Webinars

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.