Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

Nice to see a huge shipping firm dipping toes (or even a whole foot) into alternative fuels, with a goal of renewable energy in the longer term.

Maersk Orders 8 Carbon-Neutral Container Ships

Maersk — the world’s largest container shipping line — has just ordered 8 new ships that will run on green methanol. Each vessel can carry 16,000 containers and will be built by Hyundai Heavy Industries. Reuters says deliveries are expected to begin in 2023 and to be completed by early 2024.

The vessels will be 10-15% more expensive than normal container ships and will cost $175 million a piece, says Ole Graa Jakobsen, head of fleet technology for Maersk. The new ships will be fitted with engines which can run on both green methanol, which is produced by using renewable sources such as biomass and solar energy, as well as normal bunker fuel, since adequate supplies of green methanol are not yet available. Traditionally, methanol is obtained from unnatural gas or coal.

QrizB

Traditionally, methanol is obtained from unnatural gas or coal.

This made me giggle. I imagine the High Wizards of Exxon using their eldritch powers and weird majicks to conjure forth an offshore production platform

Martyn1981

Quick history lesson. The UK Gov in their wisdom decided that onshore wind and PV were mature technologies and therefore shouldn't qualify for CfD grants, so they were excluded. This was part of the RE 'purge' and shale gas push they went for in 2015.

Now after their U-turn, these technologies will be able to bid in the 2021 allocation round in December. Lesson endeth.

I've absolutely no idea what levels we'll see in the bids, how they'll compare to offshore wind, or the European bids that have continued over the years. I think the allocation round will be for 12GW of RE generation, but I don't know how that'll be split across the various technologies and 'pots'. Onshore wind and PV will be in 'pot one', and competing head to head ..... I think?

We may even see bids below the market rate that they may have otherwise been sold at, since a CfD contract will help to lower the cost of financing the buildout, since the project will have a guaranteed market for its product.

Whatever happens, it'll be interesting (to me), and should accelerate RE roll out in the UK.

Onshore wind, solar hit 8GW for UK auction shoot-out

The UK has 8GW of onshore wind and solar projects primed for the next Contracts for Difference (CfD) round, a report shows.

The latest figures from Cornwall Insight’s Renewables pipeline tracker shows that both the onshore wind and solar pipeline have grown.

The consultant calculates CfD Allocation Round 4 (AR4) eligible pipeline capacities for solar and onshore wind of up to 3GW and 5GW respectively, both figures up on the same period last year.

gefnew

Hi All
Hydro plant to get revamp in Scotland.
Revamp planned for Tummel Bridge power station - BBC News
£50 million pounds worth.

Martyn1981

Great to see this, and being part of that group, it's nice to know that the majority do care, and do want faster action. So the only group that stands out now in a minority, according to item 1 in Chris Goodall's newsletter last week, is the political right, but hopefully they'll see the (solar) light soon.

Over-50s want climate crisis addressed ‘even if it leads to high prices’

The majority of over-50s believe the UK government should be doing more to address the climate crisis, even if it leads to higher prices, a study has found.

A survey of more than 500 people aged 50 and over found that almost two-thirds want ministers to move faster on climate initiatives, regardless of whether it meant products and services would be more expensive over time, or more difficult to access.

Stuart Lewis, the founder of Rest Less, which conducted the study, said: “Our research shows that midlifers feel a huge sense of responsibility for the health of the planet and their role in reducing climate change.”

Rest Less, a website that supports and provides advice to older people, also found that only a minority of older people said they were unconcerned about the climate crisis, challenging assumptions about a generational divide on environmental issues.

Martyn1981

Weekly Carbon Commentary newsletter from Chris Goodall.

[Rather than continue to chop it up and post on multiple threads, I'd thought from now on that I'll just leave it as is on here.]

 Things I noticed and thought were interesting

Week ending August 29th 2021
 
1, Hydrogen made at wind turbines. A consortium of companies was awarded €100m by the German government to integrate hydrogen and renewables fuel production into the interior of offshore wind turbines. The aim is to avoid any need to carry electricity to shore. One of the first sites to use the new model of turbine will be RWE's 10 GW AquaVentus project in the German North Sea. I wrote a post that looked at the reasons behind the rapid growth in interest in merging turbines and hydrogen production. I speculated that a large fraction of all offshore turbines will eventually be built with onboard electrolysis, partly because it is far cheaper to transport hydrogen by pipeline than electricity by cable.
 
2, Dual fuel shipping. Maersk ships 17% of the world’s containers, emitting about 30 million tonnes of CO2 in the process, or about the same as the whole of its home country of Denmark. It has long promised a full decarbonisation strategy and made a bold move this week, announcing an order for 8 dual fuel large container ships to be delivered from 2024. The vessels will be able to run on either conventional heavy fuel oil or methanol. The cash commitment of about $1.5bn is impressive, particularly since the dual fuel capacity has added about $200m to the budget. Maersk commits to sourcing as much properly ‘green’ methanol as possible, made from either biological materials or from air-captured CO2 and hydrogen. The company acknowledged that the world’s supply of truly green methanol is wholly inadequate for the 360,000 tonnes of annual requirements. (It would use far more than Denmark’s total green electricity output to make this fuel). The company says that it is now up to the worldwide industry to build the plants to fulfil the demand and several contenders propose to enter the industry. Methanol is substantially more expensive than conventional fuels but Maersk says it has obtained commitments from many of its major customers, such as H&M and Amazon, to pay a higher price. My analysis of this gamble is here. 
 
3, Climeworks and Swiss Re. The reinsurance giant Swiss Re committed $10m over 10 years to direct air capture (DAC) of CO2 from Climeworks, its Zurich neighbour. Details of how much carbon dioxide will be captured and stored weren’t made available.  But Swiss Re did admit that the current cost is ‘several hundred dollars per tonne of CO2’. This is the biggest single order of DAC from Climeworks, much larger than recent purchases by Microsoft (1,400 tonnes) and payments company Stripe ($250k). The next few weeks are busy for the company with the opening of its pioneering Icelandic plant and a worldwide online public conference alongside its main competitors. By the way, I can vouch for the current expensiveness of DAC; Climeworks offered me a price of about $1m for a unit collecting just 35 tonnes a year for use encouraging plant growth in a greenhouse. That’s before the cost of powering the unit 24 hours a day.
 
4, Urban Outfitters resale marketplace. Last week I noted the entry of H&M into the peer-to-peer second hand clothing business. US-based Urban Outfitters made a similar announcement in the last few days. It had opened a clothing rental subsidiary last year. Now, amongst other activities it will use its new peer-to-peer platform to sell items that have come to the end of their life in the rental business. One leading fashion journal says that the US second hand clothing market will be worth $67bn in 2025, about 20% of total sales.
I expect this will be good for the climate. But data on whether second hand sales actually reduce the amount of new clothing bought is hard to find. Perhaps people will just buy as much, but then sell it on after a few wearings. Of course, this what the retailers may be hoping for. Both H&M and Urban Outfitters are offering extra discounts on new clothes paid for with the money the customer makes from selling their second hand items through the platforms.
 
5, Sunshine direct to hydrogen. Spain’s Repsol gets credit for being the oil company most committed to a full move away from fossil fuels. It has been working on ‘electrophotocatalysis’ for a decade, hoping to find ways of making hydrogen directly from sunlight, without using electricity. It said this week that after successful experiments it now expected to build a pilot plant at its refinery site in Puertollano by 2024 and hopes for commercial viability of the technology before 2030. This  is potentially a highly disruptive innovation. Generation of hydrogen from the splitting of water by sunlight would bypass electricity generation, implying that many of the investments in electrolysis, such as those mentioned in note 6 below, could be made financially unattractive. So far, other experiments in electrophotocatalysis have failed to prove its commercial possibility but Repsol and its partner, the Spanish gas distributor Enagas, have the resources and the clear incentive to make solar hydrogen a reality.
 
6, Australian hydrogen. Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forest, one of Australia’s richest businesspeople and the head of a huge iron ore company, is an ever louder voice for determined action on climate change. Among other projects, he talks of creating a new hydrogen steel industry in Western Australia. Last week he went further, promising that his industrial group will produce 15 million tonnes of green hydrogen a year by 2030 and ’50 million tonnes thereafter’. (Currently the world uses about 70 million tonnes of H2 annually). At $2/kilogramme, 15 million tonnes would mean revenue of around $30 billion, the size of a moderately large oil company. His target will require between 2 and 3 times as much electricity as Australia makes at the moment. In terms of scale, Andrew Forrest’s ambition matches anything in the world, and he has some of the financial resources to achieve his aims. In a parallel announcement, BP in Australia said that hydrogen was also the new focus for the company, although its targets are far more limited and tentative than Forrest’s.

7, Car companies and electricity markets. Several years ago, battery maker Sonnen (now owned by Shell) started offering cheap electricity rates to householders in countries such as Australia who allowed the company to control the domestic battery, importing when power was cheap and exporting it when expensive. This is now a logical market for the electric car companies. Tesla is already in partnership with retailer Octopus in the UK to offer a tariff that uses the storage capacity of the Powerwall batteries (not the cars, I think). It has now entered southern Germany, apparently under its own name, with a retail offer. Car batteries will become the single most important source of short term stabilisation of electricity grids, possibly using Tesla's Autobidder software which has been tested for several years at the Hornsdale grid scale battery in Australia as well as in retail markets. 20,000 modern EVs might offer 1 GWh of storage, far bigger than any of the world's batteries today. Following Nissan, many of the major auto manufacturers are now preparing to offer full 'vehicle to grid' capability for their EVs, allowing them to export power when financially beneficial. VW, for example, will start offering this capability next year. (Thanks to Thad Curtz).

8, Basalt weathering. Climeworks’ new plant in Iceland (note 3 above) stores the CO2 by adding it to water and then pumping it down into the basalt rock beneath the site. The basalt absorbs the carbon dioxide, permanently changing the rock into a carbonate. A recent paper in Nature Geoscience looks at another possible way of capturing atmospheric CO2. It suggests that grinding basalt into a fine dust and then spreading it on land not used for agriculture may be an effective and cheaper means of storing carbon. As with the Climeworks technology, the basalt absorbs CO2. The additional advantage of spreading it on soil is the potential (as yet largely unproven) improvement in soil fertility because basalt contains phosphorus, an important plant nutrient. One estimate in the paper is that for a cost of about $79 a tonne, cheaply available basalt could capture a total of 0.2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide a year (about 0.5% of current world emissions). My guess is that it would make substantial sense for investors or philanthropists to carefully research this technology. One expert I spoke to said he thought the energy costs of grinding the basalt into dust would be too high. But at $10/MWh for solar electricity in some places, does this matter?
 
9, Cheap electric cars. Electric cars remain substantially more expensive than their petrol equivalents, although the difference is diminishing. Some manufacturers are seeking to address the price premium by offering smaller city cars. More accurately, I might have written 'by offering absolutely tiny city cars'. Opel will launch a 47 mile/70 km range vehicle with a 28 mph/45 kph top speed in the autumn. It is 2.4 metres long. One industry journal speculated that the price will be about £5,500/$7,500. As China is demonstrating, my suspicion is that there is a reasonably sized worldwide market for very cheap battery cars only usable for short journeys at low speed.

Martyn1981

Not sure if this is really energy news, could even be BEV news (due to mentions later on), but it seems like too big a milestone in our history not to at least mention it.

Leaded petrol era ‘officially over’ as Algeria ends pump sales

The era of leaded petrol is officially over, the UN has announced, eliminating a major threat to human and planetary health.

UN experts have called the use of the fuel, which began in 1922, a “catastrophe for the environment and public health”. By the 1970s, nearly all petrol produced around the world contained lead. Now the last country to use it, Algeria, has finally stopped selling it in petrol stations.

Officials claim the end of the use of leaded petrol will prevent more than 1.2 million premature deaths a year. This is part of a wider push to improve air pollution levels across the world. Lead is extremely poisonous and there is no safe level of exposure.

The fuel has contaminated air, dust, soil, drinking water and food crops for the better part of a century, causing heart disease, stroke and cancer. It is of particular concern for children, as it damages their developing brains and ability to learn.

Martyn1981

Interesting and ironic.


Wyoming is the No. 1 US coal producer, but its largest utility is ditching the fossil fuel

Wyoming has been the US’s top coal producer since 1986. But while the state stubbornly clings to the fossil fuel, its largest utility is dumping coal in favor of renewables.

PacifiCorp is ditching coal in Wyoming

Rocky Mountain Power is Wyoming’s largest electric utility, and its parent company, PacifiCorp, announced on Friday, according to KPVI, that its biennial Integrated Resource Plan is expected to “include substantial investment in renewables — and no new investment in coal or natural gas. The 2021 plan will be finalized next week.”

Martyn1981

Great idea and move by the French Government, and I'm really shocked, it's just so, so sensible and forward looking that all countries should follow suit.

New French Law Will Help Millions Of People Drive On Sunshine

What’s all of this got to do with France, and France’s new climate law in particular? Well, France has just announced in this climate bill that 30% of the surface of new commercial and industrial buildings will have to be solarized starting on January 1, 2023 — a year and a half from now. Those solar panels will power a lot of electric vehicles, but they won’t be the only ones in a wave of new solar power capacity. Parking areas that surpass 500m² will have to solarize at least 50% of their surface area starting on January 1, 2024. That’s not the end, though. If there are carports, then the requirement is that 100% of the surface area be solarized.

Coastalwatch

The Australian Electricity Market Operator sees a bigger risk to supply security due to a lack of demand, as opposed to a lack of supply, due to commercial and domestic applications powering themselves through rooftop solar.

However, the future is not looking bright for coal.

Solar could supply 77% of Australia’s electricity demand by 2026

Solar in Australia could supply up to 77% of total electricity demand at times by 2026, the Australian Electricity Market Operator (AEMO) has revealed in its annual Electricity Statement of Opportunities report published today.

The report predicts new renewable energy generation and energy storage projects will be able to supply the country as coal-fired plants retire, contradicting concerns around reliability and supply shortfalls.

“No reliability gaps are forecast for the next five years, primarily due to more than 4.4 gigawatts (GW) of new generation and storage capacity, as well as transmission investment and reduced peak demand forecasts,” AEMO chief executive Daniel Westerman said. AEMO is also confident about the following five years to 2031, so long as proposed renewable generation, storage and transmission investments are actually committed.

In fact, AEMO has pointed to coal plant failures, like the flooding at Victorian’s Yallourn plant in June, as the most pressing reliability threat.

With solar booming, focus has now shifted from fears of supply shortfalls to demand shortfalls, as more houses and businesses power themselves through their rooftop systems.

https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2021/08/31/solar-could-supply-77-of-australias-electricity-demand-by-2026/?utm_source=USA+|+Newsletter&utm_campaign=cdbb92dc65-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_80e0d17bb8-cdbb92dc65-159341337