Source: Carbon Commentary newsletter
Industry news
Things I noticed and thought were interesting-This is a weekly newsletter about low-carbon energy generation and efficiency. I summarise the blog posts I have published during the previous week and comment on news stories that have interested me in the last few days.
Week ending 6th February 2022
1, Lithium. Two encouraging developments in the last few weeks. A group of researchers in France successfully extracted ‘kilos’ of lithium carbonate – the key source of lithium for batteries from the water passing through a deep geothermal power plant in the Rhine valley. Whether the process is financially viable remains to be calculated. In the US, a study run by a Boston company showed that lithium ion batteries could be fully recycled, and that the resulting product would be of higher quality and more durable than the original battery material. (Thanks to Thad Curtz).
2, Vehicle-to-grid. The arguments for using vehicle batteries to provide grid stabilisation services are overwhelming strong. Last year, worldwide EV sales totalled over 6 million units. The average car had battery capacity of perhaps 40 kWh. So 2021 saw an addition of around 240 GWh inside new electric vehicles. BNEF reports that the total world static battery storage capacity in 2020 was just 34 GWh. We need large numbers of cars attached to the grid ready to provide or take electricity when needed. Car manufacturers have been slow to exploit the opportunity but this might be changing. Only the Nissan Leaf and a small number of other cars have offered two way flow of electricity (or Vehicle to Grid, V2G as it is usually known). The highly anticipated Ford Lightning, which will arrive with customers in May, will allow the truck to provide power to a house at times of blackout or when the price of electricity is high. As the stresses on grids around the world increase over the next years, I suspect this will be a highly valued feature. Chinese manufacturer BYD has just introduceda school bus to the US market that can return power to the grid when needed or financially advantageous. In the UK, a recent 300 home study showed an average annual return of around £420/$560 to EV owners from making their vehicle available to return electricity to the grid when needed.
3, India hydrogen. Reliance Industries, India’s largest company and a business focused on fossil fuels, has announced several steps towards carbon-neutrality in the last year. It will invest about $75bn to build at least 100 GW of solar power and has put large sums behind electrolysers and solar panel manufacturing. It recently bought the UK sodium ion battery supplier Faradion. Even for Reliance, these investment costs are large. For comparison, it made a profit of about $8bn in 2020/21. The latest speculation is that much of the electricity output from its renewables business will be devoted to making hydrogen on site because the company does not want to have to transport electricity over India’s distribution networks. Largely unnoticed in the West, Reliance’s pivot away from coal and oil and towards solar and hydrogen, and aiming for net zero in 2035, may be one of the most ambitious transition plans in the world.
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