Carbon Commentary newsletter

1, Low carbon clothing fibres. Spiber is a Japanese company that makes a clothing fibre from what is termed a ‘brewed protein’. Plant materials are fermented to make a textile fibre that can eventually be easily recycled back into a usable protein. (There’s a section on Spiber in Possible, including a nice photograph of a lovely outdoor jacket). It has just raised another $70 million to continue its work with clothing suppliers around the world. 15 Japanese and international brands now cooperate with Spiber to develop clothing based on its fermented proteins. Spiber emphasises that its recycling techniques can potentially process all plant based fibres, such as cotton. It also stresses the importance to the clothing industry of avoiding mixtures of plant fibres and polyester and other plastics made from oil, making recycling much more difficult than it needs to be. Clothing design has to bear in mind the need to avoid mixing materials that cannot be recycled together.

2, Another brewed protein, this time for food. Solar Foods opened its first factory in Vantaa, a city in the Helsinki region. (The same city that will install the world’s largest heat battery, as featured in a recent newsletter). The company has been making small quantities of a protein suitable for adding to foods, such as meat alternatives or vegan ice cream, for several years from green electricity, hydrogen and single cell microbes. So far only Singapore has actively encouraged its use in foods but the company expects European and US permission soon. Entry into the US is targeted for late 2024. The new Finnish factory, Solar Foods says, will make about 160 tonnes of its Solein product a year, equivalent to the protein output of a 300 cow dairy farm but with a tiny environmental impact and very limited land use. The inputs to the Solein process are just carbon dioxide, oxygen, hydrogen and small amounts of other nutrients used to feed the microbe.

3, Climeworks strategy change. Direct Air Capture specialist Climeworks shifted its approach. It will now sell carbon credits for non-DAC projects alongside its existing business of asking customers to pay money to remove CO2 directly from the air. Its proposition is that it will provide buyers with guarantees of high quality carbon removal using techniques such as biochar and enhanced rock weathering. This is a surprising change of strategy for the world’s best known DAC specialist. I assume that the company is finding it difficult to provide sufficient volumes of CO2 removal certificates from its present and future DAC plants in Iceland and elsewhere. Climeworks probably believes it can fund its expansion more rapidly by also selling credits from providers of ‘nature-based’ carbon extraction techniques. But the change in approach must also raise the question of whether the company has come to recognise that its industrial technology may continue to be significantly more costly than other genuine carbon capture routes, such as biochar, which are promising prices that are a small fraction of Climeworks.

4, Interconnection queues. In November of last year the International Energy Agency said that about 1,500 GW of renewable energy projects around the globe were unable to connect to local grids. That’s about 5 times the renewables capacity that was added globally in 2022. But a new report suggests that the queue in the US alone is this size in early 2024 with over 900 GW added to the waiting list in 2023. If the projects in the queue were connected, it might provide a third of US electricity needs.  While many of the projects will never be built, the delays to those that are eventually constructed continues to increase. The typical project actually constructed in 2023 had been in the queue for 5 years, up from an average of 3 years in 2015. This situation is replicated in many countries around the world.

5, Green steel. Austrian manufacturer Voestalpine said it had produced its first steel for roller bearings from hydrogen direct reduced metal. Quantities weren’t specified but this announcement is important because it suggests that manufacturers are confident that they are able to produce even the strongest and most corrosion resistant steels using hydrogen. As with several other manufacturers, Voestalpine is switching from using blast furnaces to installing hydrogen direct reduction to make iron, combined with new electric arc furnaces to turn that product into different types of steels.

6, More on green steel. Nippon Steel, the huge Japanese steel maker, will experiment with hydrogen use, probably partly because of the potentially adverse impact of the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism which will impose tariffs on high carbon imports. CBAM is having a demonstrable effect encouraging heavy industry that wants to import into the EU to move to low carbon technologies. However Nippon Steel does not commit to using green hydrogen in its experimentation. Interestingly the company is intending to use a technology made by Italian specialist Tenova that can work with low grade iron ore and mixtures of hydrogen, methane and other gases. Other steel producers, such as H2 Green Steel in Sweden, have chosen technologies that need to use more expensive ore with a high iron content. Nippon Steel also says it is focusing on ensuring that the slag that remains after the steel is produced is sufficiently pure to be used as a raw material in the manufacture of very low carbon cement. As also tends to be the case in Europe, the Japanese state is paying over half the costs.

7. Impact of climate change on GNP. I’ve noticed a rise in the number of people saying that they believe that the economic and other impacts of climate change won’t be particularly severe. Two academic studies published this week gave some rigorous estimates of the financial effect. The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) forecasts that global GNP will be 19% below what it would be in 2050 in the absence of impacts from global warming. It goes on to estimate a much higher figure of 60% by 2100. These costs are a many times multiple of the costs of decarbonisation, says PIK.  The estimates also seem to exclude the impact of rising sea levels, which would increase economic losses even further. Economic damages in the PIK model are even higher in lower income countries such as Brazil, parts of West Africa and Pakistan. The other study from ETH in Zurich has lower estimates of lost global income at 10-12% assuming a 3 degree temperature rise above pre-industrial averages. As with the PIK work, the economic costs are forecast to be far more severe in lower income countries.

8, Methanol availability for shipping. Singapore says that it expects to require about 1 million tonnes of methanol to supply the demand from ships visiting the port in 2030. (It has the biggest fuel needs of any shipping port in the world). That is about a quarter of one per cent of global fuel requirements for the entire industry. (Methanol has a lower energy value per tonne than heavy fuel oil). The port authority said it had received over 50 expressions of industry from companies offering to supply the new fuel. In addition to the 30 or so methanol ships on the ocean today, there are orders for about 230 new vessels, mostly large global container carriers. The evidence thus far is that building a methanol supply network across the world is not going to be an impossible task, although finding truly green sources of the fuel may be more demanding.

9, Electrolysers. German electrolyser manufacturer Sunfire told us it was producing a Front End Engineering Design (FEED) for a 500 MW alkaline electrolyser to make green hydrogen. Recent orders in Europe have typically been around 20 MW so the Sunfire FEED is an order of magnitude bigger. Sunfire didn’t say who the customer is, but it seems likely to be a European refinery operator.  The last few weeks have seen growing concerns about the slow pace of growth of the hydrogen industry so this is a significant announcement although it will be several years before the plant is constructed. NEL, the best established European electrolyser manufacturer, reported a reduction in its order backlog, down 15% year-on-year. Sales were about $10m for the last quarter, less than 5% of the probable value of the Sunfire FEED.

10, Availability of car chargers. NGO Transport and Environment reproduced data showing the progress of electric car charging across the EU. DC units (‘fast’ or ‘rapid’ chargers) almost doubled in 2024, up to about 82,000 across the bloc. This equates to around 1 DC charger for every 100 hydrid and pure battery cars. The number of all types of charger rose by 42% in 2023 compared to a 35% rise in the number of EVs on the road. Transport and Environment comments that EU countries now have sufficient chargers to almost meet official 2025 targets. Of course we don’t know how many of them will actually work when the weary driver turns up with 10 km of range left.

a) Please get in contact if you’d be interested in hearing a presentation about the conclusions I reach in Possible. I’m very happy to do this online, or in person for locations easy to reach from Oxford. Best email is chris@carboncommentary.com

b) If you happen to be in Oxford, I’ll be speaking at a university seminar open to the public on Tuesday 23rd at 5pm. Details here.

c) Pilita Clark wrote a short review of Possible in the FT last weekend.

d) Unfortunately I will not be able to write a regular newsletter every week over the next few months. Thank you very much for the interesting and always thought-provoking emails recently received and many apologies if I have failed to reply.