ALL H2 IS BLUE

Thyssenkrupp Pushes Ahead With IPO 

of $5.7 Billion Hydrogen Unit

Eyk Henning, Myriam Balezou and William Wilkes, Bloomberg News

The Thyssenkrupp AG logo sits illuminated at the entrance to the company's 

steel plant in Duisburg, Germany, on Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2017. 

Thyssenkrupp reached a tentative deal in September to merge its European steel businesses with Tata Steel Ltd. in a bid to create the region’s second-largest producer and help tackle overcapacity in the industry. , 

THE KAPITALI$T KRISIS

Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Thyssenkrupp AG is pushing ahead with plans for an initial public offering of a unit that helps to build hydrogen plants, according to people familiar with the matter. 

The German engineering group is looking to list Uhde Chlorine Engineers as soon as the first quarter of 2022 to capitalize on surging interest in hydrogen-based technologies, the people said. An IPO could value the business at as much as 5 billion euros ($5.7 billion), they said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information.

Thyssenkrupp has been working with Citigroup Inc. to explore options for Uhde. It previously considered taking the business public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company before opting for the traditional IPO route, the people said. Thyssenkrupp could appoint more banks in the coming weeks, according to the people.

Deliberations are ongoing and no final decisions on the size or timing of a listing have been taken, they said. A representative for Thyssenkrupp declined to comment, while a spokesperson for Citigroup didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Established as a joint venture with Italy’s Industrie De Nora SpA, Uhde constructs plants that generate hydrogen gas from renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind. Hydrogen converts to electricity without greenhouse gas emissions when fed through a fuel cell or burned in a turbine, and can also be used as a way to store energy. 

It’s seen as key to cutting emissions from carbon-heavy industrial processes like chemical production and steelmaking, and they’ve increasingly been attracting money from investors betting on the shift away from fossil fuels. An unprecedented surge in power and natural gas prices has brought the need for diversified energy sources into even sharper focus and helped spur a flurry of green IPOs in Europe.

Thyssenkrupp Chief Executive Officer Martina Merz has overseen a far-reaching restructuring of the group in her bid to improve the fortunes of one of Germany’s last mega-conglomerates. After selling its prized elevator unit last year, Thyssenkrupp reached agreements during the summer to offload smaller mining and infrastructure businesses.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Thyssenkrupp finds lost hydrogen lottery

ticket

By Ed Cropley

LONDON, Nov 17 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Thyssenkrupp (TKAG.DE) has found the corporate equivalent of a winning lottery ticket down the back of the sofa. The 7 billion euro German conglomerate’s shares leapt 12% on Tuesday on hopes it might list its electrolysis division, which is rapidly undergoing a hydrogen-focused makeover . The unit’s sales are negligible. But such is the hype around the gas, a key enabler of the zero-carbon economy, that it may be a multibillion-euro jackpot.

Tuesday’s electrolysis revelation came as a surprise to most analysts covering the group, whose interests range from steel to submarines to car parts. Most ascribed zero value to the unit in their breakdowns of the firm. Last year Thyssenkrupp had to flog its most profitable division – Thyssenkrupp Elevators – to private equity for 17.2 billion euros to shore up its rickety balance sheet.

The oversight is understandable. Thyssenkrupp’s sales in the financial year just completed were 33 billion euros, according to Refinitiv estimates. The lion’s share came from steel and auto-related industrial units. Meanwhile, Chief Executive Martina Merz’s Uhde Chlorine Engineers (UCE) division, which makes kit to split sea water into chlorine and sodium hydroxide, commonly known as lye, had sales of around 250 million euros, analysts reckon.

But this isn’t the real story. UCE’s engineers have tweaked their electrolysers to produce hydrogen from water. Sales are probably only around 10 million euros. But such a paltry sum is immaterial when investor enthusiasm for hydrogen is producing a rerun of the 1990s internet bubble. UK startup ITM Power (ITM.L), which makes a different type of hydrogen electrolyser, has an enterprise value of 2.7 billion pounds, 675 times last year’s 4 million pounds of revenue.

Thyssenkrupp owns two-thirds of UCE; private Italian outfit De Nora holds the rest. But ITM implies the unit could be worth almost as much as Thyssenkrupp’s market value, handing Merz a 5 billion euro windfall. Like ITM, UCE can churn out 1 gigawatt’s worth of hydrogen electrolysers a year. But Thyssenkrupp’s track record with chlorine electrolysis, where it has a 50% market share, lends credibility to its ambitions. It also has some eye-catching early customers, including a $5 billion hydrogen project in Saudi Arabia run by $66 billion U.S. gas giant Air Products (APD.N).

Offloading her elevators for a princely sum on the eve of the pandemic was Merz’s first good call. Her second may be even more lucrative.

CONTEXT NEWS

- Thyssenkrupp is planning to list its Uhde Chlorine Engineers unit, which makes electrolysis equipment, to take advantage of investor interest in the technology underpinning the manufacture of low-carbon hydrogen, Bloomberg reported on Nov. 15.

- The business, a joint venture with Italy’s Industrie De Nora, might be worth as much as 5 billion euros, the news agency said, citing anonymous sources.

- Thyssenkrupp shares enjoyed their best performance in over a year on Nov. 16, closing up 12% at 10.34 euros. The company declined to comment on the report.

With new tech and $3.6M seed, DiviGas aims to clean up hydrogen production

Devin Coldewey@techcrunch / •November 17, 2021

Hydrogen is at the center of many industrial processes and potentially part of major future energy ecosystems, but the process of isolating and storing it is wasteful and expensive. DiviGas, armed with a $3.6 million seed round, hopes to clean up the hydrogen production industry with a new tech that leapfrogs existing methods, potentially supercharging this piece of the new green economy.

While hydrogen itself is generally considered a clean and extremely useful basic element, its production is married to numerous dirty industrial processes. Oil refineries and plastic production, for instance, may give off various hydrocarbons and other mixed gases and chemicals, and to separate them requires further processing and emissions.

One cleaner and simpler option than chemical reactions uses membranes or filters, which essentially separate the H2 and CO2 gases from each other and from other substances in the input stream. But these filters cannot operate at high temperatures, output some gases at low pressures that must be re-pressurized at cost and rapidly degrade in the presence of common acidic gases

Essentially the hydrogen diversion industry — and it’s big, by the way, billions big — is split between an expensive, emissions-heavy option and a cheap, limited option. After meeting in Singapore at one of SOSV’s HAX incubators, the founders of DiviGas plan to provide a third option that has none of the aforementioned weaknesses.

The company claims to have engineered a new “hollow fiber polymeric membrane” at the angstrom scale, which is to say one-tenth of a nanometer. It’s not like they designed a filter the size of an atom, but rather that the functional features of the material are at this scale, producing the kind of highly specialized effect desired — in this case, causing hydrogen and carbon dioxide gas to separate at slightly different pressures, allowing them to be diverted and isolated.

Image Credits: DiviGas

Huge numbers of fibers are bundled together into tubes through which the input gas is forced, with no chemical reactants required. Unlike other membranes, this new one can operate at high temperatures — up to 150 degrees C — and is resistant to common acidic compounds in the gas mix formed from sulfur and chlorine, which means it can handle more caustic and untreated input flows without degrading. And it does so while performing as well or better than the old membranes on basic scales of selectivity (affecting output purity) and permeance (which affects maximum operable pressure).

Because the method is the same in principle as existing membrane techniques, DiviGas’s tech can be substituted in with minimal fuss and modification. And although manufacturing the new fibers is not a trivial task, they aren’t particularly exotic and use many existing processes. As co-founder, CTO and creator of the new material Ali Naderi explained, it’s the result of various cutting-edge innovations but ultimately still easy to manufacture.

“To make it economically viable, we developed a dual-layer hollow fiber membrane to use the functional materials (i.e. expensive materials) as low as possible on the selective layer (i.e. outer layer) and a cheap/commercially available polymer in the mechanical support layer (i.e. inner layer),” he wrote in an email to TechCrunch. “This type of membrane can be fabricated commercially by using a customized spinning line that has the same price as a standard spinning line has.”

Image Credits: DiviGas

The prospect of simpler, cleaner hydrogen and CO2 production has been met with extreme enthusiasm by people in the industry, according to co-founder and CEO Andre Lorenceau.

“We’ve got clients banging down our door, asking us when we can give tens of millions of these things to them,” he said. “This round is us playing catch-up.”

The money is going toward building a pilot-scale plant in Melbourne that should be operational in March; currently it takes months to build a single unit (a usable bundle of fibers) for demonstrations, and a given client might want hundreds or thousands on a regular basis. Once the company is able to build them at a rate of around one a week, they can do larger demonstrations and small installations that will secure serious orders — and those proceeds will go toward building out out the full-scale manufacturing process.

“It’s two or three times more expensive right now, but they don’t care,” Lorenceau said (though the price will come down with volume, he added). “They say, ‘It’s a tech I know, a manufacturing process I know — if you can give it to us at that price it’s Gucci.’ And it’s a lot of clients, and we haven’t even been doing sales.”

The competitive landscape, he added, is conducive to quick action on their part, being full of slow movers and stalled startups.

“There are these giant lumbering corporations, they have a department for this and they do improve, but it’s old guard. Same reason why it isn’t the old PhDs of computer science who build the next generation of software tech — they’re not trying to build next-gen weird shit all the time,” he said. “The startups are also research PhD people who aren’t used to the high-speed VC thing. They have excellent research performance, but in terms of manufacturing, it costs a zillion bucks to make a square inch of the damn stuff. They say, ‘we’ll figure out the manufacturability…’ and they never do. So we can leapfrog them and the big corporations.”

The $3.6 million round was led by Mann + Hummel, a German industrial filter company clearly looking to get ahead of the game. Also participating in the round were Entrepreneur First, Albert Wenger (USV), SOSV/HAX, Energy Revolution Ventures, Amasia VC, Volta.vc and Climate Capital, along with several individual investors.

Alberta Innovates to receive nearly $50 million in new government funding for projects

Author of the article:Kellen Taniguchi

Publishing date:Nov 17, 2021 

Alberta Jobs, Economy and Innovation Minister Doug Schweitzer. 

PHOTO BY JIM WELLS /Postmedia

Alberta Innovates is receiving nearly $50 million in government funding for new projects.

In a Wednesday news release, Jobs, Economy and Innovation Minister Doug Schweitzer said the money will help the province become a stronger leader in clean energy technologies.

“Alberta continues to lead in all forms of energy innovation,” said Schweitzer. “Alberta Innovates is building on our strengths by supporting groundbreaking discoveries and commercializing innovative solutions Alberta — and the world — needs.”

Alberta Innovates is a provincial government agency that reports to the jobs, economy and innovation minister.

The funding is being provided to 23 projects. Projects began as early as January 2021 and must be completed by March 2023.

“These projects aim to reduce emissions, reduce water use, increase value, decrease costs and manage waste through new technologies and precesses,” said Laura Kilcrease, CEO of Alberta Innovates.

Alberta Innovates expects the projects to support 1,307 project-related jobs, while contributing $169 million to the province’s GDP.

Approved projects will provide technological solutions for the province’s energy industry in areas such as oil and gas operations, recycling and hydrogen production.

Last week, Ottawa announced an investment of $1.35 million to help Alberta companies engineer and test hydrogen fuel infrastructure, equipment and technologies.

C-FER Technologies, a non-profit subsidiary of Alberta Innovates that provides experimental testing and specialized engineering consulting services out of Edmonton, said it would use that funding to upgrade one of its facilities to help test new products and procedures for hydrogen transportation and storage.

Alberta Innovates said it would chip in another $300,000.

Thyssenkrupp finds steel is the hardest sell in company’s breakup
Bloomberg News | November 18, 2021 

Photo courtesy of thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions AG.

Thyssenkrupp AG is gearing up for its most difficult sale yet — the disposal of its heart-and-soul steel business, the next step in a dramatic downsizing that’s pulling the manufacturer back from the brink.


Europe’s steelmaking industry has struggled amid rising cost for pollution and cheaper imports from Asia. Thyssenkrupp has failed to find an external partner for the business and a spinoff is proving difficult because of the unit’s high pension burden, powerful labor unions and the vast investments needed to decarbonize steel production.

“This is a very complex undertaking characterized by economic challenges and a large number of uncertainties,” Chief Financial Officer Klaus Keysberg said Thursday, adding that the company needs more time to come up with a concrete plan for the business. “Nevertheless, we are convinced that a stand-alone solution offers the best future prospects.”

Chief Executive Officer Martina Merz is leading a deep restructuring of the conglomerate, which was fighting for survival even before the pandemic hit. Once synonymous with German industrial prowess, Thyssenkrupp has suffered a cash drain as a global steel glut compounded profound structural issues across the firm.

After selling its prized elevator unit for 17.2 billion euros ($19.5 billion) last year, the manufacturer reached agreements during the summer to offload smaller mining and infrastructure businesses and is pushing ahead with further streamlining.

The overhaul is starting to pay off. Thyssenkrupp said it expects expects cash flow to break even this year — which would end a four-year money drain — and earnings to double as the effects of the turnaround start to take hold. Activist investor Cevian Capital AB, Thyssenkrupp’s second-biggest shareholder, said it’s “pleased” with progress streamlining the company.

“We believe the guidance, even if free cash flow was not firmly committed to be positive yet, should be well received,” Jefferies analyst Alan Spence said in a report.

Thyssenkrupp gained 6.7% as of 1:23 p.m. in Frankfurt. The shares have climbed by about a third this year.

Slimming structures

Thyssenkrupp’s plans come amid renewed focus on slimming down industrial conglomerate structures — prompted by the high-profile breakups of General Electric Co., Johnson & Johnson and Japan’s Toshiba Corp. Siemens AG said last week it expects higher profit margins next year as it reaps the benefits of years-long streamlining that its arch-rival GE is starting to embark on.

Thyssenkrupp said Thursday its restructuring would continue with plans to separate the Uhde Chlorine Engineers unit, confirming an earlier report by Bloomberg News. The division, said to be worth as much as 5 billion euros, produces plants that generate hydrogen from renewable electricity, a business that requires investment to benefit from the global shift to clean energy.

The company said it prefers an initial public offering and seeks to retain a majority interest in the business.

Steel challenges

Spinning off the steel unit may be more challenging. While the division swung to a profit in the financial year ended September on the back of rising steel prices, its capital-intensive mills require around 10 billion euros in investment to convert to low-emissions production.

An attempt by Thyssenkrupp to merge the business with the European unit of India’s Tata Steel Ltd. was scrapped amid European Union antitrust concerns and a bid from British tycoon Sanjeev Gupta unraveled earlier this year due to a lack of financing.

In its earnings report released Thursday, the maker of industrial machinery, automotive parts and submarines said it’s benefiting from the global economic recovery and its restructuring measures. Thyssenkrupp’s adjusted earnings before interest and taxes last year rose to 796 million euros on sales of 34 billion euros.

Still, the company is grappling with widespread supply-chain issues that are disrupting production across many industries.

“Enormous challenges remain, especially due to the semiconductor shortage and the uncertainties arising from the coronavirus pandemic,” Merz said.

(By William Wilkes — with assistance from Christoph Rauwald)

Thyssenkrupp plans more listings as turnaround benefits seen


By Christoph Steitz, Tom Käckenhoff

ESSEN, Germany (Reuters) - Thyssenkrupp mapped out plans to break off further parts of its sprawling empire on Thursday, continuing a major overhaul that has put the conglomerate on a more stable financial footing after years of losses and leadership crises.

“We’ve left no stone unturned in our business to improve our performance,” Chief Executive Martina Merz said. “After a good two years of intensive transformation work, we can now say that the turnaround is evident.”

The submarines-to-steel group, which was forced to part ways with its elevator division last year to avert collapse, said it was now preferring to list its hydrogen unit Uhde Chlorine Engineers (UCE) in an initial public offering.

UCE, a 66-34 joint venture of Thyssenkrupp and Italy’s De Nora, is the world’s largest supplier of chlor-alkali membrane technologies used to produce hydrogen. Analysts have valued UCE anywhere between 3 billion to 6 billion euros.

Merz said Thyssenkrupp would keep a majority stake in UCE in an IPO, which is planned for the spring, adding a capital markets day for the unit was targeted for January.

Thyssenkrupp is also studying the conditions that are required for a spin-off of its steel division, Europe’s second-largest, a move previously flagged but dependent on government subsidies to shift the focus towards carbon neutral production.

Shares in Thyssenkrupp rose as much as 7.4%.

Corporate break-ups are in vogue amid a growing consensus that companies perform best if they are focused more closely on related business areas, as well as increasing pressure from activist hedge funds pushing them in that direction.

General Electric Co, Toshiba Corp and Johnson & Johnson all last week announced plans to spin off divisions.

More concrete plans for additional listings at Thyssenkrupp come as operating profit is expected to more than double next year, partly boosted by a broader economic recovery for its products, which also include car parts and bearings.

“However, enormous challenges remain, especially due to the semiconductor shortage and the uncertainties arising from the coronavirus pandemic,” Merz said.

Adjusted earnings before interest and tax are expected at 1.5 billion euros to 1.8 billion euros ($1.7-$2 billion) in the 2021/22 fiscal year, up from 796 million euros a year earlier, said the conglomerate. ($1 = 0.8838 euros)

Alberta invests $131 million in carbon capture projects in bid to cut emissions

CCS USED TO FRACK OLD WELLS NOT YET ABANDONED

'The seven successful projects we have selected so far are

 game-changers for cutting emissions'

CBC News · Posted: Nov 18, 2021

A flare stack lights the sky from the Imperial Oil refinery in Edmonton. Alberta announced $131 million investment in seven projects that are expected to cut about 2.9 million tonnes of emissions by 2030. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press

Alberta is investing $131 million in projects designed to help prevent carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere.

Up to $131 million from Alberta's Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction (TIER) fund is being funnelled into Alberta's Industrial Energy Efficiency and Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage program, Premier Jason Kenney announced Thursday. 

Seven projects have been selected to receive a total $100 million in program funding, Kenney told a news conference. Another $31 million will go to other carbon capture utilization and storage projects by the end of this year.

The projects include: 

• Advantage Energy: Glacier Gas Plant Carbon Capture and Storage and Waste Heat Recovery in Hythe
• Ember Resources: Ember Engine Emissions Reduction Program at multiple facilities throughout east/central Alberta
• Imperial Oil: Kearl ConDex Full Scale Oil Sands Mine Installations in Fort McMurray
• NuVista Energy: Wembley Cogeneration and Waste Heat Recovery Project in Wembley
• Strathcona Resources: Lindbergh T70 Cogeneration Expansion in Elk Point
• TC Energy: Turney Valley Generating Station in Turner Valley
• Tidewater Midstream: BRC Integrated Steam Methane Reforming (SMR)-CCS-Cogeneration Project in Cynthia

TIER is Alberta's industrial greenhouse gas emissions pricing and emissions trading system. It's funded by large industrial facilities, which account for more than 60 per cent of Alberta's total emissions.

Carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) and carbon capture and storage (CCS) capture emissions, permanently storing carbon dioxide underground or using it in other industrial processes. 

'Home-grown Alberta ingenuity'

Kenney, a strong proponent of the technology as a way of reducing emissions from Alberta's fossil-fuels energy sector, said the latest investment will set the groundwork for "a lower emissions future" for the province.

"The seven successful projects we have selected so far are game-changers for cutting emissions in Alberta," he said. "They are incredible initiatives based on home-grown Alberta ingenuity and leading edge technology." 

CCUS can capture, use and store up to 90 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions produced by industrial facilities.

The seven projects will cut about 2.9 million tonnes of emissions by 2030 and create an estimated 2,200 jobs, Kenney said. 

"These investments will help create jobs, spur economic growth and continue the hard work that we are doing to protect our environment as a responsible and sustainable energy leader," he said. 

Last year Alberta  invested $750 million from the TIER fund to support projects that help industries reduce carbon emissions.The province has said the investment will inject $1.9 billion into Alberta's economy and cut about six million tonnes of emissions each year. 

"This is another huge investment that will also reduce emissions while spurring economic growth and job creation," Kenney said Thursday. 

Premier Jason Kenney says Alberta is a leader in carbon capture but more federal support is needed to do more. (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press)

CCUS technology is also a key linchpin in the Alberta Hydrogen Roadmap, a policy that aims to make Alberta a hydrogen powerhouse within the decade. 

The policy, released earlier this month, depends heavily on the use of carbon capture to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and aim for Canada's net-zero goals.

Kenney said the province is already a leader in carbon capture but in order to expand, additional federal support is needed.

He said he met with federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on Monday to ask that 

Ottawa deliver on its promise to provide an investment tax credit for capital invested in CCUS projects in 2022.

"We need the government of Canada to come to the table in a big way," Kenney said.  

"We appreciate the federal government's commitment in principle to an investment tax credit for us, but we need to see a real scale of ambition behind that." 

• OPINION
  On carbon capture, federal budget delivers promise, if not funds

• Budget goes big on green spending as environmentalists criticize tax credits for carbon capture

Among the seven projects to receive funding Thursday is Advantage Energy's Glacier Gas Plant, near Grande Prairie. 

Installing carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology at the plant, one of the largest producer-owned gas processing facilities in Canada,  is expected to cut about 46,800 tonnes of emissions each year.

Meanwhile, Tidewater Midstream will build Alberta's first fully integrated blue hydrogen plant at the Brazeau River Complex, west of Drayton Valley. 

The facility will use a CCS hydrogen production unit that converts methane to hydrogen, storing the resulting emissions underground. The plant will also introduce a 15-megawatt turbine with heat recovery steam generation.  The overall project will cut about 31,000 tonnes of emissions each year, the province said. 

Imperial Oil, also on the list of seven, plans to install five additional units across the Kearl Oil Sands mine facility to recover waste heat and funnel that back into its operations in the oilpatch.

• $2.5B carbon-neutral petrochemical plant slated for northwestern Alberta

• VIDEO
  Alberta bullish on hydrogen strategy that relies heavily on carbon capture technology
• 
  

Alberta announces close to $50M funding for 23 clean technology projects


Stephen Hunt
CTVNewsCalgary.ca 

Digital Producer
Published Nov. 17, 2021 

CALGARY -

The province announced nearly $50 million in funding Wednesday to be designated towards 23 projects that advance clean energy innovation.

The approved projects, part of the province's Alberta Innovates Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction (TIER) program, will address oil and gas, hydrogen expansion, partial upgrading, recycling, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and more.

Alberta Innovates estimates that the 23 projects will create 1,307 jobs, and inject $169 million into the provincial economy.

“These projects aim to reduce emissions, reduce water use, increase value, decrease costs and manage waste through new technologies and processes. The TIER program uses cleantech to create a cleaner environment and improve industry competitiveness to build a better path forward for Alberta," said Alberta Innovates CEO Laura Kilcrease in a release.

Steve Liang, the chief technology officer for SensorUp said, “Methane emissions represent a monumental threat to our climate. SensorUp is pleased to announce it has received funding through Alberta Innovates to tackle one of the most pressing issues facing the oil and gas sector: improving the efficiency, quality and safety of methane leak detection and repair.”


"Alberta Innovates is building on our strengths by supporting ground-breaking discoveries and commercializing innovative solutions Alberta – and the world – needs," said Doug Schweitzer, Alberta Jobs, Economy and Innovation minister.

NDP RESPONDS

Alberta NDP Jobs, Economy and Innovation critic Deron Bilous issued a statement in response to the funding announcement.

“The UCP likes to talk about the importance of innovation, but their record tells a different story," Bilous said.

“Upon coming into office, the UCP declared economic diversification a luxury and cut programs designed to support innovation in clean tech."

“The UCP has cut Alberta Innovates by $26 million since coming into office, cancelled the Alberta Investor Tax Credit and Interactive Digital Media Tax Credit that attracted investment for tech startups, and cut $700 million from post-secondary institutions across the province - the main drivers of cutting edge research and innovation in Alberta.

“While the UCP now touts the importance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors in order to attract investment, Jason Kenney once called it ‘the flavour of the month’ and it’s unclear what their ESG secretariat has done to date. Meanwhile, the UCP still hasn't committed to achieving net-zero by 2050 - a commitment that international investors are looking for.”

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FEATURE: Gas-fired power increased with nuclear plant closure; path to climate goals unclear

HIGHLIGHTS

Gas burn higher despite higher price climb

Emissions-free power needed by 2040

Mixed views on technology incentives

Author
Jared Anderson Kelsey Hallahan
Editor
Joe Fisher

Despite a sharp rise in natural gas prices on year, gas burn for power generation is up significantly in New York, with nuclear power output down after the Indian Point facility permanently retired in April. The increased gas burn comes amid an aggressive decarbonization agenda that will effectively ban gas-fired power by 2040.

With the 1,041-MW Indian Point Unit 3 permanently shutting down on April 30, the state is entering its first winter without power from the nuclear plant, which had provided roughly 25% of New York City's and Westchester County's electricity.

The 1,299-MW Indian Point-2 nuclear reactor was deactivated on April 30, 2020 and Indian Point Unit 1 was shut down in October 1974. The plant is currently being decommissioned.

When Unit 3 shut down in April, S&P Global Platts Analytics said that during periods of higher load, the nuclear generation would likely be replaced by gas-fired generation in the region and recent data shows that to be the case.

Gas demand elasticity

Gas-fired generation averaged 72 GWh/d in the New York Independent System Operator footprint during the first half of November, up around 30% from the same time last year, generation data collected by Platts Analytics shows.



The 18 GWh/d increase in gas-fired generation accounts for the bulk of the state's 26 GWh/d year-over-year decrease in nuclear generation, with stronger hydropower providing the rest.

With alterative options for reliable baseload generation limited, gas-fired generation has been ramped up this autumn despite the headwinds of dramatically higher spot gas prices.

Transco Zone 6, New York spot gas has averaged $4.69/MMBtu so far this month (Nov. 1-16), nearly quadruple the $1.30/MMBtu observed for the same time last year.



The greater reliance on gas has made consumption of the fuel in the NYISO footprint less elastic, exposing the area to spot price increases when demand spikes.

An early sign of this new dynamic was observed in the state's first cold snap of the winter.



On Nov. 3-6, the average temperature in New York City fell to five to eight degrees below normal. Platts Analytics data shows that LDC gas demand spiked to 3.3 Bcf/d during the cold spell, up from the 2.3 Bcf/d observed during the seven days prior.

The 43% surge in gas demand triggered a spot gas price increase, with Transco Zone 6, NY averaging $5.42/MMBtu for flow days Nov. 3-6. This is up nearly 80 cents from the spot gas price location's prior 30-day average of $4.65/MMBtu.

Incentivizing new technology

New York has an aggressive greenhouse gas reduction initiative anchored by the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which among numerous goals, mandates a non-emitting electricity system by 2040.

The CLCPA, enacted in 2019, strengthened the state's renewable energy target from 50% by 2030 to 70% by 2030, and included an offshore wind mandate requiring load-serving entities to obtain Offshore Wind Renewable Energy Certificates procured by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

In October 2020, the state's Public Service Commission updated its clean energy standard adding a new Tier 4 to incentivize delivering renewable energy to New York City.

New York power generators and labor groups in August called on the commission to establish a zero-emissions program to help create a market for 1 GW of zero-emissions dispatchable technology needed to reliably meet the state's 2040 zero-emissions electricity target.

Specifically, the trade association Independent Power Producers of New York, the New York State AFL-CIO and the New York State Building and Construction Trades Council filed the joint petition with the service commission.

The petitioners argued that immediate private sector investment is needed develop commercially viable zero emissions dispatchable resources that will be required in less than 20 years.



The commission's comment period for the petition has ended, with stakeholder input ranging from supporting the petition to arguing it is premature.

"Given technologies to provide this [zero emissions dispatchable] service do not currently exist on a commercial scale and due to the extended amount of time to develop, permit and construct new assets in New York ... a market-based program to incent these resources is needed now," power producer NRG Energy, said in comments dated Nov. 15.

However, a group of large power consumers known as Multiple Intervenors, said the petition is "premature" and it is not clear that another program "dependent upon out-of-market payments – presumably funded by customers – is needed at this time."

A draft scoping plan for the climate law is due by Jan. 1, 2022, and the New York Independent System Operator is examining wholesale power market rule changes to encourage developing non-renewable zero emission facilities, Multiple Intervenors said, adding that the result of these initiatives may not require creating another class of generation facilities dependent upon out-of-market payments.

Environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council also called the petition premature given the number of "more pressing priorities" for achieving the CLCPA's nearer-term targets focused on deploying renewables.

The Anti-Tesla: Why Toyota Remains Hung Up On Hydrogen

Toyota Mirai. Photo by Kyle Field/CleanTechnica.
CARS
ByGuest Contributor
Published 3 days ago
Originally posted on EVANNEX.
By Charles Morris

Toyota didn’t rise to the pinnacle of the global auto industry by chance. Throughout its history, it’s been an extremely innovative, forward-looking company. Books have been written, and college courses taught, about its engineering excellence. That’s why the company’s vaunted revamp of its Mirai fuel cell–powered sedan has so many auto industry observers scratching their heads. Why does such an advanced company continue to insist that fuel cells are a viable technology for passenger cars, an application that most other automakers have abandoned?

Michael Barnard, writing in Medium, calls Toyota’s obsession with fuel cell–powered cars “bizarre,” but he explains that what most of us now see as the company’s bad bet on the hydrogen-powered Mirai sedan is a more nuanced issue than it might appear from today’s perspective.

When Toyota first began investing in hydrogen in 1992, it was actually a forward-thinking move. At the time, few would have guessed that lithium-ion batteries would evolve as quickly as they have. The original Tesla Roadster was 16 years in the future.

“Betting on hydrogen drive trains in 1992 was incredibly reasonable,” Barnard writes, and notes that Toyota was also exploring battery-electric vehicles at the time — it delivered its first electric car in 1993. Experimenting with both these varieties of EV was an innovation of the kind Toyota was known for.

Even into the 2000s, it was possible to look at hydrogen and battery-electric powertrains and believe that the former would eventually win the race. However, “it became clear by 2010, and crystal clear by 2013, that the fuel cell category was a serious dead end,” Barnard writes. He cites the work of an engineer named Emile Nijssen (posted under the nom de écran “mux”), who did extensive work with fuel cells, and wrote an extremely detailed explanation of why fuel cell cars weren’t practical in 2015.

Be that as it may, Toyota introduced the Mirai in 2014, and has waged an uphill battle to generate interest in it ever since. The Prius hybrid, launched in 2017, has been a spectacular success — to date, Toyota’s hybrids have sold over 10 million units. Meanwhile, the Mirai remains a sort of perpetual R&D project.

In a way, the Mirai is like the “compliance cars” that Toyota and other major automakers produced in the 2010s — it’s sold in low volume in a couple of limited markets, and its maker has never made any serious effort to market it. The difference is that the automakers killed their battery-electric compliance cars after a few years, but Toyota has not only kept the Mirai alive, but even recently released a new and (somewhat) improved model.

“The original bet on hydrogen wasn’t a mistake, but continuing the pursuit past 2010 certainly was,” Barnard writes. “And the Toyota Mirai was a mistake from the beginning until its inevitable end. It’s on life support now, and…eventually, Toyota will pull the plug.” Barnard believes that the Mirai is being kept alive mainly to save face for an older generation of Toyota execs and Japanese government officials.

A look at the present and future hydrogen industry in The Economist delivers a similar conclusion. This article is a well-written and detailed description of the various applications of hydrogen, and it’s a must-read for any who would don their armor and sally forth to do battle in the hydrogen-vs-battery wars.

The Economist points out that hydrogen is vital for certain industrial processes, notably the production of ammonia, the main ingredient in artificial fertilizers, and that the hydrogen used for these purposes needs to come from renewable sources (green hydrogen) rather than from fossil fuels (grey, black, blue and other hues) that are mostly used today.

When it comes to aviation and shipping, reasonable minds disagree about the role of hydrogen. Several companies, including Eviation, Heart Aerospace, Bye Aerospace, and Rolls-Royce, are developing battery-electric aircraft, and at least one, ZeroAvia, has placed its bets on fuel cells. Electric Ferries are starting to go into service in Scandinavia and elsewhere — some battery-electric, and some powered by fuel cells.

The Economist refers to BloombergNEF founder Michael Liebreich’s “hydrogen ladder,” which ranks potential uses of hydrogen from indispensable to possibly useful to unviable. Near the bottom of Mr Liebreich’s ladder are fuel cell passenger vehicles. As Mr Liebreich and many others point out, fuel cells add price and complexity, and are far less efficient, and their only real advantages (other than keeping the fossil fuel industry alive) are longer range and faster fueling, which are rapidly becoming non-issues as battery technology improves.

So, why is Toyota stubbornly sticking with the light gas? Mr. Barnard isn’t the only one who thinks the answer has to do with saving face. The Economist quotes “a veteran Japanese utility executive,” who whispers, “Millions of fuel-cell cars won’t happen. Even Honda gave up. Pride is why Toyota is sticking with it.”

Japanese Vehicle Manufacturers Hatch A Plan To Save The Internal Combustion Engine

BY SAM D. SMITH |

POSTED ONNOVEMBER 16, 2021    

Japanese auto manufacturers Toyota, Subaru, Yamaha, and Mazda, have announced that they will collaborate to further explore alternate fuels for internal combustion engine cars. They will be joined by Yamaha Motor and Kawasaki Heavy Industries.

The vehicle manufacturers made the joint announcement at the Super Taikyu Race in Okayama in Japan, where Toyota chief executive Akio Toyoda is driving a hydrogen-powered race car.

The announcement comes after the Japanese vehicle makers were notably absent from a list of manufacturers who have pledged to phase out the production of fossil fuel vehicles by 2040. The plans, however, are said to be in addition to advancing electrification but they will center on offering customers greater choice while retaining the use of internal combustion engines.

A Three-Pronged Plan

Mazda’s Bio-diesel powered Demio

With an aim to achieve carbon neutrality, the companies announced that they would unite and pursue three initiatives. Firstly, they will participate in races using carbon-neutral fuels, with Mazda revealing that they will be using a 1.5-liter Skyactiv-D engine fueled with next-generation biodiesel in the ST-Q class of the Super Taikyu Race in Okayama. Meanwhile, Toyota and Subaru will also be racing in the same series next year with biomass-derived synthetic fuel powering Subaru BRZ and Toyota GR-86-based race cars.

The second element of the collaboration is to explore the use of hydrogen engines in two-wheeled and other vehicles headed by Kawasaki and Yamaha. Kawasaki has built a world-first liquified hydrogen carrier and is currently conducting verification tests for transporting large-quantity, low-cost hydrogen to Japan produced from Australian lignite. Yamaha, along with Kawasaki, is developing hydrogen-powered engine tech for use in two-wheelers and Yamaha’s four-wheeled recreational vehicles, and Honda and Suzuki will join both companies for further hydrogen two-wheeled vehicle development.



The final aspect highlighted in the announcement is the continued use of hydrogen engines in motorsport. Toyota, Yamaha, and Denso have been working since 2016 to develop a hydrogen engine for this purpose and have entered a vehicle with this under-development engine in three races so far. Toyota plans to compete in the Super Taikyu Race with Toyota President and CEO Akio Toyoda taking stints at the wheel in his “Morizo” driver persona.

The companies also outlined their plans to tackle several other challenges, including transportation, use, and the production of alternate fuels. While Mazda aims to achieve 100 percent electrification by 2030, they are yet to announce an all-out switch to EVs. The same is true of Toyota, which will introduce seven fully electric members to their bZ family but has said that electric vehicles don’t make sense for some regions of the world.

 

Kawasaki, Yamaha, Mazda, Subaru, And Toyota Team Up On Carbon Goals
Honda and Suzuki are expected to join later.

Nov 16, 2021 
By: Janaki Jitchotvisut

Kawasaki’s been hard at work exploring various ways to further carbon neutrality goals for several years. We’ve had cautious glimpses at some of this work on occasion, from a peek at its hydrogen-powered motorcycle to a very recent glimpse under the fairings of its battery electric bike. Still, there comes a time when it’s better to have friends to back you up.

That’s why, on November 13, 2021, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Subaru, Toyota, Mazda, and Yamaha jointly announced their plans to cooperate in order to reach their carbon neutrality goals. Some of it will involve electrification, but this collective group believes that it can still make internal combustion engines work by simply using more carbon neutral fuels. Is it greenwashing, or is there something more to it?

In a perfect world, of course, this wouldn’t be an issue. In a slightly less-perfect world, production of green hydrogen is theoretically possible, but an awful lot of steps have to be taken to keep it truly neutral. From harnessing wind energy to create the hydrogen, to transporting the hydrogen for use using truly carbon-neutral transportation methods, forging that chain involves many careful links. Will it actually work that way? We certainly hope so, but it's all speculation at this point.

Previously:
 

Yamaha Motors Announces Goal Of Total Carbon Neutrality By 2050

Kawasaki Discusses Its Plans For The Future

Anyway, back to the prongs of this massive multi-company agreement that are motorcycle-related. While Mazda, Subaru, Toyota, and Yamaha are all engaged at various levels in developing hydrogen racing engines for four-wheeled vehicles, Kawasaki and Yamaha are currently considering embarking on joint hydrogen engine research for motorcycles. Since both companies have already been exploring this arena independently, it makes sense that they’d want to compare and contrast what they’ve learned, and perhaps truly put their heads together regarding what’s working and what isn’t.

While it’s currently only Kawasaki and Yamaha that have announced these plans to work together on hydrogen motorcycle engine development, they also add the following two lines of intrigue in their joint press release:

Going forward, they are planned to be joined by Honda Motor Co., Ltd. and Suzuki Motor Corporation, and the four companies intend to jointly explore the possibility of achieving carbon neutrality through the use of internal combustion engines in two-wheeled vehicles. To maintain a distinct line between cooperation and competition, they intend to proceed after establishing a framework that will clearly define areas of cooperation and collaborative research.

We don’t know what the future holds, but it will certainly be interesting to see.

By: Janaki Jitchotvisut

Toyota, Subaru and Mazda to develop new combustion technology

Japanese car firms – alongside Yamaha and Kawasaki – turn to hydrogen and biofuel for use in traditional engines



NEWS
by Felix Page 
17 November 2021

Five of Japan's largest vehicle manufacturers - Subaru, Toyota, Mazda, Kawasaki and Yamaha - have jointly detailed a plan to safeguard the future of the internal combustion engine.

Speaking together at the Super Taikyu Race in Okayama earlier this week, representatives from each of the firms vowed to collaborate on "expanding fuel options" using existing ICE technology, bucking a wider industry trend towards full electrification.

The companies "intend to unite and pursue the three initiatives of participating in races using carbon-neutral fuels; exploring the use of hydrogen engines in two-wheeled and other vehicles; and continuing to race using hydrogen engines."

They plan to continue on a trajectory towards collective carbon neutrality, as part of which they will continue to invest in electrification. But they will also seek to collaborate "in producing, transporting and using fuel in combination with internal combustion engines", as part of a drive to give customers greater choice.

Toyota's efforts in this area, particularly, are well documented. The company is already using a lightly modified Corolla race car to determine the viability of hydrogen-combustion technology, which, it says, would reduce the emissions of its vehicles without disregarding the several decades it has invested in developing its existing petrol and diesel engines.

Now, as part of this new joint initiative, Toyota will expand its existing partnership with Subaru to test 'carbon-neutral' synthetic fuels in a race environment. Next year, Subaru and Toyota will enter a BRZ and GR 86, respectively, into Japan's Super Taikyu race series (in which the hydrogen-combustion Corolla currently races) using synthetic fuel derived from biomass.

The two car makers already have an EV development partnership in place and recently revealed their respective debut EVs: the technically identical Toyota bZ4X and Subaru Solterra. This latest element of the collaboration will see them attempt to "accelerate the development of technologies for all options and take on the challenge of achieving carbon neutrality."

Their synthetically fuelled entries will be joined on the grid in 2022 by an experimental racer from Mazda, based on its 2 supermini. Using a specially adapted version of the firm's 1.5-litre Skyactiv-D diesel engine, it runs on biodiesel derived entirely from biomass.

Mazda will use the race series to test and improve the reliability of its biodiesel-fuelled engine with a view to encouraging "the expansion of the use of next-generation biodiesel fuel". The fuel itself is made from cooking oil and fats, which, Mazda said, means it does not compete with the human food supply. Notably, it does not require any modification to the standard engine, nor require any bespoke infrastructure to be implemented.

The firm is already using biodiesel in some of its company cars, having determined that its performance is on a par with that of standard, petroleum-based diesel.

Kawasaki and Yamaha, meanwhile, have teamed up to develop a hydrogen engine for motorbikes, an initiative it plans for Honda and Suzuki to join in the future. The four companies will explore how hydrogen-combustion motors can help to achieve carbon neutrality but will "maintain a distinct line between cooperation and competition" by establishing categorically which areas of research will be carried out jointly, and which are the preserve of each independent marque.

South Africa taken to court over plan for new coal power

Author of the article:

Reuters

Publishing dateNov 17, 2021  •  1 day ago  •  1 minute read  •   Join the conversation

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JOHANNESBURG — Three civil society groups have taken the South African government to court over its plan for new coal-fired power, which they say threatens people’s right to an environment not harmful to health.

South Africa already has 15 coal plants with a nominal capacity of more than 38,000 megawatts (MW) and is the world’s 12th biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.

The intention to build 1,500 MW of new coal capacity is contained in the government’s Integrated Resource Plan, a 2019 document laying out the energy mix up to 2030.

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At the United Nations COP26 climate summit this month South Africa secured $8.5 billion of financing from wealthy nations to speed up its shift from coal.

Lawyers for the three groups – groundWork, the African Climate Alliance and Vukani Environmental Justice Movement in Action – wrote to Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe and energy regulator Nersa in September demanding that the plan for 1,500 MW of new coal capacity be scrapped.

The lawyers said in a statement on Wednesday that the government had not responded to their “letter of demand” and that litigation had now been launched in the high court.

“New coal-fired power flies in the face of our constitutional right to an environment not harmful to health and wellbeing, not only for the present generations but for future ones too,” said Nicole Loser, program head for pollution and climate change at the Centre for Environmental Rights.

“There is no justifiable basis for the limitation of constitutional rights because cleaner and less harmful renewable energy is both a feasible and cheaper alternative to new coal power,” the statement continued.

Spokespeople for Mantashe, the mineral resources and energy department and Nersa could not comment immediately.

Mantashe, a former trade union leader, has argued that the transition towards renewable energy should not be rushed. (Reporting by Alexander Winning. Editing by Jane Merriman)