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  Competition from record-low natural gas prices and reduced power demand in the lockdown in the spring sent coal consumption in the U.S. power sector down by 30 percent in the first half of 2020 compared to the same period last year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Friday. The spot price of the U.S. natural gas benchmark Henry Hub hit record lows in the first half of 2020 due to mild winter early in the year and depressed demand later on with the pandemic. Monthly prices reached as low as $1.63 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) in June, the lowest monthly inflation-adjusted price since at least 1989, according to EIA estimates. Other factors contributing to the lower coal consumption this year included the continuously falling coal-fired electricity generation capacity in the United States as natural gas has been replacing coal capacity because of the cheap and abundant source of shale gas and stricter emissions r...

  Raphael Warnock (left) and Jon Ossoff are the Democratic candidates for Georgia's seats The balance of power in the US Senate will be decided in January when Georgia will hold run-off elections for both its seats. No candidate in either race has polled 50%, as required by state election law. The run-off elections will take place on 5 January, two days after the new Senate is due to convene. The Republicans currently have a 53 to 47 majority in the Senate. So far, the Democrats have managed a net gain of one seat. The Democrats had high hopes of gaining the four seats they needed to take control, but many Republican incumbents held their seats. If however, the Democrats can gain both seats in Georgia, a traditionally Republican state, this would lead to a 50-50 tie in the Senate. The result will effectively put them in control of the chamber if Joe Biden wins the White House, given the vice-president's power to cast tie-breaking votes. IMAGE COPYRIGHT Senators Kelly Loeffler a...

An artist's impression of Highview's planned energy storage facility It sounds like magic but it is real - a plan to store cheap night-time wind energy in the form of liquid air. Here is how: you use the off-peak electricity to compress and cool air in a tank, so it becomes a freezing liquid. When demand peaks, you warm the liquid back into a gas, and as that expands it drives a turbine to create more electricity. The technology, promoted by a backyard inventor, is about to hit the big time. It has been tried at a small scale but now the firm behind it, Highview, has announced that a grid-scale 50MW plant will be built in the north of England on the site of a former conventional power plant. The technology has been supported by the UK government. One attractive feature is that it uses existing simple technology developed for storing and compressing liquefied natural gas (LNG), so unlike battery storage, it does not require mining for rare minerals. The key innovation is to stor...

  President Donald Trump speaks at the White House, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020, in Washington President Donald Trump is testing how far he can go in using the trappings of presidential power to undermine confidence in this week's election against Joe Biden, as the Democrat gained ground in tight contests in key battleground states — and then inched ahead in Georgia. With his pathway to reelection appearing to shrink, Trump on Thursday advanced unsupported accusations of voter fraud to falsely argue that his rival was trying to seize power. It amounted to an extraordinary effort by a sitting American president to sow doubt about the democratic process. “This is a case when they are trying to steal an election, they are trying to rig an election,” Trump said from the podium of the White House briefing room. The Republican president's remarks deepened a sense of anxiety in the U.S. as Americans enter their third full day after the election without knowing who would serve as president...

  Paris Charles de Gaulle airport now has far fewer travelers French police have arrested seven people accused of offering fake negative Covid-19 test certificates to departing passengers at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. The six men and one woman were found to have more than 200 counterfeit certificates on their mobile phones. The fakes would have been sold for up to €300 (£271) each, prosecutors say. The arrests came after the certificate of a passenger bound for Ethiopia was found to be false. The fake certificates bore the names of real Parisian medical laboratories. Some airlines and destinations now require passengers to show a recent negative test certificate, under tighter immigration rules. The seven had been running an unlicensed business as luggage-wrappers, but that had suffered when passenger numbers crashed in the coronavirus pandemic, AFP news agency reported, quoting an airport source. They face charges of forgery and complicity in the fraud, which carry a maximum...

  As if the oil market needed another uncertainty in the year of the pandemic, a Joe Biden win at next week's U.S. presidential election could have a significant impact not only on the American oil industry but also on global crude supply within a year.    In stark contrast with President Donald Trump's maximum pressure campaign on Iran with  escalating sanctions  on the Islamic Republic's oil industry — including a new round of sanctions slapped this week — Biden pledges to offer Tehran a path back to diplomacy and a return to the nuclear deal. That is if Iran returns to full compliance with that agreement, hammered out while Biden was President Obama's vice president.  If the U.S. and Iran return on the path of diplomacy under a President Biden, there is a chance that the strict U.S. sanctions on Iran's oil exports could be eased, potentially paving the way for around 2 million barrels per day (BPD) of Iranian crude oil exports returning to the market....