2024 has seen some big changes in the energy world, with, for example, the UK announcing an 81% climate emissions cut target for 2035 at the COP 29 climate summit! Renewables have gone from strength to strength, with offshore wind expanding rapidly in the UK and PV solar now getting amazingly cheap- under €0.06/W in Europe. And the problem of having to balance variable renewables with variable demand may have become a bit less onerous, with a new German study claiming that an energy system dominated by solar and wind energy, along with storage and flexible demand management systems, need not have nuclear or fossil fuel base-load power stations to guarantee supply security.
Indeed, even leaving aside green hydrogen storage and other backup options, it has been claimed that grid stability and inertia management may not be as hard with renewables on the grid as it’s sometimes portrayed, although it may add to the cost, as of course will storage. However, in terms of full system balancing costs, a study of long duration energy storage (LDES), based on data from the Western US grid, said that LDES could cut transmission needs, renewable curtailment and overall power costs, with seasonal operation of storage becoming cost-effective if storage capital costs fall below $5/kWh.
So things may be looking up for renewables. By contrast, the nuclear option seems still stuck with problems, with even the very pro-nuclear report from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change admitting that ‘Hinkley Point C has become one of the world’s most expensive reactors’ and that ‘SMRs and AMRs could have higher costs per MW compared to gigawatt-scale reactors’. It looks to new nuclear technology being more flexible and cheaper, but that is still a way off, and, as argued above, may not in any case be needed for balancing/backup. Moreover, in the UK, nuclear skills shortages look like they may slow both the civil and military nuclear programmes. To help out the UK Nuclear Industry Association (NIA) is exploring ways to aid firms involved in civil nuclear projects to attain opportunities in nuclear weaponry, at the request of its members. That may seem to some to be rather tragic. So arguably is the evident rise in demand for fallout shelters. Although, grimly, that too may lead to some jobs...
Moving away from all of that, arguably, expanding renewables would seem to be a much better bet- and it is happening. There are already over 1.6 million people employed in green energy globally. And that’s set to grow dramatically, as the use of renewables expands around the world- heading for 4,000GW globally.
What about ideas for reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? That is sometimes seen as an ‘emergency’ climate saving option. Indeed, some see post-combustion carbon capture from power plant exhausts, and its storage underground, as vital to allow us to continue to use fossil fuel, although that idea is not without its critics. Other see reduction options for CO2 once released as better. However, an interesting Quadrature Climate Foundation (QCF) overview of Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) warns that, since the concentration of CO2 in the air is about 0.04%, it is ‘very difficult & correspondingly costly to do CDR’ and it is ‘scientifically, environmentally & economically more effective to avoid a ton of emissions than it is to remove it from the atmosphere.’ So CDR should ‘not be used as an excuse to continue with business as usual,’ and ‘net negative emissions technologies should only be deployed to compensate for residual emissions after abatement, or as a means of addressing legacy emissions’.
It admits that ‘at the moment public sentiment toward certain approaches is not consistently favourable, partly due to a lack of available & trustworthy information resulting from silos & commercial interests’. So it wants ‘better monitoring & reporting & verification (MRV) approaches to quantify the efficacy & (un)certainty’. That’s pretty important, since carbon removal, CCS and negative emission technology are often seen as helping us to get to ‘net zero’. Though, realistically, may be not for some while, and even then, probably at high cost.
What next- for 2025? The big issue will of course what happens after Trump’s inauguration. The signs are not good for progressive climate and energy polices, but he may not get it all his way. Though there are clearly fears about the global future as new fossil gas plans emerge.
Will hydrogen help to avoid that? Well maybe not easily, or soon. In a foreword to a new study of its prospects, Baroness Brown of Cambridge, Chair of the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee, warns that, while hydrogen had been promoted as being suited to use across the spectrum, now ‘the hydrogen bubble has burst’, although she does say later on that ‘low carbon hydrogen, especially green hydrogen, can be a green growth opportunity for the UK.’ So there may yet still be some bright spots- as wind and solar continue to expand and feed into hydrogen storage for grid balancing. And there are also other green supply options. For example, there’s a new design of low impact tidal current turbine that may hold promise in some locations. We are only just at the start of exploring the full range of renewable and sustainable options, with, for example, floating offshore wind systems allowing for deep sea siting in higher wind speed areas.
However, worryingly, a new poll from the UK Energy Institute found that only15% of energy professionals believed the UK will meet or exceed the 81% 2035 carbon emission reduction goal, and just 4% believed the UK will get to net zero in 2050. Ouch! Come on guys, as Americans say...let’s get with the programme! And create lots of good new green jobs – along with the training and reskilling infrastructure that will be needed to move to a sustainable energy future.
We will be back in the new year. For now, best wishes for the holiday season...
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