Author: Arnes Biogradlija

When the United States moved against Venezuela in early 2026, the geopolitical signal was loud. The oil market’s response was not. Prices did not behave as if a structural supply shock had occurred, despite Venezuela’s long-known role as a source of heavy crude tailored to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries. That disconnect is not an anomaly. It is the defining feature of oil markets in the energy transition era, claims Adi Imširović, director at Surrey Clean Energy and Lecturer on Energy Systems at Oxford University. WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE The immediate lesson is uncomfortable for headline-driven narratives. Military intervention did…

If the global energy transition were as settled as policymakers claim, oil prices would not still be acting as a proxy for geopolitical stress. Yet every major rupture of the last two decades has traced back to energy control, not climate targets. The illusion of orderly transition persists only because financial systems have been absorbing physical constraints through debt, currency expansion, and strategic distraction. WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE In recent interviews and presentations, Simon Michaux frames the current moment less as a transition and more as a structural reckoning. His argument is not ideological. It is grounded in how…

Global hydrogen output is dominated by fossil-based supply, while low-emissions hydrogen remains a small fraction of total production. That imbalance is the simplest explanation for why the sector’s current correction is not primarily a technology story. It is a capital allocation and policy credibility story, with delivered molecule cost and infrastructure execution doing most of the damage. Ryan Sookhoo frames the moment as a regional slowdown rather than a universal collapse. WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE Policy volatility is the first-order shock, not chemistry Sookhoo’s causal argument is straightforward: a U.S. federal shift in energy posture created second-order waves across…

In a policy shift that breaks with more than four decades of regulatory practice, the Environmental Protection Agency under President Trump moved to stop monetizing the public health benefits of cleaner air when setting pollution rules. The change affects two of the most harmful and widespread pollutants in the United States, fine particulate matter known as PM2.5 and ground-level ozone. Historically, these health benefits, including avoided premature deaths, asthma attacks, hospital admissions, and lost workdays, formed the backbone of cost-benefit analyses used to justify air quality standards. Under the revised approach, only the compliance costs borne by industry would be…

The European Union’s ambitious plan to address a projected 800,000-worker shortage in its battery sector has encountered significant credibility issues. InnoEnergy, a Netherlands-based clean tech company awarded €10 million in EU funding, claims to have trained 100,000 people through its European Battery Alliance Academy. Independent analysis reveals systematic flaws in how these numbers were calculated, raising fundamental questions about public spending oversight and project accountability. The methodology behind InnoEnergy’s reported success deserves immediate scrutiny. The company counts certificates issued rather than individual participants, meaning a single person completing four courses appears in the data as four separate learners. This approach…

In 2023, nearly all hydrogen consumed in the European Union was still produced from fossil fuels, despite four years of increasingly ambitious hydrogen strategies and tens of billions of euros in pledged public support. This single data point captures the core tension shaping today’s hydrogen geopolitics: political momentum has accelerated faster than technology deployment, cost reduction, and demand formation. Across major economies, hydrogen is no longer framed merely as a decarbonisation tool. It has become an instrument of industrial policy, energy security, and geopolitical positioning. Yet the strategies outlined by governments reveal structural contradictions between climate ambition, fiscal capacity, and…

John Risley’s World Energy GH2 has abandoned plans for a green hydrogen and ammonia plant in Stephenville, Newfoundland, acknowledging that clean hydrogen production costs remain prohibitively expensive for consumers compared to natural gas-derived alternatives. The billionaire developer now proposes a $16 billion subsea and overland transmission network connecting Atlantic provinces to Quebec, targeting wind power exports to northeastern United States markets through Hydro-Québec. The project collapse follows a pattern documented across the hydrogen sector where promotional announcements, government subsidies, and high-profile political endorsements precede acknowledgment of fundamental economic unviability. Then-German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Stephenville in 2022 to sign a…

China’s electrification rate in final energy consumption reached 28.8% in 2024, representing a 0.9 percentage point annual increase and surpassing levels observed in major developed economies across Europe and North America, according to the China Electricity Council’s annual report. The country projects total electricity consumption exceeding 13 trillion kilowatt-hours by 2030, with the electrification share in final energy consumption climbing approximately one percentage point annually during the 15th Five-Year Plan period to reach 35% by decade’s end. Final energy consumption, defined as energy used in everyday activities and industrial production rather than transformation losses, serves as a key metric for…

Renewable energy sources are projected to comprise 46% of global electricity generation by 2030, up from 30% in 2023, according to International Energy Agency forecasts. Solar and wind are expected to account for nearly all of this expansion. This rapid deployment trajectory creates control system challenges for microgrids integrating intermittent generation, particularly as global renewable capacity is expected to expand by over 5,520 GW during 2024-2030, representing 2.6 times the deployment achieved during 2017-2023. A recent academic study examines hierarchical control architectures that combine droop-based primary control, adaptive centralized secondary regulation, and battery energy storage systems to address frequency instability…

Thyssenkrupp’s hydrogen subsidiary Nucera recorded a 77% decline in green hydrogen segment orders during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024/25, with new business contracting to €3 million compared to prior-year levels. The company reported that additional orders in this division will not significantly impact revenue until subsequent years, while the traditional chlor-alkali business demonstrated relative resilience with only a 6% quarterly decline and €107 million in new orders. The order collapse extends deterioration visible throughout the fiscal year ended September 2025, with total order backlog falling from €1.1 billion to €606 million. This 45% backlog reduction reflects both project execution…