News in Brief
Europe’s gas prices down
REUTERS – Europe has made a relatively slow start to rebuilding gas inventories but stocks were so high at the end of last winter that storage sites are still on course to be full well before summer ends, putting downward pressure on prices.
Stocks in the European Union and the United Kingdom increased by +73 terawatt-hours between March 31 and May 9, according to data compiled by Gas Infrastructure Europe.
India’s April retail inflation eases to 18-month low
CNBC – India’s annual retail inflation eased to 18-month low in April, staying well below the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) upper tolerance limit for the second consecutive month, as food prices eased.
Annual retail inflation eased to 4.7% in April from 5.66% in the previous month, government data showed. This was the lowest reading since October 2021, when it hit 4.48%, and also lower than the earlier forecast of 4.80%.
Coal-fired power fleet to halve by 2050
REUTERS – The capacity of coal-fired power plants in the United States by 2050 will decline by more than half from 2022 levels, as environmental regulations raise costs and new plants powered by natural gas and renewable energy displace the aging fleet, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said.
In the EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2023, three scenarios with varying costs of zero-carbon technology projected that coal-fired electric-generating capacity will decline by 52% to 88% to between 97 gigawatts (GW) and 23 GW by mid-century.