Monday, April 17, 2023

Google Aims To Cut The Bureaucratic Red Tape In Green Power Procurement

By Haley Zaremba - Apr 13, 2023,

Google and LevelTen Energy have presented a new model to simplify the lengthy and complex process of power-purchase agreements (PPAs) for renewable energy.
The new model aims to reduce the time it takes to negotiate and execute a clean energy PPA by 80%, creating access for small sellers to participate and standardizing the buying and selling of clean energy.
This partnership moves Google closer to its goal of operating on 24/7 carbon-free energy, accelerating efforts towards achieving a clean energy operation.

The renewable revolution is well underway, but it remains plagued by red tape and momentum-killing bureaucratic processes. The solar and wind industries have both been bogged down with major supply chain delays over the past year, and once the projects are finally in place, a snarl of rules and regulations pose increased impediments to actually connecting those projects to the grid. But it looks like at least one of the bottlenecks faced by clean energy hopefuls – so-called power-purchase agreements (PPAs) – could be dramatically improved in the near future thanks to pressure from the private sector.

The private sector – and especially the tech sector – has long been one of the primary drivers of clean energy expansion in the United States. Corporations are responsible for buying tens of gigawatts of wind and solar power each year, and that trend is on a major growth trajectory. Regardless of who has been in office and what the federal government’s stance has been on climate and energy, Silicon Valley has pressed forward with its purchasing, investing, and development of renewable energies. But these big tech companies are growing frustrated with the extremely long process for purchasing power.

In their current form, PPAs take a year or more to become finalized. The lengthy process requires either bilateral negotiations between the parties, or must be facilitated by a Request for Proposal (RFP). The RFP-to-PPA approach is the most common, but the related negotiations are complex, context-specific, and plagued by uncertainty and unpredictability. In short, they are a complete pain in the neck.

At the rate that the renewable industry is evolving and advancing, and in the context of a particularly volatile moment for the energy market, the current timeline for PPAs is an eternity. “Most critically, the cost of clean power, and the prices that buyers are willing to pay and project developers are willing to offer, can change dramatically,” a recent report from Canary Media states. If the pillars of a deal change dramatically by the time the deal is finally inked, companies are (understandably) more likely to balk and even drop the deal altogether. And that’s not just bad news for the parties involved, it’s bad news for the renewable revolution – and the climate – writ large.

But Google is determined to fix it. Just last month, in partnership with clean energy marketplace provider LevelTen Energy, Google presented a new model for RFPs and PPAs which would dramatically simplify the process, allowing corporations to purchase clean energy with much greater speed and efficiency. According to the press release, the model “reduces the time to negotiate and execute a clean energy power purchase agreement (PPA) by roughly 80%.” Google says that this re-imagining will bring them one step closer to the company’s own espoused goal of operation on 24/7 carbon free energy.

“A significantly faster and easier RFP process [...] also stands to do much more for the power industry broadly by helping standardize the buying and selling of clean energy,” the press release goes on to say. “This makes it easier for all types of end-use buyers to purchase new additional carbon free energy and expands the marketplace to create access for smaller sellers to participate.”

The PPA issue is far from the only problem plaguing green energy expansion, however. According to a recent McKinsey report, the main hurdles that the sector desperately needs to mitigate or otherwise innovate around are a lack of sufficient and affordable land, long and unpredictable development timelines, and aging grids that are wholly unprepared for an influx of clean energy.

McKinsey’s recommendations to developers include the suggestion to “create agile and lean processes across the organization.” Google seems to be doing just that at their end of the clean energy supply chain, which is a promising step forward. But this kind of ingenuity and initiative will have to be spread across the entire industry at every level in order to scale clean energy up and out at the rate needed to sufficiently cap greenhouse gas emissions and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprie.com

Understanding The Atomic Structure Of Energy Storage Devices

By Brian Westenhaus - Apr 15, 2023

Drexel University researchers create innovative technique to study the exact electrochemical mechanisms occurring in batteries and supercapacitors.
Using two scientific research procedures concurrently, the team can track ion transfer with greater precision than before.
This breakthrough could hasten design development of energy storage devices to power electronics, electric vehicles, and renewable energy grids.

Drexel University researchers have developed a new technique that can quickly identify the exact electrochemical mechanisms taking place in batteries and supercapacitors of various compositions. This is a breakthrough that could speed the design of higher performing energy storage devices.

The researchers study results have been published in Nature Energy.

Understanding why certain materials work better than others when it comes to energy storage is a crucial step for developing the batteries that will power electronic devices, electric vehicles and renewable energy grids. Researchers at Drexel University have developed a new technique that can quickly identify the exact electrochemical mechanisms taking place in batteries and supercapacitors of various compositions – a breakthrough that could speed the design of higher performing energy storage devices.

Process graphic of discovering the electrochemical process in batteries. Image Credit: Drexel University College of Engineering. Click the study article link for more information. There is a paywall.

The Drexel team’s method combines two well-established scientific research procedures, one used to determine the composition of chemical compounds by their ability to absorb visible light and another that measures the electrical current of energy storage devices, like batteries and supercapacitors. By running these tests concurrently, the researchers have achieved a more precise way of tracking the transfer of ions within the devices – revealing the intricate electrochemical process that governs the generation of usable power.

Getting a Better Look

Danzhen Zhang, a doctoral student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in Drexel’s College of Engineering, and a co-author of the paper explained the background, “Though it has been a well-studied field for decades, we still do not fully understand the mechanisms of electrochemical processes in various energy storage systems. While we have a conceptual understanding of electrochemical reactions involved, quantifying and observing these complex electrochemical systems in a meaningful way during their operation is extremely difficult and remains an ongoing area of research.”

The challenge lies in the fact that it’s not actually possible to see ions – the charged atomic particles packed into a device as it charges and whose movement creates the electric current that enables it to power a device. They’re too small and they move too quickly. The best researchers can do is to rely on the signals that indicate where they are likely present – a sort of low-resolution atomic radar – firing particles at them and recording what bounces off.

Without being able to see how ions are arranging themselves within, atop and between the energy storage compartments of the device, called electrodes, it can be quite challenging to properly design them to maximize energy storage area and facilitate orderly entrance and exit for the ions.

John Wang, PhD, a postdoctoral research associate in the College of Engineering, and a co-author of the paper explained the current circumstances, “It would be like opening your pantry door with your eyes closed and taking a sniff inside to determine if you have enough room for a few more cans of soup. Right now, it remains challenging to make direct measurements and observe how energy storage devices perform. It would be much better if we could get a good look at the atomic structure so we know how and where the ions will fit – then maybe we can design a structure that can accommodate a lot more of them. We believe that the method we’ve created will allow us to make those measurements and adjustments.”

Trying to Fit In

The three most common ways ions assemble at an electrode are within its atomic layers, on its surface or atop other ions already on its surface.

Each of these arrangements has benefits and drawbacks when it comes to battery or supercapacitor performance. Entering, or intercalating, into the electrode material’s layers allows more ions – energy – to be stored. Attaching and detaching to the surface of the material, called a surface redox reaction, enables a quick release of energy. And perching with solvent molecules atop a layer of ions on the surface, an electrical double-layer reaction, allows for a slightly larger power discharge but less energy.

Researchers can observe how long it takes a storage device to discharge and charge again, or test the electrode material at the beginning and end of a discharge cycle to get a pretty good idea of the predominant storage mechanism.

A Troubling Secret

But recent research suggests that these energy storage mechanisms may not always occur as ordered, discrete reactions. There are a number of reactions happening with mixed or intermediate mechanisms. So, accurately distinguishing them and fundamentally understanding them is important for improving the performance of energy storage devices.

Being able to precisely quantify and keep track of ions within an electrode and track them over the course of its charge-discharge cycles will give researchers a better picture of all the reactions taking place – and, importantly, identify the parasitic side reactions that may hinder the performance of the device.

Armed with this information, designers could better tailor electrode materials and electrolytes to enhance performance and limit degradation.

An Enlightening Combination

The Drexel team’s new method offers a way to monitor both the positioning and movement of ions from electrolyte to electrode within an energy storage device. Their approach combines ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) spectroscopy – a method for determining the chemical composition of a compound by how it absorbs light – with a method that measures the electrical current during charge-discharge cycles, called cyclic voltammetry (CV).

Their breakthrough came when the group used UV-vis spectroscopy to observe the electrochemical interaction in thin nanomaterial films of a series of electrode-electrolyte systems. While UV-vis spectroscopy has not traditionally been used in this way, the fact that the electrode material being studied was so thin, as to be transparent, allowed for UV-vis spectroscopy to characterize its electrochemical changes during charging and discharging.

To validate their initial findings, the team recorded spectral data using UV-vis at the same intervals as the electrochemical reactions. In the course of this process, they realized that it could be possible to synchronize visual UV-Vis spectral data with CV measurements of current, which would eliminate a level of uncertainty shrouding the electrochemical behavior they were attempting to quantify.

By correlating the signals from two methods the researchers could pinpoint not just when a particular reaction was occurring, but also how many electrons were being transferred during the reaction – the key indicator of which type of electrochemical mechanism is taking place.

To link the results, the team plotted the UV-vis data on a graph with the CV measurements, creating a plot called a “UV-vis CV” curve. Each electrochemical mechanism – whether it’s redox, partially redox, or electrical double-layer – plots as a distinctive curve due to the way electron transfer changes the way light passes through the material, as well as shifting its electric current.

For example, a line that plots in a roughly rectangular shape would indicate electrical double-layer charging is happening, while curves with sharp peaks indicate a redox reaction is taking place.

“The ‘UV-vis CV’ curves enabled us to identify a correlation between spectral changes and electrochemical processes, thereby facilitating the differentiation of electrical double-layer, pseudocapacitive and intercalation-based battery-type redox processes,” they wrote. “Furthermore, calibration of the oxidation state change in a pseudocapacitive system enabled the quantification of the number of electrons transferred during the reaction, similar to in situ synchrotron X-ray absorption spectroscopy.”

Sharpening the Image

The correlation provided enough information for the team to understand how the electron structure of the electrode materials changed during cycling, according to Danzhen. And this is a more precise measurement than those recorded by the more expensive and time-consuming methods currently in use, such as x-ray absorption or electron energy loss spectroscopy.

“By precisely matching or cross-referencing those measurements, we can eliminate the effects from parasitic reaction and make our quantitative results more accurate,” Danzhen said.

Putting its method to the test, the team was then able to confirm a hypothesis that the mechanism governing the interaction between a water-in-salt electrolyte and a thin film electrode, made of a two-dimensional, layered nanomaterial, called a MXene, which was discovered and studied at Drexel, is an electric double-layer charging process.

“Previously, researchers used UV-vis to qualitatively distinguish energy storage mechanisms, but never quantified redox activities,” Danzhen said. “Our UV-vis method for quantifying the electron transfer number effectively eliminates this effect by utilizing optical signals to directly monitor changes in electrode materials. Moreover, derivative calculations within the UV-vis method help to further eliminate inaccuracies encountered when using conventional electrochemical characterization.”

A Clearer Path Forward

Though it’s current application would be limited to the transparency of electrode materials, the researchers suggest that this method could be a low-cost alternative to x-ray absorption spectroscopy — the equipment for which can cost more than $1 million. And it could facilitate the development of materials for energy storage, capacitive water deionization, electrochemical actuation and energy harvesting, they noted.

“Identifying the precise combination of electrode materials and electrolytes from myriad possibilities requires rapid assessment and categorization of the electrochemical behavior of the materials being used,” said Yury Gogotsi, PhD, Distinguished University and Bach professor in the College of Engineering, who led the research. “Our method provides an efficient process, using readily available equipment, that can quickly and accurately categorize how materials are interacting with ions in electrochemical systems. Using this to chart our course toward better energy storage materials and devices could help to avoid any number of missteps.”

The team plans to continue its work by using its method to test new combinations of electrolyte and electrode materials and to investigate more complex systems of electrochemical energy storage.

***

For someone who in their youth used carbon batteries in flashlights and transistor radios -the technological progress over 60 years has been amazing.

This is a real battery technology milestone. Integrating this tech in the hunt for improvements in battery construction should increase the speed of results quite soon with many chemistries having a much better shot at getting marketability sooner, too.

Another point is this innovation is sure to spark more intellectual brainstorming on solving issues and improving batteries. More perspectives, with this success as a stimulant, are going to have even more impacts over the coming years.

Perhaps this is the blast that opens up the dam.

By Brian Westenhaus via New Energy and Fuel

Nuclear Fusion Is Not A Silver Bullet Solution

By Haley Zaremba - Apr 15, 2023,

Nuclear fusion research has achieved net positive energy, but it is still a net energy drain due to the high energy cost of the laser.
Cost is the main obstacle to commercializing nuclear fusion, and it is unlikely to compete with renewable energy sources anytime soon.
Nuclear fusion may still play a role in a diverse energy mix in the future, alongside other sources like nuclear fission, to meet different energy needs at different times.

When the idea of re-creating the process that powers the sun here on Earth felt more like a thought experiment or a science fiction premise than a viable part of our global energy mix, it was easy to imagine equally far-fetched outcomes. We imagined that fusion would be limitless, unstoppable, the holy grail of clean energy and a silver bullet for the climate crisis. But now that commercial nuclear fusion is finally growing closer to reality, it’s time to ask questions about the actual logistics of scaling the technology up and out, and to acknowledge and account for its various limitations.

Fusion technology is seeing fast and furious advancement. There have been many major and minor breakthroughs in recent months and years as renewed interest and investment have been poured into fusion research and development. But one experiment in particular has tipped the commercial nuclear fusion scales from pipe dream to possibility. Last December, researchers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California made a massive breakthrough when they became the first team to finally break through what is still nuclear fusion’s most significant: creating net positive energy from the reaction. The now legendary experiment in California used lasers to beam 2.05 megajoules of light onto a tiny amount of fusion fuel (about the size of a peppercorn), sparking an explosion that ultimately produced 3.15 MJ of energy – approximately the equivalent of three sticks of dynamite.

But there’s an important caveat to their massive achievement. While the NIF experiment created more energy than was directed beamed into its target, it still was a net energy drain. The laser in the experiment still burned far more energy than just what was beamed onto the fuel, and more than what was ultimately produced. In fact, Wired reported last year that in all likelihood, “the real fusion energy breakthrough is still decades away.”

The main thing standing in the way of commercialized nuclear fusion is cost. At present, nuclear fusion research is ridiculously expensive. The up-front costs for building facilities capable of hosting a fusion reaction are enormous. For this reason, the vast majority of fusion experiments have been publicly funded, as governments were more or less the only entities with deep enough pockets to afford it. But even ITER, the world’s biggest fusion experiment co-funded by 35 nations in the South of France, is currently vastly over budget and behind schedule.

But the promise of nuclear fusion remains alluring, and money continues to flow into finding a way to make fusion scientifically and economically viable. The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act earmarked $280 million for fusion projects. Private entities, too, have increasingly gotten involved in fusion in recent years as its potential for future profitability comes into view. That list includes such heavy hitters as Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Lockheed Martin, Goldman Sachs, Legal & General, and Chevron.

So far, however, no one has cracked the code on how to make nuclear fusion anything close to affordable. It’s difficult to imagine that nuclear fusion could possibly become cost-competitive with renewable energies like wind and solar any time soon – if at all. “But fusion may still find its place, because the grid needs energy in different forms and at different times,” Wired wrote in a recent report. But that place will likely be one part of a varied and diverse energy mix, much like how nuclear fission fits into the current energy landscape.

Despite what some grandiose headlines have promised, nuclear fusion will likely fill some important energy niches, but it will never serve all of our energy needs. That doesn’t mean, however, that the research unfolding now isn’t worth it. In order to build toward a sustainable, carbon-free future, every form of clean energy production counts. And just because we can’t imagine an avenue for cheap and abundant nuclear fusion now, it doesn’t mean it will never happen. But we can be certain it’s not happening any time soon.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

WHY NOT IN CANADA?

O’Leary Looks For A U.S. State To Host His $14 Billion Refinery

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Apr 15, 2023

Kevin O’Leary: the U.S. needs another refinery to become more energy independent.
The U.S. has been losing refining capacity in recent years.
While U.S. refining capacity is shrinking, China and the Middle East are adding more capacit

Shark Tank investor Kevin O'Leary has just announced plans to build a new $14-billion refinery in the United States to help America become more energy independent.

The U.S. needs a new refinery as it would not be weaning off fossil fuels for decades to come, the chairman of O'Leary Ventures told FOXBusiness this week.

"Unfortunately, no matter how much you think we're getting off hydrocarbons, it's not going to happen for 50 years," O'Leary said on The Big Money Show, revealing for the first time plans to work on getting a permit and syndicating the funding for a new refinery expected to cost $14 billion.

Referring to the need for hydrocarbons for decades, he added, "I'm sorry, that's just the way it is. You are not going to have a wind aircraft take you across the ocean, that's not going to work."

"At the end of the day, we can make our own energy here very clean. We haven't built a refinery in America in decades because we can't permit it," the Shark Tank investor, also known as 'Mr. Wonderful,' added.

"I'm going to find a state that wants to work with me. I'm going to get a permit and we're going to do the right thing for America. We have to have more refineries," O'Leary noted.

In a subsequent appearance on FOXBusiness, O'Leary said that North Dakota could be one of the options for building the new refinery as it could be easier to obtain a permit there.

"I think I can sell this to America, I really do," he said, referring to the protests expected from environmental campaigners against such a venture.

The U.S. has been losing refining capacity in recent years, while the newest refinery with significant downstream unit capacity is Marathon's facility in Garyville, Louisiana, which came online in 1977, according to the EIA.

Capacity has been added to existing U.S. refineries through upgrades or new construction, but the fact remains that the last major refinery was built in the late 1970s.

Meanwhile, refining capacity has declined since 2014.

More than 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of refinery capacity in America has been shut permanently since the start of the pandemic, as refiners have opted to either close losing facilities or convert some of them into biofuel production sites.

Operable refining capacity in the United States hit a nearly decade low in 2022, the EIA's latest Refining Capacity Report showed in June last year.

U.S. refining capacity fell to 17.94 million bpd as of January 1, 2022, according to the latest available EIA data. That's down from 18.09 million bpd on January 1, 2021. U.S. refining capacity is now the lowest it's been since 2014, while 2021 was the second consecutive year of decreasing refinery capacity.

While U.S. refining capacity is shrinking, China and the Middle East are adding more capacity to process crude into fuels as the world and America will run on oil for decades, regardless of when peak oil demand will occur.

Whatever the speed of the energy transition, the world will still need oil and gas for decades, and peak oil doesn't mean the end of oil, analysts and industry professionals say.

Fossil fuels, accounting for over 80% of the world's energy supply today, will continue to be a key part of the mix decades from now.

According to the BP Energy Outlook 2023, oil demand is expected to peak between the late 2020s and early 2030s as the Russian invasion of Ukraine is accelerating investment in clean energy and governments are looking to bolster energy security with higher shares of renewables in the energy mix.

However, BP's chief economist Spencer Dale said, "The scale of the economic and social disruptions over the past year associated with the loss of just a fraction of the world's fossil fuels has also highlighted the need for the transition away from hydrocarbons to be orderly‎."

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

RBC; Canada’s Biggest Bank Becomes The World’s Top Financier Of Fossil Fuels

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Apr 13, 2023

A report by the Rainforest Action Network showed that the Royal Bank of Canada had overtaken JP Morgan to become the world's top financier of fossil fuel projects.
The Royal Bank of Canada financed fossil fuel projects with $42.1 billion in 2022, including $4.8 billion for oil sands and $7.4 billion for fracking, the report found.
Overall, U.S. banks dominated fossil fuel financing, accounting for 28% of all fossil fuel financing in 2022.

JP Morgan is no longer the world’s biggest financier of fossil fuels. Last year Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) became the top bank funding oil and gas, a report by environmental groups showed this week.

Fossil fuel financing from the world’s 60 largest banks hit $673 billion in 2022. These banks have funded $5.5 trillion in fossil fuels projects in the seven years since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, according to the annual Banking on Climate Chaos report by Rainforest Action Network, Oil Change International, Indigenous Environmental Network, BankTrack, Reclaim Finance, Sierra Club, and Urgewald.

To compare, the previous edition of the report from last year showed that the 60 largest banks in the world poured as much as $742 billion in fossil fuel financing in 2021.

For the first time since 2019, US bank JP Morgan Chase dropped from the top spot of the biggest backer of fossil fuels.

RBC financed fossil fuel projects with $42.1 billion in 2022, including $4.8 billion for oil sands and $7.4 billion for fracking, the report found.

Overall, U.S. banks dominated fossil fuel financing, accounting for 28% of all fossil fuel financing in 2022. JPMorgan Chase remains the world’s biggest funder of fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement, while Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America are still among the top 5 fossil financiers since 2016.

Commenting on the report, co-author April Merleaux, Research and Policy Manager at Rainforest Action Network, said, “Fossil fuel companies are the ones dousing the planet in oil, gas, and coal, but big banks hold the matches. Without financing, fossil fuels won’t burn.”

Under pressure from ESG trends and shareholders, some banks have announced stricter rules on the financing of fossil fuels in recent months.

ING, for example, is further restricting financing to the oil and gas industry, reducing the volume of traded oil and gas it finances and no longer financing midstream infrastructure for new oil and gas fields. Barclays has said it will no longer provide financing to oil sands companies or oil sands projects and tightened conditions for thermal coal lending in an updated policy, which fell short of announcing overall pledges or targets in funding oil and gas.