Environment

With Russia’s role in the global energy system falling, a select few nations are set to benefit

Published

2 years ago

April 26, 2023

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An LNG vessel in Tekirdag, Turkiye on April 12, 2023. ]

Lokman Akkaya | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Russia’s role as a global energy player is set to diminish, and the U.S. and Qatar are among a slew of nations ready to fill its shoes, analysts told CNBC.

“Russia’s global LNG supply share will almost certainly decline this decade,” Henning Gloystein, a director for energy, climate, and natural resources at political consultancy Eurasia Group told CNBC. He noted that its role in the liquefied natural gas space was retreating even before the country’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

Western sanctions, which resulted from the onslaught of its neighbor, further sapped most foreign investment out of Russia’s LNG sector.

Russia’s inability to purchase liquefaction modules (which enable natural gas to be converted into LNG) will hamper its ambitions, said S&P’s Director of South and Southeast Asia Gas, Zhi Xin Chong.

“In this decade, it will be extremely challenging for Russia to expand its liquefaction capacity given the broad sanctions that have been imposed on the country,” Chong said in an e-mail.

He added that the total capacity for Russia’s LNG facilities to produce natural gas will remain flat at 37 million tons over the next few years.

By 2030, the total global LNG capacity will grow by 50% to 671 million tons per year — and Russia’s share of this pie is expected to fall to 5% from the current 6.7%, S&P further projects.

Russia’s diminishing place

In 2021 before its invasion of Ukraine, Russia was the world’s largest gas exporter, as well as the fourth largest LNG exporter after Australia, Qatar and the U.S.

And these countries are expected to fill the gas gap — alongside others.

“We’re going to see much more emphasis on other places like the U.S., Mozambique and Australia,” Chong said.

In the first half of 2022, the U.S. overtook Qatar and Australia to become the world’s largest LNG exporter, according to the Energy Information Administration, citing data from not-for-profit organization Cedigaz.

The Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) tanker Maria Energy is moored at the Uniper LNG terminal at the Jade estuary in Wilhelmshaven, northern Germany, on January 4, 2023.

Focke Strangmann | Afp | Getty Images

By 2030, Chong expects the U.S. to take up 25% of global LNG capacity, and Qatar to make up 19%.

Eurasia’s Henning also cited the U.S. and Qatar as being the “main beneficiaries” as Russia falls back from the world’s LNG ecosystem.

“New projects and expansions to existing facilities in the U.S. as well as Qatar’s massive North Field expansion have been significantly accelerated as Europe piled into the LNG market last year,” he said.

Asides from the U.S. and Qatar, the Eastern Mediterranean is also on his list as the region is geographically well suited to replace Russian pipeline gas to southern European countries, especially Italy, Greece and Croatia.

“East African LNG including Mozambique and potentially also Tanzania may also benefit,” Henning added.

LNG’s diminishing place?

However, he cautioned that the “window of opportunity is relatively narrow” given Europe’s drive to reduce overall gas consumption through upcoming restrictions on usage and investment in alternative domestic supply sources.

The European Union unveiled a REPowerEU plan shortly after the start of the Ukriane war, with an aim of increasing the share of renewables in final energy consumption to 45% by the end of the decade. This dovetails with the European Climate Law’s long-term decarbonization agenda, Pavel Molchanov, managing director of equity research at investment bank Raymond James, told CNBC via email.

“The expansion of renewable power means that the role of gas, not to mention coal, is diminishing over time,” he said.

Environment

Economists, experts call for governments to ditch hydrogen, go fully electric

Published

7 hours ago

April 2, 2025

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Economists, experts call for governments to ditch hydrogen, go fully electric

In a joint statement, the French CAE and the German Council of Economic Experts have called for "a common approach" by France and Germany in the decarbonisation of road freight transport. And in doing so, the experts are clearly committed to battery-electric trucks.

In a joint statement, French and German economists have called on governments to adopt “a common approach” to decarbonize European trucking fleets – and they’re calling for a focus on fully electric trucks, not hydrogen.

France and Germany are the two largest economies in the EU, and they share similar challenges when it comes to freight decarbonization. The two countries also share a border, and the traffic between the two nations generates major cross-border flows that create common externalities between the two countries.

At the same time, the EU’s transport sector has struggled to reduce emissions at the same rate as other industries – and road freight in particular is a major contributor to harmful carbon emissions issue due to that industry’s heavy reliance on diesel-powered trucks.

And for once, it seems like rail isn’t a viable option:

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While rail remains competitive mainly for heavy, homogeneous goods over long distances. Most freight in Europe is indeed transported over distances of less than 200 km and involves consignment weights of up to 30 tonnes (GCEE, 2024) In most such cases, transportation by rail instead of truck is not possible or not competitive. Moreover, taking into account the goods currently transported in intermodal transport units over distances of more than 300 km, the modal shift potential from road to rail would be only 6% in Germany and less than 2% in France.

FRANCO-GERMAN COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC EXPERTS (FGCEE)

That leaves trucks – and, while numerous government incentives currently exist to promote the parallel development of both hydrogen and battery electric vehicle infrastructures, the study is clear in picking a winner.

“Policies should focus on battery-electric trucks (BET) as these represent the most mature and market-ready technology for road freight transport,” reads the the FGCEE statement. “Hence, to ramp-up usage of BET public funding should be used to accelerate the roll-out of fast-charging networks along major corridors and in private depots.”

The appeal was signed by the co-chair of the advisory body on the German side is the chairwoman of the German Council of Economic Experts, Monika Schnitzer. Camille Landais co-chairs the French side. On the German side, the appeal was signed by four of the five experts; Nuremberg-based energy economist Veronika Grimm (who also sits on the National Hydrogen Council, which is committed to promoting H2 trucks and filling stations) did not sign.

You can read an English version of the CAE FGCEE joint statement here.

Electrek’s Take

Hydrogen-sceptical truck maker MAN to produce limited series of 200 vehicles with H2 combustion engines — MAN hydrogen semi; via MAN Trucks.

MAN Trucks’ CEO famously said that it was “impossible” for hydrogen to compete with BEVs, and even committed to building 200 hydrogen-powered semi truck to prove out that hypothesis.

He’s not alone. MAN’s board member for research and development, Frederik Zohm, said that the company is the one saying hydrogen still has years to go. “(MAN) continues to research fuel cell technology based on battery electrics,” he said, in a statement quoted by Hydrogen Insight, before another board member added that, “we (MAN) expect that, in the future, we will be able to best serve the vast majority of our customers’ transport applications with battery-electric trucks.”

With companies like Volvo and Renault and now Mercedes racking up millions of miles on their respective battery electric semi truck fleets, it’s no longer even close. EV is the way.

SOURCE | IMAGES: CAE FGCEE; via Electrive.

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Environment

Quick Charge | the terrifying Trump tariffs are finally upon us!

Published

7 hours ago

April 2, 2025

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Quick Charge | the terrifying Trump tariffs are finally upon us!

On today’s tariff-tastic episode of Quick Charge, we’ve got tariffs! Big ones, small ones, crazy ones, and fake ones – but whether or not you agree with the Trump tariffs coming into effect tomorrow, one thing is absolutely certain: they are going to change the price you pay for your next car … and that price won’t be going down!

Everyone’s got questions about what these tariffs are going to mean for their next car buying experience, but this is a bigger question, since nearly every industry in the US uses cars and trucks to move their people and products – and when their costs go up, so do yours.

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New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded, usually, Monday through Thursday (and sometimes Sunday). We’ll be posting bonus audio content from time to time as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news.

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Environment

SunZia Wind’s massive 2.4 GW project hits a big milestone

Published

9 hours ago

April 1, 2025

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SunZia Wind’s massive 2.4 GW project hits a big milestone

GE Vernova has produced over half the turbines needed for SunZia Wind, which will be the largest wind farm in the Western Hemisphere when it comes online in 2026.

GE Vernova has manufactured enough turbines at its Pensacola, Florida, factory to supply over 1.2 gigawatts (GW) of the turbines needed for the $5 billion, 2.4 GW SunZia Wind, a project milestone. The wind farm will be sited in Lincoln, Torrance, and San Miguel counties in New Mexico.

At a ribbon-cutting event for Pensacola’s new customer experience center, GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik noted that since 2023, the company has invested around $70 million in the Pensacola factory.

The Pensacola investments are part of the announcement GE Vernova made in January that it will invest nearly $600 million in its US factories and facilities over the next two years to help meet the surging electricity demands globally. GE Vernova says it’s expecting its investments to create more than 1,500 new US jobs.

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Vic Abate, CEO of GE Vernova Wind, said, “Our dedicated employees in Pensacola are working to address increasing energy demands for the US. The workhorse turbines manufactured at this world-class factory are engineered for reliability and scalability, ensuring our customers can meet growing energy demand.”

SunZia Wind and Transmission will create US history’s largest clean energy infrastructure project.

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