Research Library

Last month, China released its 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) for the energy sector. While clean and low-carbon may be the keywords on paper, in reality, Beijing will continue rely on coal to power its economy and energy transitions, writes the author. Read the post on the Baker Institute Blog.

Introduction

The major drivers of Mexico’s outlook in 2022 will be 1) growing political polarization and social conflict…

"With the pressures of climate change and the urgency to incorporate alternative energy resources like wind and solar, the fixation on the purported benefits of energy transition technologies overshadows the glaring reality — an absence of strategy around identifying and quantifying other life cycle externalities, such as waste disposal or environmental impacts," write fellow Rachel Meidl and research assistant Mathilde Saada. Read more on the Baker Institute Blog.

A lignite mine on the border of Poland and the Czech Republic is caught between global environmental and local economic concerns. For COP26 to make headway on climate action, the authors write, it must consider the local implications while proposing solutions.

In October the UAE declared a goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. That goal seems incredibly lofty for an oil-dominated economy, but the UAE's particular advantages may uniquely suit the task, energy fellow Jim Krane explains in this week's Forbes post.

In the push for decarbonization, "turquoise" hydrogen offers a unique, commercially viable technology that reduces CO2 emissions, argue Rachel A. Meidl and Kenneth B. Medlock III.

The first step to reducing methane, Agerton and Gilbert argue, is to directly measure it. Their new Forbes post explains why inventory-based incentives that merely estimate emissions must give way to direct methane monitoring.

Circular economy principles are oftentimes used in conjunction or synonymously with the term “sustainability.” However, although there is a relationship between sustainability and circularity, these two concepts are very different. Energy fellow Rachel A. Meidl explains the distinction in a new post for the Baker Institute Blog.

U.S. producers have sustained oil supply by feathering their beds with “DUCs down” — their large inventory of drilled-but-uncompleted wells. Could they exhaust the DUCs? What then? Energy fellow Mark Finley explains on the Baker Institute Blog.

Amid recent disputes on oil trade, "fractious Saudi-UAE relations are ... better understood as a return to the pre-2015 status quo than a unique diplomatic breach," write Jim Krane and Kristian Coates Ulrichsen.