Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Coastalwatch

I remember when this gravity storage system was first announced and thought it a rather complex solution and being little more than the result of an exercise set before a group of students. To show just how wrong I was it appears to have won sufficient financial backing to be turned into reality. I wonder what tha max windspeed will be for it to continue functioning when called upon to recharge!

Energy Vault to deploy 2 GWh of gravity storage in China

Energy Vault’s storage solution lifts 35 tons of composite bricks to store kinetic energy, then lowers them to convert this kinetic energy into electricity.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/09/16/energy-vault-to-deploy-2-gwh-of-gravity-storage-in-china/

Coastalwatch

Europe is announcing incentives for rooftop solar while Spain with 17.1 GW of Solar already generating is heading for the 20 GW milestone. Thankfully, after years of being excluded from CFD contracts the latest round sees solar in the UK being granted licences for 2.2 GW's. I'm unsure what total this will bring us to but in 2019 we were third placed in Europe with 13,259 MW.

Germany introduces tax breaks for rooftop PV

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/09/16/germany-introduces-tax-breaks-for-rooftop-pv/

French government announces new measures to support solar self-

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/09/16/french-government-announces-new-measures-to-support-solar-self-consumption/

Spain set to hit 20 GW milestone

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/09/15/spain-set-to-hit-20-gw-milestone/

Martyn1981

Carbon Commentary Newsletter from Chris Goodall:

Industry news

Things I noticed and thought were interesting

Week ending September 18th 2022
 
1, Agrivoltaics. The expansion of solar decreases the space available to agriculture, say the sceptics, including Britain’s new prime minister. In dry, sunny countries, the opposite is probably true. New research shows that growing certain crops under raised solar panels can increase yields and substantially cut water use. Electricity production is also slightly improved because the growing plants help reduce temperatures under the panels. Integrating solar and agriculture may have multiple benefits. 
 
2, Green ammonia. Denmark’s Topsoe said it had gained an order from US start-up First Ammonia for an initial 500 MW of electrolysers. Topsoe will make solid oxide electrolysers (SOEC) and this order is boost for this technology against PEM and alkaline competitors. SOEC needs high temperatures to deliver its maximum efficiencies. The Haber Bosch process to make ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen produces large amounts of surplus heat, meaning it is well suited to this technology. The boost to SOEC is one important aspect of this deal. But as important is the intention of First Ammonia to develop new production plants in Germany and the US. This is the first example that I know of an ammonia start-up using green hydrogen to compete with existing players such as Yara or CF. The third striking feature of the Topsoe/First Ammonia deal is that the parties indicate a wish to expand to 5 GW, which would be amongst the largest single electrolyser orders. Lastly, First Ammonia says it will structure operations to use electricity to make H2 at times of the day when prices are lowest. This is another example of how hydrogen will help flatten the intra-day variations in wholesale electricity costs.
 
3, Making foods using solar. One of the important transitions over the next few decades may be a move to industrial manufacture of foods and food ingredients using microbes. The Finnish company Solar Foods uses microorganisms to make proteins. But proteins aren’t enough. Now researchers at Harvard - including Daniel Nocera, who originated the idea of the ‘artificial leaf’ - have produced an important vitamin using renewable energies. The paper explaining their results says that the work ‘demonstrate(s) that microorganisms can make complex products relevant to food and nutrition using simple gases from air and those provided by solar energy conversion reactions, thus providing a path for sustainable and energy-efficient production methods’. This research is probably a long way from being commercially useful but shows how sunshine combined with the right materials can probably produce all the nutritionally important food ingredients.

4, Hydrogen in Malaysia for steelmaking. Korea and Japan will need to import large quantities of clean energy. Many countries in Asia and Australasia could provide the hydrogen or electricity that they will require. The general assumption is that Australia will provide the cheapest source of hydrogen. But this week steel and energy company Posco in Korea said it would attempt to develop a hydrogen hub in Malaysia with local partners with an output of 200,000 tonnes a year. Posco has developed several such relationships as the world’s fourth largest steel producer seeks to find the hydrogen it will need to decarbonise. It wants to locate sources for 7m tonnes a year by 2050. Separately, analysts Wood Mackenzie wrote that the world’s steel industry would need 50 million tonnes a year of hydrogen for its mid-century needs. (I think this is at least 50% too low). It estimates the total cost of the steel industry transition at around $1.4 trillion, or around one and a half per cent of world annual GDP. This includes finding and exploiting new sources of the higher grade iron ore that hydrogen steelmaking requires.
 
5, Costs of the energy transition. A group at Oxford University calculated the savings from a fast transition to zero carbon. They assume that the cost reduction for key technologies such as solar and batteries continue at the same rate as seen over the last half century. (As the total quantity ever produced of a specific product, such as electrolysers, doubles, the cost falls by a roughly constant percentage). Many are sceptical about whether these ‘learning curve’ cost reductions will continue indefinitely but in my view it is the most reasonable assumption to make. The researchers show that a faster transition will be cheaper than a slow one. This is intuitively understandable; the more rapidly the world expands production of the key products, the faster the cost falls. Their paper estimates that a fast move to zero carbon – with carbon neutrality by 2050 - will save about $12 trillion in energy costs compared to no transition and about $7 trillion versus a slow transition. This is complex analysis, and many will disagree with it, but it is strikingly well-argued.
 
6, Green versus blue hydrogen. Most of the world, including some countries with abundant natural gas, seem to have decided to focus on green hydrogen, usually relying on the low cost of solar electricity to undercut the blue variant. The United Kingdom and Norway seem to be exceptions. A research report suggested that published projects in the UK for blue hydrogen now exceed 13 gigawatts, more than the government’s 2030 target. This compares to only 2 gigawatts of green capacity. The green hydrogen schemes are individually much smaller, say the analysts, with an average size of around 100 megawatts, less than a tenth of the blue schemes. Compare this with the scale of the Topsoe ammonia project in note 2 above. Unless the price of natural gas comes down to levels of 2019 or lower, the blue hydrogen projects are going to look very expensive in a few years time. 
 
7, Heavy trucks. Volvo Trucks has started production of a wide range of heavy vehicles, including trucks of 44 tonnes loaded weight. It wants its output to be 50% electric by 2030. Tevva, another electric truck manufacturer said sales of its 7.5 tonne truck had commenced while Volta indicated its 16 tonne vehicle will start production next year with an existing order book of 6,500 vehicles
 
8, Compressed hydrogen versus ammonia for transport over long distances. Most of the industry seems to assume that hydrogen will be transported by ship in the form of ammonia. A part-subsidiary of Total Energies said it was working with Provaris, an Australian company to develop ships carrying compressed hydrogen. Provaris’ investor presentation provides very useful comparison of the costs of both compressed and liquid hydrogen versus ammonia.
 
9, Vertical farms. As with so many parts of the low carbon economy, vertical farming frequently sees new projects saying they are the biggest ever. This week Plenty, one of the best-established businesses, announced the ‘largest vertical farm campus in the world’ on a 120 acre/50 hectare site in Virginia. We’re promised about 8,000 tonnes a year of leafy greens, strawberries and tomatoes from Plenty’s vertical columns, yielding 350 times as much as production per hectare as a conventional farm. The company says that this will be the first large scale use of vertical farming to grow strawberries anywhere in the world. (Some will disagree with this statement). But questions remain. Is it really cost-effective to grow fruits and vegetables indoors, particularly when the electricity for the LED lighting costs so much? What percentage of the world’s calories can be economically grown indoors? I guess the figure today is less than 1%. But on a more optimistic note, one company now grows hops in an indoor vertical farm and proudly boasts that the world’s first beer using its products is now on sale.
 
10, Power-to-liquids. Interatec, a company spun out of Karlsruhe university and an early pioneer of the manufacture of synthetic fuels, said that a commercial demonstration site in Hamburg is now producing liquid fuels and waxes for its customers H&R, a specialty chemicals company and energy company Mabanaft. Volumes are small - only 200 tonnes a year of synthetic fuels and 150 tonnes of waxes – but this is one of the world’s first power-to-liquids plants.

11, Wood buildings. Researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) estimated the emissions that can be avoided if wood replaces concrete in new residential buildings. PIK says that the total impact of switching to building 4 to 10 storey units using wood could be as much as 100 billion tonnes by 2100, or 10% of the remaining carbon budget for a 2 degree temperature rise. Coincidentally, the researchers suggest that about 10% of the world’s CO2 emissions in 2020 arose from the use of steel and concrete in new buildings. Advances in strengthening wood for use in construction make the target of switching away from conventional techniques very possible for mid-size buildings. The key question is whether the amount of wood required could be produced without either reducing biodiversity or reducing the land available for food production. PIK says the area of new timber production required is about 1.2% of the world’s land area. This seems an attainable target but the researchers stress the risk to biodiversity, particularly if the timber is produced in large plantations of single species.  

2nd_time_buyer

An interesting Tweet about whether Rees Mogg's promotion of fracking is a distraction from a relaxation of planning for onshore wind:

https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1573281767678943237/photo/1

QrizB

2nd_time_buyer said:

An interesting Tweet about whether Rees Mogg's promotion of fracking is a distraction from a relaxation of planning for onshore wind:

https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1573281767678943237/photo/1

One from Ripple on the same topic:

https://twitter.com/RippleEnergy/status/1573257506532499458

Martyn1981

Can I join in too:

Kwasi Kwarteng poised to ease planning rules for onshore windfarms

Kwasi Kwarteng looks likely to lift a de facto ban on new onshore windfarms after the UK government said it would bring planning consent into line with that for other infrastructure.

It has been very difficult for onshore windfarms to get planning permission since David Cameron put in place a tough consent regime in 2015. Earlier this year, Kwarteng pushed for the restrictions to be lifted but he encountered cabinet opposition.

Sam Hall, the director of the Conservative Environment Network, said: ‘We warmly welcome changes to speed up planning for offshore windfarms, to lift the ban on English onshore windfarms, and to fund legacy renewables costs out of general taxation. Renewables and insulation will not only permanently lower bills and accelerate progress towards net zero, but strengthen our energy security and protect the UK from Vladimir Putin’s weaponisation of Russian gas reserves.”

Coastalwatch

This eye catching headline lifted my spirits following a week of depressing news otherwise. However, on reading further it wouldn't appear to offer a new stream lined process but merely shuffling the lengthening queues around by allowing those schemes ready for connection to gain priority over others ahead of them and which may have subsequently stalled.

I'm sure others must be far better placed than me to form a more positive conclusion and I should welcome their input should it indeed be the case.

Failing that then perhaps a positive outcome would see Ripples Project 3 benefit as a result!

 

National Grid ESO to fast track new solar and storage projects as part of new connection management

National Grid ESO is aiming to tackle connection management via a newly announced initiative, a potentially vital measure for future solar and storage projects.

The new approach will aim to remove stalled projects from the transmission entry capacity (TEC) register, allowing new projects to be connected to the national electricity transmission network quicker.

This is something that desperately needs resolving as the UK transitions to a net zero energy system. Earlier this month, a new update from National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET) said the number of grid connection applications had quadrupled in the past four years.

The prospective initiative launched by ESO will hope to rectify this by supporting the connection of renewable projects. This could boost solar and storage projects that have faced extended delays.

The initiative will offer those on the register, whose projects are unlikely to reach delivery, to leave the register at no cost or at a reduced fee from 1 October to 30 November 2022. This could help facilitate new projects with a greater likelihood of being accepted, to be fast tracked onto the transmission network and be operational much faster than current.

https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/news/national_grid_eso_to_fast_track_new_solar_and_storage_projects_as_part_of_n

Martyn1981

A whole week gone already, boy time is flying, so here's Chris Goodall's weekly Carbon Commentary newsletter:

Industry news

Things I noticed and thought were interesting

Week ending 25th September 2022
 
1, Demand management. Two indications in recent days that voluntary and unremunerated demand management is possible. On September 6th the Californian grid asked consumers via text message to reduce their use of electricity. Later analysis suggested that this request cut power consumption by about 4%, or 2 gigawatts, over the course of the next five critical hours. In France, a survey showed that more than 80% of people approved of limiting the winter heating temperature to 19 degrees in public buildings and in workplaces. 71% are prepared to hold their domestic heating below this temperature. In the face of unprecedented shortage of energy over the next months, and the continued risk of power outages, it would make sense for other countries to introduce voluntary demand reduction experiments.
 
2, Growth in hydrogen projects. Industry body, The Hydrogen Council, said that there are now 680 large-scale hydrogen projects around the world. It completed, they will cost $240 billion. The numbers are up 50% over the past ten months. But to keep on track for net zero by 2050, hydrogen investments will have to reach $700bn by 2030. This number seems huge but the Hydrogen Council comments that it is less than 15% of the investments made in upstream oil and gas over the last decade.
 
3, Low carbon train travel. Night trains across Europe are improving. Pioneering Austrian operator ÖBB released details of its beautiful new coaches for travel from Vienna to other countries. ÖBB says it will eventually run 33 of these trains. Travel prices are said to be comparable to air links. Increasing numbers of overnight trains are being scheduled across Europe. This month a new service started from Stockholm to Hamburg although it it does take 13 hours for the full trip. In the US, the Californian rail operator said it was buying four hydrogen trains from Stadler with an option to buy another 25. These will be the first hydrogen-powered rail units in the US and have a range of 500 miles/800 kilometres.
 
4,  Electric cars. The IEA suggested that 13% of light vehicle sales in 2022 will be electric, making EVs, along with LED lighting, the only two of 55 its indices fully on track to meet its 2030 targets. José Pontes in Clean Technica said that 16% new cars in Germany are fully electric, with 14% France and 24% in the Netherlands. China is racing ahead; 30% of its new vehicles have an electric plug. Car rental company Sixt expects 70-90% of its fleet to be electric by 2030. The company stressed the importance of a previous car rental to consumers’ decisions, saying that nearly two thirds of customers see a rental as a good route to deciding whether to buy an EV. It’s just 11 months ago that Sixt launched its first offer for customers using EVs for transfers and urban rides.
 
5, Offshore wind. The Netherlands specified a target of 70 gigawatts of offshore wind in the North Sea by 2050. This will probably produce about 300 TWh of electricity, or two and a half times current Netherlands consumption. After the full electrification of vehicles and of heating, 2050 offshore wind production will probably cover at least two thirds of total energy needs. For comparison, the UK has a shallow water zone of roughly ten times the size, indicating a possible ceiling of around 700 gigawatts, which would be enough to comfortably cover its entire energy needs and provide substantial exports to the rest of Europe. Floating wind in deeper waters could provide even more power for the UK and the Netherlands.
 
6, E-fuels. Amazon said it was buying enough diesel from e-fuel supplier Infinium to cover 5 million miles of travel for its mid-range fleet in California. Although the retailer has stressed its commitment to electric vehicles, synthetic fuels from Infinium may represent an alternative, particularly before large numbers of electric trucks are available. But the company was very cagy about the price it will pay for a litre of Infinium’s fuel. 
 
7, Hydrogen made at the wind turbine. French company Lhyfe started its pilot project to produce hydrogen directly from offshore wind turbines. It will begin by generating hydrogen at the quayside of the port of St Nazaire and then shift the electrolyser to a floating platform close to a wind turbine. The company claims that this will be the first time this has been achieved. Making hydrogen at such a site involves substantial technical challenges but similar projects are planned for several European offshore wind farms. Plug Power made the electrolyser.
 
8, Carbon storage from burning biomass. Drax, a large power station in northern England, burns wood pellets for fuel, providing about 7% of the UK’s electricity. It sources most of the 7 million tonnes of pellets from the southern states of the US. Whether these pellets are genuinely carbon neutral is often questioned, with critics saying that the power station actually adds substantially to global emissions because the trees that are burnt are not being fully replaced. Drax has recently committed to collecting the CO2 from pellet combustion and will store it permanently underground in a process known as BioEnergy Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). Although the project is at early stage, success would undeniably improve the carbon footprint of Drax’s output. Now Drax has promised it will start new BECCS projects in the US, aiming to capture 4 million tonnes a year by 2030 from other power projects. It announced this week that a UK business would be licenced to sell the ‘carbon credits’ relating to the stored CO2. I foresee another round of criticism that focuses on whether Drax’s carbon credits are genuine and whether they simply allow other CO2 emitters to continue to use fossil fuels. 
 
9, Australia ammonia for Korea. Several large Korean industrial conglomerates came together to say that they will build sufficient renewables capacity in Australia to deliver 1 million tonnes of ammonia to their home country by 2032. This alone will require the installation of about 3 gigawatts of wind and solar at a project controlled by a subsidiary of Korea Zinc in Queensland. Details of the new plans are not complete but this looks to me like a carefully thought scheme with a clear project target that will create a full supply chain from Australian renewables to Korean electricity generation using ammonia as the carrier. The Korean government has indicated an intention of using almost 4 million tonnes of ammonia for power generation by 2030-35. I guess the idea will be widely copied by other Korean and Japanese entities seeking to create an energy supply for their countries sourced from Australia. This project is also a further important indication that very long distance trade in hydrogen will use ammonia as the carrier.
 
10, Namibia power-to-hydrogen-to-power. HDF Group, a French company that specialises in developing solar farms in developing countries with the capability to offer 24 hour reliable electricity, told us it has obtained authorisations to build a 85 megawatt plant in Namibia providing enough electricity for about 140,000 people. The solar farm will deliver electricity to the Namibian grid, converting surpluses to hydrogen which will later be turned back into electricity via fuel cells for use at night. The site will also have battery capacity. HDF says this will be the first power station in Africa using green hydrogen as its source of energy and the company is negotiating with several other countries around the world for similar projects. The company’s first power station combining solar and hydrogen in this way is under construction in French Guiana.  

Martyn1981

I don't know if this will shock anyone, or is simply known, but it looks like H2 for domestic heating isn't really economically viable, despite being possible. I'd suggest that's the same situation as H2 for cars, possible, but not economically viable v's the alternatives.

Green H2 does have, I believe, vast potential in many areas, so I'm not knocking it, but H2 options in some areas do seem to be getting too much promotion, suggesting FF interests trying to slow down the transition to, dare I say, 'the winning solutions' (BEV's and heatpumps). Or perhaps it's just that we are in a messy transition, and clarity is yet to be reached.

Hydrogen could ‘nearly double’ cost of heating a home compared with gas

Ministers’ plans to pin the UK’s energy hopes on hydrogen could nearly double the cost of heating a home by the end of the decade compared with natural gas, research has shown.

Using hydrogen for home heating could prove much a more expensive option than natural gas, according to the leading energy analysts Cornwall Insight. Between now and 2050, when the UK is legally bound to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions, using hydrogen would add about 70% to home energy bills compared with using gas, according to the report, commissioned by renewable energy charity MCS Foundation.

Michael Liebreich, chair of Liebreich Associates and founder of the analyst firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance, has hit out at “boiler-slingers” – the UK’s existing network of gas companies, plumbing firms and engineers – who see hydrogen as a route to maintain as much of the status quo as possible, rather than moving to heat pumps and other proven low-carbon technology.

Liebreich tweeted: “Heating with hydrogen from renewable energy is six times less efficient than using the same electricity in a heat pump. I don’t know a single serious energy analyst not affiliated with the gas industry who thinks hydrogen heating will be a thing.”

EricMears

Martyn1981 said:

I don't know if this will shock anyone, or is simply known, but it looks like H2 for domestic heating isn't really economically viable, despite being possible. I'd suggest that's the same situation as H2 for cars, possible, but not economically viable v's the alternatives.

Green H2 does have, I believe, vast potential in many areas, so I'm not knocking it, but H2 options in some areas do seem to be getting too much promotion, suggesting FF interests trying to slow down the transition to, dare I say, 'the winning solutions' (BEV's and heatpumps). Or perhaps it's just that we are in a messy transition, and clarity is yet to be reached.

Hydrogen could ‘nearly double’ cost of heating a home compared with gas

Between now and 2050, when the UK is legally bound to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions, using hydrogen would add about 70% to home energy bills compared with using gas,

But is their "now"  late September or was it earlier in the year ?  70% more than (say) March prices would probably be cheaper than actual September prices for NG.