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Tag: energy transition

  • Africa needs more green financing to unlock growth: report

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    Infrastructure deficits, climate change, and debt sustainability challenges are holding Africa back from unlocking its growth potential, S&P Global said in a new report.

    The continent is poised to play an important role in the energy transition with its natural resources, young population, and expanding middle class. But to unlock this potential Africa needs more green financing, stronger capital markets, and better regional integration, the company said.

    Productivity growth in Angola, Nigeria, South Africa, and Zambia has slowed over the last decade, S&P noted, as infrastructure development and maintenance have not kept up with the needs of expanding populations. The increased demand for energy transition minerals could boost productivity growth in resource-rich economies while others need government reforms that improve the business environment and draw investment, it said.

    A chart showing the average annualized real GDP growth for select African countries, pre-pandemic, and then post-pandemic.

    — Preeti Jha

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  • Obama, Trump Energy Secretaries Agree On Everything Until One Goes Too Far

    Obama, Trump Energy Secretaries Agree On Everything Until One Goes Too Far

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    Two former U.S. energy secretaries agreed on almost everything at a joint appearance Wednesday, including the opportunity to tell Germany ‘I told you so.’

    Trump’s second energy secretary, Dan Brouillette, brought up Germany right off the bat at Columbia University’s Global Energy Summit in New York.

    “We felt very strongly that Germany had become too dependent on one source of gas supplier—i.e., Russia. Gazprom,” said Brouillette, who held several lobbying jobs and congressional staff jobs before helming the Energy Dept. from 2019-21.

    “We tried to make the point. They disagreed with us, and that was their right to do so. But today I’m watching Germany take some very dramatic steps to broaden out their energy supply, if you will, to diversify their portfolio overall.”

    Ernest Moniz, the Nobel-Prize winning physicist who served as President Obama’s second energy secretary from 2013-2017, made sure Brouillette understood that Germany had heard that warning before.

    “Along the lines of what Dan said, in fact, the rather stern lectures to our German colleagues about the bad hygiene of their energy security situation predated your administration,” Moniz said.

    “I can recall the heavy perspiration of the German ambassador in my office, for example. So this has been a consistent theme across administrations that the German situation just wasn’t healthy, and unfortunately it’s come back to bite them and all of us frankly.”

    Germany famously shut down its nuclear reactors after the 2011 Fukushima Disaster and invested heavily in renewables, which helped make solar-photovoltaic the cheapest energy technology for the world. But Germany counted on Russian natural gas as a bridge fuel for the transition. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Germany and the rest of Europe have seen that supply squeezed, threatened, and sabotaged. Energy prices have soared globally, but particularly in Europe.

    According to Moniz, Germany did an excellent job envisioning a clean-energy economy in 2050, but a poor job managing the 30-year transition to arrive there, which—he agreed with Brouillette—will require traditional fuels, such as fossil fuels and nuclear.

    Trump’s lobbyist and Obama’s physicist agreed on most things: on the need for a diverse portfolio of energy sources, on the recognition that energy security and environmental security go hand in hand, on the collective responsibility among nations to manage energy security, and on almost everything else:

    Brouillette: “We don’t disagree as much as you might think. Ernie was instrumental in creating the export of LNG (liquified natural gas) and creating those policies that allowed us to produce more here in the United States. It created a global market for U.S. natural gas.”

    Moniz: “It’s true that we did most of the approval of licenses for export.”

    But then Brouillette crossed a bridge too far:

    Brouillette: “As we think about transition I don’t think we should think about it as one fuel source completely replacing the other.

    “If you think about human nature, if you think about humanity from whatever time period that you want, the transition has never been from one type of fuel to another…. The transition, if you will, has always been from less energy to more energy. That’s been the transition of humankind, that’s where we need to continue to go, and yes within the portfolio sometimes things will change. We’ll use less coal than we did, say, 50 years ago, as part of the portfolio, but it will always be additive. We will always be adding more energy, because that’s what society needs. It’s what economies grow on. It’s what populations are going to demand.”

    Moniz: “I’m sorry. I’m going to have to now finally disagree with my colleague. The additive comment has got to be parsed by level of development of economies. So the industrialized world, yeah, we may have some increase in energy use, but not material, the way that you were describing, all the new fuels being additive.

    “And in fact, that’s another reason why in the industrialized world we are facing a more difficult challenge in the sense that there’s going to have to be a lot of displacement of incumbent fuels and technologies going forward.”

    MORE FROM FORBESDid Europe Move To Renewables Too Fast, Too Slow Or Just Right?By Jeff McMahon

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    Jeff McMahon, Senior Contributor

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  • Context Labs Announces CLEAR Path™ Platform to Catalyze Change in Environmental Commodities Markets

    Context Labs Announces CLEAR Path™ Platform to Catalyze Change in Environmental Commodities Markets

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    Leading Market Supporters include KPMG, Williams, Parsons, Project Canary, Carbon GeoCapture & OxoCarbon; Blockchain-enabled Platform Enhances Transparency, Security, Trust, and Traceability To Provide Certified, Trusted Environmental Attributes & Differentiated Commodities


    CAMBRIDGE, Mass., September 21, 2022 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Context Labs, an Enterprise Data Fabric Climate Tech company based in Cambridge, MA, and Amsterdam, announced today the launch of its CLEAR Path™ Platform (Context Labs Environmental Attribute Registry). CLEAR Path™ ensures that the fundamental building blocks, “data,” for environmental attributes and differentiated commodities, (e.g., carbon, renewable energy credits, water, plastics, and emission certifications), are transparent, secure, attested, trusted, and traceable. These new advanced capabilities provide a solution to mitigate green-washing and avoid double-counting within the industry, targeted at reliably accelerating the global energy transition.

    Powered by the company’s Immutably™ Enterprise Data Fabric, CLEAR Path™ converges advanced machine learning/AI and blockchain technologies to form new empirical, data-driven registry capabilities rendering data as “Asset Grade Data (AGD).” CLEAR Path™ is being supported at launch by KPMG LLP along with select leading global firms, including Williams, Parsons, Project Canary, Carbon GeoCapture, and OxoCarbon.

    “Regulators are increasingly mandating carbon transparency. This is driving increased interest in the carbon intensity of commodities. The work that Context Labs is doing to deliver the highest level of transparency to the Global Environmental Attribute markets through their Next Gen Registry called CLEAR Path™ is a critical ingredient for establishing trust and driving demand for lower carbon solutions,” stated Curtis Ravenel, Senior Advisor to the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), Founding Member of the Secretariat of the Financial Stability Board’s Taskforce on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) and Board Member to Context Labs.

    “CLEAR Path™ is powered by Context Labs’ Immutably™ Enterprise Data Fabric Technology, which integrates and connects all sources of data in the verification and creation of environmental attributes, the fundamental building blocks of environmental commodities, and a new digitally quantified ESG. It generates the highest quality certs, credits, and RECs possible, based on transparent Asset Grade Data, military-grade encryption for data security, and immutable traceability on our blockchain fabric,” said Context Labs Founder and CEO, Dan Harple. “CLEAR Path™ solves two of the crucial problems at the crux of the energy transition: effectively, the lack of trust in existing environmental attributes and ESG data underpinning environmental commodities, and the inability to provide traceability for these environmental attributes across market platforms.”

    KPMG is continuing to collaborate closely with Context Labs to deploy data and technology solutions to help businesses measure, monitor and prove their climate and ESG performance and scale their efforts to offer high-quality carbon credits.

    “Voluntary carbon markets, underpinned by timely and accurate data, will be instrumental in the transition to a low carbon economy,” said KPMG US ESG leader, Rob Fisher. “With CLEAR Path™, Context Labs has the opportunity to provide a digital backbone that should help take voluntary markets to scale, increase trust and accountability amongst stakeholders, and provide companies with a better picture of both their environmental impact and risk.”

    “This is another exciting step in our multi-faceted strategy with Context Labs, leveraging technology that enhances our innovative low carbon and carbon neutral market solutions,” said Chad Zamarin, Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategic Development at Williams. “As Williams drives the next generation of the energy marketplace with next-gen gas, clean hydrogen and other low carbon products, CLEAR Path™ from Context Labs will provide an industry-leading platform that will benefit our customers with best-in-class and trusted clean energy solutions.”

    “Parsons is in the business of delivering innovative critical infrastructure across the world, including digitally-enabled solutions for utilities, transportation, environmental remediation, facilities and water and wastewater facilities,” said Peter Torrellas, President of Connected Communities for Parsons. “Today, that means we need to have a wider range of operational and environmental data available across a broader collection of stakeholders to drive climate-aligned decisions. Our collaboration with Context Labs opens new avenues of value creation in climate resilience and energy transition for our public and private sector clients.”

    “Understanding the environmental footprint of how a natural gas molecule is produced and transported is becoming essential data for both sellers and buyers. We provide markets with independent measurements and assessments to verify these environmental attributes, such as low methane intensity or low water attributes. Now Context Labs CLEAR Path™ provides a trusted registry to track, transfer and retire these attributes,” said Will Foiles, Co-Founder and COO, Project Canary. “We believe in the power of markets to help combat climate change, and our combined offering provides exciting capabilities to accelerate the adoption of differentiated, responsibly sourced gas on terms that meet the needs of both sellers and buyers.”

    “Carbon GeoCapture has spent 20 years learning to use unconventional rock formations to reduce capture and cleanup costs and to hold massive amounts of carbon dioxide. As we commercialize our unique approach, we are thrilled to be working with Context Labs to materially enhance how we track the carbon dioxide that we sequester. With CLEAR Path™, we can bring speed and transparency to how we quantify, verify, generate, register, and ultimately trade the highest quality carbon credits that will earn the highest premium in the voluntary carbon markets,” stated John Pope, Ph.D., President, and CEO of Carbon GeoCapture Corp.

    “CLEAR Path™ facilitates the trust, traceability, and compliance in the data behind carbon methodologies and projects,” said Ludovino Lopes, OxoCarbon Chairman, Member of the United Nations Global Compact and Environmental and Carbon Legal Advisor. The foundations of an environmentally sympathetic and sustainable global economy need to be built on the basis of trust, transparency, and the highest level of legal and regulatory compliance. OxoCarbon is committed to delivering premium quality carbon credits from nature-based solutions by ensuring the highest level of environmental integrity, trust, traceability, and compliance, and CLEAR Path™ will enable this.

    About

    Context Labs provides solutions for customers who demand trusted provenance in their data, tracked veracity through the data’s supply chain of use, and a requirement for trusted insights. It is dedicated to sourcing, organizing, and contextualizing the world’s ESG information, enabling data to become trusted, shared, and utilized as Asset Grade Data to provide insights and solutions through Asset Grade Analytics that informs markets. Context Labs’ mission is to provide the world’s trusted data fabric platform, delivering Asset Grade Data, using its Immutably™ Enterprise Data Fabric platform, deploying machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, and cryptographic blockchain technologies, for context-driven insights. The company was formed out of MIT research and is comprised of a leadership team that has been instrumental in the at-scale growth of the Internet, in prior companies.

    Contact: press@contextlabs.com | www.contextlabs.com | @contextlabsbv

    KPMG LLP is the U.S. firm of the KPMG global organization of independent professional services firms providing audit, tax, and advisory services. The KPMG global organization operates in 144 countries and territories and has more than 236,000 people working in member firms around the world. Each KPMG firm is a legally distinct and separate entity and describes itself as such. KPMG International Limited is a private English company limited by guarantee. KPMG International Limited and its related entities do not provide services to clients.

    KPMG is widely recognized for being a great place to work and build a career. Our people share a sense of purpose in the work we do, and a strong commitment to community service, inclusion and diversity, and eradicating childhood illiteracy. Learn more at www.kpmg.com/us.

    Williams As the world demands reliable, low-cost, low-carbon energy, Williams will be there with the best transport, storage, and delivery solutions to reliably fuel the clean energy economy. Headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Williams is an industry-leading, investment-grade C-Corp. with operations across the natural gas value chain, including gathering, processing, interstate transportation, storage, wholesale marketing and trading of natural gas and natural gas liquids. With major positions in top U.S. supply basins, Williams connects the best supplies with the growing demand for clean energy. Williams owns and operates more than 30,000 miles of pipelines system wide – including Transco, the nation’s largest volume and fastest-growing pipeline – and handles approximately 30 percent of the natural gas in the United States that is used every day for clean-power generation, heating, and industrial use. Learn how the company is leveraging its nationwide footprint to incorporate clean hydrogen, next-generation gas and other innovations at www.williams.com.

    Parsons Corporation is a leading disruptive technology provider in the national security and critical infrastructure markets, with capabilities across cybersecurity, missile defense, space, C5ISR, transportation, environmental remediation, and water/wastewater treatment. Please visit www.Parsons.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook to learn how we’re making an impact.

    Project Canary® is the leading provider of on-demand climate insights for emission-intensive companies. The company provides operational insights, emissions data, and verified climate attributes to decarbonize energy systems by integrating sensor data with real-time portal and in-depth data analytics. They are the leaders of independently verified climate credentials that support investment, safety, reporting, and disclosure actions. www.projectcanary.com

    Carbon GEOCapture is focused on using its technology and knowledge to sequester significant amounts of carbon dioxide in geologic formations as economically and quickly as possible. CGC was founded in 2016 to drive safe, affordable sequestration of carbon dioxide in geologic reservoirs. More information is available at www.carbongeocapture.com.

    OxoCarbon is committed to delivering premium quality carbon credits from nature-based solutions by ensuring the highest level of integrity, traceability, transparency, and compliance. Our rigorous validation procedures add incremental layers of value over existing standards and methodologies for carbon emissions, environmental assets, and services, enabling us to deliver environmental assets of the highest quality, in line with the long-term sustainability needs of our planet. www.oxocarbon.com

    Source: Context Labs

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