Do it yourself

‘Climate Change’, ‘Clean Energy’, ‘Renewable Energy’ and ‘Sustainability’ have been the primary topics of discussions in most global summits, symposiums, bilateral and multilateral talks & agreements, political discourses, academic projects and even election campaigns for over a decade now. “The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, also lays significant emphasis on “Affordable and Clean Energy”, “Sustainable Cities and Communities”, and “Climate Action”. Most countries have made significant progress in increasing the share of renewable/clean energy in their respective energy mix. Reportedly, in 2022 alone 268 GW of new solar energy capacity will be added worldwide. As per various estimates, globally, solar installations are expected to cross 300 GW in 2023. IEA expects global solar PV capacity to rise by nearly 1500 GW in the 2022-27 period, surpassing natural gas by 2026 and coal by 2027. ( see here ) As per the Internation...

The benchmark Newcastle thermal coal future prices have fallen to US$131/ton, the lowest price since June 2021. Though the current prices are down over 70% from the highs witnessed in September 2022; these are still materially higher from the pre covid 10yr average of close to US85/ton. The sharp spike witnessed in the past couple of years was initially due to logistic constraints due to Covid-19 and was further exacerbated by the geopolitical issues presented by Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. NATO’s economic sanctions on Russia, the single largest supplier of energy to Europe, resulted in a rush to secure energy supplies from the alternative sources, catapulting the prices of coal and natural gas, most common fuels used for power generation, sky high. Now, since the supplies from other large coal producers, e.g, Indonesia, Australia and the US have improved materially, and European countries have built strong reserves, it is likely that the coal prices may remain stable ...