Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

michaels said:

I still don't understand how nuclear and renewables coexist in any coherent energy strategy.  THe maths just seems to not make sense.

Same here. Both need storage, and once you accept storage costs for nuclear, you immediately kill nuclear as an economic competitor due to its higher generation costs. I think nuclear keeps sneaking in by assuming it only supplies a small amount and is baseload, and is covering the first part of demand. That way all of the storage costs apply to the additional RE.

If you flip it around though and say that demand is first covered by any RE generation, and nuclear is on top of that, then storage largely applies to the nuclear ...... personally I think both are unfair (silly arguments), and storage simply applies to the whole, and is part of a comprehensive and reliable supply package.

Verdigris

Storage is definitely the key, whatever the input mix.

Imagine, if we hadn't had Eton "educated" buffoons in charge, almost forever, and to whom science an technology are a mystery, we could be embarking on a green industrial revolution, where we were leader in storage technology.

Martyn1981

Here's another green hydrogen story, where RE to green H2 will displace H2 from FF methane.

[I couldn't work out if the future plan of 15m tons of H2, and 200GW of RE was for this location or spread out, since it's a vast amount.]

World’s Largest Electrolyzer Plant Now Under Construction

Gladstone, Queensland, home to one of the fossil fuel industry’s largest export hubs, will soon become home to the world’s largest electrolyzer plant. Not only that, but Fortescue Future Industries will also manufacture wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, and cables there in a Green Energy Manufacturing Centre. This is all part of the green hydrogen update in Australia.

US-based Plug Power will partner with Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) to manufacture its technology in Australia. It is expected that the electrolyzers will be used at the nearby Gibson Island hydrogen facility. Gibson Island has been used to produce fertilizer from methane. It is in the process of being converted to use green hydrogen as a feedstock.

“The electrolyser facility will have an initial capacity of two gigawatts per annum — more than doubling current global production, and enough to produce more than 200,000 tonnes of green hydrogen each year,” FFI writes.

By 2030, FFI plans to create 15 million tons of green hydrogen a year. That would require more than 200 gigawatts (GW) of new wind and solar generation and a lot more electrolyzers and clean water. “FFI’s goal is to become the world’s leading, integrated, fully renewable energy and green products company, powering the Australian economy and creating jobs for Australians as the world transitions away from fossil fuels,” FFI writes.

shinytop

Some nuclear green energy news from the Guardian of all places.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/12/finland-opens-nuclear-power-plant-amid-concerns-of-europe-energy-war?fbclid=IwAR0MLj0rG6TaYi94xGvOOS9z8w3QhOp4Jbw79mFkxlDqdz4bciHUxdciOmI

TVO said in a statement: “OL3 significantly improves Finland’s electricity self-sufficiency and helps in achieving carbon neutrality goals.”

QrizB

shinytop said:

Some nuclear green energy news from the Guardian of all places.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/12/finland-opens-nuclear-power-plant-amid-concerns-of-europe-energy-war?fbclid=IwAR0MLj0rG6TaYi94xGvOOS9z8w3QhOp4Jbw79mFkxlDqdz4bciHUxdciOmI

TVO said in a statement: “OL3 significantly improves Finland’s electricity self-sufficiency and helps in achieving carbon neutrality goals.”

Good news.

I knew Olkiluoto 3 had achieved first criticality earlier this year, but wasn't expecting it online for a couple of months yet.

It isn't mentioned in the article but it is an EPR, the same general design as Taishan 1 & 2 (operational), Hinkley Point C and Flamanville 3 (both under construction).

michaels

shinytop said:

Some nuclear green energy news from the Guardian of all places.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/12/finland-opens-nuclear-power-plant-amid-concerns-of-europe-energy-war?fbclid=IwAR0MLj0rG6TaYi94xGvOOS9z8w3QhOp4Jbw79mFkxlDqdz4bciHUxdciOmI

TVO said in a statement: “OL3 significantly improves Finland’s electricity self-sufficiency and helps in achieving carbon neutrality goals.”

Wow - so soon - remind me again what the original planned start of production date was for this reactor?

michaels

Grid carbon intensity down to 37g per kwh last night

https://www.electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2022-03-13&&_k=c26io0

So the miles I drove today had a marginal co2 footprint of 10g per mile.

shinytop

michaels said:

Grid carbon intensity down to 37g per kwh last night

https://www.electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2022-03-13&&_k=c26io0

So the miles I drove today had a marginal co2 footprint of 10g per mile.

That's about the same as cycling. 

Martyn1981

michaels said:

Grid carbon intensity down to 37g per kwh last night

https://www.electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2022-03-13&&_k=c26io0

So the miles I drove today had a marginal co2 footprint of 10g per mile.

Wow, wind and solar (mostly wind) covered about 60% of demand for most of the day. And gas got squeezed really low. I can see why intraday storage schemes seem to be accelerating and making the news more and more. Certainly gonna be needing them on a regular basis soon.

Silly thought of the day, but looking at the last CfD offshore wind contracts, and the wind/PV caps in the recent auction, then new RE with intraday storage (assuming ~20% of generation needs to be stored) is probably about half the cost of HPC now, or pretty soon.

Martyn1981

Carbon Commentary newsletter. Please see the note at the end explaining that normal service will be reduced for a few weeks.

[I thought that item 3 and 100GW of storage in China by 2030 is extremely significant. I think I recall estimates that the UK will need about 20GW of storage for a very high RE penetration. But as per note 3 I don't think the amount of energy was specified.]

Things I noticed and thought were interesting

Week ending March 13th 2022
 
1 Hydrogen powered trains. The use of hydrogen may provide the most cost-effective way of decarbonising rail routes that are not electrified. In Japan, the first hydrogen train made by Hitachi and Toyota was put into trials. It has a maximum range of 140 km without refuelling. In the UK - a country with a large number of lines that are expensive to electrify - a plan was launched to develop a series of hydrogen refuelling points in rural areas to aid the transition to hydrogen on two long distance train routes in Scotland. Germany saw the announcement of the world’s first large-scale contract to operate a fleet of 27 hydrogen trains on routes into Frankfurt. 
 
2, Aviation fuel. Norsk e-Fuel was established to make synthetic fuel from hydrogen and CO2 from direct air capture. It will construct its first plant in northern Norway, where large quantities of surplus renewable electricity are available. By 2029, it wants its refineries to have the capacity to produce 100 million litres a year of aviation kerosene, enough to provide 50% of the fuel needed for the five most important internal flight links in Norway. Climeworks will supply the direct air capture plant necessary for collecting the CO2 for the fuel and the German company Sunfire is manufacturing the advanced electrolysers. Norsk e-Fuel has previously told me that it expects the price of its aviation kerosene to be around €1.50 a litre by 2029 and to eventually fall to about €1.00 in the lowest cost locations. Today’s fossil aviation fuel prices are currently about $1.00 a litre, or slightly less than the lower figure suggested by Norsk e-Fuel.
 
3. Electricity storage in China. State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), which operates about 80% of China’s high voltage electricity network aims to have 100GW of battery storage by 2030, up from 3GW today. (No figures were provided for the energy storage capacity). For comparison, he International Energy Agency said that the world had about 17 GW of non-vehicle batteries at the end of 2020. The IEA states a need for about 550 GW of global battery capacity by 2030 to be on track for net zero by 2050, so the SGCC plan would alone provide over 20% of the requirement. The company also plans to have 100 GW of pumped hydro storage by 2030, four times the current level in China. (Thanks to Ken Shin).
 
4, Wood cellulose clothing fibre. In Thailand Global leader Lenzing opened the world’s largest Tencel fibre factory, making clothing fibres from wood. Tencel can replace cotton and polyester in most applications and has a much smaller environmental footprint. The capacity of the new factory in Thailand is about 100,000 tonnes a year, or about 0.1% of global clothing demand. It required an investment of about €400m. This gives a sense of the scale of the capital that will be needed to lessen the world’s reliance on existing fibres.
 
5, Exytron factory. The young German company Exytron started construction of its first zero carbon combined heat and power plant in the northern part of the country. The technology is simple but its implementation is revolutionary and it has struggled to get a full scale project to completion. I wrote a description of some of the core elements almost five years ago. The most important feature is that it can use surplus local electricity, perhaps from wind farms, to store energy for later use, either in the form of electrons, liquid hydrocarbons or as heat. Exytron claims that its new plant will allow the village where it is sited to be completely independent of both electricity and gas grids. The €35m cost is partly met from EU funds but mostly from money provided by investors and commercial banks, suggesting immediate commercial viability. Particularly in times of high gas prices, Exytron claims it can provide green products that are fully competitive with fossil fuels. I believe that the company’s core technologies will be widely used around the world and I recommend serious investigation of its capacity to provide local energy autonomy.
 
6, Carbon removal. The Energy Transitions Commission (ETC) produced one of its well-researched reports on pulling down CO2 from the atmosphere using ‘natural climate solutions’ and other measures. It notes that under one reasonable scenario of keeping to a temperature rise of about 1.5 degrees the 500 gigatonne budget for emissions before 2050 will be exceeded by as much as 225 gigatonnes. The world will therefore require CO2 drawdown averaging about 8 gigatonnes a year, costing about 0.25% of global GDP. Up to 2030 most of the carbon removal is expected to come from better soil management and improved forestry. Biochar plays a role and direct air capture is also allotted a small place. However, the ETC is unreceptive to the possible importance (and low cost) of enhanced rock weathering, which some scientists say might provide as much as a further 2 gigatonnes of sequestration per year. Many of the projects funded by corporate sequestration backers such as Microsoft and Stripe use fast rock weathering so the ETC’s lack of interest is surprising.

7, Another move towards grid independence using hydrogen. A large farm in north eastern Scotland which carries out agricultural research will be using the electricity from a planned wind turbine and solar farm to provide heat from stored hydrogen and power to its small local community. It will also use the hydrogen as fuel for farm equipment and to make ammonia for fertilisation, and perhaps for outside sale. This project has little of the complexity and scale of the Exytron project in note 5. But it demonstrates that in renewables-rich locations, all energy needs can be met using electricity combined with hydrogen. Similar schemes will eventually be attractive in many locations at the edge of the electricity network, particularly if large scale energy export into the grid is impossible or expensive.
 
8, Synthetic methanol. Maersk is driving the development of green methanol. It announced that it had chosen six suppliers to provide the fuel it needs to run the 12 duel-fuel container ships due to be completed by 2025. Two Danish renewables companies, European Energy and Ørsted, will provide the bulk of the 600,000 tonnes a year required by that date. (Total global demand for shipping fuel is about 300 million tonnes). Both the suppliers say that their factories will be located in the Americas. Ørsted envisages using about 1.2 GW of wind and solar combined with a 675 MW electrolyser, double the world’s total electrolysis capacity in mid 2021. European Energy stresses that its decision to build the required capacity in the Americas is driven by the cheap renewable electricity available there. Many observers doubted - and perhaps still do - whether Maersk could obtain the methanol it needs before the new ships are launched. This announcement emphasises the company’s commitment to this fuel, rather than the alternative of ammonia. A senior executive said that ‘Green methanol is the only market-ready and scalable available solution today for shipping’.
 
9, Osmotic energy generation. French startup Sweetch told us it was entering a joint venture with a large renewable energy supplier to build a pilot plant to generate electricity from osmosis at points in the Rhône valley where fresh water meets salt-laden sea water. The possibility of osmotic electricity generation has been known about for decades and Statkraft in Norway has experimented with the technology. But Sweetch says that this is the first time that a commercial trial has been planned. The company calculates that the electricity generating capacity from osmosis in the Rhone Valley alone could be 4 TWh a year, or twice the consumption of the households in the city of Marseille.

Over the next few weeks I will be writing a second report for CLSA on the prospects for hydrogen. I hope to return to a weekly newsletter in late April and will only post articles intermittently until then. My apologies for the absence and many thanks for the continued stream of very useful suggestions, not all of which I have been polite enough to reply to.