Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

2nd_time_buyer said:

Martyn1981 said:

Just looked at Energy Numbers and there's quite a lot of wind gen at the moment (15.6GW at time of writing). I also noticed that we are exporting 1.5GW to France, but importing 2.8GW from Norway, Belgium and Netherlands, so we may be acting as an additional supply route from them to France(?)

Be good to see how RE stacks up in the UK for 2022. With 2021 being a poor wind year, we should see a double bump this year if wind is average, from the new deployments in 2021/22. Could mean, dare I say should mean, that RE will exceed FF generation ....... well, one can hope.


[I can see myself getting fascinated with all the movements via the interconnectors as their numbers rise to ~14 by the end of 2025.]

I saw that at one point this morning, the generation was 17.8 kWh from wind. I believe that is a (slight) new record for UK wind.

https://www.energylivenews.com/2021/05/05/uk-wind-power-breaks-new-record-on-bank-holiday/#:~:text=British wind farms broke a,GW set on 13th February.

And still to be officially confirmed by ESO(NG), but could even have hit 18.4GW today. Where's me kite?

EVandPV

Martyn1981 said:

2nd_time_buyer said:

Martyn1981 said:

Just looked at Energy Numbers and there's quite a lot of wind gen at the moment (15.6GW at time of writing). I also noticed that we are exporting 1.5GW to France, but importing 2.8GW from Norway, Belgium and Netherlands, so we may be acting as an additional supply route from them to France(?)

Be good to see how RE stacks up in the UK for 2022. With 2021 being a poor wind year, we should see a double bump this year if wind is average, from the new deployments in 2021/22. Could mean, dare I say should mean, that RE will exceed FF generation ....... well, one can hope.


[I can see myself getting fascinated with all the movements via the interconnectors as their numbers rise to ~14 by the end of 2025.]

I saw that at one point this morning, the generation was 17.8 kWh from wind. I believe that is a (slight) new record for UK wind.

https://www.energylivenews.com/2021/05/05/uk-wind-power-breaks-new-record-on-bank-holiday/#:~:text=British wind farms broke a,GW set on 13th February.

And still to be officially confirmed by ESO(NG), but could even have hit 18.4GW today. Where's me kite?

Shows up on the app .....

Verdigris

What I find odd is that there is a coal powered station running, although they seem to be throttling it back now.

Swan_Valley

Shell carbon-capture facility found to be generating more emissions than it prevents

"A prototype carbon capture and storage facility by Shell, which was designed to eliminate emissions from hydrogen production, actually has the same yearly carbon footprint as 1.2 million cars, according to a report by Global Witness.

Shell says its Quest plant captured close to five million tonnes of CO2 over the course of five years after it was installed at the oil giant's Scotford refinery in Canada in 2015.

But the report by human rights organisation Global Witness found that over the same half-decade, it emitted just over 7.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gases that weren't captured – the equivalent to emissions from 1.2 million cars every year.

The greenhouse gases emitted include highly potent methane, which in the short term has a more than 80-times higher global warming potential than carbon dioxide."

Martyn1981

The good and bad of stormy weather, with the UK setting new wind generation records.

UK windfarms generate record amount of electricity during Storm Malik

The UK’s windfarms generated a record amount of renewable electricity over the weekend as Storm Malik battered parts of Scotland and northern England.

Wind speeds of up to 100 miles an hour recorded in Scotland helped wind power generation to rise to a provisional all-time high of more than 19,500 megawatts – or more than half the UK’s electricity – according to data from National Grid.

National Grid’s electricity system operator said that although it recognised the new milestone towards the UK’s ‘net zero’ carbon future, it was “also thinking of those affected by Storm Malik”.

The winter storms have followed a summer of low wind power generation across the UK and Europe, which caused increased use of gas power plants during a global supply shortfall.

Gas markets around the world reached record highs due to rising demand for gas as economies have rebounded from the economic shock of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the UK, electricity market prices reached an all-time high of more than £424.60 a megawatt-hour in September, compared with an average price of £44/MWh in the same month the year before.

Martyn1981

Last week's Carbon Commentary newsletter from Chris Goodall.

Things I noticed and thought were interesting

Week ending January 30th 2022
 
1, CO2 methanation. The French conglomerate Suez started construction of a waste water plant near the Spanish border. It includes two important innovations. First, the biogas coming from the plant (a mixture of CO2 and methane) will be converted entirely to methane. The methane can then be added to natural gas networks and combusted for heat. Because the CO2 resulting from this combustion is entirely of biological origin, there are no net additions of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere. Although methanation of waste water biogas has happened at other plants around the world, this is probably the first time the resulting gas been used commercially. The second advance is in the creation of biochar from intense heating of the sewage sludge. Biochar is near 100% carbon which will stay in soils for hundreds of years, often aiding fertility. This also saves greenhouse gas emissions. This new plant from Suez is a major advance because it will be closely integrated into the entire energy structure of the area, including supplying hydrogen, oxygen and heat. 
 
2, IKEA climate impact. I thought the company’s 2021 climate document was one of the best analyses I have seen. Specific, open and clear, and very little greenwash. Apparently honest as well, with some admissions of past errors in calculations. One of the most interesting statistics: just over half the emissions at IKEA come from the manufacturing of the goods they sell even though 73% of materials are either from renewable sources (principally wood) or are of recycled origin. In fact the glue used in making furniture (1.3 million tonnes) has twice the footprint of running all the stores around the world. The company plans to switch to biologically based adhesives to existing glues. The carbon cost of using its products at home fell sharply last year - even though sales rose substantially - principally because of an improvement in the efficiency of the LED lighting sold.
 
3, No coal transported by ship. Major shipping company Eastern Pacific said that it would no longer carry coal and had decided to make a formal policy announcement. ‘With a significant portion of our commercially managed fleet being in the dry bulk segment, we aim to play a small part in making one of the world’s worst pollutants … much harder to access’. The company said that its policy is ‘intended to be a message to the maritime industry that decarbonisation isn’t exclusive to how we move ships - what we move also matters’. It’ll be interesting to see if other shippers copy the policy.

4,  Vertical farming. Plenty, one of the pioneers of indoor vertical farming, raised $400m from a consortium including Walmart, the world’s largest retailer. Walmart said it will stock Plenty’s products in all its California stores. Plenty is expanding its product range away from salads to berries and vegetables such as tomatoes. Indoor agriculture is another industry where to push to improve environmental performance will eventually mean a relocation of a large fraction of the world’s production capacity away from places such as southern Spain and California to sites far closer to population centres.
 
5, Synthetic fuels. Ineratec of Germany has one of the most convincing approaches for making fuels from hydrogen and captured CO2. It operates the largest synthetic fuels pilot plant, making e-kerosene for aviation Its uses technology developed in partnership with South Africa’s Sasol, an expert in using the Fischer Tropsch process to combine hydrogen and CO2 to make fuels. It raised another $20m from investors including Engie to push forward with a new refinery near Frankfurt Airport that will make about 4,000 tonnes a year of fuel. A tiny amount in the context of world demand but an important step forward. The fact that the technology can be containerised and can react quickly to changes in power supply make Ineratec’s approach useful in a wide range of locations.
 
6, Green steel. Sweden’s SSAB, a pioneer in making steel from hydrogen, announced it would speed up its transition to being a near-zero carbon producer. Its total production of around 7m tonnes a year (about 0.4% of world production) will cease to be made in conventional coal-fired furnaces by around 2030. Previously it had targeted 2045. SSAB indicates its emissions will reduce by about 8 tonnes a year across all its operations. This is highly significant in the context of Sweden’s national GHGs of about 45m tonnes.  The company says it will have the capacity to produce 1.3m tonnes of low CO2 steel by 2026 and that it already has orders to fully cover this output. (Largely from car producers, I’d guess). It says it will make investments of around $5bn to get to zero carbon but SSAB thinks it will be able to cover this from its cash flow, rather than borrowing. Nucor, the largest US producer of steel, plans to build a new electric arc furnace in West Virginia, partly because of the availability of low carbon electricity. The local power company said ‘having renewable energy in the mix was a key factor in Nucor Corporation’s recent decision to locate its $2.7 billion steel mill in the state’.Steel is an industry which will move to areas of low cost renewables.

7, Basalt and DAC. The ability of basalt rock to absorb CO2 and turn into a carbonate may give us one of the easiest forms of permanent storage. The Climeworks direct air capture (DAC) plant in Iceland injects carbon dioxide into the basalt underneath the plant and achieves rapid carbonisation.  A US academic made an interesting proposal to use surplus energy generated in the future wind parks off the East Coast to run DAC machines on the turbines, or nearby, and then store the CO2 by chemical absorption in the basalt underneath wind farm locations. Estimates suggest that 500 gigatonnes of CO2 could be turn into carbonate rocks by wind farms off the US coastline from Massachusetts to Maryland. That’s over ten years of today’s global emissions. 
 
8, Hydrogen in Spain. Oil major Repsol announced the formation of consortium with 33 members to commercialise green hydrogen production and use. The group plans for 2 GW of electrolysis capacity by 2030, half of Spain’s national target at a budget of over $3bn. The press commentary of this announcement didn’t pick up that Repsol on its own has already publicly committed to investment of this scale in hydrogen. What is new is that the company seems to have realised that it needs to build extensive business ecosystems across the Spanish economy to use the hydrogen it intends to make. So the consortium includes vehicle manufacturers, the Spanish gas grid operator, a steel company and railway equipment maker. If a large fraction of the transport and manufacturing sectors get behind hydrogen in a consortium, the market will develop more quickly.
 
9, How much will it all cost? BNEF said the world spent about $755 bn on low carbon investment last year, strongly up on 2020. But McKinsey said it will take $9 trillion annually to get close to net zero by 2050, or about twelve times as much as the world is spending today. $9 trillion is about a tenth of world GDP. The transition isn’t going to be cheap.
 
10, Decarbonising cement. This is a very early stage idea but seems plausible. Italian oil company Eni said it was working with cement producer Holcim to help decarbonise cement production. The idea is that the common mineral olivine is finely ground up and then quickly absorbs carbon dioxide at ambient temperature and pressure. (Much like basalt does in note 7. But olivine does it more rapidly). This can permanently capture the CO2 that naturally results from the chemical breakdown of limestone in the cement production process. The olivine rock that has absorbed the CO2 is then added to the concrete that is made from the cement, permanently storing the carbon dioxide. Much remains to be investigated but this is an original and interesting idea.
 
11, Interconnectors. I wrote an article on the unusual decision by the UK government to reject a 2 GW electricity connector to France. The reason given was that the applicants hadn’t considered a particular alternative location for connecting to the UK grid. I looked at the history of the proposed alternative and found that site had already been blocked by the planning authorities when dealing with a request for a similar electrical connection. This is outside my usual area of work but I was shocked by the obvious failure in the government’s evaluation. (In the last few minutes a local group that strongly argued against the interconnector has written a response. I have included this letter in full below the article).  

Notes - Item 9 is the cost of action, not the net cost reflecting job creation, cost savings etc. See earlier post and article on this.

Item 11, I can't find the letter referenced.

QrizB

Martyn1981 said:

Item 11, I can't find the letter referenced.

It's been pasted into the comments below the article. Comment by Chris Goodall, currently "18 hours ago".

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

Last week's Carbon Commentary newsletter from Chris Goodall.

Things I noticed and thought were interesting

Week ending January 30th 2022
 
1, CO2 methanation. The French conglomerate Suez started construction of a waste water plant near the Spanish border. It includes two important innovations. First, the biogas coming from the plant (a mixture of CO2 and methane) will be converted entirely to methane. The methane can then be added to natural gas networks and combusted for heat. Because the CO2 resulting from this combustion is entirely of biological origin, there are no net additions of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere. Although methanation of waste water biogas has happened at other plants around the world, this is probably the first time the resulting gas been used commercially. The second advance is in the creation of biochar from intense heating of the sewage sludge. Biochar is near 100% carbon which will stay in soils for hundreds of years, often aiding fertility. This also saves greenhouse gas emissions. This new plant from Suez is a major advance because it will be closely integrated into the entire energy structure of the area, including supplying hydrogen, oxygen and heat. 
 
2, IKEA climate impact. I thought the company’s 2021 climate document was one of the best analyses I have seen. Specific, open and clear, and very little greenwash. Apparently honest as well, with some admissions of past errors in calculations. One of the most interesting statistics: just over half the emissions at IKEA come from the manufacturing of the goods they sell even though 73% of materials are either from renewable sources (principally wood) or are of recycled origin. In fact the glue used in making furniture (1.3 million tonnes) has twice the footprint of running all the stores around the world. The company plans to switch to biologically based adhesives to existing glues. The carbon cost of using its products at home fell sharply last year - even though sales rose substantially - principally because of an improvement in the efficiency of the LED lighting sold.
 
3, No coal transported by ship. Major shipping company Eastern Pacific said that it would no longer carry coal and had decided to make a formal policy announcement. ‘With a significant portion of our commercially managed fleet being in the dry bulk segment, we aim to play a small part in making one of the world’s worst pollutants … much harder to access’. The company said that its policy is ‘intended to be a message to the maritime industry that decarbonisation isn’t exclusive to how we move ships - what we move also matters’. It’ll be interesting to see if other shippers copy the policy.

4,  Vertical farming. Plenty, one of the pioneers of indoor vertical farming, raised $400m from a consortium including Walmart, the world’s largest retailer. Walmart said it will stock Plenty’s products in all its California stores. Plenty is expanding its product range away from salads to berries and vegetables such as tomatoes. Indoor agriculture is another industry where to push to improve environmental performance will eventually mean a relocation of a large fraction of the world’s production capacity away from places such as southern Spain and California to sites far closer to population centres.
 
5, Synthetic fuels. Ineratec of Germany has one of the most convincing approaches for making fuels from hydrogen and captured CO2. It operates the largest synthetic fuels pilot plant, making e-kerosene for aviation Its uses technology developed in partnership with South Africa’s Sasol, an expert in using the Fischer Tropsch process to combine hydrogen and CO2 to make fuels. It raised another $20m from investors including Engie to push forward with a new refinery near Frankfurt Airport that will make about 4,000 tonnes a year of fuel. A tiny amount in the context of world demand but an important step forward. The fact that the technology can be containerised and can react quickly to changes in power supply make Ineratec’s approach useful in a wide range of locations.
 
6, Green steel. Sweden’s SSAB, a pioneer in making steel from hydrogen, announced it would speed up its transition to being a near-zero carbon producer. Its total production of around 7m tonnes a year (about 0.4% of world production) will cease to be made in conventional coal-fired furnaces by around 2030. Previously it had targeted 2045. SSAB indicates its emissions will reduce by about 8 tonnes a year across all its operations. This is highly significant in the context of Sweden’s national GHGs of about 45m tonnes.  The company says it will have the capacity to produce 1.3m tonnes of low CO2 steel by 2026 and that it already has orders to fully cover this output. (Largely from car producers, I’d guess). It says it will make investments of around $5bn to get to zero carbon but SSAB thinks it will be able to cover this from its cash flow, rather than borrowing. Nucor, the largest US producer of steel, plans to build a new electric arc furnace in West Virginia, partly because of the availability of low carbon electricity. The local power company said ‘having renewable energy in the mix was a key factor in Nucor Corporation’s recent decision to locate its $2.7 billion steel mill in the state’.Steel is an industry which will move to areas of low cost renewables.

7, Basalt and DAC. The ability of basalt rock to absorb CO2 and turn into a carbonate may give us one of the easiest forms of permanent storage. The Climeworks direct air capture (DAC) plant in Iceland injects carbon dioxide into the basalt underneath the plant and achieves rapid carbonisation.  A US academic made an interesting proposal to use surplus energy generated in the future wind parks off the East Coast to run DAC machines on the turbines, or nearby, and then store the CO2 by chemical absorption in the basalt underneath wind farm locations. Estimates suggest that 500 gigatonnes of CO2 could be turn into carbonate rocks by wind farms off the US coastline from Massachusetts to Maryland. That’s over ten years of today’s global emissions. 
 
8, Hydrogen in Spain. Oil major Repsol announced the formation of consortium with 33 members to commercialise green hydrogen production and use. The group plans for 2 GW of electrolysis capacity by 2030, half of Spain’s national target at a budget of over $3bn. The press commentary of this announcement didn’t pick up that Repsol on its own has already publicly committed to investment of this scale in hydrogen. What is new is that the company seems to have realised that it needs to build extensive business ecosystems across the Spanish economy to use the hydrogen it intends to make. So the consortium includes vehicle manufacturers, the Spanish gas grid operator, a steel company and railway equipment maker. If a large fraction of the transport and manufacturing sectors get behind hydrogen in a consortium, the market will develop more quickly.
 
9, How much will it all cost? BNEF said the world spent about $755 bn on low carbon investment last year, strongly up on 2020. But McKinsey said it will take $9 trillion annually to get close to net zero by 2050, or about twelve times as much as the world is spending today. $9 trillion is about a tenth of world GDP. The transition isn’t going to be cheap.
 
10, Decarbonising cement. This is a very early stage idea but seems plausible. Italian oil company Eni said it was working with cement producer Holcim to help decarbonise cement production. The idea is that the common mineral olivine is finely ground up and then quickly absorbs carbon dioxide at ambient temperature and pressure. (Much like basalt does in note 7. But olivine does it more rapidly). This can permanently capture the CO2 that naturally results from the chemical breakdown of limestone in the cement production process. The olivine rock that has absorbed the CO2 is then added to the concrete that is made from the cement, permanently storing the carbon dioxide. Much remains to be investigated but this is an original and interesting idea.
 
11, Interconnectors. I wrote an article on the unusual decision by the UK government to reject a 2 GW electricity connector to France. The reason given was that the applicants hadn’t considered a particular alternative location for connecting to the UK grid. I looked at the history of the proposed alternative and found that site had already been blocked by the planning authorities when dealing with a request for a similar electrical connection. This is outside my usual area of work but I was shocked by the obvious failure in the government’s evaluation. (In the last few minutes a local group that strongly argued against the interconnector has written a response. I have included this letter in full below the article).  

Notes - Item 9 is the cost of action, not the net cost reflecting job creation, cost savings etc. See earlier post and article on this.

Item 11, I can't find the letter referenced.

What do people feel about solutions such as : 7, Basalt and DAC.

Sounds like a great idea - use wind spill for CCS however any solution that involves CCS is also surely an invitation for the oil economy to persuade us we can burn more hydrocarbons in the long term that some would see as a 'bad thing' regardless of whether we can offset the carbon or not.

shinytop

michaels said:

What do people feel about solutions such as : 7, Basalt and DAC.

Sounds like a great idea - use wind spill for CCS however any solution that involves CCS is also surely an invitation for the oil economy to persuade us we can burn more hydrocarbons in the long term that some would see as a 'bad thing' regardless of whether we can offset the carbon or not.

Agreed.  If (and it's a big if) CCS works why not use it to enable oil, coal or any other FF to be burnt (as long as other pollutants are controlled obviously).  Of course if you're ideologically opposed to CCS or oil companies then it's a terrible idea.    

Martyn1981

michaels said:

Martyn1981 said:

Last week's Carbon Commentary newsletter from Chris Goodall.

Things I noticed and thought were interesting

Week ending January 30th 2022
 
1, CO2 methanation. The French conglomerate Suez started construction of a waste water plant near the Spanish border. It includes two important innovations. First, the biogas coming from the plant (a mixture of CO2 and methane) will be converted entirely to methane. The methane can then be added to natural gas networks and combusted for heat. Because the CO2 resulting from this combustion is entirely of biological origin, there are no net additions of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere. Although methanation of waste water biogas has happened at other plants around the world, this is probably the first time the resulting gas been used commercially. The second advance is in the creation of biochar from intense heating of the sewage sludge. Biochar is near 100% carbon which will stay in soils for hundreds of years, often aiding fertility. This also saves greenhouse gas emissions. This new plant from Suez is a major advance because it will be closely integrated into the entire energy structure of the area, including supplying hydrogen, oxygen and heat. 
 
2, IKEA climate impact. I thought the company’s 2021 climate document was one of the best analyses I have seen. Specific, open and clear, and very little greenwash. Apparently honest as well, with some admissions of past errors in calculations. One of the most interesting statistics: just over half the emissions at IKEA come from the manufacturing of the goods they sell even though 73% of materials are either from renewable sources (principally wood) or are of recycled origin. In fact the glue used in making furniture (1.3 million tonnes) has twice the footprint of running all the stores around the world. The company plans to switch to biologically based adhesives to existing glues. The carbon cost of using its products at home fell sharply last year - even though sales rose substantially - principally because of an improvement in the efficiency of the LED lighting sold.
 
3, No coal transported by ship. Major shipping company Eastern Pacific said that it would no longer carry coal and had decided to make a formal policy announcement. ‘With a significant portion of our commercially managed fleet being in the dry bulk segment, we aim to play a small part in making one of the world’s worst pollutants … much harder to access’. The company said that its policy is ‘intended to be a message to the maritime industry that decarbonisation isn’t exclusive to how we move ships - what we move also matters’. It’ll be interesting to see if other shippers copy the policy.

4,  Vertical farming. Plenty, one of the pioneers of indoor vertical farming, raised $400m from a consortium including Walmart, the world’s largest retailer. Walmart said it will stock Plenty’s products in all its California stores. Plenty is expanding its product range away from salads to berries and vegetables such as tomatoes. Indoor agriculture is another industry where to push to improve environmental performance will eventually mean a relocation of a large fraction of the world’s production capacity away from places such as southern Spain and California to sites far closer to population centres.
 
5, Synthetic fuels. Ineratec of Germany has one of the most convincing approaches for making fuels from hydrogen and captured CO2. It operates the largest synthetic fuels pilot plant, making e-kerosene for aviation Its uses technology developed in partnership with South Africa’s Sasol, an expert in using the Fischer Tropsch process to combine hydrogen and CO2 to make fuels. It raised another $20m from investors including Engie to push forward with a new refinery near Frankfurt Airport that will make about 4,000 tonnes a year of fuel. A tiny amount in the context of world demand but an important step forward. The fact that the technology can be containerised and can react quickly to changes in power supply make Ineratec’s approach useful in a wide range of locations.
 
6, Green steel. Sweden’s SSAB, a pioneer in making steel from hydrogen, announced it would speed up its transition to being a near-zero carbon producer. Its total production of around 7m tonnes a year (about 0.4% of world production) will cease to be made in conventional coal-fired furnaces by around 2030. Previously it had targeted 2045. SSAB indicates its emissions will reduce by about 8 tonnes a year across all its operations. This is highly significant in the context of Sweden’s national GHGs of about 45m tonnes.  The company says it will have the capacity to produce 1.3m tonnes of low CO2 steel by 2026 and that it already has orders to fully cover this output. (Largely from car producers, I’d guess). It says it will make investments of around $5bn to get to zero carbon but SSAB thinks it will be able to cover this from its cash flow, rather than borrowing. Nucor, the largest US producer of steel, plans to build a new electric arc furnace in West Virginia, partly because of the availability of low carbon electricity. The local power company said ‘having renewable energy in the mix was a key factor in Nucor Corporation’s recent decision to locate its $2.7 billion steel mill in the state’.Steel is an industry which will move to areas of low cost renewables.

7, Basalt and DAC. The ability of basalt rock to absorb CO2 and turn into a carbonate may give us one of the easiest forms of permanent storage. The Climeworks direct air capture (DAC) plant in Iceland injects carbon dioxide into the basalt underneath the plant and achieves rapid carbonisation.  A US academic made an interesting proposal to use surplus energy generated in the future wind parks off the East Coast to run DAC machines on the turbines, or nearby, and then store the CO2 by chemical absorption in the basalt underneath wind farm locations. Estimates suggest that 500 gigatonnes of CO2 could be turn into carbonate rocks by wind farms off the US coastline from Massachusetts to Maryland. That’s over ten years of today’s global emissions. 
 
8, Hydrogen in Spain. Oil major Repsol announced the formation of consortium with 33 members to commercialise green hydrogen production and use. The group plans for 2 GW of electrolysis capacity by 2030, half of Spain’s national target at a budget of over $3bn. The press commentary of this announcement didn’t pick up that Repsol on its own has already publicly committed to investment of this scale in hydrogen. What is new is that the company seems to have realised that it needs to build extensive business ecosystems across the Spanish economy to use the hydrogen it intends to make. So the consortium includes vehicle manufacturers, the Spanish gas grid operator, a steel company and railway equipment maker. If a large fraction of the transport and manufacturing sectors get behind hydrogen in a consortium, the market will develop more quickly.
 
9, How much will it all cost? BNEF said the world spent about $755 bn on low carbon investment last year, strongly up on 2020. But McKinsey said it will take $9 trillion annually to get close to net zero by 2050, or about twelve times as much as the world is spending today. $9 trillion is about a tenth of world GDP. The transition isn’t going to be cheap.
 
10, Decarbonising cement. This is a very early stage idea but seems plausible. Italian oil company Eni said it was working with cement producer Holcim to help decarbonise cement production. The idea is that the common mineral olivine is finely ground up and then quickly absorbs carbon dioxide at ambient temperature and pressure. (Much like basalt does in note 7. But olivine does it more rapidly). This can permanently capture the CO2 that naturally results from the chemical breakdown of limestone in the cement production process. The olivine rock that has absorbed the CO2 is then added to the concrete that is made from the cement, permanently storing the carbon dioxide. Much remains to be investigated but this is an original and interesting idea.
 
11, Interconnectors. I wrote an article on the unusual decision by the UK government to reject a 2 GW electricity connector to France. The reason given was that the applicants hadn’t considered a particular alternative location for connecting to the UK grid. I looked at the history of the proposed alternative and found that site had already been blocked by the planning authorities when dealing with a request for a similar electrical connection. This is outside my usual area of work but I was shocked by the obvious failure in the government’s evaluation. (In the last few minutes a local group that strongly argued against the interconnector has written a response. I have included this letter in full below the article).  

Notes - Item 9 is the cost of action, not the net cost reflecting job creation, cost savings etc. See earlier post and article on this.

Item 11, I can't find the letter referenced.

What do people feel about solutions such as : 7, Basalt and DAC.

Sounds like a great idea - use wind spill for CCS however any solution that involves CCS is also surely an invitation for the oil economy to persuade us we can burn more hydrocarbons in the long term that some would see as a 'bad thing' regardless of whether we can offset the carbon or not.

I find these ideas very interesting, and of course we'll need to develop CCS to reduce the impact of the climate crisis. I'm not sure if holding temps to just a 1.5C rise is now possible, but a few years back when that was still hoped, it was based on reducing emissions of CO2 from FF's asap and ending them by 2050, resulting in a CO2 ppm level that would actually raise temps by 2C by 2100 as the temp rise lags behind the CO2 rise.

Then part 2 of the plan is that CCS would be used to reduce CO2 from the environment from 2050-2100 to prevent temps rising above that +1.5C level. Effectively a race of reducing CO2 ppm's whilst temps are rising. Or to be more correct, give us a 2/3rds chance to prevent runaway warming.

This planned CCS is just that, planned, with hopes that we can perfect techniques that are economical in time, such as these ideas. The scale of removal though is simply ginormous.

For the coal and gas industries the CCS dream seems to have completely failed now*, not only does the technology not work too well, but the additional cost of the technology, and the additional fuels needed to power it have proved an economic failure. [*TBF I don't think anyone believed it was possible, but 'selling' the idea to the public, such as 'clean coal' probably helped to delay faster action, and protect the industries for a few extra decades.]

But back to your question about the oil industry, whose emissions can't really be captured, yes it does raise the risk of yet more misinformation campaigns to undermine the need to move away from FF's as quickly as possible. And of course, the more FF CO2 that is released, the more that then needs to be captured again (to achieve that 1.5C target), making the already intimidating task 'we' face this century even harder. Given the scale of capture needed even with a swift end to FF use, many already think that the task of capturing enough via DAC is already impossible.  <sad face>