Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

If I'm reading them right, then we seem to be seeing more and more news articles where the energy companies are looking to transform their business' in anticipation of what will be necessary moving forward. Hopefully these big and powerful organisations (or at least some of them) will make the transformation/disruption, a bit easier.

Siemens, Uniper set sights on green hydrogen opportunity

Uniper and Siemens Gas and Power have signed a cooperation agreement to develop projects that will decarbonise power generation across the German energy producer's portfolio.
A key aspect of the companies' planned cooperation is production and use of green hydrogen, where the gas is made from electrolysis using renewable electricity.
The scope of the agreement also includes evaluating the potential of Uniper’s existing gas turbines and gas storage facilities for using hydrogen and will also investigate the role hydrogen can play in Uniper’s coal power plants.
Uniper recently announced that it would close or convert its coal-fired power plants in Europe by 2025 at the latest, which is critical to its goal of having carbon neutral European operations by 2035.

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

Martyn1981 said:

No idea how promising this is, nor if it might be an energy source, but thought it worth posting:

Scientists find bug that feasts on toxic plastic

A bacterium that feeds on toxic plastic has been discovered by scientists. The bug not only breaks the plastic down but uses it as food to power the process.
The bacterium, which was found at a waste site where plastic had been dumped, is the first that is known to attack polyurethane. Millions of tonnes of the plastic is produced every year to use in items such as sports shoes, nappies, kitchen sponges and as foam insulation, but it is mostly sent to landfill because it it too tough to recycle.

And again a plastic eating bacteria has been found, this time in compost. Two in two weeks, were we not looking before, or just getting luckier?

Scientists create mutant enzyme that recycles plastic bottles in hours

A mutant bacterial enzyme that breaks down plastic bottles for recycling in hours has been created by scientists.
The enzyme, originally discovered in a compost heap of leaves, reduced the bottles to chemical building blocks that were then used to make high-quality new bottles. Existing recycling technologies usually produce plastic only good enough for clothing and carpets.

The team used the optimised enzyme to break down a tonne of waste plastic bottles, which were 90% degraded within 10 hours. The scientists then used the material to create new food-grade plastic bottles.

Am I the only one imagining all the wiring insulation, light switches, tv surrounds, plastic bottles and generally everything else in the house made of plastic 'rotting' away in a few days as the house has picked up a plastic bacteria infection?

Martyn1981

Good news for Australia's virtual power plant, consisting of 1,000 homes with solar and Tesla Powerwall batteries, which has worked well, and therefore supports the bigger plan of rolling out 50,000 installs.

Tesla Virtual Power Plant In Australia Outperforms Expectations

Last year, Tesla, with the cooperation of the South Australian government, installed rooftop solar systems coupled with Powerwall residential storage batteries on over 1,000 low-income homes. The Powerwalls are linked together into what is known as a virtual power plant. It’s just like a grid-scale storage battery except instead of being all at one location, it consists of many small energy storage nodes spread over most of South Australia. See the video below for more details.

Tesla plans to install a total of 50,000 rooftop solar systems and Powerwall batteries in South Australia, and this initial report will help speed that process along. In addition to helping stabilize the grid, individual homeowners are seeing a drop in utility bills of up to 20%, a welcome relief for those on limited incomes.

Tesla is also partnering with Green Mountain Power in Vermont to help it reach its goal of 100% renewable energy by 2030 with help from another virtual power plant using Tesla Powerwall batteries. So far, that program has been very successful and saved GMP customers over $1 million during one high-demand event last summer.

Martyn1981

I recently watched this Vlog, and thought it was an interesting explanation as to how carbon negative schemes work, what's possible etc.:

Californian Carbon-Negative Roadmap

Carbon Negative Emissions. The latest 'buzz phrase' in Climate Science. But it's not just a vague concept. Our scientists tell us that removing huge quantities of carbon dioxide from our atmosphere is now the only way we can keep warming within controllable limits. And a new study by a research team co-ordinated by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory explains exactly how California will lead the way to that elusive goal.

Solarchaser

Surprised home owners are only seeing a 20% drop in bills with solar plus power wall.
I wonder if they only get the benefit of the solar, and the grid uses all of the powerwall

Martyn1981

Solarchaser said:

Surprised home owners are only seeing a 20% drop in bills with solar plus power wall.
I wonder if they only get the benefit of the solar, and the grid uses all of the powerwall

Great point, bit annoyed that that didn't jump out at me too.

So, I've done some extensive research (OK, I clicked on the first link in the article and got lucky), and the older article states:

Households participating in the Phase 2 trial are charged electricity rates more than 20 per cent better than the Default Market Offer introduced on 1 July 2019.

So it would seem (suggest) that the installs are free, and a bit like the US lease model for PV rooves, where the homeowner then gets a discounted leccy price. Or at least that's the way I read it. So cheaper leccy and PV rooves on 'poorer' homes, with a company model that then benefits from the leccy generation and frequency regulation side.

Martyn1981

Not just Scotland that is researching oceanic and river energy, the US is dipping its toes in the water too.

Life After Covid-19, Part II: Secret Renewable Energy Weapon Lurks Beneath Waters of the US

For all the nice (and not-so-nice) things people say about hydropower, the chances of building a new fleet of hydropower dams in the US are slim to none. However, there is still plenty of untapped renewable energy to be scoured from running water — and the US Department of Energy is determined to pry it loose with $38 million for a newly announced research program. The new announcement lends additional support to the prospects for deploying renewables as an economic recovery strategy in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.

Martyn1981

Norwegian off-shore floating wind, and the huge potential for the US west coast.

Look Out! Floating Offshore Wind Turbines Are Coming For Your Natural Gas

The leading global energy producer Equinor is moving forward with plans for launching a whole fleet of gigantic floating wind turbines into the sea, about 140 kilometers off the coast of Norway. The venture opens the door for a new wave of offshore wind development in deep water, where conventional fixed-platform turbines dare not venture.

The Floating Wind Turbine Difference

When wind turbines float, they can unlock new reserves of offshore wind energy that have barely been tapped. Consider the US, for example. States along much of the Atlantic coast are busily developing fixed-platform offshore wind farms, taking advantage of the relatively shallow waters of the Continental Shelf. In contrast, wind energy fans along the Pacific Coast are still gazing longingly at the sea, where the water is too deep for today’s fixed-platform engineering.
In 2010, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory analyzed the West Coast for untapped wind energy potential. It arrived at slightly more than 70 gigawatts of offshore wind for the three West Coast states, up to the fixed-platform limit of 60 meters deep. At a depth of more than 60 meters, the potential shoots up to 873 gigawatts. So far, all of it is just sitting there.

[My bold.]

Martyn1981

I'm a tad shocked at this news, which shows enormous support for off-shore wind in the US, even from Republicans. Great news.

US voters back offshore buildout

New polling shows 80% of US voters back offshore wind development with near identical support from both Democrats and Republicans.
The result comes from a national survey conducted by Public Opinion Strategies last month for US wind association AWEA.
Some 93 percent of Democrats and 86 percent of Republicans prefer offshore wind to coal, nuclear or natural gas and believe it can play an important part in the US energy mix.
Most also think the government should put more emphasis on producing energy from renewable sources, with 58 percent of Republicans and 66 percent of Democrats calling for more emphasis on wind and solar generation.

And the good news continues, or at least the possibility of some good news, with pressure on the EU to focus their post C19 recovery plans on increasing RE, and emissions reduction targets.

COVID-19: EU ministers back green recovery

Environment ministers from 10 EU countries have called on the European Commission to make European Green Deal legislation the blueprint for the bloc’s economic recovery from coronavirus.
The ministers are hoping the upcoming legislation will raise the Commission’s target of reducing emissions well above the current goal of 40% below 1990 levels by 2030, according to lobby group Climate Action Network.

Martyn1981

Carbon Commentary newsletter extracts:
[Item 2 is a 'shocker', didn't see that one coming. We'll have to find out more, but describing it as expensive, probably means, very expensive, €60k-€90k!]

1, Carbon capture. Investment funds and the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, a body composed of 12 fossil fuel companies, announced a plan to install a large scale carbon capture plant at a gas-fired power station in the US. The captured CO2 will be used for injection underground to increase the amount of oil produced from an existing field. Changes in US tax law now seem to make carbon capture from power stations financially viable and this proposal may vindicate some of the optimism. Of course the greenhouse gas problems remain: it is likely that less than 90% of the CO2 will be recovered and the use of the CO2 improves the economics of oil exploitation. Nevertheless, lessons learned in the projects such as this will help make CCS cheaper for all purposes.
 
2, Home hydrogen. A Berlin company offers a residential system for using excess summer solar power to make hydrogen for a fuel cell that will generate electricity for the house in winter. This is an expensive product that may only have a very small market but is, I think, the first home system that provides substantial storage –  of up to about 2,500 kWh – for seasonal use. (Thanks to Raymond Betz).

3, Geothermal. Only a small fraction of the world’s surface is likely to be suitable for collection of deep geothermal energy. But in the best locations, conversion of geothermal heat into electricity may be a low cost source of power, although unlikely to beat the best solar. Geothermal plants can operate 24 hours a day and need little supervision. The Ethopian government agreed final terms to buy the electricity from a total of up to 520 MW of geothermal power developed by French company Meridiam and its Icelandic geothermal partner. The construction cost is about $4m a megawatt, roughly six times the cost of solar, but with a far higher capacity factor.
 
4, Carbon capture and use. Mitsubishi group companies announced a plan to make methanol (a potential substitute for gasoline and a feedstock for many chemical production processes) from an existing stream of captured CO2 from a refinery in Japan. Hydrogen will come from electrolysis. This is a small scale project but one which will show how chemical engineering companies can pivot towards the use of non-fossil sources. 
 
5, Environmental taxes. A Swedish government inquiry reported and gave details of a proposed tax on toxic chemicals used in clothing. A levy of about £3.25/$4.00 per kilogramme will be imposed on clothes. A trader can obtain up to a 95% reduction on this levy if the clothes do not contain any of five different groups of hazardous materials. (Around 25% of clothes and footwear sold in Sweden today contain some of these toxic chemicals, including microbicides). The remaining 5% is justified, says the report, because chemicals used in the manufacturing process are also hazardous, and make full recycling of clothing difficult to achieve. The reason that this tax proposal is particularly interesting is because of its analogies to carbon taxation. All of the same problems crop up: how to tax imported goods, the administrative costs of the taxation system, the impact on sales and employment. The benefits are also similar: the switch away from the use of environmentally damaging chemicals and the encouragement to the circular economy.
 
6, Uniper commits to ‘green’ gas. Controlled by Fortum, Germany’s Uniper is one of the biggest fossil electricity generators in Europe. It gave some outline details of a switch to hydrogen as the fuel for its gas-fired plants as part of its plan to achieve net zero by 2035. The proposed transformation of its electricity generation portfolio will be done in partnership with Siemens, which commented that ‘our future lies in hydrogen’.
 
7, Urban farms. Industry leader AeroFarms is part of a group that received $100m from the Abu Dhabi government to build vertical farms in the scorched Emirates and also to carry out R&D into improving automation levels and into creating seed varieties more suitable for use in indoor agriculture. Almost all food consumed in the Emirates is imported and vertical farming allows some products to be produced locally with a very small water footprint and cheap energy from the sun.
 
8, Grid stability in the face of declining electricity demand. Indian’s prime minister Modi asked the population to temporarily switch off lights at a specific time to signal support for health workers. National electricity demand fell by 32 GW in twenty minutes without any significant problems. (That represents about a quarter of Indian power use). The Indian grid had estimated that only about 10 GW would be shed). Hydro-electric power was shut down first and some wind was curtailed. Gas turbines were switched on as power use returned to normal. Frequency and voltage were maintained within normal bands. In France, the grid operator RTE published a very clear paper looking at the impact on the public health crisis on the electricity business. It noted a 15-20% fall in electricity use as France entered confinement. This is in line with Spain and Italy, but Germany’s demand has fallen much less. For long periods since the lockdown started, CO2 emissions from the French power sector have been close to zero as all generation comes from renewables and nuclear. In a surprising finding, RTE showed that the output of nuclear power stations was adjusted rapidly in response to falling demand. This would not be possible in the UK, for example. On Saturday 28th March, nuclear output was cut by one quarter, or 10 GW, over the space of seven hours as solar energy became available. Without this surprising flexibility, RTE would have had problems matching supply and demand but the company chose to stress the importance of future hydrogen projects and large amounts of flexible car charging in order to help balance the grid as renewables continue to grow.
 
9, Electrolyser growth. Analysts Wood MacKenzie published a report showing that as of March 2020, the planned global capacity of electrolysers had reached over 8 GW, or over 30 times today’s worldwide installations. Strikingly, the analysts produced a similar report in October 2019 which listed only 3.2 GW of planned installations. Since then, the announced plans have therefore averaged almost 1 GW a month, or more than 3 times the whole world’s current capacity. We all have other things to worry about at the moment, but this looks like the beginning of a truly extraordinary industrial revolution. (Thanks to Thad Curtz).