Emerging markets have big plans when it comes to the energy transition. Today, 95% of developing economies have a renewable energy target in place, and many of them are seeing massive growth in solar and other renewable power technologies. Yet this clean power revolution won’t come cheap. While EMDEs attracted more than $100 billion for clean energy development last year, that’s a drop in the bucket of what it’ll take to reach net zero, and many markets are racing to implement the policy and inf...
Dec 05, 2024•21 min
Climate-tech funding is falling precipitously. During the third quarter of 2024, worldwide investment in the sector reached just $10.3 billion, a far cry from the $22.6 billion raised in the third quarter of 2023 and the $40.9 billion seen in 3Q 2022. These dramatic declines have been led in part by manufacturing overcapacity in China, where a collapse in market funding has allowed India to supersede China for the first time in BloombergNEF’s climate-tech rankings. With protectionism on the rise...
Nov 27, 2024•28 min
“It looks like coal weather today,” is an unlikely forecast, but it shouldn’t be. Coal production and consumption are linked to weather, and the return of a La Niña weather cycle has the potential to extend the lifespan of coal power assets and influence fuel switching. While peak coal demand is close, near-term drivers point to stagnation rather than a rapid decline. Developed economies are shutting thermal power assets at scale, but China is responsible for 56% of global coal consumption and c...
Nov 20, 2024•37 min
Wind is key to tripling global clean energy capacity by 2030, but in recent years both onshore and offshore additions have been blowing cold. The landscape improves as we look ahead to 2030, when BloombergNEF expects annual installations of wind to have risen by a massive 70%. China, which is currently responsible for over a half of all global wind additions, is leading the charge. But now that its massive turbine manufacturing base is looking outside its borders, the picture for equipment expor...
Nov 13, 2024•40 min
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” This proverb is just as apt if you swap out “trees” for “grid investment.” Some $326 billion flowed into the world’s power grids in 2023, up 7% from the year before. Yet while investment may be increasing overall, only a few markets align with a net-zero pathway. On today's show, co-hosts Dana Perkins and Tom Rowlands-Rees are joined by Felicia Aminoff from BNEF’s Grids and Utilities team. They discuss the growing pow...
Nov 07, 2024•31 min
Tariffs and subsidies loom large in the energy transition. The US Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, has been of global importance, changing trade relationships and causing some governments to rethink their domestic policies. The European Union responded by introducing the Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA), although it has fewer subsidies and trade barriers than its transatlantic counterpart. On today’s show, Dana speaks with Antoine Vagneur-Jones and Matthew Hales from BNEF’s Trade and Supply Chains t...
Oct 30, 2024•28 min
Heavy transport is at a crossroads. There are many possible paths for decarbonizing aviation, maritime shipping and long-haul trucking, including sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), ammonia, methanol and synthetic fuels. Now that companies are working to secure feedstocks, governments are writing clean-fuel policies, and investors are looking for new fuels to back, will these sectors coalesce around a single low-carbon pathway? Or will a cornucopia of options be the way of the future? On today’s ep...
Oct 24, 2024•42 min
This month, 196 parties are converging in Cali, Colombia for the 16th United Nations Conference on Biological Diversity (COP16). Less famous but no less significant than its climate-focused sibling (which will take place in Baku, Azerbaijan, a few weeks later), COP16 offers a chance to negotiate and assess strategies for protecting global biodiversity, with a focus on implementing the targets agreed upon at COP15 in Montreal two years ago. That’s critical, because as one of today’s guests points...
Oct 16, 2024•29 min
Lithium-ion batteries, hydrogen electrolyzers and transmission lines all require one fundamental ingredient: metals. In other words, there can be no energy transition without massive metal supplies. Lithium demand jumps 17-fold by 2050 in BloombergNEF’s Net Zero Scenario. Manganese demand jumps 15-fold, and copper needs rise 4.5-fold against 2023 levels. Yet as demand skyrockets, supply growth is facing headwinds as low metals prices jeopardize important capacity additions. On today’s show, Dana...
Oct 09, 2024•36 min
Innovative climate tech is a key weapon in the battle to halt global warming, but finding the most effective new technologies isn’t always easy. Enter the BloombergNEF Pioneers. This annual award program identifies new tools for tackling three critical challenges in the transition to a low-carbon economy. This year’s awards focused on relieving bottlenecks in the deployment of clean power, decarbonizing the construction and operation of buildings, and creating the next generation of net-zero fue...
Oct 02, 2024•50 min
Agriculture is responsible for almost a third of global emissions. It’s also a leading driver of deforestation, water stress and plastic waste generation, and pressure is mounting on food companies to address their climate and nature impacts. The value chain that underpins the sector, however, is vast, involving millions of individuals and tens of thousands of companies, which makes identifying and addressing areas of concern a huge challenge. On today’s show, Dana Perkins hosts two analysts fro...
Sep 25, 2024•33 min
Methane might be the world’s simplest hydrocarbon, but its immense global warming potential makes it a complex problem in the battle to halt climate change. It’s also invisible to the human eye, which has made catching the methane plumes leaking from oil and gas assets a challenge. That’s now changing, as a growing network of satellites offers more accurate evidence of methane leaks around the globe. On today’s show, Dana Perkins speaks with Maria-Olivia Torcea from BNEF’s Oil Team. They discuss...
Sep 18, 2024•35 min
Extending energy access to the world’s most populous nation will be a Herculean task. To do it while also achieving its 2030 clean energy goals, India must increase its wind and solar capacity installations fourfold, highlighting just how much of a feat this energy transition will be. On today’s episode, Rohit Gadre, a BloombergNEF Specialist, moderates a discussion at the BNEF Summit New Delhi on what it will take to realize India’s clean energy revolution. He is joined by panelists Giorgio For...
Sep 11, 2024•38 min
International oil companies have been divesting assets at a surprising rate. Between 2015 and 2023, nine of the world’s largest IOCs have sold a total of $290 billion of assets, with upstream oil assets accounting for half of the divestment deals. Yet this trend toward ditching dirty assets may now be changing, as divestment proceeds dropped 15% last year. On today’s show, co-hosts Dana Perkins and Tom Rowlands-Rees are joined by David Doherty, BloombergNEF’s Head of Oil and Renewable Fuels Rese...
Sep 05, 2024•32 min
Carbon capture is on a roller coaster these days. Projects in the sector attracted more than $11 billion in 2023, almost double the investment figure from the year before, only to see growth stall in the first half of 2024. Fortunately, carbon removal technology reaches beyond the traditional ‘CCS’ model of carbon capture and storage (or ‘CCUS’ when a utilization component is involved). Coming from a small base, direct air capture, or DAC, is gaining momentum, and new technologies such as direct...
Aug 29, 2024•29 min
A wave of new liquefied natural gas projects are due to be commissioned by the end of the decade. Yet a sharp increase in supply runs the risk of creating a glut, and with the rise of this transportable commodity, what impacts one market could have a ripple effect around the world. Today’s show addresses the interplay between global and regional gas markets, with co-hosts Dana Perkins and Tom Rowlands-Rees joined by Fauziah Marzuki, Global Head of Gas Markets at BNEF. Together, they discuss the ...
Aug 21, 2024•36 min
Using electricity seems so simple: You flip a switch, and the light turns on. Yet behind that simple action is a sprawling and complex system of supply, demand and free-market economics. Today’s show dives into power markets. What are they and what role do they play in increasing the efficiency of power systems? Tom Rowlands-Rees, BNEF’s Global Head of Power Markets, hosts Helen Kou, Head of US Power, and Ian Berryman, Head of Energy Systems Modeling, to talk about capacity markets, vertically i...
Aug 14, 2024•35 min
What do biofuels, renewable power, and the food on your plate have in common? They all need land, and lots of it. While the technologies required to reach a net-zero future are expanding alongside rising energy demand, growing populations and higher living standards could require roughly a fifth more land be cultivated for agriculture by mid-century. Of the available land on Earth, decisions must be made regarding whether to devote it to agriculture, biofuels, bioplastics, power generation, batt...
Aug 07, 2024•30 min
With the rise of intermittent renewable energy generation, the need for long-duration energy storage is rising fast. Lithium-ion batteries currently dominate the market, with record-low prices fueled by a global oversupply in battery manufacturing, but a group of new energy storage technologies may be about to challenge this technology’s position. On today’s show, Dana is joined by Yiyi Zhou, a BNEF clean power specialist, and Evelina Stoikou, a senior associate on its energy storage team, to re...
Jul 31, 2024•31 min
This year has been a mixed bag for electric vehicles. After EV sales hit new highs in 2023, some automakers have now revised down their near-term targets, citing falling demand. While this may have generated headlines, the overall market offers a more nuanced image, with different segments outperforming others, and growth in developing economies starting to pick up pace. On today’s show, Dana is joined by BloombergNEF’s Head of Electric Vehicles, Aleksandra O’Donovan, and Head of Advanced Transp...
Jul 24, 2024•40 min
Driven by supportive policies and a maturing project pipeline, clean hydrogen supply is set to increase 30-fold by 2030. Demand will be aided in part by Europe’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and other government policies, but fewer than a third of the 1,600 hydrogen projects that have been announced so far actually materialize in our analysis, and they are often subject to delays. On today’s show, Dana and hydrogen analyst Adithya Bhashyam discuss findings from our recent hydrogen outlooks...
Jul 17, 2024•30 min
Each year, BloombergNEF’s New Energy Outlook develops and evaluates scenarios for the transition to a low-carbon economy. Delving into electricity, industry, buildings and transport, this flagship report outlines sector and country transition scenarios out to 2050. On today’s show, Dana is joined by co-host Tom Rowlands-Rees, BNEF’s head of research for North America, and guest David Hostert, Head of Economics and Modeling at BNEF and lead author of the New Energy Outlook. They discuss nine tech...
Jul 03, 2024•32 min
The persistent oversupply of solar modules has pushed prices to record lows and threatened the competitiveness of manufacturing outside of Asia. Against this backdrop, a group of US companies has petitioned the Biden administration for further tariffs to be applied. While China has historically been the target of the US government, the latest levies are focused on Southeast Asian countries where Chinese manufacturers have set up shop: Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia. On today’s show, Da...
Jun 26, 2024•38 min
The European Union could be leaning towards a more protectionist stance when it comes to clean industry manufacturing, with policies such as import tariffs and domestic content targets under consideration. Would such protectionist measures help the domestic clean energy and electric vehicle sectors flourish? Today’s show brings you a panel from the BloombergNEF Summit Munich, in which Herbert Diess, Chairman of Infineon and The Mobility House; Jacek Truszczynski, Deputy Head of Unit - Net Zero I...
Jun 19, 2024•35 min
The global nuclear industry has been plagued with retirements for over a decade. However, after delegates at the COP28 summit last year voiced aspirations to triple nuclear capacity by 2050, the industry could be poised for growth. The usual regulatory, environmental and economic hurdles remain, but small modular reactors have the potential to ameliorate several of these obstacles if they can get off the ground. Meanwhile, exuberance for nuclear energy has been dampened by fluctuations in the pr...
Jun 12, 2024•36 min
As already-strained power grids grapple with rapidly increasing demand, Europe is pioneering an innovative and powerful new tool to help system operators manage grid constraints. These local flexibility markets help balance electricity supply and demand by enabling distributed energy resources, such as electric vehicles or storage operators, to solve grid bottlenecks. On today’s show, Dana is joined by BloombergNEF’s Head of Grids and Utilities, Sanjeet Sanghera, along with Felicia Aminoff, lead...
Jun 05, 2024•32 min
Rooftop solar is celebrating a runaway success in Australia, which has positioned itself to become a renewable energy superpower. From a target of doubling its renewable energy capacity by 2030 to $1.2 billion in the federal budget dedicated to the clean energy sector, the country has big plans for its energy transition. Yet the country still has a ways to travel before reaching its goals, with substantial legacy coal-fired power stations still contributing to the energy mix. On today’s show, Da...
May 30, 2024•42 min
Autonomous vehicles might be the cars of the future, but following a flurry of venture capital and private equity funding a decade ago, investment in this space has since tapped the brakes. Last year saw VC/PE fundraising fail to reach $4 billion for the first time since 2017. While green shoots have come in the form of Tesla’s upcoming robotaxi launch, in such a capital-intensive industry, which levels of autonomy are the rest of the field still betting on? On today’s show, Dana is joined by Bl...
May 22, 2024•32 min
The first quarter of 2024 has seen a flurry of sustainable finance policy activity and a wave of mandatory reporting rules. Yet on the flip side, anti-ESG policies are gaining traction in the US. On today’s show, Dana is joined by Maia Godemer, senior associate for green and sustainable finance at BloombergNEF, to discuss this rapidly changing environment. Together, they consider BNEF’s new Sustainable Finance Policy Quarterly, touching on the new EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive ...
May 15, 2024•34 min
As the host of this year’s G-20 meetings and next year’s COP30 climate conference, Brazil is in the spotlight. Ranked sixth globally for energy transition investment in 2023, and third for both wind and solar capacity additions, Brazil is aiming to use its vast array of natural resources to ensure its future as a clean energy powerhouse. On today’s show, Dana is joined by BloombergNEF’s head of Latin America research, James Ellis, and analyst, Vinicius Nunes. They discuss Brazil’s potential for ...
May 08, 2024•34 min
