More and more nations are committing to the promise of hydrogen. That promise cannot be kept unless costs come down. A report from IRENA, āGreen Hydrogen Cost Reduction: Scaling up Electrolysers to Meet the 1.5ā°C Climate Goalā, breaks down what needs to be done. Two of its authors, Herib Blanco and Emanuele Taibi, summarise the study and point at the more than 20 countries (and companies like Thyssenkrupp, NEL and ITM) committing to doing it. The … [Read more...]
Nine advantages small-scale solutions have for reducing global emissions
Which is best? Spending your budget on a million 1 KW solar panels or a single 1 GW nuclear/hydro/gas plant? Lots of electric bikes or a single tram system? Lots of smart thermostats or whole-building retrofits? Charlie Wilson (University of East Anglia), Caroline Zimm (IIASA) and Simon De Stercke (Imperial College London) summarise their study that lists the advantages of small-scale āgranularā solutions over large-scale ālumpyā ones. Granular … [Read more...]
HYBRIT project: Sweden goes for zero-carbon steel
Europeās largest iron ore producer, LKAB of Sweden, plans to invest almost ā¬40bn over the next two decades in emissions-free steel production. LKAB, along with Vattenfall and SSAB, are behind the HYBRIT project which intends to grow, fossil-free, Swedenās steel industry. They will use hydrogen instead of coal as the āreducing agentā to remove the oxygen from the iron ore. Thomas Koch Blank at RMI runs through their strategy and the implications … [Read more...]
What effect will blending Hydrogen into the Natural Gas network have?
What are the technical barriers to blending hydrogen into the natural gas network? How well will the pipelines cope? How will the blend affect equipment and appliances? What are the costs and environmental impacts? The answers to these key questions are being sought by a collaboration of laboratories, industry and academia led by NREL, called HyBlend. The long-term impact of hydrogen on materials and equipment is still not understood. The effect … [Read more...]
Study identifies causes of soaring Nuclear plant cost overruns
Why does nuclear power cost so much when the technology has had decades to get it right? MITās David Chandler explains how researchers there have identified the main causes of the cost overruns in the U.S. It turns out that building new plants by copying existing designs actually costs more. Thatās because site-specific constraints mean problems are being fixed during construction, adding to costs and delays. New types of concrete are being … [Read more...]
Accelerating renewables in Central and South East Europe
What is the potential for renewables in Central and South East Europe? Luis Janeiro, SeĆ”n Collins and Ricardo Gorini at IRENA summarise their clean energy pathway for CESEC (the Central and South Eastern Europe energy connectivity initiative).Ā The region has very good resource conditions to scale up renewables. Spectacular cost reductions in wind and solar over the last few years can provide a cheaper source of new electricity than the least-cost … [Read more...]
Solar is displacing Coal in Indiaās electricity market
India is the worldās third largest electricity market and as a fast-growing economy can, according to the IEA, lead the recovery of global energy demand out of the pandemic for the coming decade. Kashish Shah at IEEFA runs through solarās prospects in India, which hopes to build 450GW of renewable energy by 2030. Solar is getting cheaper. A 2GW auction in June delivered Indiaās lowest-yet renewable energy tariff at US$31/MWh. That figure could … [Read more...]
5 charts show the rapid fall in costs of renewable energy
Plenty in the energy sector already know about the impressive declines in renewable energy costs since 2010, particularly solar (down 82%), concentrated solar (47%), onshore (39%) and offshore wind (29%). For those of you putting together presentations to people whose buy-in you need - citizens, public officials, investors, customers, etc. - these graphics should come in useful. It looks like a tipping point is being reached, says Douglas Broom … [Read more...]
Rooftop Solar: economies of scale can challenge the centralised grid
One of our recent articles explained how rooftop solar PV is more expensive that a centralised supply, and that the transmission and distribution cost savings of the rooftop system, on their own, do not make up for this cost difference. Here, Javier LĆ³pez Prol at the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change, University of Graz, responds to those challenges. First, the economies of scale of distributed rooftop solar are yet to be realised. … [Read more...]
Green or Blue Hydrogen: cost analysis uncovers which is best for the Hydrogen Economy
Blue hydrogen is created from fossil sources, where the carbon emissions are captured and stored. Green hydrogen is made from non-fossil sources and favoured by policy makers who are wary of keeping the fossil economy going, even with CCS. As more regions commit to hydrogen, finding the right cost-optimal mix is crucial to its success. Schalk Cloete summarises his paper that models the whole system based on Germany. Integrating hydrogen will … [Read more...]
Improving cost and performance modelling for energy technologies, old and new
Measuring the performance of an energy technology is key to informing policies and pathways as the transition scales up. But are we measuring all the right things and getting accurate answers? If weāre not, those policies and pathways could end up wrong. Paul Sapin at Imperial College, UK, explains how they are creating a library of data-rich models to greatly improve predictive power for all energy technologies, both existing and emerging. He … [Read more...]
Modelling total costs for Onshore Wind power plants: from site prep to grid connection
The costs of wind turbines is dropping. But that means all the other capital costs - site preparation, foundations, infrastructure, tower construction ā will become a bigger part of the total. In the U.S. they currently account for around 30% of the capital expenditures needed to install a land-based wind plant. To keep those costs under control the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has created a comprehensive open-source modelling … [Read more...]
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