Jenny Woodworth/Dreamstime.comUp to 90% of Existing Pipeline Infrastructure Can Be Reused For Hydrogen
July 21, 2020 | Valerija HozjanNatural gas | New technologies
Hydrogen is needed to store and transport renewable electricity to where there is demand, whereby 80-90% of the existing pipeline infrastructure can be reused for hydrogen, stressed professor Ad van Wijk from TU Delft in the Netherlands in a webinar on Wednesday titled ‘Hydrogen, Renewables and Open Borders. The Winning Hand for a Net-Zero Economy’. “The clean hydrogen market is viewed as...
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Photo: Alenka Lena KlopčičSlovenia’s HESS: Pilot Hydrogen Project Could Be Launched in 2022
July 20, 2020 | Valerija HozjanElectricity | New technologies
“The European Union (EU) strategy builds on the objective of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, and the European Commission has recognised hydrogen technologies as one of the important measures to achieve this goal,” said the Slovenian hydropower company Hidroelektrarne na Spodnji Savi (HESS), which signed a co-financing agreement with Slovenia’s...
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Photo: Roman PeklajNuclear Power Can Provide Electricity Infrastructure With Long-Term Resilience
July 17, 2020 | Peter PalčecElectricity | RES and EE | Energy policy | CO2 emissions
“Nuclear energy, both new nuclear projects and the long-term operation of existing reactors, can play a key role in the post-COVID-19 economic recovery efforts by boosting economic growth in the short term, while supporting, in a cost-effective manner, the development of low-carbon resilient electricity infrastructure in the long term,” states a policy brief titled ‘Building low-carbon...
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Photo: Roman PeklajShould Greening Existing Infrastructure Be Prioritised Over New RES Projects?
July 16, 2020 | Peter PalčecElectricity | Natural gas | Oil and oil derivates | RES and EE | Energy policy
“Focusing on new green investments without taking a holistic view of existing infrastructure can be really problematic when talking about CO2 emission reductions. A good example of this is energy generation in Germany, which is a frontrunner of investments in renewable energy sources (RES). However, these new RES capacities are mostly replacing the already carbon-free nuclear capacities, while...
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