⚡Fossil fuelled Power Plants are becoming obsolete on their own, Greenpeace calls for review of Biomass, and a new additive mixture threatening LNG
By: Jakub Rzeplinski
Tags: Fossil Fuels, Lng, Solar Power, Solar Energy, Hydrogen

⚡Fossil fuelled Power Plants are becoming obsolete on their own, Greenpeace calls for review of Biomass, and a new additive mixture threatening LNG Jakub Rzeplinski Follow Dec 4, 2020 · 12 min read

Good evening The Carbon Cut Readers! Today’s highlights include:

The dirtiest fossil fuel is on the back foot

A generator-level model suggests that most fossil fuel power plants could complete normal lifespans and still close by 2035 because so many facilities are nearing the end of their operational lives

In rural New York State, big wind and solar energy projects are running into determined local opposition. What is to be done?

China will see more wind capacity installed than the next five largest markets combined during the 2020s

Phasing out the use of woody biomass to produce heat and power could help the EU double the amount of carbon dioxide its forests absorb in the next 30 years, according to a study commissioned by Greenpeace

US smart city Peachtree Corners, in Georgia, has unveiled a photovoltaic roadway system which produces energy for a solar-powered electric vehicle charging station located at city hall

and a new invention — a cleaner additive mixture to convert natural gas into solid form, for easy transportation, in just 15 minutes.

⛽ NEW FUELS

💧 Hydrogen

1️⃣ Marine transporter takes a look at hydrogen — Marine transporter Global Energy Ventures has launched a scoping study to investigate supply chain economics and internal energy requirements to transport hydrogen fuel using its existing compression (C-H2) ships.

2️⃣ Facing uncertain future, gas operators look to hydrogen lifeline — European gas pipeline operators are running trials to blend hydrogen into their networks. Across the U.S., gas utilities are gearing up to feed the fuel into their distribution systems. And in Canada, a new electrolyzer will soon fill trucks bringing hydrogen to filling stations hundreds of miles away. The flurry of projects comes as governments get serious about decarbonizing their economies and investors grow increasingly wary of stranded natural gas assets.

3️⃣ Siemens Gamesa to launch wind-hydrogen pilot — Siemens Gamesa is in the final stages of developing a pilot in Denmark to produce green hydrogen directly from wind. The scheme, near Siemens Gamesa’s Danish headquarters in Brande, will be up and running by January 2021, the turbine maker said. It will serve as a testbed for making “large-scale, cost-efficient” hydrogen production.

4️⃣ Hydrogen Fuel Could Be Texas’ Next Green Energy Bonanza — “Hydrogen has many, many uses,” Tomlinson told Texas Standard. “It can be used in the same turbines that natural gas is used in to generate electricity. Hydrogen can be used to make ammonia and then ammonia can be used as a liquid fuel. That’s what’s so exciting about hydrogen right now, is that there are many different applications in gas form and liquid form in many different technologies.” Texas is already a major producer of hydrogen, but that hydrogen is used for things like manufacturing textiles, fertilizer and rubber. Plus, that type of hydrogen isn’t particularly environmentally friendly.

5️⃣ Big Oil Could Be the Key to the Hydrogen Revolution — What’s a fossil fuel company to do when the world is planning to give up on fossil fuels? Join the revolution, of course. That helps explain the enthusiasm of Equinor ASA, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and PetroChina Co. about getting in on the switch to a hydrogen economy. For a century, oil companies have spent colossal sums of money delivering volatile liquid fuel to the power and industrial sectors. If hydrogen is supposed to replace petroleum in that equation, no one has better expertise than Big Oil.

❄️ LNG & Natural Gas

1️⃣ CNG carbon footprint less than 50% of LNG, Australian shipowner claims — Global Energy Ventures sees gap in the market for its compressed gas ships after Pavilion’s emissions-measuring deal with Qatar.

2️⃣ Global LNG demand falls as European receipts plunge — LNG receipts fell to 29.7mn t in November from 30.9mn t a year earlier, preliminary figures from analytics firm Vortexa show. The drop was mainly the result of European demand shrinking by nearly 30pc to 5.85mn t. Poland and Lithuania were the only two markets in the region that recorded a slight increase in deliveries last month.

3️⃣ Shell to double LNG bunkering fleet by 2025 — Shell plans to “more than double” its LNG bunkering vessel fleet by 2025, the firm’s executive vice-president Steve Hill said at the virtual CWC World LNG summit. The firm has six LNG bunkering vessels already in operation or about to start service, Hill said.

🚘 Mobility — EVs, Batteries & Fuel Cells

1️⃣ Cell Impact launches Japanese subsidiary — Cell Impact has formed a new Japan-based subsidiary to better serve the rapidly expanding fuel cell and hydrogen market in the region.

🦠 Synthetic Fuels, Ammonia, Methanol & BioFuels

1️⃣ What must be done to use solar and wind in power-to-methanol — According to a research team from Oxford University, solar and wind may be applied in power-to-methanol projects only if the methanol industry will switch from conventional chemical processes, that require a constant energy supply, to more flexible processes that need demand-side management.

2️⃣ Argentinian firm to produce biodiesel from sewage waste — Explora has invested over $5 million (€4.1 million) in new technology to turn sewage waste into biodiesel. The plant in Puerto General San Martín, Santa Fe, Argentina, has already produced 12,000 tonnes of deacidified residual oil that has been exported to the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Bulgaria and Brazil.

3️⃣ Bioenergy Will Continue to be the Largest RES in EU in the Decades to Come — The report highlights the energy system is still largely dependent on imported fossil fuels, and while renewable consumption grew significantly in the last decade, their penetration in the market needs to accelerate. Biomass is by far the main renewable energy source within the EU28 and in 2018 it accounted for more than 10% of the gross final energy consumption. The use of bioenergy has more than doubled since 2000 and contributes to all the final usage forms of energy i.e. heat, transport and electricity due to its storable, dispatchable and locally sourced nature.

4️⃣ NYK to operate two more methanol-fueled chemical tankers — After completion at shipbuilder Hyundai Mipo Dockyard (Korea) in 2022, the vessels will be delivered to Waterfront, a wholly owned subsidiary of Methanex Corporation, the world’s largest producer and supplier of methanol. Both vessels will be managed by the NYK Group company NYK Shipmanagement Pte. Ltd