Carbon Commentary newsletter
CARBON COMMENTARY NEWSLETTER
This is a weekly newsletter about low-carbon energy generation and efficiency. I summarise the blog posts I have published during the previous week and comment on news stories that have interested me in the last few days. Subscribe at www.carboncommentary.com.
Industry news
Things I noticed and thought were interesting
Week ending 25th September 2022
1, Demand management. Two indications in recent days that voluntary and unremunerated demand management is possible. On September 6th the Californian grid asked consumers via text message to reduce their use of electricity. Later analysis suggested that this request cut power consumption by about 4%, or 2 gigawatts, over the course of the next five critical hours. In France, a survey showed that more than 80% of people approved of limiting the winter heating temperature to 19 degrees in public buildings and in workplaces. 71% are prepared to hold their domestic heating below this temperature. In the face of unprecedented shortage of energy over the next months, and the continued risk of power outages, it would make sense for other countries to introduce voluntary demand reduction experiments.
2, Growth in hydrogen projects. Industry body, The Hydrogen Council, said that there are now 680 large-scale hydrogen projects around the world. It completed, they will cost $240 billion. The numbers are up 50% over the past ten months. But to keep on track for net zero by 2050, hydrogen investments will have to reach $700bn by 2030. This number seems huge but the Hydrogen Council comments that it is less than 15% of the investments made in upstream oil and gas over the last decade.
3, Low carbon train travel. Night trains across Europe are improving. Pioneering Austrian operator ÖBB released details of its beautiful new coaches for travel from Vienna to other countries. ÖBB says it will eventually run 33 of these trains. Travel prices are said to be comparable to air links. Increasing numbers of overnight trains are being scheduled across Europe. This month a new service started from Stockholm to Hamburg although it it does take 13 hours for the full trip. In the US, the Californian rail operator said it was buying four hydrogen trains from Stadler with an option to buy another 25. These will be the first hydrogen-powered rail units in the US and have a range of 500 miles/800 kilometres.
4, Electric cars. The IEA suggested that 13% of light vehicle sales in 2022 will be electric, making EVs, along with LED lighting, the only two of 55 its indices fully on track to meet its 2030 targets. José Pontes in Clean Technica said that 16% new cars in Germany are fully electric, with 14% France and 24% in the Netherlands. China is racing ahead; 30% of its new vehicles have an electric plug. Car rental company Sixt expects 70-90% of its fleet to be electric by 2030. The company stressed the importance of a previous car rental to consumers’ decisions, saying that nearly two thirds of customers see a rental as a good route to deciding whether to buy an EV. It’s just 11 months ago that Sixt launched its first offer for customers using EVs for transfers and urban rides.
5, Offshore wind. The Netherlands specified a target of 70 gigawatts of offshore wind in the North Sea by 2050. This will probably produce about 300 TWh of electricity, or two and a half times current Netherlands consumption. After the full electrification of vehicles and of heating, 2050 offshore wind production will probably cover at least two thirds of total energy needs. For comparison, the UK has a shallow water zone of roughly ten times the size, indicating a possible ceiling of around 700 gigawatts, which would be enough to comfortably cover its entire energy needs and provide substantial exports to the rest of Europe. Floating wind in deeper waters could provide even more power for the UK and the Netherlands.
6, E-fuels. Amazon said it was buying enough diesel from e-fuel supplier Infinium to cover 5 million miles of travel for its mid-range fleet in California. Although the retailer has stressed its commitment to electric vehicles, synthetic fuels from Infinium may represent an alternative, particularly before large numbers of electric trucks are available. But the company was very cagy about the price it will pay for a litre of Infinium’s fuel.
7, Hydrogen made at the wind turbine. French company Lhyfe started its pilot project to produce hydrogen directly from offshore wind turbines. It will begin by generating hydrogen at the quayside of the port of St Nazaire and then shift the electrolyser to a floating platform close to a wind turbine. The company claims that this will be the first time this has been achieved. Making hydrogen at such a site involves substantial technical challenges but similar projects are planned for several European offshore wind farms. Plug Power made the electrolyser.
8, Carbon storage from burning biomass. Drax, a large power station in northern England, burns wood pellets for fuel, providing about 7% of the UK’s electricity. It sources most of the 7 million tonnes of pellets from the southern states of the US. Whether these pellets are genuinely carbon neutral is often questioned, with critics saying that the power station actually adds substantially to global emissions because the trees that are burnt are not being fully replaced. Drax has recently committed to collecting the CO2 from pellet combustion and will store it permanently underground in a process known as BioEnergy Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). Although the project is at early stage, success would undeniably improve the carbon footprint of Drax’s output. Now Drax has promised it will start new BECCS projects in the US, aiming to capture 4 million tonnes a year by 2030 from other power projects. It announced this week that a UK business would be licenced to sell the ‘carbon credits’ relating to the stored CO2. I foresee another round of criticism that focuses on whether Drax’s carbon credits are genuine and whether they simply allow other CO2 emitters to continue to use fossil fuels.
9, Australia ammonia for Korea. Several large Korean industrial conglomerates came together to say that they will build sufficient renewables capacity in Australia to deliver 1 million tonnes of ammonia to their home country by 2032. This alone will require the installation of about 3 gigawatts of wind and solar at a project controlled by a subsidiary of Korea Zinc in Queensland. Details of the new plans are not complete but this looks to me like a carefully thought scheme with a clear project target that will create a full supply chain from Australian renewables to Korean electricity generation using ammonia as the carrier. The Korean government has indicated an intention of using almost 4 million tonnes of ammonia for power generation by 2030-35. I guess the idea will be widely copied by other Korean and Japanese entities seeking to create an energy supply for their countries sourced from Australia. This project is also a further important indication that very long distance trade in hydrogen will use ammonia as the carrier.
10, Namibia power-to-hydrogen-to-power. HDF Group, a French company that specialises in developing solar farms in developing countries with the capability to offer 24 hour reliable electricity, told us it has obtained authorisations to build a 85 megawatt plant in Namibia providing enough electricity for about 140,000 people. The solar farm will deliver electricity to the Namibian grid, converting surpluses to hydrogen which will later be turned back into electricity via fuel cells for use at night. The site will also have battery capacity. HDF says this will be the first power station in Africa using green hydrogen as its source of energy and the company is negotiating with several other countries around the world for similar projects. The company’s first power station combining solar and hydrogen in this way is under construction in French Guiana.
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