Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

This week's Carbon Commentary newsletter from Chris Goodall.

No.6 is certainly interesting, if you can't beat them, buy them!

Things I noticed and thought were interesting

Week ending 27th February 2022
 
1, India push for hydrogen. The government introduced plans for significant support for green hydrogen manufacture in India, including cheap electricity transmission for manufacturers establishing electrolysis operations. One source estimated that this might reduce overall costs by up to 50%, although green hydrogen would still be more expensive than the grey version. The largest Indian oil company said it would introduce electrolysers at two large refineries, but this will only meet 10% of its overall hydrogen requirements by 2030. However the Indian government is also expected to mandate that major sectors such as oil refining and steel production use a minimum percentage of hydrogen made using electrolysis. The initial mandate is expected to be 15-20%, enough to give the local industry a huge boost. Green hydrogen will be further enhanced if the government, as expected, subsidises the creation of an Indian electrolyser manufacturing industry. (Thanks to Tony Cooke)

2, Chemical recycling of plastics. Mechanical recycling results in the loss of product quality of plastics. Chemical recycling of polymers back into pure and indefinitely reusable monomers is technically challenging, and can involve high energy use, but will eventually become the standard means of reusing plastics. French company Carbios uses a proprietary enzyme to take PET back to its constituent monomers. It announced the first industrial-scale factory at the site of plastics recycler Indorama Ventures in the east of France. The new plant will cost a total of about €200m, partly funded by the French state, and will process about 50,000 tonnes a year. (World production capacity of PET plastics is about 35 million tonnes). This investment confirms France’s aim to become the leader in chemical recycling of plastics.

3, New energies in Portugal. Oil company Galp said in June 2021 it would put in 100 MW of electrolysis capacity at its Sines oil refinery. This week it doubled the proposed size of the installation. It has also recently announced a plan to start lithium production for the Northvolt battery consortium and promised to install a total of 10,000 EV chargers in the Iberian peninsula by 2025. It targets 12 GW of renewables by 2030. In relation to the size of the company, these numbers dwarf the plans of the largest international oil companies. Portugal also saw a new consortium of large companies established around the country’s main industrial centre. The partnership seeks to cut 11% from the country’s industrial CO2 emissions using green hydrogen. The businesses involved, including glass, ceramics and cement companies will invest an initial €100m to build Nazaré Green Hydrogen Valley. As with almost all projects of this sort, there is no intention to use ‘blue’ hydrogen at any stage. The consortium will go directly for electrolysis. (Thanks to Afonso Vieira).
 
4, Scope 3 greenhouse gases. Drug companies are increasingly obliging their suppliers to move to net zero. The reason is that greenhouse gas emissions in the supply chain and in the use of the products (‘Scope 3’) dwarf the CO2 arising from the operations of the company itself. Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca reported this week that its Scope 3 emissions are 20 times those of the company itself and have risen 15% since 2019. In contrast its own Scope 1 and 2 emissions are sharply down. One of the main reasons for high Scope 3 emissions is that its inhalers, used to treat asthma and some lung conditions, use HFCs, a propellant with very high global warming impact. These inhalers might add about 10% to the average UK patient’s total carbon footprint. AstraZeneca is now replacing the HFCs with a propellant of near zero climate impact. It’s about time; a UK regulatory agency has been pushing for lower greenhouse gas emissions for asthma treatment for years, pointing out that 70% of British patients used inhalers with HFC propellants compared to just 10% in Sweden. Medical impacts are usually indistinguishable.
 
5, Regenerative agriculture. Beer maker Guinness said it was working with 40 farmers on the island of Ireland to begin regenerative agriculture in their barley fields. Barley is the principal ingredient in Guinness’ products. The core idea is to plant crops after the barley harvest that will survive the winter. This improves soil health, retains nutrients and minimises carbon loss. Numbers were scarce but one Guiness barley farmer said this form of agriculture helped capture 2 tonnes of CO2 per hectare on his farm last year. Pulling together numbers, I estimate that the regenerative approach might potentially offset about one sixth of Guinness’ total emissions in Ireland (including Scope 3). 
 
6, Buying a utility to speed up its decarbonisation. Software billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes made a bid to buy AGL, a large Australian utility with lethargic plans to move away from using coal. The large Canadian fund manager Brookfield joined him. Cannon-Brookes hopes to speed up AGL’s transition to low carbon sources of electricity. He criticised the alternative approach advocated by the company of splitting itself into green and grey divisions, stating that it would not result in sufficient capital being available to the renewables business. Cannon-Brookes told the website RenewEconomy that his approach will reduce the cost of capital and give the financial certainty for a very rapid expansion of Australian solar and wind, while allowing the closure of coal power stations by 2030. His co-investor Brookfield has already bought large portions of the Australian electricity distribution system, saying that its ownership will speed decarbonisation. Will other big investors follow by buying up fossil fuel companies and accelerating their decarbonisation?
 
7, Plant-based foods. The US food manufacturer Kraft Heinz set up a joint venture with a startup that makes plant-based food. It wants to accelerate its switch away from the use of meat in prepared foods. The startup - TheNotCompany or ‘NotCo’  - uses an AI programme that learns how plants can be cooked or prepared to resemble conventional meat-based products. NotCo can use many of the hundreds of thousands of edible plants rather than few hundreds that are now utilised in diets around the world. The company seems to focus on Latin America and says it is the fastest growing food tech company in the region. Kraft Heinz comments that ‘While interest for (sic) plant-based foods is surging, barriers in taste, variety, and availability remain….NotCo has made significant progress in addressing these consumer needs, developing plant-based replacements for animal products with simpler ingredients that don’t sacrifice taste, functionality, or consumption experience’. But one question must be worrying Kraft Heinz: do consumers actually want plant products to resemble meats? After bursts of interest, sales of non-meat alternatives have stalled, falling slightly last year in some markets. Perhaps consumers want plant foods to taste like plants?
 
8, Heat pumps and biomass stoves. We are seeing rapid increases in the rates of heat pump installation across Europe. For example, 2021 sales in France grew by 52% to 267,000, or almost one per cent of French homes. Poland saw growth of 66% to about 92,000, a slightly lower percentage of households. In France most installations were air-to-water pumps and ground source equivalents have lost market share. As in other European countries, French sales of biomass stoves, typically fuelled by wood pellets, are also rising sharply, but from a lower base. 34,000 were installed, up over 100% compared to 2020. This rise in biomass stoves is certain to raise concerns about the long-term sustainability of the European supply of wood pellets. 2021 French installations will use approximately 4% of total softwood production in the country.
 
9, Geothermal energy from oil wells. Two plans in the US to use stored heat energy from below the earth’s surface to make electricity. In California, the heat will initially come from inexpensive CSP (concentrating solar power) and then piped to below the surface near oil wells. As the oil is pumped out, the heat returns to the surface and can drive turbines. The idea is that this will make CSP able to deliver dispatchable, or guaranteed, power availability for months on end. In Texas, heat from the water coming to the surface in an oil well will be used to make electricity using a British developed technology. Unfortunately, it will be employed for cryptocurrency mining because of the lack of connection to the grid. Of course it could eventually be used to make hydrogen instead. (Thanks to Andrew Wainwright). 
 
10, Solar plus hydrogen. A 50 MW solar field in Barbados will be combined with 128 MWh of battery and hydrogen storage to offer reliable daily power. When required the hydrogen will be fed into a fuel cell to make electricity. This scheme is planned by Hydrogène de France (HDF), the developer of the French Guiana solar-to-hydrogen-to-electricity plant referred to in a recent newsletter.   

markin

2nd_time_buyer said:

It is really interesting to see such a strong day for wind and solar today. Most be close to a record for winter renewable generation?

 It will be interesting to see how much energy has been diverted to pumped storage and hydro to be released this evening. Also interesting to see that biomass is currently low, suggesting that there is some capacity for supply to respond to demand.

Perhaps a sign of the future for UK power generation.

24th had 3gw higher wind that more than makes up for the solar being around 1.5gw lower, but by percentage Sat and Sunday are higher because demand is around 7GW lower.

markin

Just spotted it was Negative pricing at some time around 13:30   £-60 at its lowest.

EDIT: looking at the same day last year it did the same, so that's not a  new thing.

EricMears

paul991 said:

yes  a good  day for  renewable s personally generating best  ever for  feb, but we are still importing 10%of our load and generating 1% from coal on  a sunday

Without that 1% (which might even have been rounded up from an even lower figure) the coal plant(s) would probably have had to be completely shut down and hence not able to react to a sudden increase in demand if tomorrow turns out to be a day with little sun or wind.

Verdigris

EricMears said:

paul991 said:

yes  a good  day for  renewable s personally generating best  ever for  feb, but we are still importing 10%of our load and generating 1% from coal on  a sunday

Without that 1% (which might even have been rounded up from an even lower figure) the coal plant(s) would probably have had to be completely shut down and hence not able to react to a sudden increase in demand if tomorrow turns out to be a day with little sun or wind.

I suspect that 1% is the mixed coal and woodchip generator at Drax. It wasn't worth the firelighter to get it going again on Monday.

2nd_time_buyer

I wonder if some of the residual gas generation might have been from local combined heat and power (CHP) plants, that similarly might be tricky to switch off.

Verdigris

2nd_time_buyer said:

I wonder if some of the residual gas generation might have been from local combined heat and power (CHP) plants, that similarly might be tricky to switch off.

Good point. We have a number of new towns and developments around where I live that are CHP. They could, presumably, go over to mains power in the summer, when heating isn't required, but not in February.

That leads me to wonder if it is a particularly efficient use of gas. Most of the heat must go to waste, in the summer. At least with centralised gas generation you could use the waste heat liberate the stored energy from a liquified air storage scheme, for instance, to mix stored renewable energy in to the output, thus reducing the carbon footprint.

michaels

Verdigris said:

2nd_time_buyer said:

I wonder if some of the residual gas generation might have been from local combined heat and power (CHP) plants, that similarly might be tricky to switch off.

Good point. We have a number of new towns and developments around where I live that are CHP. They could, presumably, go over to mains power in the summer, when heating isn't required, but not in February.

That leads me to wonder if it is a particularly efficient use of gas. Most of the heat must go to waste, in the summer. At least with centralised gas generation you could use the waste heat liberate the stored energy from a liquified air storage scheme, for instance, to mix stored renewable energy in to the output, thus reducing the carbon footprint.

I was looking at a domestic CHP boiler from viessman but unfortunately in the UK it was never eligible for any of the green grants.  As mentioned, in winter running prolonged low energy burns (as our current boiler already does with weather comp flow temperature control) maximises electricity output and in the summer we would just have needed to get a swimming pool....

Martyn1981

Germany is accelerating their shift to 100% RE, possibly 2035 instead of 2050. Hopefully the shift away from FF's will accelerate across Europe/World now as we appreciate even more benefits of shifting to RE fast, including energy independence.

Government wants 100 percent green electricity by 2035

The traffic light coalition is pushing the pace when it comes to expanding renewable energies. "With many measures, we will achieve a 100 percent power supply with renewable energies as early as 2035," wrote Oliver Krischer, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate on Sunday evening on Twitter. "This not only benefits climate protection, but also makes us independent of Putin's gas, oil and coal."

Martyn1981

Not fun reading today, we have the unfolding humanitarian disaster in Ukraine, and also the latest info from the IPCC letting us know how badly we've done so far managing the climate crisis.

Perhaps Mr Putin's actions will help to minimise coverage of this report, a fossil fueled vicious circle. Ironically, his actions could accelerate a shift to RE, heatpumps, BEV's, demand side PV etc etc .......... yep, Mart looking for something positive as always.   

Climate change: IPCC report warns of ‘irreversible’ impacts of global warming

Many of the impacts of global warming are now simply "irreversible" according to the UN's latest assessment.

But the authors of a new report say that there is still a brief window of time to avoid the very worst.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that humans and nature are being pushed beyond their abilities to adapt.

Over 40% of the world's population are "highly vulnerable" to climate, the sombre study finds.

But there's hope that if the rise in temperatures is kept below 1.5C, it would reduce projected losses.