Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

NedS

ed110220 said:

QrizB said:

Martyn1981 said:

Plus for Spain, something I noticed a decade or so ago, when playing with PVGIS, is not just that they generate more (for any given amount of PV), but also how much less variation there is across the year.

I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, but this is almost all down to their lower latitude. We're just accustomed to living between 50 and 60 degrees away from the Equator!

The ~40% of Earth's surface that's in the tropics gets essentially no seasonal variation in day length.

As you leave the tropics and get closer to the poles, seasons become more distinct until you reach the (Ant)Arctic where you have periods with 24h daylight and others with 24h darkness.

We also have the misfortune of largely overcast winters. If you look at say Calgary on the edge of the Canadian prairies, it's at almost exactly the same latitude as London, but PVGIS estimates almost twice the generation in the worst month (Dec for both cities): London 43 kWh/kWp, Calgary 82 kWh. Wikipedia gives only 21% possible sunshine for London Heathrow in Dec (ie just 21% of the already short daylight hours are sunny) but 46% for Calgary International Airport. Not only is Dec the month with the shortest days and lowest sun angle, but it's also the cloudiest at least at LHR with a sunshine peak in Aug (45%).

That largely overcast weather also helps maintain our mild climate. Calgary gets a LOT colder than London in winter. I wouldn't like to say how my heat pump would perform at -35C, but I'm guessing my heating bills would be substantially higher. Would the higher winter solar generation off set the difference? I don't know.

Martyn1981

ed110220 said:

QrizB said:

Martyn1981 said:

Plus for Spain, something I noticed a decade or so ago, when playing with PVGIS, is not just that they generate more (for any given amount of PV), but also how much less variation there is across the year.

I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, but this is almost all down to their lower latitude. We're just accustomed to living between 50 and 60 degrees away from the Equator!

The ~40% of Earth's surface that's in the tropics gets essentially no seasonal variation in day length.

As you leave the tropics and get closer to the poles, seasons become more distinct until you reach the (Ant)Arctic where you have periods with 24h daylight and others with 24h darkness.

We also have the misfortune of largely overcast winters. If you look at say Calgary on the edge of the Canadian prairies, it's at almost exactly the same latitude as London, but PVGIS estimates almost twice the generation in the worst month (Dec for both cities): London 43 kWh/kWp, Calgary 82 kWh. Wikipedia gives only 21% possible sunshine for London Heathrow in Dec (ie just 21% of the already short daylight hours are sunny) but 46% for Calgary International Airport. Not only is Dec the month with the shortest days and lowest sun angle, but it's also the cloudiest at least at LHR with a sunshine peak in Aug (45%).

I noticed similar a while back when Edmonton Canada (for no particular reason) came up in a few articles. Although roughly in line with Manchester, it gets about 1,450kWh/kWp. Quite a surprise to me.

Though as Ned points out, colder temps, with an average January temp of -10C.

Maybe I'll just stay put, and compensate with more kWp instead - brawn over brain.

Martyn1981

Couple of reports from Ember that may be of interest:

Global solar installations surge 64% in first half of 2025

World installed 380 GW of new solar capacity in first six months of 2025

Global solar installations are on track for another record year. In the first six months of 2025, the world added 380 GW of new solar capacity — 64% higher than during the same period in 2024, when 232 GW were installed. In 2024, it took until September for global solar capacity additions to surpass 350 GW, while in 2025, the milestone was reached in June.

Global Electricity Mid-Year Insights 2025

Solar and wind outpaced demand growth as renewables overtook coal in the first half of 2025

The increase in solar and wind power outpaced global electricity demand growth in the first half of 2025. Solar alone met 83% of the rise, with many countries setting new records. Fossil fuels remained mostly flat, with a slight decline. Fossil generation fell in China and India, but grew in the EU and the US.

Coastalwatch

NESO forecasts lowest winter electricity blackout risk since 2019

Good news, especially as in relation to more battery storage being available along with increased gas generation and commisioning of the Greenlink interconnector to Ireland.

On the down side pricecap to fall in January before surging again in April. - According to Cornwall Insight.

https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/energy-policy/neso-forecasts-lowest-winter-electricity-blackout-risk-since-2019

NedS

Coastalwatch said:

On the down side pricecap to fall in January before surging again in April. - According to Cornwall Insight.

Which should continue to drive domestic solar uptake in the UK.

QrizB

Another Washington Post article on te green energy transition. This shuld be a gift link:

https://wapo.st/47a1O15

As President Donald Trump pressures world leaders to abandon the energy transition in favor of a U.S.-led fossil fuel resurgence, the status of India’s gas-fired power plants helps explain why his pitch isn’t getting much traction.

Half of that fleet in India is sitting idle. Although electricity demand is exploding, and the plants are designed to run for decades into the future, Indian officials have turned away from them. Their calculation: that renewable energy provides a cheaper and more reliable alternative.

“And you don’t have to depend on overseas nations for fuel,” said Sumant Sinha, CEO of ReNew, one of India’s largest renewable energy companies.

Last week, the International Energy Agency (IEA) nearly halved its forecast of renewable energy growth in the United States, citing the end of tax incentives and other recent policy shifts. Tens of billions of dollars of manufacturing projects to build solar panels, batteries, charging stations and other clean technologies have already been canceled, with hundreds of billions of dollars of additional announced investments imperiled.

But even as U.S. political forces are working against the energy transition, economics are propelling it forward globally. While Trump brands renewables as a “green energy scam,” other countries are pivoting to solar and wind because dramatic price reductions have made them the cheapest options.

More at the link, if it works.

Martyn1981

Carbon Commentary newsletter from Chris Goodall.

1, Industrial heat pumps. Chemicals major BASF started work on a 50 MW heat pump that will provide approximately 190 degree steam for the production of formic acid at its Ludwigshafen factory. The initial heat for the pump will come from the cooling system of a steam cracking plant on the same site. BASF says the heat pump will reduce the emissions from the formic acid process by 98%, or 100,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. This is one of the largest heat pumps in the world, generating a temperature that is also at the top end of what is currently possible in a large installation.

2, Wind to hydrogen. Four projects took steps to use wind energy directly for ammonia and hydrogen production. In Nova Scotia, Canada, EverWind said it had applied for a 432 MW farm to supply electricity to a hydrogen and ammonia plant located on the coast which will export its output. In Japan, a much smaller scheme was announced that is intended to link wind farms with an electrolysis centre that will then supply hydrogen to a plant that reheats steel. A demonstrator scheme off the coast of Wales moved forward, intending to use electrolysers on a 10-15 MW floating wind turbine. Netherlands-based SwitcH2 said it had commissioned ABB to do much of the design for its floating hydrogen and ammonia vessel to be installed off the Portugese coast. Making hydrogen when grids are constrained offers a potential route to using 100% of a turbine’s output.

3, Data centre heat production. Expressed at its simplest, data centres turn electricity into heat. So the obvious way of heating homes is to transport that heat into buildings. Or, as in the case of the pilot scheme proposed by electricity distributor UK Power Networks, put micro data centres actually in the home. UKPN is using innovative technology from Thermify to provide low cost heat to at least 100 homes in England in an initial trial. In Geneva, a data centre operator said it would use a different approach, inserting 40 degree heat from a data centre into a heat pump and then directly into the local district heating network.

4, Carbon Capture. Carbon Centric opened its carbon capture plant at a waste incinerator in Norway, planning to extract about 10,000 tonnes a year of CO2. This is one of the first full–scale CO2 capture plants from a waste incinerator in the world. The company has previously claimed that the Shell Cansolv technology which is used at this plant can capture 90% of the carbon dioxide in the exhaust stream. (Other CCS projects have rarely achieved 50%). The ‘food-grade’ CO2 from the incinerator will reused rather than stored but the company’s next project, a much larger 32,000 tonne plant, will transport the gas permanently to Norway’s Northern Lights undersea storage.

5, Solar to hydrogen. Increasing interest is focused on the direct use of concentrated sunlight to make hydrogen. Madrid-based Hysun raised €3m cash from Equinor and other investors to build a full-scale prototype that employs a unique mixture of solar energy concentration and a metal catalyst that splits water. Although a long way from full commercialisation, this technology could produce a step change in the cost of hydrogen. The company proposes an eventual figure of $1/kg for a plant size of 9,000 tonnes a year, a fraction of the quoted cost for green hydrogen today.

6, Solar. PV provided 39% of all Californian power in the first half of 2025, up from 33% in the previous year. Fossil fuels only provided 26%, down from 32% in 2024. The rise in solar electricity was partly made possible by a 75% rise in battery storage. (It doesn’t seem a long time since California was having serious problems coping with midday solar peaks!) Globally, the International Energy Agency wrote that solar would represent 80% of the increase in renewables by 2030. Its figures suggest growth of about 3,500 GW of capacity for solar between 2025 and 2030, compared to a total installed amount of about 2,200 GW at the end of 2024. But overall the IEA forecasted a slight reduction in its expectations for global renewable installations as a result of changes in US policy and subsidy reductions in China.

7, Wave energy. Progress in capturing the energy in waves has been held back by the need for heavy and durable steel structures. Swedish company CorPower uses a much lighter approach that mimics the beating of a heart. It claims a five times lower weight per unit of power delivered. Over the summer it received a €40m grant to assist in building a farm of its innovative devices off the coast of northern Portugal. In recently produced analysis it argues that adding wave power to wind and solar will significantly cut the need for other renewables, reduce storage needs by 40% and cutting the Levelised Cost of Energy. However the numbers come from northern Scotland, an unrepresentatively favourable location. This is a technology that has taken a long time to take off and isn’t fully proven yet in commercial applications but nevertheless looks a plausible supplement to other renewables in high wave height locations. (Thanks to Rowland Elliott)

8, Metal organic frameworks (MOF). This year’s Nobel prize for chemistry went to researchers who developed the first MOFs. These are structures that contain tiny internal holes that can capture and store gases and liquids. One of the principal potential uses may be in carbon dioxide extraction. The CO2 is held by the MOF and then driven off by the application of heat so that it can be then stored. The crucial advantage of using MOFs compared to the standard amine chemistry is the far lower need for energy for disassociating the CO2, the largest single cost associated with conventional CCS. MOFs also still work effectively in conditions of high humidity, meaning the exhaust streams do not need to have their water extracted. One UK company working on the use of MOFs estimates a total cost of operation of $31 a tonne of CO2, a small fraction of the current cost of amine-based approaches such as that used by Climeworks.

9, Biofuels add to emissions. Respected think-tank Transport and Environment (T+E) released a study arguing that biofuels add significantly to world emissions because they cause ‘indirect land clearance and deforestation’. It suggests that biofuels result in 16% more GHGs than oil. In addition, biofuels manufacture requires 32 million hectares of land, about the area of Italy, and this is expected to rise to 52 million hectares by 2030. Currently this global area supplies about 4% of total transport fuel needs. If instead of making liquid fuels, the land was devoted to solar panels, only about 1 million hectares to generate the same amount of energy would be needed, about 3% of the current requirement. And because EVs are so much more energy efficient, the electricity produced would power about 1/3 of the world’s cars. (To be clear, this does not mean 1/3 of global vehicles, just cars).

10, Future electricity storage needs. Late August to mid- September saw high winds and good sun in Great Britain. Making the assumption that the country would achieve its ambitious 2030 targets for renewables, I looked at how much storage would be required to store all the clean electricity that would have been generated over this short period by the much larger amounts of wind and solar in 2030. Using the network operator’s figures for electricity use over the four weeks, I calculated that Great Britain would have generated at least 8 TWh of excess power, or roughly 10 days national consumption, and that was assuming all other sources of electricity were turned off, bar nuclear. Today’s installed grid batteries would have only been able to hold about 0.1% of this total, showing the urgent logic to develop very large scale storage.

Martyn1981

Couple of items from this week's newsletter that I thought were worth exploring a bit further. The first is item 6:

 PV provided 39% of all Californian power in the first half of 2025, up from 33% in the previous year. Fossil fuels only provided 26%, down from 32% in 2024. The rise in solar electricity was partly made possible by a 75% rise in battery storage.

That suggests that if PV rollout continued at the same level, then in 10yrs it could provide ~100% of all current leccy demand. Obviously I'm just extrapolting to the extreme, for fun, but I thought that was significant.

Also, the mention of storage is significant. 'The Duck Curve' is something often mentioned regarding Californian (and other similar sunny locations), with claims that it's a big and difficult problem to solve. PV generation drives down demand on the grid when generation is high, but grid demand pops back up as PV gen drops, and domestic demand peaks with folk returning home, and switching on A/C etc.

From the chart (I simply grabbed) you can see a demand drop of ~15GW. But the good news is that California already has ~16GW of battery storage. I'm not sure about the energy, but suspect most of that storage will be in the 1-4hr range. Californian storage is expected to rise to ~50GW by the 2040's. And falling costs for Li-ion batts are now leading to some installs around the world at 6-8hr economic roles.

So, to my eyes, it looks like they are already ahead of the curve ..... 





And secondly, item 9 bio-fuels. This is an important issue due to the FUD often pushed about using low grade farmland for PV farms. It may even be culture war level, just to stir animosity in the news.

For a fraction of the land used to grow bio-diesel, bio-ethanol etc, you would get vastly more transport miles for BEV's via PV generation. Just as an example, you could instead use some of that land for food, some for PV and some for reforestation, and still end up with vastly more road miles.

In reality, I suspect this is prime farmland, so using it for food, would free up more of the lower grade land, such as 3b typically used for PV in the UK, and again reforestation - and again result in far more food production too.

In the US, around 30m+ acres of land are used to grow corn-ethanol, that's about 1/3 of their corn land. This provides for about 5% of road fuel when mixed in. For a fraction of that land, and again, just as a fun example, PV would provide for 100% of the US's leccy demand, that's their entire leccy demand, and in an all electric future including 100% BEV road transport.

Farming uses land to convert solar energy into energy crops, so we might as well make the best use of it.

debitcardmayhem

@QrizB thanks for the WAPO LINK, oddly I thanked your post, then clicked the new Interesting button and it took away my thanks. Now that’s interesting 😎

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

Carbon Commentary newsletter from Chris Goodall.

1, Industrial heat pumps. Chemicals major BASF started work on a 50 MW heat pump that will provide approximately 190 degree steam for the production of formic acid at its Ludwigshafen factory. The initial heat for the pump will come from the cooling system of a steam cracking plant on the same site. BASF says the heat pump will reduce the emissions from the formic acid process by 98%, or 100,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. This is one of the largest heat pumps in the world, generating a temperature that is also at the top end of what is currently possible in a large installation.

2, Wind to hydrogen. Four projects took steps to use wind energy directly for ammonia and hydrogen production. In Nova Scotia, Canada, EverWind said it had applied for a 432 MW farm to supply electricity to a hydrogen and ammonia plant located on the coast which will export its output. In Japan, a much smaller scheme was announced that is intended to link wind farms with an electrolysis centre that will then supply hydrogen to a plant that reheats steel. A demonstrator scheme off the coast of Wales moved forward, intending to use electrolysers on a 10-15 MW floating wind turbine. Netherlands-based SwitcH2 said it had commissioned ABB to do much of the design for its floating hydrogen and ammonia vessel to be installed off the Portugese coast. Making hydrogen when grids are constrained offers a potential route to using 100% of a turbine’s output.

3, Data centre heat production. Expressed at its simplest, data centres turn electricity into heat. So the obvious way of heating homes is to transport that heat into buildings. Or, as in the case of the pilot scheme proposed by electricity distributor UK Power Networks, put micro data centres actually in the home. UKPN is using innovative technology from Thermify to provide low cost heat to at least 100 homes in England in an initial trial. In Geneva, a data centre operator said it would use a different approach, inserting 40 degree heat from a data centre into a heat pump and then directly into the local district heating network.

4, Carbon Capture. Carbon Centric opened its carbon capture plant at a waste incinerator in Norway, planning to extract about 10,000 tonnes a year of CO2. This is one of the first full–scale CO2 capture plants from a waste incinerator in the world. The company has previously claimed that the Shell Cansolv technology which is used at this plant can capture 90% of the carbon dioxide in the exhaust stream. (Other CCS projects have rarely achieved 50%). The ‘food-grade’ CO2 from the incinerator will reused rather than stored but the company’s next project, a much larger 32,000 tonne plant, will transport the gas permanently to Norway’s Northern Lights undersea storage.

5, Solar to hydrogen. Increasing interest is focused on the direct use of concentrated sunlight to make hydrogen. Madrid-based Hysun raised €3m cash from Equinor and other investors to build a full-scale prototype that employs a unique mixture of solar energy concentration and a metal catalyst that splits water. Although a long way from full commercialisation, this technology could produce a step change in the cost of hydrogen. The company proposes an eventual figure of $1/kg for a plant size of 9,000 tonnes a year, a fraction of the quoted cost for green hydrogen today.

6, Solar. PV provided 39% of all Californian power in the first half of 2025, up from 33% in the previous year. Fossil fuels only provided 26%, down from 32% in 2024. The rise in solar electricity was partly made possible by a 75% rise in battery storage. (It doesn’t seem a long time since California was having serious problems coping with midday solar peaks!) Globally, the International Energy Agency wrote that solar would represent 80% of the increase in renewables by 2030. Its figures suggest growth of about 3,500 GW of capacity for solar between 2025 and 2030, compared to a total installed amount of about 2,200 GW at the end of 2024. But overall the IEA forecasted a slight reduction in its expectations for global renewable installations as a result of changes in US policy and subsidy reductions in China.

7, Wave energy. Progress in capturing the energy in waves has been held back by the need for heavy and durable steel structures. Swedish company CorPower uses a much lighter approach that mimics the beating of a heart. It claims a five times lower weight per unit of power delivered. Over the summer it received a €40m grant to assist in building a farm of its innovative devices off the coast of northern Portugal. In recently produced analysis it argues that adding wave power to wind and solar will significantly cut the need for other renewables, reduce storage needs by 40% and cutting the Levelised Cost of Energy. However the numbers come from northern Scotland, an unrepresentatively favourable location. This is a technology that has taken a long time to take off and isn’t fully proven yet in commercial applications but nevertheless looks a plausible supplement to other renewables in high wave height locations. (Thanks to Rowland Elliott)

8, Metal organic frameworks (MOF). This year’s Nobel prize for chemistry went to researchers who developed the first MOFs. These are structures that contain tiny internal holes that can capture and store gases and liquids. One of the principal potential uses may be in carbon dioxide extraction. The CO2 is held by the MOF and then driven off by the application of heat so that it can be then stored. The crucial advantage of using MOFs compared to the standard amine chemistry is the far lower need for energy for disassociating the CO2, the largest single cost associated with conventional CCS. MOFs also still work effectively in conditions of high humidity, meaning the exhaust streams do not need to have their water extracted. One UK company working on the use of MOFs estimates a total cost of operation of $31 a tonne of CO2, a small fraction of the current cost of amine-based approaches such as that used by Climeworks.

9, Biofuels add to emissions. Respected think-tank Transport and Environment (T+E) released a study arguing that biofuels add significantly to world emissions because they cause ‘indirect land clearance and deforestation’. It suggests that biofuels result in 16% more GHGs than oil. In addition, biofuels manufacture requires 32 million hectares of land, about the area of Italy, and this is expected to rise to 52 million hectares by 2030. Currently this global area supplies about 4% of total transport fuel needs. If instead of making liquid fuels, the land was devoted to solar panels, only about 1 million hectares to generate the same amount of energy would be needed, about 3% of the current requirement. And because EVs are so much more energy efficient, the electricity produced would power about 1/3 of the world’s cars. (To be clear, this does not mean 1/3 of global vehicles, just cars).

10, Future electricity storage needs. Late August to mid- September saw high winds and good sun in Great Britain. Making the assumption that the country would achieve its ambitious 2030 targets for renewables, I looked at how much storage would be required to store all the clean electricity that would have been generated over this short period by the much larger amounts of wind and solar in 2030. Using the network operator’s figures for electricity use over the four weeks, I calculated that Great Britain would have generated at least 8 TWh of excess power, or roughly 10 days national consumption, and that was assuming all other sources of electricity were turned off, bar nuclear. Today’s installed grid batteries would have only been able to hold about 0.1% of this total, showing the urgent logic to develop very large scale storage.

10 is a weird one - when has net zero ever equated to zero curtailment?