Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

shinytop

Exiled_Tyke said:

Martyn1981 said:

shinytop said:

Martyn1981 said:

Positive piece about the net benefits to jobs from the growing green economy. Whilst the UK needs to 'ramp up' training, I assume this applies to pretty much every country at the moment.

‘UK needs to ramp up green skills training’

According to Green Skills Outlook, produced by Economist Impact for ScottishPower’s parent company, a majority (71%) of business leaders agree green skills will be the most important driver, yet just 51% are implementing or planning to implement green skills programmes for their workforce.

Meanwhile, almost two thirds (63%) think that the green transition will create more jobs than it eliminates, with three quarters (74%) saying that the jobs it creates will be higher quality for workers.

UK business leaders are generally optimistic about the green transition, with over two thirds (68%) confident that it presents more opportunities than challenges.

As long as they are proper technical jobs researching, designing and implementing solutions.  

And more, better paid jobs sounds more expensive. Who'll be paying? (I think I know the answer). 

Haven't heard that old chestnut for some time.

So, RE generation typically employes more people than FF generation on a pro-rata basis. But RE gen saves on the fuel cost, v's FF generation.

Couldn't agree with you more. Where does this assumption come from that RE jobs creates problems.  The Uruguay article I posted about 3 weeks ago is a real example of how RE can create great jobs whilst benefiting the economy as a whole (including the poorest). Meanwhile FF seems to be just benefitting the already very rich. 

Have you actually read the article?  It's not about RE and neither was my comment. It's about the need to create new skills in 

"...four sectors of the economy that will play a central role in the green transition: IT and Technology, Construction and Infrastructure, Transport and Logistics and Energy and Utilities."

I did read the article and my comment was about ensuring these new green jobs added value rather than cost.  

The pile-on that often follows any even slightly dissenting or critical voice on this thread has become tedious.        


 

Martyn1981

Chris Goodall's Carbon Commentary Newsletter for the week:

1, Mushroom roots for fashion and other uses. Mycelium is the interwoven root-like structure of a fungus which grows underground. It has attracted attention as a potential substitute for leather and clothing items as well as for packaging, food and even some building materials. The commercialisation of mycelium has been slow, with some corporate failures. But new money is now coming into the developing industry as confidence has grown, particularly in the use of mycelium for fashion items such as top of the range handbags and for some interior design applications. Italian pioneer Sqim raised €11m from investors including Kering, the French luxury goods business. The money will go to building its first large scale factory. Last year Ecovative, which specialises in textiles made from mycelium received $30m to develop its manufacturing capacity, including both for textiles but also for the development of a bacon substitute. There aren’t many low carbon products like mycelium that can substitute for such a wide range of current materials and it looks as though the costs of production may eventually match those of high-carbon alternatives.

2, Using hydrogen to stop curtailment. There is a growing realisation around the world that rapid expansion of grid solar and wind will result in large amounts of curtailed electricity production. In the UK, for example, the wind resources available in Scotland often cannot be fully transmitted into England. This week Policy Exchange, a right-of-centre London thinktank, published an appeal for the prospective UK £3.5 billion curtailment costs in 2030 to be reduced by using the surplus electricity to make hydrogen. The potential amount of hydrogen produced just from otherwise wasted wind power would enough to cover two thirds of current needs. Policy Exchange says that alternatively the hydrogen could be used to provide 90% of the needs for low carbon aviation fuel by 2030. This is an entirely sensible strategy around the world: green hydrogen will not be expensive if it is produced using otherwise valueless electricity.

3, BECCS. Capturing and storing CO2 from biomass power plants (BECCS) is often seen as the most immediate means of obtaining negative emissions. The biomass has grown by extracting carbon from the air. This is released as CO2 when the material is burnt to make electricity. If this carbon dioxide is captured and permanently stored, the electricity generator can claim to be carbon negative. (This is a highly contentious assertion. Many observers claim that large biomass power stations result in deforestation, thus reducing the total amount of CO2 stored globally in trees). Two small Danish biomass power stations recently obtained government financial support for installing CO2 collection and storage. The capture is planned to start in 2025 and the first steps in constructing the BECCS facilities started last month. The subsidy from the Danish state represents about $135 per tonne of CO2 stored. This week, the huge Drax power station in northern England received construction permission for its proposed BECCS project. The eventual intention is to collect 8 million tonnes of CO2 a year, equivalent to well over 2% of current UK emissions. One respected NGO claimed that the net cost could amount to about $250 a tonne, implying a payment from the UK state of about £1.7bn a year but Drax itself appears to be silent on the money it expects to be paid. Why is the possible cost so high? Carbon capture makes an electricity generator less efficient, meaning it has to use more fuel to make the same amount of electricity. Drax’s fuel – mostly wood pellets imported from the US – is now far more costly than it was so the cost of the extra fuel needed for the CO2 capture has risen. $250 a tonne is cheaper than Climeworks CCS today, but the time Drax starts up its BECCS operation, it will almost certainly be far cheaper to pull CO2 directly out of the air in locations with low cost electricity than to use more wood pellets.

4, Hiking shoes made from one material. The French sporting goods retailer Decathlon announced a 3,000 pair trial of a new hiking shoe made from a single material, not the six different plastics an equivalent product is made from. The company will collect and recycle the shoes when the user has worn them out.  All goods, particularly plastics, are very much easier to recycle if they are made from just one raw material. And there are very strong arguments for regulation that obliges manufacturers to use the absolute minimum of different plastics in all goods, whether clothes or packaging materials. From what I can see, this new Decathlon shoe isn’t fully circular (and thus cannot be broken down and then remade into the same item) but can be effectively downcycled into other products. One Decathlon engineer commenting on the announcement also stressed that the new shoe would be competitive in price with the current range. If so, this product might eventually become the standard hiking shoe. Decathlon sells 3 million units a year of the current non-recyclable equivalent.

5, Closure of UK blast furnaces. The looming end to primary steel production in the UK is deeply sad. But replacing coal-intensive processes with electric arc furnaces has potential advantages. The UK’s current steel requirements are about 10 million tonnes a year, roughly balanced by the 10 million tonnes of steel scrap arising from demolished buildings, cars and other sources. At the moment about 8 million tonnes of this scrap is exported and only about 2 million tonnes is recycled in electric arc furnaces. At the same time, about 7 million tonnes of finished steel is imported (all numbers are approximate). Although steel recycled in electric arc furnaces cannot be used in all applications, a switch away from blast furnaces will increase domestically-produced steel supply, reduce imports and probably reduce global carbon emissions from the industry. New steel from hydrogen furnaces will be principally made in future in locations with very low electricity costs (e.g. northern Sweden or Oman) not in countries such as the UK. The loss of the blast furnaces is a very severe blow to affected communities but their replacement by electric arc furnaces makes good industrial sense.

6, EV slowdown. Global car manufacturer Stellantis spoke up about the risks of a price war in EVs. The decline in the rate of growth of electric car sales, arising partly because EVs remain more expensive than petrol equivalents, combined with the increasing market share of Chinese brands in Western markets threatens severe financial pressure on manufacturers. But on the same day that Stellantis worried publicly about price deflation, it announced that it would lease 20,000 EVs to lower income households in France for €100 a month. Part of the cost is subsidised by the government. Stellantis took 80% of the orders under this scheme and reported over 100,000 inquiries. Despite the growing concerns about the underlying level of interest in EVs, the French scheme suggests that lower prices will prompt continued high rates of growth. And having a good range of more affordable cars, as Stellantis does, will help meet that demand.

7, E-fuels. German synthetic fuels manufacturer Ineratec raised $129m from a consortium led by a US fund, demonstrating the growing appeal of companies with technology for making aviation and shipping fuels from hydrogen and CO2. Ineratec has a number of small trial installations already and the new money will go towards building a refinery in Frankfurt at a much larger scale. It says that it targets production of about one third of a million tonnes of fuel a year in 2030, produced by a gigawatt of renewable power. This seems a very aggressive aim but this volume would represent just over half the amount of synthetic fuel mandated to be used by EU airports in 2030. In the early years, the CO2 will probably come from industrial emissions but eventually it will have to be pulled from the atmosphere, further boosting the need for direct air capture.

8, Agrivoltaics. Countries with limited space for agriculture should be interested in using vertical bifacial solar panels running north-south across cultivated fields. Crop growing of smaller plants is possible between the rows. German pioneer Next2Sun announced its first ‘agrivoltaics’ plant in the state of Vermont in the US. This will be less than 2 hectares but will show the impact on agricultural productivity and solar production. Next2Sun claims that its bifacial panels (generating electricity from both sides) will offer higher output than conventional PV, albeit at a higher cost I suspect. One great advantage of panels facing east and west is that electricity production peaks in the morning and in the afternoon, complementing standard solar fields which have a midday maximum.

9, Foods made from energy. The Finnish startup Solar Foods makes proteins for food using solar energy and carbon dioxide. It has struggled to obtain permission to sell its products anywhere in the world except Singapore. The state’s need to import almost all of its food makes it more receptive to innovations products that other countries are wary about.  A vegan ice cream, the first product containing the Solar Foods proteins, was launched there last year. Last week, Fazer Group, a Finnish company that is among Solar Foods shareholders, launched a chocolate bar containing the new proteins in Singapore. Many other companies, including the industry majors such as Unilever, are also developing foods made from non-plant or meat sources but frequent product launches seem some time away. And regulatory approval isn’t coming fast enough.

Martyn1981

Wanted to post this news article as it's about CAES and H2 storage, and I thought the image was interesting just as a guide. But haven't having* read through lots of news articles I can't find the energy side, just the quoted 320MW output. But hopefully the one word I've boldened in this sentence from the article is enough to be of interest:

Phase one of the Ahaus project will use the first two of the site’s four existing salt caverns to deploy Corre Energy’s multiday CAES solution to deliver 220MW of compression capacity and 320MW of generation capacity.

I don't know how much LDES (long duration energy storage) the UK will need, nor when we need to start deploying it, with an economical amount of regular excess to make it viable. But I do try to watch out for H2, and CAES LDES, just to know it's being trialled, and lessons can be learned.

[*Edited to make a whole lot more sense.]

Corre Energy, Eneco make CAES pact

The first cavern is due to be handed over to Corre Energy in early 2027 and construction of all four caverns is already well underway, the developer said. 

The project benefits from accessing caverns which already have permits in place for construction, greatly de-risking overall project development.

Coastalwatch

Obviously been under construction and known about for some time, but news of its completion must surely be welcomed.

Largest US solar-storage project goes online

The project is a true renewable energy behemoth, spanning 4,600 acres, comprised of 1.9 million US-made First Solar panels. It holds a capacity of 875 MWdc solar, and nearly 3.3 GWh of energy storage. It has a 1.3 GW interconnection capacity. 

California’s grid is expected to receive enough electricity to power the equivalent of about 238,000 homes from the project. This leads to an estimated 320,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions abated annually.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/01/22/largest-us-solar-storage-project-goes-online/?utm_source=Global+|+Newsletter&utm_campaign=64882812ba-dailynl_gl&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6916ce32b6-64882812ba-159300013

QrizB

Is there a "wind energy in the news" thread? If there is, I can't find it.

Here's an article from RechargeNews (where it's paywalled) but reprinted at Wind Watch (more on them later):

https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2024/01/12/worlds-first-floating-wind-farm-hywind-scotland-faces-shutdown-for-heavy-maintenance/

Norwegian energy giant Equinor will temporarily remove all five floating wind turbines from the pioneering Hywind Scotland array later this year after discovering a need for “heavy maintenance” on the Siemens Gamesa machines deployed there, Recharge has learned.
The 6MW turbines will be towed back to Wergeland on the west coast of Norway as part of a maintenance programme that is likely to take around four months and will disrupt power output from the project operating 24km off Peterhead since 2017. All units will be reconnected back on the Hywind Scotland site when the maintenance is complete, a spokesman for the Norwegian company confirmed.
The work will involve changing some components on the turbines, as well as more routine maintenance. “What we see from operational data is that there is a need for… heavy maintenance on the turbines,” he told Recharge.
Hywind Scotland is fully operational at present but tow-in operations will begin later in the year, taking advantage of the more benign weather periods in late spring and summer in the Northern Hemisphere.

There's more story at the link, but that excerpt gives you a flavour.

National Wind Watch seems to be a US-based anti-wind-power pressure group "presenting the facts about industrial wind power" and established in 2005.

They don't seem to have got with the program, so to speak. Amongst other claims, they state in their FAQ:

"The fact is that wind power does not and can not contribute significantly to our electricity needs."

Perhaps someone should tell them that, in the last 12 months, wind generated 28% of the UK's electricity.

And in 2022 it generated 10% of the US's electricity.

ed110220

Martyn1981 said:

Chris Goodall's Carbon Commentary Newsletter for the week:

1, Mushroom roots for fashion and other uses. Mycelium is the interwoven root-like structure of a fungus which grows underground. It has attracted attention as a potential substitute for leather and clothing items as well as for packaging, food and even some building materials. The commercialisation of mycelium has been slow, with some corporate failures. But new money is now coming into the developing industry as confidence has grown, particularly in the use of mycelium for fashion items such as top of the range handbags and for some interior design applications. Italian pioneer Sqim raised €11m from investors including Kering, the French luxury goods business. The money will go to building its first large scale factory. Last year Ecovative, which specialises in textiles made from mycelium received $30m to develop its manufacturing capacity, including both for textiles but also for the development of a bacon substitute. There aren’t many low carbon products like mycelium that can substitute for such a wide range of current materials and it looks as though the costs of production may eventually match those of high-carbon alternatives.

2, Using hydrogen to stop curtailment. There is a growing realisation around the world that rapid expansion of grid solar and wind will result in large amounts of curtailed electricity production. In the UK, for example, the wind resources available in Scotland often cannot be fully transmitted into England. This week Policy Exchange, a right-of-centre London thinktank, published an appeal for the prospective UK £3.5 billion curtailment costs in 2030 to be reduced by using the surplus electricity to make hydrogen. The potential amount of hydrogen produced just from otherwise wasted wind power would enough to cover two thirds of current needs. Policy Exchange says that alternatively the hydrogen could be used to provide 90% of the needs for low carbon aviation fuel by 2030. This is an entirely sensible strategy around the world: green hydrogen will not be expensive if it is produced using otherwise valueless electricity.

3, BECCS. Capturing and storing CO2 from biomass power plants (BECCS) is often seen as the most immediate means of obtaining negative emissions. The biomass has grown by extracting carbon from the air. This is released as CO2 when the material is burnt to make electricity. If this carbon dioxide is captured and permanently stored, the electricity generator can claim to be carbon negative. (This is a highly contentious assertion. Many observers claim that large biomass power stations result in deforestation, thus reducing the total amount of CO2 stored globally in trees). Two small Danish biomass power stations recently obtained government financial support for installing CO2 collection and storage. The capture is planned to start in 2025 and the first steps in constructing the BECCS facilities started last month. The subsidy from the Danish state represents about $135 per tonne of CO2 stored. This week, the huge Drax power station in northern England received construction permission for its proposed BECCS project. The eventual intention is to collect 8 million tonnes of CO2 a year, equivalent to well over 2% of current UK emissions. One respected NGO claimed that the net cost could amount to about $250 a tonne, implying a payment from the UK state of about £1.7bn a year but Drax itself appears to be silent on the money it expects to be paid. Why is the possible cost so high? Carbon capture makes an electricity generator less efficient, meaning it has to use more fuel to make the same amount of electricity. Drax’s fuel – mostly wood pellets imported from the US – is now far more costly than it was so the cost of the extra fuel needed for the CO2 capture has risen. $250 a tonne is cheaper than Climeworks CCS today, but the time Drax starts up its BECCS operation, it will almost certainly be far cheaper to pull CO2 directly out of the air in locations with low cost electricity than to use more wood pellets.

4, Hiking shoes made from one material. The French sporting goods retailer Decathlon announced a 3,000 pair trial of a new hiking shoe made from a single material, not the six different plastics an equivalent product is made from. The company will collect and recycle the shoes when the user has worn them out.  All goods, particularly plastics, are very much easier to recycle if they are made from just one raw material. And there are very strong arguments for regulation that obliges manufacturers to use the absolute minimum of different plastics in all goods, whether clothes or packaging materials. From what I can see, this new Decathlon shoe isn’t fully circular (and thus cannot be broken down and then remade into the same item) but can be effectively downcycled into other products. One Decathlon engineer commenting on the announcement also stressed that the new shoe would be competitive in price with the current range. If so, this product might eventually become the standard hiking shoe. Decathlon sells 3 million units a year of the current non-recyclable equivalent.

5, Closure of UK blast furnaces. The looming end to primary steel production in the UK is deeply sad. But replacing coal-intensive processes with electric arc furnaces has potential advantages. The UK’s current steel requirements are about 10 million tonnes a year, roughly balanced by the 10 million tonnes of steel scrap arising from demolished buildings, cars and other sources. At the moment about 8 million tonnes of this scrap is exported and only about 2 million tonnes is recycled in electric arc furnaces. At the same time, about 7 million tonnes of finished steel is imported (all numbers are approximate). Although steel recycled in electric arc furnaces cannot be used in all applications, a switch away from blast furnaces will increase domestically-produced steel supply, reduce imports and probably reduce global carbon emissions from the industry. New steel from hydrogen furnaces will be principally made in future in locations with very low electricity costs (e.g. northern Sweden or Oman) not in countries such as the UK. The loss of the blast furnaces is a very severe blow to affected communities but their replacement by electric arc furnaces makes good industrial sense.

6, EV slowdown. Global car manufacturer Stellantis spoke up about the risks of a price war in EVs. The decline in the rate of growth of electric car sales, arising partly because EVs remain more expensive than petrol equivalents, combined with the increasing market share of Chinese brands in Western markets threatens severe financial pressure on manufacturers. But on the same day that Stellantis worried publicly about price deflation, it announced that it would lease 20,000 EVs to lower income households in France for €100 a month. Part of the cost is subsidised by the government. Stellantis took 80% of the orders under this scheme and reported over 100,000 inquiries. Despite the growing concerns about the underlying level of interest in EVs, the French scheme suggests that lower prices will prompt continued high rates of growth. And having a good range of more affordable cars, as Stellantis does, will help meet that demand.

7, E-fuels. German synthetic fuels manufacturer Ineratec raised $129m from a consortium led by a US fund, demonstrating the growing appeal of companies with technology for making aviation and shipping fuels from hydrogen and CO2. Ineratec has a number of small trial installations already and the new money will go towards building a refinery in Frankfurt at a much larger scale. It says that it targets production of about one third of a million tonnes of fuel a year in 2030, produced by a gigawatt of renewable power. This seems a very aggressive aim but this volume would represent just over half the amount of synthetic fuel mandated to be used by EU airports in 2030. In the early years, the CO2 will probably come from industrial emissions but eventually it will have to be pulled from the atmosphere, further boosting the need for direct air capture.

8, Agrivoltaics. Countries with limited space for agriculture should be interested in using vertical bifacial solar panels running north-south across cultivated fields. Crop growing of smaller plants is possible between the rows. German pioneer Next2Sun announced its first ‘agrivoltaics’ plant in the state of Vermont in the US. This will be less than 2 hectares but will show the impact on agricultural productivity and solar production. Next2Sun claims that its bifacial panels (generating electricity from both sides) will offer higher output than conventional PV, albeit at a higher cost I suspect. One great advantage of panels facing east and west is that electricity production peaks in the morning and in the afternoon, complementing standard solar fields which have a midday maximum.

9, Foods made from energy. The Finnish startup Solar Foods makes proteins for food using solar energy and carbon dioxide. It has struggled to obtain permission to sell its products anywhere in the world except Singapore. The state’s need to import almost all of its food makes it more receptive to innovations products that other countries are wary about.  A vegan ice cream, the first product containing the Solar Foods proteins, was launched there last year. Last week, Fazer Group, a Finnish company that is among Solar Foods shareholders, launched a chocolate bar containing the new proteins in Singapore. Many other companies, including the industry majors such as Unilever, are also developing foods made from non-plant or meat sources but frequent product launches seem some time away. And regulatory approval isn’t coming fast enough.

That's a real pity that only Singapore so far is allowing the sale of foods made from energy (without plants as an intermediate). I don't know enough about the economic viability of it, but it could be a great way to lessen the impact of agriculture and fisheries on the natural world (it's the main cause of habitat destruction) and also an opportunity for places with excellent solar or wind resources to effectively export it even if their geography means its not feasible as electricity. 

QrizB

ed110220 said:

That's a real pity that only Singapore so far is allowing the sale of foods made from energy (without plants as an intermediate). I don't know enough about the economic viability of it, but it could be a great way to lessen the impact of agriculture and fisheries on the natural world (it's the main cause of habitat destruction) and also an opportunity for places with excellent solar or wind resources to effectively export it even if their geography means its not feasible as electricity. 

The numbers seem to work, for a thought experiment at least.

The UK recommended daily calorie intake is 2000kcal for women, 2500kcal for men. Call it 10MJ or 3kWh a day, 1000kWh per year.

And let's asume that you can achieve 50% conversion efficiency of energy into food, so 2000kWh (2MWh) per year of energy per person.

The UK has a population of 60 million, so you'd need an extra 120 TWh of energy per year. That's very roughly 50% of the UK's current electricity supply, or 150% of the current installed wind generation output.

Alternatively, 120TWh would need 120GWp of solar PV, which at 200 watts per square metre (2000kW per hectare) would need 60,000 hectares of solar farm. That's roughly one-300th of the ~18 million hectares currently used by agriculture.

(Someone should check my maths before using them to make a grant application!)

Martyn1981

Impressive results for Scottish RE generation. [I've checked a few articles and it is for 2022, not 2023.]

Renewables ‘covered 113% of Scottish demand’

Scottish Government statistics have revealed that renewable energy technologies generated the equivalent of 113% of Scotland’s overall electricity consumption in 2022.

This marks the highest recorded figures to date and a 26% increase year on year.

Martyn1981

And this storage news fits well with the Scottish RE generation:

Zenobē Energy to start construction on 300MW/600MWh BESS in Scotland

Battery energy storage system (BESS) and EV solutions firm Zenobē Energy has started construction on a 300MW/600MWh project in Scotland, after securing project financing.

Zenobē Energy will use the £147 million (US$187 million) funding arranged by retail banking company NatWest to build the Kilmarnock South project which is anticipated to come online in late 2025.

The two-hour duration BESS will be used to reduce the cost of wasted wind generation in Scotland and therefore reduce energy prices for consumers.

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

Impressive results for Scottish RE generation. [I've checked a few articles and it is for 2022, not 2023.]

Renewables ‘covered 113% of Scottish demand’

Scottish Government statistics have revealed that renewable energy technologies generated the equivalent of 113% of Scotland’s overall electricity consumption in 2022.

This marks the highest recorded figures to date and a 26% increase year on year.

Not knocking this but it helps when you have a giant network attached storage called 'England and Wales' on your grid....