Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

Here's the older article with FC's running on any mix from 100% methane through to 100% hydrogen.

Ceres Power | Fully Charged

Thanks.  Not sure about combining with Batts - surely the whole point of going via intermediate H2 is to provide longer term storage plus a delivery mechanism that is in addition to the electricity grid avoiding the problem of everyone trying to run their ashp and charge their car on a cold still winters evening.

Martyn1981

michaels said:

Martyn1981 said:

Here's the older article with FC's running on any mix from 100% methane through to 100% hydrogen.

Ceres Power | Fully Charged

Thanks.  Not sure about combining with Batts - surely the whole point of going via intermediate H2 is to provide longer term storage plus a delivery mechanism that is in addition to the electricity grid avoiding the problem of everyone trying to run their ashp and charge their car on a cold still winters evening.

No need for domestic batts per se, just my idea as space heating might not match leccy demand, so the heating comes on an hour before you get up, but no leccy demand, or the house is warm but you want to pop the washing machine on, then it's evening, the house is cooling down, on pops the boiler but again leccy demand is very low. That's when batts would help.

The ashp / batts / PV is just my ponderings on how to perhaps make the whole package a bit better. If the methane/H2 mix costs more than today's gas, but half+ of the gas energy is being turned into leccy and exported, then space heating would get extremely expensive, but the Grid would be happy.

Martyn1981

European large scale storage deployment has slowed down.

Energy storage boom stalls in Europe

Europe’s energy storage boom stalled last year due to a slowdown in large-scale schemes designed to store clean electricity from major renewable energy projects, according to the European Association for Storage of Energy (Ease).
A new study by consultants Delta-EE for Ease found that the European market grew by a total of 1 gigawatts per hour in 2019, a significant slowdown compared with 2018, when the energy storage market exceeded expectations to grow by 1.47GWh.
The slowdown in 2019 has emerged amid rising concern that the outbreak of the coronavirus may stall the rollout of clean energy technologies in 2020, dealing a double blow to the clean energy industry.

These large, utility-scale projects often require planning permission, government financial support or procurement tenders to move ahead. Meanwhile, the rollout of home battery kits, which relies far less on policy support, remained a fast-growing market.
Patrick Clerens, the Ease secretary general , said: “The message is clear: even if energy storage is a key enabler of the energy transition and clearly seen as a major tool to achieve the emissions targets linked to the Paris agreement, more support is needed.”

Martyn1981

India is planning to target lots of small(ish) PV rollouts towards the agriculture sector to provide localised energy for farmers and to power irrigation pumps, but those small deployments add up to a mighty 26GW over the next 3yrs.

India Plans 26 Gigawatts Of Solar Capacity In Agricultural Sector By 2022

Minister RK Singh informed the Indian parliament that a large portion of this capacity will be installed in the form of conventional land-based projects. 10 gigawatts of capacity will be installed at barren or fallow land available with farmers. These projects will have 2 megawatt of capacity each. Farmers will be able to sell power from these projects to retailers and earn additional income. Financial support in the form of capital  subsidy shall be offered to farmers.
The government shall also support installation of off-grid solar pumps. Solar pumps are conventional irrigation pumps integrated with solar panels. Irrigation is among the most energy-intensive activities in the agricultural sector and taking its substantial load off the grid greatly improves the financial condition of retailers.

Martyn1981

Extract(s) from this week's Carbon Commentary newsletter:

1, Rent premiums on green offices. Property adviser JLL published research on the London office market showing that commercial buildings with the best environmental characteristics achieved an 8% rent premium. Similarly, the survey showed that new buildings built to the very highest standards were very much less likely to be empty after 24 months than those constructed to slightly less good standards. The difference was surprising: 7% of the very best space was empty compared to 20% of the next category down. These differences are enough to ensure that a developer has a clear business case to build highly energy efficient buildings.

2, The impact of the transition. Carbon Tracker's Kingsmill Bond makes the point that the crucial moment in all transitions is not when the new technology gains a larger share of the market than the old. Rather, it is when the newcomer begins to reduce the absolute size of the existing market. At that point the underlying economics of the old technology begin to deteriorate as capital assets are used less and R+D dries up. The demand for horses fell when the number of cars was just three per cent of their number. Gas lighting began to decline, says Kingsmill Bond, when electricity was just 2% of the supply. ICE car sales are already in structural decline and fossil fuels are following in most markets. Bond argues for an immediate imposition of a carbon tax that ensures the recent dramatic fall in fossil fuel prices does not translate into any delay to the transition (and will provide useful tax revenue in consuming, rather than producing, states). It isn’t just about fossil fuels. Tony Seba argues that agriculture is in the throes of a similar transition in which a tiny synthetic food industry will rapidly bankrupt producers of animal foodstuffs, responsible today for perhaps 15% of global emissions. (Thanks to Thad Curtz).
 
3, Batteries. Developers of a large battery project in southern UK indicated that the size would be increased from 100 MW to 150 MW. (No MWh quoted). This will make it as powerful as the (now extended) Hornsdale battery farm in south Australia and thus one of the largest in the world. The new battery will be able to supply about half a percent of UK electricity demand for just over an hour. Shell, a major operator in the UK wholesale and retail electricity markets, has purchased rights to take power. In France, which has been slow to adapt to the growth of batteries, Total subsidiary SAFT said it would install a 25 MW farm, the largest in the country, to help with grid stability. Total has committed to capital investment of $2bn a year for the energy transition and the cost of this installation will absorb about 1% of this capital. (Thanks to Gage Williams).
   
5, Biogas/Biomethane. The use of crop residues and other wastes to make zero carbon methane could replace 20% of today’s natural gas demand. The International Energy Agency says that the world could sustainably multiply today’s renewable gas production almost forty-fold from today's levels. The problem, as with making renewable hydrogen except in very sunny/windy locations, is the cost. Natural gas is currently selling at below 1 US cent per kilowatt hour in some countries but the IEA’s calculations of biomethane's potential include green gas that can only be produced for over ten times this amount. Biomethane may be very useful in places not connected to natural gas grids but elsewhere I suspect that the IEA’s projections are too optimistic.
 
6, Sustainability and the cost of capital. Two large corporate loans in the last month had interest rates tied to the achievement of carbon and other sustainability targets. State-owned Irish utility ESB borrowed €1.4bn, about 30% of its total current debt, with the interest margin tied to the achievement of lower emissions from the company’s electricity generating assets and the growth of its renewables fleet. Finish paper company UPM took on €750m of new debt with the rate interest partly determined by whether the company met its targets for improved biodiversity in its forests and a 65% reduction in emissions from its electricity usage by 2030. These are powerful indicators of the growing awareness among capital providers of the lower risk attached to borrowers that are making genuine commitments to improved environmental performance.
 
8, Germany hydrogen network. BP’s refinery in Lingen was the first in Europe to produce green hydrogen to fuel its own operations in 2018. Along with a group of partners including RWE, BP now intends to ship renewable hydrogen up to 130 km through an existing gas network in Lower Saxony. The hydrogen will be used in chemical plants such as Evonik’s factory in Marl. This is a tentative first step towards the development of a green hydrogen network running from the south of Germany to the north, available to all customers and with transparent pricing.
 
10, Zero carbon laundry. Oxwash, a UK startup, offers what may be the first zero carbon commercial laundry in the world. It achieves this through a combination of self-generated renewable electricity, low washing temperatures and electric cargo bikes to ship laundry. Oxwash raised new funds from investors including Biz Stone, one of the founders of Twitter. Alongside its very low carbon footprint, Oxwash also offers two substantial benefits: an almost complete reduction in microfibre loss (which typically might be a million fibres for each new item washed) by using a new filtration system and also very much improved sterilisation rates for laundry, arising from the careful use of ozone. To state the obvious, sterilisation of clothing is of utterly critical importance for those working in hospitals at the moment. (Disclosure: I am an angel investor).

silverwhistle

but you want to pop the washing machine on,

Good grief man! Does that concept still exist? Surely not amongst the PV owning group. 'Active demand management' dear.. :-)

Martyn1981

Trying to lead by example, or just getting 'out' before the investments go bad (or get worse)?

Parliament pension fund cuts fossil fuel investments

Parliament’s pension fund has made record investments in renewable energy and cut its exposure to fossil fuel companies to bring MPs’ pensions in line with the government’s climate action targets.
A report from the £700m pension fund showed that almost a third is now being invested in low carbon and environmentally sustainable funds following calls from hundreds of MPs to align the fund with the government’s legally binding climate commitments.

However, the pension’s trustees have stopped short of divesting entirely from fossil fuel companies and retain multimillion-pound investments in the oil companies Royal Dutch Shell and BP. The annual report showed that the fund has decreased its investment in BP by almost two-thirds in the past year, to £4.4m, and cut its holdings in Shell by a quarter, to £8m.

Martyn1981

Windy news. Promising plans for an expansion of UK on-shore wind:

Foresight JV eyes 300MW UK wind

Foresight Group and Belltown Power have formed a joint venture that aims to develop over 300MW of wind energy projects mainly in Scotland and Wales.

The partners said the pipeline will consider all options of merchant-only, power purchase agreement and Contract for Difference for developing routes to market for projects.

and predictions for off-shore growth in the coming decade:

Offshore wind 'could hit 200GW by 2030'

Offshore wind capacity could grow to as much as 200GW of operational capacity by 2030, according to a new report by the Energy Industries Council (EIC).
EIC said in the 'Global Offshore Wind 2020' report that an increased awareness of the risks and effects of climate change is likely to lead to a greater focus on decarbonisation efforts in the supply chain and means of component production.
Forecasts on the operational capacity by 2030 range from 164GW to 200GW, it added.

EIC senior analyst and report author Lara Juergens said: “The sector is expected to see strong growth throughout the next decades, not only in existing ‘mature’ markets, but equally in emerging ones.
“Examples of countries that have gained significant interest from developers and the supply chain alike in 2019 are Poland, Japan, Vietnam and Ireland.”

Martyn1981

Global wind capacity up 19% last year. Only my ponderings, but capacity factors have been rising with newer, better and bigger WT's, so perhaps more than 19% increase in generation?

World's wind power capacity up by fifth after record year

The world’s wind power capacity grew by almost a fifth in 2019 after a year of record growth for offshore windfarms and a boom in onshore projects in the US and China.
The Global Wind Energy Council found that wind power capacity grew by 60.4 gigawatts, or 19%, compared with 2018, in one of the strongest years on record for the global wind power industry.

Watch out England, there could be a water shortage coming. Time to invest in water butt companies?

England could face droughts in 20 years due to climate breakdown - report

England is in danger of experiencing droughts within 20 years unless action is taken to combat the impact of the climate crisis on water availability, the public spending watchdog says.
The National Audit Office (NAO), in a report published on Wednesday, says some parts of England, especially the south-east, are at risk of running out of water owing to decreased rainfall and a need to cut the amount taken from natural waterways.
Water companies will have to reduce the quantity of water they take out of rivers, lakes and the ground by more than 1bn litres a day, creating huge shortfalls in the coming decades, the NAO warned.

Coastalwatch

In Australia - Committee dismisses calls to use climate funds for coal plant upgrades

A push by lobbyists to access the federal government’s Climate Solutions Fund in order to cover the cost of upgrades that would extend the operational life of coal-fired generators has been rejected by the independent Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee.

Phew! Sounds like a result for common sense against the odds of the powerful Coal lobbyists

https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2020/03/25/committee-dismisses-calls-to-use-climate-funds-for-coal-plant-upgrades/