Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

NedS

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82150234#Comment_82150234

Just a shame we are not able to do anything similar in the UK, as the DNO's own and operate substations and their operating licence does not permit them to own or operate any generating equipment (including BESS), only to distribute. There is a complete lack of joined-up thinking in the UK with too many disparate groups involved in our energy systems. You'd think DESNZ could sort the mess out, but apparently not (feeling frustrated).

Martyn1981

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82150790#Comment_82150790

Yep, frustrated here too, ever since you explained this issue to me. I've been passionate about the idea of sub station batts, and all the benefits they could bring (such as greater PV export limits), for many years.

Maybe this idea/shift in Germany will prompt a review in the UK. More PV allowed for the summer, and a way to store excess winter wind. Plus shifting it at night when demand on the transmission network (and the distribution network) is lower.

Martyn1981

Carbon Commentary newsletter from Chris Goodall:

1,Electricity or hydrogen for heavy trucks?

Watch a video of Tobias Wagner (@electrictrucker) describe his itinerary for a one year trip around the world in a Daimler electric truck. This astonishing German trucker want to prove to a sceptical world that batteries can power even the heaviest road vehicles. He’s driven hundreds of thousands of kilometres in electric trucks around Europe and from today, Sunday 25th September, takes on the challenge of driving to China, Australia and then from north to south America.
But even as Tobias heads east, the major manufacturers have decided to focus renewed attention on trucks powered by hydrogen, not batteries. They announced last week a plan to expand the number of hydrogen refuelling stations and deploy 800 trucks. Have they not noticed that latest data indicates that nearly 30% of heavy duty trucks in China are already electric and the percentage is growing rapidly? That battery truck exports from China rose 800% in the most recent period? Don’t they see the analogy with the rapid incursion of reasonably priced EVs into the European market over the last few years? Batteries will probably dominate all forms of road transport within a decade or so and only determined electrification now will slow China’s incursion into overseas markets. (Thank you to Andrew Wainwright)

2,Polyester recycling still a small fraction of virgin plastic production, and percentage share falling slightly.

World production of textile fibres rose about 6% in 2025. The industry provided about 17 kilos of fibre per person, double the level of 1975. Polyester dominated production, staying at just under 60% of fibre output and producing about 1-2% of global emissions. Only about 12% of textile fibre output came from recycled polyester, predominantly from plastic bottles. Full textile to textile recycling is still a tiny fraction of production at about three quarters of one per cent, although this has risen slightly in recent years. As I commented in the last newsletter, the textile industry has made little progress towards decarbonisation or shaving the growth of fibre manufacture.

3,How much does the world need to spend on grids?

The latest International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) report showed that the rate of investment in electricity transmission and storage will need to approximately double to meet the 2030 targets set at the 2023 COP. The world spent about $525 bn on power storage and grids in 2025 and this will have to rise to over a trillion by 2030, or somewhat under 1% of global GDP. In addition, investment in renewables will have to triple from 2025 levels to substantially more than 1% of global GDP. IRENA also pointed out that energy efficiency gains remain disappointing slow, running at about 1.7% a year compared to the 4% it says is needed. With average global GDP growth running above 3%, energy demand is continuing to rise.

4,Rapid growth in the number of Sustainable Aviation Fuel projects using clean hydrogen (eSAF)

The last weeks have seen a striking number of deals that will expand the availability of eSAF over the next few years. Of course the amounts still only cover a small fraction of total fuel needs for aviation but the trend is clearly upward. Danish startup Arcadia eFuels and Uniper signedan agreement in which Uniper commits to buying 40,000 tonnes of eSAF, or over 50% of Arcadia’s output from a proposed factory in Denmark.Verso, a French company, will use a biomass electricity plant in Normandy as the source of its CO2. It has signed an agreement with Q8 but volumes and prices weren’t disclosed. In South Africa, Phelen Green said it had reached a final investment decision on a 35,000+ tonne eSAF plant. Multiple global buyers backed Infinium’s plant in Texas with long-term purchase commitments for 100,000 tonnes a year. It does look as though the EU’s rules obliging increasing percentages of SAF in aviation fuel are succeeding at developing the industry.

5,How much underground hydrogen is there, and how much is it likely to cost?

An article in Nature indicatesthat $500m has been committed by venture capitalists to explore for the hydrogen produced by natural chemical processes and which has accumulated underground. (This figure is probably a significant underestimate; Kolama, a US company raised $400m on its own to fund US, Australia and Philippines exploration). One study suggested that many trillions of tonnes could be present underground, although only a small fraction of this could be mined economically. Current hydrogen demand is about 100 million tonnes a year, but this will rise as H2 replaces fossil fuels in some applications. A French entrepreneur working in the area suggests that underground exploration companies are aiming for costs as low as $1/kg (about 3 US cents per kWh), a figure that is far lower than today’s natural gas prices and a fraction of current green hydrogen levels. He also says that France has several regions where exploration is likely to be particularly productive.

6,The largest European agrivoltaics plant was completed

A 227 MW site across 400 hectares in Sicily combines agricultural plots with solar panels raised 3m above the ground. The developer has also planted 38,000 trees and constructed 14 wells. It promises over 4 tonnes of honey production in addition to conventional crops.
Amazon has contracted to buy 2/3 of the power output from this scheme. This scheme is probably one of the largest in the world outside China and demonstrates the increasing viability of mixed food and solar power production.

7,Support in UK declining for Net Zero

A UK opinion survey showed that public support for ‘Net Zero’ has fallen below 50%. In 2019, 60% approved but only 46% now. The fall has been concentrated in those ‘strongly approving’ of the policy with support nearly halving to 15%. 28% now ‘neither approve nor disapprove’, up from 22%, while the percentage disapproving has risen from 8% to 19% since 2019. Nevertheless, the slow march for net zero continues and this week Germany’s cabinet reaffirmed its 2045 target in a formal roadmap of how it intends to achieve fossil fuel phaseout. Features include 70 gigawatts of offshore wind, up from 10 GW today and 400 GW of solar power, more than tripling today’s figure. The country is looking at closing all coal power stations by 2035 rather than the current 2038 target.

8,Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) investments

Brazil is the focus of large scale projects to use crushed rocks on farmland to capture carbon dioxide. ERW can also significantly raise agricultural outputs. Very fine grains of rocks such as basalt react with the carbon dioxide in rainfall, ultimately resulting in greater carbon storage in oceans. Terradot announced it had contracted with Google to capture a million tonnes of CO2 in rice growing areas in southern Brazil by 2040. In addition, periodic drainage of the rice paddies will cut methane emissions substantially. (Rice cultivation is a major source of CH4 emissions).
Another leading competitor, InPlanet, said it had obtained financing for ERW across Brazilian farmland that will remove nearly 30,000 tonnes by 2028. InPlanet has already spread 200,000 tonnes of crushed basalt dust and until the new Terradot deal was the largest competitor in ERW. High temperatures and raised humidity increase the speed of CO2 capture by rock dust making Brazil a logical leader in the new industry.

9,Plant-based diets are to the food system what EVs are to transport.

A petrol car converts around 20% of the energy in its fuel into motion. Protein in food from chickens similarly only contains about 20% of the protein that had been ingested by the bird. But an EV converts about 85% of its electricity into motion and, similarly, a plant-based diet also gives approximately 85% of the protein to the eater. (I saw this comparison in a posting by Prof. Paul Behrens).

10,Some responses from readers to the previous newsletter.

I wrote about a process for obtaining hydrogen from breaking down plastics. (Note 2). Marc Muré wrote to estimate that the weight of H2 arising from this process would be as little as 2% of the original waste. I hadn’t put an estimate in the note and after research I conclude that Marc is correct. In Note 1 of the same newsletter I wrote that although sodium ion batteries are heavier than lithium equivalents, one Chinese manufacturer will use these batteries for the low voltage applications in one of its ranges of cars. A reader wrote to say in that CATL was already claiming energy density equivalence between lithium and sodium ion batteries and therefore that hybrid battery packs would probably be a technological dead-end. He concluded that sodium ion will probably be the dominant battery type across a wide range of applications including EVs.

QrizB

(This probably fits here better than the main Energy forum, but it's not entirely clear-cut.)

Ars Technica has an interesting article about a demand-response system that runs in New York City, using Bluetti power stations to time-shift electrical demand for plug-in air conditioning.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/10/how-i-kept-cool-with-nycs-free-battery-program-for-window-ac-units/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

I've been looking at these for car camping use (the other option is to buy an EV with V2L, but that's a bit spendy). The Bluetti units have an option in the app to time-shift loads, and it looks like the NYC scheme uses some sort of central server to coordinate it.

silverwhistle

I've been looking at these for car camping use (the other option is to buy an EV with V2L, but that's a bit spendy).

I wouldn't buy a car just for that, I agree, ;-) but having had a car for 4 years with V2L, discovered after I bought it, it's proved very useful. My GF has just bought a newish Stellantis van for her business and although not a requirement was disappointed it didn't have it.

Martyn1981

This week's Carbon Commentary newsletter from Chris Goodall.

Once again, I've had to reformat most of it, and apologise for any errors I've missed.

No 6 is intresting/contraversial. I have my doubts regarding the lasr paragraph, but never say never.

1,Battery swapping in China.

Battery swapping numbers continued their rise over the recent Chinese holidays. Premium carmaker NIO reported 183,000 swaps on October 5 at its 4,000+ stations, implying about 45 battery changes a site in one day. To put this in context, the number of EVs in China is approximately 44 million but only a very small fraction of these cars are engineered to allow battery swaps. However the recent announcement of a financing of NIO’s battery charging by its larger competitor Geely and the joint development of a swapping network suggests the possibility of faster future growth in the number of EVs with swappable batteries.

2,Geothermal progress.

The first of three geothermal blocks at Fervo’s Cape Station plant started delivering power to the Utah grid. The other two are planned to open within a few months, providing a total of 100 MW. This is the first utility scale enhanced geothermal plant in the world. (‘Enhanced’ means the pores in the deep rock are widened using a fracking-like technique). Fervo plans further development at this site, bringing an additional 400 MW onstream by 2028 and eventually increasing output to a total of 900 MW. I’d guess long term cost targets are probably around $60-70/MWh, a competitive figure even with solar in reasonable sunny places. And Fervo’s plant will operate 24/7 of course. In Austria, Wien Energie gave a very optimistic update on its deep geothermal, saying it hoped its wells might provide district heating to around 25,000 homes. Further developments may eventually raise this figure to around 200,000 Vienna households by 2040.

3,Renewables growth in Germany.

Renewables provided over 60% of electricity in Germany in the first nine months of this year, with solar alone responsible for 24%. Renewable production was up 9% on the same period in 2025. After falling in recent years, electricity use in Germany now appears to be rising, perhaps driven by AI. In many countries rising renewables production will now struggle to match the sharp growth in data centre use and rapidly rising EV penetration.

4,Steps forward on CCS.

Owned by oil companies, Northern Lights transports CO2 from source locations to permanent storage under the North Sea, 100km from Norway. In addition to its six existing customers, including the Brevik cement works, the business announced that from 2029 it will be storing 200,000 tonnes of emissions a year from a Swedish waste-to-energy plant. (The biological source of about half of this waste will mean a net extraction of CO2 as a result of this storage).
The current planned capacity of the Northern Lights reservoir is 5 million tonnes a year, a small fraction of the emissions of the surrounding countries. In UK waters, the Liverpool Bay CCS project completed the world’s first platform that will distribute CO2 to undersea pipelines that will take it for storage in depleted gas fields. An impressively quick achievement but, once again, the maximum 4.5 million tonnes a year that will be stored is not a significant fraction of UK emissions. And, as usual, we’re given no cost details whatsoever on either project.

5,Solar provides a third of Pakistan power.

Prof. Jan Rosenow and his colleagues wroteabout the unprecedented rapid growth of solar power in Pakistan. PV provided about 2% of the country’s electricity in 2019 but more than 35% in February 2026. In 2025, Pakistan was the largest importer of Chinese solar panels in the world, behind only the Netherlands.
While the rapid uptake of PV is good news for householders able to afford an installation, the growth of domestic solar undermines the economics of the transmission and distribution companies. A kilowatt hour coming from the grid includes a fee to cover the cost of transmission lines and so a switch to home solar eventually increases the burden that has to be paid by other customers not able to install panels. (In an unrelated development in the last few weeks, California finally allowed plug-in solar. The only significant opposition came from the electricity company which pointed out that those homes without solar will now pay more for the cost of electricity as transmission costs are shared among fewer customers).

6, A plan for a hydrogen pipeline from north Africa to Europe.

Those who think the interest in hydrogen has permanently deflated should look at Germany. Although progress is far less rapid than I expected five years ago, the country continues to develop networks and industrial use for H2. In one development this week, the governments of five countries signed an early stage agreement to examine building a pipeline from Algeria through Tunisia into Sicily and then northwards across Italy to Austria and Germany. The pipeline would carry about 4 million tonnes of hydrogen a year with an energy value equivalent to over 20% of Germany’s electricity. The cost of the link is estimated at around €13bn, or barely enough to buy a full-sized nuclear power station.
I continue to say loudly to anyone who will listen that a large fraction of European energy needs will eventually come from hydrogen made in north Africa and transported by pipeline.

7,Green Korea

South Korea launched an impressively systematic programme for industrial decarbonisation, focusing on industries such as steel and chemicals but also pushing for innovation in sectors such as solar panel manufacture. This is how state industrial policy should work. A core component of the announcement was confirmation of metals producer POSCO’s intention to build a 300,000 tonne hydrogen steel plant using its proprietary technology by 2028. POSCO then plans to extend the decarbonisation to other parts of the steel industry as well as to steel consuming industries.

8,Batteries beat open cycle gas turbines.

Analysts at Wood Mackenzie wrotethat four hour battery storage is now cheaper than operating open cycle gas turbines to meet peak power needs in every major market in the world. ‘Gas turbine shortages and rising fuel volatility are driving up peaking costs, while expanding battery manufacturing continues to push storage costs down.’ The analysts forecast further cost declines in batteries although they predict a lithium supply crunch in 2029.

9,SMR nuclear plant approval in Tennessee.

After working to the much shorter timescale mandated by President Trump, the Nuclear Regulatory Authority gave construction approval for the first GE Vernova 300MW SMR in the US. (A group of these reactors is already being built in Canada) This decision appears to give the BMRX a lead in the global race to establish a dominant SMR. But the applicant, the Tennessee Valley Authority, was clear that construction will not start until financial backing is obtained.
It wrote: ‘TVA continues negotiations with industry partners to ensure responsible cost sharing and financial accountability throughout design and construction’. The TVA went to say ‘Our priority is ensuring the people of the Valley do not shoulder the costs of first‑of‑a‑kind technology that benefits the nation and world’. The concern is understandable: when the BMRX was being designed, the target was a cost of $700m but recent estimates suggest a figure of over $5bn, implying an electricity cost of perhaps $105/MWh or more.
TVA’s customers won’t appreciate that addition to their bills so some form of subsidy is inevitable.

10,A more optimistic view of the future of meat substitutes

We’ve seen a clear fall in consumer interest in plant-based meat substitutes. However a number of European alternative protein companies have nevertheless raised money in recent months. Venture capitalists continue to see a longer-term future for non-meat-based foods. One example is Edonia, a French company that appears to have found a way to give spirulina (from blue-green algae) a taste and a texture that is attractive to consumers. It also has more protein than meat. It raised €15m from investors and claims substantial interest from food manufacturers.
We’ll eventually see a wide variety of non-animal foods that are cheaper and better tasting than meat, but with a tiny carbon footprint.

michaels

Couple of questions raised:

6) Where is the North African Hydrogen coming from

8) If batteries drive gas out of the peaker market what does that mean for the UK electricity price being driven by the gas price. (I assume by then the govt will have managed to lock us into high fixed price contracts)

QrizB

6) Where is the North African Hydrogen coming from

Presumably PV and wind, much as was proposed for Xlinks.

8) If batteries drive gas out of the peaker market what does that mean for the UK electricity price being driven by the gas price

This is pretty much what's already planned. We're building large BESS sites to take advantage of daily renewables surpluses and fill in any shortfalls for the evening peak. It just takes time. I guess we won't really see the benefits for another 3-4 years.

Martyn1981

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82166691#Comment_82166691

Batteries have been winning the fight for peaker contracts for some time, typically displacing diesel farms. And more recently winning contracts v's OCGT (open cycle gas turbine).

But that's not the gas generation I think you are thinking off, IYSWIM.

Typically, it's the cost of 'normal' gas generation from CCGT (combined cycle gas generation, using steam turbines (same as nuclear and coal) v's OCGT which is effectively a jet engine with a driveshaft) that determines the price of leccy. OCGT is only needed when the UK's whole CCGT fleet is in use. [Caveat, probably also where unusual localised issues exist, such as a CCGT powerstation breakdown or such.]

OCGT is cheaper and quicker to build/deploy, and faster in response time. But less efficient at 35% to 45% v's 50% to 60% for CCGT.

So RE and batteries displacing FF peaker roles is a great thing, but probably doesn't impact normal daily generation rates that much. Remember that peaker contracts typically involve annual payments for 'being ready', as actual generation income may be small/irregular.

However …… because nothing is ever simple! Folk may remember me posting a few years ago, some industry ideas/suggestions - that in the medium to longer term in the UK, as gas generation continues to decline, that OCGT may displace some CCGT generation for 'normal' gas generation. The idea here being that as the scale and frequency of gas generation falls, it may be cheaper to maintain and operate a fleet of faster responding OCGT than the current CCGT fleet. Currently the UK CCGT fleet is probably around 10x the capacity of the OCGT fleet.

So a balance/battle between CAPEX (smaller, faster, cheaper OCGT) and OPEX (more efficient CCGT).

I've no idea what will happen, but I'm enjoying the show.