Energy for Cities, Making Hydrogen and Synthetic Fuels, Carbon Removal
IEA's Empowering Urban Energy Transitions Report; Single-step electrochemical processes for making ammonia and methanol; US funds new carbon removal projects;
In this newsletter:
Empowering Urban Energy Transitions - IEA Report
Hydrogen and Synthetic Fuels
Top Stories
Empowering Urban Energy Transitions
Highlights from IEA’s new Report:
Cities account for 75% of global energy consumption and 70% of emissions
Key drivers of growth in urban electricity use - cooling, electric vehicles, heat pumps
Installed capacity of space cooling equipment expected to double by 2030, cooling may account for 30% of electricity demand by 2030, a single degree rise in temperature raises energy demand for cooling significantly
an assessment of 13 cities across different countries suggests that each degree of temperature increase causes an average increase in peak electricity demand of almost 4%.
Popular urban initiatives for clean energy - Renewable PPAs for public buildings, expanding and electrifying bus fleets, EV charging in parking spaces, Rooftop solar on public and residential buildings, bidirectional charging
Electricity grid expansion is the major bottleneck in meeting current and future demand
Achieving national goals could require adding or refurbishing over 80 million kilometres of grids by 2040 globally, the equivalent of the entire existing global grid.
Insufficient green cover is leading to cities becoming ‘heat islands’
By 2050, three times as many cities as today are expected to experience average summertime highs of 35°C and many of them could experience substantial warming of up to 4°C before the end of the century
Energy storage needs to be scaled rapidly
In the United Kingdom, the cost of wind curtailment hit a record high of more than GBP 500 million in 2021, while in 2022 consumers paid GBP 215 million to turn wind farms off. If this electricity could have been stored and dispatched when needed, then the cost of almost GBP 720 million to buy gas-fired power to make up the difference in supply and demand could have been avoided, with the additional GHG emissions also avoided.
Demand side managements initiatives, such as smart charging of EVs, have lot of potential and are underutilised across the globe.
Recent IEA analysis illustrates the impacts of flexible resources in India’s future power system. By using digitalisation and flexible-load strategies for buildings appliances by 2030, the peak load (total load minus solar and wind generation) would be reduced approximately by around 13% compared to the base case in which appliances operate under a fixed pattern. Additionally, the flexible operation enabled by digital tools in this model decreases variable renewable energy (VRE) curtailment by around 78%
Some examples of Demand Side Management initiatives - air conditioner demand-side management pilot in Huzhuo (China) where consumers could remotely alter settings of wifi-connected air conditioners based on input from the electricity system operator; Romeflex project that pays participating customers to alter energy use as directed by the system operator
Issues in grid planning - lack of visibility of distributed energy resources such as rooftop solar, power system data is fragmented across multiple utilities
Cities are using ‘digital twins’ for energy and resource planning
Singapore, for example, started developing a 3D representation of the city in 2012 in order to identify areas that were most at risk from flooding. The digital twin is now shared across different government agencies and has many practical uses around green space management, urban planning, network coverage and transport flows
Other cities with digital twin projects - Amsterdam, Bologna, São Paulo
Many jurisdictions have setup regulatory sandboxes to trial new solutions - UK, Brazil, Europe, Portugal, Japan
Key recommendations - Simplify regulatory processes, Support community-led initiatives, Set standards for data interoperability among utilities and other power system players, Integrate energy and climate objectives, Introduce grid flexibility and demand side management initiatives
A key idea throughout the report is making energy use data accessible, usable, up-to-date, and using it for grid planning so that grids can keep up with increasing energy needs of cities.
Hydrogen and Synthetic Fuels - News
UK-based Oxccu is making synthetic fuels using captured CO2 and green hydrogen. The startup has developed a new iron-based catalyst that allows hydrogenation of CO2 in a single-step process, simpler and more efficient than the more commonly used Reverse Water Gas Shift (RWGS) and Fischer Tropsch (F-T) reaction. The process can be tailored to produce methanol, acetic acid, ethylene glycol and other fuels from the same feedstock of CO2 and hydrogen. Oxccu is setting up a demonstration plant for producing sustainable aviation fuel at Oxford airport in the UK. Oxccu
Israel-based Nitrofix has developed a single-step process that converts nitrogen and water into ammonia using electricity. Most synthetic ammonia processes require hydrogen, whereas Nitrofix uses water directly for providing the hydrogen atoms to reduce nitrogen to ammonia. This reduces the energy needed for producing ammonia, and bypasses the need for hydrogen storage. Nitrofix
Tunisia is evaluating a green hydrogen project powered by onshore wind and solar, and using desalinated seawater to supply green hydrogen to Central Europe. Offshore Energy
EU has approved €1.4 billion in state funding for the IPCEI Hy2Move project that aims to develop hydrogen-based technologies for transport and mobility. This includes developing fuel cell platforms for different vehicles such as buses and trucks, high-performance fuel cells, and technologies for supplying highly pressurised, 99.99% pure fuel-cell-grade hydrogen to refuelling stations. Offshore Energy | EC Press Release
Top Stories
The US has funded carbon removal projects, including
Storing captured carbon in low-carbon concrete CarbonCapture
Capturing CO2 with steel slag - Steel production produces alkaline minerals, called steel slag. Alkali Earth uses the slag to build roads. CO2 in the atmosphere reacts with Calcium and Magnesium hydroxides in the slag, forming carbonates which are permanently stored in the road.
Using Calcite for capturing CO2
The Calcite process passes ordinary air with approximately ≈415 PPM CO2 across calcium hydroxide in a large warehouse, absorbing CO2 from the air into calcium carbonate crystals, similar to how concrete sidewalks dry and absorb carbon in the process. The calcium carbonate that’s created is cycled into a kiln to regenerate calcium hydroxide and capture CO2. 8Rivers
The US is looking to boost nuclear power in the country. A new group will “help identify opportunities to proactively mitigate sources of cost and schedule overrun risk”. It will also explore large scale deployment of small modular reactors and micro-reactors to power US Army sites. ET Energy | White House
Europe and Australia are partnering on the critical minerals supply chain, research in the area, and developing ESG standards for sustainable production of minerals. Innovation News | EU Press Release | Australia Press Release
California (USA) is considering new Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) programs for marine flares, textiles and household hazardous waste. Waste Dive
Researchers in the US are using AI to determine the remaining useful life of power grid equipment, allowing asset owners to proactively maintain and upgrade the grid instead of waiting for equipment failures. Argonne National Lab
New research on lithium-sulfur electrodes for batteries
Swedbank, a large banking group in the Nordics, will now consider emissions of shipping companies for making lending decisions. Offshore Energy | Climate targets of Swedbank Group 2024
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