The Alternative Green Energy Thread

JKenH

I came across this on Twitter

https://x.com/dcelal/status/1738333029339160694?s=20

QrizB

Good to see Kraken providing a service in exchange for those grid stability payments! (I'm guessing these are Intelligent Octopus Flux customers with GivEnergy batteries, at least in part?)

JKenH

Scary video on Twitter of a wind turbine losing its blades. The suggestion is it happened in Ayrshire in the recent high winds but AFAIAA it hasn’t been verified yet. 

https://twitter.com/Dedicated_Being/status/1740329649492885551

JKenH

This is what happens when we drive UK producers out of the North Sea. 

China behind some of North Sea’s dirtiest oil rigs

The China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), which operates the giant Buzzard oil field as well as three others, is under scrutiny after new data revealed it is burning large amounts of waste gas offshore. 

Figures released by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) show that CNOOC is responsible for “flaring” 65m cubic metres of waste gas a year.

CNOOC’s latest annual report said it wants to expand its North Sea investments: “Our UK strategy is to grow our existing North Sea production by identifying new sources of production and to continue to develop our existing assets. 

“We also want to develop new core areas through exploration in relatively unexplored areas on the North Sea basin.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/12/31/china-behind-some-of-north-seas-dirtiest-oil-rigs/

JKenH

Another example of how making a political stand rarely helps the environment and can damage your own energy security. Joe Biden’s decision to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline may backfire on him as Canada has almost completed its Trans Mountain pipeline enabling it to export to China and other Asian countries. Currently, more crude oil flows from Canada to the United States than to any other country by a wide margin, accounting for about four fifths of Canada’s total crude oil production. Canada is also the largest source of crude oil imports to the United States. Not a great strategic move. 

Canada’s Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion reportedly 95% complete

Work on Canada’s Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project is reportedly over 95% complete. When it comes onstream, the expansion will nearly triple the pipeline’s current 300,000 barrels per day (b/d) capacity to move crude oil from oil sands in landlocked Alberta to Canada’s Pacific Coast for export to new customers in Asia or along the U.S. West Coast. Although initially expected to come online early this year, the project could be delayed as much as two years by a recent ruling, according to the project’s owner. 

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61184#:~:text=When%20it%20comes%20onstream%2C%20the,along%20the%20U.S.%20West%20Coast.

JKenH

An unusually sensible article from Michael Barnard:

Gravity Storage 101 Or Why Pumped Hydro Is The Only Remotely Real Gravity Storage

So it’s time, once again, for the basics and a bunch of examples so that people can stop fantasizing about elevators, cranes or trains and focus on water and existing hills instead.

Let’s take the three Intelligent Land Investment sites in Scotland, including the Loch Ness Red John site that was recently sold to Norway’s Statkraft. They are designed to use lochs as their lower reservoir and turkey’s nest reservoirs on overlooking hills as upper reservoirs. Lots of water. Lots of height. Free water because it’s just sitting there in the lochs, waiting to be pumped uphill in a very low environmental impact way.

2.5 GW of power capacity. 60 GWh of energy capacity.

Tesla Megapacks can deliver about 2 MW of power. This is like 1,250 of them. They can store about 3.9 MWh of energy. This is like 15,000 of them.

Pumped hydro is the only real gravity storage solution because it uses a dirt cheap, high mass, easily pumped mass that finds its level automatically and uses existing geographical feature to create big height differences. Every other gravity storage solution is kids playing around in a sand box.

https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/16/gravity-storage-101-or-why-pumped-hydro-is-the-only-remotely-real-gravity-storage/

michaels

JKenH said:

Another example of how making a political stand rarely helps the environment and can damage your own energy security. Joe Biden’s decision to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline may backfire on him as Canada has almost completed its Trans Mountain pipeline enabling it to export to China and other Asian countries. Currently, more crude oil flows from Canada to the United States than to any other country by a wide margin, accounting for about four fifths of Canada’s total crude oil production. Canada is also the largest source of crude oil imports to the United States. Not a great strategic move. 

Canada’s Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion reportedly 95% complete

Work on Canada’s Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project is reportedly over 95% complete. When it comes onstream, the expansion will nearly triple the pipeline’s current 300,000 barrels per day (b/d) capacity to move crude oil from oil sands in landlocked Alberta to Canada’s Pacific Coast for export to new customers in Asia or along the U.S. West Coast. Although initially expected to come online early this year, the project could be delayed as much as two years by a recent ruling, according to the project’s owner. 

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61184#:~:text=When%20it%20comes%20onstream%2C%20the,along%20the%20U.S.%20West%20Coast.

Seems to me that for Canada/US to be a strategic supplier of energy to China would be a big win in terms of geo-politics as the Russia - Ukraine events proved, controlling the energy supply is a great position to be in...

JKenH

Port Talbot has been sacrificed to the angry god of net zero

Why? The high price of UK energy makes Port Talbot uncompetitive but other countries heavily subsidise their steelworks.

Ultimately, this human catastrophe is a political choice. Make no mistake; some 141,931 people (the population of greater Neath Port Talbot) have been sacrificed on the altar of net zero. That absurd and misanthropic creed which calls British workers losing their jobs “progress” while their carbon will now be emitted in India and China. 

Never mind that Nato has just warned there will be a war with Russia “in the next 20 years”. Clearly, this is the ideal moment for the UK to shut one of the best steel-making furnaces in the world, start producing “net zero steel” out of Steptoe and Son scrap, while importing the higher quality steel needed to make weapons from – Oh, dear! – our enemies and competitors. The only G7 nation with no first-class steel manufacturing – are they serious? You might almost get the impression the nation was run by a fifth column plotting its downfall. 

China opens new coal-powered power stations and thousands of Welsh working-class people have to take the hit for the obsessions of a millenarian cult. 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/19/port-talbot-has-been-sacrificed-to-the-angry-god-of-net-zer/

QrizB

Corrct me if I'm wrong, but the excerpt posted above opens by stating that "other countries heavily subsidise their steelworks" then goes on to point the blame at Net Zero. Our government's Net Zero goals are not, so far as I can tell, preventing the same government from subsidising Port Talbot.

"You might almost get the impression the nation was run by a fifth column plotting its downfall." The track record of the current administration speaks for itself on this point, and Port Talbot is just a footnote.

JKenH

QrizB said:

Corrct me if I'm wrong, but the excerpt posted above opens by stating that "other countries heavily subsidise their steelworks" then goes on to point the blame at Net Zero. Our government's Net Zero goals are not, so far as I can tell, preventing the same government from subsidising Port Talbot.

"You might almost get the impression the nation was run by a fifth column plotting its downfall." The track record of the current administration speaks for itself on this point, and Port Talbot is just a footnote.

Totally agree.

Edit: The problem with the government’s policy is that it is putting net zero ahead of our security and the economy. This article from the Guardian explains why we should be concerned. 

The government “fundamentally don’t understand the industry and the need for the ability to make primary steel”, she added.

That idea makes some in defence circles nervous: a Royal United Services Institute report this year worried that becoming “the biggest economy by far worldwide to have no significant domestic steelmaking capacity” could harm security and economic resilience.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/12/iron-resolve-steel-town-unites-to-fight-for-its-furnaces

Edit 2: one further quote from the Guardian article

Despite political differences, Dakin (former Labour MP),  Mumby-Croft (Tory MP) and the unions all agree they do not want the UK to lose the ability to produce its own liquid steel from iron ore. The global chaos in supply chains from the pandemic and the Ukraine war have made some governments think more about resilience of key materials and parts, and Russia is the dominant global supplier of iron.

Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, national officer for steel at the GMB union and a descendant of several generations of Scunthorpe steelworkers, said: “If we go to war with Russia, they’re not going to send us their pig iron, are they?”