Vincent Lauerman

Vincent Lauerman is president of Geopolitics Central, a Calgary-based energy consultancy. He has spent the majority of his three-decade career working as a global energy analyst, specializing on oil markets. He has also worked as a manager of energy economists, policy analysts and reporters, and as a private macro-speculator. He began his career with the Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission in the mid-1980s, having graduated with a masters degree in economics from the University of Alberta, and has worked in Calgary, New York and Tokyo.

  • The Bitumen Beyond Combustion Series, Part 2 – Asphalt Binder

    In Part 1 of this multi-part series, Alberta Innovates identified asphalt binder — the glue that holds the asphalt mix together — as the bitumen beyond combustion (BBC) product having “the greatest potential of achieving commercial success” in the short and longer term.

    March 19, 2024, 7 AM MDT

  • The Bitumen Beyond Combustion Series, Part 1 – The Big Picture

    Alberta Innovates has been promoting and supporting the Bitumen Beyond Combustion (BBC) program since its conception in 2016, with some modest successes to date across the three main potential product streams — asphalt binder, energy carbons and carbon fibre.

    March 13, 2024, 6 AM MDT

  • Could Solar Geoengineering Be Part Of The Climate Solution?

    The idea of engineering the climate by blocking the sun’s rays through various means has been around for decades.

    March 5, 2024, 8 AM MST

  • Lauerman: Charlie Angus And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Bill C-372

    My initial thought when the editors of the DOB asked me to come out of op-ed retirement to write about federal NDP backbencher Charlie Angus’s Bill C-372 — also known as the Fossil Fuel Advertising Act — was there’s no point because the bill has a snowball’s chance in hell of passing in the House of Commons.

    February 21, 2024, 8:54 AM MST

  • Lauerman: President Putin’s Massive Ukrainian Blunder – Reprise II

    In the two weeks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the DOB published my three-part “President Putin’s Massive Ukrainian Blunder” series.

    January 31, 2024, 6 AM MST

  • The Electric Vehicle Series, Part 4 – Canada’s Budding EV Supply Chain

    Canada’s EV supply chain is widely viewed to have a great deal of potential, ranking second in the world after China in BloombergNEF’s latest global rankings in November 2022.

    January 15, 2024, 6 AM MST

  • The Electric Vehicle Series, Part 3 – Overcoming The Impediments

    Electric vehicle bulls recognize the industry has significant geopolitical, economic and environmental impediments to overcome if EVs are to dominate the global road transportation market.

    January 8, 2024, 6 AM MST

  • The Electric Vehicle Series, Part 2 – A Bearish Case

    “The future will see tens of millions more EVs on the roads, even without government programs that favour or mandate them,” Mark P. Mills wrote in Electric Vehicles for Everyone? The Impossible Dream, a Manhattan Institute report released in July.

    January 2, 2024, 6 AM MST

  • The Electric Vehicle Series, Part 1 – The Bullish Case

    “We're off to the races on EV adoption,” Colin McKerracher, head of advanced transport at BloombergNEF and lead author of its 2023 Electric Vehicle Outlook, said on an episode of Bloomberg Green’s Zero podcast in early October.

    December 18, 2023, 6 AM MST

  • Oil And Gas Emissions Cap Series, Part 3 – Decarbonizing The Mid And Downstream

    As discussed in Part 1 of this three-part series, Canada’s downstream subsector presently is the closest to achieving the level of emission reductions proposed in the federal government’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP) — 31 per cent below 2005 levels by end of decade/42 per cent below 2019 levels — whereas the midstream subsector has reduced emissions by a relatively modest amount to date (see Figure 1).

    November 30, 2023, 6 AM MST

  • Oil And Gas Emissions Cap Series, Part 2 – Decarbonizing The Upstream

    As discussed in Part 1 of this series, Canada’s conventional oil and gas subsector may be able to achieve the level of emission reductions proposed in the federal government’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan — 31 per cent below 2005 levels by end of decade/42 per cent below 2019 levels — but the oilsands subsector doesn’t have a chance due to massive production increases dwarfing improvements in emissions intensity (see Figure 1).

    November 21, 2023, 6 AM MST

  • Oil And Gas Emissions Cap Series, Part 1 – Is Mission 2030 Possible?

    The federal government’s oil and gas emissions cap is coming — much like winter in HBO’s blockbuster hit series Game of Thrones — with its draft legislation likely to be released by the end of the year.

    November 14, 2023, 12 AM MST

  • Net-Zero Power Grids By 2035 Series, Part 3 – Potential Pathways For Saskatchewan

    As discussed in Part 1 of this series, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and provincial Crown corporation SaskPower have stated in the most extreme terms that transitioning to a low-carbon power grid by 2035 — the goal of the federal government’s proposed Clean Electricity Regulations (CER) — is not achievable as it “isn’t feasible technically, logistically, or financially."

    October 31, 2023, 6 AM MDT

  • Net-Zero Power Grids By 2035 Series, Part 2 – Potential Pathways For Alberta

    As discussed in Part 1 of this series, the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) projected the cost of achieving a net-zero grid in Alberta by 2035 to be substantially higher than under a more gradual decarbonization approach in its “Net-Zero Emissions Pathways Report” released in June 2022.

    October 25, 2023, 8 AM MDT

  • The Canada Clean Hydrogen Series, Part 6 – B.C.’s Great Expectations

    The British Columbia government was the quickest Canadian province to release a clean hydrogen strategy in July 2021, and in many ways appears to have the most developed and systematic strategy for developing a hydrogen economy in their province.

    October 11, 2023, 12 AM MDT

  • Net-Zero Power Grids By 2035 Series, Part 1 – The Western Firestorm

    The Canadian government released a draft version of its Clean Electricity Regulations (CER) in August, with the goal of achieving net-zero emission grids in all provinces and territories by 2035.

    October 3, 2023, 9 AM MDT

  • The Canada Clean Hydrogen Series, Part 5 – Ontario’s Shotgun Approach

    Ontario appears to be taking more of a shotgun approach to its low-carbon hydrogen industry, in terms of sources of clean hydrogen and the markets it will serve in the province, than Alberta, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Quebec — the focus of earlier parts of this series — based on a strategy document released in April 2022.

    September 26, 2023, 12 AM MDT

  • Simpatico Views About Net Zero On WPC Ministerial Roundtable

    Three high-ranking representatives from major oil and gas producing jurisdictions expressed similar views about matters related to net-zero emissions on a ministerial roundtable at the 2023 World Petroleum Congress in Calgary.

    September 21, 2023, 8:30 AM MDT

  • The Canada Clean Hydrogen Series, Part 4 – Quebec’s Modest Expectations

    The Quebec government appears to have relatively low expectations for the province’s clean hydrogen industry compared to either Alberta or Atlantic Canada — the focus of Part 2 and Part 3 of this series, respectively — despite releasing a Green Hydrogen and Bioenergy Strategy in May 2022.

    September 11, 2023, 6 AM MDT

  • The Canada Clean Hydrogen Series, Part 3 – Atlantic Canada’s Export Drive

    Atlantic Canada is off to a fast start in the global clean hydrogen race, with a plethora of small and large-scale projects proposed for the region — especially wind-based export projects in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland & Labrador (NL), with projects in Nova Scotia presently leading the pack.

    August 23, 2023, 6 AM MDT

  • The Canada Clean Hydrogen Series, Part 2 – The Alberta Advantage

    “We believe Alberta is on track to become a major producer and exporter of clean hydrogen and ammonia,” Alberta Energy and Minerals Minister Brian Jean tells the Bulletin.

    August 9, 2023, 6 AM MDT

  • The Canada Clean Hydrogen Series, Part 1 – A Foundation For A Strong Hydrogen Economy?

    The federal and a number of provincial governments have released strategies in the past few years to help develop a strong clean hydrogen economy in Canada in the coming decades to stimulate economic growth and job creation and to slash the country’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

    July 24, 2023, 12 AM MDT

  • The Direct Air Capture Series, Part 4 – Houston, We May Have A Problem

    In Part 1 of this series, I argued that the direct air capture (DAC) industry is at last achieving liftoff, largely due to government support, especially in the U.S.

    July 10, 2023, 6 AM MDT

  • The Direct Air Capture Series, Part 3 – CarbonCapture’s Going Big By Going Small

    Los Angeles-based CarbonCapture Inc. is taking a very different approach to developing large-scale direct air capture (DAC) projects than Carbon Engineering, in terms of type of sorbent, its open architecture and modular design, and all-encompassing business model (see The Direct Air Capture Series, Part 2 – Carbon Engineering Is The Dominant Force).

    July 4, 2023, 12 AM MDT

  • The Direct Air Capture Series, Part 2 – Carbon Engineering Is The Dominant Force

    Squamish, B.C.-based Carbon Engineering, in partnership with 1PointFive, an arm of U.S. mega-independent Occidental Petroleum, is the dominant force in the fledgling direct air capture plus storage (DAC+S) industry, with the potential to remain so far into the future.

    June 13, 2023, 12 AM MDT

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