Monday 17 December 2018

Until We Confront Capitalism, We Will Not Solve the Climate Crisis

My interview on Truthout, about global warming and my book Burning Up. "... focus on rich-world hamburger eaters ignores the supply chain that produces such fuel-intensive, unhealthy products". Consumption is not a moral issue, and not mainly by individuals: fossil fuels are consumed by and through technological and economic systems."

Sunday 16 December 2018

Moving Away From Fossil Fuels Isn't Separate From Moving Towards Social Justice

My take on the Katowice talks, in an interview with The Wire in India. "Obviously, it would be welcome if more nations adopt and improve on their voluntary targets. But we should not live in a world of false hopes. The talks have failed because they have effectively limited action to the adoption of market mechanisms. They have left the industrial and financial elites that control the world’s economies untouched. Thus, they’ve made, and continue to make, decisions that have ensured huge increases in fossil fuel use."

How We Stop the World From "Burning Up"

A chunk of my book Burning Up, published by Truthout in the US. ... transition away from fossil fuels means "developing sustainable technological systems better to meet human need, and changing technological systems together with social and economic ones".

A Brief History of Not Dealing with Climate Change

My interview with Vice News about my book Burning Up: A Global History of Fossil Fuel Consumption. "Society needs to take this whole process out of the hands of that very small, powerful group of people who claim to be dealing with the problem, because they’re not dealing with the problem."

Russian gas transit through Ukraine after 2019: the options

Gazprom’s pipeline projects that aim to diversify transit away from Ukraine, Nord Stream 2 and Turkish Stream, are very unlikely to be operating at full capacity by 31 December 2019, when the current transit contract between Gazprom and Naftogaz expires. New contractual arrangements must therefore be agreed – and are being negotiated in an atmosphere of unprecedented friction between the companies. An analysis of the possible outcomes, published by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

Saturday 10 November 2018

Technological change in electricity: why history matters

A discussion article in the Trade Unions for Energy Democracy bulletin. … "a future change in the technological system – and decarbonisation implies very sweeping change – can best be envisioned in the context of deep-going social, economic and political transformations".

Monday 8 October 2018

We need to talk about technology

My article about air conditioning, in The Ecologist, questions some "left" eco-modernist dogma. It argues that a campaign for mass installation of air con is misconceived, that there are better ways to do temperature control in housing, and that the productivist thinking behind the idea is misconstrued.

Sunday 12 August 2018

Monday 30 July 2018

Let's not exaggerate: Southern Gas Corridor prospects to 2030

The Southern Gas Corridor will by 2030 supply to Europe, at most, enough for an extra 15 bcm/year of capacity on the Trans Anatolian pipeline - and, probably, less than that, I argue in a working paper published today by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

Tuesday 26 June 2018

How Russia/EEU economic relations with the EU are reflected in the gas trade

Russian gas exports to the EU; the crisis of the Russia-Ukraine gas trade; and gas markets within the Eurasian Economic Union are covered in this presentation, given at a seminar at University College London (School of Slavonic and East European Studies).

The decline and fall of the Russia-Ukraine gas trade

Article in the Russian Analytical Digest (download here). … The Russia–Ukraine gas trade is being reduced to a shadow of its former self. Contracts between Gazprom and Naftogaz Ukrainy—for the import of Russian gas to Ukraine and the transit of Russian gas across Ukraine to European customers, in 2009–19—remain in place, but have been broken by both sides. This analysis examines the state of affairs after the final ruling of the arbitral tribunal and looks beyond 2019.