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World’s largest coal port to be 100% powered by renewable energy

Posted on January 10, 2022 by dishanth

The world’s largest coal port has announced it will now be powered entirely by renewable energy.

The announcement from Port of Newcastle comes as coal power generation in Australia’s national electricity market fell to its lowest level in the final three months of 2021.

Though the port continues to export an average of 165Mt of coal a year, the move is part of a plan to decarbonise the business by 2040, and to increase the non-coal portion of its business so that coal only makes up half its revenue by 2030.

It has signed a deal with Iberdrola, which operates the Bodangora windfarm near Dubbo in inland New South Wales, for a retail power purchase agreement that provides the port with large scale generation certificates linked to the windfarm.

Chief executive officer Craig Carmody said the Port of Newcastle’s title as the largest coal port in the world “isn’t as wonderful as it used to be” and that change was necessary to avoid what happened in Newcastle and the steel industry closed.

“I would prefer to be doing this now while we have control over our destiny, while we have revenue coming in, than in a crisis situation where our revenue has collapsed and no one will lend us money,” Carmody said.

“We get 84 cents a tonne for coal shipped through our port. We get between $6 and $8 for every other product. You can see where I’d rather have my money.”

As part of its transition the port has converted 97% of its vehicles to electric and engaged in other infrastructure projects to decarbonise its operations.

Andrew Stock, climate councillor and retired energy executive who was a founding board member of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, welcomed the development but said there was a “still long way to go”.

“It’s a good thing they’re looking at it, but 50% income diversification by 2030, it’s still a decade away. That’s still a lot of coal that’s going to go through that port particularly when the IEA and the IPCC have made it clear we have to move,” Stock said.

“And 50% by 2030 is still 50% coal income.”

Stock said governments should encourage a “rapid advance in the uptake of renewables” similar to what has occurred in South Australia, which is powered by 100% renewable energy on some days.

Carmody said that as an “open access port” the business was unable to refuse traffic except under specific circumstances, but he hoped showing the company was embracing change would encourage its workforce and others to do the same.

“In some ways it doesn’t matter what the policies of government are, equities and debt markets, they’re making the decision for us,” Carmody says. “It doesn’t matter what the policy settings are in Australia, it’s what some investor in New York or Tokyo is thinking.”

“We don’t really have a choice. Nobody wants to invest in [being part of the fossil fuel supply chain].”

The announcement comes as figures from Dylan McConnell, research fellow the University of Melbourne’s Climate and Energy College, shows renewable energy provided nearly a third of all electricity produced in the national electricity market (NEM).

In the last three months of 2021, coal’s share of the electricity grid fell 5.9% when compared to the same period in 2020, while gas recorded its lowest quarter of generation since 2004

Over the same period, rooftop solar grew 24% and utility solar by 26% – though wind’s share only grew by a “quite modest” 6.4% compared to previous years. This was partly due to poor wind conditions and a lack of new capacity.

“At the high level, solar is squeezing out coal, particularly black coal,” McConnell said. “You can see it quite clearly in the shape of what’s happened to the profile of generation.”

McConnell said that Victoria and South Australia recorded average negative power prices in the middle for the entire quarter.

“It’s a sign of the time that we’re getting negative prices on average,” McConnell said. “Coal’s being hollowed out in the middle of the day and that’s also what’s affecting their bottom line as well, as that’s when you’re having negative prices quite consistently.”

Source The Guardian

IEA: Renewables Will Lead Global Generation in 2025

Posted on November 13, 2020 by dishanth

The world’s power generation is about to become even more green, according to a new publication from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The group on Nov. 10 published its “Renewables 2020″ report, and highlighted how generation capacity from both wind and solar will double across the next five years and surpass global generation from both coal and natural gas. The IEA said renewable energy this year is growing at its fastest annual pace in the past six years, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. The agency said the pandemic has in fact hastened the closure of older thermal power generation infrastructure; as an example, American Electric Power this week announced it would shut down nearly half its entire fleet of U.S. coal-fired power plants.

The IEA in the report said “the COVID-19 crisis is hurting—but not halting—global renewable energy growth,” noting that “renewable markets, especially electricity-generating technologies, have already shown their resilience to the crisis.”

90% of New Generation Is Renewable

“From January to October 2020, auctioned renewable capacity was 15% higher than for the same period last year, a new record,” the report said. “At the same time, the shares of publicly listed renewable equipment manufacturers and project developers have been outperforming most major stock market indices and the overall energy sector.”

The report said almost 90% of new power generation in 2020 will be renewable, with about 10% of new output coming from natural gas- and coal-fired plants. The IEA said a continuance of that trend would make renewables the world’s largest power source in 2025.

Fatih Birol, the agency’s executive director, in a statement, said, “Renewable power is defying the difficulties caused by the pandemic, showing robust growth while other fuels struggle. The resilience and positive prospects of the sector are clearly reflected by continued strong appetite from investors—and the future looks even brighter with new capacity additions on course to set fresh records this year and next.”

Birol continued: “Governments can tackle these issues to help bring about a sustainable recovery and accelerate clean energy transitions. In the United States, for instance, if the proposed clean electricity policies of the next U.S. administration are implemented, they could lead to much more rapid deployment of solar PV [photovoltaic] and wind, contributing to faster decarbonization of the power sector.”

John Lichtenberger, senior vice president of Core Solar, an Austin, Texas-based developer of solar power projects, recently told POWER, “the cost of solar technology has come down so much” that developing solar power is a “no-brainer, from an environmental standpoint and an economic standpoint. Renewables are not a novelty, they’re a legitimate cost-effective, environmental way to generate power. Solar technology [has] been refined and improved, and the cost has come down. The technology has become a commodity, [and] we’re seeing production across the globe.”

Global Energy Demand Falls

The IEA said the coronavirus pandemic is a major factor in a 5% decline this year in global demand for energy. The report, though, said “priority access to the grid and continuous installation of new plants are all underpinning strong growth in renewable electricity. This more than compensates for declines in bioenergy for industry and biofuels for transport—mostly the result of lower economic activity. The net result is an overall increase of 1% in renewable energy demand in 2020.”

The report said new deployments of renewable energy, led by China and the U.S., mean that “net installed renewable capacity will grow by nearly 4% globally in 2020, reaching almost 200 GW. Higher additions of wind and hydropower are taking global renewable capacity additions to a new record this year, accounting for almost 90% of the increase in total power capacity worldwide. Solar PV growth is expected to remain stable as a faster expansion of utility-scale projects compensates for the decline in rooftop additions resulting from individuals and companies reprioritizing investments. Wind and solar PV additions are set to jump by 30% in both the People’s Republic of China and the United States as developers rush to complete projects before changes in policy take effect.”

The agency said India and the European Union also will drive increases in renewable energy, which the report said will result in a record expansion of global renewable capacity additions of nearly 10% next year, the fastest growth since 2015. The IEA recently said that solar power today is now the cheapest source of electricity in history.

The report said that total installed wind and solar PV capacity is on track to overtake natural gas in 2023, and coal in 2024—and said that generation from all renewable resources will become the “largest source of electricity generation worldwide in 2025,” supplying one-third of global power output.

The IEA report said, “Solar PV alone accounts for 60% of all renewable capacity additions through 2025, and wind provides another 30%. Driven by further cost declines, annual offshore wind additions are set to surge, accounting for one-fifth of the total wind annual market in 2025.”

Darrell Proctor is an associate editor for POWER

Source: Power Magazine

This is the carbon footprint of your internet activity

Posted on March 6, 2020March 3, 2020 by dishanth

Data centres processing and storing the world’s data already use around 1% of the electricity we generate, according to the IEA.
Computing is expected to account for up to 8% of global power demand by 2030.
The emissions associated with everyday computing could be surprisingly high.

A stone’s throw from a power station on the barren outskirts of Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, a grey warehouse surrounded by metal containers hums to the sound of money.

Inside, hundreds of computer servers work continuously to solve complicated mathematical equations generating the digital currency Bitcoin – burning enough electricity to power tens of thousands of homes in the process.

“Any high-performance computing … is energy intensive,” explained Joe Capes of global blockchain company The Bitfury Group, which operates the facility in Tbilisi.

Cryptocurrencies are one of several new technologies, like artificial intelligence and 5G networks, that climate experts worry could derail efforts to tackle global warming by consuming ever-growing amounts of power.

Data centres processing and storing data from online activities, such as sending emails and streaming videos, already account for about 1% of global electricity use, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Sending one less ‘thank you’ email a day could save 16,433 tonnes of carbon a year.
Image: Statista

That’s about the same amount of electricity that Australia consumes in a year.

But as societies become more digitalised, computing is expected to account for up to 8% of the world’s total power demand by 2030, according to some estimates, raising fears this could lead to the burning of more fossil fuels.

“If we don’t take into account the carbon footprint, we are going to have a climate change nightmare coming from information technology,” said Babak Falsafi, a professor of computer and communication science at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne.

Efficient Data

One solution is to improve the efficiency of data centres, which is something operators are naturally prone to do since electricity accounts for a large share of their running costs, according to data experts.

“As a rule of thumb, a megawatt costs a million dollars per year … This obviously catches management’s attention,” said Dale Sartor, who oversees the U.S. Department of Energy’s Center of Expertise for Data Centers in Berkeley, California.

Energy demand from data centres in the United States has remained largely flat over the past decade as improvements in computing have allowed processors to do more with the same amount of power, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

But that is set to change, predict tech analysts.

The 50-year-old trend known as Moore’s Law, which has seen computer chips double in capacity every two years, is expected to slow down as it becomes harder to add any more transistors to a chip.

Some companies have been looking at other ways to make savings.

In Georgia, where most electricity is generated by hydropower, Bitfury deployed a system to reduce the energy needed to cool down its heating servers.

Cooling can account for up to half of a data centre’s total energy use, the company says.

While some of its processors are still cooled with outside air, others are immersed inside metal tanks filled with a special liquid with a low boiling point.

As the liquid boils, the vapour transfers heat away from the processors, keeping them fresh and allowing the company to do away with fans and save water.

“Air is free … but it is not efficient,” explained Capes, who heads Bitfury’s liquid cooling technology subsidiary, adding that the system consumes 40% less electricity than traditional air cooling solutions.

Others have taken similar steps.

A Google data centre in Finland uses recycled seawater to reduce energy use while some companies have opened facilities near the Arctic Circle to benefit from naturally cold air.

But improving efficiency “can only get you so far”, said Elizabeth Jardim, a senior corporate campaigner at environmental group Greenpeace. “At some point you will have to address the type of energy that is powering the facility.”

Tech giants including Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft have committed to using only renewable energy but some still use fossil fuels, and more needs to be done to bring others on board, she said.

Jardim suggested governments enact policies to incentivise tech companies to procure green energy and increase transparency around the data sector’s carbon footprint.

Less Cat Videos

Meanwhile, internet users can also play a role by switching to greener companies or simply reducing their data use, said Jardim.

“Right now data pretty much is equivalent to energy, so the more data something takes the more energy you can assume it’s using,” she said.

Simply sending a photo by email can emit about the same amount of planet-warming gases as driving a car for a kilometre, said Luigi Carafa, executive director of the Climate Infrastructure Partnership, a Barcelona-based non-profit.

“The problem is we don’t really see this, so we don’t perceive it as a problem at all,” he said by phone.

A 2019 study by energy supplier OVO Energy found that if Britons sent one less email a day the country could reduce its carbon output by the equivalent of more than 81,000 flights from London to Madrid.

Global online video viewings alone generated as many carbon emissions as the whole of Spain in 2018, according to French think tank The Shift Project.

“People can already reduce their carbon emissions today if they stop watching cat videos,” said Falsafi, the Lausanne professor, who heads the university’s research centre for sustainable computing, EcoCloud.

“Unfortunately, they are neither aware of the issue nor incentivised to reduce carbon emissions.”

Written by

Umberto Bacchi, Journalist,

This article is published in collaboration with Reuters

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.