Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Exiled_Tyke

The more innovative ideas we get the better chance of viable solutions coming through.  This is interesting (but I still prefer dropping concrete down disused mine shafts!)

  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60066690

Coastalwatch

It seems the truth will out, eventually!

Climate change: Satellites map huge methane plumes from oil and gas

Huge plumes of the warming gas methane have been mapped globally for the first time from oil and gas fields using satellites.

Plugging these leaks would be an important step in buying extra time to curb climate change.

The new research found plumes covering vast areas, sometimes stretching to 200 miles - the leaks are thought to be mostly unintended.

Last year, about 100 countries promised to cut methane emissions by 2030.

"We knew about individual gas blow-outs before, but this work shows the true methane footprint of oil and gas operations around the planet", explains Riley Duren, an author of the paper and CEO of Carbon Mapper which tracks methane emissions.

Image source, Thomas Lauvaux

Image caption,

Methane leaks have been systemically mapped from space

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60203683

Martyn1981

Hiya CW, thanks for that, it's such bad news, but I'm going to try to find a positive by suggesting how much bigger the gains are from action than may at first appear just from reducing final FF consumption. This means that you also get savings through the transport, the processing and extraction, and the impact of fugitive emissions too. A recent study found that over 40% of all sea freight (by weight) was fuel to be burned (oil, gas/LNG, coal and a bit of bio-mass).

I appreciate I'm trying to polish a trud here on this bad news, but at least the wins from moving away from FF's are greater than we may initially realise, especially given the low efficiency of burning 'stuff', so we only have to replace about 1/3rd of the total energy in the FF's.

Thought I'd mention how many 1,000's of old abandoned oil wells there are in the US leaking methane, but wanted to check that "1,000's" wasn't an exaggeration, turns out it is actually millions:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there are more than 3 million total abandoned oil and gas wells. About 2 million of those are estimated to be very old and never properly plugged. The agency believes such wells are responsible for most of the methane emitted from abandoned wells.

Recently I was chatting elsewhere about methane/CO2 emissions and thought these extracts might be interesting, and also why I tend to refer to CO2(e) emissions (e being equivalent):

Couple of quick extracts for you. EPA:

Methane is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. Over the last two centuries, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled, largely due to human-related activities.

EDF Energy:

Methane has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere. Even though CO2 has a longer-lasting effect, methane sets the pace for warming in the near term. At least 25% of today's warming is driven by methane from human actions.

In the US where so much of the gas comes from fracking, it appears that burning gas is actually worse than coal in terms of atmospheric warming when the relatively high fugitive emissions of methane are included. [But obviously coal burning emits more 'dirty' pollution.]

Coastalwatch

A bit controversal for some perhaps! But it would appear that with Shell announcing profits of circa £20b yesterday a windfall tax could have gone a long way to mitigating the increases further, instead of kicking the can down the road, as he put it. A vid of one minute is included in the link.

Energy prices: Government 'sided with oil and gas companies' - Ed Miliband

Labour's Ed Miliband has criticised the government's action on rising energy prices, accusing them of siding with oil and gas companies over families.

It comes as oil giant Shell announced a huge increase in profits, about four times the level recorded the previous year.

Average household energy bills are set to increase by £693, with the chancellor offering £350 of help to most households.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-60256965

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

Hiya CW, thanks for that, it's such bad news, but I'm going to try to find a positive by suggesting how much bigger the gains are from action than may at first appear just from reducing final FF consumption. This means that you also get savings through the transport, the processing and extraction, and the impact of fugitive emissions too. A recent study found that over 40% of all sea freight (by weight) was fuel to be burned (oil, gas/LNG, coal and a bit of bio-mass).

I appreciate I'm trying to polish a trud here on this bad news, but at least the wins from moving away from FF's are greater than we may initially realise, especially given the low efficiency of burning 'stuff', so we only have to replace about 1/3rd of the total energy in the FF's.

Thought I'd mention how many 1,000's of old abandoned oil wells there are in the US leaking methane, but wanted to check that "1,000's" wasn't an exaggeration, turns out it is actually millions:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there are more than 3 million total abandoned oil and gas wells. About 2 million of those are estimated to be very old and never properly plugged. The agency believes such wells are responsible for most of the methane emitted from abandoned wells.

Recently I was chatting elsewhere about methane/CO2 emissions and thought these extracts might be interesting, and also why I tend to refer to CO2(e) emissions (e being equivalent):

Couple of quick extracts for you. EPA:

Methane is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. Over the last two centuries, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled, largely due to human-related activities.

EDF Energy:

Methane has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere. Even though CO2 has a longer-lasting effect, methane sets the pace for warming in the near term. At least 25% of today's warming is driven by methane from human actions.

In the US where so much of the gas comes from fracking, it appears that burning gas is actually worse than coal in terms of atmospheric warming when the relatively high fugitive emissions of methane are included. [But obviously coal burning emits more 'dirty' pollution.]

Doesn't coal extraction also have more than its fare share of methane emissions?

Martyn1981

michaels said:

Martyn1981 said:

Hiya CW, thanks for that, it's such bad news, but I'm going to try to find a positive by suggesting how much bigger the gains are from action than may at first appear just from reducing final FF consumption. This means that you also get savings through the transport, the processing and extraction, and the impact of fugitive emissions too. A recent study found that over 40% of all sea freight (by weight) was fuel to be burned (oil, gas/LNG, coal and a bit of bio-mass).

I appreciate I'm trying to polish a trud here on this bad news, but at least the wins from moving away from FF's are greater than we may initially realise, especially given the low efficiency of burning 'stuff', so we only have to replace about 1/3rd of the total energy in the FF's.

Thought I'd mention how many 1,000's of old abandoned oil wells there are in the US leaking methane, but wanted to check that "1,000's" wasn't an exaggeration, turns out it is actually millions:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there are more than 3 million total abandoned oil and gas wells. About 2 million of those are estimated to be very old and never properly plugged. The agency believes such wells are responsible for most of the methane emitted from abandoned wells.

Recently I was chatting elsewhere about methane/CO2 emissions and thought these extracts might be interesting, and also why I tend to refer to CO2(e) emissions (e being equivalent):

Couple of quick extracts for you. EPA:

Methane is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. Over the last two centuries, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled, largely due to human-related activities.

EDF Energy:

Methane has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere. Even though CO2 has a longer-lasting effect, methane sets the pace for warming in the near term. At least 25% of today's warming is driven by methane from human actions.

In the US where so much of the gas comes from fracking, it appears that burning gas is actually worse than coal in terms of atmospheric warming when the relatively high fugitive emissions of methane are included. [But obviously coal burning emits more 'dirty' pollution.]

Doesn't coal extraction also have more than its fare share of methane emissions?

Yep, and mentioned in the article CW posted, so goes to show how bad the fugitive emissions from fracking are.

Coastalwatch

It would seem Holland are well on the way to giving up on gas, domestically at least. Not sure how the UK might compare?

Around 90% of newly built homes erected last year in the Netherlands are gas-free

Netbeheer Nederland, the Dutch association of national and regional power network operators, has revealed that approximately 90.1% of new buildings erected last year are not connected to the gas network in the service areas of grid operators Liander, Enexis Netbeheer and Stedin.

A year earlier, this percentage had reached around 87%. “The number of applications to disconnect existing homes from natural gas is also increasing,” the organization said. “For example, households are switching to all-electric as a sustainable alternative.”

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/02/04/around-90-of-newly-built-homes-erected-last-year-in-the-netherlands-are-gas-free/

Martyn1981

Something we've talked about recently, and QrizB raised some months ago. Also incredible to think how ten years ago some folk argued against RE because it would increase our bills, and now it's seen as a way to permanently lower bills ..... unless I suppose the price of wind and sunshine goes up!

Cutting green levies on energy bills is false economy, say analysts

Cutting green levies on energy bills, or watering down the UK’s commitment to net-zero carbon emissions, would fail to help households with high energy prices and store up problems for the near future, analysts have warned.

Ed Matthew, campaigns director at the E3G thinktank, said: “Cutting green levies to tackle the energy bills crisis would be utterly self-defeating. It would only keep the UK addicted to gas for longer. The only cure is to ramp up clean energy investment and eliminate energy waste. That is the permanent solution to bring down energy bills. Any politician working against that is directly undermining the interests of their constituents and likely to be in the pocket of the fossil fuel lobby.”

Wind and solar paid back £160m in the final quarter of 2021 because they receive an agreed price, called a strike price, for their energy. When the wholesale price is higher than the strike price, generators pay back the difference, and this is reflected in lower bills for consumers in subsequent quarterly periods.

He added: “The escape route from volatile and uncontrollable gas prices couldn’t be clearer. Investing in our green future secures low-cost reliable power as well as getting the UK to net zero as fast as possible.”

Producing more gas in the North Sea, which some have also called for, would do little or nothing to reduce energy prices in the UK, because any additional gas would be sold on international markets to the highest bidder, analysts added.

Martyn1981

I watched this vid yesterday and thought it was an interesting, pleasant and quick look into the idea of transporting hydrogen long distances. In this case it's from Australia to Japan.

Rosie explains that despite this being H2 production from brown coal, so every part of the process is energy intensive and dirty, she's interested in it as it will hopefully shed light on the real issues and economics of shipping H2. It may show that it's viable, and we can then look at cleaner RE methods of production, or it might show that the whole idea is unviable and not worth pursuing further.

This vid doesn't give answers so to speak, but sets out what is involved.

And just a thought/ponder from me, but Japan may need to import H2 as they don't have the potential to generate enough RE leccy on the Islands, and their steep shelving coastline is not suitable for a large amount of conventional offshore wind ...... but, it seems that the economics of floating offshore wind are starting to improve, so perhaps that might be a solution for them?

World's Dirtiest Clean Energy Project (and Why I'm a Fan)

Martyn1981

This week's Carbon Commentary newsletter from Chris Goodall.

Not wishing to play favourites, but the size of the numbers in item 3 did stand out for me. Also item 5 adds 'gold' to the colour spectrum of hydrogen sources, that's a new one on me.

Things I noticed and thought were interesting

Week ending 6th February 2022

1, Lithium. Two encouraging developments in the last few weeks. A group of researchers in France successfully extracted ‘kilos’ of lithium carbonate – the key source of lithium for batteries from the water passing through a deep geothermal power plant in the Rhine valley. Whether the process is financially viable remains to be calculated. In the US, a study run by a Boston company showed that lithium ion batteries could be fully recycled, and that the resulting product would be of higher quality and more durable than the original battery material. (Thanks to Thad Curtz). 

2, Vehicle-to-grid. The arguments for using vehicle batteries to provide grid stabilisation services are overwhelming strong. Last year, worldwide EV sales totalled over 6 million units. The average car had battery capacity of perhaps 40 kWh. So 2021 saw an addition of around 240 GWh inside new electric vehicles. BNEF reports that the total world static battery storage capacity in 2020 was just 34 GWh. We need large numbers of cars attached to the grid ready to provide or take electricity when needed. Car manufacturers have been slow to exploit the opportunity but this might be changing. Only the Nissan Leaf and a small number of other cars have offered two way flow of electricity (or Vehicle to Grid, V2G as it is usually known). The highly anticipated Ford Lightning, which will arrive with customers in May, will allow the truck to provide power to a house at times of blackout or when the price of electricity is high. As the stresses on grids around the world increase over the next years, I suspect this will be a highly valued feature. Chinese manufacturer BYD has just introduced a school bus to the US market that can return power to the grid when needed or financially advantageous. In the UK, a recent 300 home study showed an average annual return of around £420/$560 to EV owners from making their vehicle available to return electricity to the grid when needed.
 
3, India hydrogen. Reliance Industries, India’s largest company and a business focused on fossil fuels, has announced several steps towards carbon-neutrality in the last year. It will invest about $75bn to build at least 100 GW of solar power and has put large sums behind electrolysers and solar panel manufacturing. It recently bought the UK sodium ion battery supplier Faradion. Even for Reliance, these investment costs are large. For comparison, it made a profit of about $8bn in 2020/21. The latest speculation is that much of the electricity output from its renewables business will be devoted to making hydrogen on site because the company does not want to have to transport electricity over India’s distribution networks. Largely unnoticed in the West, Reliance’s pivot away from coal and oil and towards solar and hydrogen, and aiming for net zero in 2035, may be one of the most ambitious transition plans in the world.
 
4, Wärtsilä. The Finnish engine maker scored two important successes. It announced an order for its first ship engines designed to run on green methanol from a Dutch business that installs offshore wind turbines. And one of its electricity generation customers in the US said that it would use a 25% hydrogen mix in a power station in Michigan.
 
 5, 'Gold' hydrogen. It is often said that pure hydrogen doesn’t exist naturally on earth because it would rapidly escape to the upper atmosphere and beyond. This conclusion seems to be inaccurate. Hydrogen is generated by some chemical reactions deep underground and could be mined, possibly at lower cost than making it using electrolysis. One academic paper concluded that hydrogen might be naturally flowing from geologic sources in volumes exceeding 25 million tonnes a year, or a third of the globe’s current use. An article (paywall) said that almost a third of the state of South Australia has now been licenced for exploration for natural hydrogen and there are now many other mining projects for so-called gold hydrogen around the world.
 
6, Storage using gravity. Building an energy storage facility that raises weights to use electricity and then lowers them to generate power looks a highly uneconomic proposition. Allowing 10 tonnes to fall by 36 metres will produce about 1 kWh of electricity if operated with 100% efficiency. Do this a thousand times a year and a maximum of 1 MWh is stored and then regenerated, perhaps worth about $50. Nevertheless the Swiss/US company EnergyVault has successfully raised another $50m and will go public via a SPAC that is said to value it at $1.1bn. It also announced a major project in China –  its first commercial development - with a proposed storage capacity of 100 MWh, or ten million tonnes of weight raised 36 metres. If I have got my numbers correct, that might produce a gross annual revenue of about $5m. My instinct that all that revenue will be absorbed in maintenance costs.
 
7, Heavy trucks and hydrogen. A scientist at the respected German research institute Fraunhofer published a paper suggesting a very limited demand for hydrogen fuel cell heavy vehicles. The only exception to its conclusion might be very large trucks in remote locations with poor electricity availability. The writer concludes that the next generation of battery heavy trucks, which may be able to accept a charging rate of 800 kW, would be able to take on enough electricity within 45 minutes to drive 400 km. 45 minutes is the mandated rest period of EU commercial drivers after 4.5 hours of driving. The researcher says that very fast recharging rates leave no clear space in which hydrogen will be the cheaper or more efficient alternative. This is a major change from a Fraunhofer paper of less than 18 months ago which argued that Germany needed to install about 140 hydrogen stations to meet a need for about 1.3 million tonnes of the gas for a quarter of a million heavy freight vehicles. Some European companies don’t agree with Fraunhofer’s latest conclusion. Polish refiner PKN Orlen just announced an investment of $1.85 bn to build 100 refuelling stations in central Europe as well as the capacity to make 60,000 tonnes of hydrogen.

8, Organic regenerative cotton. Gallant, a Los Angeles cotton company, partnered with Chetna Organic, an Indian farmer cooperative with 700 members, to offer cotton made using ‘regenerative agriculture’ principals. This form of farming tries to improve soil quality (and carbon storage) by such techniques as minimising ploughing, keeping the surface constantly covered and putting other crops between rows of the principal product. Industry body Textile Exchange said last week ‘A transition to regenerative agriculture is fundamental for the fashion and textile industry’ but admitted that it ‘can’t be defined in a single statement or set of practices’. Expect food and clothing brands to start initiatives this year to associate their products with improved agricultural practices and resulting increases in soil carbon as well as trying to define exactly what 'regenerative agriculture' means.
 
9, No more working with fossil fuels. Danish engineering consultancy COWI, a business with more than 6,000 employees, said it would cease to accept work on projects involving fossil fuels. The company said that about 5% of its 2021 revenue came from the sectors it will no longer provide services to. The press release wrote ‘As the first among peers, COWI promises to have 100 per cent of its revenue from projects driving sustainability within three to five years'. It added ‘We will still work with energy majors on their green transition, but not on projects exploring or producing fossil fuels’.
 
10, Green steel. The world’s 2nd largest steel producer succeeded in getting another government to partly pay for the conversion to direct reduction using hydrogen. ArcelorMittal said it would spend €1.7bn to convert 3 out of 5 of its blast furnaces in France to low carbon alternatives by 2030 with the help of the national government. This will cut France’s emissions from industrial sources by 10%, or about 8 million tonnes.  This investment follows ArcelorMittal’s mid-2021 commitment to converting much of its Spanish operation to hydrogen by 2025, partly funded by the government. Spain and France represent almost 20% of the company’s total steel output.