The energy industry is being reshaped by decentralization, digitization, technologies, changes in the demand for renewables , prices and greater sustainability as a matter of public policy. As the risks change, so do the opportunities.
Lately, the energy sector is more volatile than ever and we are not only talking about prices, which is normal, interesting things are happening around the world and today It's time to review them in summary mode.
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The first floating and mobile nuclear power plant has already been moves around the world installed on a ship and is in Russia.
The plant known as "Akademik Lomonosov" will become at the northernmost nuclear power plant on Earth destined to replace an aging coal-fired power plant that supplies electricity to more than 50,000 people in Chukotka.
Estimates of this mobile nuclear plant installed in a ship is that it can operate without the need to refuel for more than 3 years.
Its facilities (the ship's crew is 70 members) will have sufficient energy to illuminate and heat a city of approximately 100,000 inhabitants.
Of course, Greenpeace has already warned that this is directly crazy if we see the history of accidents nuclear weapons in Russia without counting that it will move in waters of very difficult access in case of an accident.
An engineer from the University of California (Los Angeles) has developed a device that generates energy in conditions of total darkness.
The prototype was published in Joule magazine, it works under the concept of radiative cooling of the sky to maintain the cold side of a various thermoelectric generator degrees below room temperature.
The concept tries to take advantage of the energy that is generated after sunset, when the temperature of the building structure descends to be colder than from the surrounding air.
Although the demo implemented was low cost and was produced just enough power to light an LED, Obviously, there is a long way to go if intended to use as a battery storage option for solar cells, but we are facing a new way of research to generate light from darkness.
The rise of renewable energy technologies creates employment opportunities throughout the supply chain worldwide world. At the end of 2018, the sector employed 11 million of people around the world, according to the recent report posted by IREAN from Renewable Energy and Jobs.
More countries are manufacturing, marketing and installing renewable energy technologies. While leading markets as the United States, China and the European Union welcomed the higher concentration of jobs, other Asian countries have emerged as exporters of photovoltaic solar panels (PV), says the report.
Photovoltaic solar energy continues to be the major employer among renewable energy technologies in 2018 , representing a third of the workflow of the sector.
Asia, home to more than 3 million jobs in the photovoltaic sector. Latin American countries too experienced growth, in line with the increase in the regional demand for photovoltaic energy.
While China was ahead of Europe in investment offshore wind in 2018, the US and South African markets North have also begun to turn experience into oil and gas in offshore wind jobs. the energies off-grid renewables, along with expanding access to electricity, have contributed to job creation in all of Africa and Asia.
Many governments have given priority to the development of renewable energy, first of all, to reduce emissions and meet international climate goals, but also, to obtain more socioeconomic benefits spacious.
One of the main and most expensive components of rechargeable batteries is lithium, therefore the final price of a battery will depend - in part - on this wonderful metal.
A few years ago the automotive sector was preaching that the scarcity of this material was a hardship for the advancement of the electric car. well this year the value of lithium has fallen by 30% and it is not for a divine apparition, just new mines have been opened in Australia.
For now! another excuse less that prevents the advancement of the electric car.
Researchers at L’Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) have calculated that they can recover the heat accumulates in subway tunnels.
The heat that comes from the subway brakes, from the engines, people, and ground heat in general should be be used to heat thousands of homes.
According to the investigation, the system should work similar to a refrigerator, with a network of pipes containing a special fluid or just water to transfer heat inside the tunnel walls and connect them to pumps heat.
In winter, cold water would be bombarded into the pipes and emergeria heats the surface, the other way around, in summer. According to researchers, it would be an economical and very efficient system with a useful life of more than 50 years (heat pumps would be replaced every 25 years)
Even, in reality, energy could be extracted, although the investment in facilities would be much higher, but it is a viable option.
New technologies are providing benefits tangible in the efficiency of the renewable sector, but as is being verified, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data they are taking them to a new level.
To give examples:
Remember our article on Artificial Intelligence applied to architecture, very interesting!
The electric automotive sector is booming and not all They are electric cars. Lately public transport electricity, mainly buses, are taking the streets of many cities.
According to the latest report Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables on the panorama of electric buses at the national level international… “globally, electric buses are will triple by 2025.”
Although we are not all going at the same pace – we can see the following graphs – yes there is an upward trend at the level that will benefit us all.
Of course, and as we already explained in this article, China is in the lead accounting for a whopping 98% of the global market in the adoption of electric buses in its streets . The Chinese market, the most promising in the sector, will exceed one million electronic buses in 2023 and it will reach 1.3 million by 2025, according to the report.
To support this high concentration of E-buses, a a total of more than 50,000 e-bus charging points by the end 2019. This figure will more than double by the end of 2025.
Eurostat has recently published a rather interesting about the dependence of EU countries on the oil imports and therefore, in a dependence foreign energy that can give important bankruptcies negatively affecting the country's economy.
Spain is one of the countries of the European Union that most exposed is to more expensive oil, since 74% of the total of energy it consumes has to import from abroad and, of it, 97.9% is oil, according to statistics of Eurostat energy dependency published recently.
EU member states, import levels net oil sales came close to their consumption levels of oil, with dependency rates ranging from 96% to 104%. Dependency rates above 100% indicate an accumulation of oil reserves, while rates negative dependency ratios indicate a net exporting country.
According to the Global State of Renewables 2019 report (Published by the UN together with the Frankfurt School and Bloomberg New Energy Finance), in 2018, global investment in renewable energy reached US$ 288.900 million and the funding for new capacity was nearly three times higher than in the coal and gas sector.
The energy capacity of renewables – excluding large hydroelectric plants – has gone from 414 gigawatts for that 2009 to 1,650 gigawatts that we will have at the end of this year . The highest rise notable, solar energy, which at the beginning of 2010 was at 25 gigawatts and this year it will reach 638 gigawatts.
In the energy sector, renewable energies are increasingly increasingly preferred for new electricity generation. In 2018 some 181 GW of power capacity were added renewable, which is a new record slightly higher than that of the previous year.
Renewable energy has established itself worldwide as a main source of electricity generation for several years and the estimated participation of renewables in the global electricity generation was more than 26% at the end of of 2018, so we are on the right track.
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