Total Energy USA assembles all the energy sectors – fossil, renewable and nuclear – to give you a comprehensive look at different energy solutions that will generate energy business and help to address today’s energy challenges. In an event focused on how businesses are impacted by energy and designed to open new opportunities, you will have access to the latest information, the newest technologies and the best industry connections.
Sponsored by DuPont
The first North American gathering to discuss applying the UN's Fossil Resource Reserve Methodology to renewable electricity and fuels and identify U.S. (and other Americas) stakeholders in the UN's recently formed Task Force on the Application of UNFC-2009 to Renewable Energy Resources.
Goal: This workshop, the first in North America, while not an official UN meeting, is designed to identify the appropriate stakeholders to be recommended to the new UN task force to address this topic and build knowledge about the concept of renewable energy reserves.
AgendaSummary/Background:
An important initiative is underway at the UN to develop a proposal for measuring the energy potential in renewable energy in a way that's consistent with how fossil energy is measured today. This can be extremely influential in an energy company's financial valuation and strategic decisions.
Today, well-established methodologies are used to assess oil & gas projects based on agreed criteria. A company’s fossil fuel reserves, described using specific terms such as Proved and Probable reserves (as defined in the Petroleum Resources Management System) are good indicators of its future earnings, and correlate with share prices. Oil companies seek to move as many barrels as possible from the probable to the proved category, and as production depletes those reserves, they continually seek to replace them in order to maintain and/or increase their market value. The UNFC-2009 is the one reference methodology used to compare across all reserve types including oil, coal, gas and other minerals.
While renewable energy sources are by definition not depletable, the idea is to look at future cumulative energy output at a project level and evaluate the cumulative energy output over its lifetime, classified as a reserve. In this way, different energy sources can be compared more easily, and renewable energy’s contribution can be more directly compared to that of fossil fuels.
The UN Economic Commission for Europe’s called upon the UN Expert Group on Resource Classification (EGRC) to “develop ideas on how the UNFC could apply to and integrate renewable energy”. In April 2013, the EGRC held a working session in Geneva, where it considered the topic and concluded that UNFC-2009 can be applied to renewable energy resources. The EGRC also established a public-private Task Force to develop a draft set of specifications for the application of the UNFC-2009 to Renewables. It is envisaged that this will consist of an overarching Renewable Specification document, together with commodity-specific specifications and a conversion document that will outline the conversion principles across energy metrics to support a consistent comparison and reporting of various energy resources.
This workshop, the first in North America, while not an official UN meeting, is designed to identify the appropriate stakeholders to be recommended to the new UN task force to address this topic and build knowledge about the concept of renewable energy reserves. The Task Force is interested in soliciting input and participation by US interests, which have been underrepresented to date, especially given how large the U.S. renewables industry is compared to that of most of the rest of the world. It is a significant opportunity for any company that has renewable energy generation in its portfolio.
