Global Climate News - April 19
UK renewable supply chain readiness; Viking Link - world's longest interconnector; using fibre optic cables for sensing in remote environments;
UK Renewables Supply Chain
Highest risk areas in UK govt’s renewables supply chain readiness study:
Most severe supply constraints are in offshore wind and offshore transmission, specifically - fixed and floating foundations, HVDC cables and converter stations, installation vessels and ports.
Other insights:
For onshore wind and solar, regulatory barriers and processes are the bigger bottleneck
Many developers indicated that planning and grid constraints were significantly greater barriers to onshore wind deployment than supply chain constraints.
More skilled professionals needed - design and commissioning engineers, project managers, and installation technicians
Other sectors - oil & gas, networks, interconnectors - compete for same components
Lack of certainty in order pipeline is holding back manufacturing capacity
Financial pressure on turbine manufacturers due to price competition, inflation in inputs, low bids from renewable developers in auctions, insufficient offtake from existing manufacturing capacity
Turbine size is increasing (decreases cost of electricity per MW), which means more investment in product development, lower production volumes, reliability issues
Significant shortfall for blades, nacelles, towers expected in 2025-28
Manufacturing capacity for monopile foundations is booked for 3-4 years, due to constraints in inputs
Only three to five steel mills globally can provide the widest, thickest, thermomechanically-rolled heavy steel plates – and they have very limited availability
HVDC and HVAC stations taking longer due to low manufacturing capacity for transformers and converters
lead times have increased to 24 months for 132 kV transformers and to four years for 400 kV ones
Shortage of electrical steel used in transformer cores
Not enough installation vessels, especially for large turbines and foundations
What can help?
standardise designs for offshore connections
aggregate demand and share manufacturing locations
developers can coordinate for transmission connections
more corporate PPAs
centralise procurement for balance of plant equipment
GOV.UK | UK renewables deployment supply chain readiness study, Baringa, April 2024 (PDF) (recommended)
Top Stories
Viking Link, the world’s longest interconnector, connecting the power grids of Denmark and the UK was launched this week. The 475-mile (~765 km) cable has a 1.4GW capacity.
Illustration of the Viking Link interconnector projection, Src The emissions from cement making come both from the energy used and the CO2 emitted when limestone is heated. California-based Fortera is making a ‘Re-carb’ cement. They capture the CO2 released in the cement making process and mix it back into limestone, creating a more reactive form of limestone that can be mixed with regular Portland cement or used all by itself.
As ice melts in the Arctic, more of the ocean is exposed to the wind and there is more wave activity - leading to bigger storms. Landfast ice, ice that is “fastened” to the coastline, protects coastal areas from these storms, but is melting. To predict wave activity and protect coastal communities from storms, researchers are using internet cables as sensors. The technique is called Distributed Acoustic Sensing - rather than having individual sensors at intervals, the entire optical fibre cable acts as a sensor.
Distributed Acoustic Sensing or DAS uses laser technology to detect variations in wave height above the internet cable. Larger wave peaks, for instance, will put more pressure on the cable; troughs take that pressure off. Areas with little or no change in pressure suggest where ice may be dampening the swells above. Scientists emit these laser beams and interpret how they refract in the cable using a suitcase-sized tool called an interrogator. The result is a high-resolution map of how ice and waves are changing around the coast.
“The fact that we can get data every 10 meters (33 feet) per 40 kilometers (24 miles) of distance is like [deploying] thousands of scientific buoys,” says Smith. “It opens up a lot more processes that we can look at, which we just can't do with sparse observing systems,” such as buoys and moorings.
DAS systems are also being used to monitor salinity, gas leaks in seawater, coastal erosion and submarine landslides, tsunamis, and underwater noise levels. For monitoring underground CO2 storage using DAS, a fibre optic cable can be inserted while drilling the well. The cable can then collect seismic and temperature data, both for carbon storage on land and in sea.
Germany has launched its first auction for the carbon contracts for difference funding programme.
Carbon contracts for difference are intended to trigger the introduction of modern, climate-friendly manufacturing processes in energy-intensive sectors, such as the paper, glass, steel and cement industries. In sectors where climate-friendly production processes are currently not yet competitive, carbon contracts for difference will offset the added cost involved compared with conventional procedures – for a period of 15 years.
US-based Orbital Biocarbon is making biochar from wastewater sludge. Th sludge is dried and added to PYREG’s reactor where it is heated between 930 and 1,300 Fahrenheit for several minutes. The heating destroys microbes and other contaminants. Biochar and syngas - mix of CO2 and H2 - are obtained. The syngas is burned to generate heat, which is cycled back to the reactor.
After the initial start-up phase, the reactor becomes thermally self-sufficient and doesn’t need auxiliary fuel to maintain continuous operation.
The exhaust from the process is passed through a liquid and a carbon filter to remove particulate matter. The biochar can be used as a fertiliser.
Science based targets network has launched a pilot with 4 corporates - Carrefour, Mars Petcare, Bolton Foods and Musholm A/S - to develop guidance on targets for ocean-based value chains. Carbon Pulse | SBTN
Major global power utilities have formed the Utilities for Net Zero Alliance (UNEZA) to collaborate on taking renewables capacity to 749 GW by 2030 (for group members this was 295 GW in 2023) and significantly increasing investments in power transmission. Recharge | IRENA Press Release | UNEZA Action Plan (PDF)
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Soumya Gupta
Founder, Telborg.com | SummaryWithAI.com
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