Global Climate News - April 4

Racing with hydrogen cars; Energy strategy for India;

Apr 05, 2024

Racing with hydrogen-fueled cars

On June 15, 2024, several prototype cars using fuel cells and hydrogen combustion engines will race in a 1 hour demonstration at the main 24 Hours of Le Mans circuit.

The L’Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO), which is the creator and organiser of the 24 Hours of Le Mans has a collaboration with GreenGT and Total Energies to introduce an electric hydrogen category for 24 hours of racing by 2027.

pv magazine | ACO Press Release | Michael Fassbender: Road to Le Mans - The Film

2070 Net-zero Energy Strategy for India

Building large nuclear capacity will help avoid the use of fossil fuels as well as massive imports of critical minerals. The current costs per MW can be reduced with large-scale deployments. Under the net-zero scenarios analysed, NZ-1 with maximum nuclear capacity has the lowest electricity cost for the end user.

Between 78-331 GW of nuclear, 233-486GW of solar and 100-282GW of wind will be needed under various net-zero scenarios to serve India’s energy needs by 2070. That comes from a system-wide analysis of current capacity, costs, emerging technology and trends, by the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Indian Government.

One of the key findings of this study is that clean, affordable electricity at lowest LCOE can be achieved in Net Zero pathways, especially with a focus on nuclear power and renewable power. Widespread electrification of end-use sectors, especially transport and residential, and eventually low-carbon and/or green hydrogen production will lead to a rapid increase in electricity demand after 2050 but not a corresponding increase in the carbon footprints of the power sector.

Each of the four net-zero scenarios considered in the report have a specific focus:

NZ-1 - nuclear grows significantly, old coal power is phased out and remaining has carbon capture;
NZ-2 - fossil fuel power expands with carbon capture, hydrogen plays an important role;
NZ-3 - renewables + storage dominate, no new coal after 2020;
NZ-4 - extension of NZ-3 where less fossil fuel is used across other sectors

In NZ-1 and NZ-4, where fossil fuel use is reduced significantly, emissions peak in 2030. In other scenarios, GHG emissions peak in 2050.

In all scenarios, Coal will continue to serve the country for at least the next 2 decades, after which it may decline depending on scale up of other technologies. To phase down coal, significant critical mineral imports will be needed for storage and renewable power. Vanadium flow batteries might be useful for stationary storage.

The vanadium redox flow batteries are recyclable, leading to a reduced need for minerals. The largest deposits of vanadium are located in China, Russia, Australia, South Africa, and Brazil. Additionally, vanadium occurs in almost 65 minerals. Vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) is used as an electrolyte in redox flow batteries and is extracted from the titaniferous magnetite ore during steelmaking. Vanadium can also be extracted from the processing of aluminium from bauxite. Therefore, ash, slag, spent catalysts, or residues generated from the iron and steel industries, aluminium plants, and crude oil, tar, and coal refining and processing contain vanadium, which can be recovered. This means that vanadium availability is relatively distributed across the globe.

Building large nuclear capacity will help avoid the use of fossil fuels as well as massive imports of critical minerals. The current costs per MW can be reduced with large-scale deployments. Under the scenarios analysed, NZ-1 with maximum nuclear capacity has the lowest electricity cost for the end user.

Bio-based energy is also important for India. There is already a 20% bioethanol blending target for automobile fuel by 2025 (10% blending was achieved in 2022) and mandatory use of compressed biogas in city gas distribution networks from 2025 onwards.

Biochar can be used not only for hydrogen production, but also for decarbonising steel.

For instance, to produce 100 million tons of steel, around 63-77 million ton of coal and coke are required. If we can replace even a fifth of coking coal with biochar by 2030, we may be reducing CO2 emissions from steel industry by 20% as biochar is biogenic and is considered carbon neutral. We may need about one lakh (100,000) hectare of land to grow bamboo plantations for the Indian steel industry of today. Our initial results for GIS based optimization for energy plantations at all India district level indicate that about 121 Indian districts could be targeted for bamboo plantation as energy plantation.

Given the high life cycle emissions from sugarcane-base bioethanol, using surplus grain and setting up 2nd generation ethanol plants may be needed.

The report also considers the use of a carbon price in accelerating clean energy deployments.

if a carbon price is established in India soon, a drastic reduction in the carbon footprint of electricity could generate about INR 5 lakh crores in today’s price (considering carbon price in 2050 of INR 1,700/tCO2 or approximately USD 25/tCO2 ). These funds could be deployed to fill the capital investment gap in achieving the nuclear thrust.

ET Energy | Synchronizing energy transitions toward possible Net Zero for India Report (PDF)

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