Industry news
Things I noticed and thought were interesting
Week ending October 31st 2021
1, Energy storage using gravity. Energy Vault uses an unusual technology for energy storage, lifting heavy objects at times of grid surplus and then letting the weight drop when power is needed to drive a turbine. According to the company, using gravity in this way can provide 12 hours or more of daily storage, which is ideal for balancing solar power in low latitudes with reliable sun. The company went public in the US a month ago, stating that it expected the levelised cost of its technology to be half that of lithium ion batteries in 2025. (More useful material on energy storage costs in the presentation). It also claims that it will reach more than 87% round-trip efficiency, a number only marginally below batteries. Energy Vault announced last week a prospective order from DG Fuels to provide up to 1.6 GWh of storage at its sites. DG Fuels will make aviation fuel from waste cellulosic biomass, such as corn stalks/stover, combined with green hydrogen. All preceding ventures hoping to use cellulosic wastes from the production of renewable fuels have struggled to achieve commercial success. DG Fuels says that its prospects are better, with patents that make the Fischer Tropsch conversion process more efficient.
2, Hydrogen airplanes. ZeroAvia, the US/UK fuel cell aircraft start-up, said it was planning to link Rotterdam and London in 2024. The distance between these two cities is about 320km in a straight line. The planes will be small, carrying only 19 passengers, but this would be the first international link using hydrogen aircraft. It’s only just over a year since ZeroAvia’s first trial flight of a small passenger aircraft.
3, Cement processes ready for carbon capture. The Australian firm Calix offers a technology to cement manufacturers. The raw material is held in a sealed container and the heat is applied to the outside, possibly delivered by low carbon electricity. The design means that the CO2 given off in the manufacturing process can be easily collected and then stored (or used). Calix has a pilot plant at a Heidelberg Cement factory in Belgium. The incremental costs of the company’s technology was assessed by Heidelberg and other industry partners at around €14-€24 per tonne of CO2 collected. Including the subsequent shipping of the CO2, these figures rise to around €39-€80 per tonne. At the lower end of the range, the costs are less than the current price of EU emissions certificates, making it rational for producers to adopt the Calix approach. These are very encouraging numbers and suggest that Calix currently offers the cheapest route to low carbon cement. Heidelberg is in the early stages of designing a much larger plant using the technology.
4, Green hydrogen for papermaking. Swedish paper manufacturer Essity told us that a Germany production site will introduce increasing percentages of green hydrogen into its paper drying process. After some equipment changes, it hopes to reach 100% hydrogen use, completely replacing natural gas, by autumn 2022. This is a first for the paper industry.
5, Electrofuels. Two important developments this week. A company in British Columbia (BC), Canada, raised money from the provincial government to design a synthetic gasoline/petrol plant using CO2 capture technology from Carbon Engineering, a business also based in BC. The hydrogen necessary will be sourced using electricity from hydro generators. Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, a subsidiary of Occidental, will operate the plant. Oxy was the first licencing partner of Carbon Engineering, so this a strong statement of confidence in the technology from the oil company. This project will be Canada’s single largest green hydrogen project. However it will only replace about one per cent of BC’s motor fuels and the current cost will be a multiple of that of fossil gasoline. Another e-fuels company got extensive coverage after the US air force successfully trialled a small batch of synthetic aviation fuel. Twelve, as the company is known - presumably because carbon has an atomic mass of twelve - uses a proprietary catalyst and a process it promises will mimic photosynthesis. Results from larger scale trials will be available before the end of the year. Perhaps at last we are seeing the beginnings of a large scale electrofuels industry. I guess there are now about ten established competitors in this business area. (Thanks to Mark O’Hare).
6, Learning to drive. The Stellantis brand Peugeot carried out a survey. It found that 40% of UK parents wanted their children to learn to drive in an electric car, skipping any experience in a gasoline or diesel variant. An interesting illustration of how we all now assume that electric cars will be completely dominant within a few years.
7, Regenerative agriculture. Even by the depressing standard of our progress on decarbonising energy, the world hasn’t moved fast enough to rescue agriculture. Carbon is being lost from soils, fertility is draining away and biodiversity fades. These adverse trends push farmers to use more fertilisers and pesticides but also threaten long-term crop yields. The right response is increasingly said to be ‘regenerative’ agriculture although I’m never completely sure exactly what this means. It will certainly vary by soil type, by crop and by geographic region. Nevertheless, the idea is attracting vastly more attention than even a year ago. Knorr, a global Unilever brand, said that it would commence 50 large experiments around the world to improve carbon sequestration in soils and improve climate resilience.
In a smaller pledge, the retailer Lidl announced that it would start selling a full range of potatoes in France that are cultivated using regenerative techniques. This seems important to me because Lidl is unusual in actively marketing the vegetables as good for the soil, and thus for climate. Its producers admit the potatoes may not be as pleasing to look at as the standard product, but are better in other respects.
Lastly, a Danish start-up raised nearly $5m to create a marketplace for the carbon stored by farmers using regenerative techniques. It will monitor soil carbon content and sell improvements to businesses eager to use them as offsets. I have the same worries about this as with forestry offsets. Who will check that the carbon remains in the soil in ten years’ time? But the prospect of farmers getting a full return for their efforts to retain and improve their soil will be enough to ensure that this market takes off.
8, Battery swap for vehicles. Perhaps we shouldn’t assume that swapping vehicle batteries is an idea that failed a decade ago. China has just launched a pilot programme in 11 cities to enable cars and smaller commercial vehicles such as taxis to swap batteries when they run out of charge. The target is 100,000 cars which have batteries that can be replaced and 1,000 stations where the swap can occur. Currently only one Chinese manufacturer makes cars with replaceable batteries. However taxis may be a more appropriate target because of the cost to the driver if he or she is forced to spend time recharging in the middle of a busy day.
9, Green hydrogen, but not from electrolysis. The assumption that green hydrogen has to be made from water electrolysis may not be accurate. Heating methane (CH4) in the absence of oxygen so that it splits into carbon and hydrogen Is a possible alternative. No greenhouse gases are produced in the process but some methane will have inevitably escaped from the well and the pipeline. Monolith has developed this technology in the US and has now signed an agreement with South Korean conglomerate SK Inc. to licence the technology in their partner’s home territory. Proponents of methane pyrolysis, as it is called, say that the energy needed to obtain the hydrogen is less than using electricity and that the carbon by-product has substantial value as a raw material for use in tyre manufacturing and other uses. This may be true but the market for pure carbon today is far smaller than the quantity that would be produced if a large percentage of global hydrogen were produced by pyrolysis.
10, Attitudes to climate action. A survey of global opinion showed a sharp increase in the numbers wanting their country to be a leader in setting ambitious climate targets. Before the Paris conference the percentage was 43%. It is now 58% and the number opposing any international agreement has become vanishingly small. But 34% still only want ‘gradual action’ on climate change.
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