California raises sails on 'ambitious yet achievable' 25GW US Pacific floating wind voyage

State energy policy agency recommendations point to first 5GW of deepwater plant turning by 2030 en route to 'maximum feasible' offshore capacity in next decades

Source: Recharge News | By Tim Ferry

The US state of California has set far-reaching targets for up to 5GW of floating wind power to brought online by the end of the decade and 25GW by 2045, exceeding the aspirations of even ardent industry supporters, and placing the Golden State on the path towards nationwide leadership in the sector.

The California Energy Commission (CEC), the state regulator in charge of energy policy, today (10 August) released its report to the California Natural Resources Agency and the state legislature per mandate of law AB525, signed last year by state governor Gavin Newsom, detailing its finding of the “maximum feasible” offshore wind capacity for the state.

“Today’s action solidified the goals as official state policy for planning purposes,” a CEC spokesperson told Recharge. “No further approvals are required.”

“California is home to one of the world’s best offshore wind resources... and I am confident that this clean, domestic source of electricity can play an important role in meeting our state’s growing need for clean energy,” said Newsom, in remarks cited at a business meeting of the CEC.

Last month, Newsom called on the CEC to raise its offshore wind target to at least 20GW by 2045.

CEC chair David Hochschild said: “These ambitious yet achievable goals are an important signal of how committed California is to bringing the offshore wind industry to our state”, adding: “this remarkable resource will… help us transition away from fossil fuel-based energy as quickly as possible while ensuring grid reliability.”

The CEC initially intended to submit its report 1 June this year, and as of May had set preliminary targets of 3GW of offshore wind by 2030 and 10-15GW by 2045 and up to 20GW by 2050.

However, calls by stakeholders and think-tanks, including a research team from the University of California Berkeley, urged the policy planners to am higher, to as much as 50GW by 2045, and the CEC withdrew its preliminary report to consider more ambitious targets.

Liz Burdock, CEO of sector business development body the Business Network for Offshore Wind, said that the raised targets “marks a significant moment in the path to develop a national floating offshore wind industry”.

“The long-term certainty of a 2045 goal will ​help build investor confidence and attract investments in ports, vessels, and offshore wind manufacturing facilities along the Pacific coast,” she said. “A new clean energy industry is born.”

The raised targets will provide enough electricity to power 3.75 million homes initially and many as 25 million by mid-century.

“These goals set an ambitious course and show that California is very serious about ‘going big’ on floating wind, to drive economies of scale and generate the very substantial clean power, climate, and jobs benefits this renewable energy resource can deliver for our state,” said Adam Stern, executive director of trade group Offshore Wind California.

“Achieving 5GW of offshore wind by 2030 will position the state to meet and even exceed its 25GW goal by 2045.”

This report is the first of several products the CEC must prepare to create a strategic plan for offshore wind energy development as required by state law, and will be followed by reports on economic benefits specific to offshore-wind related port and workforce development, and a third drawing a permitting roadmap for the sector.

“Adopting a goal of 25GW by 2045 sends a critical signal that California is ready to meet this moment—and gives the state’s clean energy companies the green light that we need to get to work, at scale, to provide the clean power Californians are going to rely on for decades to come,” said Alex Jackson, director of American Clean Power-California, an industry lobby group.

California has some of the nation’s top wind resources, estimated by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory at 200GW of technical potential, with wind speeds particularly along the state’s northern coastlines exceeding 9.5 metres per second, as well as a huge economy and population of nearly 40 million to drive demand.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the regulator of energy development in federal waters, has proposed a lease auction for the end of this year for 373,000-acres in the Morro Bay and Humboldt wind energy areas (WEA) with up to 4.5GW of capacity which has already attracted 23 qualified bidders, including some of the world’s biggest offshore wind developers, such as Equinor, RWE, Shell and TotalEnergies.

Yet the industry will face multiple hurdles, including deep waters exceeding 1,000 metres, requiring nascent floating platforms, as well as a severe lack of port or supply chain capacity, qualified personnel, and transmission infrastructure.

The CEC based the planning goals primarily on the mandates of SB100 – the 2018 California state law calling for 60% renewable energy by 2030 and 100% clean energy by 2045, as well the need to quickly begin addressing bottlenecks that could derail the industry’s rollout.

“Achieving a 2030 online date for any proposed offshore wind project [to contribute to the state’s 5GW target] will take a significant mobilisation of effort and resources, and timely infrastructure investments, among other factors,” said the CEC.

“The CEC will work with state and federal partners to identify process steps and milestones that could allow for a 2030 online date for California’s first offshore wind projects.”

8,000% growth | 'More than 100GW of hydrogen electrolysers to be produced annually by 2031'

Sector will experience compound annual growth of 62.6%, with Europe leading the way, says Guidehouse Insights report

Source: Recharge News | By Leigh Collins

The global production of electrolysers — the machines that split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen using an electric current — will grow exponentially over the next nine years, according to a new report by analyst Guidehouse Insights.

The annual manufacturing capacity will grow from about 1.3GW at the end of this year to 104.6GW by 2031 — an increase of almost 8,000%, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 62.6%, the US-based company says in its study, Market Data: Electrolyzers.

While the 104.6GW figure is far higher than the 47GW of electrolysers expected to be manufactured annually (by 2030) by US investment bank Jefferies, it is still well below the 180GW foreseen to be in use by the end of the decade under the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Announced Pledges Scenario — and even further behind the 850GW the IEA says is needed to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

Nevertheless, it still represents massive growth for an industry that has only installed about 200MW of electrolysers to date, according to Aurora Energy Research.

“The market for electrolyzers is expected to experience tremendous growth through the forecast period,” the Guidehouse report says. “This growth is expected to be driven by factors such as decreasing capital costs, declining feedstock costs, and an overall push for decarbonization. Additionally, policies, such as subsidies, limits on fossil fuels, and carbon taxes, can drive the market even further.”

It adds that it expects the electrolyser manufacturing market to be led by Europe, followed by Asia Pacific, then North America, Latin America and the Middle East & Africa.

At least 14 gigawatt-scale electrolyser factories have been announced to date — adding up to 26GW — by the following manufacturers:

• Thyssenkrupp (5GW, Germany)

• ITM Power (5GW, UK)

• Plug Power (1GW in US; 1GW in South Korea; 2GW in Australia, with partner Fortescue Future Industries)

• John Cockerill (1GW in France; 2GW in India, in conjunction with Greenko)

• Siemens Energy (1GW in Germany, but eventually ‘multi-gigawatt’)

• Cummins (1GW in Spain, with Iberdrola; and 1GW in China, with Sinopec)

• Nel (2GW, Norway)

• Ohmium (India, 2GW)

• McPhy (France, 1GW)

• Sunfire (Germany, 1GW)

Battery safety

Source: Government of Canada | Author unknown

Date modified: 2022-01-21

The batteries that power many of your household devices and children's toys contain harmful substances, like acids, that can cause serious injury and even death if swallowed by a child. They can also pose a risk of fire or explosion.

The tips here can help you and your children avoid serious injury from batteries. Learn how to safely install, use, store and dispose of batteries.

Health risks

Many batteries, such as button batteries, are small enough to be swallowed by children. This can cause serious internal injuries and even death.

Batteries, such as lithium-ion batteries, can also overheat, leak, burst, and even explode and catch fire, causing serious injuries if they are not properly:

• installed

• used

• stored

• disposed

Report any battery-related injuries directly to the manufacturer. You can also Report an Incident Involving a Consumer Product to Health Canada.

Button batteries

If you suspect your child has swallowed a button battery, seek immediate emergency medical attention. Do not wait for symptoms to develop.

• A swallowed button battery can result in significant injury and death. It is important to act quickly if your child has swallowed a button battery.

• A button battery can lodge in a child’s throat where an electrical current is triggered by saliva causing a chemical reaction that can burn through the esophagus in as little as 2 hours.

• Several health organizations, including Ontario Poison Centre and Alberta Health Services advise giving your child honey on the way to the emergency department to reduce the risk of serious injury. Do not delay getting your child to the nearest hospital.

• Button batteries can be found in many household items that are accessible to children, such as:

  • toys

  • watches

  • calculators

  • reading lights

  • flameless candles

  • laser pointers

  • musical greeting cards

  • small electronic devices (like remote controls)

  • singing books

  • light up/flashing jewellery

  • hearing aids

  • key chain accessories

  • kitchen and bathroom scales

  • thermometers

Safety Tips

• Know the products in your home that contain button batteries.

• Check regularly that button battery compartments are secure.

• Look for products with battery compartments that prevent easy access. For example, screw-closed compartments are harder to access than those that simply slide to open.

• Always supervise children when they use products containing button batteries.

• Do not allow children to play with button batteries or remove them from household products.

• Never store button batteries near food and/or medicine.

• When replacing button batteries, make sure that used batteries are discarded quickly and properly. Even used or expired batteries can cause life-threatening injuries.

• Place pieces of non-conductive tape (packing, scotch or electrical tape) on either side of button batteries after removing them from products and before disposing of them.

Lithium-ion (also known as Li-ion) batteries

The use of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries in consumer products is very common and they are generally considered safe to use. But as with any energy storage device they carry safety risks including overheating, fires and explosions. Lithium-ion batteries are more susceptible to being damaged than other types of batteries and can become hazardous in certain conditions. Take precautions when using, charging and storing these batteries.

Lithium-ion batteries are found in many electronic devices, such as:

• laptops

• cell phones

• power tools

• hoverboards

• vaping products (e-cigarettes)

Charging your lithium-ion battery

Lithium-ion batteries can overheat, catch fire or explode if they are not charged in a safe manner. Follow these precautions to help minimize risks associated with charging your lithium-ion battery:

• Allow batteries to come to room temperature before charging

• Never attempt to charge a battery in below freezing temperatures

• Do not exceed the recommended charging time

• Do not charge your device on soft surfaces, such as a couch or bed. Soft surfaces can trap heat around the battery

• Use your battery charger in a place you can keep an eye on it in case it overheats

• Use the charger that came with your device. If you need to buy or replace a charger, make sure the voltage and current are compatible with your device

• Make sure to use a charger that has one of the recognized Canadian certification marks, such as CSA, cUL or cETL. These marks indicate that the products are assessed to the required Canadian electrical safety standards. Chargers that do not meet the required electrical safety standards may cause electric shock and fire hazards for consumers. For more information on certification marks, visit your provincial or territorial Electrical Safety Authority.

• Do not use uncertified chargers.

Reduce your risk

Installation

• Do not allow children to install batteries

• When installing alkaline batteries, be sure to line up the "+" sign on the battery with the "+" sign on the product's battery compartment. Improper installation can cause a battery to leak or overheat and lead to serious injury

• Do not use different types of batteries together

  • Do not mix old batteries with new ones

  • Do not mix rechargeable batteries with non-rechargeable ones

Use

• Always read and follow instructions on battery packaging

• Do not use batteries that:

  • are swollen

  • are dented

  • have torn plastic wrappers

  • show other signs of damage or wear

• Buy your batteries from a trusted source

• Batteries are not toys. Do not let children handle them

• Do not allow children to take battery-operated items to bed. Burns and other injuries can occur if the batteries leak or overheat during the night

• Do not leave battery-operated devices, like cell phones and laptops, on your bed while you sleep, especially while charging

• Do not attempt to recharge batteries that are not rechargeable

• Do not attempt to repair a device containing a battery if it is not recommended by the manufacturer. Damage to a lithium-ion battery can result in hazards, such as overheating, fire or explosions

Storage

• Batteries can catch fire or even explode when in contact with metal. Do not store batteries where they can touch metal, like coins, or keys, such as in a pocket or handbag

• Store batteries in their original packaging and in a cool, dark place away from household chemicals

• Store batteries away from medicine and food so that they are not swallowed by accident

• Store batteries out of children's reach and sight

• Carry batteries for your vaping product in a protective, non-metal case

• Remove batteries from devices that will not be used for an extended period of time, such as seasonal decorations

• Do not store batteries in a sub-freezing environment, such as your freezer

Disposal

• Avoid throwing batteries out in household garbage. Many retailers and local governments have battery recycling programs that allow you to drop off old batteries. Contact your local government for a list of drop-off centres

• Never toss batteries into a fire. They might burst or explode

• Be sure batteries cannot be pulled out of the trash by a child. Spent batteries can still pose health risks and cause serious or fatal injuries

It's H2-go | Why 2023 will be green hydrogen's global lift-off year

Subsidy schemes kicking in this year in key economies will all but guarantee profitability for projects that will need huge new sources of renewable power, writes Leigh Collins

3 January 2023 10:47 GMT UPDATED  3 January 2023 11:17 GMT

Source: Recharge News | By Leigh Collins

The next 12 months will transform the global green hydrogen industry from a much-discussed idea to large-scale reality, with a wave of government subsidy schemes entering into force that will virtually guarantee profitability for renewable H2 projects which will in turn need huge amounts of clean power to operate.

The most significant support programme will almost certainly be the US hydrogen tax credits — unveiled in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act — which would pay producers up to $3 per kilogram of green H2. But Contracts for Difference (CfD) subsidy programmes from the EU and UK are also due to begin this year, along with Germany’s H2Global scheme, which will provide financial support for clean hydrogen (and its derivatives) imported from outside the EU.

In addition, Canada said it will unveil a hydrogen tax credit scheme in the spring of 2023; Oman will unveil the winners of its first green hydrogen tender in March, and its second in December; India is expected to unveil a new subsidy programme in the coming months; Norway has agreed in principle to introduce a CfD scheme this year; while China is set to significantly expand its green H2 output in 2023.

Very little, if any, government cash is expected to enter producers’ bank accounts this year due to the simple fact that money will be paid out for H2 production or usage rather than project construction — and projects may take many months or years to become operational.

On top of this, most of the subsidy schemes are yet to be finalised and it is not clear exactly when they will be.

However, many large-scale green hydrogen projects will almost certainly reach final investment decisions this year on the back of the subsidies, with construction beginning by the end of 2023 — with billions of dollars flowing to businesses, including contractors, advisors and manufacturers of electrolysis equipment, wind turbines and solar panels.

And let’s not forget that despite all the talk about clean hydrogen in recent years, only 270MW of green H2 projects are currently in operation, despite a staggering 957GW having been announced according to UK analyst Aurora Energy Research.

So where do all the different green hydrogen subsidy schemes stand today?

US H2 tax credits

The Inflation Reduction Act, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden on 16 August 2022, offers tax credits of up to $3/kg to US clean hydrogen producers for the first ten years of a project’s lifetime.

The size of the tax credit depends on the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of each project, as well as how much staff are paid (see panel at end of article for details).

The maximum tax credit would effectively make green hydrogen cheaper to produce than grey H2 made from unabated fossil gas in most of the US and the world, according to cost estimates from analyst Platts.

The final details of the subsidy scheme are still being devised by the US government, including rules on the temporal correlation of renewable energy and H2 production — but these are expected to be revealed in the coming months.

However, they could be delayed somewhat as the EU, Norway, Australia and South Korea have officially complained to the US government that the Inflation Reduction Act — which includes a host of climate-reduction measures and associated subsidies — breaches international trade rules by giving preferential treatment to US-made products.

A high-level EU-US Inflation Reduction Act Task Force has been set up in an attempt to head off a potentially damaging trade battle between the two over the subsidies, which has so far seen modest success, while President Biden has also pledged to “tweak glitches” in the act.

But the notion that the US can make changes to the law — as requested by the EU — seems highly unlikely given the initial struggle to get all Democratic senators on board and the fact that the Republican lawmakers have taken control of the House of Representatives.

However, the US is still expected to be the most attractive market for green hydrogen production in 2023, due to both the tax credits and the $9.5bn of federal cash made available for the development of clean H2 in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed by the US in 2021.

This includes $8bn — to be allocated in the fiscal years 2022-26 — to help establish at least four regional clean hydrogen hubs, which the infrastructure bill defines as “network[s] of clean hydrogen producers, potential clean hydrogen consumers, and connective infrastructure located in close proximity... that can be developed into a national clean hydrogen network to facilitate a clean hydrogen economy”.

EU’s Carbon Contracts for Difference

The European Commission announced in May 2022 that it will roll out Carbon Contracts for Difference (CCfD) subsides for green hydrogen using cash from its Innovation Fund “to support a full switch of the existing hydrogen production in industrial processes from natural gas to renewables and the transition to hydrogen-based production processes in new industrial sectors such as steel-making”.

This has been designed to help meet the EU’s target of producing ten million tonnes of green hydrogen annually inside the bloc by 2030, and importing a further ten million tonnes by the same date

Under this scheme, end users (rather than producers) would be paid a guaranteed amount by governments for avoiding CO2 emissions. This would consist of savings made by not paying a carbon price under the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS), plus a top-up subsidy to reach the “strike price” agreed in the CCfD.

The amount actually paid by governments would therefore depend on the fluctuating ETS carbon price, and would mean that if it exceeded the strike price, end users would actually pay the difference back to the government.

The final details of the green H2 scheme were due to be published last year, but was delayed after the European Parliament voted against the European Commission’s proposal for hourly proof of dedicated renewable energy supply to electrolysers.

A new compromise draft proposal — to allow quarterly matching of dedicated renewable energy supply to hydrogen production until 2028, which would then be replaced with hour-by-hour correlation — was widely expected to be officially unveiled in mid-December, but the year ended with no word on the matter.

This proposed rules would still need to be officially agreed by the 27 member states and the European Parliament, but the Commission is keen to get the CCfD scheme implemented as soon as possible to give the bloc a fighting chance of reaching its target of producing ten million tonnes of green hydrogen annually by 2030.

The rules are also expected to apply to renewable H2 imported into the EU.

On top of all this, the EU gave the go-ahead in September for member states to subsidise 3.5GW of new electrolysis capacity under the Hy2Use programme.

Germany's H2Global

Germany’s multi-billion-euro H2Global green hydrogen subsidy programme — which is only available to H2 (and derivatives) imported into the EU — is the most advanced of all the schemes, but funding is not expected to start flowing to producers until 2024 at the earliest.

Last month, the German government unveiled two tenders for imported renewable hydrogen derivatives — one for green ammonia, and the other for green methanol and H2-based sustainable aviation fuels — supported by an initial €900m ($959m) tranche of funding.

Under H2Global's unique double-auction scheme, a special purpose-company owned by the German government called the Hydrogen Intermediary Network Company (HintCo) will buy green hydrogen or its derivatives from international producers via ten-year Hydrogen Purchase Agreements (HPAs), before selling it on to European customers, who will bid for short-term supply contracts via separate tenders.

The supply contracts will be awarded to the highest bidders but in the event that they fall short of the cost of the HPA, the difference will be made up by HintCo using funds from the German government.

As the commercial risk will be assumed by HintCo, H2Global will provide international green hydrogen producers with long-term price and demand certainty the need to develop their projects, while also securing a supply for European customers.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz has already cleared a total of €4bn of funding for H2Global, but the EU has so far only given the green light to the first tranche of €900m.

The government intends to complete the HPA auctions by mid-2023, but does not plan to launch the supply auctions until 2024-25.

UK’s CfD scheme

The UK announced in April 2022 that it would finalise a Contracts for Difference (CfD) subsidy scheme for clean hydrogen by the end of the year, and in July it invited green H2 developers to register “expressions of interest” in the scheme — the first part of the application process.

The government promised that support for up to 1GW of green hydrogen projects would be awarded “via two allocation rounds in 2023 (opening in 2022) and 2024 (opening in 2023)”, all of which would be operational or under construction by 2025. The first funding round would support about 250MW of projects, it said.

But the CfD programme has yet to be finalised — no doubt due to the fact that Britain has seen three different Conservative prime ministers in office since last July.

In April 2022, the government explained that the H2 CfD would offer a subsidy representing “the difference between a ‘strike price’ reflecting the cost of producing hydrogen and a ‘reference price’ reflecting the market value of hydrogen”.

Essentially, this would enable green hydrogen to be available to the market at the same price as grey hydrogen produced from unabated fossil gas.

Green — and blue — hydrogen remains a UK government priority, with an updated national hydrogen strategy last month revealing that Westminster aims “to issue final grant offer letters in early 2023” to shortlisted green hydrogen developers that registered expressions of interest.

A market engagement exercise about a second funding round for renewable H2 would be launched in the second quarter of 2023, it stated in December.

In addition, the devolved Scottish government last month unveiled its own £90m ($112m) Green Hydrogen Fund and said it would open a “call for proposals” for renewable H2 projects in early 2023, as part of its bid to install 5GW of clean H2 by 2030, and 25GW by 2045.

But details as to how the money would be allocated have not yet been revealed.

Canada

Canada announced in November that it would introduce a new tax credit of up to 40% for hydrogen production, as part of an effort to bring the country’s incentive regime in line with the generous H2 subsidies available over the border in the US.

The scheme is due to be introduced in the Spring, and run until 2030.

The Canadian model plans to mirror the US regime by making the tax credits scaleable dependent on a range of factors, including carbon intensity and labour conditions.

An upcoming public consultation will determine a carbon-intensity system, as well as the level of support for each hydrogen production pathway, including green hydrogen produced from renewable energy and blue H2 made with fossil gas and carbon capture and storage, according to the country's finance department.

India

The Indian government first unveiled plans to make India a major green hydrogen producer in November 2020, and in August 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced during his annual Independence Day speech that the country would become “a global hub for green hydrogen production and export”.

At the time, power and renewable energy minister RK Singh said that India would compel oil refiners and fertiliser manufacturers to use set amounts of green hydrogen from 2023-24.

Little more was heard about the plans until February 2022, when the government announced that India aimed to produce five million tonnes of green hydrogen annually by 2030 as part of an “interim” hydrogen strategy. This also included a plan for green hydrogen producers to be able to waive electricity transmission fees, which according to one senior Indian oil company executive could reduce power costs of renewable H2 projects by as much as 75%.

Then, last month, the Indian parliament passed a new law that would allow the government to force “designated consumers” to buy a certain amount of “non-fossil” energy or feedstock — paving the way for the government to issue green hydrogen mandates to H2 users.

Singh told Parliament that the government plans to mandate the use of green hydrogen in sectors such as steel, oil refining, fertiliser production and cement production. India currently consumes about 17 million tonnes of grey hydrogen per year, according to the University of Oxford, so this could be extremely significant.

Two weeks later, on 27 December 2022, Reuters reported that India is planning a $2bn incentive programme for the green hydrogen industry, attributing the news to three unnamed sources, including a “senior government official”.

This official stated that these incentives could be announced in the forthcoming budget for the fiscal year beginning on 1 April, but the Indian government has so far declined to comment.

Nevertheless, it is widely expected that India will be a major green hydrogen player in 2023.

What about China?

Green hydrogen production is also expected to expand significantly in China in 2023, with the world’s largest project — a 260MW facility being built in Xinjiang by local oil giant Sinopec — due to be completed around the middle of the year.

And as Hydrogen Insight reported in November, electrolyser sales in China are expected to more than double this year as the country continues to roll out green hydrogen projects — many of which have been delayed due to Covid or supply-chain disruptions.

According to Eric Lin, a board member at John Cockerill’s Chinese manufacturing arm, Cockerill Jingli Hydrogen, about 1.5-2GW of electrolysers will be sold in 2023, up from 600-700MW this year.

Trial by typhoon awaits 'world first' floating solar linked to wind turbine off China

Development giant SPIC and Norwegian technology pioneer deploy PV arrays connected to turbine in exposed seas off Shandong province

Source: Recharge News | By Andrew Lee

Chinese development giant SPIC and a Norwegian solar pioneer are claiming a world first after deploying an offshore floating PV plant integrated with a wind turbine – and now hope it passes a testing typhoon season off China.

The hybrid plant off Shandong province uses floating PV arrays designed by Norway’s Ocean Sun linked to an SPIC offshore wind turbine and sharing its power export cable.

The twin 0.5MW floating arrays will act as a pilot for a planned 20MW project in 2023, said Ocean Sun, which is working with partners around the world to commercialise its patented 'flotation ring' polymer membrane technology.

The company claimed the link with wind power would help drive down cost of energy by boosting output and believes “a large market” will emerge for hybrid offshore deployments. Major players such as RWE have already unveiled plans for their own projects in the North Sea.

While deployment of floating PV on inland surfaces such as lakes and reservoirs is already booming, placing solar at sea presents a new level of challenge due to the harsh conditions facing equipment offshore.

Ocean Sun CEO Børge Bjørneklett said earlier this year that the waters off Shandong “see annual typhoons with challenging sea state, and all involved parties are aware of the risks. In all circumstances, Ocean Sun will improve our product with learnings from this exposed site”.

The pilot now has to survive one typhoon season to “show its robustness”.

Bjørneklett claimed to Recharge in an interview last year that ocean-based PV has the potential to beat floating wind in terms of growth.

“The application area is so much larger [than for floating wind] if you look at irradiation maps of the world, particularly in Southeast Asia.”

The Ocean Sun CEO also said the technology has onshore solar in its sights.

“I think to be a bit futuristic, people will ask themselves why they put up solar panels on land at all,” he said.

Clean energy is more than just a lesson at UniSC. It’s how we power our largest campus.

Source: University of the sunshine coast, University of Southern California | author unknown

To embrace Australia’s steady supply of sunshine, we have installed 6,000+ solar panels to power a “water battery” that cuts our energy use by 40 percent. It's a first for an Australian university.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Rather than a traditional battery – which poses disposal problems for the environment – UniSC uses a thermal energy storage tank, mostly consisting of water. That means minimal waste when it comes time to replace. The water, once chilled using the power of the sun, is used in air conditioners across the Sunshine Coast campus, resulting in a massive leap towards our goal to become carbon neutral by 2025. And the best part is – there was no capital outlay. Veolia delivered the infrastructure as part of the broader agreement.

Highlights

• $100m savings over 25 years

• No capital outlay by UniSC

• Over 100,000 tonnes CO2 saved

• 4.5 ML thermal energy storage tank

• 6,000+ solar panels generating 2.1 megawatts of power

• Plant room with latest PV-integrated roofing

• Environmentally-friendly refrigerant gas

• Real-time monitoring system

• Use of lake water to save a further 802 ML of potable water

Smart system checks the weather

The best option for energy changes from hour to hour. UniSC opted for a system that reacts to changing conditions in real-time. Depending on what the weather is doing and various other factors, the system will react to changing conditions and shift energy between the solar panels, mains electricity and thermal energy storage tank. This ensures the campus is using the best source of energy that optimises energy use, carbon emissions and cost.

Partnership with Veolia

The key to the success of the project was a strong partnership with Veolia, a global company that delivers renewable energy solutions. Veolia installed the panels and tank at no cost to UniSC. They operate and maintain the infrastructure and sell the energy generated back to the University at a rate cheaper than electricity from the grid. After a 10-year period, ownership of the infrastructure will transfer to UniSC. Over the 25-year life of the project, UniSC will save $100m on buying electricity from the grid, and any additional electricity costs are quickly eclipsed by the saving.

Tax Credits for Electric Vehicles Are About to Get Confusing

Foreign-made cars no longer qualify. General Motors should become eligible again. But officials are still working on the fine print.

Source: New York Times | By Jack Ewing

Dec. 29, 2022

Next year could be confusing for anyone shopping for an electric car.

A law that takes effect on Jan. 1 will both expand and scramble the list of vehicles that qualify for federal tax credits of up to $7,500 in ways that officials and carmakers are still trying to sort out.

The Biden administration on Thursday put out a new list of cars that will qualify for the credits. That list, which included models from Ford Motor, Nissan, Rivian, Volkswagen, Stellantis, Tesla and Volvo, is not complete, and the Treasury Department said it would be added to “over the coming days and weeks.”

Although they were not included on the list, models from General Motors, which had exceeded a cap on the number of cars that could collect subsidies under an older law, are expected to be eligible again in January because the new law, the Inflation Reduction Act, abolishes the cap. But imported cars that qualified under the old law will no longer be eligible; these include vehicles made by brands like Hyundai and Kia.

Even when the list published on Thursday is complete, it might be good for only three months or so because officials plan to carry out other parts of the law in March. That is when the Biden administration plans to put in place new rules intended to force carmakers to buy batteries and raw materials from suppliers in the United States and its trade allies. Very few if any electric cars might qualify right away after those rules go into effect, auto experts said.

The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Biden in August, was designed to promote battery-powered vehicles while providing incentives for companies to make them in North America. It is also designed to exclude rivals like China and Russia from the supply chain.

But the details of how to apply those principles were left to the Treasury, which has had only four months to work through scores of brain-numbing technical details not fully addressed in the legislation.

For example, for a vehicle to qualify for credits, at least 40 percent of the minerals in its battery, measured by their value, must come from the United States or a trade ally. The quota rises in steps to 80 percent in 2027. But it is devilishly difficult to track the origin of raw materials. And the law didn’t specify which countries should be considered trade allies.

A preliminary list issued by the Treasury on Thursday includes countries like Chile, Nicaragua and Singapore because they have trade agreements with the United States. But it excludes the European Union, with which the United States does not have a trade pact. (Officials left open the possibility that countries could be added to the list later.)

Federal regulators face a dilemma. If they interpret the law too strictly, carmakers may not even try to qualify for the credits. If they interpret the law too liberally, it might not achieve one of its key aims — to compel carmakers to create jobs in the United States and pivot supply chains away from China or other geopolitical adversaries.

China dominates the processing of battery raw materials like lithium and graphite, and it controls mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the source of most of the world’s cobalt, an essential battery ingredient.

Since August, only cars assembled in the United States, Canada or Mexico have been eligible for the full credit of $7,500. On Jan. 1, the law abolishes a limit of 200,000 vehicles per manufacturer under an older law.

After March, or whenever the Treasury Department decides how to enforce the limitations on imported battery minerals and battery components, the rules will get a lot tougher. It’s possible that no vehicles will qualify immediately.

In other words, car buyers might have a brief window — from January to March — to collect the full credit. Then they will have to wait months or years for mines to begin producing ore in friendly countries, refineries to be built and domestic battery assembly lines to start rolling, analysts say.

Pablo Di Si, the chief executive of Volkswagen of America, which builds electric vehicles in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Mexico, has pleaded for automakers to be given a few years to adapt. “When you have an industry that has been disrupted the way we have been disrupted,” he said in an interview, “you cannot make these sudden changes in technology, in production, in mineral extraction.”

It is considered unlikely that Congress will revise the law, given that Republicans will soon control the House. Even with Democratic control of both houses, the Inflation Reduction Act passed only after the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, made major concessions to Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, who had initially joined Republicans in opposing it.

But it appears that the Treasury will try to give carmakers and buyers a break by interpreting the law flexibly. For example, a battery component that is assembled in the United States, Canada or Mexico will probably pass muster even if it is made from imported parts, the Treasury Department said Wednesday in a preliminary report.

Some aspects of the law are fairly clear. Well-heeled car buyers — defined as those whose modified adjusted gross income on their tax returns is $150,000 for individuals and $300,000 for couples — won’t be able to claim credits.

Sport utility vehicles, vans and pickups are eligible for credits only if the manufacturer’s suggested list price is less than $80,000. For sedans and other vehicles, the price cap is $55,000. For plug-in hybrids, the size of the tax credit depends on battery size, at least until March.

That means pricey electric vehicles from companies like Mercedes-Benz and Lucid will probably not qualify even though they are made in the United States. Either their sticker prices are too high or their customers are too rich.

How to classify vehicles is another issue. Officials are likely to define an S.U.V. more narrowly than carmakers’ marketing departments do.

There is a loophole in the law that could provide a way for consumers to take advantage of the credits even for vehicles that don’t meet domestic sourcing requirements.

The act exempts commercial vehicles from the mineral and battery sourcing quotas, and the requirement that vehicles be made in North America. Auto industry lobbyists want the administration to interpret that provision to mean that cars purchased by leasing companies are commercial vehicles.

If that argument flies, and the Treasury Department indicated Thursday that it will, rental companies, ride-share services and leasing companies could collect credits on imported vehicles or those with foreign parts and pass the savings on to their customers.

The loophole angered Mr. Manchin, who on Thursday accused the Biden administration of bending to industry pressure and undermining policies designed to “bring our energy and manufacturing supply chains onshore to protect our national security, reduce our dependence on foreign adversaries and create jobs right here in the United States.”

Mr. Manchin said he would introduce legislation that “prevents this dangerous interpretation from Treasury from moving forward.”

The exception for leasing companies may help mollify Asian and European allies who have complained the Inflation Reduction Act discriminates against their carmakers. South Korean leaders are particularly aggrieved.

South Korea is a close military ally of the United States, and Hyundai is investing $5.5 billion to build batteries and electric vehicles in Georgia. But the plant, which will employ 8,000 people, won’t begin mass-producing vehicles until 2025.

Until then, the rules are a blow to Hyundai’s ambitions in the United States, where its Ioniq 5 has been a very popular electric model. During the first nine months of the year, Hyundai and its sister brand Kia had almost 8 percent of the U.S. electric vehicle market, second only to Tesla, which had a commanding 64 percent, according to Kelley Blue Book. Hyundai has asked that its vehicles qualify for credits until the Georgia operation is up and running, but it appears unlikely that U.S. officials will grant that request.

For the first time, used electric vehicles will be eligible for credits of up to $4,000. There are restrictions. The credit applies only to vehicles sold for less than $25,000 that are at least two years old. Buyers can’t earn more than $150,000 if they file taxes as a married couple, and no more than $75,000 if they file singly. The credit applies to a vehicle just once, and buyers can’t claim a credit more than once every three years.

Still, the credit means that electric vehicles ought to be more accessible to middle-income buyers. “It has the potential to transform the way the used-car industry works,” said Scott Case, chief executive of Recurrent, a firm that tracks the used electric vehicle market.

For buyers confused by all these new rules, there will be ways to know whether vehicles they’re considering will be eligible for the tax credits. Recurrent’s website allows buyers to type in a vehicle identification number and find out whether a used car is eligible.

One way that buyers can ensure that they’ll receive the credit is to insist that dealers apply it to the purchase price. That was not allowed under the old rules but will be possible beginning in 2024. The change will help people whose taxes are too low to claim the full credit.

For all their complaints about the way the Inflation Reduction Act was written, carmakers generally like the legislation. Speaking to investors in October, Jim Farley, the chief executive of Ford, noted that the law contained subsidies for battery production that were separate from the tax credits for car buyers that could be worth $7 billion for the company and its suppliers through 2026. Those subsidies should help reduce electric vehicle prices.

The Inflation Reduction Act, Mr. Farley said, will “have a wide range of positive impacts for both our customers and for Ford.”

Jack Ewing writes about business from New York, focusing on the auto industry and the transition to electric cars. He spent much of his career in Europe and is the author of “Faster, Higher, Farther," about the Volkswagen emissions scandal. @JackEwingNYT • Facebook

Turn Red Planet green with wind turbines to unlock new Mars missions: NASA

Scientists say research shows wind can take place alongside solar and nuclear as 'valuable' energy source to sustain life on Martian surface

Source: Recharge News | By Andrew Lee

Wind energy is “a valuable energy resource for future human missions to Mars” that could open new areas of the Red Planet for exploration, according to a team of scientists that urged more research into how turbines can support life under Martian conditions.

Once written off as a source of power due to conditions on Mars’ surface – where low atmospheric density results in wind forces typically 1% those seen on Earth – new research led by Victoria Hartwick of the NASA Ames Research Centre in California claims technological advances such as tapping low wind speeds and operating in extreme environments now “favour a Martian application”.

Wind turbines on Mars could prove particularly valuable as a complement to nuclear and solar energy, offering greater safety levels than the former and potentially able to function when the latter is engulfed in dust storms, say the researchers in a new paper published in Nature Astronomy that uses what’s claimed as “a state-of-the-art Mars global climate model”.

“We find that wind speeds at some proposed landing sites are sufficiently fast to provide a stand-alone or complementary energy source to solar or nuclear power,” said the scientists, adding that “wind power represents a stable, sustained energy resource across large portions of the Mars surface” that could help open up 13 new 'regions of interest' on the planet for human exploration.

Part of their calculations were based on power curve figures from an Enercon 33 turbine operating at the Ross Island wind farm in Antarctica as “an analogue site for present day Mars”.

Wind power represents a stable, sustained energy resource.

“We encourage additional study aimed at advancing wind turbine technology to operate efficiently under Mars conditions and to extract more power from Mars winds,” said the researchers.

They flagged a host of technical challenges that would need to be overcome, ranging from lightweight designs for transport to Mars to the need to operate in ultra-challenging temperature and dust conditions.

'Wrong side of history' | Wake up to the hype around green hydrogen for heating

OPINION | No colour of H2 makes sense to decarbonise heating, and pretending otherwise risks delaying urgent action to slash emissions, write Richard Lowes and David Cebon

Source: Recharge News | By Richard Lowes and David Cebon

Governments around the world are developing strategies and suites of policies to support their climate change mitigating ‘net-zero’ ambitions. Of course, more recently, linked to the terrible Russian war against Ukraine, policymakers are also looking to limit exposure to fossil fuel imports and the risks they pose.

The current US administration has described hydrogen as a “game-changer” in the fight against climate change and the transition away from fossil fuels. The UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson believes it “has perhaps the greatest potential of all”, while Ireland’s Tánaiste (the deputy head of government) has called it “the holy grail” of energy policy.

Such proclamations are impacting the politics of energy. The European Commission is proposing to allow gas infrastructure owners to fund hydrogen-readiness work, and potentially using the energy bills of electricity consumers to pay for it. A new Energy Bill currently making its way through the UK Parliament could allow a ‘hydrogen levy’ on electricity sales. In normal times, such ‘cross-subsidisation’ would never be allowed. But the climate and energy price crises, mean we are no longer in normal times. The perceived need for speed means that rapid action is considered more important than due process.

And while climate change demands an emergency response, there is a risk that going too fast, without evidence-backed decisions, will actually undermine efforts to decarbonise.

"Modest role"

To reach net zero, practically all fossil-fuel combustion needs to be replaced.

For buildings, heat pumps are a clear winning technology, extracting the majority of their heat output from outside air, ground or water. Even in cold temperatures, heat pumps can be powered using increasingly cost-effective, renewable electricity.

. Richard Lowes. Photo: Richard Lowes, RAP

According to the most detailed and up-to-date global net-zero analyses from international management consultancy McKinsey and The International Energy Agency, heat pumps take up the lion’s share of building heating in their global net-zero predictions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) recent report explains that “scenarios assessed show a very modest role for hydrogen in buildings by 2050”. The IPCC also highlighted the importance of heat pumps.

The proponents of unchecked hydrogen use are on the wrong side of the evidence, and history. They ended up there because of money — or more specifically, sunk assets, which are now under threat as the world attempts to move away from fossil fuels and its associated infrastructure. The use of hydrogen made from natural gas with carbon capture and storage (CCS) could keep gas flowing through infrastructure that would otherwise be stranded, and maintain the need for oil and gas development and processing facilities through which hydrogen can be produced.

With gas currently providing the largest share of the world’s heating, as well as public policies being considered and designed to remove fossil fuel heating from buildings, it should come as no surprise that the gas industry has been overselling the idea of converting gas infrastructure to run on hydrogen.

Hydrogen is being promoted through a powerful international, political and media machine, associated with the incumbent fossil fuel industry, and it is lobbying governments around the world.

We have seen this lobbying first hand. And while research into and evidence of lobbying tends to be limited, there are plenty of publicly available examples, indicating the scale of the efforts. In a letter to the European Commissions, trade body Eurogas has said hydrogen “will play a key role” in the energy demand for the sectors of home-heating, transport and electricity generation.

Just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you should

In a rare intervention on political lobbying, an often taboo subject in the UK, The Times newspaper explained how both BP and Shell were lobbying the UK government to support hydrogen to be used for heating. The UK’s ‘All Party Parliamentary Group on Hydrogen’ , “a cross-party group of MPs and peers [member of the UK parliament's upper house] that focuses on raising awareness of, and building support for large scale hydrogen projects” is funded directly by an industry group including Shell, Equinor, Cadent, Northern Gas Networks, SGN, Baxi, etc. These companies are all incumbents in the gas industry.

In the US, gas monopolies are promoting the conversion of their infrastructure to hydrogen and blending hydrogen into gas mix, while fighting government policies to reduce gas use alongside general efforts to undermine building electrification.

. David Cebon, professor of mechanical engineering, University of Cambridge. Photo: David Cebon, University of Cambridge

The scale of this lobbying is vast and has been mapped in detail across Europe where it has been described as “intense and concerted”. The lobby has seen some success in Europe, accused of hijacking European Covid recovery funds.

There are two potential impacts of such lobbying.

Firstly, there could be direct impacts on policy, with governments offering financial and regulatory support for investments in hydrogen, in spite of evidence suggesting this may be a poor use of funds. Indeed we are already seeing this.

But the second, more egregious outcome, would be that such efforts to promote hydrogen delay actual progress on climate change as policymakers are distracted from clearly better and cheaper options. Indeed, it has already been suggested that the oil sector knows the hydrogen solution for personal vehicles is flawed.

Pumping up the pressure

On the face of it, for countries such as the UK and the Netherlands, with well-developed and highly interconnected gas systems, it makes sense to consider the existing system and ask whether it be used in a zero-carbon world. The simplicity of ‘greening the gas’ or the idea of a ‘drop-in replacement’ is also an extremely effective lobbying and sales line.

The parent company of the UK’s largest gas (and oil) boiler manufacturer, explained in its submission to a UK parliamentary inquiry into heating:

"Bosch believes that hydrogen gas, with a by-product simply of water, could be the closest silver bullet we have."

In the same inquiry, one UK gas network owner explained that “a hydrogen-ready boiler solution supplied by a repurposed gas network – which is already built to meet peak heat demand in winter – offers the optimum route to decarbonise heat at the scale required with the lowest levels of disruption and most value for customers”.

In some respects, hydrogen does have some extremely valuable characteristics for clean energy systems. Firstly, it can be stored indefinitely (although the very small molecules make it prone to leaking out of most containers), which in a world of variable renewable energy is potentially attractive for long-term or transportable storage. Secondly, like fossil gas, it can be burned to produce heat or electricity; or used in fuel cells (producing heat and electricity at once). It can also be produced through the electrolysis of water, powered by increasingly cheap renewable electricity.

Yet just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you should. And this is patently true for the idea of widespread hydrogen use. In the same way that champagne is reserved for special occasions, hydrogen is a premium product with specific value.

Even a cursory look at the basic technical details show hydrogen as a very expensive and environmentally unattractive solution for the heating and much of the transport sector.

Not a source of energy

A common misunderstanding is that hydrogen is itself a source of energy. It is not. It is solely a vector or energy carrier: a means of storing and transporting energy. Hydrogen gas does not exist in a state where it can be extracted from the environment in useful quantities, but it must be created, which is energy intensive and costly.

The reason why the fossil-fuel production industry is so keen on hydrogen is because nearly all hydrogen currently made globally (most of which is used in industry) is produced from fossil fuels, mostly gas, but some oil and coal.

Enter 'blue hydrogen', a term that refers to hydrogen produced from fossil gas with (some) greenhouse gas emissions captured in the production process and in theory stored so that they have no impact on the climate.

Blue hydrogen is controversial principally because of worries that it might be worse for the climate than simply burning methane. These concerns stem from the fact that the production of the gas used to make it could lead to increased fugitive methane emissions, a very potent greenhouse gas, and also because capturing and storing CO2 emissions is difficult, expensive and has not been successfully achieved at scale anywhere in the world.

A belief that the whole idea of hydrogen had been captured by the fossil-fuel industry led to Chris Jackson resigning as chairman of the UK’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association, saying the group’s support for blue H2 “is at best an expensive distraction, and at worst a lock-in for continued fossil-fuel use that guarantees we will fail to meet our decarbonisation goals”.

With fossil gas prices skyrocketing to record highs, and the entire European continent aiming to rapidly reduce its exposure to Russian gas imports, blue hydrogen has rapidly gone out of fashion. Although you won’t hear that mentioned by many industrial hydrogen proponents.

Much of the hydrogen push has silently pivoted towards 'green' hydrogen, created from water using green electricity. While on the face of it, a move from fossil fuel-derived hydrogen to renewably produced hydrogen might appear to be a good thing, the reality is that burning green hydrogen at scale seems even less plausible than burning blue hydrogen. The energy content of green hydrogen comes from electricity and the production process involves significant energy efficiency losses.

The electricity could be used directly in 100% efficient electric heaters or even more efficient heat pumps which use electricity to extract heat from the environment. Heat pumps operate with an effective efficiency of over 300%, with each unit of electricity going in, resulting in three units of useful heat.

These conversion efficiencies are a basic element of energy economics, and are the nub of the green hydrogen debate.

Energy conversion basics

All energy conversion processes result in losses, meaning you get less useful energy out compared to the amount you put in. For example, a power station burning gas may be around 60% efficient with 40% of the energy lost as heat.

Fundamentally, the hydrogen pathway for heating (all the way from electricity generation to burning it in a boiler) has much greater energy losses than direct electric route. It therefore requires far more primary energy (about 6 times more) than using a heat pump to deliver the same amount of heat, leading to much higher costs.

The biggest energy loss associated with green hydrogen use is in the process of electrolysis, or splitting water molecules to produce the hydrogen in the first place.

A recent academic review put in-practice efficiencies at between 60% and 73% for electrolysis (i.e. one unit in and 0.6 to 0.73 units out), albeit with some scope for improvement; something the hydrogen industry (obviously) agrees with.

Blue hydrogen was, at least before the gas price explosion, potentially cost effective compared to widespread use of heat pumps in various independent pieces of analysis, albeit under less stretching greenhouse gas reduction targets.

There is, however, not one independent study that suggests green hydrogen is cost effective compared to the widespread use of heat pumps. The high cost of hydrogen compared to alternatives becomes quite obvious once you understand how the energy efficiency of green hydrogen and compares to electrification.

. Relative efficiencies of heat pumps, direct electrification and hydrogen heating. Photo: David Cebon

The graphic above spells this out. The first route (shown on the left) shows transmission of the electricity to a consumer where it powers a heat pump. As heat pumps use electricity to heat a building from the environment that results in around three (or more) units of heat for every unit of electricity consumed, they have an effective 300% efficiency (known as the “coefficient of performance” or COP, which is in this case three). While some losses occur in the transportation of electricity, the overall effect is that 100 units of electricity results in about 270 units of heat reaching the consumer. This is an amazing energy uplift when you consider the value of clean electricity and that over two thirds of the useful heat is coming from an inexhaustible renewable source.

The second route (centre) uses a simple electric space heater, powered by green electricity. There are small losses in electricity transportation, but most of the 90 kWh of electricity reaching the heater is converted into useful heat, yielding about 86 kWh.

The third route on the right shows the generation of green hydrogen which is burnt in a boiler for heating. Significant losses occur in the conversion of electricity to hydrogen. But further losses occur as energy is used to store the hydrogen and transport it to buildings and also when the hydrogen is burnt in boilers. 100 units in at the start of the process leads to 46 out in this pathway. Comparing the left hand and right hand routes, the heat pump route delivers about six times more heat than a green hydrogen boiler for the same amount of electricity generation.

This six times difference is the stark reality of using hydrogen for heating compared to heat pumps.

If providing the equivalent amount of heat by the green hydrogen route requires up to six times as much primary energy, it would be necessary to build up to six times as many offshore wind turbines or nuclear power stations, all with their own environmental and resource impacts. Clearly this electricity capacity would take much longer to build, cost more and would delay decarbonisation. Hence comments from the UK’s Climate Change Committee CEO warning that switching all heating to hydrogen would be “impractical”, particularly when climate change demands rapid and immediate action.

Perhaps it is not quite that simple

Now, you might be thinking, OK that’s great in theory, but you don’t always have renewable electricity being generated when you need your heat pump running and so you will not be able to get that efficiency all of the time.

This is certainly true for some of the time. However, as pointed out by the late Sir David Mackay – the British physicist, mathematician, Regius Professor of Engineering and Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change – even running a heat pump solely on electricity generated by gas power stations would still use less gas and therefore have lower emissions than using a gas boiler. That’s because, even though your gas power station may be only 50% efficient, your heat pump is 300% efficient and that makes the overall process more efficient than burning gas in a boiler.

Politicians do not want to take the difficult decisions

It’s also important to bear in mind that heat pumps perform less well when it is colder with a performance of possibly 150% (a coefficient of performance of 1.5). But even in that case, the heat pump would still generate three times more heat per unit of electricity than green hydrogen. Using a heat pump will therefore always be more efficient and require less primary energy than burning green hydrogen for the same amount of heat.

The impracticality of hydrogen is not just limited to expanding the electricity sector to infeasible levels. The UK gas grid is currently not suitable for transporting hydrogen and an investment of £22 bn ($26bn) would be needed to make it so according to analysis for the UK government; that’s similar to the total current value of the UK gas grid. There is also no getting away from the fact that hydrogen would require geographically based conversions, turning off whole areas of gas at a time and then refilling and reconnecting them, potentially leaving whole areas without heat or hot water for days.

Need for speed

Clearly the climate is changing and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase. Slow progress thus far means that the world needs to decarbonise as quickly as possible. Any delay to decarbonising heating or transport, such large chunks of current emissions, could be disastrous. We obviously also need to wean ourselves off increasingly expensive fossil fuels.

Taking the hydrogen-for-heating route would not just cost much more but would take longer to achieve, requiring so much more primary energy. This idea is unlikely to ever get beyond limited trials.

A more likely scenario is that more time is wasted considering the idea of burning hydrogen for heat and more is spent funding companies to research it because politicians do not want to take the required difficult decisions. The lobbying will continue and while governments are slowly beginning to understand the limits and costs of hydrogen, lobbying is moving towards local authority policymakers where future decisions will need to be made.

Amidst the hype, citizens are become increasingly confused about future heating technologies. All of this leads to climate delay and continued exposure to fossil fuels.

But when decision-makers are faced with the real-world cost implications of hydrogen for heat, the role of electrification and energy efficiency will eventually be realised. Yet this may be too late.

Decarbonising heat will be hard enough. And when speed is everything, there is no time for the hydrogen distraction.

·David Cebon is professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Cambridge, and an executive at the Centre for Sustainable Road Freight

·Dr Richard Lowes is a senior associate at the Regulatory Assistance Project and research fellow in the University of Exeter's Energy Policy Group

Extracting water from desert air: unique 10GW green hydrogen project set to begin construction in 2022

The $10.75bn Desert Bloom facility in Australia’s Northern Territory is due to start commercial production the following year

Source: Recharge News | By Leigh Collins

The 10GW Desert Bloom green hydrogen project in the Australian outback — which will source water for the electrolysis process from the air — has been granted Major Project Status by the Northern Territory.

This means that the regional government will work with developer Aqua Aerem to progress the $10.75bn project to full scale, including identifying suitable locations in the sparsely populated Barkly region and fast-tracking each stage through the planning approvals process.

Aqua Aerem said the status will allow construction to begin on an initial 8MW test next year, ahead of a 400MW first phase, with “the production of commercial quantities of green hydrogen from 2023”. Upon completion in 2027, the project will produce about 410,000 tonnes of green H2 for less than $2/kg, making it cost-competitive with grey hydrogen made from unabated fossil fuels.

Desert Bloom is unique among an ever-growing global pipeline of gigawatt-scale green hydrogen projects because it will capture its water from the air. Electrolysers, which split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen generally need nine litres of H2O for every kilogram of H2 — yet most giga-scale projects are situated in arid or semi-arid regions where high solar irradiation improves the levelised cost of H2 production.

“Our air-to-water technology, which solves this previously intractable water supply problem, is a world first; invented and developed here in Australia,” said Gerard Reiter, chief executive of Aqua Aerem, which means “water air” in Latin.

“This technology will open the door for green hydrogen projects to be located where the best renewable power sources are available, which is generally in the driest areas of the planet.”

Aqua Aerem offers little detail about how the technology works, only to say that it utilises an absorber that will “capture water from the atmosphere in arid environments... with increased efficiency in hotter climates”.

Most of the existing global pipeline of green H2 projects are expected to source their water from the sea through purpose-built water desalination facilities.

Despite the general lack of the rain in the arid/semi-arid Barkly region of the Northern Territory, the humidity levels — ie, the water vapour content in the air — still average 23% in the driest month of October, rising to 45% in January.

When water is extracted from air, it is usually through condensation — drawing air into a machine and cooling it until the water vapour reaches its dew point and turns to liquid.

The Northern Territory’s power utility, Territory Generation, intends to buy hydrogen from the initial stages of the project and use it to generate electricity at a gas-fired power plant in the nearby township of Tennants Creek. This will be an expensive way to produce power, as the round-trip efficiency of converting electricity to hydrogen and back again is usually about 30%, meaning that only 30kWh is produced from the original 100kWh.

In the longer term, the developer aims to utilise existing natural-gas pipelines to transport its H2 900km north to Darwin for export to Asia, although local ammonia production is also being considered.

Desert Bloom will eventually consist of thousands of moveable 2MW containerised modules called Hydrogen Production Units that utilise PV panels, concentrated parabolic solar thermal heaters, the patented air-to-water equipment, and electrolysers — thus generating water, heat, electricity and hydrogen.

Singapore-based Sanguine Impact Investment, Aqua Aerem’s majority shareholder, has already taken a financial investment decision to provide the project with an initial A$1bn ($977m) — and further investment is expected to come from “one of Japan’s largest gas buyers and distributors”, the developer says.

Floating solar power could supply 'almost half' of global electricity demand: NREL

US researchers calculate as much as 10,600TWh in annual power generation potential from water-top PV installed on hydro-dam reservoirs

Source: Recharge News | By Darius Snieckus

Wiring in floating solar arrays to existing hydropower reservoirs around the world could change the face of the global energy system by meeting nearly 50% of total electricity demand, according to a potentially market-making new study out of the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Researchers estimate as much as 7.6TW of power could be produced by the water-top PV. This works out to about 10,600TWh of potential annual generation – even before output from the hydro plants – compared to worldwide electricity consumption which, according to International Energy Agency 2018 figures cited by NREL, was just over 22,300TWh.

“This is really optimistic,” said NREL integrated decision support group researcher Nathan Lee, who was lead author of the study.

But he tempered: “This does not represent what could be economically feasible or what the markets could actually support. Rather, it is an upper-bound estimate of feasible resources that considers waterbody constraints and generation system performance.”

NREL counted 379,068 freshwater hydropower reservoirs worldwide that could host floating PV arrays, though noted that “additional siting data [would be] needed prior to any implementation because some may be dry during parts of the year”.

Coupling floating solar and hydropower is seen having a strong rationale for a number of reasons, including that a hybrid system could have lower transmission costs by linking two seasonally-aligned power sources to a common substation and that the two technologies can balance each other with their respective electricity production.

“The greatest potential for solar power is during dry seasons, while for hydropower rainy seasons present the best opportunity. Under one scenario, that means operators of a hybrid system could use pumped storage hydropower to store excess solar generation ,” said Lee.

Like its cousin in the floating wind sector, floating PV has been hailed for its huge potential in the next wave of the energy transition, with the ability to capitalize on unused water surfaces to produce renewable power in countries where land may be scarce. Plants in the hundreds of megawatts, or even gigawatt-scale, are now being proposed around the world.

Technical advisory group DNV GL, which earlier this year set up a cross-sector initiative to develop best practice for the sector, has cited estimates that human-made inland waters alone have the potential to support up to 4TW of new power capacity globally.

Floating solar is also pushing out into the open sea – Recharge reported earlier this year how a pioneering deployment offshore of the Netherlands remained operating after being hit by Storm Ciara.

NREL, in a previous study, estimated that installing floating solar panels on man-made US reservoirs could generate about 10% of the nation’s annual electricity production.

Wake-up call | Energy-sapping turbulence at offshore wind projects 'vastly underpredicted'

'Velocity deficits' equal to 10% drop in wind speed modelled by ArcVera at zones in US Atlantic in the frame for arrays built around ultra-large class, 12MW-plus units

Source: Recharge News | By Darius Snieckus

The wind industry’s Olympian drive to continue upscaling offshore turbine size could come under the microscope after new calculus concluded conventional engineering modelling of ‘wake’ – the turbulence created by rotor blades as wind moves through an array – has “vastly underpredicted” energy losses linked to so-called “external wakes” – particularly for the ultra-large-class machines now heading for the water.

The work by consultancy ArcVera, which studied long-range wake loss potential at project development zones off New York in the US Atlantic, found “velocity deficits” as high as one metre per second – equal to a 10% drop in wind speed – “could persist up to or greater than 100km downwind” of offshore developments using 12MW-plus models.

“This new study provides an important cautionary lesson as the wind industry proceeds to ever-larger wind turbine models with greater farm density across the globe,” Greg Poulos, CEO of ArcVera, said of the findings, which used high-fidelity Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) numerical weather prediction modelling run with wind farm parameterisation (WFP) software to factor in the effects of turbines at a site

“WRF-WFP’s results here show that engineering wake... models currently under-predict long-range wake losses by a significant margin. Unexpected losses are likely to accrue from wind farms once thought to be too far away to be material to project performance.”

Mark Stoelinga, head of Atmospheric Science Innovation at ArcVera, added: “This [underestimate] is leading to long-range energy deficits much greater than expected by most subject matter experts in the industry.”

The research, scoped over a swathe of the New York Bight, where the state held a record-setting, $4.4bn leasing round this year, was sparked by the fact that engineering models commonly used in the wind industry to this point have been validated internal and “nearby” external wakes but not over long distances or for large nameplate, 12MW-plus, machines with 200-metre-plus diameter rotors.

ArcVera noted that WFP in WRF “has been validated against SCADA recorded production for an [in-house] onshore case, and it was accurate with respect to long-distance wakes within 16% at a 5km, 50-metre rotor diameter range”.

“In the onshore validation study that we conducted in Iowa, USA, wakes were found to travel over 40 km overland, in stable atmospheric conditions. Over the ocean, it is common for atmospheric stability to be enhanced, especially when warm air flow passes over colder underlying water,” said Stoelinga.

“We also surmise that the very large turbines used in the study produce unusually strong wakes that cannot easily recover their lost momentum, especially under enhanced atmospheric stability conditions.

Consultancy DNV in 2020 flagged the impact the so-called “blockage effect” and wake in general could have on the overall economics of offshore wind power.

'People will wonder why they put solar on land at all': pioneer says floating PV can beat wind

Ocean Sun's hiring of a top Equinor expert to help 'take it to the next level' reflects its ambition to play a key role in the energy transition, says CEO Børge Bjørneklett

Source: Recharge News | By Andrew Lee

It’s not uncommon to hear predictions that renewable energy’s next big leap forward will come with a boom in floating generation – but Børge Bjørneklett is convinced that it will be led by solar modules, not wind turbines.

As CEO of Norwegian floating PV pioneer Ocean Sun, Bjørneklett's bullishness over the technology’s prospects is hardly surprising, but he insists the data backs him up when he claims the fledgling sector is on the cusp of a boom that could outstrip even the growth tipped for foundation-free wind turbines.

“The application area is so much larger [than for floating wind] if you look at irradiation maps of the world, particularly in Southeast Asia,” he tells Recharge. “It’s also much more lean [in materials and deployment]”.

The application area is so much larger… if you look at irradiation maps of the world.

And while floating wind “still has a long way to go on cost”, Bjørneklett claims floating PV, and in particular Ocean Sun’s patented 'flotation ring' polymer membrane technology, is already “in many areas the most affordable source of energy”.

Floating wind’s many advocates may take issue with his analysis, but Ocean Sun – which is working with the likes of Statkraft and Fred Olsen Renewables, and says it is in discussions over more than 3GW of deployments – made a powerful statement of intent in February, when it hired Nenad Keseric as its new chief operating officer from Equinor.

Keseric spent more than a decade helping the Norwegian energy giant carve out a leading position in floating wind, and Bjørneklett claims his new hire is well-placed to help take Ocean Sun “to the next level” towards gigawatt-scale deployments around the world.

Ocean Sun is far from the only player in the fast-emerging floating solar market, which in recent years has been dominated by China’s Sungrow and France’s Ciel & Terre, both pioneers in the market.

But the Oslo-listed Norwegian group’s differentiator rests with its use of hydro-elastic membranes with mooring systems based on fish farming, rather than the rigid pontoons or floats more usually employed to place PV modules on lakes, reservoirs or even the open sea.

Water cooler moment

That allows highly efficient dissipation of heat into the surface below, effectively meaning the system is cooled by water, rather than air, which in Bjørneklett’s phrase has a “very interesting effect” on energy yield of around 0.4% per degree-centigrade, that can result in an increase of up to 10% compared to pontoons or ground-mounted panels.

The advantages of membrane deployment over pontoons does not stop at energy yield, according to Bjørneklett, with Capex reduced by the use of polymer materials around the perimeter of the membranes.

Ocean Sun’s 600kW circular membranes need up to 15-times less container volume to be transported than rival systems, he claims, and can be “unpacked like a big pancake” for the addition of modules, in the case of which are supplied by China’s GCL System.

Asked to put a cost-of-energy figure on its system, Bjørneklett says that depends heavily on irradiation levels and the size of system. “But we can now deploy systems for well under $500,000 per megawatt,” with the gap on ground-mounted systems narrowing fast, he claims.

The technology has also shown it can survive harsh weather conditions, with a prototype in the Philippines – one of three pilots worldwide – coming through tropical storms and monsoons.

Ocean Sun’s business model is as a licensor of technology, and the company, founded in 2016, is working with several big names in the energy sector as they advance their own ambitions.

Perhaps most strikingly, Ocean Sun is part of a project to build a 2.1GW floating PV plant on the Saemangeum tidal flat on the Yellow Sea coast of South Korea that is among the largest planned globally.

A 2MW project in Albania led by Statkraft is currently awaiting delivery of its modules, and

earlier in 2021 Ocean Sun announced it would link with Fred Olsen Renewables and others for a 250kW pilot deployment off the Canary Islands, as part of the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme.

The Canary Islands project, Bjørneklett explains, will test how Ocean Sun’s systems perform in less sheltered open-water conditions, which present the greatest challenges to floating solar systems.

Asian opportunity

But the firm’s CEO expects the vast majority of opportunities globally to come in coastal or sheltered areas, or inland waters, with Asia offering particular promise.

With onshore renewables often facing limited land availability, the region’s coastal megacities will look offshore for their power, Bjørneklett predicted, claiming floating solar has a big card up its sleeve compared to wind at sea.

“It’s flat, can sit a few kilometres away from big cities and you can’t even see it,” he says.

Bjørneklett concedes that the technology works best “between the 45th parallels” – so roughly below southern France in Europe and northern Japan in Asia – as “if you go too far north and south we suffer a bit on panel inclination”.

Even so, according to Bjørneklett, such is the potential for floating solar that it is not just floating wind that is in its sights – even onshore PV should start looking over its shoulder.

“I think to be a bit futuristic, people will ask themselves why they put up solar panels on land at all,” he says.

Bjørneklett’s prediction of global supremacy may be too rich for some, given that floating solar currently has only around 3GW operational around the world, a tiny fraction of the total renewables fleet.

However, there are plenty of objective observers willing to predict floating solar will have a big role to play.

Fitch Solutions said late last year it sees potential for 10GW of additions as soon as 2025, while DNV GL – which in 2020 established a joint industry partnership for the sector – has cited estimates that deploying panels on inland man-made waters alone has a potential to add four terawatts of power capacity worldwide.

‘EU’s 2030 green hydrogen mandates would drive up power demand and make electricity punishingly expensive’

The European Commission’s H2 strategy is reckless and high risk, says independent non-profit organisation Transport & Environment

Source: Recharge News | By Leigh Collins

Meeting the European Commission’s planned mandates for green hydrogen in 2030 would increase electricity demand by 17% at a time when power prices are already at an all-time high, according to Brussels-based independent non-profit organisation Transport & Environment (T&E)

In its latest Renewable Energy Directive proposal, the commission wants to replace 50% of the fossil-gas-derived grey hydrogen used in Europe by 2030 with green H2 produced from renewables by 2030. On top of this, also by 2030, it wants 2.6% of the energy demand from transport to come from so-called RFNBOs — renewable fuels of non-biological origin, which includes hydrogen and synthetic “e-fuels” produced from green H2. This 2.6% includes road and rail transport, as well as aviation and shipping.

Combined, these two mandates would require about 500TWh of renewable energy, said T&E — equivalent to all the wind power currently generated in Europe, or France’s total electricity consumption.

“The 2.6% of green hydrogen and e-fuels will require more renewable electricity in 2030 than all the electricity consumed by battery electric vehicles (cars, buses, trucks) in that year,” said T&E in a statement.

It added: “The European energy grid is gradually decarbonising with more renewables and less fossil-fuel coal and gas-powered electricity. But without additional renewables tied to hydrogen targets, the EU’s plan will likely result in renewables being diverted from the grid and undercut the emissions savings from electric vehicles by making the grid dirtier. With gas the most common marginal fuel to plug gaps, this strategy would be punishingly expensive with gas prices so high.”

Geert Decock, electricity and energy manager at T&E, added: “The EU is playing a high risk hydrogen strategy. We do need hydrogen for ships and planes, but it is reckless to heap unnecessary pressure on wind and solar when clean electricity will be needed to power the growing number of electric cars and heat pumps for homes.

“The EU must ensure that any hydrogen production is coupled with new renewable energy generation. Otherwise today’s high gas and electricity prices will feel like a bargain compared with what’s to come.”

'Green hydrogen developers fear electrolysers will quickly sell out when the ketchup effect kicks in', says Nel CEO

Jon André Løkke tells Recharge that his company, one of the world's leading electrolyser makers, is in discussions with clients about reserving manufacturing capacity for their projects

Source: Recharge News | By Leigh Collins

Readers of a certain age may be familiar with the difficulties of getting thick tomato ketchup out of a glass bottle — holding it upside-down doesn’t work, it has to be shaken vigorously or whacked on the base until the sauce starts flowing, and then it suddenly gushes out, often smothering the plate.

Jon André Løkke, the chief executive of leading electrolyser manufacturer Nel, believes this “ketchup effect” is a metaphor for today’s hydrogen sector.

In other words, gigawatts of orders are ready to be signed off, but will not be until the industry gets the metaphorical whack on the bottom of the bottle from governments, and then OEMs will suddenly be swamped, leaving customers scrambling to place orders before manufacturing capacity is swallowed up.

“Customers are increasingly concerned about securing access to production capacity… and [our] plant may soon end up being sold out,” Løkke tells Recharge, adding that Nel has already “initiated capacity reservation discussions with a selected number of clients”.

This fits with recent analysis by US investment bank Jefferies, which found that global electrolyser manufacturing capacity will not be big enough to meet demand in 2030, even in the lowest demand scenarios.

Løkke explains that the company’s new fully automated 500MW factory in Herøya, Norway, was completed in September, with production now being ramped up to meet “actual customer demands”, with plans to expand capacity to 2GW once the proverbial ketchup starts flowing.

Nel’s order pipeline already consists of more than 800 projects adding up to more than 11GW of electrolysers, with its largest being a 1.6GW facility.

It will be ‘first-come-first-serve’ principle so that the clients that commit first will be secured first.

“However, we are still waiting for the “ketchup effect” where firm commitments are made,” Løkke tells Recharge. “Here it will be ‘first-come-first-serve’ principle so that the clients that commit first will be secured first.

“Given that we already have developed a fully automated production concept and spent more than three years on that, we also believe that we will be able to add additional capacity relatively quickly. Copy/paste is faster than developing from scratch. Hence, this will also depend on the demand from end customers.”

He explains that demand for electrolysers will grow rapidly once countries and regions provide “clear and predictable policy frameworks”.

“It’s not just about providing subsidies or carbon contracts for difference to reduce the short-term cost gap between renewable H2 and fossil H2,” he says. “It’s a mixture of different funding instruments and policy tools at EU level and national level. Like the proposed targets in the revised Renewable Energy Directive, where the European Commission has proposed a target for the use of renewable hydrogen in industry... 50% of the hydrogen they consume [would have to be] renewable hydrogen. This is one way that we can incentivise a switch from grey to green.

“Having certainty that there will be demand means we will increase our capacities, which will lead to economies of scale and a subsequent reduction in capex costs. You cannot reduce cost from an empty factory.”

Cutting the cost of green hydrogen

Nel declared in January that its new factory will cut the cost of its electrolysers — ie, the machines that use an electric current to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen — by about 75%, helping the price of green hydrogen to fall to $1.50/kg by 2025.

“It is absolutely doable, provided of course we have the right regulatory framework to achieve volumes in production,” Løkke explains, pointing out that the US government has since adopted the same cost target. “Clear signals from policy makers, regulators and industry are key for us in terms of making the additional investments to increase capacity further.”

That $1.50/kg price would also require the cost of renewable energy to continue to fall.

“With the levelised cost of energy of wind and solar prices continuously coming down, renewable hydrogen will follow the same path, as electrical power constitutes 70-80% of hydrogen’s total cost.”

Løkke says that four factors will enable Nel to cut the cost of delivered electrolysers by 75% — automation and economies of scale at its new factory (which accounts for roughly half of the reduction); standardising module offerings to 20MW, 50MW, 100MW and 250MW; improved supply-chain procurement; and standardised design and pre-fabricated skids that reduce time and cost for commissioning and installation.

Use cases

The Norwegian tells Recharge that the biggest demand for electrolysers is currently coming from heavy industry, from hard-to-abate sectors such as “CO2-free steel, CO2-free ammonia, CO2-free methanol, etc” — rather than for more controversial uses such as transport and heating.

“We cannot achieve climate neutrality without hydrogen,” he explains, adding that the gas “can unlock the full potential of renewables, providing a means to flexibly transfer energy across sectors, time, and place”.

“You cannot make CO2-free steel with a battery, you need an H2 molecule to electrify steel production. The same goes for many other industry applications including mobility applications like shipping and aerospace. Hydrogen is key and we cannot decarbonise without it. That is why the future is bright for renewable hydrogen.”

He points out that Nel is already involved in projects focused on energy storage, heavy-duty trucks and steel plants, including the HyBrit project in Sweden, which is already producing steel using green hydrogen.

But while many independent analysts believe that hydrogen should not be used for heating buildings, Lokke is not so convinced, saying that it has potential in neighbourhoods close to industrial hubs — so-called “hydrogen valleys” — that will be both producing and using large amounts of H2.

“Regarding heating, we recently delivered a purchase order in Scotland for an electrolyser system that would heat 900 homes in a first phase,” he says. “Moving forward, as hydrogen valleys develop and as supply and demand increase, the case for the use of renewable H2 in heating could increase in these types of locations.”

And as a company that also manufactures hydrogen filling pumps, it is not surprising to hear Løkke talk up the potential of green hydrogen in transport.

“We are designing the station modules with a clear focus on TCO [total cost of ownership] for the final customer. From a cost of hydrogen at the pump of $5/kg, hydrogen will reach fossil parity and be competitive in most transport applications.”

The cost of hydrogen at the pump in Germany — the biggest market for fuel-cell vehicles in Europe — is currently €9.50/kg, according to the H2.live website.

Løkke also sees a bright future for green hydrogen in energy storage, despite the poor round-trip of efficiency of converting power to H2 and back again.

“Hydrogen can also help to balance the grid and store energy,” he says. “In 2020, an estimated €1.35bn [$1.52bn] worth of offshore wind energy was curtailed in Germany due to insufficient transmission grid capacity. In 2021, in the UK, 2.5TWh were curtailed at a cost of £172m ($227m) — that’s taxpayers’ money.

“So we need a clearer framework there to help the business model develop. This would be a win-win for all stakeholders: consumers, governments and industry.”

Japan's first offshore solar farm to feed robot battery-mule boats with power for Tokyo

Consortium plans futuristic energy system for Japanese capital under cutting-edge technologies programme

Source: Recharge News | By Andrew Lee

Japan’s first offshore floating solar array aims to generate power in Tokyo Bay that can then be stored and shipped back to shore in batteries by drone sailing vessels, said a group planning the ambitious project.

Dutch-Norwegian floating PV pioneer SolarDuck said its consortium with Tokyu Land Corporation and Everblue – a Japanese marine specialist – has been selected to build a demonstration plant as part of a Tokyo government plan to mobilise cutting-edge technologies for the city’s next 100 years.

SolarDuck – which is already planning arrays as large as 5MW in the North Sea off Europe – aims by Q1 2024 to deploy an 88kW floating solar system and mooring cables in the Tokyo Bay Area. The energy generated would be stored in batteries that would be transported back to shore by Everblue’s autonomous vessels for use in the power-hungry Japanese capital.

Few further details of the demonstrator such as PV capacity or timescale were given in a statement announcing the contract from the Tokyo government.

The partners said: “Tokyo, a major energy consumption area, is dependent on power transmission from the suburbs. The achievement of energy generation and marine transportation in the Bay Area will contribute to the realisation of a [unique] urban model.”

While deployment of floating PV on inland surfaces such as lakes and reservoirs is already booming, placing solar at sea presents a new level of challenge due to the harsh conditions facing equipment offshore.

China recently claimed a first when it linked two 0.5MW floating PV arrays with a single offshore wind turbine in the seas off Shandong province.

GE Turkey's 2022 Summary: building a bridge to the future with the sustainability principles

Source: GE Turkey | Author is some hard working grunt probably. The translator is Google.

December 30, 2022

Protecting the legacy of innovative approach left by Thomas Edison for 130 years, GE is always working for a better world. It is building a bridge to the future with the sustainability principles it has put at the center of its work for years. Thanks to the importance it attaches to diversity in business life and a free and open working environment, happy employees win. It always aims for the better with technology solutions that touch life.  GE has been building the future in Turkey for more than 70 years. As we prepare for a new year, we summarized the projects that GE Turkey implemented in 2022, the decisions it took and the signatures it signed. 

Here are the developments that marked 2022!

Turkey's Happiest Workplace

GE Turkey was deemed worthy of the "Turkey's Happiest Workplace" award in the Industrial Engineering category in the "Turkey's Happiest Workplaces Survey" conducted in collaboration with Happy Place to Work and Capital Magazine .

Environment, Health and Occupational Safety

This year, GE Turkey continued to work to ensure the safety of its employees and stakeholders. With the priority of environment and human; produced renewable technology solutions in energy, waste and natural resource management. Click for the interviews we conducted with our environment, health and safety employees .

First Step in My Career

This year , GE collaborated with the Contemporary Life Support Association for the "First Step in My Career" project . With the project, 60 girls and 15 boys studying in various cities of Turkey; An 8-week training that guided a total of 75 university students and mentoring was provided to professionals of the near future.

basilisk

Hayra Alamet – Şahmeran 34 exhibition , sponsored by GE HealthCare , brought together different artists and also made an important initiative that will contribute to the future of girls.

The Rise of Artificial Intelligence

GE HealthCare and Bayındır Health Group signed an agreement to test three applications based on artificial intelligence. Doctors in the radiology and emergency departments of Bayındır Söğütözü Hospital in Ankara, using Edison Open AI Orchestrator and other artificial intelligence applications offered by GE HealthCare and Lunit , present clinical images obtained from chest X-ray and mammography examinations with artificial intelligence supported findings and explanations. will review.

Three Separate Companies

As GE builds the future, it will continue as three separate companies. Firstly; GE HealthCare will leave early in the new year , followed by GE Vernova in early 2024 , and finally GE Aerospace to begin more focused work in their respective fields.

It Begins With Enlightenment

GE HealthCare said “Everything Begins with Enlightenment” in Turkey Breast Cancer Awareness Month and illuminated Atatürk Cultural Center with pink light for three days. Within the scope of the project, “illuminating” seminars were held to raise awareness about breast cancer.

From the Roots to the Future with Our Power

The 7th GE Turkey Women Employee Network Summit, where we have been listening to the experiences and inspiring speeches of successful leaders for years, took place this year. Inspired by GE 's deep-rooted past, saying “From the Roots to the Future with Our Strength” , the GE Women Turkey Women Employee Network Summit was filled with valuable speakers.

By the Power of the Wind

Upon the order of Poland's largest energy company PGE, Poland's largest generator transformers started to be produced at the Gebze Power Transformers Factory. The 830 MVA generator transformers, which will equip the Dolna Odra Power Plant and provide the highest technical efficiency in electricity generation, will deliver electricity to hundreds of thousands of households.

Our Future Face

In cooperation with the GE Turkey Women Employee Network and the Association for Supporting Contemporary Life , young people hosted the STEM event by saying “ Our Future Face ” to train the talents of the future and to increase the representation of women, who are few in number in working life, in technical roles.

Koch Industries’ Bet on Batteries

The company is plugging $30 million into a start-up co-founded by one of Silicon Valley’s favorite scientists.

Source: New York Times | By Andrew Ross Sorkin, Jason Karaian, Vivian Giang, Stephen Gandel, Lauren Hirsch, Ephrat Livni, Anna Schaverien and David F. Gallagher

April 6, 2022

Exclusive: New funds for an in-demand Silicon Valley scientist

Charles Koch — the C.E.O. of Koch Industries, the sprawling energy and commodities conglomerate — has funded conservative groups that raise doubts about climate change, part of the considerable political influence that his family fortune wields. Over the past few years, Koch has also been a big investor in batteries — a key technology in the global effort to cut carbon emissions.

An arm of Koch Industries has been betting that the fast-growing electric vehicle industry will generate vast demand for better batteries. Its list of investments includes Aspen Aerogels, Eos Energy Enterprises, Standard Lithium and, now, Blue Current, a start-up helmed by one of Silicon Valley’s favorite scientists, Joseph DeSimone. Koch Strategic Platforms is investing $30 million in Blue Current, which it will use to build a pilot and take it to production, DealBook is first to report.

“We are going to need a lot of batteries,” Elon Musk said last year at a Tesla event. Wood Mackenzie estimates that 18 percent of new cars sold will be electric by 2030, far outstripping current battery output. Battery manufacturing is dominated by companies like Tesla, Panasonic and LG Chem, but new players are emerging. Venture investors in the U.S. put $1.8 billion into the industry in 2021, far above any previous year, according to PitchBook.

DeSimone has helped Blue Current attract buzz. He is named in more than 200 patents, and left a long academic career in the sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University to co-found Carbon, a 3-D manufacturing company, in 2013. (The company raised $680 million in private funding.) DeSimone stepped down as C.E.O. in 2019, becoming chairman of its board, and joined the Stanford faculty the next year. Since then, Silicon Valley has been wondering: What’s next?

Blue Current has worked in stealth mode since 2016, when DeSimone founded it with Nitash Balsara, a professor at U.C. Berkeley. The company is betting on solid-state silicon as a superior technology to batteries that rely on lithium and liquid electrolytes, which are highly flammable. Battery fires are a real problem for electric vehicles: Last year, General Motors had to replace the lithium-ion battery modules in 141,000 cars after some caught on fire. Solid-state batteries using either lithium or silicon are the next big thing for investors, but Blue Current says its silicon-based batteries are safer and have a particularly high energy density, meaning more charge in a smaller space.

Neither battery type is “ready for prime time yet,” said Venkat Srinivasan, the director of the Argonne National Laboratory’s Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science, who has not directly evaluated Blue Current’s technology. A big question is whether the companies in this fast-growing industry can ramp up production enough to become commercially viable. Blue Current now has new funds from a high-profile investor to prove itself.

Andrew Ross Sorkin is a columnist and the founder and editor at large of DealBook. He is a co-anchor of CNBC’s "Squawk Box" and the author of “Too Big to Fail.” He is also a co-creator of the Showtime drama series "Billions." @andrewrsorkin • Facebook

Jason Karaian is the editor of DealBook, based in London. He joined The Times in 2020 from Quartz, where he was senior Europe correspondent and later global finance and economics editor. @jkaraian

Stephen Gandel is a news editor for DealBook. He was previously a senior reporter for CBS News, and a columnist at Bloomberg. He has covered Wall Street and financial firms for most of his career. @stephengandel

Lauren Hirsch joined the New York Times from CNBC in 2020, covering business, policy and mergers and acquisitions.  Ms. Hirsch studied comparative literature at Cornell University and has an M.B.A. from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. @laurenshirsch

Ephrat Livni reports from Washington on the intersection of business and policy for DealBook. Previously, she was a senior reporter at Quartz, covering law and politics, and has practiced law in the public and private sectors.   @el72champs

Anna Schaverien covers news from Britain and Europe. She is based in London. @annaschav

Green power giant Iberdrola makes floating solar debut on Brazil paradise island

Spanish group enters fast-growing sector with array on Fernando de Noronha in nation's northeast

Source: Recharge News | By Andrew Lee

Global green power giant Iberdrola will leap into floating solar with a debut project on a Brazilian eco-paradise island.

The Spanish group will build the €2m ($2.1m) PV array on the waters of the Xaréu dam on the island of Fernando de Noronha, part of a volcanic archipelago off Brazil’s northeast.

The 630kWh array will provide about half the energy needs of Compesa, the utility that runs water and sewage on the island, a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site, said Iberdrola, whose Neoenergia subsidiary will start building the project by the end of the year as part of a raft of initiatives there.

Iberdrola said the floating solar project will be its first globally and will allow the company to evaluate its wider potential.

Floating PV has rapidly gained traction around the world thanks to its ability to tap reservoirs, lakes and other water surfaces in areas where building on land is constrained or would cause environmental damage.

Wiring in floating solar arrays to existing hydropower reservoirs around the world could change the face of the global energy system by meeting nearly 50% of total electricity demand, according to a 2020 study by the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Floating PV has more recently also started the journey offshore, with arrays designed to survive harsh conditions planned in Europe and Asia.

Vancouver company says it can demonstrate fusion technology at power plant scale by 2027

Source: CTV News Vancouver | by: Shannon Paterson

Updated Dec. 13, 2022 6:59 p.m. PST | Published Dec. 13, 2022 6:39 p.m. PST

On the heels of a major scientific breakthrough in fusion at a lab in California, the CEO of Vancouver-based General Fusion says his company is on track to demonstrate the real-world possibilities of the clean energy technology at the power plant level by the year 2027.

For the first time, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have achieved ignition, a fusion reaction that produced more energy than it took to create. General Fusion CEO Greg Twinney says it’s a huge step forward, as nuclear fusion has all the benefits of energy produced by nuclear fission, without any of the downsides.

“This is a scientific breakthrough, and what you need to be able to do now is to take this approach and translate it and repeat it on a regular basis in order to turn it in to a power plant, and that needs to be done in an economical and viable way long term. And that is where we come in,“ said Twinney.

His Vancouver-based company has 200 employees working with different types of fusion technology, aimed at producing clean, renewable energy.

“Our approach to fusion is a two-stage approach: You create the fuel mixture, plasma, and then you compress it. We do this in a similar way to a diesel engine, compressed fuel and air in a large cylinder, and what they do is increase the density and temperature to the point you get fusion reaction,” said Twinney. “We have designed an approach that has an end in mind of commercializing fusion, so putting it on the grid.”

He aims to demonstrate that technology at a power plant level by the year 2027, and have General Fusion’s first commercial power plant online in the early 2030s.

“We are headquartered here in Vancouver, this is where we have built our large-scale prototypes, large plasma injectors, compression systems and achieved these conditions in which we can now step out of a lab and into a full-scale power plant demonstration,” said Twinney.

He believes fusion will play a big part in renewable energy going forward, but said it needs government buy-in and investment.

“Funding is one of the biggest gates to unlocking fusion commercially,” said Twinney. “The more capital we have, the faster we are able to go. I do absolutely believe we can achieve net zero (carbon emissions) by 2050, but we are going to need to move quickly.”