Carbon Commentary newsletter

1, Heat pumps. Contrasting news from the US and Europe. In the US, heat pump sales exceeded gas boilers for the second year running, although sales of both types of heaters fell last year. Heat pump sales contracted by 17% compared to 23% for gas boilers. But the US still managed over 3.6 million installations. Europe saw a 5% fall to around 2.6 million heat pumps sold, with the number of units sold falling each quarter in 2023. (For a wider comparison, China installed over 12 million heat pumps in 2021).

2, Vehicle to Grid. The new Renault 5 E-Tech, just launched in Europe, will be able to put electricity from its battery back into the power networks. This small car will have a 40 kWh battery that can charge or discharge at 11 kW. Very few EVs have had this capacity up until today. Priced at €25,000 for its basic version, the car can therefore save owners money by charging at night and discharging at times of maximum electricity need. Vehicle to Grid capability will be a critical requirement for EVs within a couple of years. As an example, if 50% of UK cars were electric, their batteries would contain enough electricity to power the country for a day.

3, Clothing recycling. Renewcell, the pioneering Swedish clothing recycler, filed for bankruptcy. The company specialises in processing worn cotton clothing, such as jeans, and turning the material into new cellulosic fibres. It was one of the first genuinely circular technologies in the world clothing industry. Why did the company fail, even when it had the apparent backing of some fashion industry majors, such as Zara? Some commentators blame the remote location of Renewcell’s factory in central Sweden. They say it would have been better sited close to clothing manufacturers so that the product could be easily incorporated into new textiles. More cynical observers say that Renewcell’s troubles stemed from the reluctance of the fashion industry to get fully behind recycling of used clothing. I point out in Possible, to be published in the UK on 21^st March, that textiles business around the world have been all too willing to talk about sustainability but their actions have rarely matched their rhetoric. The carbon reducing performance of the global fashion industry has fallen way behind other emissions intensive sectors such as cement manufacture, which faces even greater difficulties than textiles in decarbonising its industry.

4, Natural carbon storage. Leading researcher David Beerling and his colleagues contributed an important paper on how finely ground basalt rock applied to agricultural soils can capture CO2. The work, carried out on a US Corn Belt farm, suggests that applying 50 tonnes of dust to fields over four years can result in extra carbon storage, eventually carried into the oceans, of around 10 tonnes of CO2. This is a comparable result to previous work and Beerling suggests it allows for the possibility of a global target of 2 billion tonnes of CO2 sequestration a year (about 5% of current emissions) from the weathering of fine rock particles deliberately applied to agricultural land. Other major benefits include significant soil fertility improvement, helping to raise yields, and decreased acidification of the land, reducing the need to apply lime. Some estimates suggest that what is known as ‘enhanced rock weathering’ may cost substantially less than $100 a tonne of CO2 sequestered. Another unusual technique for carbon sequestration on currently agricultural land was put forward by researchers a year ago. They suggested that burying wood or organic materials underground in a dry chamber would permanently sequester carbon if kept free of moisture. The researchers estimate a cost of around $60 a tonne of CO2, a figure similar to the possible net cost of spreading basalt dust. The world needs to research natural carbon storage techniques such as these, which have the potential to be far lower cost than direct air capture. (Thanks to Thad Curtz and Nick Jelley).

5, Germany and carbon capture. The electricity sector and other industries in Germany have long wanted CCS to be allowed but environmental groups have been understandably sceptical: is CCS just a way for power producers and heavy industry to continue to burn fossil fuels? The problem Germany faces is that without carbon capture net zero is close to impossible. Even with massive imports of hydrogen and maximum expansion of offshore wind, substantial emissions will remain. It was a pivotal moment this week when economy minister Robert Habeck said the government proposes to allow offshore, although not onshore, storage of CO2. Habeck is a member of the Greens, and his parliamentary colleagues indicated strong disapproval of the new policy. The debate is not over but this was a significant change in direction in a country long sceptical of underground storage of CO2.

6, Wind to H2. Will large wind farms convert part or all their output to hydrogen at the point of production? The news this week gives varying pointers. The backers of Dogger Bank D in the UK North Sea said that the final phase of what will be the world’s largest offshore wind farm would not make hydrogen, an option previously considered. Instead it announced that the project had secured an electrical connection into the UK grid and may also connect to the rest of Europe. But a major new investment in offshore wind off the east coast of Canada will see a 4 GW wind farm connect to a 1.5 GW electrolyser to make about 120,000 tonnes of hydrogen a year. If I have done my calculations correctly, about 20% of the output of the wind farm will be used to make H2, presumably at times of abundant electricity. In China, a new 700+ km hydrogen pipeline will link Inner Mongolia, where solar and wind are abundant, to a port south of Beijing. This could be the world’s longest H2 pipeline but installing such a link would be far cheaper and quicker than building an electricity connection.

7, Goldman Sachs on batteries. The bank cut its estimates of battery growth this year to 29%, down from the 35% of a previous projection. Demand rose 31% in 2023, meaning that Goldman now sees growth slowing slightly this year. However, the bank went on to say that ‘Goldman Sachs Research expects a nearly 40% decline in battery prices between 2023 and 2025, and for EVs to reach breakthrough levels in terms of cost parity (without subsidies) with internal combustion engine cars in some markets next year’. 68% of car sales in Europe are projected to be electric in 2030, a forecast that might look too optimistic to someone noting that pure EVs only represented 11% of European sales in January 2024. (But January tends to be a bad month for battery-only cars).

8, IEA carbon emissions calculations. The International Energy Agency provided its estimate that CO2 output from global energy production rose by 1% last year. This rate of increase was slightly higher than 2022, even though global GNP growth was marginally lower. As with the previous year’s analysis, the IEA blamed the weather (also known as ‘climate change’) for part of the continued increase in emissions. In 2023 water shortages pushed hydro-electric production down, causing a rise of emissions from coal-powered stations of around 170 million tonnes, equivalent to around half of the global increase in CO2. In the previous year, the IEA had identified ‘extreme weather’ as causing about 20% of the rise in emissions. In an unrelated but striking comment, the Agency noted that advanced country emissions have now fallen to the level of fifty years ago. Coal use in these countries is similar to the amounts burnt in 1900. But increased coal use in China and India was responsible for a substantial part of the rise in global emissions this year.

9, Sustainable Aviation Fuel. The IAG, the parent of several European airlines including British Airways and Iberia, agreed to buy nearly a billion litres of what is called e-SAF, which is made from captured CO2 and hydrogen. The supplier is Twelve in Washington State. The  aviation group says this purchase will cover about one third of its target of 10% SAF use by 2030. Although this deal is not one of the largest contracts for the provision of sustainable fuel to the aviation industry, I think it is biggest to use captured CO2, rather than carbon obtained from biomass. The limited amounts of biomass available globally for use in making fuels, and the increasing competition for this material, means that the extensive use of synthetic fuels, also known as e-fuels, will be necessary for the aviation industry to decarbonise.

10,  China completes first SMR. As small nuclear reactors stall in the West, China announced the structural completion of its first onshore example, a 125 MW power station built on the southern island of Hainan. (Completion does not mean the reactor is producing power – that is scheduled for 2026). I could find no estimates of the likely cost of this SMR but the rapid progress of this pressurised water reactor suggests that China is likely to dominate this sector, much as it does all almost all other clean technologies.

Please ask if you would like to arrange a talk on my new book for your organisation. I’m happy to travel, of course, but for obvious reasons I don’t fly.