Energy Evolution

Richard Glick, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, joins Energy Evolution to discuss what it will take deliver more clean energy to U.S. consumers. FERC recently began a push to address obstacles that are holding up the development of electric transmission in a bid to connect more consumers to less emissions-intensive energy and avert the worst impacts of a changing climate. Glic...

Ahead of London International Shipping Week 2021, a six-part S&P Global Platts podcast miniseries looks into the pricing of alternative marine fuels for the global shipping industry. In each episode of Marine Fuels of the Future, Platts editors investigate the current state of the major fuel alternatives, as the shipping sector seeks to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions ahead of stringent caps i...

Ahead of London International Shipping Week 2021, a six-part  S&P Global Platts  podcast series looks into the pricing of alternative marine fuels for the global shipping industry. In each episode of  Marine Fuels of the Future , Platts editors investigate the current state of the major fuel alternatives, as the shipping sector seeks to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions ahead of stringent caps i...

Ahead of London International Shipping Week 2021, a six-part S&P Global Platts podcast series looks into the pricing of alternative marine fuels for the global shipping industry. In each episode of Marine Fuels of the Future , Platts editors investigate the current state of the major fuel alternatives, as the shipping sector seeks to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions ahead of stringent caps in 2...

Natural gas producers are partnering with data companies to reduce emissions amid growing pressure to decarbonize supplies.   This episode features interviews with Chris Romer, the co-founder and CEO of Project Canary, and Andrew Baxter, the Environmental Defense Fund's director of energy strategy. The team also spoke with Andrew Logan, senior director for oil and gas at nonprofit investor network...

Total renewables penetration targets in Europe require a "common currency" which provides a reliable price signal against which the cost of different technologies and renewable paths can be assessed. Guarantees of Origin certificates could become this common currency, incentivising the use of renewable sources as part of corporate fuel mix disclosures, and promoting a net-zero culture. In this Pla...

Electric vehicles have been trending as the primary choice to decarbonize the transportation sector worldwide. Although some could expect the EV revolution to disrupt all current technologies, existing biofuels can keep playing a key role where they are available. In this podcast, Brazil is discussed as an example of where transitioning to EVs is not as urgent as in other countries since the wide...

The move from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources can have a big impact on the communities that once depended on those industries. Our guest for this episode is Brian Anderson, director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory. He was recently tasked with leading the Biden administration's Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization. In this rol...

Today we are looking at how the energy transition to lower emissions and cleaner fuels will affect natural gas. Editors from S&P Global Platts and Market Intelligence discuss the findings of their recent series of stories looking the natural gas sector in the era of Energy Transition. From the burner tip back to the wellhead, natural gas interests will find that changes ahead bring risk and opport...

Voluntary carbon markets have seen significant growth in recent years and are expected to surge in the years ahead. But they have traditionally been seen as opaque, complex and niche. That is rapidly changing as a large range of companies start to engage with them. In the latest Platts Future Energy podcast, Jonty Rushforth is joined by Paula Vanlaningham and Jeff Berman to discuss the 'beauty' of...

U.S. utilities are responding to growing demand for electric vehicles by forming new coalitions to build charging infrastructure for their consumers. Energy Evolution spoke with two leaders in the utility space to better understand the trend. This episode features interviews with Badar Khan, the U.S. President of National Grid and Matthew Forck, the vice president of community economic development...

Evolving choices around EV battery composition have altered price dynamics in the lithium market, with the two main forms, hydroxide and carbonate, now moving independently to each other, reflecting different use cases and trading patterns. LFP was considered by many industry participants to be a lower priority in the upcoming EV boom. This started to change with the gradual removal of Chinese EV...

China has laid out some lofty goals for its climate action. In September 2020, it pledged that it would peak its carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and hit carbon neutrality before 2060. This was followed in December 2020 by an announcement to enhance its nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement for 2030, including increasing the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy c...

Electric vehicle demand is expected to skyrocket worldwide and that could require a lot more minerals than currently being supplied today for the necessary batteries. S&P Global Market Intelligence expects sales of passenger plug-in electric vehicles to increase from just over three million units in 2020 to over 11 million units by 2025. Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency recently suggeste...

The UK's hydrogen production landscape is littered with big natural gas-based CCS projects – why is this, and what does it say about renewable hydrogen's immediate prospects? S&P Global Platts Zane McDonald, Jeff McDonald and Henry Edwardes-Evans discuss projects, prices and policies with a little help from Ryse Hydrogen's Jo Bamford.

The world is moving closer to mining the deep sea to accommodate surging demand for battery metals needed in the global energy transition, but opposition to the practice is also mounting. After years of review, the International Seabed Authority, or ISA, is nearing completion of regulations that would allow entities to begin collecting lumps of metal from the deep ocean. While some tout the proces...

The recent plans announced by China's Tsingshan to convert nickel pig iron (unsuitable for batteries ) into nickel matte (an intermediate for the production of battery-grade nickel sulfate) has shaken the market, causing nickel prices to pull the brakes on its bull run. The price uptrend was driven by the widespread belief that nickel demand for batteries would boom shortly, while supply of batter...

In the latest S&P Global Platts Future Energy Podcast, Roman Kramarchuk, Head of Future Energy Outlooks, is joined by Dan Klein, Head of Future Energy Pathways, to talk about the main takeaways of Platts Future Energy Outlooks Annual Guidebook , a comprehensive study that includes Platts oil, gas, and overall energy reference cases, along with long-term outlooks for global crude, regional crude an...

The February winter storm that crippled the Texas power grid left millions of residents without light and heat for days, and drove natural gas prices to record highs. So how did this happen? What does it mean for the future of the energy industry? Joining the discussion are Jay Hakes, an author and former administrator of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Emily Grubert, a professor at Ge...

Ground is due to be broken on the UK's first battery gigaplant, built by Britishvolt , in summer 2021, with the plant due to start producing batteries at scale by the end of 2023. The gigaplant is an important step in shortening the UK's battery supply chain and helping ensure that UK automakers comply with the Brexit agreement's rules of origin standard, which dictates that at least 40% of the va...

President Joe Biden moved quickly to return the United States to the Paris climate. He is likely to take major steps forward on climate policy that could impact the energy transition as the world heads to the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference later this year. However, the United States also faces a credibility problem on climate change issues after the Trump administration withdrew fro...

During the Trump years, the US issued an Executive Order to ensure the local development of critical minerals, but no material production was established after that. During his campaign, president Joe Biden stressed the importance of promoting clean energy, which is directly linked to the supply of key battery metals. What will the new US administration bring in terms of policy and strategy around...

Hydrogen is generating a lot of buzz in the U.S. energy world, but what might look like a nascent technological revolution is not going to occur overnight, according to several experts interviewed on this episode. But while hydrogen has received its fair share of hype in the past, this time may be different as the growth of sustainability-driven investments, rising pressure to act on climate chang...

Spain's Repsol was the first oil major to set net-zero emissions to target in December 2019, and the company has pivoted fast to grow its low-carbon energy business launching a raft of wind, solar, biofuels, and green-hydrogen projects. The surge in clean energy projects will see Repsol's low-carbon spending jump to 40% of total capex by 2030, up from an already peer group-leading 25% in 2020. Fol...

The COVID-19 pandemic hit many industries hard in 2020, including automotives. Electric vehicles' sales, however, grew substantially from 2019 -- and the trend should continue in 2021, supporting the demand for battery metals such as lithium and cobalt. This edition of the Platts Future Energy podcast explains why EVs outperformed internal combustion engine cars and how the lithium and cobalt mark...