Cambridge Ideas - The Future Of Energy

NOTT-202: the CO2 sponge

Scientists at the Universities of Nottingham and Newcastle, in collaboration with Oxfordshire-based Diamond Light Source and STFC Daresbury Laboratory have come up with a metallic, porous material which can efficiently adsorb and retain CO2 from the atmosphere. NOTT-202a, as the material is called, has a structure which comprises two interlocked metal frameworks. The nature of this structure allows certain gas species - indeed most components of air - to pass through, but forms nanopore-sized gaps which CO2 is unable to pass through. The material is being deemed as a huge breakthrough for metal-organic framework research, and potentially for the key aims of CO2 capture and storage.

Source article: NOTT-202: UK Scientists Create Metal-Organic Framework That Absorbs CO2

DECC Unveil U.K. Bioenergy Strategy

The Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) has recently made its Bioenergy Strategy available to the public. Working closely with the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the government's strategy, which look to increase the contribution by bioenergy to the U.K's energy mix without in anyway compromising  its sustainability, encompass the following:

• 10-12% of U.K's primary energy attributed to bioenergy by 2050.
• A reduction of the emissions threshold associated with forest biomass from 285 to 200g CO2/kWh, and the application of a U.K. Forest Standard to ensure the sustainability of all domestic forests, irrespective of the final wood use.
• The rapid deployment of CCS (Carbon capture and storage) technologies which, when used in conjunction with bioenergy, could result in a net CO2 sink. The U.K. potential of deploying biomass power generation with CCS is being explored by an ETI-helmed project.
• The focus of biomass-based power generation towards co-firing and/or conversion of existing coal-based plants, with dedicated biomass being restricted to small-scale, or a limited number of large-scale projects.
• An assessment of the global wood industry, to understand the potential effects of a growth in U.K. demand.

The full document can be accessed here.

Rising Fuel & Insurance costs drive U.K.'s lowering vehicle emissions

An encouraging trend is emerging amongst automotive sales in the U.K: 46.8 % of cars sold last year emitted less than 130 g/km of CO2, an increase of 10.6 % from 2007. Correspondingly, U.K vehicle CO2 emissions have fallen on average by 23 % from 2000. It's probably fair to say that the lean towards newer, greener vehicles owes at least as much to inexorably rising petrol and diesel prices, as well as higher road tax and insurance for older vehicles, as it does to a heightened sense of public conscience.

But that would be doing something of a disservice to the automotive industry, which has made leaps and bounds in improving fuel efficiency in recent years. Under E.U. regulation, average CO2 emissions must be below 130 g/km by 2015 (it's currently at 138.1 g/km), and to 95 g/km by 2020. New vehicles are some 18 % more fuel efficient than the U.K. average. More and more consumers are recognising that the savings in running costs quickly negate the higher cost of buying new, with fleet and private car companies being especially quick on the uptake.

With that said, it seems the buying public are still putting their faith in the familiar - just 1.3 % of the U.K market comprised of electric or hybrid-electric vehicles. But there is still much that can be done with the standard gas-guzzler; the automotive industry is finally making the necessary steps.

Reference article: Sales of low emission cars soar in UK (link)

Is the future of Wind Power all out at sea?

Six miles off the coast of Norway, the Hywind turbine may just hold the key for the future of wind power. Out at a depth of 200m, Hywind cannot be mounted to the seabed, so instead is allowed to float on a steel cylinder, held upright by ballast and a three-point mooring. Since 2010, Hywind has generated 15MWh of energy.

Offshore wind overcomes the NIMBY ("Not In My Back Yard") opposition which so often thwarts onshore wind, and also offers greater average wind-speeds which blow more of the time, but the harsh conditions make it potentially a highly expensive technology to build and maintain. However, with offshore turbines being typically much larger than onshore, direct-drive (gearless) turbines become more favourable, and with fewer parts to go wrong the technology could potentially become financially viable.

The success of Hywind could provide turbine designers with a much larger playground to play with; deeper waters such as the Mediterranean, and off the coasts of countries like Japan and the U.S. suddenly become possible locations for windfarms.

CCS: Will the U.K. ever capture the moment?

In this month's issue of Professional Engineering (the publication of the IMechE), there's an interesting overview of the U.K's stalling plans towards Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS). In 2007, the Department Of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) launched a competition to build the U.K.'s first demonstration CCS plant, a competition that, as various entrants pulled out in the midst of the economic crisis, was won by default as much as merit by Longannet in Fife. That came to an underwhelming, if predictable end last October, as it was announced that the scheme would be scrapped, under crippling financial concerns primarily over the cost of piping required to transport the captured CO2 to the North Sea.

It is immensely frustrating when you consider that the U.K. has so much in place to become global leaders in CCS. On the geological side, there's the extensive experience of oil and gas drilling in the North Sea. In terms of technical knowledge, the U.K. has, in the likes of Cambridge and Imperial, some of the key academic institutions looking into both the array of capture technologies and the modelling of geological storage. And whilst CO2 is more corrosive than natural gas, the U.K.'s existing gas pipe network means that the infrastructure is, at least in part, in place.

Plants such as Longannet also provide a part of that infrastructure; the most developed capture technologies, such as solvent-based capture, are predominantly post-combustion, which means that they are retrofittable to existing plants. This introduces a significant efficiency penalty to the plant (somewhere around a third of the standalone plant's thermal efficiency is typical), but steadily-advancing technologies such as Chemical Looping Combustion, whereby the use of metal oxides to provide oxygen for combustion makes CO2 separation an inherent part of the process, may eliminate such penalties for future new-builds.

There is light at the end of the tunnel. Last December saw the £21 million CO2 capture installation at Ferrybridge power station in West Yorkshire go online. This post-combustion project works by capturing the CO2 from the flue gas in an absorbing column using solvents before heat-assisted regeneration of the sorbent, and the resultant release of the captured CO2. A joint project between SSE, Doosan Power Systems and Vattenfall, the demonstration plant captures 100 tonnes of CO2 per day, equivalent to 5MW of the plant's 2000MW capactiy; there's no storage of CO2 at this stage, but the project will provide extremely valuable insight into the handling of hot flue gases which will inform potential future CCS projects, such as that in Peterhead jointly helmed by SSE and Shell, which may come into operation as early as 2016.

Whether the capture technology is post-, pre- or oxy-fuel combustion, retrofit or new-build, the costs of CCS are substantial. But with the relative readiness of the technology, and its ability to integrate readily with existing infrastructure, it's hard to imagine, new nuclear builds aside perhaps, another technology that can readily take such a big chunk out of the U.K.'s CO2 emissions than CCS.

Fast Reactors - the answer to the U.K.'s stockpiles?

Prof David Mackay, Cambridge University Professor and Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) has suggested that a new generation of fast reactors might offer the solution for dealing with the U.K.'s stockpile of nuclear waste, and further sweeten the deal for the U.K.'s potential nuclear renaissance. According to Mackay, the transmutation and subsequent fission of a stockpile which currently comprises 100 tonnes of plutonium and 35,000 tonnes of depleted uranium could provide the U.K. with 500 years of low-carbon electricity.

Unlike conventional thermal reactors, fast reactors do not use neutron moderators to reduce the velocity of released neutrons, a technique used to help sustain the fission reaction for uranium 235-rich fuel. These high-speed neutrons are more suited to the conversion of plutonium and other waste material, and the final waste product has a much shorter half-life than the original stockpile, thus providing relief to the substantial issue of waste disposal, as well as the nagging concern over terrorists plundering the stockpile for weapons-grade plutonium.

The favoured design is GE Hitachi's Prism Reactor, which started life as a U.S. government-funded research project. The commercial plant would be much smaller than a typical plant, producing around 311 MWe. A non-moderating coolant with a high heat capacity is required; multiple loops of liquid sodium would be used to transfer the heat from the reactor to a steam generator to power a turbine. Given the compact size of the reactor, multiple reactors could be combined; the present scheme proposes a pair of Prism reactors to be installed in place of the now defunct MOX (Mixed Oxide) Plant at Sellafield.

Fast reactors are less proven and more difficult to harness than the more commercially popular thermal reactors, but GE Hitachi insist that with the latest passive safety systems, reactor meltdowns such as that of Fukushima last year are a virtual impossibility.

Full article on the Guardian website.

TESBiC: Techno-Economic Study of Biomass To CCS

Although biomass and carbon capture & storage (CCS) are frequently quoted as being "carbon-neutral" technologies, neither, in practice, can quite match that claim. But combine them, and you have something which surpasses carbon-neutral, a carbon-negative technology whereby the CO2 released from the combustion of biomass is captured and sequestered, providing a net sink of CO2 which can overcome the inefficiencies of the individual technologies.

The TESBiC (Techno-Economic Study of Biomass To CCS) consortium is looking to turn that pipe dream into a genuine part of the future U.K. energy mix. Commissioned and funded by ETI, the consortium's partners are a mix of key academic institutions (Cambridge, Imperial College, Leeds), big industrial players (EDF, Drax Power, Doosan Babcock) and innovative energy consultancies and software engineers (E4tech, cmcl innovations). The project's aims are to investigate and compare several combinations of CCS technologies with biomass with a state-of-the-art review, thus providing a greater understanding of how they might be deployed within the U.K., the compatibility between different technologies and different forms of biomass, and the challenges, both technical and economical, which must be overcome. This will provide the necessary insight to carry out parametric modelling studies of the most promising technology combinations, helping to address for some of the remaining unknowns, and underline the true potential of biomass with CCS.

Further details can be found on the TESBIC project webpage.

U.K.'s First Marine Energy Park Announced in South West

Climate Change Minister Greg Barker announced in Bristol today that the South West is to be the location of U.K.'s first Marine Energy Park, and will encompass an area stretching between Bristol and Cornwall, and as far out as the Isles of Scilly. The announcement marks a big step forward in the U.K.'s pledge to become world leaders in marine energy, and to tap its huge potential which, at around 27GW, is equivalent to 8 coal-fired power stations. On making the announcement, Barker said that "the south west can build on its existing unique mix of renewable energy resource and home-grown academic, technical and industrial expertise" and will support "thousands of jobs in a sector worth a possible £15bn to the economy to 2050". The initiative is partnered by the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth, as well as Local Enterprise Partners and Cornwall's Wave Hub.

Full article on DECC website.

Algae to power the fleets of tomorrow?

A major step towards a greener shipping and marine industry has potentially been made with the introduction of algae-based fuel to both the world's biggest navy and shipping company. Maersk, who have a global fleet of some 1,300 ships, along with the U.S Navy, have been trialling algal oil as a potential replacement for diesel and "bunker" fuel. Maersk tested the fuel, both in its pure form and mixed with conventional fuel, on one of their vessels travelling between Europe and Asia. The fuel was sourced from the U.S. Navy, who have tested 20,000 gallons of it on a decomissioned destroyer. Testing is in its early stages, but early signs are highly promising, with the transition appearing to cause little problems for existing vessels.

The algae-based fuel is synthesised at Solazyme, who are also working on the development of fuels for a number of commercial airlines. The fuel is produced in giant fermentation tanks at their plant in Riverside, Pennsylvania, whereby other non-food forms of biomass are fed to the algae to promote the production of oil. Algae is in fact a collective term for a large group of largely single-cell organisms, the individual characteristics of which can be used to produce fuels of varying properties.

It's hard to argue with the case for their introduction into the shipping and marine industry, which alone is responsible for 3-4 % of greenhouse gas emissions and consumes 350 million barrels of oil annually, when the potential benefits are an 80 % reduction in CO2. The question, which seems to be a perennial one for all forms of biomass, is one of scale-up. The company has recently purchased a new plant in Brazil, capable of producing 50 millions gallons of fuel annually. But whilst Solazyme's favoured tank-based method of producing algal fuel is currently substantially cheaper than growing algae in ponds, the overwhelming demands for cleaner, more sustainable fuels in shipping and marine applications (the U.S navy is targeting a 50 % reduction in the use of conventional fuels by 2020) are surely only achievable by handing large areas of the sea and other large bodies of water over to algae growth, the scale-up of which should see a dramatic drop in the cost of fuel production using this method, and make it highly competitive with fermentation tanks. Nonetheless, with the backing of a major shipping firm, a navy, not to mention oil giants Chevron, the endeavours of Solazyme will potentially oversee a huge step forward for the wider acceptance of cleaner, algal-based fuels.

Reference articles:

Dynamic Fuels and Solazyme Partner to supply fuel for U.S. Navy. Solazyme (link)

Cargo boat and US navy ship powered by algal oil in marine trials. The Guardian 13/01/12 (link)

Andasol: the glowing beacon in the fading dreams of Solar?

With 600,000 parabolic mirrors generating 150 MW, Andasol, located (as the name would suggest) in the heart of the Guadix plateau in Andalucia, is the largest solar power plant in the world. On its original commissioning in 2009, it also became the first plant of its kind in Europe, a parabolic trough plant, whereby the mirrors focus the sun's energy onto absorption pipes containing oil, which is heated and in turn is used to heat water to form steam for power generation. Energy is generated day and night by storage of the excess thermal energy using molten salts, thus bypassing one of the core obstacles opposing more the conventional solar PV technologies.

Andasol3 went online late last year, expanding the already-huge facility to the size of 210 football pitches; a good example of Prof David Mackay's notion that if you want renewables to play a big role in the energy mix you have to build big. The plant is a joint-venture with ownership split between several german companies (Solar Millennium, MAN Ferrostaal AG, Stadtwerke Munchen and RWE Innogy & RheinEnergie AG), a €900m investment which is made ultimately affordable to the end consumer by Spain's feed-in tariffs, a fixed government subsidy which is guaranteed for 25 years. Future builds, however, are unlikely to receive such charity.

In the UK, the government has just proposed plans to slash feed-in tariffs given to small-scale solar in half, and countries such as Spain, who are feeling the squeeze of the economic recession even more, are likely to follow suit. The likely result of present and future cuts will be an ever-growing disparity between investment and subsidies, with a predicted shortfall by 2015 of $5bn in the UK, and $6bn. These are troubling times for the renewable energy industry and, in Europe at least, threaten to push solar firmly into the shade.

Reference article: World's largest solar plant powers up. The Independent 01/01/12 (link)

Canals offer cleaner passage for UK biomass

It is hoped that the UK's 18th century network of canals may be revitalised, by playing a pivotal role in the transportation of biomass for power generation. The concept stems from the energy services company Dalkia, which uses the Aire and Calder canal systems in Yorkshire to transport timber used in power generation, and has experience with 200 biomass facilities across Europe.

With the UK targeting 20% of its energy to be generated from renewables by 2020, biomass is likely to play a key role, but its green credentials can be significantly offset by transportation issues. It is hoped that the shift from road to rail will provide a cleaner mode of transport.

Last year, 1.8m tonnes of freight were carried along the UK's canal network, well down on its 40m peak in the days prior to automobiles, but there is great hope that this figure will rise significantly if the scheme is adopted more widely.

Full story is available on the Guardian website.

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