The firm, which owns brands such as Andrex and Huggies, is celebrating the fact that the project near Barrow-in-Furness was successful in securing a place on the UK Government’s Hydrogen Business Model Strategy Shortlist. The Shortlist was announced last week as part of a bumper day of green policy publications, detailing 20 projects set to share public funding support and benefit from streamlined planning processes.
Led by Carlton Power, the project is seeking to co-locate 35MW of electrolyser facilities and a 40MW energy storage system at the Cumberhead West Wind Farm. The 126MW wind farm is currently under construction and completion is expected later this year. Green hydrogen production should then be able to commence in 2025.
Kimberly-Clark is planning to offtake green hydrogen from the project to serve its paper mill in Cumbria, replacing natural gas. This plan was first announced to the general public in the summer of 2022, but the confirmation of Government support is a significant step forward.
Until the hydrogen production begins, Kimberly-Clark will offtake renewable electricity from the wind farm via a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA). It will use this electricity at three manufacturing sites and two distribution centres across the UK.
HYRO
Two additional green hydrogen projects involving Kimberly-Clark were also detailed on the UK Government’s Hydrogen Business Model Strategy Shortlist – one in Northfleet, Kent, and the other in Flint, North Wales.
Both of these projects are being led by HYRO, a joint venture between RES and Octopus Energy’s generation arm. HYRO’s long-term vision is to invest £3bn green hydrogen in the UK.
The two electrolyser projects will have a combined capacity of 22.5MW. As with the project in Cumbria, they will use renewable electricity to electrolyse water, thus producing green hydrogen. The hydrogen will be stored and fed into hydrogen-ready boilers within Kimberly Clark sites. A timeline has not yet been announced for the completion of the renewable arrays nor the electrolysers.
Kimberly-Clark’s managing director for the UK and Ireland, Dan Howells, said: “A lot of hard work has gone into developing the green hydrogen projects and it’s fantastic to see the UK government selecting them for the funding shortlist.
“These developments represent a significant stepping stone towards our big ambition to move solely to renewable energy to manufacture Andrex, Kleenex, Huggies, WypAll and Scott in the UK by 2030. We can only reach our decarbonization goals via innovative partnerships and cutting-edge technology.”
Other manufacturers exploring hydrogen as a natural gas replacement in the UK include Unilever, Pilkington Glass, Quorn Foods, Kelloggs, PepsiCo, Essity, Encirc and Jaguar Land Rover.
WSP USA was awarded the engineering, procurement and construction management contract (EPCM) for the underground storage portion and related surface facilities of a major clean energy storage infrastructure to build the world’s largest green hydrogen production and storage facility.
WSP was selected by a joint venture between Magnum Development and Mitsubishi Power to lead all EPCM phases of the ACES Delta underground storage facility in Utah, beginning with Phase I, which consists of the developing two large salt caverns capable of holding a total of 11,000 metric tons of hydrogen.
The firm will also be responsible for the solution mining infrastructure, water and power supply facilities, brine management, and will assist with environmental compliance for the energy hub.
The ACES Delta project involves converting renewable power into green hydrogen that can be stored in commercial-scale solution mined caverns. When completed it will provide 100 percent clean energy seasonal storage capabilities, thereby deploying technologies and strategies essential to a decarbonized future for the western U.S. power grid.
“Green hydrogen is the future in renewables,” said Andres Fernandez, national hydrogen market lead for WSP, a leading engineering and professional services consultancy. “Green hydrogen is particularly unique because it only uses renewable sources combined with advance technology in electrolysis to generate hydrogen. WSP is honored to be part of an innovative team that will deliver the next generation of renewable energy and drive the green energy transition.”
ACES Delta will capture intermittent renewable generation and shape the product into reliable and dispatchable electricity, making the project’s seasonal storage capabilities ideal for integrating renewable energy facilities with the existing energy infrastructure. Each cavern will hold the equivalent of 150 gigawatt hours (GWh) of carbon-free dispatchable energy, which is equivalent to 40,000 megawatts of lithium ion batteries. This stored green hydrogen becomes an energy reserve that can be released to produce fuel for electric power generation at any time.
The project will use Utah’s unique geological salt domes to store green hydrogen in two massive salt caverns. Image: Mitsubishi Power
The overall project will enhance grid reliability and efficiency through optimization of existing transmission line loads, while creating the ability to move excess generation from highly productive renewable energy generation months with little electric load to cover demand during high-load periods. It also reduces the need to overbuild renewables and new transmission assets.
The massive natural geological salt formation is adjacent to the Intermountain Power Project (IPP) near Delta, with transmission interconnections to major demand centers throughout the west and significant renewable energy resource opportunities in the region.
“Using salt caverns for seasonal energy storage is a significant opportunity to empower hydrogen as an energy carrier and significantly expand energy storage resources throughout the U.S.,” Fernandez said. “This will further support the increased build-out of renewable energy thus reducing America’s carbon footprint. WSP is leveraging decades of experience in underground storage experience to provide a full suite of services around the hydrogen economy. This project reinforces WSP’s leadership in underground storage and positions the company to become a key player in developing hydrogen hubs.”
After nearly two years of engineering effort, WSP is grateful for the opportunity to support ACES Delta for the project execution phase and contribute to the advancement of the hydrogen economy in the U.S., at a time when the industry is poised for significant growth. This project consolidates WSP global leadership in underground liquid and gas storage facilities, including hydrogen, and aligns with WSP’s mission to help its clients and communities become Future Ready®.
About WSP USA
WSP USA is the U.S. operating company of WSP, one of the world’s leading engineering and professional services firms. Dedicated to serving local communities, we are engineers, planners, technical experts, strategic advisors and construction management professionals. WSP USA designs lasting solutions in the buildings, transportation, energy, water and environment markets. With more than 12,000 employees in 200 offices across the U.S., we partner with our clients to help communities prosper. wsp.com
Germany recorded about 25% more electricity generated from renewable sources in the first three months of the year compared with the same period last year thanks to unusually windy and sunny weather, industry officials said Monday.
Preliminary calculations by the energy lobby group BDEW and the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research indicate that Germany generated about 74.5 billion kilowatt hours of renewable power in the first quarter.
Renewable energy provided about 54% of Germany’s energy needs in January and February, they said.
The German government has pledged to ramp up the use of solar and wind power as part of its plan to wean the country off Russian fossil fuels because of the war in Ukraine.
But like other European countries, Germany is expected to fill part of the shortfall with fossil fuel imports from other regions of the world in the short term.
Stanford professor Mark Jacobson sees a way for the U.S. to meet its energy demands by 2050 with 100% wind, water and solar.
His models use no fossil fuels, carbon capture, direct air capture, bioenergy, blue hydrogen or nuclear power.
Jacobson’s roadmap is different from many clean-energy proposals, which advocate using all technologies possible.
A prominent Stanford University professor has outlined a roadmap for the United States to meet its total energy needs using 100% wind, water and solar by 2050.
Mark Jacobson, a Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering and the director of its Atmosphere/Energy Program, has been promoting the idea of all renewable energy as the best way forward for more than a decade. His latest calculations toward this ambitious goal were recently published in the scientific journal Renewable Energy.
Transitioning to a clean-energy grid should happen by 2035, the study advises, with at least 80% of that adjustment completed by 2030. For the purposes of Jacobson’s study, his team factored in presumed population growth and efficiency improvements in energy to envision what that would look like in 2050.
Jacobson first published a roadmap of renewable energy for all 50 states in 2015.
This recent update of that 2015 work has a couple of notable improvements.
First, Jacobson and his colleagues had access to more granular data for how much heat will be needed in buildings in every state for the coming two years in 30-second increments. “Before we didn’t have that type of data available,” Jacobson told CNBC.
Also, the updated data makes use of battery storage while the first set of calculations he did relied on adding turbines to hydropower plants to meet peak demand, an assumption that turned out to be impractical and without political support for that technology, Jacobson said.
Reliability of four-hour batteries
In the analysis, Jacobson and his team used battery-storage technology to compensate for the inherent intermittency of solar and wind power generation — those times when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.
The Achilles’ heel of a completely renewable grid, many argue, is that it is not stable enough to be reliable. Blackouts have become a particular concern, notably in Texas this year and during the summer of 2020 in California.
That’s where four-hour batteries come in as a way to generate grid stability. “I discovered this all just because I have batteries in my own home,” Jacobson told CNBC. “And I figured, oh, my God, this is so basic. So obvious. I can’t believe nobody has figured this out.”
Mark Jacobson’s garage where his four batteries are located. Two cars are currently charging, too. Photo courtesy Mark Jacobson
Jacobson said that he observed his batteries stayed charged if they weren’t plugged in when they are off.
To get more than four hours of charge, multiple four-hour batteries can be stacked to discharge sequentially. If a battery needs more charge output at one time than the battery can provide, then the batteries need to be used simultaneously, Jacobson told CNBC.
With this observation, Jacobson and his colleagues at Stanford produced scenarios showing it is possible to transition to a fully renewable system without any blackouts or batteries with ultra-long-duration battery technology.
That’s key because technology for ultra-long-duration batteries that would hold energy for several days have yet to be commercialized. Start-ups like Form Energy are working to bring such batteries to market.
Planning, of course, is also key to keeping the grid stable. “Wind is variable, solar is variable,” Jacobson said. “But it turns out, first of all, when you interconnect wind and solar over large areas, which is currently done, you smooth out the supply quite a bit. So it’s because, you know, when the wind is not blowing in one place, it’s usually blowing somewhere else. So over a large region, you have a smoother supply of energy.”
Similarly, wind and solar power are complimentary. And hydropower “is perfect backup, because you can turn it on and off instantaneously,” he said.
Also, there needs to be changes in pricing structures to motivate customers to do high energy demand activities at off-peak times.
“Demand response is a very big component of keeping the grid stable,” Jacobson said. “It’s used some today. But a lot of places a lot of states in the US right now, the electricity price is constant all day … and that’s a problem.”
Calculating the breakdowns
So far, Jacobson and his team have run simulations for the all renewable, four-hour battery roadmaps for six individual states – Alaska, Hawaii, California, Texas, New York and Florida, and the contiguous 48 states taken together. (For the rest of the states, Jacobson has approximate simulations, which are available here.)
According to his models, California’s energy mix would include 14.72% on-shore wind energy, 18.28% off-shore wind, 21.86% solar panels on roofs, 34.66% solar panels operated by a utility, 5.32% hydropower, 2.91% geothermal electricity and 0.25% wave energy.
Texas would be 37.66 on-shore wind, 14.77% off-shore wind, 20.87% roof solar, 23.85% solar panels operated by a utility, 0.1% hydropower and 0.19% wave energy.
Jacobson and his colleagues use three types of models for the calculations.
First, they use a spreadsheet model to project business-as-usual energy demand in each sector in each state to 2050 and then to convert the business-as-usual energy demand in 2050 to electricity provided by wind, water and solar.
Second, they use a weather model to predict the wind and solar fields in each state every 30 seconds. This weather-prediction model runs on a supercomputer and is written in Fortran computing language.
And the third component of his modeling matches the 2050 energy demand with the weather modeling of energy that can be supplied from wind, water and solar every 30 seconds. The third component is also written in Fortran, but this portion of the process can run on virtually any computer.
The resulting models use no fossil fuels, carbon capture, direct air capture, bioenergy, blue hydrogen or nuclear power.
And in that, Jacobson’s roadmaps are different from many clean-energy proposals, which advocate for using all technologies possible.
“So we’re trying to eliminate air pollution and global warming, and provide energy security. So those are the three purposes of our studies,” Jacobson told CNBC. And that “is a little different than a lot of studies that only focus on greenhouse gases. So we’re trying to eliminate air pollution as well, and also provides energy security.”
Addressing all three issues has been Jacobson’s focus for more than a decade. His first major work in the area was published in 2009 in Scientific American magazine, and four years later he appeared on NBC’s “Late Night with David Letterman” to promote his renewable-only approach. Jacobson and longtime progressive political candidate Bernie Sanders co-authored a clean-energy op-ed in The Guardian in 2017.
Combating fears of blackouts
Jacobson knows that his viewpoint is not the loudest. The promise of next-generation nuclear power plants, for example, has gotten government and private funding of late.
Nuclear innovation is “pushed mostly by the industry people, people like Bill Gates, who has a huge investment in small modular reactors,” Jacobson said. “He has a financial interest. And he wants to be known as somebody who tries to help solve the problem.”
Gates addressed the criticism that he’s a “technocrat” looking to solve climate change with new innovations, instead of with political legislation supporting technology like wind and solar which already exists, in an interview with Anderson Cooper on CBS’ “60 Minutes” earlier in the year. “I wish all this funding of these companies wasn’t necessary at all. Without innovation, we will not solve climate change. We won’t even come close,” Gates said.
Also, the timeline for getting some of these technologies to commercialization is too long to be useful. Gates’ advanced reactor company, TerraPower, announced in November that it has chosen the frontier-era coal town Kemmerer, Wyoming, as the preferred location for its first demonstration reactor, which it aims to build by 2028.
“Even if it’s seven years, that’s just a demonstration plant,” Jacobson said. “That’s not even close to a commercial plant and on the scale we need.”
TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque said the technology, specifically the Natrium nuclear reactor, will make a meaningful difference in combating climate change.
“The Natrium technology was chosen as the first mover of TerraPower’s technologies because we believe it will be operational in time to offer significant benefit toward the country’s decarbonization goals,” Levesque said in a statement.
Winning over clean-energy skeptics afraid of blackouts is a challenge, but Jacobson believes he can convince people to accept that a future like he has modeled is possible.
Renewable solutions for long-distance ships and aircraft are not available yet, he said. “But those are on the drawing board. And we know technically it can be done just as those haven’t been commercialized.”
Education is a key hurdle, as Jacobson sees it. “I am optimistic. But the thing I find that’s the biggest difficulty is the fact that it is an information issue, because most people are not aware, most people are not aware of what’s possible,” he said.
The climate emergency is the biggest threat to civilisation we have ever faced. But there is good news: we already have every tool we need to beat it. The challenge is not identifying the solutions, but rolling them out with great speed.
Some key sectors are already racing ahead, such as electric cars. They are already cheaper to own and run in many places – and when the purchase prices equal those of fossil-fueled vehicles in the next few years, a runaway tipping point will be reached.
Electricity from renewables is now the cheapest form of power in most places, sometimes even cheaper than continuing to run existing coal plants. There’s a long way to go to meet the world’s huge energy demand, but the plummeting costs of batteries and other storage technologies bodes well.
And many big companies are realising that a failure to invest will be far more expensive as the impacts of global heating destroy economies. Even some of the biggest polluters, such as cement and steel, have seen the green writing on the wall.
Buildings are big emitters but the solution – improved energy efficiency – is simple to achieve and saves the occupants money, particularly with the cost of installing technology such as heat pumps expected to fall.
Stopping the razing of forests requires no technology at all, but it does require government action. While progress is poor – and Bolsonaro’s Brazil is going backwards – countries such as Indonesia have shown regulatory action can be effective. Protecting and restoring forests, particularly by empowering indigenous people, is a potent tool.
Recognition of the role food and farming play in driving global heating is high, and the solutions, from alternatives to meat to regenerative farming, are starting to grow. As with fossil fuels, ending vast and harmful subsidies is key, and there are glimmers of hope here, too.
In the climate crisis, every fraction of a degree matters and so every action reduces people’s suffering. Every action makes the world a cleaner and better place to live – by, for example, cutting the air pollution that ends millions of lives a year.
The real fuel for the green transition is a combination of those most valuable and intangible of commodities: political will and skill. The supply is being increased by demands for action from youth strikers to chief executives, and must be used to face down powerful vested interests, such as the fossil fuel, aviation and cattle industries. The race for a sustainable, low-carbon future is on, and the upcoming Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow will show how much faster we need to go.
Transport
Responsible for 14-28% of global greenhouse gas emissions, transport has been slow to decarbonise, and faces particular challenges in areas such as long-haul flight.
But technical solutions are available, if the will, public policy and spending are there, too. Electric cars are the most obvious: petrol and diesel vehicles will barely be produced in Europe within the decade. EV sales are accelerating everywhere, with the likes of Norway well past the tipping point, and cheaper electric vehicles coming from China have cut the fumes from buses. Meanwhile, combustion engines are ever more efficient and less polluting.
Employees on the assembly line for electric buses in Xi an, Shaanxi province, China. Photograph: Visual China Group/Getty Images
Bike and scooter schemes are growing rapidly as cities around the world embrace electric micromobility. Far cleaner ships for global freight are coming. The potential of hydrogen is growing, for cleaner trains where electrification is impractical, to be followed by ships and even, one day, planes. Manufacturers expect short-haul electric aircraft much sooner. Most of all, the pandemic has shown that a world without hypermobility is possible – and that many people will accept, or even embrace, a life where they commute and travel less. Gwyn Topham
Deforestation
Deforestation and land use change are the second-largest source of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. The destruction of the world’s forests has continued at a relentless pace during the pandemic, with millions of hectares lost, driven by land-clearing in the Brazilian Amazon.
Volunteers plant mangrove tree seedlings in a conservation area on Dupa beach, Indonesia. Photograph: Basri Marzuki/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock
But there are reasons for hope. The UK has put nature at the heart of its Cop26 presidency and behind the scenes, the government is pushing hard for finance and new commitments from forested nations to protect the world’s remaining carbon banks. Indonesia and Malaysia, once global hotspots of deforestation, have experienced significant falls in recent years, the result of increased restrictions on palm oil plantations. However, the 2000s soy moratorium in Brazil shows these trends are reversible. Finally, there is a growing recognition of the importance of indigenous communities to protecting the world’s forests and biodiversity. In the face of racism and targeted violence, a growing number of studies and reports show they are the best guardians of the forest. Empowering those communities will be vital to ending deforestation. Patrick Greenfield
Technology
Emissions from technology companies, including direct emissions, emissions from electricity use and other operations such as manufacturing, account for 0.3% of global carbon emissions, while emissions from cryptocurrencies is a huge emerging issue.
Mining – the process in which a bitcoin is awarded to a computer that solves a complex series of algorithms – is a deeply energy-intensive process and only gets more energy-intensive as the algorithms grow more complex. But new mining methods are lighter, environmentally. A system called “proof of stake” has a 99% lower carbon footprint.
Researchers pose for a group photo at the International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals in Beijing, China. The centre was inaugurated to support the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock
Scrutiny of the whole sector is increasing, spearheaded by tech workers who walked out in their hundreds to join climate change marches in 2019. The companies have pledged to do better: Amazon aims to be net zero carbon by 2040 and powered with 100% renewable energy by 2025. Facebook has a target of net zero emissions for its entire supply chain by 2030 and Microsoft has pledged to become carbon negative by 2030. Apple has committed to become carbon-neutral across its whole supply chain by 2030.
They’re still falling short when it comes to delivering, but employee groups continue to push. Kari Paul
Business
For decades Exxon Mobil has arguably been corporate America’s biggest climate change denier. But this year, the activist investor Engine No 1 won three seats on the company’s board with an agenda to force the company to finally acknowledge and confront the climate crisis.
Across corporate America and all around the world there are signs of change. The Federal Reserve, the world’s most powerful central bank, is beefing up its climate team. BlackRock, the world’s biggest investor, has made environmental sustainability a core goal for the company.
This isn’t about ideology: it’s about “common sense.” According to BlackRock, failure to tackle climate change is simply bad for business. The investor calculates that 58% of the US will suffer economic decline by 2060-2080 if nothing is done.
Much more needs to be done, and some question whether corporate America can really solve this crisis without government action. But the days of denial are over – what matters now is action. Dom Rushe
Electricity
The rocketing global market price for gas has ripped through world economies, forcing factories to close, triggering blackouts in China, and threatening to cool the global economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
But it has also spelled out a clear economic case for governments to redouble their efforts in developing homegrown, low-carbon electricity systems.
The good news is that renewable energy is ready to step up and play a greater role in electricity systems across the globe.
A woman completes paperwork by the light of solar-powered lamps in a village shop for solar products. Photograph: Kunal Gupta/Climate Visuals Countdown
The precipitous fall in the price of wind and solar energy has helped to incentivise fresh investments in electricity vehicles and energy storage technologies, such as batteries, where costs are plummeting too. Soon, wind and solar power will help to produce green hydrogen, which can be stored over long periods of time to generate electricity during days that are a little less bright or breezy.
All of these advances are made possible by cheap renewables, and will help countries to use more renewable energy too. There has never been a better time to step back from gas and go green. Jillian Ambrose
Buildings
The built environment is one of our biggest polluters, responsible for about 40% of global carbon emissions.
Over the past two decades, the carbon footprint of buildings “in use” has been greatly reduced by energy-saving technologies – better insulation, triple-glazing, and on-site renewables such as solar panels and ground-source heat pumps. Onheat pumps, the UK lags far behind: Norway, through a mixture of grants and high electricity prices, has installed more than 600 heat pumps for every 1,000 households.
As national energy grids are decarbonising, the focus is shifting to reducing the “embodied energy” of materials – which can account for up to three-quarters of a building’s emissions over its lifespan – for example by reducing the amount of concrete and steel in favour of timber.
The Vertical Forest in the Porta Nuova district in Milan. Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty
There is also a growing movement to prioritise refurbishment and reuse over demolition, driven by the realisation that the most sustainable buildings are the ones that already exist. Oliver Wainwright
Food and farming
The hoofprint of the global livestock industry is a significant one, accounting for about 14% of total annual greenhouse gas emissions. But it is increasingly recognised and accepted by national governments.
New Zealand now has a legal commitment to reduce methane emissions from agriculture by 10% by 2030, while Denmark has passed a legally binding target to reduce climate emissions from the agricultural sector by 55% by 2030.
While global meat production is increasing, there is a growing shift towards fish and poultry, which have a comparatively lower emissions footprint than red meats. The food industry is also developing a range of lower-carbon products using plant-based proteins such as soy and pea, and insect and lab-grown meat alternatives. Tom Levitt
Manufacturing
Decarbonising the manufacturing of every product needed by a modern economy is a vast and varied task. Some sectors are well on their way. For instance, Apple, the world’s third-largest maker of mobile phones by volume, has pledged to produce net zero carbon throughout its supply chain by 2030.
For many others, advances in efficiency of factories and their products will be accelerated by machine learning and other artificial intelligence technologies that are still in their infancy. There are even hopeful signs in some of the hardest sectors to decarbonise, such as plans by Volvo to replace coal with hydrogen in the steel it uses in cars.
One of the greatest reasons for optimism is manufacturers’ increasing awareness of circular design principles. Making products easier to recycle from the start will help to cut emissions from fresh resource extraction– although a bigger question remains as to whether rich societies can reduce consumption, the most obvious way to cut emissions. Jasper Jolly
We publish this long-term energy outlook at the start of 2021, after a year that has brought extraordinary challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent economic crisis caused unprecedented disruption in the energy landscape—and the path to recovery remains uncertain.
At the same time, the world’s energy systems are going through rapid transitions that are triggered by simultaneous shifts in technological development, regulations, consumer preferences, and investor sentiments. Our Reference Case sheds light on these developments and provides a synthesis on how energy demand will evolve.
In the short term, a return to pre-COVID-19 levels is projected in one to four years
The impacts of COVID-19 have permanently shifted energy-demand curves. Although demand rebounds to 2019 levels in one to four years, it does not return to the previous growth path. Electricity and gas rebound more quickly than oil demand, and coal does not return to pre-COVID-19 demand levels.
Recent work by McKinsey on the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on economic growth introduces a set of scenarios, reflecting varying levels of effectiveness of the public-health response and speed and strength of policy interventions.
From these scenarios, two were selected as most likely outcomes by a group of more than 2,000 executive respondents globally: “Virus Contained; growth returns” and “Muted Recovery.” At the time of this report’s publication
(January 2021), the latest actual numbers show a trajectory that comes closest to “Virus Contained; growth returns.” Consequently, this scenario underlies the projections in our report.
Given the unparalleled size of many economic-recovery packages, the focus of the stimulus measures plays a key role in shaping energy systems in the decades to come.
Source: Mckinsey
Source: Mckinsey
Source: Mckinsey
Source: McKinsey
In the longer term, fundamental shifts already emerging pre-COVID-19 are going to be the key drivers of the energy transition
As economies and energy markets recover from the short-term impact of COVID-19, fundamental shifts in the energy system continue, and the coming decades will likely see a rapid acceleration of the energy transition.
Power wins and hydrogen changes the landscape . . .
Power consumption doubles by 2050 as energy demand electrifies, wealth increases, and green hydrogen picks up momentum.
. . . and low-cost renewables dominate power markets
Renewables become cheaper than existing fossil plants within the next decade. This triggers a sharp uptake in the installed capacity of solar photovoltaics and onshore and offshore wind (5 TW of new solar and wind capacity installed by 2035—which is equivalent to fivefold growth).
Peaks in fossil-fuel demand keep coming closer
Projected peaks in demand for hydrocarbons have come forward. Oil demand peaks in 2029 and gas in 2037, whereas coal shows a steady decline.
Yet in the Reference Case fossil fuels continue to play a major role in the energy system by 2050, driven by growth in areas such as chemicals and aviation.
In the Accelerated Transition scenario, demand for fossil fuels continues to decline, particularly oil and coal. Peak oil demand could move forward by five years to the early 2020s, at a level less than 1 MMB/D above 2019 levels.
Source: McKinsey
After a long period of growth, global liquids demand peaks in the late 2020s, followed by a 10% decline in demand by 2050. This is mainly driven by slowing car-park growth, enhanced engine efficiency in road transport, and increased electrification.
Global coal demand peaked in 2014 and continues to decline by almost 40% from 2019 to 2050. Under increasing regulatory and financial pressure, coal’s role in the power sector diminishes, contributing to the overall decline in demand.
Gas continues to increase its share of global energy demand in the next ten to 15 years—the only fossil fuel to do so—and then peaks in the late 2030s. Even in the Reference Case, gas demand in 2050 is 5% higher than today.
Our hearing organs start to develop at two or three weeks of gestation, and as we continue to develop in the womb we can hear well enough to react to sound. Sight may well be listed second in influential academic Marshall McLuhan’s ordering of the human senses into a hierarchy of importance yet traditionally, industrial design has focused on sight and touch, especially for expensive items. But, as we learn more about the design of infrastructure required for a net-zero emissions future, audio is becoming increasingly important in how we design, and for whom.
A more sustainable future means that our world will likely become quieter as energy-efficient technology has the potential to reduce noise impacts.
In most machines or systems, noise reflects a loss of energy in the system – energy being wasted rather than put to productive use. As we focus on reducing emissions and increasing energy efficiency, there is potential to achieve a quieter environment.
Creating power with solar panels or hydrogen instead of boilers and steam turbines; powering vehicles with batteries or hydrogen fuel cells rather than gasoline or diesel engines; electrifying rail lines to take diesel-electric locomotives out of service, and developing high-efficiency electric motors to make commercial processes (from air conditioning to manufacturing) whisper-quiet.
What are the ramifications of a quieter world as communities transition to net zero emissions, and how does that impact design? Could the noisiness of your factory floor or your suburb become a measure of how sustainable you are as a business or a community?
Do we need more or less noise?
This question is in the eyes (or ears) of the beholder. Rachel Carson’s seminal text ‘Silent Spring’, responsible for kicking off the modern environmental movement, argues that a healthy natural environment should be ‘noisy’ with natural life.
However, COVID-19 has revealed a mixed reaction to the relative silence that so many people experience from working remotely. For some, prolonged silence and isolation made them desperate for interaction with others; some introverts thrived in lockdown and never want to return to an office; others craved solitude after the noise of home-schooling kids, while trying to work.
Anecdotally, people are seeking out silence, as evidenced by the trend of city folks moving to regional centres. There is also the increasing use of noise-cancelling headphones, allowing people to curate their own audio environment, regardless of what sounds are actually around them.
The influence of increased or decreased noise on creativity, mental health and reflectiveness is probably down to the individual, although there are questions to be asked as we design this new audio world. Sound-masking systems conceal noise in new offices, but what if these became more common? Would organisations lose creativity if eavesdropping was lost? Research shows eavesdropping actually makes us better people. Could plugged-in employees result in decreased stress at the expense of less creativity and social engagement?
Hearing is a primal threat detector for humans and design has compensated for quieter noise in the past: for instance, the first cars were preceded by a person ringing a bell as a warning. Silence can be a problem, which is why electric trams and cable cars traditionally ring a bell to alert pedestrians to their approach, and why pushbikes have a bell on their handlebars.
Now, electric vehicle makers have synthetic sounds generated from their quiet motors – to make pedestrians aware that cars are around. While this has already become a legal requirement in the EU, other automakers are looking for workarounds: for example, Ford reportedly wants to include an ‘off switch’ for its line-up of police vehicles, presumably so officials can sneak up on suspected criminals.
How audio design can improve sustainable outcomes
Audio design in infrastructure could become a way to solve problems or achieve better sustainability outcomes. Look at start-up Ping Services, the creators of a stethoscope for monitoring the ‘health’ of wind turbines. Acoustic technology ‘listens’ to turbine blades to monitor their condition and helps predict degradation without early retirement, a common issue afflicting wind turbines.
The idea of creating an ‘acoustic fingerprint’ of well-maintained operating equipment, as a measure of equipment performance, has multiple applications across many industries such as mining and manufacturing. Ping, a small Adelaide start-up, is reaping the benefits of being an innovative first mover in using noise, or absence of it, as a measure of efficiency.
This movement towards less noise could change our property and settlement patterns, reducing urban sprawl. For instance, real estate next to busy roads may not necessarily lose value in a future of predominantly electric vehicles, because the reduced noise and reduced particulate emissions (no engines, less brake wear) will alleviate the impact on an amenity that a busy roadway would normally have.
A school in the Netherlands has placed acoustics at the heart of design under the premise that less noise equals less stress, illness and lower absentee rates. More than 30 000 m² of stone wool tiles and a long wall of reindeer moss supports the ceiling in creating a comfortable acoustical environment. Acoustic panels themselves are becoming more sustainable with options now made from chemical-free pulp.
The opportunities a net-zero future brings for design are endless. As roadways become narrower due to automated, quieter and non-emitting vehicles, the physical environment can be integrated further into design. Increased vegetation has the power to muffle harsh noise and absorb carbon dioxide. Just as rooftop gardens and flower walls are now commonplace, the best of Mother Nature’s audio like the calming benefits of birdsong could be incorporated on a broader scale.
Designing for silence
An electrified economy could potentially see increased audio pollution restrictions (for example, construction site noise limits, airport curfews) to reduce intrusions on people’s audio space. In the same way that smog and pollution were controlled in response to the industrial revolution’s excesses, the transition to a net-zero economy could include further control of public sound.
New regulations around use of drones already protect local wildlife, and sound laws have been enacted by governments and councils to account for technology that causes ambient public noise to recede from electrification and high-efficiency motors.
Not all of these will be reactions against sound: already, pleasant background sounds are actively introduced in places where people need to be calm, such as medical settings, or synthetic engine noise is simulated in electric vehicles to create a sportier sound upon acceleration.
Incorporating the design of sound into the built environment from the beginning is the best way to achieve a quieter environment, and avoids subjective tastes dictated by a few for the group. Already there are moves to design quiet spaces while, at the same time, we are warned of the psychological dangers of silence. Between the two extremes is a design challenge for perhaps audio-neutrality – more likely to be attained if we start with human need.
Decarbonising economies to combat climate change is a complex journey and won’t happen overnight, and neither will our response to lowering noise levels. Instead of the future soundscape being managed as an afterthought, more value could be obtained if we consider it early in the design phase, especially of workplaces and educational institutions, as a driver of qualitative measures such as engagement, fulfilment and purpose.
Sound is important to us. It is not only one of the first senses to develop, but it is also widely-believed to be the last sense people retain before they lose consciousness forever. While COVID-19 has provided an unexpected context in which to consider the audio environment we want to live, work and play in, climate change is providing ongoing opportunities to return to the sounds of nature.
You’ll have to keep listening to find out what a net-zero emissions future sounds like. Perhaps it might not only be smelling the roses, but also hearing the birds chirp. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful world!
Aurecon’s award-winning blog, Just Imagine provides a glimpse into the future for curious readers, exploring ideas that are probable, possible and for the imagination. This post originally appeared on Aurecon’s Just Imagine blog. Get access to the latest blog posts as soon as they are published by subscribing to the blog.
Will people in price-sensitive Asia only buy clean energy if it’s cheap? Eco-Business spoke to clean energy entrepreneurs about why consumer behaviour is lagging behind investment trends in Asia, and what can be done to persuade more people to switch to clean electricity.
Clean energy is on the rise, even in Asia, where fossil fuels play a stubbornly resilient role in the region’s energy story. The proportion of renewable energy consumed in Asia is projected to double within the decade.
The big question is, what will persuade the region’s consumers to switch to clean electricity? Will people in price-sensitive Asia only buy clean energy if it’s cheap?
A GlobalData consumer survey in 2019 showed that 45 per cent of consumers in Asia Pacific prefer to buy products that are “better for the environment”. Asian consumers also expect brands to care about society. Compared to just 41 per cent in the US and 46 per cent in the UK, 58 per cent of Asian consumers prefer to see brands leading meaningful initiatives in their communities.
But that does sentiment translate to the energy people consume?
Martin Lim, CEO of Singapore-based marketplace for retail electricity, Electrify.sg, says that although investors are showing a growing appetite for clean energy in Asia, consumers seem to be behind the curve. Out of about 66,000 residential rooftops in Singapore, less than 1,400 have adopted solar panels in their homes, he notes. Why?
Requiring about $20,000 in upfront investment, a home solar panel system in Singapore would still need about 6-10 years before it starts to provide owners with “free energy”; after offsetting the energy expenditure of household consumption.
Jeffrey Char, founder and CEO of SOGO Energy, a Japan-based renewable energy investment firm that serves rural communities in developing countries, believes that Asian consumers still tend to be rather price-sensitive, even in wealthier countries like Singapore.
Even if there’s a one-cent difference, the percentage of consumers who would pay extra would probably drop from 90 per cent to 10 per cent.
Jeffrey Char, CEO and founder, SOGO Energy
Increasing financial pressures in the region like household debt only serve to heighten the price sensitivity to “non-essential” or “luxury” goods.
Furthermore, Asian consumers are twice as likely as their American counterparts to tighten their wallets after a crisis. 60 per cent of consumers in this region are putting more money aside for rainy days post Covid-19, according to a study by Bain and Facebook.
Karlo Edesson Abril, accounts manager of Filipino solar energy developer SunAsia Energy, thinks that economic status is still the largest determinant of individuals’ power to vote with their wallets.
“Sustainability and green energy is the way to go, but for people who are just living from day to day, every peso counts. So if green energy is cheap, people will go for it, but price is still the main concern.”
What is causing clean energy inertia in Asia?
What experts agree on is that the lack of consumer demand is not due to the inefficacies of renewables, and emerging reports are proving renewables to be the lowest cost form of energy in many countries.
But larger factors are at play that makes switching less worthwhile.
For one, clean energy might cost more in developed countries, because of existing grid and pricing infrastructure that favours traditional energy sources.
“In Singapore, you flip a switch and the lights come on. In other parts of Asia, you have people whose generators go out all the time because of poor infrastructure. They’re using fossil fuels in a very suboptimal way, and it ends up being very expensive and very dirty. Having the choice to invest in clean energy versus fossil fuels from scratch, it makes sense for them to choose the former,” explains Char.
It is for this reason that rural Asia and Africa might leapfrog developed economies to clean energy “in the same way they didn’t build telephone networks and jumped straight to cell phones,” he says.
Levelling the playing field
While meeting global climate targets will likely depend on stronger demand for clean electricity in Asia, stakeholders are using a variety of approaches to help consumers make the switch.
SOGO allows its clients to completely avoid transmission costs by installing solar power locally, giving clean energy a 9 yen (USD$0.086) competitive advantage.
On a governmental level, support seems to be headed in the right direction. “I think it’s commendable for The Department of Energy in the Philippines to start quantifying generation instead of capacity, looking more at consumer-centric prices (kilowatt-hours) instead of installed capacity,” says Abril.
Nevertheless, it remains hard for clean energy projects to remain financially sustainable if they drain state funds with feed-in tariffs.
Perhaps the most recent and notable example of this is the Japanese government’s cutting of feed-in-tariff purchase prices towards 2019, even though the return of investment for post-Fukushima solar farms was staggeringly profitable.
“The investments in these solar farms [in Japan] took only about four years or less to break-even, which is twice as fast as that of anywhere else around the world,” Lim says. “But feed-in-tariffs is a model that eventually stops because the premium is paid for by the state.”
Governmental initiatives need to be complemented by market mechanisms to promote organic demand.
Clean energy washing?
A looming danger is that consumers might purchase the cheapest available clean energy plan—which might not actually reduce their carbon footprint.
Since the launch of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme 15 years ago, mandating big emitters to offset via carbon reduction projects, the demand boom for carbon offsets has resulted in incidences of fraud and greenwashing.
Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), which provide proof of a carbon offset, are a reliable way to offset emissions. Whereas a typical reforestation project might be time and cost-intensive, solar and wind projects are easy to audit even on a large scale, according to Kang Jen Wee, founder and CEO of renewable energy certification company Trecs.ai. But the currency is not flawless; RECs could be subject to double-counting or false reporting.
RECs emerged more than 10 years ago, as a tool to address flaws in the carbon crediting system. At that time, there was no high-speed broadband, but today we can tap on real-time data to avoid greenwashing.
Martin Lim, founder and CEO, Electrify.sg
To ensure a reliable offset, there are firms that specialise in verification, such as Trecs.ai, which holds REC sellers accountable. Using blockchain technology, every transaction can be tracked in the public domain, and consumers can find out exactly where their clean energy originates from by keying in the serial number of their purchased REC.
Meanwhile, Electrify works to attribute the energy in real-time, limiting the amount of clean energy one can buy to offset their emissions at each time period. This ensures sustainable rates of consumption.
Ultimately, consumers are more likely to switch to clean energy if they are made aware of its benefits.
“If we put environmental education in the general curriculum, we can educate everyone of the benefits of clean energy,” says Abril. Sustainability Reporting is also an important way to employees to be more conscious of their energy consumption choices and therefore carbon footprint, he says.
In the small Canadian city of Saint-Jérôme, Québec, electric bus and truck manufacturer Lion Electric is preparing to expand south of the border, aiming to open a plant in the United States by 2023, with the capacity to produce 20,000 vehicles a year.
After signing deals with online retailer Amazon and school districts across North America, the company expects the new factory will hire 1,500 people, from electrical engineers to assembly-line workers, and create another 9,500 jobs in its US supply chain.
“There’s a lot of people involved in building a 100-per cent electric vehicle,” said vice-president Patrick Gervais.
The expansion by Lion Electric – which is set to go public on the New York Stock Exchange in March, through a merger with a US acquisitions firm – seems well-timed.
US President Joe Biden, who took over from climate-change sceptic Donald Trump on Jan. 20, plans to invest US$2 trillion in green infrastructure over the next four years.
Besides combating climate change, the administration says the plan could create more than 10 million jobs.
“When I think of climate change and the answers to it, I think of jobs,” Biden said in a speech Wednesday, on a day he signed a second round of executive actions to help curb climate warming and protect people and the economy from its impacts.
“We can put millions of Americans to work modernising our water systems, transportation (and) our energy infrastructure to withstand the impacts of extreme climate,” Biden said.
A government-backed study out this week said reaching net-zero carbon emissions from US energy and industry by 2050 – as Biden aims to do—could be achieved by rebuilding energy infrastructure to run primarily on renewables, at a net cost of about $1 per person per day.
The transition would involve increasing energy efficiency, switching to electric technologies, using predominantly clean electricity—especially wind and solar power – and deploying a small amount of carbon capture technology, the researchers found.
Study co-author Margaret Torn, a senior scientist with the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said building clean infrastructure equates to jobs, including in the United States, “as opposed to sending money overseas to buy oil from other countries”.
“There’s no question that there will need to be a well-thought-out economic transition strategy for fossil fuel-based industries and communities,” she said in a statement.
“But there’s also no question that there are a lot of jobs in building a low-carbon economy.”
A wind farm shares space with corn fields the day before the Iowa caucuses, where agriculture and clean energy are key issues, in Latimer, Iowa, US. Image: Jonathan Ernst, via Reuters.
Fossil-fuel unemployment
Opponents of Biden’s plans to jumpstart climate action have raised concerns about the loss of jobs in traditional fossil fuel industries—oil, gas and coal.
Republican lawmakers have pointed to the executive order Biden signed within a few hours of taking office, cancelling construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Work on the pipeline—intended to carry more oil extracted from tar sands in Canada to the United States—would have sustained 11,000 US jobs in 2021, they maintain.
However, researchers and environmental advocates argue that clean energy offers far higher levels of employment compared to fossil fuels.
A 2019 study by University College London found that the broadly defined “green economy” in the United States—including renewable energy, environmental protection and low-carbon goods and services—provided nearly 9.5 million jobs.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, US jobs in the coal mining industry, comparatively, halved between 2012 and 2020, employing some 44,600 people in October last year.
Under Biden’s green transition, the greatest job-growth potential could be in retrofitting buildings to make them more energy-efficient, said Adam Zurofsky, executive director of advocacy group Rewiring America, which is pushing for US homes to switch rapidly to electric heating and cooking.
This is due to the huge number of buildings across the country that need updating and the array of skills involved, from carpentry to electric installation, he said.
Such jobs are intrinsically American jobs, he added.
“You can’t retrofit a building or install solar panels (remotely) from China or India,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Zurofsky previously oversaw energy policy for New York state, and worked on shutting down the last remaining coal-fired power plants there.
Often communities would not object on environmental grounds, he said, “but that plant paid a lot of property taxes for the local school district… (and it) employed people in the town.”
The transition away from fossil fuels needs to be carefully planned and managed, including allowing a period of time to help people adjust, he emphasised.
A worker descends from the top deck of a car carrier trailer carrying Tesla electric vehicles at Tesla’s primary vehicle factory after CEO Elon Musk announced he was defying local officials’ coronavirus disease (Covid-19) restrictions by reopening the plant in Fremont, California, US. Image: Stephen Lam, via Reuters.
Decent work?
Another concern is the quality of jobs that might be created by Biden’s green infrastructure plan.
“It’s also about dealing with inequality and making sure the jobs created in the green economy are well-paid and have labour standards attached to them,” said Mike Fishman, executive director of the nonprofit Climate Jobs National Resource Center.
“Most of the jobs in solar installation (and) retrofitting tend to be both non-union and low-paid,” he added.
This week, Biden promised that his plan to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic through green economic stimulus would create “good-paying union jobs” at the “prevailing wage and benefits”.
But it could face significant resistance from Republicans in the Senate, particularly when it comes to inclusion of labour standards like fair wages and making it easier for workers to unionise, said Fishman.
“That will be a fight,” he added.
If successful, Biden aims to use the federal government’s procurement spending to ensure that companies given contracts have to abide by those labour conditions, which would also guarantee rights like paid leave and overtime.
The government spending, if approved, could include deploying more than half a million new electric-vehicle charging outlets across the country by 2030 and—critically, for firms like Lion Electric—converting all 500,000 US school buses to zero emissions.
“The green economy is the future—it’s the new economy,” said Gervais. “You do it for the environment but it’s also a viable business model.”
“We’re creating jobs that did not exist before,” he said. “It’s really exciting.”
This story was published with permission from Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women’s rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit http://news.trust.org/climate.
