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Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

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  • Martyn1981
    Martyn1981 Posts: 15,383 Forumite
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    Couple of articles from Renews.
    First off an article suggesting flexible CfD's to encompass split technology rollouts, such as H2 production:

    CfD-style backing ‘may unleash UK hydrogen’

    The UK government should explore introducing a split Contract for Difference or premium payment to support the deployment of low carbon hydrogen, according to a new report.

    Such models are preferable to applying a backstop or guaranteed purchase of the gas as consumers are exposed to high payments under such systems, the study by Frontier Economics concluded.


    The second looks at re-use of waste materials for generation rather than landfill:

    Gresham House backs fuel pellet-from-waste factory

    Gresham House’s British Strategic Investment Fund (BSIF) is investing in a fuel pelleting facility in Teeside that will produce high-calorific value fuel from waste that would otherwise be landfilled.

    The facility will produce Waste Knot Energy’s pellets that originate from non-recyclable waste.

    The factory will manufacture in excess of 240,000 tonnes of fuel pellets each year, which will be transported within the UK by rail or exported by ship.

    Mart. Cardiff. 8.72 kWp PV systems (2.12 SSW 4.6 ESE & 2.0 WNW). 20kWh battery storage. Two A2A units for cleaner heating. Two BEV's for cleaner driving.

    For general PV advice please see the PV FAQ thread on the Green & Ethical Board.
  • Coastalwatch
    Coastalwatch Posts: 3,591 Forumite
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    Good to see California successfully leading the way on emission standards in their own state, thus allowing others to adopt their lower levels rather than those relaxed nationally.

    More carmakers agree on CO2 reduction with CARB

    The Californian environmental authority CARB has now concluded five individual agreements with car manufacturers for voluntary CO2 reduction in the US state. The emission target supersedes the levels promoted by the Trump administration.
    The US federal government is sticking to its plan to freeze emissions standards at today’s levels until 2026, but California and other states have been pushing their right to set their own levels since summer 2019.

    As is well known, the US government wanted to deprive California of the right to establish the stricter environmental rules and regulations. California and 22 other states had taken the administration to court over the attempt to deny the state’s own regulation.

    Since then, 13 states have come forward to adopt tighter emissions standards and to defy the new laxer laws brought in by the Trump administration as reported. Together these states account for more than 40% of US vehicle sales. These states that had previously adopted California’s standards for cleaner vehicles have notified every automaker participating in the California Framework Agreement in writing that they too will support the agreements.

    East coast, lat 51.97. 8.26kw SSE, 23° pitch + 0.59kw WSW vertical. Nissan Leaf plus Zappi charger and 2 x ASHP's. Givenergy 8.2 & 9.5 kWh batts, 2 x 3 kW ac inverters. Indra V2H . CoCharger Host, Interest in Ripple Energy & Abundance.
  • Coastalwatch
    Coastalwatch Posts: 3,591 Forumite
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    In a country with huge potential for wind and solar generation it seems criminal that due to a simple lack of planning and leadership the roll out of these valuable resources is having to coming to a standstill. Following the huge bush fires that ravaged the country recently it would seem to confirm that " Morrison fiddles, while Australia burns."

    Australia - Solar, wind, storage investment collapses as risks on developers grow.

    A new analysis by the Clean Energy Council reveals a dramatic fall in the number of large-scale renewable energy projects committed in the second quarter of 2020, with just three projects representing 410 MW of new capacity reaching financial close – the lowest level since 2017.
    New investment in large-scale solar, wind and storage projects in Australia continued to slump in the second quarter of the year as Australia’s perennial grid woes and policy uncertainty continued to undermine investor confidence. At $600 million, investment in financially committed projects was at its lowest level in the last three years, a new analysis by the Clean Energy Council (CEC) reveals.

    But despite continuous warnings, not much has been done to date to strengthen the grid and pave the way for new renewable energy projects to join the market. Instead, the situation in some parts of the grid has rapidly deteriorated putting a growing number of projects at risk.

    “This is weighing on confidence for new investment in the sector, at a time when we need more clean energy investment to boost jobs and regional development and ensure sufficient new generation is in place before old coal generators retire,” Thorton says.

    He went on to note that Australia has an enormous opportunity to leverage renewable energy as part of a nation-building Covid-19 economic response, but that “this requires much needed regulatory reform, sensible energy policy, rapid improvements to grid connection processes and investment in the transmission backbone and energy storage.”

    East coast, lat 51.97. 8.26kw SSE, 23° pitch + 0.59kw WSW vertical. Nissan Leaf plus Zappi charger and 2 x ASHP's. Givenergy 8.2 & 9.5 kWh batts, 2 x 3 kW ac inverters. Indra V2H . CoCharger Host, Interest in Ripple Energy & Abundance.
  • Martyn1981
    Martyn1981 Posts: 15,383 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    Bit of Welsh water's news:

    Crown Estate grants leases for floating windfarm off Wales

    The Queen’s property managers have given the green light to the first floating offshore windfarm to be built off the coast of Wales, as the UK’s wind industry prepares to power into the Celtic Sea.

    The Crown Estate granted two new leases for windfarms in Welsh waters on Wednesday, including the seabed rights for a demonstration project that involves installing floating wind turbines 27 miles from the shore.

    The 96MW Erebus project marks a big step for the development of offshore wind off the Welsh coast, and could emerge as one of Britain’s first floating windfarms beyond Scotland, where one is under construction and another planned.

    The Crown Estate, which holds the rights to seabeds around the British Isles, encompassing Wales, England and Northern Ireland, has also granted rights for a 10,600 hectare extension to the Gwynt y Môr offshore windfarm off the coast of north Wales, which could provide power of up to 576MW, helping Wales meet climate targets.

    Mart. Cardiff. 8.72 kWp PV systems (2.12 SSW 4.6 ESE & 2.0 WNW). 20kWh battery storage. Two A2A units for cleaner heating. Two BEV's for cleaner driving.

    For general PV advice please see the PV FAQ thread on the Green & Ethical Board.
  • Martyn1981
    Martyn1981 Posts: 15,383 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    Perhaps a 'cousin' to green energy news, though this article does mention less energy use too.

    Britain to get first commercial refinery for extracting precious metals from e-waste

    The UK is to get its first commercial refinery for extracting precious metals from electronic waste, which will also be the world’s first to use bacteria rather than cyanide-based processes.

    A New Zealand startup, Mint Innovation, plans to open the facility within 12 months in Cheshire, in the north of England, after delays caused by the Covid-19 crisis.
    Mint was set up in 2016 to develop a bio-refinery that combines hydrometallurgy and biotechnology to safely extract metals – including gold, palladium, silver and copper – from e-waste.

    Ollie Crush, the company’s chief scientific officer, says the key features of its refineries are that they are low-cost, green, and local to where the waste is being created.

    “The plants are very agricultural, more like a small microbrewery. The regulatory tailwind is for western nations to handle their own waste stream. We offer the same yield as the big smelters, the same level of service and quicker,” he said.

    “But unlike the smelters, we do not use cyanide and we use less energy, less CO2, less water, less waste. A refinery can be popped into any nation, region or city.’


    Mart. Cardiff. 8.72 kWp PV systems (2.12 SSW 4.6 ESE & 2.0 WNW). 20kWh battery storage. Two A2A units for cleaner heating. Two BEV's for cleaner driving.

    For general PV advice please see the PV FAQ thread on the Green & Ethical Board.
  • Martyn1981
    Martyn1981 Posts: 15,383 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    Extracts from the Carbon Commentary news letter. Just a note to say that publishing is erratic, it's not me, they don't come out each and every Sunday.

    1, Hydrogen from offshore wind for an oil refinery. Another electrolyser project that will take surplus power from offshore wind to make hydrogen for a refinery was funded. A grant of €30m from the German government will see a 30 MW electrolyser installed with pipeline transport and other infrastructure to feed the Heide oil refinery with some of the hydrogen it needs in its daily operations. Future intentions include a scheme to expand the electrolyser to 700 MW. This is the third large hydrogen project developed by offshore wind specialist Orsted.
      
    3, Vertical farming. The explosion of investment in vertical farming has been almost exclusively restricted to technologies that produce large-leaved green herbs and salads. However an academic investigation into growing wheat indoors showed that yields per hectare might be as much as 600 times those achieved outdoors if the grain were grown in stacked columns. Wheat provides about 20% of world calorie consumption and production is threatened by drought, excess temperatures and pests so it represents an attractive target for innovation. But the research demonstrated one thing all too clearly: the light heat and cooling energy needed to grow the grain indoors is vastly in excess of the current value of the crop. Deep in the background data attached to the study is a table showing that the cost of energy for growing 1 hectare of indoor wheat is about $16m dollars, or about 40 times the value of the grain. Meanwhile, in the body of the paper the authors state that ‘running an ...indoor wheat facility is unlikely to be cost-recovering under normal market conditions’. They can say that again.
     
    4, Conversion of gas turbines to hydrogen. German utility Uniper and turbine supplier GE have started work on a strategy for moving towards carbon neutrality using hydrogen. Uniper’s 4GW of GE gas turbines will be converted to operate on up to 100% renewable hydrogen. The crucial challenge, implied Uniper, will be finding out whether the existing gas storage infrastructure it uses can be made fully compatible with using hydrogen as a fuel for turbines.
     
    5, ‘Carbon farming’. Shell Australia bought the world’s best established ‘carbon farming’ company. Select Carbon helps landowners, particularly farmers, turn land into net carbon sinks. The importance of this is under recognised: soil contains more carbon than trees and the atmosphere combined. Soil Carbon works on about 9 million hectares in Australia, an area roughly equivalent to half the agricultural land area of the UK. The acquisition is – I think – Shell’s first major venture into soil or forest carbon sequestration, which has been stated as one of the pillars of the company’s move to net zero by 2050. This may turn out to be most significant story in this week’s newsletter but it got little coverage in the main media. (Thanks to Adrien De Vriendt)
     
    6, Power to methane. Hydrogen may be winning all the headlines but the leading synthetic methane competitor offers a plausible alternative. Electrochaea takes the output from wastewater or anaerobic digestion plants and turns biogas into 100% methane (in effect, natural gas) using green hydrogen. The crucial advantage Electrochaea offers is complete compatibility with existing natural gas infrastructure. The company’s progress has been slow since it opened its first commercial scale power to methane plant in Copenhagen five years ago. But it now claims an order book of over 1 GW and last week won €17.5m from the EU to build its first 10 MW installation. I continue to think that biological methanation, which is Electrochaea’s approach, is the most plausible way of turning CO2 into a usable hydrocarbon. (Thanks to Bela Hanratty).
      
    8, Hydrogen and oil producing states. The growing consensus that hydrogen will be the dominant storage medium for energy has even begun to convince petro-states to take action. Saudi Arabia’s push towards green hydrogen promises costs similar to hydrogen made from natural gas at around $1.75 per kg. Russia’s hydrogen strategy, published in June, specified a target of 2 millions of exports by 2035. (2 million tonnes is about 3% of today’s world production). A government adviser said that ‘Today hydrogen is used mainly in the chemical and petrochemical industries and used quite limitedly, but we can build a low-carbon economy on its basis and we have all the prerequisites for this.’ Russia will have noticed that the EU, the major customer for its natutal gas, is shifting towards hydrogen and will see no alternative to following suit. Germany, in particular, has made clear that it will need to import large quantities of H2.

     

    Mart. Cardiff. 8.72 kWp PV systems (2.12 SSW 4.6 ESE & 2.0 WNW). 20kWh battery storage. Two A2A units for cleaner heating. Two BEV's for cleaner driving.

    For general PV advice please see the PV FAQ thread on the Green & Ethical Board.
  • Coastalwatch
    Coastalwatch Posts: 3,591 Forumite
    Seventh Anniversary 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    edited 24 August 2020 at 1:56PM
    Thanks for posting ASB. By the time I followed the link there were only 4 plants in operation, 2 at full power and 2 with only one turbine in operation, both off at request of the grid. However, one turbine had also suffered an Automatic trip following a loss of condenser vacuum!
    Perhaps that's why they've fired up a coal station! :(
    East coast, lat 51.97. 8.26kw SSE, 23° pitch + 0.59kw WSW vertical. Nissan Leaf plus Zappi charger and 2 x ASHP's. Givenergy 8.2 & 9.5 kWh batts, 2 x 3 kW ac inverters. Indra V2H . CoCharger Host, Interest in Ripple Energy & Abundance.
  • Martyn1981
    Martyn1981 Posts: 15,383 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    I think this partly explains why CCGT generation has been a lot higher than usual lately:
    Only 6 of EDF's nuclear plants are actually generating currently and one of those is at reduced power.
    The others are also consuming 150MW between them!

    Just a silly thought but I wonder if you take the total capacity of nuclear and its current output, if the maths work out at a capacity factor of 24/7 ...... 24hrs per week, 7 months a year?  ;)
    Mart. Cardiff. 8.72 kWp PV systems (2.12 SSW 4.6 ESE & 2.0 WNW). 20kWh battery storage. Two A2A units for cleaner heating. Two BEV's for cleaner driving.

    For general PV advice please see the PV FAQ thread on the Green & Ethical Board.
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