Fossil Fuel subsidies, current state of affairs and impact

[BPNBound]

Power plants on natural gas generate approx. 45% of the CO2 of coal.

I have generally understood that gas generates approximately half the CO2 of coal per unit of energy produced. Does that sound about right?

 

[jstar]

Yes, that’s what the studies say at least.

 

[jstar]

Amazing potential:

The Lightyear One is a solar-powered car with an eye-watering price

Ever wanted to own an electric car that can charge itself? Soon, that could be a very real possibility. Dutch clean mobility company Lightyear today debuted its long-range prototype, the Lightyear One, with a range of 725 km (450 miles) and a small battery that can be charged directly via...

www.engadget.com

They talk about charging once per summer. And in this climate...a normal electric vehicle must be charged. This also partly applies to a solar car, but due to its solar cells, such a model can also 'charge' itself.

On the solar car (company) Lightyear; it seems the first model the 0, was just too expensive and complicated to build (in Finland). The sales price of €250.000 would not even cover is.

Now it was announced that Lightyear had applied for a deferment of payment for its operational branch: Atlas Technologies. That was, among other things, the department where Lightyear had housed its production. Lightyear now announces that the Court has declared its operational branch bankrupt. Something important: Atlas Technologies B.V. is not the company that owns Lightyear's intellectual property. That is in the hands of Atlas Technologies Holding B.V.. This holding is said to house the investments of the Dutch government fund and the Swedish Koenigsegg.

Lightyear states it regrets the news - how could it be otherwise - for employees, customers, investors and suppliers. The manufacturer says it will work closely with the appointed curator.

What will the future of Lightyear look like? That is still unclear but Lightyear says they will focus on another model, the 2.

Because after the 0, Lightyear wanted to build the 2. With an expected price tag of less than €40,000, this is a much more affordable 'solar car', for which 40,000 private individuals have already signed up. Companies such as LeasePlan and MyWheels have already (pre)ordered more than 20,000.

 

[jstar]

In the mean time, hydrogen is moving one step forward and taking two steps back.

There was a new fuel cell Mirai from Toyota but Hyundai seems less keen to continue with the technology and put some models on hold.

More and more -in the US and Europe at least- the consensus seems to be that the technology is more suitable for heavy transport such as trucks, ships, …. Also for heating houses in colder climates. So the European manufacturers are mainly developing light trucks on hydrogen. Only Japan and companies like Toyota and Honda still seem to believe in the technology for passenger cars.

Of course Shell etc. don’t agree and still want to push it, which makes perfect sense since they could keep their business model with gas stations after 2030 / 2035 / 2050 (depending on country and continent).

This is a rather funny article on the marketing of the Mirai at the time btw:

Droga5 and the Art of the Sell, A Half-Century After Mad Men

It wants to be the consummate modern advertising agency. Don Draper would approve.

nymag.com

 

[jstar]

The problem with hydrogen is that you need a lot of energy to make it. And obviously it doesn’t make any sense if that is not from green electricity. (So for instance wind turbines or solar parks instead of coal or gas burning power stations.) They call it grey (or gray) electricity if it’s generated by fossil fuels and gasses.

The Indonesian government estimates that the country would require US$ 25.2 billion in investments to underpin green hydrogen development from 2030 to 2060. Mass adoption would be at its peak in 2050. So that’s still quite far away. Hydrogen would be a 10% contribution to the total power generated from clean energy in 2060, which I feel is a rather low number.

Let’s see what Indonesia is doing to create green energy. There are 11 geothermal** and 30 hydro-electric* power plants but currently they predominantly use power stations on fossil fuels (as coal) and biofuels. Now they’re very proud of their biodiesel but if you consider what that is, made from vegetable oil or animal fat, it is not positive at all. It is never good to use (land destined or suitable for) food production -think of soy bean, sun flower, peanut and coconut oil- for fuel production. Not to speak of the very controversial palm oil production in the country. There are currently 18 power plants under construction which would mainly burn coal. Oops.

Anyway, they are looking into alternatives. And this is the theory: The 2019 Indonesia Energy Outlook stated that the archipelago has the potential to generate 94.3 GW in hydro*, 28.5 GW in geothermal*, 32.6 GW in bio-based polypropylene*, 200 thousand bpd in biofuel, 207.8 GWp in solar energy, 60.6 GW in wind, and 17.9 GW in ocean*** energy.

Bear with me now, this is a bit of explanation about the not so obvious types of energy what they talk about for Indonesia and which are mentioned above:

* Hydro
This is one of the oldest and largest sources of renewable energy, which uses the natural flow of moving water to generate electricity. Of course you’d think of a large dam but it can be much smaller than that. So small rivers or even irrigation ditches can be used, it is much easier to obtain and more widely used than most people realize.

** Geothermal
This as the name implies, Geo (earth) + thermal (heat), is heat energy from the earth. It can be generated from reservoirs of hot water that exist or are human made at varying temperatures and depths below the earth's surface. Wells, ranging from a few feet to several miles deep, can be drilled into underground reservoirs to tap steam and very hot water. There are already geothermal plants operational in Indonesia.

*** Bio based polypropylene
This is a polymer manufactured from natural materials such as corn, sugar cane, vegetable oil, and some other biomass. This is mainly for bio based wrapping. It is always very iffy to use something that could serve as food, for energy or fuels but a in a sugar mill process for instance, its combustion produces an amount of heat that can generate electricity.

**** Ocean
There is energy available by waves and tides. Of course from the movement of water you get kinetic energy.
There is also a possibility for salinity power which is the energy created from the difference in salt concentration, commonly fresh and salt water so mainly when a river ends in a sea.
Thermal energy conversion is producing energy by harnessing the temperature differences between ocean surface and the deep ocean waters. In tropical regions as Indonesia surface water can be much warmer than deep water. They need a temperature difference of at least 20° Celsius to power a turbine to produce electricity.

A geothermal plant in Indonesia.

 

[jstar]

I read on the Pertamina GE website that they currently have 13 (instead of 11) geothermal working areas available and running. And 3 are under development.

Obviously this kind of plant is ideal for remote locations where the capacity demand is not that high and which would be complicated to provide with coal, gas, oil or other fuels.

 

[fastpitch17]

I suggest converting coal plants to trash burning generation. I have promoted this here since I arrived. Evidently there are a few small trash burning operations here but nothing to be too excited about.

I came from a city that converted from coal to trash 25 or so years ago. They use burnable trash from the city and some of the surrounding communities. The benefits were enormous for the communities.

Trash pickup cost were incorporated into property taxes. Eliminated and power company took over paying for collection. There was also a reduction in electricity cost to the consumers. The residents seperated burnable from non burnable. Our landfill totally disapeared. It was covered and sealed and then athletic fields built upon it. The only fossil fuel used was natural gas which was used towards the top of the smoke stacks to burn off the smoke and any harmful gasses thus making it a much more clean energy. One could not see any smoke coming out of the stacks.

I understand Surabaya is considering a generation facility of this or similar sorts. Imaginge if Jakarta's mountain of trash disapearing and residents actively putting trash in containers to be collected because the incentive is lower rates for them. 7 or 8 years ago in Bandung or Bogor the residents protested against such a facility because they didn't want the smoke in their community. It was canceled. I could only wonder who the engineers were that didn't plan this out fully.

 

[jstar]

The problem with hydrogen is that you need a lot of energy to make it. And obviously it doesn’t make any sense if that is not from green electricity. (So for instance wind turbines or solar parks …..

Only Japan and companies like Toyota and Honda still seem to believe in the technology for passenger cars.

Japan has a rather bad electricity infrastructure. So it’s not so weird they think their future is hydrogen as a fuel source. There are two ways to use hydrogen; as a so called fuel cell and as a fuel in a traditional gasoline engine. The latter is extremely inefficient. The former is in fact an electric car with a technology on board to create electricity from the hydrogen. That’s why it’s called FCEV vs the BEV of a battery operated electric vehicle.

Since they don’t have the capacity to make their own (yet). Japan will get its hydrogen from Australia.

It‘s not so easy to transport. Even to heat houses you can not just take the existing pipelines for natural gas. There is some retrofitting of the installation necessary. Also, the hydrogen needs to be diluted first and processed again in the house. A kind of pack/unpack proces if you will. And there is some risk involved since as a fuel, hydrogen is highly flammable and leaks generate a serious risk of fire. The pressure in a hydrogen tank is also very high, so to call it a potential bomb is not so far from the truth.

You can imagine to transport a huge amount of hydrogen is even more complicated. In Europe they can produce hydrogen in North Africa (Algeria, Sahara) and have a pipeline via the Mediterranean sea to Italy. Obviously that won’t work between Australia and Japan.

So the Japanese Kawasaki developed the world's first liquid hydrogen carrier ship. It is called the Suiso Frontier. It has a huge double shielded & insulated tank to keep hydrogen at a temperature of -253° Celsius (-423° Fahrenheit). That is the temperature at which hydrogen becomes liquid.

All very nice, but the ship is powered by a diesel engine which consumes -in the return trip Australia-Japan)- more energy than it contains in hydrogen. And don't forget the emission of CO2. Obviously that’s not the way to go.

 

[Hawk256]

All very nice, but the ship is powered by a diesel engine which consumes -in the return trip Australia-Japan)- more energy than it contains in hydrogen. And don't forget the emission of CO2. Obviously that’s not the way to go.

View attachment 2759

Similar things could be said about going to electric cars at this point. A big majority of the elecricity is coming from fossil fuels. We are moving one issue to a different location instead of solving the problem.

 

[jstar]

I suggest converting coal plants to trash burning generation. I have promoted this here since I arrived. Evidently there are a few small trash burning operations here but nothing to be too excited about.

I think the only country which has waste-to-energy plants is Sweden. To heat their homes and buildings and provide electricity they burn garbage. Doing that produces steam in a boiler which is used to power a(n electric generator) turbine.

 

[jstar]

Similar things could be said about going to electric cars at this point. A big majority of the elecricity is coming from fossil fuels. We are moving one issue to a different location instead of solving the problem.

Renewables made up 19.8% of electricity generation in 2020, with hydro and wind making up the majority. That's expected to rise to 35% by 2030. Many countries are doing better* but others much worse. So obviously that needs to go faster.

But you commit yourself to whataboutism and ignoratio elenchi. Hydrogen is not viable in small cars, it makes no sense even if the electricity would be 100% green. You need quite a lot of kilo (they don’t measure in liters) of hydrogen to fill a tank in a car and get a reasonable mileage. The production and transport and storage of hydrogen is very expensive (four times more than gasoline). A fuel cell is not very efficient, you don’t get a lot of bang for the buck. And currently the life of a fuel cell is not expected to be much more than 150.000 km.

If you have a huge truck or ship that could be different; they have the space for the tanks, they would become extremely heavy with all the batteries to be able to travel more than 1.000 km, and the charging of batteries would take too long.

*Norway:

 

[Hawk256]

Renewables made up 19.8% of electricity generation in 2020, with hydro and wind making up the majority. That's expected to rise to 35% by 2030. Many countries are doing better but others much worse. So obviously that needs to go faster.

But you commit yourself to whataboutism. Hydrogen is not viable in small cars, it makes no sense even if the electricity would be 100% green. You need quite a lot of kilo (they don’t measure in liters) of hydrogen to fill a tank in a car and get a reasonable mileage. The production and transport and storage of hydrogen is very expensive (four times more than gasoline). A fuel cell is not very efficient, you don’t get a lot of bang for the buck. And currently the life of a fuel cell is not expected to be much more than 150.000 km.

If you have a huge truck or ship that could be different; they have the space for the tanks, they would become extremely heavy with all the batteries to be able to travel more than 1.000 km, and the charging of batteries would take too long.

I never said that hydogen was viable. How did I commit to whataboutism? The point I was making is that we currently don't have a solution for the problems with fossil fuels (be it hydrogen, electric or anything on the horizon). We just move the problem from one place to another. Hydrogen and electic cars are facing some of same hurdles.

 

[jstar]

A hydrogen car is also an electric vehicle. So yes, the source, the fuel of the future whether it is via battery or hydrogen or whatever always depends on the availability of electricity.

But we don’t move the problem, we use certain new locations or technologies to provide that electricity in a green way. If you see the huge wind and solar parks you can’t say nothing is done.

I just gave the Japan example to point out how focusing on one solution could become ‘moving the problem‘ yes. But that’s an exception.

 

[fastpitch17]

There are a number of cities in the US that utilize waste-to-energy plants. So far mainly benefits. Just need to procure enough waste to operate. Near by communities don't mind contributing since they no longer need to deal with landfill needs and are paid for their combustables.

When this has been put in place you find more interest in recycling the items that do not burn. All burnable, incuding single use plastics are in one container and one container holds the recyclable items. The containers were supplied by the power provider.

 

[jstar]

View attachment 2743

On the solar car (company) Lightyear; it seems the first model the 0, was just too expensive and complicated to build (in Finland). The sales price of €250.000 would not even cover is.

Now it was announced that Lightyear had applied for a deferment of payment for its operational branch: Atlas Technologies. That was, among other things, the department where Lightyear had housed its production. Lightyear now announces that the Court has declared its operational branch bankrupt. Something important: Atlas Technologies B.V. is not the company that owns Lightyear's intellectual property. That is in the hands of Atlas Technologies Holding B.V.. This holding is said to house the investments of the Dutch government fund and the Swedish Koenigsegg.

Lightyear states it regrets the news - how could it be otherwise - for employees, customers, investors and suppliers. The manufacturer says it will work closely with the appointed curator.

What will the future of Lightyear look like? That is still unclear but Lightyear says they will focus on another model, the 2.

Because after the 0, Lightyear wanted to build the 2. With an expected price tag of less than €40,000, this is a much more affordable 'solar car', for which 40,000 private individuals have already signed up. Companies such as LeasePlan and MyWheels have already (pre)ordered more than 20,000.

View attachment 2744

At the end of January, the news came that Lightyear had put an end to further production of the Lightyear 0.

The operational branch was declared bankrupt shortly after, but the sun has not definitively set for Lightyear (pun intended). Filled with enthusiasm, Lightyear is setting up a new company.

Lightyear founder Lex Hoefsloot says that Lightyear has managed to raise enough cash to start a new company. Thanks to the Individual Investors Group (IIG), an American investor and lender, €8 million was raised in one day. Lightyear states it can now focus again on the Lightyear 2, which is Lightyear's more affordable solar car for which tens of thousands of pre-orders have already been received. Lightyear does indicate that it must find additional capital in order to actually start production of the Lightyear 2.

Lightyear's Intellectual Property, previously held by Atlas Technologies Holding B.V., will now be transferred to the new company. We will see.

 

[jstar]

Solar cars are having a hard time. As said before, a part of the Dutch company Lightyear went bust, with the result that the production of the solar car Lightyear 0 was stopped after just a handful of cars. Lightyear is making restart and hopes to be able to produce its next solar car on larger-scale.


The German Sono Motors is another company that has been developing an electric car -since 2016- that generates (part of) its required energy with solar cells. It is called the Sion. In mid-January, Sono Motors was looking for a financial raft of €105 million to stay afloat. That amount was not collected in time, but Sono Motors gave itself a little longer. After more than a month of struggling, finally Sono Motors throws the towel in the ring.

So it’s over and out for the solar car Sion. The Sono Group had raised 90% of the money needed and that is obviously close but not enough.

The closing of the Sion chapter has resulted in, among other things, the loss of jobs for some 300 employees. However, Sono Group will not disappear. Since 2021, Sono has been supplying its solar cell technology to manufacturers of buses and trucks such as MAN, Mitsubishi and Scania, among others. The company stated it will continue to do so in Europe, Asia as well as the United States.

 

[jstar]

Giant CATL, battery supplier to BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and Ford, among others, will present a special new battery type during the car expo Auto Shanghai.

The Condensed Battery is primarily intended for aviation, because a very high energy density per kilo is possible; 500 Wh per kilo. That is roughly twice the energy density of a modern lithium-ion battery. According to CATL, this is partly due to ”highly conductive electrolytes, cathode materials with ultra-high energy density and innovative anode materials”. We will believe them on that I guess.

Although CATL presents the new battery technology as a handy solution for electric aviation, it is of course not for nothing that they are presenting this at a car fair. CATL says it is also working on such batteries for use in the automotive industry.

Far away future?? No, according to CATL, car batteries with this technology will go into large-scale production this year.

 

[R Cameron]

twice the energy density of a modern lithium-ion battery

This would be a huge jump since 10-20% improvements are newsworthy. It appears another company beat them to the 500 number a month ago, but making a test unit versus an economically viable production battery is a different matter, the first to do that will sell very well. And maybe make our smartphones last several days as well.

The All-New Amprius 500 Wh/kg Battery Platform is Here | Amprius Technologies

FREMONT, Calif. – March 23, 2023 – Amprius Technologies, Inc. is once again raising the bar with the verification of its lithium-ion cell delivering unprecedented energy density of 500 Wh/kg, 1300 Wh/L, resulting in unparalleled run time.

amprius.com

 

[jstar]

President Widodo held an opening speech at the Hannover Messe. He stated that Indonesia does not close its borders and is open to investments and cooperation.

The president also spoke to representatives of Volkswagen and BASF during his trip to Germany. BASF would be interested in building a factory for batteries for electric cars in the North Moluccas. This investment would be more than $2.5 billion. According to rumors, Volkswagen would be interested in collaborating in building a factory for car batteries.

 

[jstar]

Let’s see what Indonesia is doing to create green energy. There are 11 geothermal** and 30 hydro-electric* power plants but currently they predominantly use power stations on fossil fuels (as coal) and biofuels. Now they’re very proud of their biodiesel but if you consider what that is, made from vegetable oil or animal fat, it is not positive at all. It is never good to use (land destined or suitable for) food production -think of soy bean, sun flower, peanut and coconut oil- for fuel production. Not to speak of the very controversial palm oil production in the country. There are currently 18 power plants under construction which would mainly burn coal. Oops.

The European Court of Auditors has clearly spoken out against e-fuels and biofuels as an alternative to electric driving. The agency warns EU politicians not to bet on the wrong horse when it comes to reducing CO2 emissions.

According to the Court of Auditors, so-called e-fuels and biofuels are unsuitable for achieving the EU's climate targets in the transport sector. "They are often cited as possible successors of gasoline and diesel," says Nikolaos Milionis, who is responsible for controlling climate spending in the transport sector in the EU. “But they can't currently offer a credible, reliable alternative on a large scale,” the AD quotes.

The Court of Auditors states the biomass produced in the EU is not sufficient to be a serious alternative to conventional fossil fuels. “However, if the required biomass is mainly imported from third countries, this would be contrary to the goal of strategic autonomy in the energy sector,” Milionis explains. "In addition, biofuels compete for raw materials with, for example, the food and pharmaceutical industry and are far from available everywhere."

The Court therefore recommends that EU policymakers continue to promote battery-powered electric cars 'as the only feasible alternative'. However, there are several problems. On the one hand, electric cars are still too expensive for end customers to have a big effect on the CO2 traffic balance. On the other hand, Europe is heavily dependent on numerous battery raw materials, which entails serious geopolitical risks. Many commodity countries are politically unstable. There are also concerns about the expansion of the charging network in Europe.