Energy analysts argue that the European Union moved too quickly away from fossil-fueled power, before ensuring that sufficient renewable sources could take up the slack in an emergency. Caught halfway in a transition that should take decades, they say, Europe is now scrambling to find coal and gas to burn in its remaining traditional power stations.

Banks have earned about $3.6 billion in fees in 2021 from arranging sales of ESG bonds for companies and governments. That is more than double the $1.6 billion banks pocketed so far this year from issuing debt for fossil-fuel companies. About $750 billion of ESG bonds have been issued this year, compared with $468 billion during all of 2020.

Wind farms were paid £1.85 million to shut down this week – at a time when consumers face huge rises in energy bills because of the spiralling cost of natural gas. The turbines were switched off, because the electricity they would have produced could not have reached the regions that needed it. Instead, electricity from gas-fired power stations was used.

On-demand power from storage is critical for preventing blackouts in Australia, which is increasingly dependent on wind and solar farms, from which energy is not always available. Hornsdale Power Reserve was called on to dispatch power in July to November 2019 during frequency disturbances, but that the energy was not supplied as needed.

Europe’s gas prices have more than tripled this year as top supplier Russia has been curbing the additional deliveries the continent needs to refill its depleted storage. Higher gas prices boosted the cost of producing electricity. Europe is short of gas and coal and if the wind doesn’t blow, the worst-case scenario could play out: widespread blackouts.

SDX received the go-ahead from the Financial Market Supervisory Authority to operate a stock exchange and a central securities depository for digital assets in Switzerland. This authorization enables SDX to go live with a regulated, integrated trading, settlement, and custody infrastructure based on distributed ledger technology for digital securities.

The value of the world’s stock of negative-yielding debt has ballooned to more than $16.5tn. Germany’s 10-year yield fell to minus 0.51%, the lowest level since early February. The country’s 30-year yield has also fallen beneath zero. All of Germany’s debt, which serves as a reference for bonds across the eurozone, now trades at negative yields.

Have politicians made a fundamental miscalculation when it comes to the contribution of electric cars? In 6,000 of the 8,760 hours a year, more electricity from fossil-fuel power plants will be needed in addition to green electricity. Then the real CO2 emissions could be much higher than the politicians estimate, in total even twice as high.

The German federal government assumes that electricity consumption will remain largely constant over the next ten years. However, their own consultants see it differently. They warn against a miscalculation and demand that the German energy transition is partially relocated abroad. Germany will turn from a net exporter to a net importer of electricity.

RTE, the operator of the national grid called on the French to reduce their consumption. The consumption was forecast at 88 GW, low compared to the 102 GW peak of 2018. Some of the nuclear power stations are under maintenance, two reactors and a coal-fired power station at Fessenheim had been closed and wind was very weak on Friday.

National Grid is struggling to keep the system balanced as demand rises with colder weather and wind generation is forecast to be low. Britain gets about 8% of its power supply from huge cables connected to Europe. The low electricity supply situation could be compounded by a planned strike by Electricite de France SA workers.

How to manage intermittency is one of the challenges of weather-dependent low-carbon electricity. It is not simply about paying for back-up for when nature refuses to play ball. It generates additional system costs. A report by the UK’s business and energy department shows how they change the economics of different low-carbon energy sources.