Gas Markets
As the illegal war in the Ukraine continues, there is a growing discussion about the need to move away from a reliance on Russian commodities in the energy market, which presents new challenges to energy policy. The timing could hardly be worse, coming as [...]
I didn’t really go out on a limb in my last post when I predicted that energy markets would continue to make headlines this year – the last few days have seen a lot of people wondering what on earth is happening with gas [...]
This week has seen the failure of three more energy suppliers: Pure Planet which supplies gas and electricity to around 235,000 domestic customers, Colorado Energy with around 15,000 domestic customers, and Daligas with around 9,000 domestic and non-domestic customers. This new round of closures [...]
Current high gas prices combined with a period of low wind output in September have re-awakened concern about security of supply, including among the general public – today my doctor asked me if he was going to be able to charge his car when [...]
Gas markets were highly volatile today as prices went on a roller-coaster ride - front month NBP futures on ICE reached an unprecedented £4 /therm! Similar trends were seen in European markets with the key TTF benchmark exceeding €160 /MWh. This meant gas traded [...]
In researching the new gas courses for my training programme, I discovered the etymology of the word “gas” - appropriately, it derives from the Greek word khaos meaning “chaos”. Sixteenth century Flemish scientist Joannes Baptista van Helmont, was interested in the process of combustion, [...]
Gas market tightness has caused prices to rise sharply over the past few weeks, not only pushing electricity prices higher, but also causing supply issues in industries such as fertiliser manufacture which rely on natural gas as a feedstock. This is creating major headaches [...]
As we begin to emerge from the covid lockdown there is a lot of talk about a “green recovery” and “building-back green”, with a renewed focus on hydrogen. Last week the Confederation of British Industry (“CBI”) with the University of Birmingham called on the [...]
Last week I spoke about how to manage the transition to a low carbon gas network at the Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum. Much of the conference covered the different available approaches to de-carbonising the gas network, in particular conversion to hydrogen and [...]
In the last few weeks there have been a number of announcements by the Government and others on the challenging subject of the de-carbonisation of heat. Heating and cooling currently accounts for nearly half of UK energy consumption, and around 50% of UK emissions [...]