New theories and materials aid the transition to clean energy

by Richard Harth, Arizona State University

Illustration highlighting the three forms of catalysis described in the new study. 

Credit: Jason Drees / The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University

With each passing day, the dark side of our addiction to fossil fuels becomes more apparent. In addition to slashing emissions of carbon dioxide, society must find sustainable alternatives to power the modern world.

In a new study, Gary Moore and his research group explore different approaches to catalysis, a chemical process that plays an essential role in biological reactions, as well as many industrial applications.

Catalysts are substances that speed up the rates of chemical reactions, without being consumed during the reaction process. Enzyme catalysts are so important in nature that life would be impossible without them, as conditions within living cells are not conducive to many vital chemical processes. Chemical reactions that would otherwise require hours or even days to occur can unfold in under a second with the help of enzyme catalysts.

Chemical catalysts have been used in a variety of human applications, ranging from pharmaceutical development to biodegradable plastics and environmentally safe fertilizers. They may also advance the development of green energy solutions to address the climate crisis, an area Moore's group has actively pursued.

Moore is a researcher in the Biodesign Center for Applied Structural Discovery (CASD) and an associate professor in ASU's School of Molecular Sciences (SMS). He is joined by Daiki Nishiori, a graduate student in SMS and lead author of the new study, as well as Brian Wadsworth, a former graduate student in SMS who is now employed at Intel Corporation.

The study findings appear in the current issue of the journal Chem Catalysis.

Catalysts up close

The new study draws on investigations into the behavior of catalysts by Moore and his ASU colleagues as well as other researchers in the field. The current perspective article describes three forms of catalysis—enzymatic, electrocatalytic and photoelectrosynthetic—outlining progress to date and highlighting some of the remaining challenges faced by scientists seeking a comprehensive understanding of these important phenomena.

While a great deal has been learned through the study of enzyme catalysis in living organisms, researchers hope to develop synthetic alternatives that can improve on nature's designs. "It's challenging to mimic biological enzymes for catalysis," Nishiori says. "Biological enzymes have complex, three-dimensional protein structures," and operate under quite different conditions than most human-engineered catalysts

Instead, researchers hope to produce a new range of synthetic catalysts to drive chemical reactions with high efficiency. Successful results could greatly improve the industrial production of many products of benefit to society. These include new types of carbon-neutral or carbon-free fuels.

"We cover a fair amount of material space in this article, including traditional chemical catalysis by enzymes, as well as electrocatalytic processes mediated by biological and/or synthetic complexes," Moore says. The study then moves on to describe hybrid systems that capture radiant light energy and use it to drive charge transfer reactions. The obvious parallel in nature is with photosynthetic processes carried out by plants.

But artificial photosynthetic technologies can't simply replicate nature's blueprint. In addition to a limited understanding of the structure-function relationships governing their performance, photosynthetic plants convert and store barely 1% of the incident sunlight gathered by their leaves in the form of chemical bonds. These bonds ultimately make up the foods we eat, and on longer-geological time scales, the carbon-based fossil fuels our modern societies rely on. This is all a healthy plant needs to develop and reproduce but is insufficient for human applications.

Illuminating research

Designing new photoelectrosynthetic devices involves using light-gathering technology, similar to current photovoltaic cells, and coupling it to a thin layer of catalytic material. In this scheme, charge carriers are transferred from a semiconductor surface to catalytic sites. Once a catalyst has accumulated enough charge carriers, it enters a so-called activated state, allowing catalysis to proceed. The process can be used to produce hydrogen from water or to produce reduced forms of CO2including methane, carbon monoxide, liquid fuels, and other industrially useful products.

"In the case of a more traditional solar cell, your ultimate target is converting sunlight into electrical power. The systems we're developing use solar energy to power energetically uphill chemical transformations," Moore says. Instead of producing electricity, the impinging sunlight leads to catalyzed chemical reactions, ultimately generating fuels.

"Here, the fuels we are describing are not tied to fossil carbon sources. We can develop chemistry that's either carbon free, including the transformation of water into hydrogen gas, which could serve as a fuel, or we can use CO2 from the atmosphere to generate carbon-containing fuels," Moore says. "In this latter example, although the resulting fuels are carbon-based, no new sources of CO2 are liberated into the atmosphere." The process is a form of carbon recycling.

Moore refers to such technologies as photoelectrosynthetic. While they hold significant promise for producing clean energy and cleaner generation of useful industrial products, understanding the chemistry at both a theoretical and practical level is challenging. The photons of light and charge carriers used to jumpstart catalysis are quantum entities, with particularly subtle properties that researchers are still struggling to accurately model.

Producing effective technologies to address future energy challenges will require a more thorough mathematical understanding of light harvesting dynamics as well as catalytic processes and charge movement. The current study provides a tentative step in this direction.

Alongside these advances, researchers in materials science will need to design materials better able to exploit these processes, fabricated from durable and affordable materials.

New paths through the energy labyrinth

In addition to the purely scientific hurdles to be addressed, Moore states that changes in public policy will be critical drivers if greener energy technologies are to succeed. "It's daunting to compete with an existing technology that involves simply drilling a hole in the ground to extract a source of energy that's already there," Moore says. A scientifically educated public, able to make informed voting choices that impact how society invests in future infrastructure will also be vital. "Do we want to choose to make investments in technologies that minimize the impact of climate change, or do we continue making use of an energy infrastructure with components and processes that are over a hundred years old?"

Moore is hopeful that advances in enzymatic, electrocatalytic and photoelectrosynthetic technologies will play important roles in a more sustainable, less destructive energy future.Study offers new insights for sun-gathering technologies

More information: Daiki Nishiori et al, Parallels between enzyme catalysis, electrocatalysis, and photoelectrosynthesis, Chem Catalysis (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.checat.2021.09.008

Provided by Arizona State University 

Super-sized wind turbine race happening ‘too quickly’

By Chris Baraniuk
Technology of Business reporter

An artist's impression of the next giant turbine from Denmark's Vestas

Next year, Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas will put up a gargantuan prototype - a 15-megawatt (MW) wind turbine that will be powerful enough to provide electricity to roughly 13,000 British homes.

It will be the biggest such turbine in the world, though potentially not for long. Wind turbines just keep getting bigger - and it's happening faster than almost anybody predicted.

Chinese firm, MingYang, recently announced plans for an even more powerful device clocking in at 16MW, for example. Just four years ago, the maximum capacity of an offshore turbine was 8MW.

"It's happening quicker than we would wish, in a sense," says Aurélie Nasse, head of offshore product market strategy at Vestas. The firm is one of a handful that have led the development of super-sized turbines - but headaches associated with building ever larger machines are beginning to emerge.

"We need to make sure it's a sustainable race for everyone in the industry," says Ms Nasse, as she points out the need for larger harbours, and the necessary equipment and installation vessels required to bring today's huge turbine components offshore.

Then there's the hefty investments required to get to that point. "If you look at the financial results of the [manufacturers], basically none of us make money anymore," explains Ms Nasse. "That's a big risk."

Aurélie Nass from Vestas says there is a huge financial risk when developing bigger turbines

Yet the wind industry's willingness to push limits is one of its greatest strengths, she adds. A double-edged sword, or turbine blade, if you will. And there are few signs that the race to 20MW turbines and beyond is about to slow down.

"It's just astonishing," says Guy Dorrell, a spokesman for Siemens Gamesa, referring to the fact that a single offshore wind farm can now power a million homes. By the end of this year, his firm plans to install an onshore prototype of a 14MW offshore turbine that can be boosted to supply 15MW.

"We've worked out that a single turn of a 14MW turbine would power a Tesla Model 3 for 352km (218 miles)," he says. Besides heightened power output, one of the advantages of bigger turbines is that they are more efficient in terms of installation time and cost - clearly, you only need one base structure and set of cables for a 14MW turbine versus two for a pair of 7MW machines.

The UK currently has about 10.5 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind capacity and this is set to quadruple by 2030. But that still isn't enough to deliver net-zero electricity by 2035, according to researchers at Imperial College, London.

Whatever happens next the demand is there and you can bet that bigger turbines will become more commonplace, says Christoph Zipf, a spokesman for Wind Europe, an industry body.

Twenty years from now, 15MW turbines will be viewed as "average", he predicts.

One sweep of a big turbine blade could power a Tesla car almost 220 miles

It may happen even sooner than that. The UK's newest offshore wind projects, planned for Dogger Bank in the middle of the North Sea, are already set to use 13 and 14MW turbines.

But surely there are limits to how large these structures can get? They are already mind-boggling. Each blade on Vestas' 15MW turbine is 115.5m (379ft) long - nearly as long as London's Centre Point tower is high. The turbine itself has a rotor diameter of 236m (London's tallest building, The Shard, is 310m tall).

"There has to be a physical limit although nobody has yet put a number on that," says Simon Hogg, at Durham University. Prof Hogg holds the Ørsted chair at the university, which is funded by energy firm Ørsted.

Instead, it's the practicalities of putting these machines in place and maintaining them that might first become problematic.

Prof Deborah Greaves at Plymouth University says of super-sized offshore turbines, "There are still open questions around the cumulative environmental impact and the capacity of the marine environment."

Wind turbines do have some negative effects on wildlife but the extent of this, at scale, is difficult to measure. Plus, very large wind farms at sea must be sited carefully to avoid conflict with shipping lanes.

There are a limited number of vessels that can handle the biggest turbines

Prof Hogg adds that the cost of maintaining hundreds of very large turbines, miles offshore could go up over time. "Something like that, may be the defining driver as to how big offshore wind turbines can actually get," he says.

Then there are the technical niggles. The really big turbines tend to be positioned far away from land but that means the electricity they generate must travel huge distances.

When transmitted using alternating current (AC), some power ends up getting lost. Converting to direct current (DC) is much more efficient but using DC at very large scales requires significant advances in engineering, says Prof Hogg.

Plus, the tip of a very long turbine blade travels faster than the tip on shorter blades rotating at the same rate - given it has a longer distance to cover in the same amount of time.

However, current turbine designs have a maximum speed for the blade tip of around 90m/s, or 324km/h (201mph), says Prof Hogg, which has a "big effect on the overall aerodynamics of the blade."

He adds that blades are also twisted slightly near the tip to ensure good performance, although there is a limit on how much they can be twisted. That means there is a limit on a blade's size and speed of rotation.

In short, while building a wind turbine significantly bigger than today's giants may be possible from a manufacturing standpoint, it could be the practicalities and costs of installing, maintaining and operating them that really challenge their seemingly unstoppable growth in the future.

As Ms Nasse says, "We need to be a little careful of the pace."

The Ocean Is Swallowing a Town That Can’t Afford to Fight Climate Change

A failing breakwater in Conception Bay South in Newfoundland shows just how ill-prepared most places are for the climate crisis.

THE CONCEPTION BAY SOUTH BREAKWATER WAS BREACHED AFTER A STORM IN JANUARY. PHOTO COURTESY OF RICK STANLEY/OCEAN QUEST

By Conor McCann
14.10.21

As Hurricane Larry swept across eastern Canada last month, residents of Conception Bay South, a coastal community on Newfoundland’s Avalon peninsula, braced for the worst.

Candidates in September’s municipal election removed campaign signs, expecting 100 km/h winds. Others worried about their boats tied up in the harbour, while some just tied down whatever they could. Many residents, however, simply hoped the breakwater would hold.

With a population of roughly 26,000, Conception Bay South is the largest town in the province. At its heart is a series of harbours called upper and lower Long Pond, which are protected by a narrow breakwater built on top of a naturally formed barachois, the narrow beach-rock bar that separates the coastal lagoon from the ocean.

Without the breakwater “you’d have homes that were completely exposed to the open ocean and relatively low-elevation homes,” said Ted Perrin, a former navigation officer who has lived most of his life along the shores of Long Pond.

Though the breakwater held up during September’s hurricane, residents haven’t always been so lucky.

In January 2020 a winter storm slammed the island, plunging the community into a state of emergency, and breaching 300 metres of the breakwater. The town was left exposed to pounding storm surges that destroyed wharves, damaged boats, and filled the channel with rocky debris.

Approximately $1.4 million in repairs had already been made before a storm destroyed the breakwater again a year later.

BREACHES IN THE CONCEPTION BAY SOUTH BREAKWATER IN JANUARY. PHOTO COURTESY OF PIERRE GAUVREAU

Though the breakwater has protected the community for over half a century, since its construction there have been at least eight breaches due to unusual storm surges—half of which have occurred within the past 10 years.

“My father’s been here 66 years. He’s seen a fair share of storms, high tides, and hurricanes, and he says they definitely are more frequent,” said Perrin.

“What has happened—and I have no doubt, is that climate change is starting to become a factor.”

The world’s coastal cities are bracing for climate change with massive investments in infrastructure designed to withstand rising tides and heightened storms.

New York City has committed $500 million to protect Lower Manhattan, while Miami has a $3.8 billion plan to fortify its coast and alleviate flood risks.

In Singapore, where Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong called climate change an existential threat to the country, the government has committed nearly $72 billion preparing for the global worst-case scenario.

But as these cities batten down the hatches with billion-dollar investments, towns like C.B.S. are treading water just to maintain their existing infrastructure, already at a prohibitive cost for most communities in the province.

Newfoundland and Labrador has a predominantly coastal population, with about half of the island’s half a million residents living in St. John’s and the surrounding metro area. In a report presented to City Hall last year, researchers predicted increased rainfall, sea-level rise, and more frequent storms for the province over the next 30 years.

“With sea-level rise and increased storm intensities, you can get a greater storm surge,” said Joseph Daraio, an associate professor at Memorial University’s Faculty of Engineering.

AFTER THE DAMAGE THIS YEAR, CONCEPTION BAY SOUTH FIXED THE BREAKWATER WITH NEW ARMOUR STONE. VIDEO STILL COURTESY OF PAUL FLYNN

Working with Natural Resources Canada to train engineers and provide resources for designing climate resilient infrastructure, the challenge, said Daraio, is that we can no longer rely on past benchmarks for new projects.

“When you’re designing any kind of infrastructure, traditionally, you’re using historical data,” he said. “And you can only go by what has occurred.”

Now, what were once the most severe conditions a project could withstand are liable to become the new normal.

“You can’t base your design for 30-50 years into the future on what’s happened in the past anymore, because it’s going to be different,” Daraio warned. “With climate change, the historical data becomes unreliable.”

For towns like C.B.S. this means existing infrastructure may not be able to withstand the rigours of new climate pressures. Development around the barachois has been a point of contention in the town for over a century: the common complaint being that wealthy residents who live near the water have made changes to the area that predominantly benefit themselves.

The channel that connects the two ponds was dredged in 1957 so that members of the newly formed yacht club could sail into the upper pond. In doing so, a bridge that had once allowed inland farmers to gather capelin, a small shore-spawning fish, for fertilizer was removed and never rebuilt.

Continuing animosity over the decades has made its way to social media, where residents often trade vitriol in the town’s Facebook groups.

Some of that discontent centres on the 2016 transfer of responsibility for Long Pond Harbour from the federal government to the town, and along with it a $1.6 million grant for maintenance of the area.

Frustrated residents claim that money was mismanaged by the town, with $1 million being spent on a new park, leaving little for the necessary maintenance of the breakwater.


The former mayor of Conception Bay South, Terry French, who did not seek re-election in this year’s municipal race, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Perrin believes the breakwater has made the difference between major storms and disaster events, but he says it’s municipal negligence, rather than the effects of climate change alone, that have caused it to fail.

“It’s critical infrastructure that has to be maintained,” he said. “The town of C.B.S. [is] doing a very poor job of maintaining it.”

After last year’s breach, the town received emergency funding from the government to fix the breakwater, and after the damage this year, replaced the existing beach rock with new armour stone.

It’s a solution that doesn’t leave Perrin feeling confident. That armour stone, he said, is just sitting atop the same beach rock that has been washed away before. Without proper maintenance he fears it’ll wash away again.

“If they’re not monitoring it they could really miss the changes, and we could get into a situation where... we’ve got a major breach and damage to homes.”

Barricading the island behind a wall of armour stone isn’t a realistic solution for the challenges which communities across the province will face over the next 30 years.

Fortunately, Daraio said the thinking is slowly changing. “We’re designing now for the conditions in the future, so that when something happens that’s maybe never happened before… we’re ready for it,” he said.

But while he would like to see towns like C.B.S. create multi-decade plans to update infrastructure for climate resilience, he admitted that’s idealistic.

“The resources aren’t there for municipalities,” he said, “really just because they don’t have enough money. They don’t have the people.”

Particularly in the case of smaller communities, where local companies bid for contracts on work, some may be hesitant to add the extra costs associated with designing for the future into their proposals, especially when new parameters haven’t been formally implemented into the existing design codes.

In many ways, according to Daraio, the infrastructure response to climate change is one of planned retreat.

“You need to kind of accept that these areas are going to change,” he said. “Some of these areas will be uninhabitable. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

“These are changes that are happening—are going to happen—and we need to confront them.”

Follow Conor McCann on Twitter.

#VOTENO

Braid: Next Monday's equalization vote is emotional but largely meaningless

What will be achieved with a provincial vote to start picking equalization apart? In all likelihood, very little

Author of the article: Don Braid • Calgary Herald
Publishing date: Oct 14, 2021 • 

Premier Jason Kenney provided an update on COVID-19 and the ongoing work to protect public health at the McDougall Centre in Calgary on Tuesday, September 28, 2021. 

PHOTO BY DARREN MAKOWICHUK/POSTMEDIA

Are Albertans really about to demand an end to equalization nationwide?

A Leger poll for Postmedia suggests it could happen in Monday’s provincial referendum .

Fifty per cent of Calgarians will vote yes on the call to remove the principle of equalization from the Constitution, the survey finds.

Only about 34 per cent of Edmontonians agree. But the poll doesn’t cover the rest of the province, where support for abolition will probably be strong.

There’s no certainty, but on balance it appears the question could succeed. That would be a huge relief to Premier Jason Kenney.

Many in his own party fear that his unpopularity could cut into support. If the high-stakes question fails, they say, Alberta would have no cards to play for a generation.

Other Albertans feel the question should have been softer, simply seeking negotiations and reform without demanding an end to equalization for everyone in Canada.

A question like that would probably get a huge majority. But this is a demand to abolish the very underpinning of equalization. It will offend a lot of people across the country.

Equalization is undeniably stacked in favour of Quebec, but there are provinces, such as P.E.I., that need help maintaining services at a reasonable national level.

That’s been the whole point of equalization since the first payments were made in 1957 — to create a rough national equality in education, health care and other services.

It was never meant to equalize provincial economies, although that often seems to be the modern goal for Quebec.

Veteran journalist Mary Janigan, in her epic 2020 book, The Art of Sharing, writes that “equalization is vital to the survival of the nation. But it can only continue if the poorer and richer provinces deem the bargain to be fair.”

Alberta has always been a net contributor through taxation. The provincial economy has fallen far since 2015, yet we are still balanced precariously on the “have” side of the national equation.

Economic decline has only deepened the feeling that equalization is profoundly discriminatory. And as Janigan suggests, that is dangerous to both the program and the country.

But what will be achieved with a provincial vote to start picking it apart?

In all likelihood, very little.

The UCP suggests that a yes vote would force “a duty to negotiate” declared in the 1998 Supreme Court reference on succession.

But that’s not quite so, according to U of C emeritus professor Rainer Knopff, one of Alberta’s leading experts on the Constitution.

He says the duty is triggered only when a provincial referendum seeks secession from Canada, not when the subject is equalization.

That fact would “give reluctant governments a ready excuse to ignore Alberta’s proposed equalization referendum,” he wrote.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is hardly likely to agree to major talks on equalization as long as he needs Quebec seats — which is to say, forever.

But Knopff notes another twist: If the people of a province pass a referendum on any constitutional subject, and the government then votes a similar resolution in the legislature, the other provinces and Ottawa do have a duty to negotiate.

The trigger is the legislature resolution, not the referendum.

All this is recognized in the province’s new Referendum Act. Kenney hasn’t publicly talked much about the second step. He usually suggests the referendum alone will trigger national negotiations.

But even if the UCP does pass a legislature resolution, Ottawa is not compelled to talk.

As one expert notes, the Supreme Court set no enforcement rules or compliance guidelines, nothing that would prevent years of stalling.

Lawyers could argue forever about whether Ottawa must negotiate, and when.

What should Albertans do next Monday? I’d say, vote for whatever makes you feel good. Just don’t expect it to mean anything.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald

Twitter: @DonBraid

Facebook: Don Braid Politics

Hollywood crew members speak out about why they’re ready to strike

BY KYLIE LOGAN
October 13, 2021 

Charlie Schneider, an assistant lighting chief for Hollywood film and TV shows, is fed up with what he describes as pitiful wages and working well past midnight. The job is so taxing, he said, that a fellow crew member who had worked a string of 14-hour days fell asleep while driving home from the set and flew off the road.

"His car was completely totaled. And it was just by a miracle that he's still with us,” Schneider said.

Upset about their working conditions, Hollywood production crew members are on the verge of a historic strike that promises to shut down the film and television industry. If negotiations with the studio fail to deliver a contract by this weekend, they plan to walk off the job starting on Monday.

Their union, the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees, is asking for sufficient breaks for meals and full days off on weekends; better wages across all job types; pension and health coverage for retired members that is equal to their last three years on the job, and an end to streaming service productions being able to pay workers less.

In a statement, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios, said, "There are five days left to reach a deal, and the studios will continue to negotiate in good faith in an effort to reach an agreement for a new contract that will keep the industry working."

The strike would come at a sensitive time for the studios. They're already reeling from the pandemic, which shut down production for months and decimated box office sales.

The production crew union and studios re-negotiate a basic agreement every three years, but in a public statement, IATSE says things are different this time, partly because of the pandemic and the rise of powerful streaming services like Netflix.

Ariel Goodman-Weston, president of the union representing Hollywood’s costume crew members, which is part of IATSE, says a better contract is a matter of respect for some of the hardest workers she knows. Costumer pay is among the lowest in the industry, she said, and many of her unit's members work long days to earn as much as sound or camera crew members make in less time. Why? She believes it's because of the union’s “diverse” membership and that their jobs are classified as “women’s work.”

“[Storytelling] is the foundation of humanity,” said Goodman-Weston, adding that studios should value stories enough to take care of the people who create them. Her colleagues each have “such an amazing skill set and history and culture that they come from and that they bring to the job,” she said.

Dana Fytelson, a member of the union for cinematographers, which is also part of IATSE, is thankful her colleagues are speaking up. It’s “unifying us,” she said. Most crew members are too nervous to voice concerns about working conditions, because they don’t want the producers to hold it against them.

A script coordinator, who asked not to be identified for fear of losing future work, added that low pay can restrict marginalized communities, people with children, and those who lack backup savings, from sustaining their careers. For example, when she recently asked for a 50-cent hourly raise for a job that put her on-call around the clock, she was denied. Additionally, the script coordinator complained of a lack of upward mobility. Now that streaming services are producing short 10-episode seasons, the writers’ room is practically sealed shut to newcomers.

In addition to higher wages and meal breaks, Schneider, the lighting specialist, voiced concern about safety on the set. Production crew workers must often lift heavy equipment, for example. And long work days can result in accidents, on or off the set. Schneider added that during the pandemic the studios devoted big money to COVID testing and PPE gear so filming could resume. But he asked, “Why not ensure the health and safety of all your employees on a day-to-day basis, unrelated to COVID?”

According to Fytelson, some crew members are unable to afford a strike, if it happens. Crew members can't apply for unemployment if they walk off the job, and some will have to seek income elsewhere to pay rent. “On one hand,” she said, “It's short-term pain, long-term progress. On the other hand, we live in Los Angeles.”

France makes nuclear offer to Poland

14 October 2021

France's EDF has made an offer to the Polish government to build as many as six EPR units. A project of that size would decarbonise 40% of the country's electricity and avoid up to 55 million tons of CO2 per year, EDF said. The "non-binding preliminary offer" represents a range of options for Poland. It details the engineering, procurement and construction that would be needed for four to six EPR units, at either two or three sites. The EPR units would produce 1650 MWe each.

A cutaway of an EPR reactor (Image: EDF Energy)

EDF estimates that "about 25,000 local jobs" could be created at a construction site with two EPRs, as well as "tens of thousands" of indirect jobs.

"The offer aims at meeting the objectives of the Polish Nuclear Power Programme adopted by the Polish government in October 2020," said EDF, adding: "It aims at setting the principles for a Polish-French strategic partnership framework in support of Poland’s ambitious energy transition plan, aligned with the European carbon neutrality target."

Poland plans to build large nuclear reactors in the north of the country and has been developing environmental studies while engaging with communities near Żarnowiec and Lubiatowo-Kopalino. The state-owned project company handling the work is called Polskie Elektrownie Jadrowe, having changed its name from PGE EJ 1 in June this year.

EDF said it has been "committed to partner the Polish nuclear power programme since its inception, with the full support of the French government." Both the countries are among the 10 EU nations of the Nuclear Alliance which has demanded nuclear power be included in the EU's Taxonomy list of sustainable investment options.

The US government is also keen to support Poland's nuclear power plans, with Westinghouse promoting its AP1000 design. Westinghouse recently upped its involvement in the country by opening a regional services centre in Krakow.

In parallel, Poland has a thriving small reactor scene, with energy intensive industrial companies Synthos, Ciech, KGHM, Unimot and PKN Orlen working towards upgrading to new small reactors. Synthos' subsidiary Synthos Green Energy is collaborating with ZE Pak to potentially replace coal units at the Pątnów power plant with nuclear units.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

Macron: Nuclear 'absolutely key' to France's future

13 October 2021

Nuclear power was at the heart of French President Emmanuel Macron's France 2030 plan for re-industrialisation, announced yesterday. The plan includes a programme to demonstrate small reactor technology and mass production of hydrogen using nuclear electricity in this decade.

Emmanuel Macron sets out his France 2030 vision at the Elysee Palace, yesterday (Image: Elysee)

With a presidential election six months away, Macron presented France 2030 as his near term "response to the great challenges of our time" and a way to build a "21st Century humanism". 

Macron's first conviction, he said in his speech at the Elysee Palace, was that innovation and industrialisation are inextricably linked, and it had been a mistake for France to think it could be innovative while letting its heavier industries decline. "Our country is going to reindustrialise itself through technological start-ups and what is called 'deep tech'," said Macron. "And our large industrial groups will survive, transform and win the game thanks to the disruptive innovation of startups that they will have incubated or that they will have bought or with which they will have partnerships."

Accordingly, 'Reinventing Nuclear Power' was placed as the first objective in Macron's plan, with EUR1 billion (USD1.2 billion) allocated to demonstrate small nuclear reactor technology. He said this programme would be "starting very quickly with very clear first projects," adding that, "In fact, we must launch several projects from different technological families."

Macron said that as a core production technology, nuclear merited first position in the plan. Continuing to develop nuclear power "is absolutely key because we know that we will continue to need this technology," he said.

On large reactors, Macron told the crowd he would be able to make his decision on the potential construction of up to six large reactors "in coming weeks", anticipating the completion of a pivotal study by Prime Minister Jean Castex and the transmission network operator RTE.

Macron's second objective also had a close relation to the country's nuclear sector. Hydrogen, he said, "is really an energy sector where we can do it because we have assets. We have a primary asset, it is once again nuclear power."

The possibility of using clean electricity from France's fleet of 56 nuclear reactors is "a huge change" that "will allow us to be a leader" in the emerging hydrogen sector, Macron said. He foresees hydrogen replacing liquid fuels for road transport. In the hydrogen sector, "We have very good research, we have very good players: Air Liquide and a few other manufacturers. In addition, we have a network of start-ups, equipment manufacturers, entrepreneurs, innovators who are ready to go and who are organised."

A serious commitment to hydrogen is needed, Macron said, to avoid repeating the country's mistake in renewables, which he said was to invest too little. "We must develop our industrial offer in hydrogen and therefore invest massively in this sector. This means that by 2030, France must be able to count on its soil at least two giga-factories of electrolysers in order to massively produce hydrogen and all the technologies needed for its use."

"It is this triptych," Macron said, "nuclear, hydrogen and renewable energies" and their breakthrough innovations "that will allow us to produce energy and electricity differently and to start contributing to this world where we produce better, and more carbon-free."

"As you can see, we have real levers. We have real historical advantages, but we have to accept the investments that I have just mentioned in order to achieve these objectives," said Macron.

As well as EUR8 billion across these energy projects, Macron signalled France would "invest massively" to help existing heavy industry decarbonise. "It will be public and private investment," he said, "but without public investment it is impossible, it is unsustainable." In total the France 2030 plan amounts to EUR30 billion of investment.

Macron also said he would use the upcoming French presidency of the European Union to introduce a mechanism to penalise imports from countries where industry operated under less stringent decarbonisation policies.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

ATER EBIDA

Oilsands majors accrue $7.8 billion in free cash flow

PAYBACK TAXPAYER SUBSIDIES
By JWN staff  
Wednesday, October 13, 2021




Canada’s oilsands majors continue to generate huge amounts of free cash flow in 2021.

Higher commodity prices in the first half of 2021, coupled with a slow return to pre-pandemic levels of capital spending, have resulted in operating cash flow significantly outweighing capital budgets for many producers across the U.S. and Canadian upstream sectors this year.

“This is especially true in the Canadian oilsands, with Canadian Natural Resources Limited, Cenovus Energy Inc., Imperial Oil Limited, MEG Energy Corp. and Suncor Energy Inc. recording a combined free cash flow of $7.8 billion in the first half of the year,” said Mark Young, senior analyst at Evaluate Energy.

This analysis is part of a new Evaluate Energy report on key cash flow and capital management trends across the North American upstream sector. Access the report here.

“While it is not unusual for oilsands producers to generate billions in free cash flow, these 2021 values remain highly significant,” Young said. “Only three financial quarters between the start of 2018 and the beginning of the pandemic in Q1 2020 saw values higher than the free cash flow recorded in either Q1 or Q2 2021.”

Despite this recent high in free cash flow, the data also shows that capital spending has now recovered to pre-pandemic levels for the five producers.

“These oilsands companies never deviated far from spending $2.5-$3.5 billion each quarter before the pandemic started in Q1 2020, and Q2 2021 was the first quarter of that magnitude since,” Young said. “This can actually be seen across the Canadian industry, with the other 37 Canadian producers in our report recording combined Q2 capex greater than averages seen prior to the pandemic.”

Evaluate Energy’s Q2 2021 cash flow review for North American oil and gas producers can be downloaded here. The report includes analysis of dividend increases, capital budget levels and debt-related spending for 86 U.S. and Canadian oil and gas producers.

Carbon capture-biofuel plant planned for Merritt
Green jobs promised for plant that turns CO2 and hydrogen into green fuel

By Nelson Bennett | October 14, 2021,

New plant will use Carbon Engineering's direct air capture. | Submitted


A licensing partner of Carbon Engineering will build Canada’s first direct-air carbon capture and green hydrogen plant for the production ofcarbon-neutral fuel in Merritt.

The plant will be the green equivalent of an oil refinery, except the marine, aviation and diesel fuel it will make will be from green hydrogen and CO2 captured from the atmosphere. It will be the first of its kind in Canada, and promises to be a big job creator.

Huron Clean Energy, a partnership that includes Oxy Low Carbon Ventures and Carbon Engineering, will finance the project, with a bit of help from the B.C. government, which is kicking in $2 million from its Clean Energy Fund.

The project is expected to create 620 direct jobs for the project’s design and development, 4,780 jobs during construction, and 340 ongoing jobs for the plant’s operation, accordingf to a B.C. government news release.

Huron Clean Energy’s Merritt Electro Fuels plant in Merritt will use Carbon Engineering’s direct air capture technology to capture CO2 from the air, and use hydrogen produced from water and BC Hydro electricity to make a drop-in fuel that can displace diesel, marine fuel and aviation fuels.

Producing 103 million litres of green fuel will require a massive amount of electricity -- 315 megawatts – to run the direct air capture plant and produce 35,200 tonnes green hydrogen from water using electrolysis.

“The Merritt Electro Fuels Project advances made-in-B.C. technology to capture carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and convert it into clean fuels,," Bruce Ralston, Minister of Energy, Mines and Low-Carbon Innovation, said in a press release.

“This innovative, world-leading project will support our economy͛’s shift away from fossil fuels while creating new jobs and opportunities for British Columbians.”

Huron Clean Energy will finance, design, build and operate the plant. Huron Clean Energy is a partnership that includes the venture capital arm of Occidental Petroleum (Oxy Low Carbon Ventures), Carbon Engineering, the Macquarie Group, the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation and Upper Nicola Band.

"When we launched our Clean BC plan in 2018, we committed to making our fuel cleaner, by increasing the low carbon fuel standard from 10% to 20% by 2030 and increasing the supply of ... low carbon transportation fuels," Ralston said at a press conference this morning."

Ralston said the plant could be commissioned and in production as early as 2025.

More to come
͞nbennett@biv.com

B.C. government announces new plant in Merritt to remove carbon dioxide from the air

The plant, which will be run by Huron Clean Energy, will capture carbon from the air and use it to create synthetic low carbon fuels.

Author of the article: Tiffany Crawford
Publishing date: Oct 14, 2021 

Bruce Ralston, the province’s minister of energy, mines and low carbon innovation

 PHOTO BY DON CRAIG /Government of B.C.

The B.C. government has announced it will provide $2 million to help design a new plant in Merritt that will remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to make low carbon synthetic fuel.

Energy Minister Bruce Ralston and Chief Harvey McLeod of the Upper Nicola First Nations made the announcement Wednesday at a news conference in Squamish.

Ralston said the plant, which is to be operated by Squamish-based Huron Clean Energy, will be a world leader in carbon capture to create low carbon hydrogen synthetic fuels, which can be used for the marine, aviation and other transportation industries. The plant will be powered by hydroelectricity.

He said once built, the Huron Clean Energy’s Merritt Electro Fuels Project will create more than 100 million litres of synthetic fuel a year and capture more than 250,000 tonnes of carbon annually. It will also create 4,000 construction jobs and 340 long-term jobs operating the plant.

“This innovative, world-leading project will support our economy’s shift away from fossil fuels while creating new jobs and opportunities for British Columbians,” said Ralston.

Huron has an equity partnership and land-lease arrangement with the Upper Nicola Band, which will receive a part of the equity interest in the project as consideration for the land lease and other services, according to the B.C. government.

The funding is part of the B.C. government’s $50 million plan to attract industries to B.C. so they can reduce their carbon footprint by using hydroelectricity.

The new plant is expected to be operation in 2025.

Last month, B.C. Hydro and the provincial government announced a new five-year plan for the Crown corporation that provides incentives for people to switch from fossil fuels to electricity to power their homes, businesses and vehicles.

Under the plan, B.C. Hydro will spend nearly $190 million to promote fuel-switching in homes, buildings, vehicles and industry.

More than $50 million will be spent to attract industries to B.C. to run their businesses and reduce their carbon footprint by using hydroelectricity, which Ralston called “an ambitious plan.”

ticrawford@postmedia.com

THE REALITY IS THAT CCS IS NOT GREEN NOR CLEAN IT IS GOING TO BE USED TO FRACK OLD DRY WELLS SUCH AS IN THE BAKAN SHIELD IN SASKATCHEWAN
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-myth-of-carbon-capture-and-storage.html

ALSO SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=CCS

Lucy in the sky: Spacecraft will visit record 8 asteroids

By MARCIA DUNN

1 of 7

This image provided by the Southwest Research Institute depicts the Lucy spacecraft approaching an asteroid. It will be first space mission to explore a diverse population of small bodies known as the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. 

(SwRI via AP)


CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Attention asteroid aficionados: NASA is set to launch a series of spacecraft to visit and even bash some of the solar system’s most enticing space rocks.

The robotic trailblazer named Lucy is up first, blasting off this weekend on a 12-year cruise to swarms of asteroids out near Jupiter — unexplored time capsules from the dawn of the solar system. And yes, there will be diamonds in the sky with Lucy, on one of its science instruments, as well as lyrics from other Beatles’ songs.

NASA is targeting the predawn hours of Saturday for liftoff.

Barely a month later, an impactor spacecraft named Dart will give chase to a double-asteroid closer to home. The mission will end with Dart ramming the main asteroid’s moonlet to change its orbit, a test that could one day save Earth from an incoming rock.

Next summer, a spacecraft will launch to a rare metal world — an nickel and iron asteroid that might be the exposed core of a once-upon-a-time planet. A pair of smaller companion craft — the size of suitcases — will peel away to another set of double asteroids.

And in 2023, a space capsule will parachute into the Utah desert with NASA’s first samples of an asteroid, collected last year by the excavating robot Osiris-Rex. The samples are from Bennu, a rubble and boulder-strewn rock that could endanger Earth a couple centuries from now.

“Each one of those asteroids we’re visiting tells our story ... the story of us, the story of the solar system,” said NASA’s chief of science missions, Thomas Zurbuchen.

There’s nothing better for understanding how our solar system formed 4.6 billion years ago, said Lucy’s principal scientist, Hal Levison of Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “They’re the fossils of planet formation.”

China and Russia are teaming up for an asteroid mission later this decade. The United Arab Emirates is also planning an asteroid stop in the coming years.

Advances in tech and design are behind this flurry of asteroid missions, as well as the growing interest in asteroids and the danger they pose to Earth. All it takes is looking at the moon and the impact craters created by asteroids and meteorites to realize the threat, Zurbuchen said.

The asteroid-smacking Dart spacecraft — set to launch Nov. 24 — promises to be a dramatic exercise in planetary defense. If all goes well, the high-speed smashup will occur next fall just 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) away, within full view of ground telescopes.

The much longer $981 million Lucy mission — the first to Jupiter’s so-called Trojan entourage — is targeting an unprecedented eight asteroids.

Lucy aims to sweep past seven of the countless Trojan asteroids that precede and trail Jupiter in the giant gas planet’s path around the sun. Thousands of these dark reddish or gray rocks have been detected, with many thousands more likely lurking in the two clusters. Trapped in place by the gravitational forces of Jupiter and the sun, the Trojans are believed to be the cosmic leftovers from when the outer planets were forming.

“That’s what makes the Trojans special. If these ideas of ours are right, they formed throughout the outer solar system and are now at one location where we can go and study them,” Levison said.

Before encountering the Trojans, Lucy will zip past a smaller, more ordinary object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists consider this 2025 flyby a dress rehearsal.

Three flybys of Earth will be needed as gravity slingshots in order for Lucy to reach both of Jupiter’s Trojan swarms by the time the mission is set to end in 2033.

The spacecraft will be so far from the sun — as much as 530 million miles (850 million kilometers) distant — that massive solar panels are needed to provide enough power. Each of Lucy’s twin circular wings stretches 24 feet (7 meters) across, dwarfing the spacecraft tucked in the middle like the body of a moth.

Lucy intends to pass within 600 miles (965 kilometers) of each targeted asteroid.

“Every one of those flybys needs to be near-perfection,” Zurbuchen said.

The seven Trojans range in size from a 40-mile (64-kilometer) asteroid and its half-mile (1-kilometer) moonlet to a hefty specimen exceeding 62 miles (100 kilometers). That’s the beauty of studying these rocks named after heroes of Greek mythology’s Trojan War and, more recently, modern Olympic athletes. Any differences among them will have occurred during their formation, Levison said, offering clues about their origins.

Unlike so many NASA missions, including the upcoming Dart, short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, Lucy is not an acronym. The spacecraft is named after the fossilized remains of an early human ancestor discovered in Ethiopia in 1974; the 3.2 million-year-old female got her name from the 1967 Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

“The Lucy fossil really transformed our understanding of human evolution, and that’s what we want to do is transform our understanding of solar system evolution by looking at all these different objects,” said Southwest Research Institute’s Cathy Olkin, the deputy principal scientist who proposed the spacecraft’s name.

One of its science instruments actually has a disc of lab-grown diamond totaling 6.7 carats.

And there’s another connection to the Fab Four, a plaque attached to the spacecraft includes lines from songs they wrote, along with quotes from other luminaries. From a John Lennon single: We all shine on . . . like the moon and the stars and the sun.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Q&A: La Nina’s back and it’s not good for parts of dry West

By SETH BORENSTEIN

In this Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2021 file photo, County of Santa Barbara Fire Department firefighters extinguish a roadside fire next to train tracks off of the U.S. 101 highway in Goleta, Calif. On Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that a La Nina has formed, which can be bad news for parts of the parched West. It also could mean a more active Atlantic hurricane season. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, File)

For the second straight year, the world heads into a new La Nina weather event. This would tend to dry out parts of an already parched and fiery American West and boost an already busy Atlantic hurricane season.

Just five months after the end of a La Nina that started in September 2020, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced a new cooling of the Pacific is underway.

La Nina’s natural cooling of parts of the Pacific is the flip side of a warmer El Nino pattern and sets in motion changes to the world’s weather for months and sometimes years. But the changes vary from place to place and aren’t certainties, just tendencies.

La Ninas tend to cause more agricultural and drought damage to the United States than El Ninos and neutral conditions, according to a 1999 study. That study found La Ninas in general cause $2.2 billion to $6.5 billion in damage to the U.S. agriculture.

HOW STRONG AND HOW LONG WILL IT LAST?

There’s a 57% chance this will be a moderate La Nina and only 15% that it will be strong, said Mike Halpert, deputy director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. He said it is unlikely to be as strong as last year’s because the second year of back-to-back La Ninas usually doesn’t quite measure up to the first.

This La Nina is expected to stretch through spring, Halpert said.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE WEST?

For the entire southern one-third of the country and especially the Southwest, a La Nina often means drier and warmer weather. The West has been experiencing a two decade-plus megadrought that’s worsened the last couple of years.

But for the Northwest — Washington, Oregon, maybe parts of Idaho and Montana — La Nina means a good chance rain and drought relief, Halpert said.

“Good for them, probably not so good for central, southern California,” Halpert said.

The Ohio Valley and Northern Plains could be wetter and cooler. La Nina winters also tend to shift snow storms more northerly in winter while places like the mid-Atlantic often don’t get blockbuster snowstorms.

WHAT ABOUT ATLANTIC HURRICANE SEASON?

During last year’s La Nina, the Atlantic set a record with 30 named storms. This year, without La Nina, the season has still been busier than normal with 20 named storms and only one name left unused on the primary storm name list: Wanda.

The last couple weeks have been quiet but “I expect it to pick up again,” Halpert said. “Just because it’s quiet now, it doesn’t mean we won’t still see more storms as we get later into October and even into November.”

La Ninas tend to make Atlantic seasons more active because one key ingredient in formation of storms is winds near the top of them. An El Nino triggers more crosswinds that decapitate storms, while a La Nina has fewer crosswinds, allowing storms to develop and grow.

WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF THE WORLD?

Much of both southeast Asia and northern Australia are wetter in La Nina — and that’s already apparent in Indonesia, Halpert said. Central Africa and southeast China tend to be drier.

Expect it to be cooler in western Canada, southern Alaska, Japan, the Korean peninsula, western Africa and southeastern Brazil.

___

Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter: @borenbears.

___

The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.