Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

Only another 5hrs or so and then they finally get the loose horse out of the hospital, and some normality will be restored to the US, and a raft of environmental announcements too.

Exiled_Tyke

Martyn1981 said:

Only another 5hrs or so and then they finally get the loose horse out of the hospital, and some normality will be restored to the US, and a raft of environmental announcements too.

And (with a huge sigh or relief), the tide has turned, Executive orders signed and the return to a green agenda has commenced!  

ASavvyBuyer

Latest Blog from Octopus about Agile, etc.

ASavvyBuyer

Cross-channel electricity link to begin full flow.

Coastalwatch

Martyn1981 said:

EVandPV said:

Coastalwatch said:

Does this announcement suggest the governments newly heralded Green Recovery is little more than a Green washing exercise!

Whitehaven coal mine: Government refuses to call in plans

Plans for the UK's first deep coal mine in 30 years can progress after the government decided not to intervene.

Cumbria County Council approved the £165m West Cumbria Mining plan in Whitehaven in October.

The government could have called in the plans for an inquiry, but has chosen not to do so, the council said.

Citing environmental concerns, Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Farron said the decision was a "complete disaster for our children's future".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-55561852

W.T.F !!??😨

Playing Devil's Advocate, it's for coking coal, not thermal coal. But, hopefully the future lies in RE leccy generation to hydrogen for a cleaner method to produce raw iron and steel.
So it's bad news, but perhaps (maybe?) not as bad as it may first appear to be.

Edit - LOL, I'm feeling really uncomfortable about this post. I knew that New Year resolution to 'Big up' coal would bite me on the as........

Apparently only 70% of steel produced today uses coal, the remaining 30% use other methods. So it is possible and achievable to produce steel without continuing to pollute the planet unnecessarily for the next thirty years.

I do not see how it can be claimed to be a sustainable solution and an essential part of a green recovery as appears to be the stance of government at present. For Secretary of State Rober Jenrick to claim that shoud be a local decision seems rather a cop out to me.

Rather like energy produced via Nuclear also being claimed to be green!

Martyn1981

Stumbled over this vid on Youtube yesterday, and thought it was really good, it's quite educational (to me) on recycling materials, composting etc, and just some of the 'stuff' that's out there.
Not being preachy at all, it's fast and fun.

10 Inventions That Are Saving The Planet

Martyn1981

Had to post this item just for the quoted paragraph:

Wind Power & Renewables Surge To New Record In China

China has done it again! It has beat expectations on the amount of wind power added in 2020, with a staggering 72 gigawatts of wind power added last year. 2020 wind power additions more than doubled the previous record set in 2019. Also, for further perspective, only 60 gigawatts (GW) of wind power was added globally in 2019. 

Martyn1981

I'm guessing many on here will still remember the massacre of cleaner and greener policies back in 2015 with the government winning a majority. We saw the cutting and removing of demand side PV support, the omission of on-shore wind and PV from CfD auctions, the planning rules changed to block on-shore wind, but aid fracking, and sadly, the scrapping of the zero carbon home standard for new builds, which was the last stage of the steadily rising building standards, just one year short of the rule change.

Well now we have some chickens coming home to roost, and finding things a little less efficient, and a little more costly.

Buyers of brand-new homes face £20,000 bill to make them greener

Householders buying brand new homes in the next four years are likely to find an unpleasant surprise awaiting them in the future: homes built today will have to be retrofitted with energy efficiency measures and low-carbon technology, at an average cost of more than £20,000.

The extra costs will amount to more than £20bn for the whole of the UK, if the government’s targets of building 300,000 new homes a year are met. Critics say the costs could have been avoided if ministers had agreed to bring in low-carbon standards sooner.

Building a new house with high energy efficiency standards and a heat pump instead of a gas boiler costs about £4,800 more than building to current standards. However, building to current standards and then retrofitting the house with the same would cost an average of £26,300, or about £21,500 more than installing the technology in the first place, according to an analysis by the Labour party of data from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC).

Martyn1981

Carbon Commentary newsletter:

 

2, Green ammonia. Orkney, a collection of small islands off the north-west coast of Scotland, can claim to be the leader in commercial operations using surplus power to make hydrogen. By some measures, 50% of electricity generated on the windy islands is currently wasted and the surplus is now used for making hydrogen for applications as diverse as space heating, fuel cell vehicles and re-generation of electricity at the main port. The local authority announced planning approval for an extension to a wind farm on the islands and the creation of small green ammonia factory using spare electricity that makes hydrogen and then combines it with nitrogen. The ammonia will be used for heat and transport. In another boost for the chemical, a consortium including the shipping company Maersk promised to begin development of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) that will convert ammonia into electricity to power electric motors for shipping.
 
3, Flexible charging. Battery electric vehicles may be a vital part of the infrastructure that provides grid stability. Two UK companies announced a venture to incorporate large numbers of privately-owned EVs into the market that balances electricity supply and demand at short notice. When electricity is in short supply, charging will be paused and then begun again, usually well past the evening peak in demand. This is potentially a source of significant revenue to electricity retailers and their EV-owning customers.
 
4, Energy islands. The populated Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic between Sweden and Germany will be the first pilot of an ‘energy island’, taking in electricity from several different offshore wind farms and then using interconnectors to send the maximum 2 gigawatts of power to one or more countries, depending on demand. The next generation of ‘energy islands’ will be man-made, probably linking countries around the North Sea. The Bornholm scheme took a step forward this week as the Danish and local German grid operator said that they would cooperate to create the legal and regulatory structures allowing cross-border trading of electricity passing through the island’s transmission system.
 
5, More on green ammonia. Spanish oil company Repsol is part of a consortium intending to construct wind turbines and floating solar in the harbour of the port of Santander. The electricity will be used to make hydrogen and then ammonia for use around the port. The last few weeks have seen a remarkable number of new projects taking renewable energy and converting it directly to hydrogen at the site of the wind or solar power.
 
6, Solar installations in 2021. Last year saw a total of about 132 GW of solar PV installed around the world. Even in the current difficult circumstances, some forecasters are seeing a substantial growth this year. Jenny Chase at BNEF says the number could be as much as 194 GW, up almost 50%. That alone will provide more than 1% of world electricity production. The rise is partly because of the continued drop in module prices, which are predicted to fall to $0.18 a watt, down 10% from last year and approximately 30% of the price of five years ago.
 
7,  Electrolyser sales. Last week I wrote about an order for a 24 MW electrolyser, the largest in the world. This week that record was broken by a sale of a 88 MW unit, over the three times the size. The new order was for a hydro-electric power station in Quebec and will produce about 11,000 tonnes of hydrogen a year at times when the electricity from the hydro plant isn’t needed. The hydrogen will be used in a local biofuels plant. The contract was won by Thyssenkrupp, the German engineering company. The company's hydrogen technology comes from its business making chlorine from sea water for the chemicals industry. The sale is a major breakthrough into the new market for Thyssenkrupp.
 
8, NEL electrolysers. Some countries and companies continue to be reluctant to back green hydrogen, thinking that blue hydrogen (made from natural gas with CCS) will be cheaper for many years. The world’s largest electrolyser manufacturer, NEL, said in its investor presentations this week that green hydrogen will reach the critical $1.50 per kilogramme cost target by 2030. This is substantially lower than the prospective costs for blue hydrogen estimated by Thyssenkrupp and mentioned in last week’s newsletter. It matches the cost in most countries of conventional grey hydrogen made from gas with no carbon capture. NEL sees a 75% reduction in the costs of electrolysers by 2030 and  also said that it had counted almost 10,000 power-to-x projects (a way of describing electricity to hydrogen) around the EU, and more than 5,000 in China. Its sales pipeline has doubled every quarter in the past year and it now has prospective orders of 10 GW. NEL's current yearly production capacity is probably one tenth of that figure. Over 80% of the pipeline is for projects over 100 MW, bigger than the order referred to in note 7 above. (The unshowy NEL presentations are the best analyses of the prospects for hydrogen electrolysis that I have seen).
 
9, The beginnings of municipal investment in hydrogen production. The Hamburg city utility is part of a consortium including Shell and Vattenfall wanting to put a new 100 MW hydrogen production plant on land currently occupied by a recently closed coal-fired power station. The utility will also help develop a pipeline network that will deliver hydrogen to industrial customers around the port area. Hamburg sees the hydrogen hub as a part of its commitment to decarbonisation. In Finland, the city of Vaasa is working with engine manufacturer Wärtsila to develop hydrogen capacity as a way of storing excess electricity. Wärtsila generators will then turn the hydrogen back into electricity when needed.
 
10, Use of cross-laminated timber (CLT) in buildings. CLT is strong and relatively light. It can be used to build multi-storey commercial buildings, generating real savings in carbon when compared to concrete, as well as delivering highly insulated homes. But extensive use is still unusual, particularly in the US, and the first large scale renovation of an office building is now taking place in Boston. An old factory converted to offices is getting an extra two storeys from the use of CLT. The many advantages of cross-laminated timber include the carbon storage but also the possibility of avoiding rebuilding foundations because CLT is about 70% lighter than concrete for an equivalently sized building.  

Martyn1981

Potential shake up for the UK's grid operations, if National Grid has to give up operating the system. Note, they separated that part off a while back under the catchy title National Grid Electricity Supply Operator (NG ESO), but still under the National Grid Group which includes National Grid Electricity Transmission (NG ET).

National Grid should lose role as electricity system operator, says Ofgem

National Grid could lose its role of keeping Britain’s lights on after the energy regulator called for a new and independent electricity system operator to help steer the UK towards its climate targets.

Ofgem has called for National Grid to be stripped of its role after 30 years balancing the electricity grid because the energy company also owns energy networks.

The regulator warned this could create a conflict of interest in the future as the UK’s networks play a larger role in helping to keep the lights on.

National Grid has already legally separated the electricity system operator business from the FTSE 100 group but Ofgem’s proposal would lead to all ties being severed and a new independent system operator put in its place.

The new operator could provide independent recommendations to the government and Ofgem on gas and electricity network investment proposals to help move the UK towards a net zero carbon electricity grid at the lowest possible cost, according to the regulator. This could help to save consumers between £400m and £4.8bn between 2022 and 2050.