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The renewable energy super-grid is planned to become operational in 2020 and will involve Europe's leading utilities, who will share part of the massive price tag.   The project would be the first multinational grid designed to address the fluctuating nature of green power generation, one of the main challenges slowing down the share of renewables in the baseload energy mix.   Energy from power produced from the wind farms at night could be stored in Norway's hydropower facilities to be released the following day; helping to secure a more stable energy supply.

The report identifies five key findings, as follows: There is a significant contradiction between consumer perceptions and their actual knowledge of energy efficiency. Consumers’ first instinct is to contact utilities/electricity providers for energy-efficiency activities, but providers still need to build trust and credibility. While prices remain a key factor to adoption, the extent of the utilities’/providers’ control over energy use has emerged as a potential barrier. Channels and contact points for utilities/electricity providers to communicate with consumers are diverse. Adoption of electricity management programs is influenced by fragmented and nontraditional consumer preferences.

We found that the EV powertrain is $4.6k cheaper to produce than we thought and there is more cost reduction potential left. Consumer cost of ownership (TCO) parity vis-à-vis combustion engine (ICE) cars can be reached from 2018 (first in EU), creating an inflection point for demand.

Our detailed analysis of moving and wearing parts has shown that the highly lucrative spare parts business should shrink by ~60% in the end-game of a 100%-EV world, which is decades away.

EVs are an opportunity for tech companies because the electronics content in the Bolt is $4k higher than in an ICE car, excluding the battery.

Most governments provide some kind of financial assistance to boost energy supply or reduce prices for certain energy consumers. Fossil fuels have been widely subsidized for decades. The exact scale of these subsidies is not known because a comprehensive study has never been undertaken. What is clear is that fossil-fuel subsidies can drain government budgets and increase greenhouse gas emissions. In recognition of these unwanted impacts, the leaders of the Group of Twenty (G-20) countries agreed in September 2009 to phase-out inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies in the medium term. The Global Subsidies Initiative is well aware of the complex issues surrounding fossil-fuel subsidies and their reform. That is why last year, in anticipation of the current calls for such reform, it commenced an ambitious program to identify, measure, and analyze the effects of fossil-fuel subsidies. Key findings from the first five in-depth reports, which together make up the series Untold Billions: Fossil-fuel subsidies, their impacts and the path to reform, are summarized above. Below, each of the individual reports can be freely downloaded. Support for one of the papers, Gaining traction: the importance of transparency in accelerating the reform of fossil-fuel subsidies, was generously provided by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

President Jimmy Carter signed a bill calling for 10,000 megawatts of OTEC capacity to be up and running by 1999. Then oil prices stabilized, administrations changed, and other than a few demonstration projects, nothing happened.

“When people actually have to build stuff that’s got to survive in the ocean and be insured, costs double. Insurance premiums triple,” he said. “And all of a sudden, what looked good when you announced it, you can’t actually get finance to build.”

Binger added that many small island nations still haven’t recovered from the debt they incurred during the oil crisis that began in 1979.