Topic:

Topic: EU-ETS

Latest

[Episode #238] – Transition in Europe 2024

Dec 4 2024

The outlook for energy transition in the US may feel bleak at the moment, but Europe continues to make significant progress. So if you’re ready for a little good news and thoughtful conversation about the energy transition in Europe, this one’s for you!

Our guest in this episode is Jan Rosenow, a veteran European energy observer, analyst, and policy advisor with extensive experience in energy regulation and market design. As Vice President of the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP), he supports their European team with a focus on power market design, energy regulation, electrification, the gas transition and energy efficiency. Jan’s resumé includes roles at the World Economic Forum, the International Energy Agency, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the UK’s Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, and the British House of Commons, among many others. He is also an accomplished academic who has contributed extensively to hundreds of peer-reviewed articles, technical reports and opinion pieces on energy and sustainability.

In this episode, we explore where Europe’s energy policies are delivering results and where it is still falling short. We discuss the enormous need to improve building energy efficiency across the continent and how electrifying heating systems can help. Jan also explains why balancing electricity and gas prices is key to supporting the energy transition. And Chris offers a few thoughts on how the re-election of Donald Trump might impact energy transition in the years ahead.

Guest:

As the vice president of the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP), Jan Rosenow partners with RAP’s CEO and senior leadership team on global strategy while providing programmatic direction to RAP’s European team with a focus on RAP’s initiatives in Europe on power market design, energy regulation, electrification, the gas transition and energy efficiency.

Rosenow serves in various board and expert committee roles with current and past roles including the World Economic Forum’s Senior Executive Group on Electrification, the International Energy Agency’s Executive Committee of the DSM TCP, the European Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (eceee) and GLOBSEC.

He has also advised the International Energy Agency, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ), government departments in a number of countries and the UK’s Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, as well as serving as an expert witness on several occasions to the European and British Parliaments. He is a former special advisor to the British House of Commons and the lead author of the International Energy Agency’s first global assessment of market-based instruments for energy efficiency.

An accomplished academic, Rosenow has contributed extensively to energy research. He is a research associate at Oxford, Cambridge, Sussex and FU Berlin. His scholarly work includes hundreds of peer-reviewed articles, technical reports and opinion pieces on energy and sustainability, which have been widely cited and used to shape policy discussions.

Rosenow is also a highly sought-after keynote speaker, regularly invited to present at national and international conferences. His speaking engagements include the United Nations, the International Energy Agency, the World Economic Forum, the European Parliament and more. He is also the co-founder and co-host of the “Watt Matters” podcast, where he discusses energy and sustainability issues with leading experts.

In recognition of his impact in the energy sector, Rosenow has been named one of the top 100 players in the global climate space and among the top 25 energy influencers and top 15 sustainability influencers worldwide. Additionally, he is one of LinkedIn’s Top Green Voices. His commitment to advancing the UK’s energy future led to his election as a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and his contributions to the energy sector have earned him a fellowship at the Energy Institute.

Jan Rosenow earned several postgraduate qualifications, including a master’s degree in environmental policy and regulation from the London School of Economics and a doctorate from Oxford University.

On Twitter: @janrosenow

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janrosenow

On the Web:
https://www.janrosenow.com/
https://www.raponline.org/experts/jan-rosenow/

Geek rating: 7

(more…)

[Episode #193] – Harmonizing EU and US Climate Policies

Mar 8 2023

Mini Episode

As the European Union and the United States work toward stronger climate policies, their two divergent approaches are creating tension. The EU has opted for a mix of rewards and penalties to incentivize green industries while also taxing carbon emissions from domestic industries - a “carrots and sticks” approach. On the other hand, the US is only offering rewards because Congress can't assemble a sufficient majority to agree on taxing carbon emissions from its industries; in other words, a carrots-only approach.

These contrasting approaches to climate policy have agitated trade discussions between the US and Europe, as shown by the recent passage of the $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act in the US, which European leaders worry might make their trade position weaker.

But another policy is now rising to the forefront as a source of trade tension: Europe's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (or CBAM), which will impose tariffs on goods imported to Europe based on their embedded carbon emissions. The CBAM works to prevent "carbon leakage" by ensuring that European producers who pay carbon taxes won't be disadvantaged compared to others who don't.

In this conversation, we are joined by Noah Kaufman, an economist and research scholar at SIPA’s Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University who served in the White House under both President Biden and President Obama, to discuss the challenges of accounting for the embedded carbon emissions in various goods, as well as how the EU and the US can find common ground and harmonize their climate policies.

Geek rating: 2

(more…)

[Episode #76] – Carbon Clampdown

Aug 22 2018

Mini Episode

The European Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS) has famously been dysfunctional for most of the past decade, unable to support a carbon price that would be an effective tool for energy transition. But that’s about to change: the EU is embarking on a plan to fix its carbon trading market. But will this be enough? According to calculations by our guest in this episode, there is reason to hope that the emissions trading surplus will be removed by 2023 and carbon prices will rise back to a meaningful level, but that may still not be high enough to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement. So what can be done about it? Will the prospect of Brexit ruin the EU-ETS market? Can carbon prices rise high enough to sustain carbon capture and sequestration technologies? Will we even need carbon prices in the future, given the falling costs of wind and solar? Are asset managers finally getting smart about understanding the risk of stranded fossil fuel assets in their portfolios? And are risk assessors finally beginning to grapple with climate risk?

Mark Lewis, now Head of Research and Managing Director at Carbon Tracker, returns in this episode to dig into details of European carbon market reform and explain what it all means…as well as outlining a fresh way of looking at services delivered by different energy sources, and the implications of this perspective for the oil sector in particular.

Geek rating: 8

(more…)