Industry news
Things I noticed and thought were interesting
Week ending 22nd November 2020
1, Cement and carbon capture. Several European groups have been working together to pioneer a technique for making cement that allows easy capture of the CO2 inevitably produced in the manufacturing process. Instead of injecting air into the kiln, the new process uses pure oxygen. This means that the flue gas from this ‘oxyfuel’ process will be nearly 100% CO2, which is cheaper to process than if it is mixed with atmospheric nitrogen. The first trial plant will be in southern Germany at a Heidelberg cement works. Three other interesting aspects of the new plan: 1) for the first time the partnership explicitly suggests the captured CO2 will be used to make aviation fuel 2) if aviation fuel is the use, it will make sense to generate the required hydrogen at the plant, not least because electrolysis would also produce the stream of pure oxygen that the oxyfuel process requires and 3) oxyfuel may be a move away from the other decarbonisation plan being pursued by Heidelberg at a Belgian cement works which uses a different technology from Australian company Calix.
2, Peak oil. Kingsmill Bond and his colleagues at Carbon Tracker argue that oil demand may have peaked. Overall world oil requirements will rise by 3.6 million barrels a day (mbd) to 2030 in the central IEA forecast. The IEA says that demand will fall in richer countries but increase by 4.4 mbd in oil importing emerging markets such as China and India. However Carbon Tracker points out that oil imports currently cost around 2% of GDP in these emerging markets. Oil is 35% of Indian merchandise imports and China spends $80bn a year on fuel imports for transport. So there is a huge financial incentive to push towards electric vehicles in most importing countries, as well as health justification from reducing urban air pollution. Recent Chinese and Indian policy statements are indeed suggesting a far more rapid transition than previously forecast. This data-rich paper shows that the likely implication is that world oil demand will therefore fall from 2019 onwards, particularly if demand for plastics has also peaked.
3, Other useful numbers from Carbon Tracker. The report reminds us that 61% of all 2 wheeler sales in China are already electric, as well as 59% of buses. He also calculates that a 2 kW installation of solar PV, filling a small domestic roof and with a components cost of about $1,000, will typically provide enough power to cover the needs of the average car for its entire life. This same car with a petrol engine would require one tonne of oil each year, costing the importer about $6,000 over its 15 year use.
4, Vehicle to grid. The first chargers that will both put electricity into car batteries and allow it to be extracted when needed were installed for a 100 home experiment in western UK. The local network will use the two-way inverters to help manage the local electricity network. Users are promised financial rewards of at least £120/$160 a year for making their capacity available for use. I suspect that car batteries will eventually become the dominant short-term storage medium. But obstacles remain. The price of the inverters for this new experiment is not far off ten times the cost of a one-way car charger. And only the Nissan Leaf allows currently allows both charging and discharging. Other manufacturers will probably follow in about 2024.
5, Solar to feed electric railways. Solar PV farms are more profitable if they can connect directly to local electricity consumers rather than simply sell into the wholesale market. The price achieved for their electricity may almost double. One particular idea often advanced has therefore been to use renewables to power adjoining electric railway networks. Railways are the single largest user of electricity in the UK, taking over 1% of all power. The first proposed large-scale connection in Britain (and possibly in the world??) received a promise of government funding this week. A new 3.75 MW solar farm will export directly to a railway line between London and the south coast. Once the site is working, the PV farm will be transferred to ownership by the community and by local rail users.
6, Hydrogen coalition in the US West. This newsletter has already covered the planned conversion of a large coal-fired power station in Utah to using gas turbines that will eventually burn 100% hydrogen. This project is part of a new alliance of Western states and Canadian provinces building an energy economy based on hydrogen and renewables. Storage of hydrogen in a Utah salt deposit is an important part of the overall plan. $1bn will be spent creating caverns in the salt able to hold hydrogen with an energy value of about 150 GWh (about 4 hours of California’s typical consumption). A quick calculation shows that this is equivalent to about $6 per kWh, a tiny fraction of the $100 per kWh cost of batteries. (Thanks to Thad Curtz).
7, Offshore wind in the EU. The EU produced a short policy statement asking for a 300 GW target for fixed offshore wind by 2050. Other offshore technologies, such as tidal and floating wind, were allocated an additional 40 GW. The bloc has about 12 GW of offshore energy today. If achieved, these aspirations would provide about 80% of today’s electricity needs for the EU-27. The UK separately confirmed an intention this week to develop about 40 GW of wind by 2030, up from about 10 GW today. This alone would provide over half the UK’s current requirements. I argue in What We Need To Do Now that the UK, which controls about half the shallow waters of the North Sea, should eventually aim for at least 200 GW to create enough energy to completely decarbonise the economy, not just electricity supply, alongside solar and onshore wind. The new EU numbers suggest that the space exists to provide this capacity.
8, Hydrogen from Morocco. Morocco has exceptional sun and most of the world’s natural phosphate reserves. But at the moment it imports ammonia to make fertiliser from its phosphates. So it makes sense to manufacture its own hydrogen for conversion into ammonia. It announced that it would develop a trial plant to produce 4 tonnes a day of ammonia from surplus electricity. It said it would also develop a 100 MW hydrogen plant by mid-decade. The long term ambition is to capture 4-8% of the global power to gas or liquids market (‘PtX’). This will probably be critically dependent on using pipelines to move hydrogen from North Africa into Europe. Interest in this possibility is rising as states recognise that pipeline transmission is a more viable option than transmitting electricity. One study suggested that pipelines are 10 to 20 times cheaper than pylons over long distances.
9, BHP and steel. BHP is one of the largest iron ore producers in the world. Its long term survival will partly depend on whether steel production can be fully decarbonised, so it is starting to push its customers towards hydrogen. Much of its ore goes to China, which makes approximately half the world’s steel. BHP has committed about $US35m to working with Baowu, the second largest operator of blast furnaces in China, on trial projects to introduce hydrogen into steel-making. So far, most of the investments in using the gas in steel making have been concentrated in Europe.
10, Clothes recycling. The reasons so little clothing is recycled include difficulties separating cotton and polyester in single garments and, second, maintaining the lengths of individual fibres as they go through a mechanical or chemical process. An innovation from the Hong Kong clothing research institute allows the creation of new clothing using a simple and low toxicity process said to resemble boiling water. The youth fashion brand Monki, part of H&M, will launch its first genuinely recycled product this week, a grey tracksuit made using the new hydrothermal process. No details were provided of the costs but the range of new techniques becoming available for recycling raises hopes that this most difficult of sectors can be decarbonised.
Pilita Clark of the Financial Times wrote (paywall) that What We Need To Do Now was one of her five Environment books of the year. She commented that the book is ‘pleasingly accessible’. The short review also noted that its emphasis on the vital role of hydrogen seemed very ambitious when it was published but the decarbonisation plans of most countries now rely on it. I sell copies of the book to UK readers. Details are on the home page of my web site.
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