A growing number of EU nations are announcing laws to phase out the sale of new fossil fuel cars within the next 20 years. But are the proposed bans compatible with EU laws, or even workable given cross border trade and movement rights? If you are Dutch, why not buy your new petrol car in Belgium, then drive it back to the Netherlands? How do you enforce CO2 targets with foreign haulage fleets transiting through your nation? Eoin Bannon at … [Read more...]
Two new designs, GSR and MA-ATR, to make “blue” Hydrogen cheaper
What’s the best way to make clean hydrogen? Steam Methane Reforming (SMR) is the most common and cheapest way of producing hydrogen, but it also produces CO2 emissions. Capturing that CO2 is complex and costly. Schalk Cloete presents research on two new designs for “blue” hydrogen (blue = derived from natural gas/coal with carbon capture/CCS). He describes in detail Gas Switching Reforming (GSR) and Membrane-Assisted Autothermal Reforming … [Read more...]
Methane emissions underestimated by 25-40%, says new study
The methane in our atmosphere comes from natural biogenic (plants, animals) and fossil sources. By telling the difference we can know how much we humans are responsible for. It matters because methane is a potent greenhouse gas, second only to CO2. Previous “bottom-up” estimates came from multiplying the number of sources (livestock, natural gas operations, landfills) by their likely emissions. Robert McSweeney at Carbon Brief describes a new … [Read more...]
BP’s zero-carbon pledge: three major challenges
This month BP, one of the world’s largest oil and gas firms, announced its ambition to be a net zero emissions company by 2050. The promise extends to cutting the emissions of its customers too; after all, they’re the ones who are actually burning the fuel, not BP. So it aims to reduce the carbon intensity of its products by 50% by 2050 or sooner. Jules Kortenhorst, Tyeler Matsuo and Raghav Muralidharan at Rocky Mountain Institute take a look at … [Read more...]
Canada is launching methane emissions rules for Oil and Gas
January 2020 marked the first time the Canadian government has targeted methane emissions from the oil and gas sector. They’ve committed to reduce oil and gas methane emissions by 40% to 45% below 2012 levels by 2025. Reducing methane emissions is considered one of the most cost-effective ways to cut global emissions. Methane equates to around 5.4% of the country’s total emissions of 716 Mt CO2-eq. The IEA estimates global methane emissions from … [Read more...]
Germany must put CCS back on the table, says Merkel
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 infrastructure leaks methane: fix it, or accelerate to clean energy
Natural gas, because it’s low-carbon, is being used as a bridge fuel away from the old fossil fuel world. But there are two main problems. The infrastructure leaks methane (the main component of the gas) which is 25 times more potent than CO2 over a 100-year period (and 86 times over a 20-year period!). And, crucially, nobody is properly measuring those leaks. That means policy makers are growing the gas mix without knowing by how much it’s … [Read more...]
Grid switchgear uses SF6, the world’s most potent greenhouse gas. How do we regulate it?
Sulphur Hexafluoride (SF6) is described as the world’s worst greenhouse gas. It’s 23,500 times more potent than CO2. Global annual emissions are 8,100 tonnes, equivalent to the CO2 emissions of 100m cars. It has an atmospheric lifetime of over 1,000 years and its installed base is expected to grow by 75% by 2030. 80% of all SF6 is used in gas insulated switchgear, a vital component of the grid (isolating and protecting different sections), so … [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...]
Aviation’s multiple challenges: from renewable fuels to non-CO2 emissions
Barely the first steps towards climate-neutral aviation have been made. High energy density renewable fuels are needed, and at scale. But even as they become available, hard-to-abate industries will be queuing up to buy them first. And then there’s reducing the "non-CO2 effects" that, according to Germany's environment agency (UBA), can harm the climate twice as much as direct CO2 emissions: condensation trails, particles and other greenhouse … [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...]
Extract CO2 from our air, use it to create synthetic fuels
Carbon Capture needs to take off, but nobody knows how it’s going to happen. We need innovation, scrutinised, tested and funded. Jim Conca looks at a method of extracting CO2 directly from the air that’s being pioneered by Carbon Engineering in Canada, backed by private investors and government agencies. It grew out of academic work at the University of Calgary and Carnegie Mellon University. It’s “Direct Air Capture” system can remove a ton of … [Read more...]
Will the German Climate Protection Programme 2030 miss its own targets?
On Friday, 20 September, the German Climate Cabinet agreed on the guidelines for German climate policy for the coming decade, set against the backdrop of EU targets. The core topic was additional CO2-pricing in the mobility and heating sectors. From 2021 a CO2-price of €10/ton will apply to the German transport and buildings sectors. The price will rise to €35/ton until 2025. But Simon Göss says the national emission trading system and new … [Read more...]
Calculating the effect of $50/tonne CO2 on energy prices
Despite much debate, governments are hesitant to raise – or even impose – carbon pricing, worried about the direct impact it will have on businesses and consumers.To help understand its effect Severin Borenstein at the Energy Institute at Haas has crunched the numbers of a $50/tonne CO2 price, very expensive by today’s standards. He’s calculated the actual price increases on a gallon of petrol/gasoline, gas- and coal-fired generation, and natural … [Read more...]
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