1, Electrifying mining vehicles. 70+ tonne mining vehicles will be complex to electrify. Not only do these trucks work long hours each day, making charging more difficult, but the enormous weight of the batteries reduces the carrying capacity of the vehicle. Nevertheless, some manufacturers have concluded that electric power is a viable way forward. Caterpillar announced that it would work with CRH, North America’s largest producer of aggregates, to trial new electric trucks as well as providing the charging infrastructure. This is Caterpillar’s first such agreement.
2, Synthetic aviation fuel. Infinium, one of the prospective participants in the synthetic fuels industry, said it was planning a factory in Norway. Very low cost electricity for making hydrogen is a principal requirement for making low-carbon fuel and northern Norway provides this. The CO2 also needed will be provided by plants sited on a nearby industrial park. US-based Infinium now has planned projects in most large European countries and over a dozen around the world. But its assertion this week that its proposed Norwegian plant will be the first in that country will have surprised Norsk e-Fuel, one of the pioneers in the synthetic fuel business, which hopes to have its first plant operating in northern Norway by 2026 not far from the proposed Infinium site.
3, Decarbonisation of high temperature heat industries. Electricity can probably be used directly for industrial requirements up to about 1000 degrees (although, as in note 9, heat pumps can only manage much lower temperatures). Several large industries, such as porcelain-making and glass manufacture, need hotter kilns. This will mean burning hydrogen, although it is often not a simple matter to switch away from natural gas. For example, hydrogen doesn’t radiate heat when combusting, which may make ceramics manufacture more difficult. A large project to use ‘blue’ hydrogen with carbon capture to make glass in the north-west of England took a step forward by achieving permission for construction this week. The plant will produce a stream of hydrogen with an energy value of over a gigawatt when completed in 2028. That equates to about a quarter of million tonnes of H2 a year. Recent weeks have seen large reductions in estimates of the volumes of hydrogen needed globally to fuel the transition. I question whether these new forecasts accurately calculate the H2 needed for steel and for the other industries, such as ceramics, needing more than 1000 degrees.
4, Carbon capture efficiencies. The project in note 3 is said to assume that 97% of the CO2 produced in the hydrogen manufacturing process will be captured and stored. This is an aggressively optimistic assumption. No existing CCS site has achieved capture rates remotely close to this level. Another ‘blue’ hydrogen project was announced last week in the Netherlands, with Norway’s Equinor working with industrial gas company Linde to also produce a quarter million tonnes of the gas. The CO2 storage location isn’t specified but Equinor will probably be using the Northern Lights saline aquifers project in the Norwegian North Sea. This project targets a 95% CO2 capture rate, also well above what has historically been possible around the world. High carbon capture rates require larger amounts of energy to be used, adding to the cost burdens of CCS.
5, The market for the Netherlands hydrogen. Steelmaker ThyssenKrupp put out a call for tenders for hydrogen for its huge works at Duisburg, Germany, the biggest plant in Europe. This steelworks would be a natural customer for the hydrogen mentioned in note 4. A year ago, ThyssenKrupp bought a 12 kilometre gas pipeline link on the Dutch/German border from RWE. That connection now provides a direct future route from Eemshaven, the location of the proposed Netherlands hydrogen facility, to Duisburg.
6, Modular EV architecture. Major manufacturers are developing single designs for the chassis of electric vehicles. Many different types of car or van will use the platform. Korean manufacturer Kia showed an architecture which enables an EV to be switched quickly between the configuration for a taxi, perhaps to be used during the day, and a delivery van, perhaps for night-time work. Kia is also partnering with Uber to offer a tailored car suitable for drivers offering ride-hailing. Journalists digging into Ford’s next range of electric vehicles noted that it appears to be developing a standard chassis and software which can be used to offer a wide range of different vehicle types. This follows similar announcements from General Motors and the Chinese battery manufacturer CATL. The overriding aim of this trend towards single EV platforms is to reduce costs by standardising components and manufacturing processes. (Thanks to Gage Williams)
7, On the other hand, EV proponents were discomfited by the decision of Hertz to sell 20,000 of its EVs – about one third of its fleet - and exchange them for internal combustion engine cars. It seems that the repair costs of electric vehicles, whether used for short-term rentals or leased to Uber drivers, are higher than expected and demand is more limited.
8, The cost of electrolysers. A recent paper estimated the steepness of the learning curve for the three main types of electrolyser, using a database that tracks the cost of hydrogen projects since 2000. The paper suggests a slope of around 15% for each doubling of installed electrolyser volumes, very roughly comparable to what we have seen for solar PV and lithium ion batteries. The authors, including noted researchers who have been following the development of hydrogen for several years, suggest that by 2030 electrolyser costs should fall well below $300 a kilowatt, compared to at least $900 a kilowatt today. This decrease means that the cost of green hydrogen will be increasingly dominated by the price of electricity. (These forecasts are of course dependent on the rate of electrolyser installation). The continued higher prices for solid oxide machines are balanced by their striking increases in the efficiency of hydrogen production. Less and less electricity will be needed to make a kilo of H2 across all electrolyser types with the paper stating that solid oxide ‘electrolyzers are likely to approach the theoretical optimum of 33 kWh per kg towards the end of this decade’. Many analyses of the future economics of hydrogen fail to incorporate the reductions in the electricity that will be required.
9, Heat pumps for industry. Conventional heat pumps for heating domestic homes don’t deliver a high enough temperature for most industrial applications. In late 2022 Nestlé put out a request for the development of heat pumps that can provide temperatures up to 200 degrees and also use low global warming potential refrigerants, such as CO2 or ammonia. The role in food manufacturing is particularly clear because most factories have a variety of heating and cooling needs which heat pumps can service symbiotically. Several heat pumps have been recently installed across Nestlé factories that show the potential for large reductions in energy use. Last week German heat pump supplier GEA said it will install its high temperature heat pumps, which can take water up to 95 degrees, in a Nestlé infant milk factory in the Netherlands. 200 degrees is still a long way off but extensive use of heat pumps will significantly reduce emissions in food factories.
10, Capital requirements for the transition. One potential obstacle to decarbonisation is the amount of capital required. Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) brought out a report that showed that the required investment in renewables necessary to achieve the targets set out in the core IEA scenarios rises from about $1.1 trillion in 2023 to around $1.8 trillion in 2030 (about 2% of current global GDP). This represents a 7% yearly increase, compared to average 6% annual growth rates since 2015. Falling requirements for fossil fuel investment under the IEA scenarios mean that the net amount of new capital required across all energy sources only rises by 2% per annum until 2030, or less than the expected growth in global GDP. RMI concludes ‘The key now is to ensure that capex moves from generation to grids, and from developed markets to emerging markets. The primary impediments to change are policy and expertise rather than the volume or availability of capital.’
11, ‘Grid forming’ batteries. The new 185MW/565MWh installation at Kapolei near Honolulu in Hawai’i offers grid support capabilities that match conventional fossil fuel plants. The Kapolei batteries provide what is known as inertia, as well as the capacity to start up when the rest of the grid is non-operative and an extremely fast response time when stabilising the AC frequency. The developers claim the project is the most advanced battery system in the world and a ‘postcard from the future’. The installation will allow the Hawai’i grid to incorporate 10% more renewables than at present, the owner says. Battery systems like this will eventually allow grids to entirely run on renewable sources. Other large utilities are copying the approach. For example, AGL in Australia recently announced a larger battery with similar features, also to be built near to the site of a recently closed coal-fired power station. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency is part-funding the batteries saying that ‘we’ll.. need these new batteries to provide the crucial system security services that are currently provided by .. traditional generators’.
In reading about the Nestle's requirement to displace steam raised by fossil fuel boilers and wanting to use high temperature (200C) heat pumps (which don't exist - yet), wondered if folks had seen what Caldera Heat Batteries have been developing in this space? https://www.caldera.co.uk/
High temperature thermal stores, taking low carbon electricity (e.g. at night or direct from on-site renewables) to heat the store and releasing the heat on demand as steam for industrial processes. This will meet Nestle's needs!