Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

This article is great, and whilst there is technically nothing new in it, it uses actual figures to illustrate how RE can meet demands and push out gas IF we simply apply a mix of generation technologies, storage and carbon taxing. Yes the job is big, but that doesn't mean it is impossible or even difficult, just big.

Greening The Grid: Resource Adequacy, Intermittency, & Carbon Pricing

Please bear with me. I know this title is a turn-off to any but the most abject energy nerd, but this is a really important issue if we are to solve climate change. As noted in my first two articles (here and here) we’ve got to green the grid. 

To green the grid, we must adopt a strategy of meeting our energy needs with low-cost renewable wind and solar resources. The obvious question is how to resolve the intermittency issue (what happens when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine). Solving this problem is a necessary ingredient for “saving the planet.”

Wind and solar, now the lowest-cost sources of energy, are subject to “intermittency,” otherwise known as, “what to do if the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining.”

Intermittency of wind and solar is a subset of the problem of resource adequacy – do grid operators have the resources to meet the demand for electricity at every hour?

Conclusion
Grid intermittency from cheap renewable energy brings new problems to grid operators and planners as we add more and more renewable energy to the grid. Fortunately, there are many tools at their disposal, chief among them (1) seeking a diversity of zero carbon supply resources and (2) storage batteries, which are declining in cost. Incorporating a price on carbon into grid planning and operations decisions will be one effective mechanism that will result in solutions becoming more and more economically.   

Martyn1981

Cheaper, and hopefully subsidy negative off-shore wind might, perhaps, maybe, persuade the government to speed up the deployment of RE by increasing the amount of capacity available in future auctions. Well, one can hope!

Open up offshore windfarm subsidy scheme, urges Scottish Power

One of Britain’s biggest wind power developers has called on the government to scrap the limit on its next offshore wind subsidy auction to help power a green economic recovery, claiming it will not lead to a rise in energy bills.

Scottish Power has urged government officials to open up next year’s offshore wind subsidy auction to as many new projects as possible in order to deliver a “huge wave” of investment and jobs following the pandemic.

In previous auctions the government has capped the amount of renewable energy that can win a subsidy contract, which is paid for through energy bills, to encourage developers to lower their costs.

Keith Anderson, Scottish Power’s chief executive, said there was “minimal risk” to household energy bills because the cost of sea-based turbines is so low the projects may even help to make Britain’s energy cheaper.

“Why constrain investment when we could be making the most of what we’ve got to grow the renewables sector?” Anderson said. “We know that we need more renewables, let’s just get the hell on with it.”

In the last auction round, in September 2019, the winning bids from offshore windfarm developers tumbled by a third to about £40 per megawatt hour, which is less than the price of electricity in the wholesale energy market.

Energy market experts said the record low subsidy levels could mean that households will not face extra costs to support the projects when they begin generating electricity, and might even help to bring down energy bills.

A Europe-wide study of wind power subsidies from Imperial College confirmed last week that UK projects were likely to be the world’s first “negative-subsidy” offshore windfarms.

Coastalwatch

Thanks for posting that Mart. I like the rational behind it as if it leads to a surplus of energy available then it must surely incentivise the options mentioned in your previous posts, ie storage batteries, diverse zero carbon supply sources and carbon pricing tariffs.

If the government is serious about a Green recovery and AGW then how could they possibly refuse.

Martyn1981

Some toe dipping into the use of hydrogen to store excess RE energy, and help balance the grid, in Florida. If this works well (or not) it should provide lessons learned to the rest of the World.

NextEra Energy Sees Hydrogen As A Zero Emissions Alternative To Natural Gas

NextEra likes to conduct small experiments with new technologies to see whether it is cost effective, and then it goes big if the trials are successful. That’s what it did with solar panels. It now plans to install 30 million of them by 2030. Early tests of battery storage were completed successfully, which led to the decision to construct the Manatee battery facility.

Now the company has its eye on another technology that may help it eliminate all emissions associated with the electricity it provides to its customers — hydrogen made by electrolysis using renewable energy that would otherwise be “clipped” or curtailed. According to NASDAQ.com, during the company’s second quarter earnings call, CFO Rebecca Kujawa told analysts,

“Based on our ongoing analysis of the long-term potential of low-cost renewables, we remain confident as ever that wind, solar, and battery storage will be hugely disruptive to the country’s existing generation fleet, while reducing cost for customers and helping to achieve future CO2 emissions reductions. However, to achieve an emissions-free future, we believe that other technologies will be necessary, and we are particularly excited about the long-term potential of hydrogen.”

silverwhistle

There's some mixed news in this article with new capacity being built in China but the overall trend is the main message, and that's encouraging:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/03/more-coal-power-generation-closed-than-opened-around-the-world-this-year-research-finds

Coastalwatch

I know it's been muted on here before but a couple of bodies are now also suggesting it and making it on to the BBC website.

Adverts for large polluting cars 'should be banned'

A new campaign called "Badvertising" is demanding an immediate end to adverts for large polluting cars.

It says the government should clamp down on sports utility vehicle (SUV) car adverts in the way it curbed smoking ads.

SUVs now make up more than 4-in-10 new cars sold in UK, while fully electric vehicles account for fewer than two in a hundred.

The report from the green think tank The New Weather Institute and the climate charity Possible says the trend towards big cars is propelled by aggressive advertising.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53607147

ed110220

silverwhistle said:

There's some mixed news in this article with new capacity being built in China but the overall trend is the main message, and that's encouraging:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/03/more-coal-power-generation-closed-than-opened-around-the-world-this-year-research-finds

I think there is too much focus on coal power capacity and not enough on how much coal is actually being burnt to generate electricity, because the two things are only very loosely related. To its credit the Guardian does say that China's coal power stations are only operating at a capacity factor of about 50%. If they carry on building coal power stations, the main effect will simply be that they've wasted money on building power stations that will be used less and less. 

Martyn1981

ed110220 said:

silverwhistle said:

There's some mixed news in this article with new capacity being built in China but the overall trend is the main message, and that's encouraging:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/03/more-coal-power-generation-closed-than-opened-around-the-world-this-year-research-finds

I think there is too much focus on coal power capacity and not enough on how much coal is actually being burnt to generate electricity, because the two things are only very loosely related. To its credit the Guardian does say that China's coal power stations are only operating at a capacity factor of about 50%. If they carry on building coal power stations, the main effect will simply be that they've wasted money on building power stations that will be used less and less. 

Yep. The fall in the Chinese coal powerstations operating capacity has been going on for some years as the rules/regs have been used (or misused) to open vast numbers of new powerstations without a corresponding increase in demand. Also, and I admit this is a tad desperate, but in China and elsewhere, it may be true that newer capacity is a bit cleaner than the older ones being closed.
If it wasn't for the weird situation in China, then we would be seeing a more significant fall in capacity.
But, and this is the news that warms my heart, is the reduction in planned rollouts in India. I always said the real 'win' from RE subsidies in the wealthier nations was the benefits that the reduction in costs would bring if it meant countries like India - planning a massive rollout of coal from 2010 onwards - changed course and went for RE instead, and they are. India will never see anything like the European/US CO2(e) emissions per head now. Phew!

Martyn1981

I think this is more about energy than BEV's, as we see more and more industries around the World looking for ways to reduce their CO2(e) emissions.

Vulcan Is A Step Closer To Net-Zero-Carbon Lithium Production

In the transition away from fossil fuels, electric vehicles (EV) are set to be deployed on a massive scale in the 2020s. This will create a huge market for lithium-ion batteries (LIB), and battery-quality lithium.

This shift is taking place on a major scale in Germany — the heart of the world’s fastest growing EV and LIB industries.
However, LIBs have a dirty little secret — their supply chains are notoriously carbon intensive. Lithium is currently transported to Europe’s battery manufacturers and automakers from environmentally damaging hard-rock mining or salar-type brines operations in Australia, China, and the Americas. This generates significantly more CO2 emissions than the manufacture of traditional internal combustion engine vehicles.

Dual-listed Vulcan Energy Resources* (ASX:VUL | FWB: 6KO) has Europe’s largest lithium resource, a central position close to the growing LIB/EV markets in Germany, the lowest CO2 intensity and water usage of all lithium projects globally, and now, a lithium extraction process that’s been proven to work on its geothermal brine.

Vulcan’s geothermal project, centrally located in the Upper Rhine Valley, has just reached a major milestone in delivering Europe with net Zero Carbon Lithium™.

Bench-scale test work at Vulcan’s project has demonstrated >90% lithium recoveries via Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) from its geothermal brines. Using real brine at ambient pressure from the Upper Rhine Valley, Vulcan produced lithium chloride (LiCl) concentrates using techniques similar to other commercial and near-commercial lithium brine projects.

Martyn1981

Big wind plans for China. For scale (I think) at 25% cf these additions alone would generate 1.5x the UK's leccy consumption.

251GW new Chinese wind expected this decade

China is expected to add 251GW of new wind capacity between 2020 and 2029 but additions will take a 16% hit from next year due to the end of subsidies, according to Wood Mackenzie.

The country’s wind power market could reach a cumulative grid connected capacity of 461GW by the end of the decade, WoodMac added, with more than 25 wind bases totalling over 100GW of capacity planned or under construction to support near-term wind growth.