Global Climate News: June 2-4
South Korea's Hydrogen Power Bidding Market; Europe's Hydrogen Market Pilot; IEA analysis on Tripling Renewable Capacity by 2030; Using fly ash to produce magnesium; Australia's Solar Methanol plant;
In this newsletter
News from Governments
IEA - COP28 Tripling Renewable Capacity Pledge
Using Radiation to Produce Hydrogen from Water
Top stories
News from Governments
South Korea has launched a clean hydrogen power bidding market
The clean hydrogen power bidding market is a market for supplying and buying electricity produced by harnessing clean hydrogen. Participants are allowed to harness power generators using only hydrogen that fulfills the domestic clean hydrogen certification standards (GHG of 4㎏CO2e or less per 1kg of hydrogen). This year’s annual bidding volume is 6,500 GWh with a contract period of 15 years. Commercial operation must begin by 2028, following three years of preparation period plus one year of grace period.
South Korea has published its draft plan for Electricity Supply and Demand for a 15-year period. The plan includes
building 1 small modular reactor by 2025 and 3 large nuclear reactors by 2038
increasing cumulative solar + wind capacity to 72GW in 2030
building LNG cogeneration plants
70% carbon-free electricity by 2038
Maiel Business Newspaper | Taiyang News | Reuters | 11th Basic Plan (Korean)
US is making available $1.3 billion in funding for EV charging and hydrogen refuelling infrastructure in urban and rural communities. Smart Cities Dive | Govt Press Release
Europe is working on a hydrogen market pilot that will
collect, process and give access to information on demand and supply for renewable, low-carbon hydrogen and derivatives, allowing European off-takers to match with both European and foreign suppliers. It will collect and process market data on development of hydrogen flows and prices.
The state of New York (USA) is offering rebates to low-income households for energy efficiency upgrades such as insulation, air sealing and heat pumps. Utility Dive | Press Release
IEA - COP28 Tripling Renewable Capacity Pledge
IEA’s analysis of renewable capacity and national pledges of countries finds that only 14 out of 194 Nationally Determined Contributions submitted have explicit renewable power targets by 2030, although all NDCs mention renewables. Insights from the COP28 Tripling Renewable Capacity Pledge Report:
China’s target of 1200 GW solar PV + wind alone accounts for more than 90% of the total stated renewable energy targets. And it is working towards the target fast.
At its current pace of monthly deployment, made possible by supportive policies and declining renewable technology costs, China could realise its 2030 ambition in 2024 – six years earlier than targeted. Today, generation costs for new utility-scale solar PV and onshore wind installations are lower than for coal-fired facilities in almost all provinces.
Most countries aim to scale Solar PV and wind. Other forms of renewable are less popular.
EU countries with goals for specific technologies
Geothermal - Italy, Croatia, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia
Bioenergy - Sweden, Finland
Ocean energy - Portugal
Countries that lead in renewables goal-setting
In Europe - Germany, Spain, Italy and France
In Asia-Pacific (excluding China) - India, Japan, Australia, Viet Nam
In Middle East and North Africa - Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Israel
Overcapacity of fossil fuel-based power is keeping renewables from scaling in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines
Over 60% of Latin America’s comes from renewable sources, due to large share of hydropower. However, countries are looking to diversify the renewables mix to account for low rainfall periods
For sub-Saharan Africa, lack of sufficient financing is the major blocker
About 50 countries may meet or even exceed renewable installation targets
However, the growth is not sufficient to meet the COP28 goal of tripling renewable power capacity by 2030. Countries’ ambitions total to 7903 GW installed renewables by 2030, but 11000 GW is needed to achieve tripling of capacity.
The Guardian | IEA - COP28 Tripling Renewable Capacity Pledge (June 2024)
Using Radiation to Produce Hydrogen from Water
Research has been done on using both light in the visible spectrum, as well as other forms of radiation to produce hydrogen from water.
When using visible light, the process is called photo-electro-chemical (PEC) water splitting and uses solar energy. This requires semiconductors and catalysts like tungsten oxide, bismuth vandate and titanium dioxide, that are activated by light.
The photo-catalyst absorbs visible light, exciting electrons from the valence band to the conduction band, and creating electron–hole pairs. The photo-excited electrons contribute to the reduction reaction, which converts water into hydrogen gas (H2).
Ultraviolet (UV) radiation can also be used for directly splitting water using solar energy, but more efficient catalysts are needed as only ~5% of solar energy reaching Earth is in the UV spectrum, while more than 50% is in the visible spectrum.
A third method, Water Radiolysis, uses ionizing radiation (like gamma rays, X-rays or high-energy particles) to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Catalysts used for this include alumina, zirconium, niobium alloys, Plutonium oxide. This method has been used in nuclear reactors to produce hydrogen, for cooling and other applications.
To commercialise any of these methods for producing hydrogen, more research is needed, specifically on
finding more efficient catalysts
testing reaction efficiency and by-products with water of different purities - many require pure water
managing safety from radiation (for UV and ionizing rays) and any reactive by-product
Materials like perovskites and graphene derivatives are also being explored for photo-catalytic water splitting.
Recent updates in Direct Radiation water-splitting methods of hydrogen production
Top Stories
Australia-based Latrobe Magnesium has developed a process to extract Magnesium metal from fly ash, a toxic waste product obtained from burning coal. Latrobe first separates out non-magnesium impurities from the fly ash, and dissolves the magnesium-rich feedstock in hydrochloric acid. This gives magnesium chloride (MgCl2), which is allowed to react with water in a spray roaster, producing magnesium oxide (MgO). This is where Latrobe differs significantly from traditional methods of producing magnesium, which use Magnesium carbonate (MgCO3) as an intermediate. When the MgCO3 is reduced to magnesium, CO2 is released. But since, Latrobe’s intermediate is MgO it’s able to avoid these emissions. The company has demonstrated MgO production at its 1 kiloton per annum demonstration plant, and is now working on the second stage of the plant which will convert magnesium oxide (MgO) to pure magnesium metal. The non-magnesium impurities separated from the fly ash are also converted into useful products like supplementary cementitious material (SCM), silica, iron oxide, calcium carbonate and char. Innovation News | Latrobe Magnesium | Video Presentation
A survey of long duration of energy storage costs by BNEF finds thermal energy storage and compressed energy storage are already at par with li-ion batteries in capex per unit, with the lowest capex for these in China.
Thermal energy storage and compressed air storage, for example, had an average capital expenditure, or capex, of $232 per kilowatt-hour and $293/kWh, respectively. For comparison, lithium-ion systems had an average capex of $304/kWh for four-hour duration systems in 2023, so generally shorter-term storage. BNEF
Australia is planning a solar methanol (SM) demonstration plant that will use concentrated solar thermal energy (heat + electricity) to capture CO2, electrolyse water to hydrogen, and produce methanol from CO2 and hydrogen.
The SM1 Project would include a 10 MW PEM electrolyser for hydrogen production. A co-located lime plant would supply produced/captured CO2 (which is an unavoidable process emission in lime production). The produced hydrogen in combination with up to 15,000 tonnes per annum of CO2 captured/supplied using Calix’s calcination technology would be used to synthesise up to 7,500 tonnes per annum of solar methanol.
Heat for the operations would be supplied by the VS1 (30Mw concentrated solar plant). Power for the electrolyser would be a combination of supply from the VS1 project and grid-based supply. Src
China has commissioned a 5GW, 200000-acre solar farm - the world’s largest - in Urumqi. ET Energy
Severe floods in southern Germany have submerged streets and highways, damaged barriers on rivers and railway infra, and stranded hundreds of people. NYT
Excellent read on a carbon price on global shipping emissions (expected early 2025) by Dialogue Earth. Also see World Bank’s global Carbon Pricing Dashboard.
The city of Kingston, in Canada, is now home to a number of rare earth recycling startups. Climate Home News
New research shows replacing metal catalysts with rare earth catalysts (Zirconium + Titanium), allows conversion of nitrogen to ammonia at room temperature, saving a lot of energy compared to the Haber-Bosch process which is carried out at a temperatures ranging from 300° to 650° C. Mercom | Lawrence Berkeley Lab | Catalytic reduction of dinitrogen to silylamines by earth-abundant lanthanide and group 4 complexes
A more accurate way to model CO2 reduction to CO in CO2 electrolysers by Lawrence Berkeley Lab | Exploring CO2 reduction and crossover in membrane electrode assemblies
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