Gas and renewables boost power efficiency

The metrics are very different, but global power market’s two growth engines are making efficiency gains

Combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power generation is the most efficient way of converting thermal energy to electric energy. Renewables may be catching up on some of the oldest, most wasteful oil-fired plants, but remains largely the least efficient. Given its free and inexhaustible primary energy supply, though, its gains now matter far more than its headline number. Indeed, it is arguable that the very meaning of efficiency in power generation should be differently defined depending on whether the generator is conventional or renewable. In conventional generation, it obviously refers to the proportion of electricity derived from a given thermal input. 78.4GW – US coal generation dec