Carbon Commentary newsletter

1, Synthetic fuels. Pioneer Norsk e-Fuel said it had contracted to buy 130,000 tonnes of biogenic CO2 for its aviation fuel plant in development in northern Norway. This will provide it with enough carbon dioxide to react with hydrogen to make the fuels it has already contracted to sell to Norwegian and other airlines. Norsk e-Fuel stressed the importance of this deal as a way of building up a large scale and reliable supply chain for CO2 in Europe. California-based Infinium announced that it had opened the first ‘commercial scale’ factory in the world making synthetic fuels. However it didn’t give a figure for the volume of its output. Nevertheless, this is a significant moment for the world’s low carbon fuels industry.

2, Sustainable shipping fuels. Engine manufacturer Wärtsilä has a contrary view to Infinium and Norsk e-Fuel. It said that it expected green fuels to be ‘3 to 5 times more expensive than fossil fuels’ in 2030. ‘Green synthetic fuels will only arrive at significant volumes from the late 2030s’. This seems too pessimistic to me. I think that advances in CO2 capture and hydrogen electrolysis will bring synthetic fuel costs down far faster than Wärtsilä expects. But, as Possible contends, the world will certainly have to endure higher liquid fuel costs for a substantial number of years.

3, Blenheim. The Unesco World Heritage Site at Blenheim Palace near Oxford told us of two new initiatives to help attain its hugely ambitious net zero objective. The estate owns 5,000 hectares of land and says it wants to plant 600,000 trees in the next 3 years. With external forestry specialists, Blenheim is pioneering the use of tree buds and twigs to grow new trees at a huge scale, targeting the eventual production of one million saplings a year. As importantly, it is aiming to ensure higher survival rates of the new trees once in the ground. Its partner Vertical Future employs autonomous indoor stacked growing systems. Blenheim’s experiments in the ‘industrialisation’ of sapling production will be of value around a world that is facing a shortage of native tree seeds. The estate is also pioneering the complete recycling of all its organic waste into biochar using a new small scale machine. The biochar will then be added to the soil of the woodlands where the new trees are planted to improve water and nutrient retention. Alongside its plan to provide the land for what would be Europe’s largest solar farm, Blenheim’s ambitious experiments are a model of how large landowners can reduce emissions.

4, Geoengineering. Reducing the amount of solar energy reaching the earth’s surface prompts intense debate among scientists. While many acknowledge that geoengineering may be necessary to hold down temperatures others believe that it will be used as another excuse to continue adding CO2 to the atmosphere. This week saw the publication of a piece of research led by US government scientists arguing for vastly increased effort to understand the potential of ‘marine cloud brightening’ (MCB), a way of increasing the reflectivity and persistence of low level clouds over oceans. Although MCB has been proposed for well over a decade, knowledge of how it might work is limited and the case for proper experimentation is strongly made. Alongside MCB, solar radiation management (SRM) is viewed as the most plausible form of geoengineering. SRM will involve adding substances such as sulphur to the high stratosphere to increase reflection of the sun’s rays. In the same week that large scale experimentation with MCB was being proposed, the first major trial of SRM was abandoned before its start in the face of persistent opposition from environmentalists and others. This experiment, run by a Harvard professor, would have launched a few kilogrammes of a reflective particle into the stratosphere from a balloon and measured the effects. Both form of geoengineering will probably affect weather, perhaps changing monsoon patterns if used at scale, but nevertheless I believe the arguments for running large scale scientific trials are nevertheless overwhelmingly strong.

5, Offshore wind. The most recent European offshore wind auction produced a price of about 10 Euro cents per kWh (10.8 US cents).  The 1.5 GW project off the coast of Norway is expected to be operational by 2030 as the first part of proposed 30 GW of offshore development. The price agreed is about 15% higher than the maximum set by the UK government for the next auction of offshore wind licences which will open in the next few days. Of course different countries apply varying condition for renewable energy bids, and the costs of installing turbines is not the same across all portions of the North Sea but the high price and limited interest in the Norwegian tender does not bode well for the next UK auction, or others around Europe.

6, Green steel subsidies. A very well documented short report looked at the subsidies provided in Europe for green steel production and compares the figures to the US. The note argues that EU countries are providing typical grants of almost $400 a tonne of yearly hydrogen steel capacity, out of total costs to build a new plant of around $1,300. No hydrogen direct reduction steel works are yet planned for the US but the maximum subsidy available would be at least a third less than in Europe. At $400 a tonne, current European subsidy levels nevertheless represent good value in terms of emissions reductions. A tonne of new steel made with coal has a footprint of about 2 tonnes of CO2, meaning that the subsidy would be paid for within a few years of the start of production.

7, Biogenic methane for shipping. Much of the global shipping industry has decided to go for methanol as its low carbon fuel. One major group appears to have decided to push for methane, a fuel which will not need major changes to engines which rely on LNG. Electrochaea, a German business that uses tiny organisms to convert CO2 from biogenic sources such as anaerobic digestion plants into methane, announced an agreement with a Swedish shipping company. Eric Thun AB will use biomethane from Electrochaea’s Danish operations to fuel its 7 existing LNG ships.

8, Grid constraints. One chapter in Possible deals with the problems in of adding extra high voltage transmission capacity to allow the faster rollout of renewable electricity and the growth of industries using that power. Two announcements this week demonstrated that the world hasn’t yet found a clear way to build stronger grids at the pace that is necessary. H2 Green Steel, the world’s most important low carbon steel project, was told that it would not be able to access 500 MW of the 2.6 GW of grid capacity that it thought it had reserved with Vattenfall, the grid operator in northern Sweden. The reason given was that another pioneer hydrogen steelmaker – Hybrit – will need the capacity sooner than H2 Green Steel and new rules oblige Swedish grid operators to prioritise earlier projects. Vattenfall happens to be a shareholder in Hybrit but not in H2 Green Steel so we can be fairly certain this dispute will end up in court.  In north east Canada, a different problem has emerged. High quality iron ore is already mined in Labrador and the province sensibly wants to make green metal from the ore locally instead of exporting it. (This will happen in many other places around the world). But there isn’t enough electricity available at the proposed steel-making site and a further gigawatt of power is needed. Large amounts of new transmission capacity will have to be added but, as usual, the grid operator and the metals company don’t yet agree how the expensive additional lines will be paid for.

9, Heavy trucks. Two large orders this week for heavy vehicles using electricity. Logistics company DFDS bought another 100 Volvo trucks to add to the 125 it has already acquired. DFDS indicated it was well on track to meet its target of having 25% of its fleet electrified in 2030. XPO Logistics has purchased another 165 trucks from Renault to add to the 100 already ordered, including some sizeable 44 tonne vehicles. These orders seem substantial votes of confidence but we also need to note that both logistics companies have a substantial existing business shipping the products of Volvo (DFDS) and Renault (XPO) from the vehicle factories. Therefore they didn’t have much choice about their purchases.

10, Grid upgrades. I made a mistake in my translation of an announcement about the French electricity grid last week. The news report actually said that the French grid is older than European equivalents, not younger as I suggested. This partly explains the very high figure of €100bn required for upgrades compared to the estimate made by its UK equivalent this week of around £58bn. The UK’s National Grid also said it expected a 64% increase in power consumption in the UK by 2035. This seems an unexpectedly high figure to me, implying a 5+% annual increase over the next decade.  (Thanks to Thomas Kouroughli for pointing out the error in my translation).

Possible - Ways to Net Zero is now available from retailers in the UK: Amazon, Blackwells, Guardian Bookshop.