Industry news
Things I noticed and thought were interesting
Week ending 21st June 2020
1, Synthetic fuels. Spain’s Repsol made a €80m commitment to two synthetic fuels refineries. It will spend €60m to capture CO2 from the flue gases at an oil refinery near Bilbao and merge the gas with hydrogen from electrolysis to make hydrocarbons. The initial plant, to be opened by 2026, will initially produce about 3.5 million litres a year. This is a much smaller number than the Norwegian synthetic fuels refinery announced last week, which is looking to expand to about 500m litres by the same date. (Norway details from a web presentation here). Repsol will also develop a waste-to-gas plant near Bilbao and feed the gas into the oil refinery. It says that the plant could eventually use all the municipal waste from the local area. Curiously, Repsol, claims that ‘waste-to-gas’ can be part of the circular economy. This is a questionable assertion; the losses in such a process are likely to mean a significant amount of CO2 ends up in the atmosphere. (Thanks to Manu Sainz).
2, Hydrogen trains. Alstom announced another potential customer for its hydrogen train. SNAM, the Italian gas grid operator, will provide the hydrogen infrastructure for a possible start in 2021 in Italy. The Alstom iLint has been working successfully on a route in the north east of Germany and trials in France and the UK have also been announced.
3, Fast fashion. An interesting small academic study looked at how attitudes to fashion purchasing were changed by education on how clothes are made. Some training was also given to participants on how to repair or redesign clothing. The researchers noted substantial changes in how fashion items were envisaged, shifting from being seen as short-lived consumables, similar to food, toward articles capable of being continuously refashioned and reused. Most participants said they would not buy 'fast fashion' again. The principal author commented ‘we have… shown that it is possible to change people’s shopping behaviour by providing them with new skills and knowledge, with appropriate equipment and meeting spaces, and peers with whom they can share their thoughts.’ In the UK, an item is typically worn only about a hundred times before being thrown away, making ‘fast fashion’ an increasingly large fraction of carbon emissions. (Although the full environmental cost of clothing is often not directly measured in national CO2 accounts because most clothes are made in a small number of Asian countries ).
4, Hydrogen in steel-making. Another major steelmaker announced an intent to switch to hydrogen. Liberty Steel, one of the top ten manufacturers outside China, confirmed it is seeking to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. CEO Sanjeev Gupta said ‘Renewable energy becomes cheaper by the day’ and hydrogen from electrolysis should be competitive with coal at prices of $1-2/kg or about 3 to 6 cents per kilowatt hour. ($2/kg is highly likely to be achieved in the best locations within a few years). Gupta said that the group would make its own hydrogen using electricity from solar PV. (Thanks to Steven Edwards).
5, Climate conventions. The French citizens’ convention drew to a close. The proposals will now go directly to the government, which has indicated a willingness to legislate on the recommendations, or even to hold a referendum. I guess that the proposed measures are likely to be very different to those to be proposed by the UK Climate Assembly. The French group has voted, for example, to reduce the speed limit on main roads, to try to cut the numbers of new cars sold and to constrain the use of advertising. More than in the UK’s equivalent convention, the members seem to want change society and its consumption patterns as part of the decarbonisation endeavour.
5, Hydrogen storage in salt caverns. If the world does move to ‘renewables plus hydrogen’ as the basis of its energy system, it will need huge storage capacity for the gas. A study showed that the space available in salt caverns in northern Europe is easily sufficient. The German researchers estimated that the total capacity is about 84,000 Terawatt hours, with particular good storage capacity in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. For comparison, the UK’s total current annual energy demand is about 2,200 TWh.
7, Liquid air storage. Highview Power announced the financing of a storage plant in Manchester, UK. Air is chilled to a liquid when power is cheap and then expanded through gas turbines when electricity is needed. The project is reported to have a storage capacity of 250 MWh and a cost of about £85m. This equates to a capital cost of about £340/$420 per kWh, probably about 3 times the figure for a large battery system. It will have a round-trip efficiency of 60-75%, compared to 80%+ for lithium ion and more for a flow battery. Response times to power emergencies will also be significantly slower, meaning it will not be able to access some payments for grid services. It will also require more people to run and maintain the plant than other energy storage methods. The big advantage is its long life but I doubt whether this is a sufficiently strong financial justification. (Thanks to the several people who wrote to me about this new project).
8, Efficient buildings as storage media. An impressive Italian study commissioned by insulation firm Knauf looked at the possibility of using domestic buildings for energy storage. The academic work examined how long a large fully renovated four story development in Milan would retain heat on an average winter day with outside temperatures ranging between 0 and 6. If the building operates its heating system for two days to get the interior up to 24 degrees, followed by turning off the heating, it would then take five days to fall below 19.5 degrees, the minimum regarded as acceptable. The unrenovated building would have seen the temperature fall to 19.5 degrees in under 12 hours in the same circumstances. The core argument of this impressive paper is that not only does radically improved insulation decrease the total heat need of homes but it also allows buildings just to use heating when energy supplies are abundant, such as during times of windy weather.
9, BP Statistical Review. The new CEO adopted a very different tone to his predecessor, mentioning the importance of hydrogen for the first time and stressing that the technologies to get to net zero do ‘exist today – the challenge is to use them at pace and scale’. Last year, Bob Dudley had said that ‘coal-to-gas switching’ was likely to be required but Bernard Looney focuses entirely on renewables and CCUS. However BP still avoids any direct statement of its own responsibility to act urgently, stressing that it is ‘committed to playing our part’ but continuing to place responsibility on wider society to ‘make a radical shift in all our behaviours’. I thought it was also interesting that Looney used the phrase ‘build back better’, a phrase associated with the political left and not a comment I expected from an oil major. But the challenge continues to be immense: BP also points out that increased renewable power is still not covering the global growth in electricity consumption, let alone reducing it.
10, Uses of hydrogen. I wrote a post that looks at the main experiments/pilots/trials on the use of hydrogen in the main sectors that cannot be completely electrified, such as long distance aviation and steel-making. The examples are mainly from north-western Europe. My main point is that, with the partial exception of cement production, every single greenhouse gas emitting sector can either run on electricity or hydrogen, or some combination of both. Many governments around the world, and some oil companies, now see this possibility. A leaked document suggests the EU Commission agrees and sees potential for the chemical industry, steel and transport saying ‘Hydrogen is one of the enablers in the context of the Green Deal for decarbonising sectors like chemical industry, steel industry and transport’. The UK, with the notable exception of Scotland, has largely chosen to ignore the opportunity.
A particularly large number of people wrote with news stories this week and I apologise for not replying individually. Please keep the ideas coming; these suggestions really help me keep up with events. Thank you.
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