Coal-fired electricity exports criticized

Egypt-Saudi Electricity Interconnection enables cross-border power trading, 3,000 MW capacity, and peak-demand balancing across the Middle East, boosting grid stability, reliability, and energy security through an advanced electricity network, interconnector infrastructure, and GCC grid integration.

Key Points

A 3,000 MW grid link letting Egypt and Saudi Arabia trade power, balance peak demand, and boost regional reliability.

✅ $1.6B project; Egypt invests ~$600M; 2-year construction timeline

✅ 3,000 MW capacity; peak-load shifting; cross-border reliability

✅ Links GCC grid; complements Jordan and Libya interconnectors

Egypt will connect its electricity network to Saudi Arabia, joining a system in the Middle East that has allowed neighbors to share power, similar to the Scotland-England subsea project that will bring renewable power south.

The link will cost about $1.6 billion, with Egypt paying about $600 million, Egypt’s Electricity Minister Mohamed Shaker said Monday at a conference in Cairo, as the country pursues a smart grid transformation to modernize its network. Contracts to build the network will be signed in March or April, and construction is expected to take about two years, he said. In times of surplus, Egypt can export electricity and then import power during shortages.

"It will enable us to benefit from the difference in peak consumption,” Shaker said. “The reliability of the network will also increase.”

Transmissions of electricity across borders in the Gulf became possible in 2009, when a power grid connected Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, a dynamic also seen when Ukraine joined Europe's grid under emergency conditions. The aim of the grid is to ensure that member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council can import power in an emergency. Egypt, which is not in the GCC, may have been able to avert an electricity shortage it suffered in 2014 if the link with Saudi Arabia existed at the time, Shaker said.

The link with Saudi Arabia should have a capacity of 3,000 megawatts, he said. Egypt has a 450-megawatt link with Jordan and one with Libya at 200 megawatts, the minister said. Egypt will seek to use its strategic location to connect power grids in Asia, where the Philippines power grid efforts are raising standards, and elsewhere in Africa, he said.

In 2009, a power grid linked Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, allowing the GCC states to transmit electricity across borders, much like proposals for a western Canadian grid that aim to improve regional reliability. 

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EU Winter Energy Mix 2022-2023 shows renewables, wind, solar, and hydro overtaking coal and gas, as demand fell amid high prices; Ember and IEA confirm lower emissions across Europe during the energy crisis.

Key Points

It describes Europe's winter power mix: reduced coal and gas, and record wind, solar, and hydro output.

✅ Coal generation fell 11% YoY; gas output declined even more.

✅ Renewables supplied 40%: wind, solar, and hydro outpaced fossil fuels.

✅ Ember and IEA confirm trends; mild winter tempered demand.

The EU burned less coal this winter during the energy crisis than in previous years, according to an analysis, quashing fears that consumption of the most polluting fossil fuel would soar as countries scrambled to find substitutes for lost supplies of Russian gas.

The study from energy think-tank Ember shows that between October 2022 and March 2023 coal generation fell 27 terawatt hours, or almost 11 per cent year on year, while gas generation fell 38 terawatt hours, as renewables crowded out gas and consumers cut electricity consumption in response to soaring prices.

Renewable energy supplies also rose, with combined wind and solar power and hydroelectric output outstripping fossil fuel generation for the first time, providing 40 per cent of all electricity supplies. The Financial Times checked Ember’s findings with the International Energy Agency, which said they broadly matched its own preliminary analysis of Europe’s electricity generation over the winter.

The study demonstrates that fears of a steep rebound in coal usage in Europe’s power mix were overstated, despite the continent’s worst energy crisis in 40 years following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, even as stunted hydro and nuclear output in parts of Europe posed challenges.

While Russia slashed gas supplies to Europe and succeeded in boosting energy prices for consumers to record levels, the push by governments to rejuvenate old coal plants, including Germany's coal generation, to ensure the lights stayed on ultimately did not lead to increased consumption.

“With Europe successfully on the other side of this winter and major supply disruptions avoided, it is clear the threatened coal comeback did not materialise,” analysts at Ember said in the report.

“With fossil fuel generation down, EU power sector emissions during winter were the lowest they have ever been.”

Ember cautioned, however, that Europe had been assisted by a mild winter that helped cut electricity demand for heating and there was no guarantee of such weather next winter. Companies and households had also endured a lot of pain as a result of the higher prices that had led them to cut consumption, even though in some periods, such as the latest lockdown, power demand held firm in parts of Europe.

Total electricity consumption between October and March declined 94 terawatt hours, or 7 per cent, compared with the same period in winter 2021/22, continuing post-Covid transition dynamics across Europe.

“For a lot of people this winter was really hard with electricity prices that were extraordinarily high and we shouldn’t lose sight of that,” said Ember analyst Harriet Fox.

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CO2 Removal Technologies address climate change via negative emissions, including carbon capture, reforestation, soil carbon, biochar, BECCS, DAC, and mineralization, helping meet Paris Agreement targets while managing costs, land use, and infrastructure demands.

Key Points

Methods to extract or sequester atmospheric CO2, combining natural and engineered approaches to limit warming.

✅ Includes reforestation, soil carbon, biochar, BECCS, DAC, mineralization

✅ Balances climate goals with costs, land, energy, and infrastructure

✅ Key to Paris Agreement targets under 1.5-2.0 °C warming

The world is, on average, 1.1 degrees Celsius warmer today than it was in 1850. If this trend continues, our planet will be 2 – 3 degrees hotter by the end of this century, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The main reason for this temperature rise is higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which cause the atmosphere to trap heat radiating from the Earth into space. Since 1850, the proportion of CO2 in the air has increased, with record greenhouse gas concentrations documented, from 0.029% to 0.041% (288 ppm to 414 ppm).

This is directly related to the burning of coal, oil and gas, which were created from forests, plankton and plants over millions of years. Back then, they stored CO2 and kept it out of the atmosphere, but as fossil fuels are burned, that CO2 is released. Other contributing factors include industrialized agriculture and slash-and-burn land clearing techniques, and emissions from SF6 in electrical equipment are also concerning today.

Over the past 50 years, more than 1200 billion tons of CO2 have been emitted into the planet's atmosphere — 36.6 billion tons in 2018 alone, though global emissions flatlined in 2019 before rising again. As a result, the global average temperature has risen by 0.8 degrees in just half a century.

Atmospheric CO2 should remain at a minimum
In 2015, the world came together to sign the Paris Climate Agreement which set the goal of limiting global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees — 1.5 degrees, if possible.

The agreement limits the amount of CO2 that can be released into the atmosphere, providing a benchmark for the global energy transition now underway. According to the IPCC, if a maximum of around 300 billion tons were emitted, there would be a 50% chance of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. If CO2 emissions remain the same, however, the CO2 'budget' would be used up in just seven years.

According to the IPCC's report on the 1.5 degree target, negative emissions are also necessary to achieve the climate targets.

Using reforestation to remove CO2
One planned measure to stop too much CO2 from being released into the atmosphere is reforestation. According to studies, 3.6 billion tons of CO2 — around 10% of current CO2 emissions — could be saved every year during the growth phase. However, a study by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich, stresses that achieving this would require the use of land areas equivalent in size to the entire US.

Young trees at a reforestation project in Africa (picture-alliance/OKAPIA KG, Germany)
Reforestation has potential to tackle the climate crisis by capturing CO2. But it would require a large amount of space

More humus in the soil
Humus in the soil stores a lot of carbon. But this is being released through the industrialization of agriculture. The amount of humus in the soil can be increased by using catch crops and plants with deep roots as well as by working harvest remnants back into the ground and avoiding deep plowing. According to a study by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) on using targeted CO2 extraction as a part of EU climate policy, between two and five billion tons of CO2 could be saved with a global build-up of humus reserves.

Biochar shows promise
Some scientists see biochar as a promising technology for keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere. Biochar is created when organic material is heated and pressurized in a zero or very low-oxygen environment. In powdered form, the biochar is then spread on arable land where it acts as a fertilizer. This also increases the amount of carbon content in the soil. According to the same study from the SWP, global application of this technology could save between 0.5 and two billion tons of CO2 every year.

Storing CO2 in the ground
Storing CO2 deep in the Earth is already well-known and practiced on Norway's oil fields, for example. However, the process is still controversial, as storing CO2 underground can lead to earthquakes and leakage in the long-term. A different method is currently being practiced in Iceland, in which CO2 is sequestered into porous basalt rock to be mineralized into stone. Both methods still require more research, however, with new DOE funding supporting carbon capture, utilization, and storage.

Capturing CO2 to be held underground is done by using chemical processes which effectively extract the gas from the ambient air, and some researchers are exploring CO2-to-electricity concepts for utilization. This method is known as direct air capture (DAC) and is already practiced in other parts of Europe.  As there is no limit to the amount of CO2 that can be captured, it is considered to have great potential. However, the main disadvantage is the cost — currently around €550 ($650) per ton. Some scientists believe that mass production of DAC systems could bring prices down to €50 per ton by 2050. It is already considered a key technology for future climate protection.

The inside of a carbon capture facility in the Netherlands (RWE AG)
Carbon capture facilities are still very expensive and take up a huge amount of space

Another way of extracting CO2 from the air is via biomass. Plants grow and are burned in a power plant to produce electricity. CO2 is then extracted from the exhaust gas of the power plant and stored deep in the Earth, with new U.S. power plant rules poised to test such carbon capture approaches.

The big problem with this technology, known as bio-energy carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is the huge amount of space required. According to Felix Creutzig from the Mercator Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) in Berlin, it will therefore only play "a minor role" in CO2 removal technologies.

CO2 bound by rock minerals
In this process, carbonate and silicate rocks are mined, ground and scattered on agricultural land or on the surface water of the ocean, where they collect CO2 over a period of years. According to researchers, by the middle of this century it would be possible to capture two to four billion tons of CO2 every year using this technique. The main challenges are primarily the quantities of stone required, and building the necessary infrastructure. Concrete plans have not yet been researched.

Not an option: Fertilizing the sea with iron
The idea is use iron to fertilize the ocean, thereby increasing its nuturient content, which would allow plankton to grow stronger and capture more CO2. However, both the process and possible side effects are very controversial. "This is rarely treated as a serious option in research," concludes SWP study authors Oliver Geden and Felix Schenuit.

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Nighttime thermoradiative power converts outgoing infrared radiation into electricity using semiconductor photodiodes, leveraging negative illumination and sky cooling to harvest renewable energy from Earth-to-space heat flow when solar panels rest, regardless of weather.

Key Points

Nighttime thermoradiative power converts Earth's outgoing infrared heat into electricity using semiconductor diodes.

✅ Uses negative illumination to tap Earth-to-space heat flow

✅ Infrared semiconductor photodiodes generate small nighttime current

✅ Theoretical output ~4 W/m^2; lab demo reached 64 nW/m^2

There's a stark contrast between the freezing temperatures of space and the relatively balmy atmosphere of Earth, and that contrast could help generate electricity, scientists say – and alongside concepts such as space-based solar power, utilizing the same optoelectronic physics used in solar panels. The obvious difference this would have compared with solar energy is that it would work during the night time, a potential source of renewable power that could keep on going round the clock and regardless of weather conditions.

Solar panels are basically large-scale photodiodes - devices made out of a semiconducting material that converts the photons (light particles) coming from the Sun into electricity by exciting electrons in a material such as silicon, while concepts like space solar beaming could complement them during adverse weather.

In this experiment, the photodiodes work 'backwards': as photons in the form of infrared radiation - also known as heat radiation - leave the system, a small amount of energy is produced, similar to how raindrop electricity harvesting taps ambient fluxes in other experiments.

This way, the experimental system takes advantage of what researchers call the "negative illumination effect" – that is, the flow of outgoing radiation as heat escapes from Earth back into space. The setup explained in the new study uses an infrared semiconductor facing into the sky to convert this flow into electrical current.

"The vastness of the Universe is a thermodynamic resource," says one of the researchers, Shanhui Fan from Stanford University in California.

"In terms of optoelectronic physics, there is really this very beautiful symmetry between harvesting incoming radiation and harvesting outgoing radiation."

It's an interesting follow-up to a research project Fan participated in last year: a solar panel that can capture sunlight while also allowing excess heat in the form of infrared radiation to escape into space.

In the new study, this "energy harvesting from the sky" process can produce a measurable amount of electricity, the researchers have shown – though for the time being it's a long way from being efficient enough to contribute to our power grids, but advances in peer-to-peer energy sharing could still make niche deployments valuable.

In the team's experiments they were able to produce 64 nanowatts per square metre (10.8 square feet) of power – only a trickle, but an amazing proof of concept nevertheless. In theory, the right materials and conditions could produce a million times more than that, and analyses of cheap abundant electricity show how rapidly such advances compound, reaching about 4 watts per square metre.

"The amount of power that we can generate with this experiment, at the moment, is far below what the theoretical limit is," says one of the team, Masashi Ono from Stanford.

When you consider today's solar panels are able to generate up to 100-200 watts per square metre, and in China solar is cheaper than grid power across every city, this is obviously a long way behind. Even in its earliest form, though, it could be helpful for keeping low-power devices and machines running at night: not every renewable energy device needs to power up a city.

Now that the researchers have proved this can work, the challenge is to improve the performance of the experimental device. If it continues to show promise, the same idea could be applied to capture energy from waste heat given off by machinery, and results in humidity-powered generation suggest ambient sources are plentiful.

"Such a demonstration of direct power generation of a diode facing the sky has not been previously reported," explain the researchers in their published paper.

"Our results point to a pathway for energy harvesting during the night time directly using the coldness of outer space."

The research has been published in Applied Physics Letters.

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Vietnam Offshore Wind Regulations expand coastal zones to six nautical miles, remove water depth limits, streamline permits, and boost investment, grid integration, and renewable energy capacity across deeper offshore wind resource areas.

Key Points

Policies extend sites to six nautical miles, scrap depth limits, and speed permits to scale offshore wind.

✅ Extends offshore zones to six nautical miles from shore

✅ Removes water depth limits to access stronger winds

✅ Streamlines permits, aiding grid integration and finance

Vietnam has recently redefined its regulations for offshore wind power projects, marking a significant development in the country's renewable energy ambitions. This strategic shift aims to streamline regulatory processes, enhance project feasibility, and accelerate the deployment of offshore wind energy in Vietnam's coastal regions, amid a trillion-dollar offshore wind market globally.

Regulatory Changes

The Vietnamese government has adjusted offshore wind power regulations by extending the allowable distance from shore for wind farms to six nautical miles (approximately 11 kilometers), a move that aligns with evolving global practices such as Canada's offshore wind plan announced recently by regulators. This expansion from previous limits aims to unlock new areas for development and maximize the utilization of Vietnam's vast offshore wind potential.

Scrapping Depth Restrictions

In addition to extending offshore boundaries, Vietnam has removed restrictions on water depth for offshore wind projects. This revision allows developers to explore deeper waters, where wind resources may be more abundant, thereby diversifying project opportunities and optimizing energy generation capacity.

Strategic Implications

The redefined regulations are expected to stimulate investment in Vietnam's renewable energy sector, attracting domestic and international stakeholders keen on capitalizing on the country's favorable wind resources, with World Bank support for wind underscoring the growing pipeline in developing markets. The move aligns with Vietnam's broader energy diversification goals and commitment to reducing reliance on fossil fuels.

Economic Opportunities

The expansion of offshore wind development zones creates economic opportunities across the value chain, from project planning and construction to operation and maintenance. The influx of investments is anticipated to spur job creation, technology transfer, and infrastructure development in coastal communities, as industry groups like Marine Renewables Canada shift toward offshore wind specialization.

Environmental and Energy Security Benefits

Harnessing offshore wind power contributes to Vietnam's efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change. By integrating renewable energy sources into its energy mix, Vietnam enhances energy security, as seen in the UK offshore wind expansion, reduces dependency on imported fuels, and promotes sustainable economic growth.

Challenges and Considerations

Despite the promising outlook, offshore wind projects face challenges such as technical complexities, environmental impact assessments, and grid integration, as well as exposure to policy risk exemplified by U.S. opposition to offshore wind debates.

Future Outlook

Looking ahead, Vietnam's redefined offshore wind regulations position the country as a key player in the global renewable energy transition, a trend reinforced by progress in offshore wind in Europe elsewhere. Continued policy support, investment facilitation, and technological innovation will be critical in unlocking the full potential of offshore wind power and achieving Vietnam's renewable energy targets.

Conclusion

Vietnam's revision of offshore wind power regulations reflects a proactive approach to advancing renewable energy development and fostering a conducive investment environment. By expanding development zones and eliminating depth restrictions, Vietnam sets the stage for accelerated growth in offshore wind capacity, contributing to both economic prosperity and environmental stewardship. As stakeholders seize opportunities in this evolving landscape, collaboration and innovation will drive Vietnam towards a sustainable energy future powered by offshore wind.

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Developing Countries Clean Energy investment fell as renewable energy financing slowed in China; solar and wind growth lagged while coal power hit new highs, raising emissions risks for emerging markets and complicating climate change goals.

Key Points

Renewables investment and power trends in emerging nations: solar, wind, coal shifts, and steps toward decarbonization.

✅ Investment fell to $133b; China dropped to $86b

✅ Coal power rose to 6,900 TWh; 47% generation share

✅ New coal builds declined to 39 GW, decade low

New clean energy investment slid by more than a fifth in developing countries last year due to a slowdown in China, while the amount of coal-fired power generation jumped to a new high, reflecting global power demand trends, a recent annual survey showed.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) surveyed 104 emerging markets and found that developing nations were moving towards cleaner, low-emissions sources in many regions, but not fast enough to limit carbon dioxide emissions or the effects of climate change.

New investment in wind, solar and other clean energy projects dropped to $133 billion last year from $169 billion a year earlier, mainly due to a slump in Chinese investment, even as electricity investment globally surpasses oil and gas for the first time, the research showed.

China’s clean energy investment fell to $86 billion from $122 billion a year earlier, with dynamics in China's electricity sector also in focus. Investment by India and Brazil also declined, mainly due to lower costs for solar and wind.

However, the volume of coal-fired power generation produced and consumed in developing countries increased to a new high of 6,900 terrawatt hours (TWh) last year, even as renewables are poised to eclipse coal globally, from 6,400 TWh in 2017.

The increase of 500 TWh is equivalent to the power consumed in the U.S. state of Texas in one year, underscoring how surging electricity demand is putting power systems under strain. Coal accounted for 47% of all power generation across the 104 countries.

“The transition from coal toward cleaner sources in developing nations is underway,” said Ethan Zindler, head of Americas at BNEF. “But like trying to turn a massive oil tanker, it takes time.”

Despite the spike in coal-fired generation, the amount of new coal capacity which was added to the grid in developing countries declined, with Europe's renewables crowding out gas offering a contrasting pathway. New construction of coal plants fell to its lowest level in a decade last year of 39 gigawatts (GW).

The report comes a week ahead of United Nations climate talks in Madrid, Spain, where more than 190 countries will flesh out the details of an accord to limit global warming.

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