Webinars

Somehow, the world’s utilities and electricity providers have to plan for two big temperature-related adjustments. This is to increase air-conditioning as the world warms, and to switch heat from the fuels it uses today onto electricity.

Rethink Energy senior analyst Peter White shows you how we devised a model to predict these changes, published in the accompanying forecast Warming and Cooling – double whammy for the grid.

We put hard numbers on cooling spend and electricity home heat and show you how a growth of some 1,500 TWh in power increases across the top electricity using societies.

These are twin problems that must be solved in the same time frame – shifting home heating from the wood, coal and gas fossil fuels which they rely on today to renewables, at the same time as we accommodate soaring temperatures which immobilize workforces in the struggle for national competitiveness.

We confined our report to the top 21 countries in terms of electricity output, representing about 84% of global electricity today.

In each country we assess, the problem and therefore the solution are different.

As the planet warms, more and more countries shift from the heating transition into one where cooling becomes more important.

Rethink Energy’s new report, Renewables Set to Unlock $2.2 Trillion Green Steel Monster outlines how soaring margins in the wake of Covid-19 will drive an imminent wave of investment into a new generation of ‘Green Steel.’ Powered by a surge in scrap availability, 4,500 TWh of renewable power, and 60 million tons of green hydrogen per year, the report sets out a pathway for an 82% reduction in CO2 output by the 2050.

This 30-minute presentation hosted by Rethink’s Senior Analyst and lead author of the report Harry Morgan was followed by a 15-minute Q&A session.

The webinar will aim to answer the following questions:

• Why will steel will not follow coal, oil and gas, in reaching peak demand by 2050?
• How come recycled steel can only provide half the answer to a net zero future?
• How quickly will hydrogen-based DRI displace bio-fuel/CCUS innovation?
• Why is Sweden set to lay the foundations for an Indian revolution?

And most importantly

• How can steelmaking set itself on course for a zero emissions future?

As the global energy system transitions away from fossil fuels, its synthesis between industries – including steelmaking – will become stronger than ever. Dramatic change in both supply- and demand-side economics will become increasingly driven by the desire to decarbonize. Those that resist this transition will be left in the dust by those that adopt ‘green’ practices – don’t let your business be one of them.

A new company called Breeze is being formed around a brilliant idea to turn dormant pipelines into a transmission network for renewable energy.

There are over 3 million pipelines in the US today, and a growing number of them are being idled. Breeze wants to turn this network of stranded assets into Green Energy highways.

Breeze is looking for partners, licensees and pipeline owners who are interested in generating revenue from defunct pipelines and join the green, zero-pollution energy market.

Breeze is putting together a use case for what it calls a Compressed Air Pipeline Systems (CAPS). It proposes that any existing gas or oil pipeline can be turned into a transmission system for renewables, and one that has a built-in system of overnight storage. This can be to replace or supplement traditional cable connections to the grid.

Breeze is putting the finishing touches to a detailed plan to use compressed air to store, transport and generate electricity. Breeze will store power within pipelines simply by letting air compress further inside them. The system will need a small heat source to heat the compressed air on exit from the pipeline, allowing it to spin turbines to generate electricity. While this tiny portion of the energy used might be supplied by fossil fuels at the outset, Breeze is working on the cheapest way to take that legacy power source out of the equation.

Much of this can happen converting retired coal and gas plants, and using their capacity to the generate energy for the grid.

Rethink Energy will interview Breeze at this webinar and answer questions about the price-efficiency of its proposed system.

Rethink Energy held a one hour discussion under the title  “Energy Through the Looking Glass – what will stock markets look like after the energy transition”

The webinar was framed around the sight of Alice peering through a Looking Glass and seeing the future of Energy and all the related markets.

What would she see?

Illustrated with slides and visuals, Peter White, CEO and founder of Rethink Technology Research painted his vision of a fight between Tesla class superstocks, which ignore financial fundamentals and promise the earth, threatening every 100 year old company with extinction.

Carbon Trust’s Energy Strategist Kingsmill Bond talked about the Terminal Decline in fossil fuel groups and what they must do to avoid their fate.

Q&As were included in the final third.

Held September 15th, 2020

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Publisher

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Held as a one hour webinar “Who will be the Tesla of Green Hydrogen Production?” was a discussion about the future of low–cost, clean, green hydrogen production at scale. And furthermore, could a Tesla-like player who comes along to gobble up the market?

Led by Harry Morgan & Peter White |  Research Analysts at Rethink Energy

Panellists:

Jean Louis Kindler | Co-Founder and CEO | Ways2H
Vaitea Cowan | Co-founder | Enapter
Grant Strem | CEO | Proton Technologies
Luc Graré | VP Sales & Marketing | Nel

There is a general understanding in the US that lithium-ion is already the technology of choice in this business.

But should longer periods of more than 4 hours, for instance 10 to 12 hours, or even longer, require a different technology and perhaps even an entirely different approach?

Rethink Energy would like to invite you to a one hour discussion webinar, under the title “Can Lithium-Ion batteries play in 10 hour capacity markets, or do we need another technology.”

Right now, the energy storage market is on fire, as more and more utilities and grids finds themselves faced with adequacy shortfalls.

There is a general understanding in the US that lithium-ion is already the technology of choice in this business.

But should longer periods of more than 4 hours, for instance 10 to 12 hours, or even longer, require a different technology and perhaps even an entirely different approach?

Join us and a panel of energy storage leaders to come together and discuss the future of energy storage, past 2025, when ten hour markets and longer will begin to emerge.

Live Webinar  |  June 30, 2020
Presented by Peter White  |  Principal Analyst of Rethink Energy & Founder Rethink Research

With special guests:
Stefan Schauss  |  President, Essgrid
Marek Kubik  |  Market Director, Fluence Energy
Charlie Blair  |  Managing Director, Gravitricity
Maximilian Schumacher  |  Business Development Manager, Siemens Gamesa

We began asking the question, if renewables are now at pricing parity, how long before they can outbid gas turbines on the electricity grid?

It seems obvious that as solar plus battery, or wind plus battery systems became more widely installed, they would become cheaper.

And if they became cheaper, then their combined LCOE (Levelized Cost of Energy) would outrank all gas-fired turbines. If they take the peaker load from them, as a means of power generation, is it all over for gas?

We started putting together numbers. It’s tough work: gas pricing, LCOE price falls, volumes of batteries manufactured and installed, etc.

Natural gas heading for a $1 trillion crisis

In the end it was a simple calculation, could gas turbines continue to compete from new by 2026? The answer is quite startling and you can hear about it in the webinar.

What about existing gas-fired turbines on the grid? Could they survive, even if capex was already committed? It’s a similar story…

The webinar was on Tuesday May 19^th 2020

Hosted by senior analyst, Peter White and joined by wind power specialist, Harry Morgan, the webinar was held to explain our new quarterly tracking service for Wind, coinciding with the launch of our first quarterly report entitled, “Wind soars in 2019, faces struggle through Covid-19, as subsidies fall.”

The service is introduced alongside 3 further tracking services – on solar, energy storage and hydrogen, as part of Rethink Energy, the weekly news analysis service.

We entered the energy market with Rethink Energy in early 2019, and produced its first forecast in June 2019, and has so far produced four fully fledged forecasts, predicting out initially to 2030, but with our offshore wind forecast pushing out 20 years to 2040 we have decided to keep 20 year horizons for all future forecasts.

Rethink is in the midst of launching a series of quarterly updated reports – the first two in wind and solar – followed swiftly by tracking of energy storage projects and trends, and another on the scaling up of a new hydrogen economy. They’re all helping us build the perspective to see beyond merely project pipeline oriented forecasts.

The first of these services is doing little more than count completed projects, auction awards and fresh capacity brought online, but this is just the starting point. We’re building deeper industry contacts and getting them to share their thinking in interviews with us, report on government stimulus at every level in the energy food chain and how each country is planning to transition renewables into an era of parity with fossil fuels.

Hosted by solar power industry specialist, Peter White, the webinar was held to explain our new quarterly tracking service for solar, which has just been launched with our first report entitled, “Solar PV continues to break records in 2019 before Covid-19 interruption.”

This service is introduced alongside 3 further tracking services – on wind, energy storage and hydrogen, as part of Rethink Energy, the weekly news analysis service.

We entered the energy market with Rethink Energy in early 2019, and produced its first forecast in June 2019, and has so far produced four fully fledged forecasts, predicting out initially to 2030 with all future forecasts pushing out 20 years to 2040.

Rethink will now launch a series of quarterly updated reports – these first two in solar and wind – followed swiftly by tracking of energy storage projects and trends, and another on the scaling up of a new hydrogen economy, will all help us build the perspective to see beyond merely project pipeline oriented forecasts.

We concede that at first our services will do little more than count completed projects, auction awards and fresh capacity brought online, but this is just the starting point. We will build deeper industry contacts and get them to share their thinking in interviews with us, report on government stimulus at every level in the energy food chain and how each country plans to transition renewables into an era of parity with fossil fuels.

Hosted by senior energy analyst, Peter White and joined by Wind Power specialist, Harry Morgan, this webinar set our to explore our latest report entitled “Offshore wind to drive 8m jobs, is key to decarbonization”.

It’s a comprehensive global study on the technology and key drivers behind a market which is showing no signs of slowing down in the next two decades.

However, offshore wind targets over the next five years will largely be missed – but this will lead to an installation rush during the 2030s. it will drive the creation of 8 million jobs globally and lead to the build out of over 400 GW of electricity generating capacity by 2040.

By 2030 offshore wind capacity will only rise from 25 GW today to 163 GW, but will kick on once again as floating wind turbines emerge as a separate extra market during the 2030s. This will drive annual offshore wind installations towards 30 GW a year, leaving the world with 411 GW of wind energy by 2040, providing almost 5% of global electricity.