Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

Sorry, finding lots of little items, that I think are worth mentioning.

So we have some big batt news from Aus, which may have been mentioned before, but the plans are huge. Potentially 1.2GW/2.4GWh, with phase one approved consisting 3 large batts totalling 600MW/1,600MWh. Interestingly, the total project may include some flow batts, with potentially 12hr storage. [Obviously all batts can run for longer, but duration is typically stated against the economic role/time for which they are being deployed.]

Australia’s biggest battery project changes shape as Equis reaches FID, begins construction

In total, phase 1 then includes 600 MW of battery power and 1,600 MWh of storage, involving an investment of over $1 billion (USD 661 million). The company said: “With the SEC’s equity investment of $245 million, Equis expanded its equity investment to over $510 million in MREH phase 1.”

Flow batteries to potentially come

Equis has, however, been approved for 1,200 MW of capacity at the MREH site. It says “the remaining 600 MW is currently being developed with longer term storage solutions of up to 12 hours.” It is reportedly considered flow battery technologies to meet this long-duration target.

And who can resist wind farm repowering news, especially when they throw up fun stats of less turbines but more power.

RWE repowers German wind farm

At the site in the Paderborn district in North Rhine-Westphalia, only two wind turbines are now in operation instead of the original nine while electricity production has also been doubled, to 11.4MW.

At the Lengerich site, the company is replacing the old 1.8MW turbine with a 5.7MW version.

The company is replacing a total of 17 wind turbines in Lesse and Barbecke, in Salzgitter and in the district of Peine, with a total capacity of 30.6MW, with 11 turbines with a total of 61.8MW.

I assume they quoted the max discharge rate and capacity and any mention of hours was based on those two figures?

Martyn1981

Looks like the Gov stalling on H2 boilers is nearly at an end. Hopefully this will help boost progress on heatpumps in the UK, since we are trailing mainland Europe's deployment rates.

UK government backs plan to ban gas and ‘hydrogen-ready’ boilers

The UK government has formally backed plans to ban gas and “hydrogen-ready” boilers from newbuild homes in England from 2025, in a long-delayed consultation on low-carbon building standards.

The proposals could mean heat pumps being installed as standard as part of measures to make all new homes “net zero ready” from 2025.

The consultation rules out the use by housebuilders of all fossil fuel heating systems including gas, hybrid heat pumps and hydrogen-ready boilers, after a finding that there was “no practical way to allow the installation of fossil fuel boilers while also delivering significant carbon savings”.

The net zero standards are considered key to the government’s plan to meet its legally binding target of net zero emissions by 2050. However, the consultation has been delayed amid growing controversy over the government’s links to the housebuilding sector.

Coastalwatch

With an energy density of 160 Wh/kg making them favourable for storage rather than EV's an increase beyond 200 Wh/kg is considered likely as the technology matures making it a likely replacement for Lion in the second half of the decade. With the removal of both Cobalt and Nickel in the cathode material then further cost and environmental benefits should also emerge with a future price as low as $30/kWh thought possible.

Just wondering if it will mean Mart and Zeup putting off the pruchase of Storage batteries a while longer before prices are considered to have finally bottomed out.

Chalmers University confirms potential of sodium batteries as lithium alternative

Unlike lithium, sodium is “a very common substance,” writes the Chalmers team, and is found, for example, in sodium chloride. Moreover, table salt and biomass from the forest industry comprise the primary raw materials inside the cells the researchers looked at, which leads to “abundance”. This is particularly advantageous regarding the “impact on mineral resource scarcity, and equivalent in terms of climate impact,” Chalmers writes.

The life cycle assessment calculated the impact of two types of batteries from cradle to gate, from raw material extraction to manufacturing a battery cell. The Chalmers team based the batteries on said abundant raw materials. The anode comprises hard carbon from either bio-based lignin or fossil raw materials, and the cathode contains so-called “Prussian white” (consisting of sodium, iron, carbon and nitrogen). The electrolyte contains a sodium salt.

This is similar to the recent cells shown by Northvolt and common in sodium-ion battery development. CATL and others in the industry are also pushing the technology since sodium-ion batteries, SIB for short, are one of the few alternatives to Lithium-ion batteries, as these forego not just the potential scarcity but also the price of lithium.

https://www.electrive.com/2023/12/13/chalmers-university-confirms-potential-of-sodium-batteries-as-lithium-alternative/

Screwdriva

The boiler tax is here:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/net-zero/homeowners-hit-boiler-tax-pay-for-heat-pump-drive/

Martyn1981

Carbon Commentary newsletter from Chris Goodall.

Things I noticed and thought were interesting

Week ending December 17th 2023

The newsletter will take a break until after Christmas. When I come back, I'll be using Substack because of the increasing cost of using MailChimp. Subscribers will not need to do anything. As now, subscription details will not be used for any other purpose.
 
1, Synthetic fuels. The manufacture of ethanol from corn releases large quantities of CO2 which is vented to the atmosphere. Scientists have recommended that this CO2 is used ito make other fuels by combining it with green hydrogen. China’s State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC) appears to have decided to build what I think will be the world’s first large-scale plant. Reports suggest a 3.5 GW wind farm will make sufficient hydrogen alongside ethanol manufacture to produce about 400,000 tonnes of ‘Sustainable Aviation Fuel’ and similar amounts of methanol, probably for shipping. These figures represent about 0.1% of global fuel demand for aviation and ships. The cost will be just under $6bn.
 
2, Battery swapping. We had all thought this approach was a dead end but Stelllantis (Citroen, Peugeot, Fiat, Chrysler etc) just did a deal with a battery swapping business. San Francisco-based Ample will install stations in Madrid in 2024 that will offer a 5 minute swapping service to a fleet of 100 Fiat 500e cars. Ample also makes modular car battery packs that can apparently easily replace the existing Stellantis batteries. This venture follows the entry of Chinese vehicle manufacturer Nio into the European battery swap market. It has about 2,000 swapping stations in China and claims a 3 minute turnaround. Battery swapping has a clear economic rationale for those people, such as taxi drivers, who don’t want to wait an hour in the middle of the day while their vehicle charges. Of course it may also mean that manufacturers can sell cheaper cars with less battery storage because it takes so little time to swap the discharged batteries for full ones.
 
3, Measuring carbon in soils. The world needs far better measurement techniques for checking on the levels of carbon in agricultural soils. Intensive farming has depleted soil organic carbon (SOC) levels and new agricultural methods such as ‘regenerative farming’ hope to reverse this change. But levels of soil organic carbon (SOC) can vary hugely within a few metres inside a single field, meaning that accurate assessment of the average level usually requires very large numbers of expensive measurements. Scottish soil sampling pioneer Agricarbon raised a new round of funding from Shell and others to complement existing investments from Nestlé. Agricarbon’s robotised sampling and clever data analysis should enable rapid international expansion into a market urgently needing good verification of claims that regenerative agriculture will improve SOC levels. 
 
4, EV sales. The last few weeks have seen reports of a ‘slowdown’ in EV sales. What is actually happening is better described as a decrease in the rate of growth, a very different phenomenon. Consultants Rho Motion reported that November 2023 global sales reached their highest level at around 1.4 million cars, up about 20% year-on-year and the highest ever monthly total. Sales in North America were particularly strong. European volumes were less impressive. Several governments in Europe have also reduced or restricted subsidies in recent weeks, including Germany and France. The changes in French support are likely to particularly affect sales of lower cost Chinese cars. So far this year, plug in cars in the UK have achieved an almost 24% share, up from just over 21% last year.
 
5, Lithium extraction. Current methods of mining lithium are environmentally problematic. Innovators are now focusing on what is called ‘Direct Lithium Extraction’, a variety of potential processes that chemically extract the metal from liquid sources, such as geothermal brine. There’s little waste and no need for huge evaporation lakes. Although there is scepticism about the commercial viability of some of these routes, at least one DLE process (adsorption) has been used commercially since the mid-1990s. DLE seems likely to offer reasonable costs for lithium production and is being taken up by the new oil industry participants entering the lithium industry, such as Exxon and Koch. Adionics, a French start-up with a new DLE approach, raised €25m, taking Chilean lithium giant SQM onto its shareholder register. DLE makes new sources of lithium much easier to exploit. Despite what you sometimes hear, there will be no long-term shortages of this metal. (I saw the Adionics story in the newsletter of Net Zero Insights, a business that tracks fundraising and other corporate developments in climatetech. Disclosure: I own shares in NZI).
 
6, Electrolyser manufacturers exit hydrogen refuelling. Nothing signals the poor prospects for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as clearly as the withdrawal of the key electrolyser manufacturers from the sector. Last week, NEL sold all its shares in Everfuel, which operates a small number of hydrogen filling stations in northern Europe.  McPhy said it was negotiating to sell its sites to Atawey, another French operator of hydrogen filling stations. ITM Power sold its similar business two months ago. 
 
7, Direct Air Capture. An important few days for DAC. Climeworks sold 80,000 tonnes of future CO2 extraction to international consultants BCG, its biggest sale ever. (BCG has already bought 40,000 tonnes this year from Climeworks competitor CarbonCapture). At the other end of the spectrum, UK start-up Airhive announced a joint venture to build a 1,000 tonnes/year trial plant in Canada with Deep Sky, a prospective developer of megaton scale DAC projects. The particular interest here is that Airhive technology is significantly different to conventional approaches to DAC. It grinds up CO2 absorbing rocks into microscopic dust and then ‘fluidises’ the particles, creating a semi-liquid that rapidly chemically absorbs the CO2 in the air, resulting in permanent storage. Airhive’s striking claim is that ‘the process removes close to 100% of the CO2 in air passed through its system in less than 0.1 second’. If Airhive’s technology is as good as it says, BCG’s purchase of Climeworks credits will look poor value for money. I have a hunch (and, no, I don’t have the numbers to back this up) that CO2 absorption by mineral dust or through 'enhanced rock weathering will turn out to be far cheaper than the amine-based technologies such as Climeworks uses. 
 
8, Beef emissions. Would moving beef production back into the fields and out of feedlots reduce the huge carbon footprint of beef? An ill-tempered debate rages.  New academic analysis concludes that even low intensity outdoor beef farming is much worse for the climate than crowded feedlots. Among other reasons, the animals grow much more slowly outside, meaning that lifetime methane emissions are higher for the same amount of beef. The researchers also point to the importance of ‘carbon opportunity cost’, or the carbon sequestration that could occur on pastureland if, instead of cows grazing, trees were allowed to grow. Not only do outdoor cows produce substantial weights of emissions but they use land that otherwise might be sequestering carbon.
 
9, Flow batteries. The rapid development of lithium ion has tended to overshadow flow batteries, an alternative technology for static (not transport) energy storage. Flow batteries offer potentially lower costs, don’t generally need expensive raw materials and can typically run for longer periods (perhaps up to 8 hours or more, compared to a maximum of 4 for large lithium batteries). However static lithium ion batteries have been making improvements in the number of hours of discharge they can offer, reducing the importance of this critical benefit of flow batteries. Norwegian utility Statkraft backed the Netherlands start-up Aquabattery for a trial in the city of Delft. The long duration storage that Aquabattery can offer will be tested for up to a year. The hope is that 8 hour flow batteries will be better than lithium ion at coping with the intra-day variation in electricity supply and demand, as well as helping deal with grid congestion in places like the Netherlands. When, for example, solar is producing large amounts of power which cannot not be accepted onto the grid, flow batteries may be able to store electricity and release it at night more effectively than lithium ion. (Thanks to Tony Cooke).
 
10, Hydrogen project growth. The number of projects identified by the Hydrogen Council rose by 35% over the six months to end-November 2023 up to around 1,400 large projects globally. However only about 7% have passed through the Final Investment Decision process. In Europe, for example, $190 bn of clean hydrogen production schemes have been proposed but only $8 bn have been fully approved. Across the world, the value of projects on which final decisions have been made has risen about 30% in the last six months but part of this rise is probably driven by higher capital costs. Worryingly, the Hydrogen Council report is markedly less optimistic than before about eventual green hydrogen production cost. It projects a figure of $4.5-$6.5 a kilogramme, up 30-65% over the last six months. The cause is the inflation in prices of supplies, higher cost of capital, supply chain problems and elevated renewable energy costs.   

QrizB

The bit about battery swapping is interesting.

Martyn1981 said:

Carbon Commentary newsletter from Chris Goodall.

 
2, Battery swapping. We had all thought this approach was a dead end but Stelllantis (Citroen, Peugeot, Fiat, Chrysler etc) just did a deal with a battery swapping business. San Francisco-based Ample will install stations in Madrid in 2024 that will offer a 5 minute swapping service to a fleet of 100 Fiat 500e cars. Ample also makes modular car battery packs that can apparently easily replace the existing Stellantis batteries. This venture follows the entry of Chinese vehicle manufacturer Nio into the European battery swap market. It has about 2,000 swapping stations in China and claims a 3 minute turnaround. Battery swapping has a clear economic rationale for those people, such as taxi drivers, who don’t want to wait an hour in the middle of the day while their vehicle charges. Of course it may also mean that manufacturers can sell cheaper cars with less battery storage because it takes so little time to swap the discharged batteries for full ones.
 
 

In my youth, when I was lean, wiry and had all my hair & teeth, I had car with a brim-to-fumes fuel tank range of 250 miles. The A-roads here in the south were littered with petrol stations, one every few miles.

Over the years most of them have stopped selling fuel, becoming other businesses or closing completely. I'd assumed this was because the fuel tank range of cars had increased and so, while road fuel sales haven't fallen until very recently (eg. see page 24 here), the need for mid-journey fill-ups had plummeted.

If battery swapping becomes common, will we see a resurgence of roadside businesses supporting this? Or will swap sites be attached to eg. retail parks?

Edit to add: much like out-of-town Costas and Starbucks!

Martyn1981

Martyn1981 said:

Snippet of news, which I'll update soon hopefully.

Viking Link, a 1.4GW interconnector to Denmark is/was scheduled to be commissioned in 2023. It's currently undergoing low power testing (both directions).

That will lift us from 8.4GW to 9.8GW. There's another ~5GW currently in the pipeline (cableline?) for 2024* to 2030.

*Greenlink, a 500MW connection between Ireland and Wales had a planned commissioning date of 2023, but now 2024.

Update as promised on the 1.4GW interconnector to Denmark. And the big news is that it may be commissioned (at 800MW) on 29th Dec.

More interesting than I expected, the article explains the associated problems/issues of shifting a lot of power across new areas/regions.

Amazing how fast things are changing, and the 'future' is arriving.

800MW Viking Link about to be commissioned

The new electricity 800MW Viking Link connection between Denmark and England is to be commissioned on 29 December 2023, developer Energinet has said. 

The full capacity of 1400MW cannot be offered to the electricity market from the start, because the West Jutland high-voltage grid has not yet been developed sufficiently, it added.

Exiled_Tyke

So this isn't really news as we've all known about the problem of curtailment for some time. But articles like this will help increase the pressure to sort the problem out. It is crazy that we are wasting huge quantities of cheap RE at the same as during FF for more expensive energy.  This in the grid connect issue must surely now be high priorities? 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082

Martyn1981

Hiya ET, this recent news article ties in well with your post. Lots (and lots) of work needed to modernise the grid.

[Total guess, but perhaps the scale and frequency of curtailment is now enough to begin investment in larger scale, longer term storage (beyond batts). If not yet, then perhaps soon?]

Subsea project to bring renewable power from Scotland to England awarded £1.8bn

One of Britain’s biggest power grid projects has awarded contracts worth £1.8bn for a 190km subsea electricity superhighway to bring renewable power from Scotland to the north of England.

National Grid and Scottish Power plan to begin building the “transformative” £2.5bn high-voltage power line along the east coast of the country from East Lothian to County Durham from 2025.

The Eastern Green Link 1 (EGL1) project is one of Britain’s largest grid upgrade projects in generations and has been designed to carry enough clean electricity to power the equivalent of 2 million households.

The UK is under pressure to deliver a power grid overhaul as it prepares to double its demand for electricity by 2040 as part of a plan to cut the use of gas and other fossil fuels.

Martyn1981

Wind must be close to a new record. Currently showing about 21.5GW, with the record at 21.62GW. But, demand will now be rising, so that may minimise any curtailment, and allow a bit more. Looks like the Grid likes to keep about 2.5GW to 3.5GW of FF's running.

Edit - Just saw a brief flash of 21.63GW on Nat Grid Live, before dropping to 21.58.