Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Not quite what you asked, but ESO (formerly part of the National Grid) has presented a report suggesting the grid will be ready to cope with 100% RE leccy by 2025.

Note, that doesn't mean they expect 100% of all supply to be RE, or even (I assume) that it will at times be 100% RE by 2025, but that they'll be ready to cope with a 100% RE supply scenario.

Which I think is heartening news.

Zero carbon operation of Great Britain’s electricity system by 2025

Sort of a repeat of what I said, in an article today:

Fossil fuels produce less than half of UK electricity for first time

National Grid is spending around £1.3bn a year to adapt the grid to run on renewable energy, and believes that it will be ready to manage a completely zero-carbon electricity grid within six years.

“Do I expect that this will be a reality? No,” Pettigrew said. “But we won’t be a constraint in a low carbon world. We will be prepared to play our role.”

Note - The numbers for RE & nuclear don't seem quite right, but the description

Instead, UK homes and businesses will rely more on clean electricity generated by wind farms, solar panels, hydro power and nuclear power reactors.

seems to exclude bio-energy, which would then add up. If we included this, then I think last year RE & bio & nuclear represented more than 50% of leccy generation.

mmmmikey

On the same subject, some interesting charts here.....


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48711649


(and good to see that environmental issues are rising on the political agenda again and making headlines on the BBC website)

Piddles

Battery Aviation - This took me by surprise this morning:

Eviation says the craft - called Alice - will carry nine passengers for up to 650 miles (1,040km) at 10,000ft (3,000m) at 276mph (440km/h). It is expected to enter service in 2022.

As did this:

Even assuming huge advances in battery technology, with batteries that are 30 times more efficient and "energy-dense" than they are today, it would only be possible to fly an A320 airliner for a fifth of its range with just half of its payload, says Airbus's chief technology officer Grazia Vittadini.

All in the same article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48630656

Martyn1981

Piddles wrote: »

Battery Aviation - This took me by surprise this morning:

As did this:

All in the same article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48630656

Harbour Air in Canada which operates a fleet of short range puddle jumpers is going full electric already:

Harbour Air Is Switching Over To 100% Electric Seaplanes

When the world’s largest floatplane-only airline, Harbour Air, says it is switching to become an electrically powered airline, you know something is going on with the state of aviation battery technology. It starts to make sense to some, at least enough to look into it. And when aviation makes financial sense of electric mobility, it also means the tipping point is near or already reached.

Harbour Air will be the first seafaring airline to convert its complete fleet of de Havilland Beaver, Otter, Twin Otter aircraft and lone Cessna Caravan to electricity. These 41 vintage aircraft will be converted to reach a longer lifecycle with highly improved efficiency and lowered maintenance costs, a win-win for all.

And my memory seems to recall something about glider tow planes, as these do very (very) short flights, but need to be built for high power, so leccy torque is ideal.

GreatApe

Piddles wrote: »

Battery Aviation - This took me by surprise this morning:
As did this:
All in the same article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48630656

Airplanes are good for about 60,000 cycles.
Batteries are not close to that yet especially if charged and discharged close to 0% to 100% and if you wanted to only charge between 20-80% sweet spot then your range is 40% lower

More likely is liquid hydrogen.
3 x the energy mass density of jet Fuel so you can carry significantly more payload or you can just have a much less heavy airplane which uses much less energy per mile

GreatApe

1961Nick wrote: »

From what I've read, converting surplus renewable energy into hydrogen makes a lot of sense. Since the cost of the energy is virtually zero, the only cost is the infrastructure required to store & distribute it.

But with most things in life the energy cost is a small part of it.

Its like if I tried to argue that if petrol was free then uber taxi rides would be nearly free, you would probably think I was mad because you know the driver needs paying and the car has depreciation and maintenance which means the cost of the uber ride would not be free but would still be pretty expensive

Well it is exactly the same for a chemical plant. The plant is the car which needs maintenance and has depreciation and the chemical engineers and workers at the chemical plant are the uber driver who needs paying

Its also the same mistake the nuclear guy who said it would be too cheap to meter made. Sure nuclear fuel is pretty cheap but the power station and workers are expensive (just like the fuel for your uber taxi trips is perhaps 10% of the actual price you pay the other 90% is the driver the software and the car)

Why do people find this so hard to understand? Hydrogen wont be easy and most likely will not work because like nuclear plants, like uber taxis, the capital, maintenance and staff costs will make it expensive

Now if they could make hydrogen production extremely cheap and effective and very long lasting (30+ years) and require little to no maintenance or land or consumables then perhaps there is a way to bulk transform wind power to expensive hydrogen (say wind at 4p in the future used to convert hydrogen to 8p a unit this can then be piped to your home at an additional cost of say 5p a unit (NG costs about 3p to go from wholesale to retail and hydrogen is less dense so is gona need bigger pipes and lots of digging) so you end up with 13p a unit hydrogen into your home or business. This is a huge amount more than the 4p for natural gas you currently pay. Also importantly it is much much more than the 1-2p utilities and large users pay. Converting this 13p hydrogen back into electricity will have hydrogen produced electricity costing in excess of 25p a unit vs 3-5p today

liquid hydrogen might be useful in airplanes because it has very high energy density per kg (3 x higher than jet fuel) so the airplanes can carry significantly more payload or just be more energy efficient per mile due to less weight

Likewise in shipping hydrogen would work if you forced shipping to have to switch away from oil. Batteries might also work for shipping but also perhaps the world will just use autonomous land EV HGVs more and shipping less

]I'm sure it must be possible to build a fuel cell tanker that runs on the hydrogen it's transporting? A hydrogen filling station in every town would make a fuel cell vehicle a viable proposition & an alternative to a BEV - for those that don't relish queuing at a charger & then waiting 30 minutes for it to charge.

Ships are likely to use proven gas turbines fired by hydrogen rather than fuel cells
Cars wont ever use hydrogen. It makes some sense in ships and airplanes because the hydrogen can be liquid and stored in light unpressed insulated tanks rather than try to use compressed hydrogen in bulky compressed tanks

Piddles

Martyn1981 wrote: »

If the UK car fleet was replaced with 50kWh BEV's, then we'd have 1,500GWh of batts almost as a side effect. I'm guessing that at any point in time one third or more will be parked up, so if plugged into a smart charger with appropriate instructions to benefit from cheap excess, or sell at peak prices, these BEV's could meet the intra-day needs.

I'm liking this. OVO's vehicle-2-grid trial gives the expectation of free charging for your EV. You "book" your travel needs in advance through an app, so you always have what you need and "We are working closely with Nissan to ensure that no battery degradation is caused by V2G charging beyond what would be expected from normal charging using a standard EV home charge point.".

The original Tesla Roadster had V2G, but subsequent models not. Presumably over battery degradation worries and/or protecting Powerwall sales. Musk has said they might revisit that decision. They need to.

I like the idea of your car being your personal power station as it tends to be where you are, and where you are is where you're consuming energy. The forthcoming RE Smart Export Guarantee for business, the 2% benefit-in-kind for EV company cars and 0% BiK for charging EVs and V2G or V2H(House) mean you could charge your EV at work while the sun shines and power your house and/or the grid after the sun goes down. Tax free. (Or, shhhh, earn some money through V2G)

BTW (sorry if this is old news) but I came across this very, very impressive site from MIT. It compares the whole lifecycle greenhouse emissions for BEV/HEV/FF vehicles against climate targets and total cost to the customer. Take the Tour and use the Customise section as there are naturally a lot of default assumptions (eg I changed the petrol/diesel to a UK equivalent $5.90). I found the big takeaway was the need to maintain subsidies for a while longer. The only downside I could find was that it was US centric, but globalised car production these days doesn't make it too much of a problem. http://carboncounter.com/

zeupater

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Very early days, but electric or hybrid aircraft may prove viable for short haul trips, and allow airports to go 24/7 with near silent night flights.

Regarding your last para, here's a recent article on producing hydrocarbon fuels, only a demonstrator at 0.1 litres per day, but a start.

Carbon-neutral fuel made from sunlight and air

Hi

That's the kind of short cycle carbon scrubbing process I mentioned a few posts back ....

This is the Canadian company I've been following developments on for a number of years ... https://carbonengineering.com/ ... the process is interesting, already tested to produce commercial quality fuels in limited volumes (barrels not lab test quantities!) and modular to allow scalability .... commercial scale production trials are already scheduled to start within a couple of years ... it's pretty interesting and worthy of keeping an eye on ...

On the air travel side, I caught a news item on TV today (BBC News?) from the Rolls Royce factory in Derby which touched on clean aero-engines using electricity and synthetic/biofuels, but can't readily find reference to it to provide a link ...

Anyway, mentioning Derby made me think of Toyota & following that the Mirai - I know it's theoretically been around in the UK for years, but I've never ever seen one on the road, not even a demonstrator ... mind though, maybe they're all clustered around the dozen-or-so H2 pumps dotted around the country, so when the current EU/UK government initiative to rapidly expand the really expensive public infrastructure (through subsidy) to around 50 sites within the next couple of years, H2 cars will be almost everywhere ... maybe not then with the alternative infrastructure already being somewhere between a couple of magnitudes more numerous & close on universally accessible, depending on type & dispensing speed of course ...

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

Awwwww come on! I was enjoying that article .....

GE Will Shutter California Natural Gas Plant 20 Years Early

The problem is two-fold. One, the Inland Empire Power Plant is fitted with GE H series turbines, which have proved troublesome in service. The only other facility in the world that used the H series turbines is located in Wales. Two, those turbines are not easy to start and stop quickly. As renewables have become more common in California, the Inland Empire plant is ill-suited to ramping up when the supply of renewable energy dwindles due to a lack of sunshine or wind.

There’s a kicker to this story that CleanTechnica readers will appreciate. After the Inland Empire plant is dismantled, GE will sell the site to a company that makes battery storage units for the renewable energy market. Is that poetic justice or what?

OK, that's cheered me back up.

Martyn1981

Norway Announces Plan To Cut Emissions From Ships 50% By 2030

The diesel engine is the workhorse of the maritime industry, which means all those ships in Norwegian waters are spewing enormous amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year. This week, the government announced a series of measures it says will cut those emissions in half by 2030. That’s an ambitious goal but a manageable one, officials say. Others say the plan is too little, too late.

Here are some details from Norwegian media outlet TU. First a word of caution. Google Translate has a tough time with Norwegian to English translation duties. If some of the quotes you read below sound a bit lumpy, that’s the reason.

The plan sets up a series of targets for seven categories of vessels — scheduled passenger boats and ferries, cruise ships and larger passenger ferries, cargo ships, offshore vessels, special vessels and fisheries vessels, fishing vessels, and recreational boats. The entire 68 page plan can be viewed online but is only available in Norwegian at this time.

It focuses on four carbon reduction strategies: electrification/batteries, hybrid solutions, LNG, and biogas. Hydrogen is a component of the electrification strategy. Despite the fire and explosion at a hydrogen refueling station near Oslo this month, it is still considered an important part of the emissions reduction.