Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

EricMears

Suggest you ask someone from Greece how easy it is to influence EU decisions !

Martyn1981

Back to renewables with some promising news for low head hydro. Lower costs, improved output and more fish friendly for anyone that wants to mullet over.

Bill Gates backs 'game changer' hydropower technology

Microsoft founder Bill Gates is backing a hydropower technology that’s claimed to potentially “fundamentally change how water is leveraged as a renewable energy source”.
Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which was set up by the software billionaire, joined Schneider Electric in an $11m investment in Natel Energy, which says its Restoration Hydro Turbine (RHT) can boost output from plants while simultaneously cutting effects on fish and other environmental impacts.

Natel Energy hydropower turbine gets backing from Breakthrough Energy Ventures

Start-up Natel will now accelerate development of its environmentally-friendly turbine that could significantly lower the cost of new hydropower builds

Coastalwatch

Not sure what category this most suits as it's about a new method of Lithium extraction from Australia. Surely got to be cleaner than mining coal!

An international research team, led by Monash University, has developed an innovative new filtration method that could dramatically reduce lithium extraction times, accelerating us toward our energy future.
The Monash-led team, featuring researchers from CSIRO, the University of Melbourne, and the University of Texas at Austin, published the study in Nature Materials.

“Based on this new research, we could one day have the capability to produce simple filters that will take hours to extract lithium from brine, rather than several months to years,” said Professor Huanting Wang, co-lead research author and professor of chemical engineering at Monash University.

“Preliminary studies have shown that this technology has a lithium recovery rate of approximately 90% – a substantial improvement on 30% recovery rate achieved through the current solar evaporation process,” said Wang.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/03/27/australian-researchers-make-lithium-extraction-breakthrough/

Solarchaser

EricMears said:

silverwhistle said:

I would only point out to Cardew that self-determination is far more important than the economy and co-operation, or so I kept being told by those keen on Brexit.

Still puzzled why Ms Sturgeon feels the need to be independent of England but happy to sacrifice self-determination by joining the EU.  The two strands are completely incompatible !

I think that makes the point beautifully.
Its a union of 4 countries, not just England.

In the EU, everyone has a veto, in the UK, England rules.
In the EU, if you want to leave.... you leave.
In the UK, you must ask permission.... the unions are QUITE different.

Coastalwatch

Hadn't seen this posted anywhere so apologies if it has, but possibly worth repeating even so!

UK has ‘record-breaking’ year for low carbon energy

Last year saw renewables records broken across the board as renewables produced nearly 37% of the UK’s power, according to new data released by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

In 2019, renewables generated a record breaking 36.9% of the UK’s electricity, it announced today (26 March). Of this, wind power contributed 20%, a further record, with 9.9% from onshore wind and 9.9% from offshore wind.

This amounted to 32TWh of generation from wind in 2019, the most ever recorded. Renewable electricity capacity grew to 47.4GW by the end of the year, a 6.9% increase (3.0GW) on a year earlier.

Across the board, low carbon generation increased in 2019, ensuring that renewables and nuclear together accounted for a record 54.2%. Nuclear provided 17.4%, while natural gas provided 40.9% and coal just 2.1%.

https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/uk-has-record-breaking-year-for-low-carbon-energy

Martyn1981

RE leccy to hydrogen production/storage to support/balance the grid, to allow for greater penetrations of RE leccy.

Toshiba unveils ‘world’s largest hydrogen plant’ in Fukushima

The new facility can produce as much as 1,200m3 of hydrogen per hour which will be used to stabilise the electricity grid and boost the use of renewables

Pile_o_stone

EricMears said:

Suggest you ask someone from Greece how easy it is to influence EU decisions !

Or any of the other smaller countries. The EU will be even more dominated by France and Germany with the withdrawal of the UK. 

Martyn1981

Sneaky news day, with Japan trying to downplay its Paris Accord intentions, and Barclays wishy-washy policy change on investing/financing FF projects, such as no longer planning to fund UK fracking!

Campaigners attack Japan's 'shameful' climate plans release

Japan has laid out new plans on greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris agreement ahead of vital UN climate talks later this year, becoming the world’s first major economy to do so.
But its proposals were criticised by campaigners as grossly inadequate, amid fears the Covid-19 crisis could prompt countries to try to water down their climate commitments.

Japan’s target of a 26% reduction of emissions by 2030, based on 2013 levels, is rated as “highly insufficient” by the Climate Action Tracker analysis, meaning that if all targets were at this level, temperature rises would exceed 3C.

Barclays sets net zero carbon target for 2050 after investor pressure

Barclays has bowed to investor pressure over its climate track record and announced plans to shrink its carbon footprint to net zero by 2050.

The bank, which has its headquarters in London, has pledged to align all of its financing activities with the goals and timelines of the Paris agreement, starting with the energy and power sectors, and to publish “transparent targets” to track its progress.

Barclays has been the top European financier of fossil fuels in the last four years and is the seventh largest globally, according to a recent report by the Rainforest Action Network. The bank has provided more than $118bn (£95.2bn) worth of financial services to carbon-intensive companies and projects since the Paris agreement was signed in 2016 and was the largest financier of Arctic oil and gas last year.

Greenpeace UK’s senior climate adviser, Charlie Kronick, criticised the policy, which he said contradicted Barclays climate announcements. “The whole thing stinks of hypocrisy. It’s nothing but an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of shareholders, who rightly want the bank to end its contribution to catastrophic climate breakdown.
“Barclays remains Europe’s largest financier of these planet-heating industries and refuses to face up to the reality of the climate emergency and their role in fuelling it. Until it realises that getting to net zero means ambitious action to phase out support for all fossil fuels, this newly proposed resolution is absolutely meaningless.”

Martyn1981

Extracts from this weeks carbon Commentary newsletter, and deja vu as it's again very heavy on the hydrogen gas, and related issues:

1, Pure carbon from air-captured CO2. A new project at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, a centre of research into carbon capture and use, was funded by the German government. The pilot will turn CO2 from the air into pure carbon (‘carbon black’). Carbon black has a wide variety of applications, including tyre manufacture, and is a highly priced product. The proposed process will use the CO2 collected by Climeworks equipment, as well as renewable hydrogen, to make methane, which is then bubbled through liquid tin. The methane separates into pure carbon and hydrogen, which can be recycled. Because of its very high value, attempts have been made to make carbon black from organic materials in the past but I think this is the first time that air-captured CO2 has been the source of the carbon.
 
2, Power to methane. Electrochaea is the world leader in the biological conversion of hydrogen and CO2 into methane. Ancient bugs called archaea rapidly absorb CO2 and renewable hydrogen from a fluid and convert these molecules into methane. Electrochaea’s technology can thus act as a bridge between the electricity network and the natural gas system. (Methane dominates the ingredients in natural gas). The company announced successful results from a large-scale trial in Switzerland which injected gas into the local grid for a total of over a 1,000 hours. Energy efficiency (expressed as the energy value of methane output compared to the hydrogen input) was 89%, including heat collection. The huge advantage of the Electrochaea approach is that can operate at a wide variety of sizes, and works at low temperature and pressure. Although the conversion proces inevitably involves energy losses, widespread existing natural gas infrastructure may mean it is cheaper overall to convert surplus electricity into hydrogen and then methane rather than leave it as H2.

3, World’s largest green hydrogen plant. The size of future hydrogen manufacturing sites continues to sharply increase. Chinese electricity generator Beijing Jingneng indicated to local media that it would build a 5 gigawatt site in Inner Mongolia with 2 GW of wind, 1 GW of solar and about 2 GW of hydrogen conversion capacity. (To calculate this last figure I have used the estimate of 4-500,000 tonnes of hydrogen production a year). The site is close to proposed new chemical plants which I assume will use the hydrogen produced. This single plant will make just under 1% of the current world needs for hydrogen. It’s worth mentioning again that a green hydrogen plant of this size would have been wholly unimaginable as little as a year ago.

4, Hot water tanks for demand response. A new scheme run by consortium of hot water tank manufacturers and software companies will use a virtual battery of 350 UK hot water tanks to test 'demand-side response'. Households with electric water heating will be fitted with equipment that enables the heating element to be switched on and off depending on the state of the wider electricity market. The system will learn when the household typically uses hot water and will arrange to heat the tank when electricity is in oversupply. This important project seems to be a response to the sophisticated hot water tanks produced by Mixergy, which already allow the household to financially benefit by adjusting water heating to conditions in the electricity market.
 
5, Ammonia for shipping. Experts are divided as to the best route forward for long-distance shipping. Ammonia is an important contender as the replacement for fossil fuels. Made from hydrogen, it can be stored relatively easily but is also toxic and corrosive. Wartsila, one of the most important suppliers of ships’ engines, said it was conducting onshore trials with ammonia. It hopes for the first experiments on ships in 2022. Any replacement for heavy oil requires engine modifications and, most importantly, very widespread global availability of the new fuel. In this latter respect ammonia may be a better candidate for marine fuels than pure hydrogen, which many see as the main contender.
 
6, Wood for buildings. The French government decreed that all new public buildings should be constructed with at least 50% wood or other biological materials, such as hemp. This transition is surprisingly easy - see the section on cross-laminated timber in What We Need To Do Now - and can potentially result in buildings that store CO2 and thus have a negative carbon footprint. France also said it wanted 100 urban farms in towns and cities, an initiative than can be productively copied across the temperate world.
 
7, Prices for Australian wind. A proposed new 1 GW onshore wind farm in Queensland seems to have been tendered at a price of below £25/€27/$30 per megawatt hour. This undercuts any fossil fuels production but also brings the price of power down to levels that make hydrogen production economic. As the ever-insightful RenewEconomy web site points out, wind is a better bet for grid supply in much of Australia because large scale solar faces the disadvantage of producing electricity at the same time as millions of PV-equipped homes. Until we see very large scale conversion into hydrogen, grid solar is going to tend to command lower average prices than wind power. (I saw this on Reneweconomy.co.au)

  I thought the last point (7) was very interesting as it provides a second cheap way to produce hydrogen for an export industry, and helps to balance the enormous demand side leccy production from solar.

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

Extracts from this weeks carbon Commentary newsletter, and deja vu as it's again very heavy on the hydrogen gas, and related issues:

1, Pure carbon from air-captured CO2. A new project at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, a centre of research into carbon capture and use, was funded by the German government. The pilot will turn CO2 from the air into pure carbon (‘carbon black’). Carbon black has a wide variety of applications, including tyre manufacture, and is a highly priced product. The proposed process will use the CO2 collected by Climeworks equipment, as well as renewable hydrogen, to make methane, which is then bubbled through liquid tin. The methane separates into pure carbon and hydrogen, which can be recycled. Because of its very high value, attempts have been made to make carbon black from organic materials in the past but I think this is the first time that air-captured CO2 has been the source of the carbon.
 
2, Power to methane. Electrochaea is the world leader in the biological conversion of hydrogen and CO2 into methane. Ancient bugs called archaea rapidly absorb CO2 and renewable hydrogen from a fluid and convert these molecules into methane. Electrochaea’s technology can thus act as a bridge between the electricity network and the natural gas system. (Methane dominates the ingredients in natural gas). The company announced successful results from a large-scale trial in Switzerland which injected gas into the local grid for a total of over a 1,000 hours. Energy efficiency (expressed as the energy value of methane output compared to the hydrogen input) was 89%, including heat collection. The huge advantage of the Electrochaea approach is that can operate at a wide variety of sizes, and works at low temperature and pressure. Although the conversion proces inevitably involves energy losses, widespread existing natural gas infrastructure may mean it is cheaper overall to convert surplus electricity into hydrogen and then methane rather than leave it as H2.

3, World’s largest green hydrogen plant. The size of future hydrogen manufacturing sites continues to sharply increase. Chinese electricity generator Beijing Jingneng indicated to local media that it would build a 5 gigawatt site in Inner Mongolia with 2 GW of wind, 1 GW of solar and about 2 GW of hydrogen conversion capacity. (To calculate this last figure I have used the estimate of 4-500,000 tonnes of hydrogen production a year). The site is close to proposed new chemical plants which I assume will use the hydrogen produced. This single plant will make just under 1% of the current world needs for hydrogen. It’s worth mentioning again that a green hydrogen plant of this size would have been wholly unimaginable as little as a year ago.

4, Hot water tanks for demand response. A new scheme run by consortium of hot water tank manufacturers and software companies will use a virtual battery of 350 UK hot water tanks to test 'demand-side response'. Households with electric water heating will be fitted with equipment that enables the heating element to be switched on and off depending on the state of the wider electricity market. The system will learn when the household typically uses hot water and will arrange to heat the tank when electricity is in oversupply. This important project seems to be a response to the sophisticated hot water tanks produced by Mixergy, which already allow the household to financially benefit by adjusting water heating to conditions in the electricity market.
 
5, Ammonia for shipping. Experts are divided as to the best route forward for long-distance shipping. Ammonia is an important contender as the replacement for fossil fuels. Made from hydrogen, it can be stored relatively easily but is also toxic and corrosive. Wartsila, one of the most important suppliers of ships’ engines, said it was conducting onshore trials with ammonia. It hopes for the first experiments on ships in 2022. Any replacement for heavy oil requires engine modifications and, most importantly, very widespread global availability of the new fuel. In this latter respect ammonia may be a better candidate for marine fuels than pure hydrogen, which many see as the main contender.
 
6, Wood for buildings. The French government decreed that all new public buildings should be constructed with at least 50% wood or other biological materials, such as hemp. This transition is surprisingly easy - see the section on cross-laminated timber in What We Need To Do Now - and can potentially result in buildings that store CO2 and thus have a negative carbon footprint. France also said it wanted 100 urban farms in towns and cities, an initiative than can be productively copied across the temperate world.
 
7, Prices for Australian wind. A proposed new 1 GW onshore wind farm in Queensland seems to have been tendered at a price of below £25/€27/$30 per megawatt hour. This undercuts any fossil fuels production but also brings the price of power down to levels that make hydrogen production economic. As the ever-insightful RenewEconomy web site points out, wind is a better bet for grid supply in much of Australia because large scale solar faces the disadvantage of producing electricity at the same time as millions of PV-equipped homes. Until we see very large scale conversion into hydrogen, grid solar is going to tend to command lower average prices than wind power. (I saw this on Reneweconomy.co.au)

  I thought the last point (7) was very interesting as it provides a second cheap way to produce hydrogen for an export industry, and helps to balance the enormous demand side leccy production from solar.

Hmm - a certain poster was very big on the idea of point 4, using resistance electric heating to soak up excess RE...