Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

So ..... Aussie central government politics and policies are not exactly RE friendly (they do like a nice lump of coal) but state politics and individuals are pro-RE, and especially pro-money (saving it).

So, kinda ironic, but also incredibly good news, is that Aus is smashing it when it comes to leccy generation/RE.

Not so good with transport, with poor efficiency and a love of petrol/diesel, but growing EV choice and falling costs, combined with cheaper RE leccy, could mean a perfect storm is heading for transport too.

Australia on track to meet Paris Agreement targets by 2025

“The electricity sector is on track to deliver Australia’s entire Paris emissions reduction targets five years early, in 2025, without the need for any creative accounting.

“Australia is on track to reach 50% renewable electricity in 2024 and 100% by 2032. The Australian renewable energy experience offers real hope for rapid global emissions reductions to preserve a living planet.”

And S. Australia, the home of the giant Tesla battery (soon to be the small cute Tesla battery), needs special mention as it proves the way, over and over.

Massive solar-plus-storage projects move forward in Australia

The Robertstown region could host two big renewable energy projects – a 500 MW solar farm co-located with a 250 MW/1 GWh battery storage capacity, and a construction-ready 200 MW PV project with 120 MWh of storage that forms part of the Solar River Project, the size of which could eventually double.

Martyn1981

An article here on the issues and need to get to carbon free gas. This doesn't remove the need today for gas, with the multiple concerns we discussed in detail recently, but is more about the future and underpining RE generation with a backstop price/product for excess. [Perhaps for the UK, the leccy is more likely to come from off-shore wind excess, but the same issues apply.]

The weekend read: From solar to gas

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

An article here on the issues and need to get to carbon free gas. This doesn't remove the need today for gas, with the multiple concerns we discussed in detail recently, but is more about the future and underpining RE generation with a backstop price/product for excess. [Perhaps for the UK, the leccy is more likely to come from off-shore wind excess, but the same issues apply.]

The weekend read: From solar to gas

You keep cheer leading this excess electricity to gas idea but it wont work and as mentioned previously a lot of gas demand is for heating which can and should be electrified in the same way the french use a lot more electricity for heating and thus a lot less gas for the same population.

The storage problem is solved by EVs and higher CF wind farms not by building chemical plants and hiring chemical engineers on zero hour contracts to work only when the wind blows hard.

If the political will is there and the public accept the price the future for the UK is offshore wind heavy + EVs + interconnectors + curtailment + CCGTs to fill in the gaps. You could get to perhaps as much as 85% wind 15% CCGTs for everything (electricity transport and heating) which is a 90%+ decarb of the UK which is sufficient.

If you really wanted to get towards 100% more likely is you would have some biomass plants to fill in the gaps rather than CCGTs although that probably is a bad idea as costs and difficulty rises exponentially after a certain point.

GreatApe

In the not too distant future humanity will create machines capable of human level skills at more or less everything. At that point anything and everything becomes possible and very very rapid.

You will be able to simply command those machines to do anything and everything. Move mountains, build whole new nations, and of course controlling the climate to exactly what you want. Then the interesting part of environmental science starts. What is an ideal environment and for what lifeforms do you maximize the climate for?

These are not questions even thought about now primarily because climate change is a non issue mostly pushed by the hard leftists as an anti business ideological weapon (they lost the argument that capitalism doesn't create mass wealth by simply..looking around them...so the green movement started as a way to say ok we are all rich now but the plant is dying so we were right after all capital doesn't work...only it does work it creates mass wealth for everyone and the planet is not and never was dying)

My guess before 2050 everything will be solved
The real challenge of this century is not claimitchange that is a non issue
The challenge will be how to survive the singularity and if we do, how to expand humanity to the trillions

Martyn1981

From nightmare to dream solution ..... well I'm allowed to be optimistic.

After Puerto Rico's leccy system was all but destroyed, I hoped that they would start again from the ground up, and be the perfect demonstration of an RE solution.

They have lots of sun, and great wind too. And the small solar farms survived the hurricane well (at least better), and PV + battery solutions were quickly rolled out for emergency situations, such as the charitable Tesla quick fixes of PV in carparks linked to Powerpacks to get hospitals up and running again.

So, could they go for a system of large mini grids, cross linked to meet future needs - certainly looks like that's were they are going, with gas generation (replacing diesel) to fill in the gaps.

Presumably, more PV, wind and batts will roll out long term to replace the LNG imports being planned. Cool!

Puerto Rico Renewable Energy Plan Calls For Solar, Storage, & “Midi” Grids

The energy plan calls for the installation of 2,220 MW of solar energy and 1,080 MW of energy storage. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, there are 1,031 MW of battery storage in all the US at the present time. The renewables will allow Puerto Rico to phase out the coal and diesel powered generating stations that have been the backbone of its energy supply for decades.

With input from Siemens Power Technologies International, the plans calls for the emphasis to be on creating renewable energy sources during the first five years of the plan. The proposed battery installations would contain a mix of 2, 4, and 6 hours of energy storage, according to Utility Dive.

pile-o-stone

GreatApe wrote: »

In the not too distant future humanity will create machines capable of human level skills at more or less everything.

I first heard something like this back in 1984 when I was told I was wasting my time learning to program because coding will be done in the background by computers, guided by the flowcharts selected in the foreground by analysts.

I ignored that advice and learned to program in various languages and I have had a 27 year career in IT where we still develop code line by line. The tools are better but the basic premise is the same.

On my computer science degree I did an Artificial Intelligence module and they had the same statement as we always hear from the developers of fusion reactors - the technology is only 10 years away. Again, 27 years later and we still are just 10 years away.

pile-o-stone

I saw this on the news the other day:

"Drax Power Station says it has become the first to use carbon capture technology on burning wood pellets in the fight against climate change.

Drax has long been a testing ground for carbon capture following a government-funded investigation into the technology in 2012, although the subsequent removal of subsidies ended that trial.

This latest trial implements a different solution known as bioenergy carbon capture and storage (Beccs). It uses a solvent developed by Leeds-based C-Capture to isolate carbon dioxide from flue gases, which are released when biomass is used to generate electricity. It has been used to catch around a tonne of the greenhouse gas a day during the pilot.

There are even hopes that if the pilot could be scaled up it could deliver “negative emissions” and remove carbon from the atmosphere."

https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/02/drax-becomes-the-first-power-station-to-capture-carbon-from-biomass/

GreatApe

pile-o-stone wrote: »

I first heard something like this back in 1984 when I was told I was wasting my time learning to program because coding will be done in the background by computers, guided by the flowcharts selected in the foreground by analysts.

I ignored that advice and learned to program in various languages and I have had a 27 year career in IT where we still develop code line by line. The tools are better but the basic premise is the same.

On my computer science degree I did an Artificial Intelligence module and they had the same statement as we always hear from the developers of fusion reactors - the technology is only 10 years away. Again, 27 years later and we still are just 10 years away.

There is no doubt general AI will arrive, the question is simply when

If the exponential curve of computer tech continues it can't be too far away because by definition the exponential function is so powerful that even if the task is exponentially harder than you think it just takes a small additional amount of time to get there

With regards to fusion power it is a waste of time because like fission the reactor is just a small fraction of the cost of a plant. In a fission nuclear plant the reactor is about the size of a bus its not the reactor that makes it expensive it is the low thermal efficiency and the large physical size of the buildings and the small numbers needed meaning no learning curve or efficiency gains. That is to say lets pretend we have a working fusion reactor a simple black box. Well build everything you need around the fusion reactor to make it work and whats that going to cost you? Too much is the answer. This is why fission reactors lost out to CCGTs. A CCGT is about 1/10th the physical size and 1/10th the cost of a fission nuclear plant. Likewise a fusion plant is likely to be multiple times the size of a CCGT so they wont be economic vs CCGTs. CCGTs killed new nukes. CCGTs also killed fusion nukes before they were even born. CCGTs also killed coal plants in some countries like the UK which will be coal free in a few years time thanks not to wind or PV but to CCGTs. CCGTs are fundamentally better than coal and nuclear plants. Operating at 60%+ efficiency is much much better than 33% efficient nukes or coal plants. Not only do you get twice as much electricity for the same thermal energy but the infrastructure to handle the heat is less than 1/3rd the size which more or less means less than 1.3rd the cost to build

zeupater

Hi

As ever with CCS, the issue isn't the ability or the technology, it's cost & scalability ...

If DAX alone burns 7million tonnes of biomass per year it'll be creating around 12million tonnes of CO2, averaging over 30,000 tonnes/day of which around 8200 tonnes ((12/44)*30000) is pure recoverable carbon which in solid form would occupy over 3600 cubic metres of storage, that's 1.3million cubic metres/year, or a cube of permanent carbon storage measuring around 110*110*110metres from one relatively small generating plant for each and every year of generation ...

The only realistic solution which doesn't create mountains of recovered carbon waste is to recycle the carbon into a form which is ready for burning again, which effectively means utilising clean energy to recover the emissions from the atmosphere when energy is in abundance, which it isn't when there's a need to use backup generation sources.

This effectively is & has always been the issue with CCS ... it's fine in principle & even for small scale technology proving tests, but when the realisation of the impact of the issues of scaling comes into play the justification becomes very hard ....

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

As ever with CCS, the issue isn't the ability or the technology, it's cost & scalability ...

HTH
Z

Yes, you are right, but BECCS has a potential joker to play.

The world is slowly waking up to carbon pricing. The UK says it will freeze our tax at about £18/tonne, and possibly lower it a bit, if the EU tax keeps going up.

But, BECCS is a negative carbon solution, so, perhaps, whilst not being charged a carbon price (as emissions from bio-mass are net zero), they might also get a carbon subsidy for storing carbon too, giving them a double economic boost in competing with FF's, and a single boost in competing against RE.

No idea if that would make them viable, possibly not given the falling costs of RE generation, but v's RE + storage (as bio-mass can demand follow a bit, and is predictable/dependable) and with a carbon subsidy too, perhaps?

Plus, long term, to avoid runaway climate change and meet the +1.5C target, we need to deploy CCS as the plans currently are for a plus 2C rise, with the goal of avoiding that and only hitting +1.5C by 2100 based on carbon capture being rolled out from 2050 onwards - when we assume we can invent something to do this, and hopefully do it economically.

So many things have to go right it scares me, but it's also fun to watch the technological arms race.