Graham Weale is an expert on Energy Transitions both in Europe and the USA. He has a deep understanding of their political, economic and technological dimensions explaining how end-goals can be achieved at the lowest cost to society.
Weale has the ability to highlight the difficult issues that politicians face and to explain the challenges of such transitions in a way which is illuminating. Between 2007-16 Weale was Chief Economist at RWE, Germany’s largest power generator, and helped navigate the company through the German Energiewende (the move out of nuclear power into renewables).
Before this Graham Weale was Director of European Services for IHS Globalinsight (now CERA), one of the world’s leading energy and economic consultancies. Whilst his most recent experience focused on Europe’s electricity system, at Globalinsight he covered gas and coal extensively and was frequently engaged as an Expert Witness at high-profile gas contract arbitrations. His oil experience was gained with ExxonMobil.
Graham Weale has first-hand experience of all of the major forms of energy. The combination of his technical and commercial background from Oxford University enables him to offer unique insights into the junction of these two disciplines. In the late 1980s he was credited as the first energy expert to highlight the potential of the Combined Cycle Gas plant as a major source of power generation in Europe. Weale has also worked as advisor to the European Commission and other European Governments. He is a member of the IEA Business Council and was appointed Honorary Professor of Energy Economics at the Ruhr University Bochum (Germany’s 5th largest) in 2015.
This presentation starts with some exciting game-changing decisions which large companies have announced. It next looks at the decarbonisation business models of six leading companies – Enel, Ørsted, Shell, TotalEnergies, Volkswagen and Tesla. Finally it focusses on the EU € 250 bn investment value chain in 2030 and suggests which companies – European and foreign – will capture different parts of it – renewables, hydrogen, batteries and charging stations.
This presentation looks at six of the most innovative projects at a commercial scale which are supported by the Germany government to help decarbonise the country. It explains how they exploit the synergies of several different elements – renewable energy, hydrogen production, carbon capture and storage, use of the by-products (oxygen and waste heat) in industry, for transport and also buildings. One project shows how “fifth generation” district-heating can be used to reduce primary energy demand for a building block by 80% and the customer bill by 20%.
This highly ambitious project to reduce Europe’s emissions by 55% from 1990 to 2030 can only work if energies of different types are all targeted at the goal. The presentation looks at five different aspects of “energy”, all of which need careful coordination: political energy, clean energy, less energy, cheap energy and winning energy. It shows a plausible path to the goal and suggests which companies and countries will come out on top.
As the world moves into using green energy those countries which are rich in low-cost renewable resources will take the place of fossil-fuel producers. This presentation suggests how the geographical pattern of energy production will change and the implications for geo-politics. It further considers whether such energy (e.g hydrogen) will be exported over long distances or instead act as a magnet for energy-intensive industry and concludes with a summary of current large-scale projects.
There is no shortage of hydrogen strategies or projects at the planning stage, but most of these are waiting for the host government to announce plans to subsidise both investment and operating costs. This presentation looks at a selection of projects announced together with the alternative forms of subsidy. It then considers the necessary long-term contractual arrangements (analogous to those for gas imports) and the need for reliable off-take partners. It concludes with a plausible timeline for the roll-out of production and imports for Europe up to 2040.
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