Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Cardew

Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot make short film on the climate crisis

Everyone must surely have heard of President Trump and Putin’s favourite 16 year old. She has teamed up with The Guardian’s highly respected environmental correspondent; see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q0xUXo2zEY

Martyn1981

News from Russia, and an article explaining how confusing the Russian side to all this is, given the vast oil and gas potential that will be opened up 'thanks' to global warming.

Russia Signs Climate Accords & Putin Responds To Climate Change, But There’s A Catch

When even Russia starts to believe in climate change, the world really is coming to an end. Yet to everyone’s surprise, that is exactly what happened. Russia just joined the Paris climate accords. This means so many things all at once, but first, we need to get out of the way the fact that a lot of people in the US still don’t believe in climate change. This has just become even more absurd than before, because if even Russia believes in it, how can those people still claim otherwise? In any case, back to Russia. For a long time, Russia had a bit of a funny perspective of climate change, which is something along the lines of “It doesn’t exist, but if it did it would be great for Russia since we can get more oil and gas from areas that are currently hard to explore.” So in its quest to fuel the world’s fossil fuel addiction, Russia built a lot of valuable infrastructure throughout its country.

The new & more immediate threat

It was all over the news this summer, as something a lot of people — including myself — consider the absolute biggest climate change threat out there, both for its potential severity as well as a huge knowledge gap: permafrost. Permafrost is permanently frozen ground. It covers the top half of both Canada as well as Russia. There is a top layer of soil that melts and freezes with each season, but everything underneath it remains frozen year round, or at least it used to. This frozen ground has so much methane and CO2 trapped in it that if it starts to melt and release that gas into the atmosphere, we won’t stay under 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius but will likely shoot right past to 4 degrees and above.

Martyn1981

Great news about shipping emissions, to meet incoming legislation, the industry has spent $12bn on new kit to scrub air emissions.

The bad news, of the ~4,000 ships that have installed scrubbers so far, only 23 have closed loop scrubbers that catch the emissions, the rest ....... dump it in the sea! Think 'cheat devices' that even a VW executive would be ashamed off.

Global Shipping Is Making False Impressions About Circumventing Pollution — Billions Spent On “Cheat Devices”

The Independent informs us that the shipping industry is yet another industry where the burden put on the environment is not being reduced as much as it’s being shifted and concealed. Experts warn this could have a terrible, devastating effect on wildlife in British waters — and, remember, water goes everywhere.

Global shipping companies are rigging vessels with “cheat devices,” even to the tune of billions of dollars, to create a false impression. By circumventing new environmental legislation, they are simply dumping pollution into the sea to protect the air. Seems a case of cutting off one’s foot instead of one’s hand, metaphorically.

Will Crisp of The Independent follows the money: “More than $12bn (£9.7bn) has been spent on the devices, known as open-loop scrubbers, which extract Sulphur from the exhaust fumes of ships that run on heavy fuel oil.”

There are increasing concerns in all directions, as the vessels will then meet the coming standards demanded by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), which start in January, but they are simply re-directing the exhaust from air to water, which will also increase carbon dioxide emissions, saving nothing in net. The British waters will be compromised.

Crisp continues (via The Independent): “For every ton of fuel burned, ships using open-loop scrubbers emit approximately 45 tons of warm, acidic, contaminated washwater containing carcinogens including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and heavy metals, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), a non-profit organization that provides scientific analysis to environmental regulators.

Martyn1981

Stumbled across this, and thought it only fair to mention Total as it seems (who am I to guess?) that they are serious about a transition to cleaner energy.

Oil giant Total ‘not greenwashing’ when it comes to renewables

French oil group Total is not ‘greenwashing’ when it comes to its renewables investments, a senior executive told a skeptical audience at a green finance conference in London on Thursday.

Soon after a poll revealed that the majority of the audience at the Green Investment Group’s Green Energy Conference thought that oil & gas players were not seriously interested in green electrons, Total senior vice-president for renewables, Julian Pouget said: “It’s not at all greenwashing. It’s a business decision driven first by the fight against climate change, but also by the fact that we see electrification of the full energy mix.

According to a presentation by the Macquarie-owned Green Investment Group, Total has invested far more of its capital in low-carbon investments than its competitors — 4.3% of its total capex from 2010 to Q3 2018, compared to 2.3% for BP, 1.8% for Equinor and 1.3% for Shell, with Chevron and ExxonMobil on a lowly 0.23% and 0.22% respectively.

Pouget explained that Total has already built 3GW of wind and solar projects, is currently adding 1-2GW per year, and has a target of installing 25GW by 2025, with “10,000 people working on these topics in Total group”.

He added that Total wants to get more heavily involved in offshore wind, particularly in floating wind, where the company sees synergies with its oil & gas exploration and production business, and also in energy storage.

Martyn1981

Universities entering into PPA's to buy wind energy. Not clear from the article, but I'm reading it that this is existing generation, not a build out to meet the PPA, but I may be wrong, plus any increase in demand for RE will push the market forward.

UK universities in landmark deal to buy energy direct from windfarms

Twenty of the UK’s leading universities have struck a £50m deal to buy renewable energy directly from British windfarms for the first time.

The collaborative clean energy deal will supply electricity from wind farms across Scotland and Wales to universities including Newcastle University, University of Exeter and Aberystwyth University.

James Rolfe, the chief operating officer at Anglia Ruskin University, which is part of the deal, said the university has joined others in declaring a climate emergency, and plans to be climate neutral by 2030.

“To support this commitment we aim to source all of our electricity from zero carbon sources by 2025, and this power purchase agreement makes a significant contribution towards this goal whilst delivering financial savings and budget stability,” he added.

Richard Murphy, the managing director of The Energy Consortium, said the “groundbreaking deal” would help universities reduce their carbon emissions and save money by accessing the power purchase market for the first time.

Martyn1981

Couple of Nobel news items that relate to green energy by association - the ability to integrate more, and the need to publicise the climate crisis and associated need to move away from FF's.

Nobel prize in chemistry awarded for work on lithium-ion batteries

The Nobel prize in chemistry has been awarded to three scientists for their work in developing lithium-ion batteries.

John B Goodenough of the University of Texas at Austin, M Stanley Whittingham of Binghamton University and Akira Yoshino of Meijo University will receive equal shares of the 9m Swedish kronor (£74o,000) prize, which was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on Wednesday.

At 97 years old, Goodenough is the oldest laureate to receive a Nobel prize in any discipline; Whittingham is the second British-born researcher to win a science Nobel this year.

Lithium-ion batteries have long been tipped for the award, not least since they have proved pivotal in the development of the high-tech world we inhabit.

“They have laid the foundation of a wireless, fossil fuel-free society, and are of the greatest benefit to humankind,” the academy said.

Greta Thunberg, favourite to win Nobel peace prize, honoured at Standing Rock

Thunberg has also become the favourite with British betting companies to receive this year’s Nobel. She is considered the most likely winner of the peace prize, to be awarded on Friday, ahead of the Ethiopian prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, indigenous Brazilian leader Raoni Metuktire and Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand.

The prize would cap an extraordinary past year for Thunberg, which began with her making solo protests against inaction by the Swedish government on the climate crisis. Her stand her morphed into a mass global movement, with students around the world skipping school on Fridays to call for leaders to do more to address the crisis.

Martyn1981

Article on some interesting energy economics in the US regarding RE and storage:

Coal costs see PacifiCorp turn to major solar-plus-storage build-out

PacifiCorp has formalised a long-anticipated shift from coal to solar, wind and battery storage, setting ambitious targets underpinned by a belief in clean energy’s sound economics.

The utility, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy, recently unveiled a roadmap that would see it add nearly 3GW of new solar by 2025 and 6.3GW by 2038.

The firm’s “preferred portfolio” would also feature a major wind roll-out – with 4.6GW in new capacity installed by 2038 – and, in a first for the utility, energy storage.

As PacifiCorp noted, its 2019 integrated resource plan (IRP) – still a draft at this stage – singles out battery storage as part of a “least-cost portfolio” for the first time.

Martyn1981

For anyone following the developments of hydrogen as an export market for Australia.

Siemens backs Aussie plan to produce hydrogen via 5GW PV-plus-wind complex

Developer Hydrogen Renewables Australia (HRA) and German engineering giant Siemens have unveiled plans for a hydrogen production facility in Western Australia, meant to be powered by a whopping 5GW of wind and solar.

Siemens will provide electrolyser technology to the project, which will be deployed on a heritage farm in the state’s mid-west, just north of the city of Kalbarri.

“This project will not only help local industry but also the growing demand for green hydrogen from Asian and other markets,” said Terry Kallis, executive chairman of HRA. “Imagine exporting West Australian sunshine and wind to the world in the form of hydrogen.”

He added that the project’s location “is the best in Australia for combined solar and wind, making it one of the most cost-effective spots to produce clean energy.”

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

For anyone following the developments of hydrogen as an export market for Australia.

Siemens backs Aussie plan to produce hydrogen via 5GW PV-plus-wind complex

Nonsense
If other countries have significant demand for hydrogen they can build it in their own back yards

Producing hydrogen in Australia
Liquify it at huge cost
Transport it by ship at huge cost
Gasify it at cost
Sure that's Gona happen

Not only is it Gona happen it's Gona out compete natural gas (4 atoms hydrogen one carbon) which costs $10/MWh in USA/Aust/Russia/Iran/Qatar and is immensely easier to handle liquify

GreatApe

Are fossil fuels ethical?
Do they cause illness and pollution and cut lives short?

What about gas central heating?
Surely saved millions of lives in lowered winter cold deaths since the 1970s deployment of gas powered central heating. Surely saved hundreds of millions of colds and sick days
Also made us cleaner people, the weekly bath (sometimes shared!) became the daily shower

Possible thanks to affordable fossil fuels especially natural gas

At some point alternatives will become affordable
But don't pretend that fossil fuels were anything other than a massive benefit to humanity both in wealth and in health