You are here: Home » Subject » Commentary
Commentary
Press Release
Leading financial institutions setting divestment trend
Feb 15, 2019 (IEEFA Japan): ITOCHU of Japan has announced it is exiting from developing new coal-fired power plants as well as thermal coal mines to address the impact of climate change, and will continue to divest its existing thermal coal mine investments in Australia and Indonesia. IEEFA sees this as a major policy pivot […]
Tim Buckley
Precedent set in measuring the community cost of carbon emissions
The NSW Land and Environment Court refused development consent for a new open cut coking coal mine in New South Wales’ Gloucester Valley on 8 February 2019, citing the mine’s likely contribution to climate change as a key reason. Gloucester Resources Limited (GRL) had sought development consent for the Rocky Hill Coal Project to produce […]
Dennis Wamsted
Technology gains pose a major threat to baseload power providers
The utility industry, broadly speaking, has a checkered history on renewable energy development, often having fought state renewable energy portfolio standards, curtailed residential net energy metering for solar and brought into question the reliability of wind and solar. But a new dynamic is at play now, especially around solar-plus-storage projects. Here, sharp and continued price […]
Tom Sanzillo, Kathy Hipple and Cathy Kunkel
Despite opponents’ fears, ban likely saved investors billions
New York State, under the leadership of Governor Andrew Cuomo, instituted a ban on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in 2014. Not surprisingly, the ban was hotly contested. Opponents had portrayed fracking as a silver bullet that would create jobs and promote economic development. They predicted the state’s citizens would regret Cuomo’s decision. A retrospective analysis of […]
Kathy Hipple and Clark Williams-Derry
Accounting tricks hide the industry's biggest secret: it’s a losing game.
The US oil and gas boom continued in full force during 2018. By year’s end, America’s oil and gas output reached record highs, squeezing the nation’s net petroleum imports to their lowest point since the early 1970s. But this production frenzy came at a tremendous financial cost. Despite the highest oil prices since 2014, fracking-focused […]
Simon Nicholas
Chinese funding responsible for more than a quarter of all new coal plants outside its borders
SYDNEY—At the first ever ‘Belt and Road’ forum hosted in Beijing in 2017, President Xi pledged the US$900 billion infrastructure project would ‘seize new opportunities… and achieve green and low-carbon development.’ Yet as analysis this month demonstrated, Chinese funding is responsible for more than a quarter of all new coal plants outside its borders, many […]
Tom Sanzillo and Kathy Hipple
Failure to achieve energy plan likely
The Argentine government’s plan to develop the massive Vaca Muerta oil and gas reserves in northern Patagonia has hit a major obstacle. The success of the plan requires the Argentine government to subsidize most of the development costs initially. But the Argentine government is in fiscal distress and has recently made it known that it […]
Press Release
Money managers need to recognize poor market performance
The financial case for investing in fossil fuels is losing ground as the powerful oil and gas industry continues its steady decline, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). In a briefing note released Feb. 6, Fossil Fuel Investments: Looking Backwards May Prove Costly to Investors in Today’s Market, IEEFA analysts […]
Press Release
Exhibits “resource curse,” dashes expectations for jobs, taxes, and growth
The nearly six-fold increase in West Virginia’s natural gas production in the last decade, due largely to shale development, or fracking, has fallen short of expectations for economic growth, job creation, and tax revenue generation, according to a new report released by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) and the West Virginia […]
Tim Buckley
IEEFA supports new bill prohibiting the opening up of thermal coal mining in Queensland’s Galilee Basin
SYDNEY-Australia continues to blindly court local and multinational mining companies with one of the largest untapped thermal coal deposits in the world, despite the global pipeline of new coal-fired power plants continuing to shrink and global warming becoming blatantly obvious due to extreme record-breaking weather events. Beneath the Galilee Basin in Central Queensland, Australia, is […]
IEEFA Japan: ITOCHU Corporation announces coal exit
Leading financial institutions setting divestment trend
Feb 15, 2019 (IEEFA Japan): ITOCHU of Japan has announced it is exiting from developing new coal-fired power plants as well as thermal coal mines to address the impact of climate change, and will continue to divest its existing thermal coal mine investments in Australia and Indonesia. IEEFA sees this as a major policy pivot […]