SCI FI TEK

Consortium Of Japanese Companies To Back Promising Fusion Startup

By ZeroHedge - May 18, 2023, 

• 16 companies in Japan, including Mitsubishi Corp. and Kansai Electric Power Co. are investing in a new nuclear fusion startup.
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• Funds from the investment are going to be put toward "enabling stable operation of a fusion reactor",
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• The goal is to have a small-sized reactor built in Japan by 2024.

16 companies in Japan, including Mitsubishi Corp., Kansai Electric Power Co. and one government affiliated fund, are readying a $73.6 million investment in a startup working to commercialize fusion power. 

Tokyo-based Kyoto Fusioneering was founded in 2019 by researchers from Kyoto University, according to Nikkei, who calls the company "the most successful startup in Japan working with fusion-related technology."

The ultimate goal is to move toward implementing and developing fusion, which makes heat by combining hydrogen atoms to make helium. Fuels that can be used for fusion can be drawn from seawater and are "practically inexhaustible", the report says. 

This means that if fusion can be perfected, it could be a large step to moving the planet to a carbon-free future. The startup uses "plasma-heating equipment called gyrotrons" which help create nuclear fusion reactions.

Source: Nikkei

Kyoto Fusioneering is seen as the world leader in the development of gyrotrons. 

Nikkei notes that Mitsui & Co., J-Power, Inpex and 10 other companies, including MUFG Bank and JIC Venture Growth Investments, a government-affiliated fund have also all invested with the company. 

Funds from the investment are going to be put toward "enabling stable operation of a fusion reactor", with goals of having a small scale reactor built in Japan by 2024. The company also plans on bolstering its engineers and furthering testing on its gyrotrons to see if they can perform over extended periods. 

The company hopes to be the first to commercialize such a process, the report says. Recall, the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in the U.S. said in 2022 that they had also succeeded in creating a fusion reaction that produced more energy than it consumed, the report says. 

Even U.S. companies like Microsoft are already starting to secure contracts with fusion energy companies for power. Microsoft's contract is with a company called Helion Energy and starts in 2028. 

By Zerohedge.com

How A Cactus Inspired Scientists To Make Cheaper Hydrogen

By Brian Westenhaus - May 18, 2023

• University of Texas scientists have proposed a new material as a catalyst to split water molecules.
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• The durability and unique design of prickly pear cactus in desert environments by adsorbing moisture through its extensive surface and ability to bear fruits at the edges of leaves inspired this study to adopt a similar 3D architecture.
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• Nickel may be a much cheaper catalyst than platinum, but it is not as quick and effective at breaking down water into hydrogen.

Engineers at The University of Texas at El Paso have proposed a low-cost, nickel-based material as a catalyst to help split water more cheaply and efficiently. Their inspiration? A desert succulent known as the prickly pear cactus.

The durability and unique design of prickly pear cactus in desert environments by adsorbing moisture through its extensive surface and ability to bear fruits at the edges of leaves inspired this study to adopt a similar 3D architecture. Image Credit: University of Texas at El Paso. Click the study paper link for more information.

The material is described in a new paper in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

More than 100 years ago, scientists discovered how to turn water into hydrogen gas – a highly desired green energy that’s been nicknamed “the fuel of the future.” Despite that breakthrough, hydrogen has not latched on as a dominant fuel source. Breaking down water into hydrogen can be inefficient and costly and the transformation process, called electrolysis, remains unperfected.UTEP Mechanical Engineering Professor Ramana Chintalapalle, Ph.D., who led the study said, “This is nature-inspired design in the laboratory. You have this plant with an extensive surface that can absorb moisture and survive in extreme environments. We thought, ‘How can we incorporate this into our research?’”

The Hydrogen Problem

Electrolysis is the process of splitting water with electricity and an electrocatalyst – a material that speeds up any chemical reaction. Current techniques to split water rely heavily on platinum as a catalyst, which has its drawbacks.

“Platinum is the dominant material used to help split water, but it is very expensive – more expensive than gold – and it’s just not feasible to use it on a large scale because of its price,” Chintalapalle explained. “We need a catalyst that’s more economically viable so every country can reasonably adopt hydrogen.”

A Prickly Solution

Navid Attarzadeh first noticed the prickly pear cactus while walking to UTEP’s Center for Advanced Materials Research lab. The team had been exploring nickel as a catalytic replacement for platinum, a metal that is abundant on Earth and 1,000 times cheaper than platinum.

Nickel, however, is not as quick and effective at breaking down water into hydrogen.

Attarzadeh said, “Every day, I passed this same plant. And I started connecting it to our catalyst problem. What caught my attention was how big the leaves and fruits were compared to other desert plants; the prickly pear has an extraordinary surface area.”

That’s when the Attarzadeh had an idea. What if they designed a 3D nickel-based catalyst in the shape of the prickly pear cactus? The larger surface area could accommodate more electrochemical reactions – creating more hydrogen than nickel typically can.

The team quickly designed the nano-scale structure – invisible to the human eye – and put it to the test.

“We tested the catalyst’s ability to split water repeatedly and had good results,” Chintalapalle said. He added that this is a fundamental discovery and the process needs further refinement, but it’s a step in the right direction.

“Hydrogen gas can transform energy technology for our country – without generating greenhouse gas emissions,” Chintalapalle said. “Our carbon footprint could be eliminated; we need to keep pursuing this.”

***

Sounds great and probably is. But there remains the raw efficiency of the electricity needed to perform the electrolysis. There isn’t a huge gain – it closer to just a push. Then there is the storage matter. Hydrogen and di-hydrogen are the smallest atom and molecule and slip away through – practically anything.

Ask a metallurgist or just check. The effect of hydrogen on steels isn’t a good thing at all. Nature did a really good thing on earth locking hydrogen away in water. There is a lot of the Universe’s fuel right here.

We’re still a long way off from pumping some distilled water into the car for fuel and driving away. There is a lot yet to discover and learn.

Someday its going to get figured out.

By Brian Westenhaus via NewEnergyandfuel

China Is Still Critical To America’s Clean Energy Boom

By Haley Zaremba - May 18, 2023

• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dramatically highlighted the importance of energy security and pushed countries to implement protectionist energy trade policies in order to ensure supply.
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• As the West revaluates supply chains, attention is being drawn to how dependent the clean energy industry is on China.
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• Recent attempts by the U.S. to counter Chinese dominance in clean energy have been criticized as being counter-productive, but a more comprehensive approach could eventually work.
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On the global stage, we are seeing a swift shift in geopolitical strategy away from free market trading toward protectionist policies and “friend-shoring” as a direct response to last year’s European energy crisis. Years of a free market approach to energy trading had left Russia with enormous influence over European energy markets. In 2021, countries in the European Union sourced 45% of their total gas imports – about 155 billion cubic meters (bcm) – from Russia alone. Then, Russia illegally invaded Ukraine and all hell broke loose. 

After the invasion in February of last year, a political scuffle turned into an all-out energy war between Brussels and the Kremlin, causing a crisis in European energy markets that reverberated around the world. Europe condemned Russia’s actions with a mix of actual and threatened economic sanctions; Russia responded by cutting off gas supplies overnight to flex its leverage over European markets; and thus, the relative danger and vulnerability of relying on one (particularly volatile) source for a significant portion of the bloc’s energy mix was thrown into stark relief. 

As a result, leaders in the West have swiftly changed their trade strategy. United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has openly called for a shift of strategy away from free market trading to the concept of “friend-shoring”, in which countries shift supply chains to “trusted countries” with similar values and political allegiances – that is to say, away from Russia and China. The Euro­pean Commission’s Strategic Foresight Report 2022, too, has called for a similar reconfiguration of trade networks. “Staking out spheres of influence and assessing the reliability and trustworthiness of suppliers and countries is the order of the day,” read a recent analysis from Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, the German Institute of International and Security Affairs. 

In addition to trying to break economic ties with Russia as the war in Ukraine drags on, increasing attention is being called to the global dependence on China for clean energy supply chains, and to strategies to break that dependence and decrease supply chain vulnerability before history repeats itself. According to the International Energy Agency’s Energy Technology Perspectives 2023 report, “China is the leading global supplier of clean energy technologies today and a net exporter for many of them. China holds at least 60% of the world’s manufacturing capacity for most mass-manufactured technologies (e.g. solar PV, wind systems and batteries), and 40% of electrolyser manufacturing.” 

Experts have argued that after years of neglecting the domestic clean energy industry, the United States will have to make an assertive and accelerated effort to build up domestic production and manufacturing capacity to have any chance of competing with China on the global market. According to a recent study from Cornell University, it would also be essential for meeting national decarbonization targets (and therefore global targets, as the United States is the second largest greenhouse gas emitter after China). The study found that nationalizing United States solar energy supply chains would greatly reduce their carbon footprint and energy use. 

Just this month, in an attempt to shift the balance of clean energy power away from China, the United States treasury department released new guidance limiting clean energy tax credits to U.S.-based solar developers that produce their photovoltaic cells domestically. However, clean energy experts have warned that this approach will backfire spectacularly, as the United States has negligible extant solar panel production capacity. Instead of breaking the United States’ dependence on Chinese solar panel imports, the requirement would simply prevent virtually all existing U.S. developers from accessing the credit. 

“Directly and indirectly, the US will rely on supply from China,” Pol Lezcano, a senior associate at BloombergNEF, was recently quoted by the Financial Times. “This guidance may encourage more cell manufacturing to take place in the US, but most of the cells used in US solar projects will continue to come from . . . factories in south-east Asia, most of them owned by Chinese companies.”

While this specific policy approach may be misguided, the intent behind it is spot-on, and many experts argue that it actually does not go far enough. Solar cells are only one small part of a very long supply chain that will have to be reconfigured from top to bottom in order to diversify clean energy markets. Primary materials will also become increasingly important in clean energy markets and geopolitics in general as demand for finite rare earth materials skyrockets. Currently, China has a chokehold on these supplies as well, but the U.S is scrambling to build up its own lithium operations and to forge new trade agreements in South America – though this will present its own challenges.

In short, increasing clean energy production in the West without also increasing cash flow to China will be very, very difficult to pull off. Piecemeal policy measures such as the one introduced by the Treasury last week are doomed to fail without system-level coordination. In fact, as solar panel manufacturers are currently finding out, inadequate measures designed to support local supply chains can – and will – make matters even worse. 

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

U.S. Legislators Attempt To Ban Oil And Gas Exports

By Irina Slav - May 19, 2023

Three U.S. legislators have proposed a bill that would reimpose a ban on U.S. crude oil exports on the ground that this would benefit coastal communities, U.S. energy consumers as a whole, and help the U.S. achieve its climate change goals.

“Block All New (BAN) Fossil Fuel Exports Act, legislation that would amend the Energy Policy and Conservation Act and ban the export of American crude oil and natural gas abroad to protect frontline communities from dangerous export infrastructure, prioritize U.S. consumers against fossil fuel profiteering, and help ensure the United States meets its climate and clean energy commitments on the world stage,” a news release on the page of Senator Edward Markey, a lead sponsor of the legislation, said.

This is the latest attempt to stop U.S. oil and gas producers from exporting their products overseas after a removal of the ban in December 2015 turned the United States into one of the largest energy exporters in the world.

“Oil and gas companies continue to pad their pockets at the expense of American consumers and frontline communities – all while fueling our global climate crisis,” Markey said. “Our country is due for an oil change. A ban on oil and natural gas exports overseas is a win for environmental justice, for our economy, and for our planet.”

The bill was introduced simultaneously in Senate and in the House of Representatives, where it will likely be rejected by the Republican majority. Yet it is a signal that the aggressive push against the oil industry from any direction possible is not letting up.

Previous attempts to reimpose the ban on crude oil and gas exports have run along similar lines with a special focus on keeping energy affordable for U.S. consumers. Opponents have invariably beat the initiative, however, pointing out that in a global oil market, even with an export ban, U.S. oil—and retail fuel—prices would be tied to global prices and a ban would lead to a surge in these.

An additional argument has been the importance of U.S. oil and gas for international partners such as Europe, which only avoided a major energy shortage last year thanks to urgent deliveries of U.S. liquefied natural gas.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

UK

ClientEarth Asks High Court To Reconsider Its Case Against Shell

By Irina Slav - May 19, 2023, 

ClientEarth, the environmentalist group that tried to sue Shell’s board of directors, will ask the High Court at an oral hearing to reconsider its decision to dismiss a case the group brought against Shell’s board of directors.

The organization took Shell’s board to court in February on allegations that the company’s directors were guilty of mismanaging climate risk and of breaching company law with their failure to devise an emission-reduction strategy in accordance with the Paris Agreement targets.

“Shell may be making record profits now due to the turmoil of the global energy market, but the writing is on the wall for fossil fuels long term,” a senior lawyer for the environmentalist group said, as quoted by CNBC, in February.

The High Court, however, dismissed the case on the grounds that the plaintiffs “do not disclose a prima facie case for giving permission to continue the claim” and that its allegations imposed specific obligations on company directors on managing climate risk, ESG Clarity reported earlier this month.

The lawsuit send waves across the industry since it was the first of its kind—company executives and directors have never been targeted individually by environmentalist organizations before.

The High Court judge who ruled on the case noted that although ClientEarth had made some valid points with regard to the risk Shell faces as a result of climate change, the allegation that directors mismanaged this risk was hard to prove.

There is no “universally accepted methodology as to the means by which Shell might be able to achieved the targeted reductions [to emissions]…this means that it is very difficult to treat what is said as providing a proper evidential basis for alleging that no reasonable board of directors could properly conclude that the pathway to achievement is the one they have adopted,” Judge Trower said.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

China Steps Up Inspections On Old Oil Tankers

By Tsvetana Paraskova - May 19, 2023

As the number of old oil tankers shipping Russian oil has soared, Chinese authorities in the Shandong province have increased the safety checks on old vessels arriving at the major oil import port of Qingdao, holding ships more than 20 years old at the port for weeks.

At least two old oil tankers, including one from Russia, spent nearly a month at the port of Qingdao, waiting to be inspected more thoroughly, Bloomberg reported on Friday, quoting sources familiar with the checks and a database of inspections in the Asia Pacific.

Last year, an unusually large number of tankers changed ownership in what analysts and shipping industry officials believe was a push from Russia to continue shipping large volumes of its crude and entities willing to profit from Russian oil trade in a sanctions regime. The ‘dark’ or ‘shadow’ fleet of oil tankers is growing to now include tankers not only shipping sanctioned Iranian and Venezuelan oil, but also increasingly larger volumes of Russian oil and products. 

Ahead of the December 5 EU embargo on imports of Russian crude oil, which was announced months before the implementation, hundreds of vessels—mostly older ones nearing the end of service life and bound for scrap—had changed ownership to companies not associated with the EU or G7, such as firms based in Dubai.  

China’s increased scrutiny of old vessels coincides with the surge of opaque trades and shipping practices after the price cap on Russian oil came into effect.

The number of tankers operating in opaque markets reached a record high in the first quarter of 2023, supported by Russian and Iranian trade, Vortexa said in a report last month.

Vortexa observed 125 tankers that switched from Iran and Venezuela to Russian trade and carried 1.1 million barrels per day (bpd) of Russian crude in March 2023, a record high.

Shipping oil with old tankers without EU/G7 companies’ insurance is a disaster waiting to happen, shipping analysts and brokers say. 

Just this week, the United States and several other Western countries plus Ukraine called for increased surveillance for cracking down illicit ship-to-ship transfers of oil, which have soared since the embargoes on Russian crude and product exports came into effect.  

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

New Mexico Accounted For 50% Of U.S. Oil Production Growth In 2022

By Tsvetana Paraskova - May 19, 2023

New Mexico, home to part of the Permian basin, saw the highest crude oil production growth of any U.S. state last year, with output gains of 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) accounting for half of America’s oil production increase, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in a report on Thursday.

Total U.S. crude oil production increased by 600,000 bpd in 2022 compared with 2021, averaging 11.9 million bpd, per EIA’s Monthly Crude Oil and Natural Gas Production report.

For the third year in a row, New Mexico’s oil production growth eclipsed the growth of crude output in any other U.S. state, including Texas, the biggest U.S. oil-producing state and also home to part of the Permian shale basin.

Crude oil production in New Mexico jumped by 300,000 bpd to 1.6 million bpd in 2022, a record for the state, the EIA has estimated.

New Mexico and Texas contributed the most growth to U.S. crude oil production in 2022, while oil output in the rest of the United States grew by just 0.6% last year, or by 33,000 bpd.

Crude oil production in California fell for the eighth consecutive year, and production in Alaska declined for the fifth consecutive year. North Dakota, which had been one of the leading states in oil production growth in the past decade, saw oil production fall for the third consecutive year in 2022, the EIA noted.

The administration forecast in its Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) in May that U.S. crude oil production would continue to increase this year and next. Total U.S. crude oil production is set to climb to 12.5 million bpd in 2023 and to 12.7 million bpd in 2024, according to EIA’s most recent estimates.

However, production growth could be lower than expected as the new priorities of the shale patch – capital discipline and a focus on returns to shareholders and debt repayments – have coupled with supply chain constraints and cost inflation to weigh on growth in recent months.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Trans Mountain Pipeline Needs More Funds

GETTING TO TIDEWATER NDP'S RACHEL NOTLEY

AB ELECTION LEADERS DEBATE MAY 17,2023 

By Julianne Geiger - May 19, 2023

Canada's Trans Mountain Expansion crude oil pipeline needs more funds as construction costs have skyrocketed, Canada's federal government said on Friday.

"Given the significant expenditures expected ... [Trans Mountain Corporation] will require the continued availability of future financing in order to proceed with the project," the Canada Development Investment Corporation (CDEV) said in its 2022 annual report.

The Trans Mountain Pipeline was due for an expansion years ago, but the former owner, Kinder Morgan, was planning on killing in the project so the federal government stepped in and forced Trans Mountain Corporation to finish the project. In 2017, the project was estimated at C$7.4 billion, but by March 2023, the estimated costs had ballooned to a staggering C$30.9 billion—or $22.3 billion.

The company has attributed the increased costs in part to inflation, supply chain challenges, and labor shortages.

The project is about 80% complete, with an expected in-service date of early next year. That is, if the financial issues are sorted in time.

As of the end of 2022, Trans Mountain Corporation owned the federal government C$16.1, nearly three-fourths of which were construction-related costs for the new line.

Now, TMC is estimating that it will take another C$9.1 billion this year, but it has nearly exhausted its credit limits.

The federal government has stated that it is not interested in long-term ownership of the two Trans Mountain lines, but according to Argus, the government may be unable to recoup its investments.

The Trans Mountain pipeline is expected to help Canada overcome its constrained pipeline capacity and open new markets by nearly doubling the amount of oil capable of flowing through the system, at 890,000 bpd.

The pipeline continues to face climate opposition.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com