Carbon Capture has not been popular in Germany. The public are largely opposed, political parties are split, and Federal States are not approving new projects. Germany has only four operations, and only one has injected anything (not much) into the ground. Now Chancellor Merkel wants it back on the table, along with a public debate. Julian Wettengel at Clean Energy Wire runs through the reasons for the opposition (an excuse to keep coal plants … [Read more...]
Norway’s “Northern Lights” project: creating the CCS business model
Northern Lights, a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project backed by the Norwegian government, is drilling test wells in the North Sea to find suitable places to store CO2. Project partners include Shell and Total, and others are joining them. CO2 will be shipped to an onshore terminal from which it is piped to the subsea wells. Once established, the plan is for other European countries to send their CO2 too. The project will also create the … [Read more...]
Gas Switching Reforming: making Hydrogen to balance variable Wind, Solar
What is the best technology to balance the variable output of wind and solar? When there is little wind and sun the plant must produce power to compensate. When there’s too much wind and sun it must utilise that excess power. In other words, given the high capital cost of the new balancing technology it must do both profitably enough to cover the time sitting idle. A paper co-authored by Schalk Cloete looks at Gas Switching Reforming (GSR). The … [Read more...]
U.S. Presidential Election: for the first time, climate is a top priority
Another climate action “first” this year will be the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. Never before has climate change featured as a top priority for American politicians and voters, says Arnault Barichella writing for the IFRI Centre for Energy & Climate. It’s thanks to the growing evidence of human-caused global warming in collision with a current President who calls it all a hoax and has been rolling back the regulations of his predecessor. … [Read more...]
CCUS, nuclear, industrial heat, hydrogen, smart grids: “large unit” innovation needs more support
How do we accelerate innovation across all technologies? Simon Bennett at the IEA breaks down the task into “small unit” and “large unit” challenges. The first is easier and moves faster. Thanks to their small size and unit cost, heat pumps, EVs and solar panels benefit from mass production, mass deployment (100,000 to 100m units/year globally) and large customer markets with fierce competition. They can also easily leverage other fast-evolving … [Read more...]
An independent Global Energy Forecast to 2050 v the IEA’s WEO 2019
Schalk Cloete has completed his own 5-part independent Global Energy Forecast to 2050 to compare with this year’s IEA World Energy Outlook, published mid-November. Underpinning all his predictions is his bet that the world will adopt tech-neutral policies (i.e. not backing any one technology over another, like a very high carbon tax) in 2030: in his opinion it will be the best way to accelerate the transition to meet the Paris goals as the 1.5°C … [Read more...]
Decarbonising industry: how much policy-driven adoption is needed to let the market take over
Decarbonising industry is one of the world’s greatest challenges. The costs, today, are huge and therefore the technology adoption required has hardly started. But several technologies already exist. Gbemi Oluleye at Imperial College (UK) explains the first step is to measure the market size for each sub-sector, then estimate how much policy-driven adoption is required to achieve the cost reductions that make the change viable. After that, no … [Read more...]
IEA’s WEO 2019 scenarios won’t hit the Paris targets, again. It must start telling us what will
As always, the energy world is abuzz with reactions to the IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook, published yesterday. As always, it’s getting plenty of criticism from those who say it lacks ambition, and in doing so will again get quoted to justify support for continued reliance on fossil fuels, explains Kelly Trout at Oil Change International. The IEA’s most ambitious pathway, the Sustainable Development Scenario (SDS), gives a 66% chance of … [Read more...]
10 Carbon Capture methods compared: costs, scalability, permanence, cleanness
We need to understand carbon capture, storage and utilisation (CCUS) better. To do so, this article looks at 10 methods and estimates how much CO2 each will take out of the atmosphere by 2050, and the cost per tonne. In their list the authors, Ella Adlen and Cameron Hepburn at the University of Oxford, cover the industrial (e.g. CO2-EOR, synfuels) to the biological (e.g. forestry, soil carbon sequestration). They say there are six that can be … [Read more...]
China’s industry: Deep decarbonisation progress and challenges
Across the world, industry is regarded as a hard-to-decarbonise sector, and an emissions priority. In China it’s responsible for over 65% of its energy consumption and 70% of carbon emissions. Ji Chen and Shuyi Li of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) look at the highlights of China’s efforts, and reference them against the RMI’s Reinventing Fire: China analysis. Efficiency, electrification, CCUS, hydrogen and “recycle and reuse” all play an … [Read more...]
The Clean Hydrogen revolution: how, by whom, when?
Hydrogen rivals oil and gas for storage and hard-to-decarbonise sectors (industry, heavy and long distance transport). But it isn’t all carbon free. “Grey” hydrogen – the cheapest at €1.50/kilo - is made from gas. “Blue” hydrogen depends on the fortunes of carbon capture technology. “Green” hydrogen is CO2 free, but needs further cost reductions in the green electricity used in the electrolysis process. Noé van Hulst, at the Netherland’s Ministry … [Read more...]
UK’s net-zero ambition: counting all emissions, not just in-country
The UK’s Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has advised its government to go zero-carbon by 2050. But, say Joe Blakey and Marc Hudson of the University of Manchester, counting all emissions means counting the carbon footprint of imports too. Including these (and excluding emissions from exports) the UK’s footprint is 70% higher than the figure used by the CCC. The same is likely true for all high income economies. And the cost of successful … [Read more...]
Carbon Capture: Can CO2-EOR really provide carbon-negative oil?
Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) injects CO2 into oil reservoirs, increasing the pressure and forcing the oil out. 20% of global oil production uses EOR. But if that CO2 doesn’t stay underground it hasn’t been captured. If it was itself extracted from natural underground CO2, there is no benefit – or worse. Ideally, it should come from already captured CO2. But most oil wells are nowhere near a CCUS (carbon capture, usage and storage) facility: in the … [Read more...]
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