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 Newsletter 2nd October
1, Cheaper EVs. EVs are still expensive when compared to direct petrol equivalents in most markets. That’s partly because they are highly sophisticated machines, packed with gadgets and still difficult to assemble. Tata Motors has gone the other direction, endeavouring to produce an EV for the Indian market that comes closer to the prices of conventional cars. Its $10,000 new model moves well into the standard price range of the Indian market and represents a one third reduction on the cost of the next cheapest electric car. Of course China has EVs that are cheaper still and will eventually be exported in large quantities. In Europe, Citroen made a plausible attempt at a EV that begin to appeal to the widest market with the release of a concept vehicle that may retail at about €25,000 and offers up to 10 km travel per 1 kWh of power use, a radical improvement on the current industry average. But its appearance will take some time to get used to.
2. Regenerative agriculture. Pepsi and agricultural ingredients giant ADM launched a plan to convert about 800,000 hectares to ‘regenerative’ farming. This means reducing chemical inputs, minimising soil disturbance and ensuring that the ground is covered with growing plants for as much as the year as possible. The intention is to increase carbon storage in the soil and reduce fertiliser use, saving greenhouse gas emissions. This is a big project: 800,000 hectares is almost 3% of the total agricultural area of France. The ambition is to reduce net emissions/increase carbon storage by almost 2 tonnes a year per hectare. This is a tough target; 1 tonne is usually seen as achievable. Two things immediately strike me. First, if regenerative agriculture is done at a large enough scale, it could by itself bring many countries to close to ‘net zero’. But, second, that we still have very little knowledge of even how to measure soil carbon changes reliably.
3, Simple hydrogen manufacture. It may be that making hydrogen from water will not require electrolysis. Pure aluminium is sufficiently reactive to strip oxygen from water to make aluminium oxide, and giving off hydrogen. But the oxide coats the aluminium, blocking further reaction. Scientists at the University of California Santa Cruz have found a way of returning the aluminium to its pure state, making it available again for taking oxygen out of H20. The experiment uses gallium, a rare chemical element that is expensive but can be reused multiple times. No-one yet knows whether hydrogen can be produced at competitive costs using this approach. (Thanks to Thad Curtz)
4, Solar thermal. A new type of power station operates in the state of Victoria, Australia. It combines solar photovoltaics with an unusual type of thermal storage. PV can only capture a fraction of the energy from the sun. The rest can be turned into heat. In the Australian power plant it is stored as hot water for use when electricity is in short supply. This is then used to turn liquid ammonia into gas, turning a turbine to make power. This experiment is still at an early stage and has been very costly to create, implying a high price for the power it generates. But it does have the huge advantage of being able to deliver electricity when it is needed and may eventually be cheaper than batteries for long-term storage.
5, Australia power production. Last week’s newsletter covered the Korean plans for hydrogen exports from the state of Queensland in Australia. This week the state made a further impressive announcement about its wider decarbonisation plans. These include an intention to build the world’s largest pumped hydro station and commission enough solar capacity on rooftops to comfortably cover all electricity demand in the middle of the day. (South Australia already covers 100% of demand with rooftop solar occasionally). I was particularly struck by the intention to get a hydrogen gas turbine operating in a trial and to eventually convert the remaining coal-fired power stations to hydrogen. The Queensland statement is detailed and bold; other administrations around the world should follow
6, Finnish synthetic fuels. German investor Prime Capital said it had partnered with a Finnish developer to build 600 MW of renewables to power a green hydrogen and methane plant in Finland. The interesting aspect of this deal is the incorporation of synthetic methane (the main ingredient of natural gas) into the venture. The methane can be piped into existing networks, replacing Russian gas. But it will be 2026 before the first output comes to market.
7, Decarbonisation of aviation. Much excitement this week about the news of a short trial flight of the Eviation electric airplane in the US. This plane will offer emissions free flight for ranges typically of 150-250 miles (240-400 km) at a speed of around 300 miles/480 km per hour. The capacity seems to be 9 passengers but the key market may be short distance valuable freight. This is a major innovation but its significance should not be over-estimated. Even if all aviation up to 400 miles (620 km) was electrified, not just small passenger aircraft, it would reduce aviation emissions by only about 9%. Realistically, small electric passenger planes will only ever have a marginal impact on greenhouse gases from aviation. An article in Nature points out that using low carbon aviation fuels, such as synthetic kerosene made from green hydrogen, will reduce CO2 emissions (and should result in small fare increases of around 15%). However the extra greenhouse effect arising from non-CO2 impacts of burning fuels at high altitude will prove much more difficult to remove, with the Nature study commenting that its best case only sees a reduction of around a half to two thirds of these effects.
8, CO2 capture. Belgium and Denmark agreed to cooperate on Project Greensand, an important carbon capture project. The petrochemicals giant INEOS is at the centre of the scheme. CO2 will be collected at the company’s Zwijndrecht plant in Belgium, which makes an important raw material for the plastics and other industries. The intention is to then compress the CO2 and insert it into sealed shipping containers at 5 degrees Celsius. The containers will be taken by truck to the port of Antwerp, loaded onto a platform supply vessel and then taken to INEOS’s Nini oil platform off the Danish coast. The Nini field will have been converted from oil and gas production to carbon storage of up to 8 million tonnes a year. At the platform the CO2 from the containers will be piped into the old reservoir. There is much to admire about this project but the cost and complexity of the scheme make it look almost impossibly difficult. It cannot make good financial sense to move large quantities of compressed CO2 in relatively small shipping containers over long distances before piping it into the ground.
9, US solar. Berkeley Lab produced its exceptionally informative annual summary of developments in solar in the US. (The full report can be found as a PDF at the bottom of the web page). Among the findings were a) the average levelised cost of solar in the US – before tax credits - is now $33 a MWh, down an average of 16% a year since 2010 b) the solar electricity price is now ‘often competitive’ with wind and ‘with the cost of burning fuel in existing gas-fired generators’ c) utility-scale solar now produces 3.9% of US electricity from about 150 GW of capacity d) the queue of solar projects waiting for connection is now 674 GW, or four and a half times current installed solar farms e) About 40% of these schemes propose to include on-site batteries f) about 90% of new installations in 2021 used some form of tracking of the sun’s position and the use of trackers increases the capacity factor of the solar farm by 5% (thus increasing from, for example, 20% to 25%).
10, Electric trucks. At last week’s major industry show in Hannover, Germany, Volvo Trucks did not exhibit a single non-electric vehicle. Reports say that the exhibition was dominated by electric trucks from all manufacturers. Scepticism about the future of battery long-distance freight is evaporating. One news report said ‘it was hard to spot a diesel burner .. in the show’.
Subscribe to this weekly newsletter at www.carboncommentary.com.