HEY PAGANS

Pollutionwatch: how bad are bonfires for the environment?

Councils always get complaints, but scientists have been busily burning leaves in a giant chamber to understand the problem

Little is known about the air pollution bonfires cause. Photograph: James Osmond Photography/Alam

Gary Fuller

@drgaryfuller

Fri 10 Sep 2021

Ateam of French scientists has been investigating air pollution from bonfires. They used a specifically constructed fire chamber: a big room that could easily accommodate one or two whole houses, added instrumentation in the extract ducts, spread a bed of sand on the floor and set about burning leaves and hedge trimmings.

Bonfires are a frequent source of complaints to UK local councils, and in some places these complaints quadrupled during the 2020 lockdown. But little is known about the air pollution they cause. This means they are often assumed to produce pollution that is similar to home fires and wood stoves.

Any gardener (and their neighbours) will know the smell of smoke from burning green waste. Unsurprisingly, for each kilogram burned, garden waste on bonfires produced up to 30 times more particle pollution (smoke) than burning logs in a stove, but smoke from the wood stove contained up to 12 times more cancer-causing polyaromatic hydrocarbons. The pollution from bonfires more closely resembled wildfire smoke, which is being increasingly linked to health problems.

Autumn is coming and so is the annual garden-tidy before winter. The simple message is: do not burn your garden waste; compost it instead or shred it to make a mulch.

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FROM THE HORSES MOUTH

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Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a technology to recover CO2 from fossil fuel power plants and factories and store them underground, shutting out contact with the atmosphere.

”Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Engineering（MHIENG)” Group offers large scale, high performance & reliable CO2recovery plants that can be applied in a wide variety of industries. Collaborating with Kansai Electric Power Company, Inc., we developed the Kansai Mitsubishi Carbon Dioxide Recovery (KM CDR) Process, which delivers economic performance for plants of wide-ranging capacities, with features such as low energy, low degradation absorbing fluids, and low corrosiveness.

There are various ways to utilize CO2, such as chemical use (urea, methanol), Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), and Enhanced Coal Bed Methane Recovery (ECBM). Of these, EOR is attracting attention as a technology that enables both the prevention of global warming by storing the CO2 and the tertiary recovery of crude oil at the same time.

The EOR collects CO2 emissions from power plants and factories, sends the CO2 via pipelines to the oil fields, inserts the CO2 to the oil reservoir of the oil fields, and recovers the crude oil remaining underground. The method dramatically increases the recovery rate of crude oil from what used to be 20 ~ 30%.

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“Chemical Looping” – Scientists Find a Way To Transform Toxic Sewer Gas Into Clean Hydrogen Fuel

By OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

Study builds on previous work using ‘chemical looping.’

Scientists have found a new chemical process to turn a stinky, toxic gas into a clean-burning fuel.

The process, detailed recently in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Sustainable Chemical Engineering, turns hydrogen sulfide – more commonly called “sewer gas” – into hydrogen fuel. Hydrogen sulfide is emitted from manure piles and sewer pipes and is a key byproduct of industrial activities including refining oil and gas, producing paper and mining.

The process detailed in this study uses relatively little energy and a relatively cheap material – the chemical iron sulfide with a trace amount of molybdenum as an additive.

In addition to smelling like rotten eggs, hydrogen sulfide is highly toxic, corroding pipes and harming the health of people who encounter it.

“Hydrogen sulfide is one of the most harmful gases in industry and to the environment,” said Lang Qin, a co-author on the study and a research associate in chemical and biomolecular engineering at The Ohio State University. “And because the gas is so harmful, a number of researchers want to turn hydrogen sulfide into something that is not so harmful, preferably valuable.”

Researchers have found a way to turn a toxic gas into a clean-burning fuel. Their process involves adding the element molybdenum to break the gas into separate elements.

The study is built on previous work by the same research group using a process called chemical looping, which involves adding metal oxide particles in high-pressure reactors to burn fuels without direct contact between air and fuel. The team first used chemical looping on coal and shale gas to convert fossil fuels into electricity without emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The initial process used iron oxide to break down the fossil fuels.

The researchers later applied the concept to hydrogen sulfide and invented the SULGEN process, which converts hydrogen sulfide into hydrogen. The researchers found that the pure chemical, iron sulfide, didn’t perform well at the large scales needed for industrial use, Qin said. The research team has been trying to identify other inexpensive chemicals that could catalyze that transformation in higher quantities. This study shows that introducing a trace amount of molybdenum into iron sulfide might be an attractive option.

That material is relatively inexpensive and easy to acquire, making it an attractive option for larger-scale operations.

Transforming this toxic gas into hydrogen fuel creates an alternative oil and gas, which are major contributors to climate change, the researchers said.

“It is too soon to tell if our research can replace any of the hydrogen fuel production technologies that are out there,” said Kalyani Jangam, lead author of the study and a graduate student in Ohio State’s Clean Energy Research Laboratory. “But what we are doing is adjusting this decomposition process and making a valuable product from that.”

For this most recent study, the researchers found that molybdenum improves the breakdown of hydrogen sulfide, splitting it into two parts – hydrogen fuel and sulfur.

This work is early in the scientific process – the researchers showed that the process worked in the lab; tests at the industrial level are forthcoming.

“The big picture is we want to solve the harmful gas issue, and we thought that our chemical looping process would allow that,” Qin said. “And here, we have found a way to do it in the lab that creates this value-added hydrogen fuel.”

Reference: “Mo-Doped FeS Mediated H₂ Production from H₂S via an In Situ Cyclic Sulfur Looping Scheme” by Kalyani Jangam, Yu-Yen Chen, Lang Qin and Liang-Shih Fan, 12 August 2021, ACS Sustainable Chemical Engineering.
DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.1c03410

The senior author on this paper is Liang-Shih Fan, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State. Yu-Yen Chen, a former doctoral student in Fan’s laboratory, also contributed.

'MAYBE' TECH

Caterpillar, Chevron Team on Hydrogen Power

Written by Marybeth Luczak, Executive Editor

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Facilitated by Caterpillar subsidiary Progress Rail, Caterpillar and Chevron are demonstrating a hydrogen-powered locomotive prototype and associated hydrogen-fueling infrastructure at various U.S. locations.

Caterpillar Inc. and Chevron U.S.A. Inc. will collaborate “to confirm the feasibility and performance of hydrogen for use as a commercially viable alternative to traditional fuels” for line-haul rail, marine vessels and prime power, reported the companies, which said they will demonstrate a hydrogen-powered locomotive.

Caterpillar and Chevron on Sept. 8 announced they will be developing hydrogen demonstration projects in both transportation and stationary power applications.

Caterpillar Group President of Energy and Transportation Joe Creed

Facilitated by Caterpillar subsidiary Progress Rail, Caterpillar and Chevron are demonstrating a hydrogen-powered locomotive prototype and associated hydrogen-fueling infrastructure. The companies said work on the rail demonstration “will begin immediately at various locations across the United States.”

“As we work to provide customers with the capability to use their desired fuel type in their operations, collaborating with Chevron is a great opportunity to demonstrate the viability of hydrogen as a fuel source,” Caterpillar Group President of Energy and Transportation Joe Creed said. “This agreement supports our commitment to investing in new products, technologies and services to help our customers achieve their climate-related objectives as they build a better, more sustainable world.”

Chevron New Energies President Jeff Gustavson

“Through Chevron New Energies, Chevron is pursuing opportunities to create demand for hydrogen—and the technologies needed for its use—for the heavy-duty transportation and industrial sectors, in which carbon emissions are harder to abate,” Chevron New Energies President Jeff Gustavson said. “Our collaboration with Caterpillar is another important step toward advancing a commercially viable hydrogen economy.”

 

Progress Rail to develop hydrogen locomotive as part of Caterpillar-Chevron collaboration

By | September 9, 2021

Companies say work on rail project, part of effort to prove hydrogen's feasibility for transportation and stationary power, will begin immediate

Progress Rail will be part of an agreement between Caterpillar and energy company Chevron to develop a hydrogen-powered locomotive demonstration project, along with hydrogen-powered demonstrations for other transportation and stationary power uses.

Caterpillar and Chevron said the project’s goal is to show the feasibility and performance of hydrogen as an alternative fuel for line-haul rail and marine applications. They said work on the locomotive project and associated hydrogen fuel facilities would begin immediately at various U.S. locations.

“As we work to provide customers with the capability to use their desired fuel type in their operations, collaborating with Chevron is a great opportunity to demonstrate the viability of hydrogen as a fuel source,” Joe Creed, Caterpillar group president of Energy & Transportation, said in a press release. “This agreement supports our commitment to investing in new products, technologies and services to help our customers achieve their climate-related objectives as they build a better, more sustainable world.” Jeff Gustavson, president of Chevron New Energies, said the collaboration with Caterpillar “is another important step toward advancing a commercially viable hydrogen economy.”

The Progress Rail projects will join several other programs seeking to develop hydrogen power for rail applications. Canadian Pacific is working on converting a diesel locomotive to hydrogen power, which it says should be operating next year [see “Canadian Pacific’s hydrogen locomotive should be operating in 2022, CEO says,” Trains News Wire, Jan. 20, 2021]. A California agency is funding development of a hydrogen fuel-cell locomotive by Sierra Northern Railway [see “California Energy Commission awards $4 million for development …,” News Wire, March 18, 2021]. And hydrogen-powered passenger trains are operating in a number of European countries, with one on order for use in Southern California [see “Development of hydrogen-powered trains continues, but battery-powered equipment making more inroads,” News Wire, Dec. 14, 2020].

Strength of a party's climate change plan could help influence results in at least 9 ridings: Environics Analytics


Christy SomosCTVNews.ca Writer
Phil HahnCTVNews.ca Producer
Thursday, September 9, 2021 

TORONTO -- Climate change is a hot-button issue in this federal campaign, and data shows that a party’s environmental strategy could help influence its results in at least 9 ridings where races were neck-and-neck in the last election.

Environics Analytics analyzed all 338 Canada’s federal electoral districts and found environmental issues are important to a wide swath of Canadians.

The data and analytics firm found that voters in 46 ridings had above average concerns – compared to the national average -- for the way their lifestyles have an impact on the world around them.



More Environics Analysis stories for CTVNews.ca

Further, the winning margin in nine of these ridings was less than 10 per cent in the 2019 election – with one riding in Quebec where the winning margin was 0.6 per cent.

To get a better sense of how important environmental issues are to Canadian voters, Environics Analytics analyzed 15 voter segments with geodemographic modelling. They combined a survey about how voters rank on about 100 social values - including ones related to the environment - with demographic and population segmentation data, to create postal-code specific estimates on the values.
Related: Who makes up the wide mosaic of our federal ridings, and how do they vote?

They then analyzed how these voter segments measured up against EA’s database of social values of Ecological Concern and Ecological Lifestyle.

Ecological Concern is measured by “the belief that today’s environmental problems are a result of industrial and personal disregard for the environment” and that economic sacrifices to protect the environment are necessary.

Ecological Lifestyle is measured as “how willing people are to change their own choices around purchasing, including avoiding environmentally friendly products” and paying more to protect the environment.

Across the 15 voter segments analyzed, Environics Analytics found that while concern for the environment measured in both ecological concern and lifestyle was consistent across 11 segments, two population segments scored above average in the social values and two scored below average.

“Out of our 15 voter segments, there's a relatively consistent proportion across the whole population,” said Environics Analytics’ Rupen Seoni in a telephone interview with CTVNews.ca. “So this is an issue that has broad appeal, and what we're seeing with some of the polling is people are saying climate change is one of their top election issues.”

The two population segments who scored above average make up about 10 per cent of Canada’s population. They are young, professional, urban and well-educated voters that Environics Analytics dubbed “Jeunes en Ville” and represent three per cent of the Canadian population. They’re comprised of young people living in central neighbourhoods in Quebec’s cities.

“Young in the City” voters, who represent seven per cent of the Canadian population, live in English Canada’s larger cities. They had the highest score amongst all the population segments when analyzed for both ecological concern and ecological lifestyle, which means they are more likely to prioritize environmental protection even at the expense of economic growth, and are willing to pay a premium for goods and services deemed “good” for the environment.

Meanwhile, the two population segments who scored below average on the social values -- and were less likely to prioritize environmental protection over economic growth -- tended to be rural and older, and make up about 15 per cent of Canada’s population.

Dubbed by Environics Analytics as “Aging Heartland,” these are people who live in prosperous rural communities with maturing families or empty nesters. And “Older Rustic,” which consist of modest-income older couples in rural settings.

“These segments at the more extreme ends of the spectrum on environmental issues together make up about 25 per cent of the population,” Seoni explained.

RIDINGS TELL THE STORY

“Now, when we actually play that into riding races, which is all about, ‘where do we think this could be an issue and where could it move some of the riding races in what looks to be quite a close election?’, we see some pretty interesting things here,” Seoni continued, adding that he focused on one of the environmental social values (Ecological Lifestyle) for his analysis.

“We found this pretty instructive to sort out which ridings could have some impact on the election in terms of which way these ridings might go, will they change hands, et cetera,” he said.

The 18 ridings with scores of 20 per cent and higher above the national average tended to be central-city ridings in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa and Quebec City.



All but two were Liberal-held, and had been won by large margins. The NDP won second-place in most of the ridings, and out of the group of 18, the closest race was Ontario’s Toronto- Danforth – which the Liberals won in 2019 with a 14.5 percentage-point margin over the NDP.


A further 28 ridings had above-average scores on the Ecological Lifestyle social value, around ten to 20 per cent higher than the national average, were also found in big cities but in suburban areas.

In those ridings, such as King-Vaughan, Ont., Beauport-Limolou Que., and Nepean Ont., the close races in 2019 often had the Conservatives in second place. Seoni wonders whether the Conservatives’ better articulation of a plan around climate change could help move those ridings into their column.



Of the 29 ridings that scored at least 15 points below the national average on the Ecological Lifestyle social value, most were won by the Conservatives in 2019 by wide margins. Nine were won by the Liberals or NDP with smaller margins, which include Kenora, Ont., Labrador, Nfld., and Skeena-Bulkley Valley in B.C.

Environics Analytics estimates that the ridings which had close races scored above or below average on the Ecological Lifestyle social value may be the ones to watch in the upcoming election, as they signal that environmental issues may be the deciding factor in flipping the riding.

Here are those nine ridings where races were tight in 2019:



Environics Analytics is a Bell Canada company.

Strict caps must be set on fossil fuel extraction to meet climate goals, study finds

By Nicoletta Lanese 

A large excavator loads a truck with oil sands in a mine in Alberta Province, Canada in October 2009. (Image credit: Getty / MARK RALSTON / AFP)

Nearly 60% of the world's oil and methane gas reserves and 90% of its coal reserves must remain in the ground by 2050 in order to meet the climate goals set by the Paris Agreement, a new study finds.

Leaving these fossil fuel reserves untouched would give the world a 50% chance of limiting the increase in global average temperatures to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels, according to the study, published Wednesday (Sept. 8) in the journal Nature.

"If we want a higher chance of staying below 1.5 C, then we have to, of course, keep more carbon in the ground, more fossil fuels in the ground," study co-author James Price, a research associate at the University College London (UCL) Energy Institute, told reporters at a news conference Tuesday (Sept. 7).


Related: The reality of climate change: 10 myths busted

"I think this is a very important study" in that the work lays out, in concrete terms, what it really would take to meet goals set by the Paris Agreement, said Maisa Rojas, a co-author of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report and a climate scientist at the University of Chile, who was not involved in the new study.

"This is what it means — that there is a lot of fossil fuel that we cannot extract," Rojas said.

In 2015, parties to the Paris Agreement pledged to limit the increase in global average temperatures to well below 3.6 F (2 C) above preindustrial levels. Ideally, they aim to limit the increase to less than 2.7 F; limiting warming to this degree would slow, or even stop, some of the impacts of climate change that we're already seeing unfold, Live Science previously reported.

But to meet these goals, models suggest that the world should ideally reach net-zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2050. That means major changes need to be made right away, according to a report the IPCC released last month. In the first installment of its Sixth Assessment Report, the IPCC concluded that if average global temperatures continue to rise at current rates, we'll soon surpass an 2.7 F increase and hit 3.6 F of warming above preindustrial levels by 2050.

"Achieving global net zero CO2 emissions is a requirement for stabilizing CO2-induced global surface temperature increase," the IPCC report authors wrote. How do we reach net zero? The new Nature study highlights a critical step: We must cut the amount of fossil fuels we pull from the ground.

"We believe our new paper adds further weight to recent research that indicates the global oil and fossil methane gas production needs to peak now," first author Dan Welsby, an energy and environment researcher at UCL, said during the news conference. Specifically, the authors found that global oil and gas production needs to decline at an average annual rate of around 3% through 2050.

"For oil, this is a significant increase [from what] was found by a previous UCL study," published in 2015 in the journal Nature, Welsby noted. That study found that, to prevent global average temperatures from rising by more than 3.6 F, about a third of oil reserves, 50% of gas reserves and more than 80% of coal reserves would need to remain in the ground.

The new study also suggests that, "for coal, all regions need to have already reached peak production," Welsby said. On a somewhat promising note, studies suggest that global coal production already peaked in 2013, the authors noted. To meet the targets set forth in their paper, current coal production rates would need to fall by around 6% per year through 2050, Welsby said.

Related: 10 signs that Earth's climate is off the rails

These estimates come with a degree of uncertainty, Price noted at the news conference. For example, as temperatures rise, carbon released from melting permafrost could cause ripple effects in the carbon cycle, the process by which carbon atoms move between reservoirs on Earth. These kinds of shifts can make plants less efficient at pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis, meaning efforts to limit fossil fuel production may need to ramp up in order to compensate, Rojas said.

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In addition, the authors' climate model assumes that, each year, a certain amount of carbon will be sucked out of the atmosphere by carbon dioxide removal technologies. "However, there is substantial uncertainty as to whether these largely unproven technologies can be deployed as quickly, and at the scale required," Price said. The world's largest CO2-sucking plant opened in Iceland just this week, but in general, experts agree that these pricey technologies are not a viable replacement for cutting CO2 emissions on the front end, Gizmodo reported.

Given these uncertainties in the model, "the bleak picture painted by our scenarios for the global fossil fuel industry is very probably an underestimate of what is required," the authors wrote in the Nature study. "As a result, production would need to be curtailed even faster" than predicted.

But given the IPCC's latest report, can fossil fuel production and demand be curtailed dramatically enough that we avoid a global temperature increase of 2.7 F by 2050?

In reality, "it may well be the case that we'll surpass 1.5 degrees globally, around midcentury," Price said. But in anticipation of the third installment of the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report, which will address strategies to mitigate warming, "much of the modeling that goes on there will assume some overshoot above 1.5 degrees, and then we'll return to 1.5 degrees at some stage in the second half of the century," he said. In other words, even if the warming were to exceed 2.7 F at some point, efforts to rein in fossil fuel extraction now would still pay off in the long run.

"Really, what the future will look like will depend … on our decisions today," Rojas told Live Science. "This will all really depend on policies." These policies should include initiatives that both restrict fossil fuel production and reduce demand on the consumer side, study co-author Steve Pye, an associate professor of energy systems at the UCL Energy Institute, said at the news conference. For instance, moratoriums on production and bans on new exploration could curb fossil fuel extraction, while steep carbon pricing could target the consumer side, the authors wrote.
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In this vein, Denmark and Costa Rica recently entered an agreement to phase out their domestic oil and gas production, and international agreements like theirs could be key to success on a global scale, Pye said. Of course, countries whose economies rely heavily on fossil fuel production will face the greatest challenges in decarbonizing, and ideally, international partners would help to support them through the transition, he said.

Originally published on Live Science.

Oil and gas reserves need to be left unburnt to hit Paris Climate Agreement goals: study

By Drew Costley The Associated Press
Posted September 10, 2021 


WATCH: Is there a 'just transition' away from fossil fuels? – Sep 2, 2021

Researchers who estimate how much of the world’s coal, oil and natural gas reserves should be left unburned to slow the increase in climate-changing gases in the atmosphere say even more of these fossil fuels should be left in the ground.

The researchers, from University College London, say earlier estimates, published in 2015, had to be updated.

They now calculate that nearly 60% of the world’s oil and gas reserves and 90% of the coal reserves need to stay in the ground by 2050 to meet climate goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Those limits would give the world a 50-50 chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial times, according to their study Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“We believe on new paper adds further weight to recent research that indicates the global oil and fossil methane gas production needs to peak now,” Dan Welsby, lead author and an energy and environment researcher at the University College London, told a news conference Tuesday. “We found that global production needs decline at an average annual rate of around 3 percent (through) 2050.”

READ MORE: Despite political promises, plastic continues to fill Canada’s lakes, rivers and oceans

It’s been long known that emissions from burning fuels for electricity, transportation and other uses are the chief driver of climate change, pulling long-buried carbon in fossil fuels out of the ground and depositing that carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Scientists say such heat-trapping gases are causing sea-level rise and extreme weather events around the world.

The last study like this was several months before world leaders drafted the 2015 Paris accord and pledged to reduce warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), but preferably to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Oil industry looks for federal funding to decarbonize oilsands – Aug 31, 2021

That study, also conducted by University College London scientists, looked at how much countries would have to limit fossil fuel emissions to hold warming to 2 degrees Celsius. They found that a third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves and 80% of coal reserves would need to stay in the ground.

Emissions reductions proposed in this latest study dramatically increase the amount of fossil fuels that would need to stay in the ground to meet Paris targets.

The study comes less than a month after the International Panel on Climate Change reported that the world will likely cross the 1.5-degree-Celsius warming threshold in the 2030s under five scenarios of emissions reduction. Scientific consensus is that any warming past 1.5 degrees Celsius could result in catastrophic impacts, such as loss of species.

While acknowledging the IPCC report’s grim outlook, Welsby said he wanted to model a scenario that would limit the worst impacts of climate change.


READ MORE: Tree planting efforts can’t keep up with wildfire destruction, evidence shows

Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, editor-in-chief of the Annals of Global Health, said the the paper underscores how important government and corporate policy are in limiting warming. “The nations and corporate entities need to readjust their targets and leave oil, gas and coal in the ground if we’re ever going to get there,” Landrigan said.

His journal was one of over 200 health and medical publications that co-published an editorial on Sunday calling on world leaders to take emergency action to halt global warming.

In the editorial, medical and public health professionals highlighted the health impacts already wrought by our changing climate.




Canada election: Where do political parties stand on reducing gas emissions? – Aug 30, 2021

Dr. Renee Salas, who works in the emergency department of Massachusetts General Hospital, said she’s seen patients come in with health conditions that have been created or exacerbated by the climate change impacts, such as heat stroke and respiratory problems.

While everyone is at risk for adverse health impacts from climate change, Salas said, children, the elderly, the poor and racial minorities are disproportionately bearing the brunt.

A report last week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that poor people and people of color will be impacted disproportionately by severe heat, flooding and air pollution caused by our changing climate.


READ MORE: Why Canada could be burning coal well beyond the 2030 deadline set by the Liberals

Katharine Egland of Gulfport, Mississippi saw her house nearly destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The busy hurricane and storm season of 2020 cost her an additional $12,000 in damages. And she spent most of her vacation this past week helping Gulf Coast residents survive and recover from Hurricane Ida.

As chair of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Environmental and Climate Justice Committee, she’s seen firsthand how poor and minority residents of the region suffer from the impacts of climate change the most.

While she welcomed the fossil fuels findings of the new climate studies, Egland said she is frustrated world leaders haven’t taken more action to reduce warming.

“Usually when these reports come out, … frontline communities are like, ‘Okay, we pretty much knew that,’” she said. “And we advocate to keep it all in the ground. And we keep listening to reasons why that can’t be done, but we know it has to be done.”

TC Energy clear to keep insurers secret from pipeline activists

Robert Tuttle, Bloomberg News

TC Energy Corp. is the latest Canadian pipeline company allowed to keep its insurers confidential as activist groups push firms to drop business with the fossil fuels industry.  

The Canada Energy Regulator ruled that the names of TC Energy’s insurers are “commercial information” and the midstream company has met the requirement of “consistently treating” this information as confidential, according to a ruling on the agency’s website. 

Pressure from environmental groups has prompted some major insurance companies to halt support for energy projects. Zurich Insurance Group AG last year dropped its coverage of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which carries crude from the Canadian oil sands to the country’s Pacific Coast. In April, the pipeline’s operator received permission for insurer secrecy. 

TC Energy requested permission to keep insurers confidential in May as part of its annual reporting requirements for its gas pipeline network. The company didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment.

   NUCLEAR AS GREEN ENERGY GIVES IT A NEW LEASE ON LIFE

Nuclear fuel report sees positive long-term future

08 September 2021

World nuclear generating capacity is set to continue its upward trend with demand for uranium fuel increasing over the period to 2040, according to the projections in the latest edition of World Nuclear Association's Nuclear Fuel Report. Uranium resources are more than enough to meet that demand, but intense development of new projects will be needed in the current decade to avoid potential supply disruptions.

(Image: World Nuclear Association)

Nuclear generation capacity is expected to grow by 2.6% annually, reaching 615 GWe by 2040 in the Reference Scenario of The Nuclear Fuel Report: Global Scenarios for Demand and Supply Availability 2021-2040, launched today at World Nuclear Association Annual Symposium 2021. Only 74% of 2020's reactor requirements were covered by primary uranium supply.

The report is the latest in a series of reports published at roughly two-yearly intervals since 1975. Drafted with input from over 80 experts from across the global nuclear industry co-chaired by Alexander Boytsov of Tenex and James Nevling of Exelon Generation, the report uses publicly available information gathered from organisations active in the nuclear fuel cycle - both members and non-members of the Association - to produce projections for nuclear capacity and uranium production. Its three scenarios - designated Reference, Upper and Lower - cover a range of possibilities for nuclear power to 2040.

The proprietary model used by World Nuclear Association to prepare projections for fuel requirements has been thoroughly revised for this edition, with a reassessment of the various factors affecting nuclear fuel demand, such as thermal efficiency parameters, enrichment levels and fuel burn-ups.

Small modular reactors (SMRs) are considered in the report from a qualitative point of view but are not yet incorporated quantitatively in the model, other than the inclusion of the Russian-designed KLT-40S, two of which are now in operation on the floating nuclear power plant Akademic Lomonosov. Presenting the report today, Nevling said he expects that some of the projects currently projected for the later years in the report period will see the emergence of clusters of SMRs. "Our expectation is that by 2023, [the SMR] market will have matured sufficiently that we'll be able to shift from a qualitative treatment to a quantitative treatment," he said.

Nuclear power currently generates about 10% of the world’s electricity. It is expected to play an increasingly important role in future for reasons including its near-zero emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants, its on-demand, reliable and secure nature, and its long-term cost-competitiveness. In addition, its ability to produce near zero-carbon heat could help to decarbonise many hard-to-abate sectors of the economy. It faces several competitive challenges from other electricity generation sources, especially in deregulated markets, but while electricity demand growth has slowed down in some countries, the nuclear sector remains strong in many developing countries.

Capacity growth

As of mid-2021, global nuclear capacity was around 394 GWe (from 442 units), and about 60 GWe (57 units) was under construction. In the Reference Scenario, nuclear capacity is expected to grow by 2.6% annually, reaching 439 GWe by 2030 and 615 GWe by 2040. The Upper Scenario sees growth to 521 GWe in 2030 and 839 GWe in 2040. Even under the Lower Scenario, a steady increase in capacity projections is seen over the entire reporting period.

World reactor requirements for uranium estimated at about 62,500 tU in 2021 increase to 79,400 tU in 2030 and 112,300 tU in 2040 in the Reference Scenario; however, world uranium production dropped considerably from 63,207 tonnes of uranium (tU) in 2016 to 47,731 tU in 2020.

"The currently depressed uranium market has caused not only a sharp decrease in uranium exploration activities (by 77% from USD2.12 billion in 2014 to nearly USD483 million in 2018) but also the curtailment of uranium production at existing mines, with more than 20,500 tonnes of annual production being idled," the report notes. "Uranium production volumes at existing mines are projected to remain fairly stable until the late 2020s, then decreasing by more than half from 2030 to 2040."

Secondary supplies of uranium are projected to play a gradually diminishing role in the world market, and while commercial inventories will, in the near term, help in bridging the gap between supply and demand, the market remains undersupplied, the report finds. In the long term, the industry needs at least to double its development pipeline of new projects by 2040, it says. "There are more than adequate project extensions, uranium resources and other projects in the pipeline to accomplish this need, but it is essential for the market to send the signals needed to launch the development of these projects," it notes.

"Intense development of new projects will be needed in the current decade to avoid potential supply disruptions. A number of projects at very advanced stages of development are waiting for an improved supply-demand market situation in order to commence uranium production," the report says.

Beyond mining

The report also considers supply and demand in the conversion, enrichment and fuel fabrication sectors. Near-term requirements for uranium hexafluoride will be met by commercial inventories, and the ramp-up and restart of existing facilities by 2023, but more conversion capacity will be needed in the long term.

Existing enrichment capacity is sufficient to meet reactor requirements. Additional capacity might be needed in the second half of the next decade under the Reference Scenario - and in the current decade under the Upper Scenario - but the modular nature of centrifuge technology and the construction times for nuclear power reactors mean that expansion of enrichment capacity can take place in a timely way, and supply challenges are not expected, the report finds.

The fuel fabrication market differs from the other stages of the nuclear fuel cycle due to the specificity of the product: fuel assemblies are highly engineered and technological products designed for use in a particular reactor core, and the market itself is more regional in character than global. "The current geographical shift, with nuclear fuel demand increasing in Asia and decreasing in the West, may cause fuel vendors to move from a regional to a more global market approach," the report says.

"Given its unique combination of attributes - reliability, affordability, low-carbon and universal deployability - it is clear that nuclear energy will play an even larger role in the electricity and energy systems of tomorrow," World Nuclear Association Director General Sama Bilbao y León said following the launch of report. "The Nuclear Fuel Report makes it clear that sufficient uranium resources exist to meet the expected growth, but uranium markets need to rebalance to incentivise investment in uranium mining to support the expansion of the global nuclear fleet."

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

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Former US enrichment site ready for redevelopment

09 September 2021

The former Centrifuge Complex site at Oak Ridge in Tennessee is now ready for industrial development. The complex was one of the final collections of buildings to be demolished last year as workers completed the first-ever cleanup of a former uranium enrichment complex. The footprint of the former facility is earmarked for the construction of a proposed regional airport at the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP).

The former enrichment site as it looks today (Image: EM)

A large concrete slab covering more than 5 acres (2 hectares), left behind after the final buildings were demolished, has now been removed and backfilled by the US Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management's (EM) cleanup contractor UCOR. The site will remain a grassy field until it is redeveloped.

"Removal of these structures was an important step forward in completing ETTP cleanup, and now removal of the slab and restoration of the site is another significant step in transformation of the site into a multi-use industrial park," said James Daffron, Oak Ridge acting ETTP portfolio federal project director.

The Centrifuge Complex before demolition (Image: EM)

Uranium enrichment facilities were first built at the site in the 1940s to produce enriched uranium for defence purposes, under the code name K-25. Later renamed the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant, the site expanded and began also producing enriched uranium for the commercial nuclear energy industry and also to explore new enrichment technologies. The last of these facilities ceased operation in the mid-1980s.

EM is now working to clean up and transition ETTP to a multi-use industrial park. To date, it has transferred about 1300 acres to the community for economic development, land that now houses 20 private businesses. More than 3000 acres at the site are set aside for conservation, and the site also houses a history centre and a component of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park .

Researched and written by World Nuclear News