Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

ABrass

Solarchaser said:

gefnew said:

Hi All
A different type of storage for excess wind generation.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54841528
looks ok for regional boost to the grid.

I cant be the only one thinking.... how?

Compressing air so much it becomes a liquid doesn't even seem feasible. 
A compressor compresses everything in the air, including water,  so you separate this out as the water doesn't compress very well.

On the flip side you have things like argon gas for welding thats compressed to 150bar, but those vessels are very thick.
Yes condensation builds up on vessels with alot of compressed air as its definitely colder, but I can't see it being more than say -10c (total guess)

70% efficiency,  yeah I dunno, I can see alot of heat being generated in a compressor trying to get to the pressure needed.

Anyway just thinking aloud, time to do some searching 

LAES has been featured on this thread many times. In short it is plausible and the commercial scale pilot plant mentioned is being built to demonstrate it. 

Martyn1981

Solarchaser said:

gefnew said:

Hi All
A different type of storage for excess wind generation.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54841528
looks ok for regional boost to the grid.

I cant be the only one thinking.... how?

Compressing air so much it becomes a liquid doesn't even seem feasible. 
A compressor compresses everything in the air, including water,  so you separate this out as the water doesn't compress very well.

On the flip side you have things like argon gas for welding thats compressed to 150bar, but those vessels are very thick.
Yes condensation builds up on vessels with alot of compressed air as its definitely colder, but I can't see it being more than say -10c (total guess)

70% efficiency,  yeah I dunno, I can see alot of heat being generated in a compressor trying to get to the pressure needed.

Anyway just thinking aloud, time to do some searching 

This is one of my favourites, and they have been going for about a decade steadily building larger test facilities and now are building several small storage plants around the World. A great British story.
You are right about the heat generated, and the cold too when they release energy. This is the crucial part to their idea, as they store both the heat and cold, to reinject, and thus lift their efficiency. If co-located with a source of waste heat and or waste cold their efficiency gets higher, potentially even above 100%, but that would take some perfect co-locating. Looks like they are, in standard form, slightly more efficient than H2 storage, and close to PHS with some waste heat.
Major benefits though of LAES are that they are modular, and the kit is all from existing and standard chemical industry parts. If you want more storage you also only need to expand the storage part, not the rest. Being able to build out multiple sites of say 200MW/1,200MWh, that can actually demand follow, would be incredible.

Martyn1981

Martyn1981 said:

If anyone is interested in Highview and LAES (I've been carping on for years), then a Youtube channel I enjoy 'Undecided' has done a good vid on it and how progress is now being made with several installations taking place.

Liquid Air Battery Explained - Rival to Lithium Ion Batteries?

Handy recent vid, for those interested.

Martyn1981

Looks like the UK is still dragging its feet, but the good news is that vast numbers of jobs will be created as and when we get on with it.

Global experts question UK’s commitment to tackle climate crisis

Boris Johnson’s government is investing only 12% of the funds needed to tackle the climate emergency and the growing threat to nature, according to a new report that will raise fresh international concerns about the UK’s commitment to the green agenda.

The study – released before an expected major speech on the environment by Johnson – says ministers need to commit £33bn each year of this parliament to green causes. So far only £4bn a year has been pledged.

The report by the IPPR thinktank comes as Johnson faces increasing global pressure to act, most notably from the next US president Joe Biden, who is committed to green causes.

In addition, the government’s own climate change committee recently warned that the UK is not on track to meet its interim emissions targets for the Fourth and Fifth Carbon Budgets for the periods 2023-2027 and 2028-2032 and identified some critical areas for action. These would include bringing forward the 2035 ban on sales of new petrol, diesel and hybrid cars, an increase in strategic investments in the development of carbon capture and storage for industries, such as steel, and much more investment in zero-carbon alternatives to gas central heating.

silverwhistle

Coastalwatch

VW & Greece to build e-mobility pilot island

https://www.electrive.com/2020/11/04/vw-greece-to-build-e-mobility-pilot-island/

This caught my my eye, but the bit I liked best was that they were including e-bikes in the mobility modes. As someone who occasionally cycles 3 miles into town for a shop I know it's an option often overlooked.

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

Solarchaser said:

gefnew said:

Hi All
A different type of storage for excess wind generation.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54841528
looks ok for regional boost to the grid.

I cant be the only one thinking.... how?

Compressing air so much it becomes a liquid doesn't even seem feasible. 
A compressor compresses everything in the air, including water,  so you separate this out as the water doesn't compress very well.

On the flip side you have things like argon gas for welding thats compressed to 150bar, but those vessels are very thick.
Yes condensation builds up on vessels with alot of compressed air as its definitely colder, but I can't see it being more than say -10c (total guess)

70% efficiency,  yeah I dunno, I can see alot of heat being generated in a compressor trying to get to the pressure needed.

Anyway just thinking aloud, time to do some searching 

This is one of my favourites, and they have been going for about a decade steadily building larger test facilities and now are building several small storage plants around the World. A great British story.
You are right about the heat generated, and the cold too when they release energy. This is the crucial part to their idea, as they store both the heat and cold, to reinject, and thus lift their efficiency. If co-located with a source of waste heat and or waste cold their efficiency gets higher, potentially even above 100%, but that would take some perfect co-locating. Looks like they are, in standard form, slightly more efficient than H2 storage, and close to PHS with some waste heat.
Major benefits though of LAES are that they are modular, and the kit is all from existing and standard chemical industry parts. If you want more storage you also only need to expand the storage part, not the rest. Being able to build out multiple sites of say 200MW/1,200MWh, that can actually demand follow, would be incredible.

So suppose it cycles 1gw per day buying off peak power at say 2p/unit and sells for 5 peak hours at 10p/unit @ 70% efficiency the daily gross profit is £50k - question is what is the capital cost and operational cost?

Martyn1981

Extracts from this week's Carbon Commentary newsletter:

1, Zero carbon ammonia. Natural gas is largely methane, a molecule containing carbon and hydrogen atoms. Monolith Materials said it will built a full scale zero-carbon ammonia factory at its existing plant in Nebraska. It has a proprietary technology for splitting gas into its constituent elements. Hydrogen is generated, while carbon black, a very useful form of almost pure carbon, is the other output. Hydrogen will then be turned into ammonia through the conventional Haber Bosch process, which can be powered using renewable electricity. Ammonia is the key ingredient of fertilisers and responsible for about 1% of world emissions. The output of almost 200,000 tonnes of carbon black a year will probably go into tyre manufacture, which is the most important use of this raw material. But tyres only use about 10 million tonnes a year, so the Monolith Materials technology will probably not be used worldwide. Nevertheless this is a potentially important route for decarbonising some portion of the fertiliser industry. (Thanks to Brian Tyler).
 
2, More green ammonia. Iberdrola committed to a partnership with supplier Fertiberia that will see the creation of 800 MW of electrolysers for the complete switch of Spanish fertiliser supply to green hydrogen by 2027 using solar electricity. The companies said that they will spend €1.8bn on the fertiliser plants, which will take Spain to 20% of its 2030 electrolyser target. (This new plan hugely extends earlier announcements for a pilot plant at Puertollano). In another sign of growing enthusiasm for a switch to green hydrogen for making ammonia, the South Australian government subsidised some of the infrastructure for 75 MW electrolyser project that will produce ammonia to be exported by sea. Until the Spanish plants are completed, this will be the largest source of green ammonia in the world.

3, Hydrogen barges. An inland barge in the Netherlands is being converted to use a hydrogen fuel cell for propulsion. (Another plan to move Heineken beer around the country on zero-emission barges has been previously covered in the newsletter). The new venture sees a 110m carrier converted to use two 40 ft shipping containers to store compressed hydrogen. The vessel, to be adapted next year, will also have a large capacity battery. The developers acknowledged that hydrogen will be more expensive than diesel but, perhaps optimistically, said that the difference have ‘inconsequential’ impact on the price of the goods that are transported. In an important sign of the maturing of the hydrogen economy, the Netherlands government also publicly advocated the setting up of the world’s first hydrogen bourse, although only by 2026. A fully functioning market for hydrogen would be an important step in the full integration of the gas into the energy economy.
 
4, Ground source heat pumps (‘geothermal’). Along with California, Boston is one of the places in the US most committed to reducing the use of natural gas for building heating. New construction projects cannot connect to the gas grid. But the local utility comments that the consequent rise in electricity demand in dense urban areas will be difficult to accommodate. ‘The struggle we have is, we don't know where we're going to put the infrastructure. We're having a hard enough time building a substation today’, said a senior executive of Eversource Energy. This may be a problem in many dense urban areas trying to switch away from gas boilers to home heat pumps. The utility says it will explore the use of hydrogen in its gas network and will also look at the providing district heating and cooling using near-surface ground source heat pumps (a technology confusingly sometimes called ‘geothermal’). While these heat pumps would still use electricity, the amount would be much less than the air source equivalents at individual buildings. The advantages for the utility would also include the ability to use its rights to dig up streets and maintain a network of pipes, a task analogous to its current activities. Of course this is only copying what happens already in many Nordic towns and cities. (Thanks to Thad Curtz)
 
5, Combustion of iron for heating. Very finely ground metals will easily combust, producing large volumes of heat. The product will be a metallic oxide, which can then be converted back to the pure metal using renewable electricity, creating a zero carbon loop. For some industrial processes that need very high temperatures, it is possible that burning iron or aluminium may be a potential low carbon alternative to natural gas or coal. A brewery in the Netherlands installed a trial iron powder combustion unit made by a student group at the University of Eindhoven. This is a world first. Commentators quickly questioned whether the round trip efficiency of this process - roughly 40% - would be any better than using hydrogen for heat. But I think it is too early to dismiss metal combustion. It could be cheap, safe, easy to store and may operate cost-effectively at a smaller scale. (Thanks to Jeremy Hinton, Thad Curtz). 
 
6, Solar refrigerators. A Brazilian company has developed a solar fridge for off-grid uses, such as vaccine storage, in countries with poor grid connections. It claims an electrical efficiency four times better than conventional products. As with other solar devices, the 100 litre fridge is now sold on 24 month financing, usually to small entrepreneurs. Connected to the internet, it stops working if payments are missed. The fridge can keep its contents cold for 36 hours without sun using the attached battery. The Kenyan business selling it has now provided over $400m of financing for off-grid solar products.
 
7, Support services for fossil fuels. It’s not just investors. Professional service firms are also breaking away from fossil fuels. One of the world’s leading engineering firms, Black and Veatch, promised it would take on no new coal-fired power station assignments and would refuse any consulting projects to extend the life of existing coal plants.
 
8, Bioenergy and CCS (‘BECCS’).  Chiyoda, a Japanese company with one of the strongest portfolio of technologies for carbon capture from industrial plants, said that it had completed work on a small biomass power station in Japan that burns palm kernel shells. Its process will capture more than 50% of the emissions from the plant. This is the world’s first BECCS power station working at a significant scale.
 
9, Iberdrola ambitions. The Spanish utility produced an extremely useful summary of a global future dominated by renewable energy. It upped its own expansion ambitions to around 5GW a year over the next few years, roughly the same as BP, which has annual revenues of seven times as much. But the scale of the global challenge was made clear in one set of numbers: Iberdrola sees the world needing investments of around $2.7trn a year in the electricity system by 2030, three times the current amount and well over 2% of global GDP. Iberdrola is perhaps the world leader in renewables and is responsible for about 1% of global electricity production. But even its enhanced investment ambitions (€15bn a year) are only equivalent to two thirds of one percent of the world’s requirements of $2.7trn. 
 
10, Hydrogen for steel-making. The manufacture of steel is responsible for 7-9% of global CO2 emissions. The route to decarbonisation is almost certainly 100% replacement of coal by hydrogen using what is known as the ‘direct reduction’ process. I wrote a blog post that looked at the scale of the challenge. The key numbers are striking. Replacing today’s volumes of blast furnace steel will require about 120m tonnes of hydrogen, more than doubling today’s global volumes. The energy needed to make green hydrogen will require more than a quarter of today’s global electricity production and about 650 GW of electrolysers. (Compare this to the Spanish target of 4GW by 2030 mentioned in note 2). If the electricity came entirely from wind, the new turbines required would almost triple today’s wind power.

EVandPV

Good news from across the pond just keeps coming .....

Biden victory to trigger US return to Paris Agreement and fresh wave of climate action

https://www.businessgreen.com/news/4022930/biden-victory-trigger-us-return-paris-agreement-fresh-wave-climate-action

Martyn1981

And more good news from the US, unless you work in the fracking or nuclear industries.
Looks like green H2 production will grow, and displace other forms of energy from FF's and nuclear. Add in support for green technologies and carbon taxes for FF's, the banning of fracking in several states, and the rapidly escalating costs of new nuclear (traditional or SMR's) and the future is looking ever more green.

Green Hydrogen Nail, Meet Shale Gas Coffin (& Nuclear Could Be Next)

If US President-Elect Joe Biden doesn’t do the fossil fuel industry any favors, he’ll only be following in the footsteps of outgoing President* Donald J. Trump. Intentionally or not, Trump has already overseen the demise of the domestic coal, oil, and natural gas industries. The latest development occurred right around Election Day, when a $7 billion, 20-year plan to export liquid natural gas from the US to France suddenly evaporated. That could have something to do with the launch of a new investor-driven green hydrogen R&D center in Europe, and Trump’s own Department of Energy is determined to mirror the hydrogen angle right here in the US.

Power-to-gas refers to electrolysis systems, which deploy electricity to split hydrogen gas from water. That’s a sustainability no-go if the electricity comes from a fossil power plant, but the advent of low-cost wind and solar power is changing the game, in more ways than one.

Wind and solar are intermittent resources, so they also unlock the energy storage and transportation value in hydrogen. As an energy carrier, hydrogen can store renewable energy in bulk, for long periods of time. Hydrogen can also be transported by pipeline, truck, ship, or rail, which means that it can be deployed to overcome gaps or transmission bottlenecks in electricity infrastructure.

Sure enough, in November of 2015 the US Department of Energy included green power-to-gas in a group of six “transformational” energy projects to be funded through its ARPA-E office.

The US nuclear industry has been pinning its hopes on a new approach that involves assembling small scale, modular nuclear power plants in a factory, and then shipping them out for installation.

Unfortunately for nuclear fans, the idea appears to have hit a brick wall.

A company called NuScale was set to install 12 modular nuclear power plants on the grounds of the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory, and the arrangement got a shot of adrenaline in October, in the form of a $1 billion grant from the Energy Department.

Nevertheless, 8 of the 36 utilities that signed on to the plan turned tail and ran in recent weeks. As reported by our friends over at Science magazine, the bailouts followed a dire announcement by the plant’s intended buyer, Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, which projected a 3-year delay and an additional $1.9 billion in cost, pushing the completion date back to 2030 at a total cost of $6.1 billion.

Coastalwatch

Pressure mounts on the government for bringing ICE forward. Strange it should be industry when I'd expected it to be rather the other way around. Reckon if Boris us impatient to sign a deal with the new US administration then he may need to green up a bit in order to impress!

Major UK fleet operators renew call for ICE ban by 2030

The UK’s four biggest fleet operators, BT and Openreach, Centrica, DPD UK and Royal Mail, today called on the British Government to commit to 100% electric vehicle sales by 2030. The demand comes trough the UK Electric Fleets Coalition, run by The Climate Group.

Collectively, the Coalition operates more than 500,000 vehicles and founding members had pledged as early as in 2018 to electrify their fleets. On top of the Climate Pledge, the extra Alliance lobbies the British Government to adopt a 2030 end date to the purchasing of new petrol and diesel cars, a policy that is currently under review as reported.

Three years ago, the British government introduced a ban on the sale of new cars with combustion engines from 2040 and recently issued concrete plans to indeed bring this deadline forward by ten years to 2030. The update from PM Boris Johnson is expected this autumn along with a row of other new clean energy policies aimed at providing a green trigger for the economy in the face of the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

https://www.electrive.com/2020/11/06/major-uk-fleet-operators-renew-call-for-ice-ban-by-2030/