Intel’s new manufacturing plant in Leixlip, Ireland, which cost $18.5 billion to build, is replete with technologies touted for conserving energy and water including programmable, all-LED lighting and a water reclamation and filtration system that could save 275 million gallons a year.
One of its more unusual features, however, is an approach that’s often overlooked: capturing heat generated by equipment in the facility and funneling it into production processes rather than expelling it through cooling towers. This was accomplished by the installation of recovery chillers that capture heat created by Intel’s high-temperature manufacturing processes and pipe it in the form of heated water to other places at the facility.
Intel estimates these heat recovery measures will allow it to significantly cut the natural gas it must buy to run operations at the site, Fab 34. It will use nine times as much recovered energy than what is generated by other fuels, the company projects. That so-called “waste heat” can be used for tasks such as preheating the ultra-pure water Intel needs for semiconductor fabrication or keeping buildings at the site warm during cooler weather, said Rich Riley, principal engineer in Intel’s corporate services development group.
“If we didn’t have that heat, we would need that much more gas to facilitate the [heating, ventilation and air-conditioning] operations,” Riley said. “This is an overall reduction of natural gas consumption.”
Over time, Intel’s plan is to build on heat recovery and other energy efficiency measures by updating them with industrial equipment, such as heat pumps, that run on electricity.
Intel’s near-term energy-related sustainability goals include reducing Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 10 percent by 2030 from a 2019 baseline (it has achieved 4 percent as of fiscal year 2022); and conserving up to 4 billion kilowatt-hours cumulatively.
An untapped source of energy efficiency
Intel hasn’t disclosed the potential impact on its carbon emissions this heat recovery at Fab 34 effort could have, but a retrofit using water-to-water heat pumps in Fab 10 (also in Leixlip) will save an estimated 18.3 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. It will reduce Scope 1 emissions by about 4,760 metric tons, but Scope 2 emissions will increase by about 1,627 metric tons because of the electricity needed for the heat pumps.
Industrial energy remains a thorny challenge for corporate sustainability teams: An estimated 20 percent to 25 percent of energy consumed globally by industrial sources is still predominantly powered by coal and natural gas, according to the International Energy Agency.
The potential energy cost savings of using recovered waste heat for industrial processes, district heating applications or to generate electricity could reach up to $152.5 billion annually, slightly less than half the value of the natural gas imported by the European Union in 2022, according to a McKinsey report published in November. The analysis estimates the global recoverable heat potential is at least 3,100 terawatt-hours.
“In our view, if you want to decarbonize, heat recovery and waste heat is one of the most economical levers available,” said Ken Somers, a McKinsey partner who was one of the report’s authors. One barrier to adoption has been low natural gas prices, but tariffs and supply shortages have prompted companies to rethink their dependence, he said.
The industrial heat pump technology needed to move heat from where it’s generated to where it’s needed in a production process is also maturing. The potential for manufacturers of chemicals, consumer products, food and pharmaceuticals to use this approach is growing as a precursor to the electrification of production systems, said Patricia Provot, president of thermal production equipment manufacturer Armstrong International.
“If your plan is to fully decarbonize, your first step is to get rid of steam and use hot water, and then try to recover as much of that waste heat as possible and put it back into the system,” Provot said.
Data centres are well-known for being energy guzzlers because of the growth of digital demand. Worldwide, they consume an estimated 200 terawatt hours a year (TWh/yr), or nearly 1 per cent of global electricity demand.
That said, the energy consumption of data centres has not grown at the exponential rate of Internet traffic. This is due to the huge strides made in energy efficiency in data centres. Improvements in the efficiency of servers, storage devices and data centre infrastructure, as well as the move away from small data centres to larger cloud and hyperscale data centres, have all helped to limit the growth of electricity demand.
According to figures from a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), from 2010 to 2020, the number of internet users worldwide has doubled and global internet traffic has expanded 15-fold. But global data centre energy use has been flat since 2015, at about 200 TWh/yr.
Globally, leading data centre operators have committed to carbon neutrality and science-based targets for emissions reduction by 2030. To achieve these goals, they have partnered with technology companies to develop ways of reducing energy consumption at all levels of operation – from direct-to-chip cooling to providing on-site prime power through alternative energy fuel cells.
New cooling solutions
One of the main areas of innovation is developing new solutions to cool data centres more efficiently as their capacity grows. Typically, cooling accounts for a large proportion of overall power consumption. Estimates from 2021 suggest that the figure ranges from 30 to 37 per cent.
Air cooling has been widely adopted in data centres since their inception. The basic principle of such systems involves circulating cold air around the hardware to dissipate heat.
More high power-density racks of up to 50kW are being deployed in data centres, such as those at Equinix’s International Business Exchange (IBX) data centres around the world. Source: Equinix.
But air cooling systems are struggling to keep up with the increases in the power density of racks. Thanks to new generations of central processing units (CPUs), rack power requirements have moved from below 20 kilowatts (kW) to up to 40 or 50 kW today, easily.
Air cooling systems have evolved to address higher densities, but there is a point at which air just does not have the thermal transfer properties to do so in an efficient manner. This has caused organisations to look into liquid cooling, as water and other fluids are up to 3,000 times more efficient in transferring heat than air.
Liquid cooling is available in a variety of configurations that use different technologies, including rear door heat exchangers and direct-to-chip cooling.
Rear door heat exchangers is the more mature technology, where a liquid-filled coil is mounted in place of the rear door of the rack. As server fans move heated air through the rack, the coil absorbs the heat before the air enters the data centre.
Direct-to-chip cooling integrates the cooling system directly into the computer’s chassis. A liquid coolant is brought via tubes directly to the chip, where it absorbs heat and removes it from the data hall. The warm liquid is then circulated to a cooling device or heat exchange.
One of the world’s largest data centre providers, Equinix, for example, is developing a new direct-to-chip cooling technology at their Co-Innovation Facility (CIF) located in the Washington DC area. Developed in collaboration with Zutacore, the system introduces a cooling fluid to an evaporator overlying the CPU to absorb heat directly, which in turn causes the liquid to evaporate and produce a constant temperature over the CPU.
Hotter temperatures
Some operators are challenging the thinking that data centres should be operated at low temperatures of 20 to 22 degrees celsius. There is evidence to support the running of data centres ‘hot’, i.e., increasing their temperature by 1 or 2 degrees Celsius, which improves efficiency without any significant sacrifices in system reliability.
In Singapore, the Infocomm Media Development Authority has been trialing the world’s first ‘tropical data centre’, to test if data centres can function optimally at temperatures of up to 38 degrees Celsius and ambient humidity up to or exceeding 90 per cent.
Running with simulated data, the trial would test how data servers react under various situations, such as peak surges or while transferring data, and in conditions such as with no temperature or humidity controls.
Using digital resources and analytics to optimise energy usage
Smart solutions monitoring energy consumption patterns allow data centres to configure the optimal use of their resources, as well as to identify and diagnose equipment problems and take steps to fix them. Software powered by artificial intelligence (AI) can also assist companies to better manage their infrastructure and maximise the utilisation of their CPUs.
In an interview with Fortune, Equinix’s chief executive Charles Meyer explained that AI is used in the company’s data centres to “anticipate where power needs to be applied, how cooling… needs to be done to improve the power usage efficiency of the facility overall”.
Using on-site lower-carbon energy sources
New cooling solutions and digital resources are offsetting the energy consumption from increasing data centre services. However, there remains the question of energy supply to the facility overall.
A totally carbon-free solution would involve locating a data centre beside a wind- or solar-generated renewable energy source, or purchasing 100 per cent green energy from the grid. But these may not always be feasible solutions. In Singapore, for instance, space constraints limit the use of solar energy, and wind conditions are not sufficient for wind power.
Alternatives include the use of fuel cells for primary power supply at data centres. Fuel cells generate power through electrochemical reactions using natural gas, biogas or LPG. Testing by Equinix at CIF indicates they are 20 to 40 per cent cleaner than gas-powered electricity generation.
Fuel cells generate power through electrochemical reactions using natural gas, biogas or LPG. Source: Equinix.
When fuel cells are set up near data centres, there are even greater efficiencies. The generated electricity has less distance to travel and hence less energy is lost in the transmission process.
Equinix has deployed fuel cells at 15 of its facilities, including the carrier-neutral SV11 opened in San Jose in 2021, which utilises 4 megawatts (MW) of fuel cells for primary power production on site and can scale up to 20 MW of fuel cells.
Equinix is also part of a consortium of seven companies (including InfraPrime, RISE, Snam, SOLIDpower, TEC4FUELS and Vertiv) which launched the Eco Edge Prime Power (E2P2) project. E2P2 is exploring the integration of fuel cells with uninterruptible power supply technology and lithium-ion batteries to provide resilient and low-carbon primary power to data centres.
This work will also pave the way to transition from natural gas to green hydrogen (hydrogen produced using renewable energy) in fuel cells. Such advances are a step change towards sustainability where green hydrogen is available.
A holistic approach
Energy efficiency is crucial in determining future emissions in an industry that will continue growing in response to digitalisation and data consumption.
Besides energy efficiency, major data centre operators are interested in holistic sustainability gains that minimise carbon emissions. They consider how sustainable their supply chains are, total resource use and the company’s whole carbon footprint such as the embodied carbon in building materials.
Equinix, for example, has adopted a global climate-neutral goal by 2030 and has embedded decarbonisation actions across its business and supply chain.
Jason Plamondon, Equinix’s regional manager for sustainability in Asia-Pacific, says that the company is “well on (its) way to meeting (its) climate commitments, with over 95 per cent renewable coverage for (its) portfolio in FY21, maintaining over 90 per cent for the fourth consecutive year”.
He adds: “As the world’s digital infrastructure company, we have the responsibility to harness the power of technology to create a more accessible, equitable and sustainable future. Our Future First sustainability approach includes continuing to innovate and develop new technologies that contribute to protecting our planet.”
There were 131 billion parcels shipped worldwide in 2020 — a figure that is predicted to double in the next five years. Asia represents a huge market for global trade and logistics with the continent expected to account for 57 per cent of the growth of the global e-commerce logistics markets between 2020 and 2025.
But getting things from A to B creates an enormous carbon footprint.
Transportation was responsible for 8.26 gigatons, or about 26 per cent, of CO2 emissions globally in 2018, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Freight, the transport of goods, accounts for more than 7 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the International Transport Forum.
Slashing planet-warming gases produced by transport and logistics will be instrumental in helping nations and corporates hit their climate goals.
A raft of corporate net-zero commitments has largely led to rapid efforts to drive down direct Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions. More organisations are pledging to reduce Scope 3 emissions generated upstream and downstream of the value chain and those embodied in transport and distribution.
Supply chains have become longer, more complex as logistics networks link more economic centres together and consumer preferences change leading to more regular, smaller freight shipments and rapid delivery by energy-intensive transport such as air freight.
While Europe and North America dominate historic transport emissions, much of the projected growth in emissions is in Asia, according to the World Economic Forum which reckons that highly ambitious policies could cut emissions by 70 per cent – but not to zero.
Operating in 220 countries and territories, Germany-headquartered Deutsche Post DHL Group is one of the largest logistics firms in the world. It also produced 33.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in 2020.
The organisation has pegged its pathway to decarbonisation on reducing annual group carbon dioxide emissions to below 29 million tonnes by 2030 as it attempts to hit zero emissions by 2050. An investment of US$7.6 billion until 2030 will be funnelled into alternative aviation fuels, the expansion of electric vehicles and climate-neutral buildings, the group announced on 22 March.
“Logistics is a key contributor to the global carbon footprint. DHL occupies a big share of global logistics,” said Amrita Khadilkar, regional director, Operations Development, Digitalisation and GoGreen, APAC.
“In order to accelerate the move towards net zero carbon logistics, more work needs to be done to develop solutions within transport,” Khadilkar said. Private sector efforts alone are not enough, governments and policymakers must also buoy decarbonisation efforts.
From burning less, to burning clean
The S-curve charts the firm’s path to net zero logistics emissions.
The early climb on the solid S-curve represents carbon reduction strategies through supply chain efficiencies using existing technology that will enable the firm to burn fewer fossil fuels.
Carbon offsets are used to compensate for the hard-to-abate emissions and bridge the leap to the second dotted line S-curve—which represents the impending usage of new and currently less familiar types of technologies and approaches for carbon reduction—the final leg to net zero.
On this ‘burn clean’ pathway, the company sees the removal of carbon through sustainable fuels and alternative technologies, such as electric vehicles.
The S-curve framework – used to illustrate the typical pattern of start, rapid growth and maturity of technology diffusion as well as the corresponding efficiency improvements across an industry or economy – is one way to guide carbon reduction in logistics. This is achieved by reducing, compensating and removing. [Click to enlarge]. Image: DHL
However, there are several roadblocks to getting transport and logistics firms to burn clean fuels and move closer to net zero. Initial efforts show that firms find it challenging to navigate this road alone without meaningful collaboration.
“Most logistics firms have the know-how for reducing their carbon footprint using their existing technologies and familiar ways of working. But that will only take them so far as per the solid S-curve,” said Professor Emeritus Steven Miller, former vice provost (Research), Singapore Management University.
“To make the required progress in carbon reduction, companies need to jump to the next-generation (dotted line) S-curve enabled by new technology and new ways of working which will enable far greater opportunities for carbon footprint reduction,” he added.
Transport is still largely dependent on fossil fuels and is likely to remain so in the coming decades. Long-distance road freight (large trucks), aviation and shipping are areas from which carbon is particularly difficult to eliminate.
The potential for hydrogen as a fuel, or battery electricity to run planes, ships and large trucks is limited by the range and power required; the size and weight of batteries or hydrogen fuel tanks would be much larger and heavier than current combustion engines.
Currently, the logistics sector has low clean-technology maturity and high costs for such, such as new energy vehicles (NEVs), sustainable fuels, according to DHL. Supporting infrastructure like charging ports for EVs and access to renewable energy is currently lacking in some markets, driving up the cost of sustainable alternatives further. Meanwhile, aviation is still grappling with hitting on a viable low-carbon strategy.
“Some of the sustainable technologies and solutions in the early stages may not be commercially viable or operationally scalable,” acknowledged Khadilkar.
The IEA says that there needs to be deep cuts in fossil fuels to reach the mid-century target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Climate Action 100+, the world’s largest grouping of investors representing US$65 trillion in assets, warned in March that the aviation industry needed to take “urgent action” to align with the world’s climate goal. Its report highlighted the need for a “substantial” increase in sustainable aviation fuel between now and 2030.
Collaboration is key
In a bid to cut the reliance on fossil fuels in its air freight, DHL has set an ambitious goal of using 30 per cent sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) for all air transport by 2030.
Last month, DHL announced one of the largest SAF deals with bp and Neste which have committed to provide 800 million litres until 2026. DHL expects its strategic collaborations to save about two million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over the aviation fuel lifecycle – equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of about 400,000 passenger cars.
Tackling emissions created on land, DHL teamed up with Swedish firm, Volvo Trucks to introduce heavy duty electric delivery trucks for regional transport in Europe. The initiative is buoyed with funding from the country’s innovation agency, Vinnova and energy agency.
The adoption of new fuel technologies, essential to helping firms complete the journey to zero carbon emissions, requires partnering with governments to fund research and development efforts. Public investment in higher-risk programmes can also lead to the development of potentially disruptive technologies for energy applications.
“Government support can improve the rate of adoption of such technologies or solutions,” said Khadilkar. “Government incentives can also enable more research in green technologies and speed up any efforts to bring them to market.”
This would also reduce the cost. While companies like DHL and its industry peers can pilot new green technologies into freight, the cost will have to be shouldered by the consumer to some extent. Customers and companies say they want to live more sustainably but not all are willing to pay a premium to enable it.
Firms can only edge closer to net zero through trial and error. “Governments need to help through more research and development support, staging and coordinating larger scale domestic and international field trials, and by providing incentives for relevant business investments in new technology and capital, as well as in the related needs for human learning and training to work with these new technologies,” Miller said.
The adoption of sustainable alternatives has accelerated in countries where governments are offering financial support. This includes subsides and incentives through tax relief. Government subsidies have helped China become the world’s largest market for EVs. It is expected to exceed the government 2025 target and hit 20 per cent nationwide penetration this year.
“Investing or promoting green infrastructure can enable local businesses’ operations to be greener—through available and affordable renewable energy or developed local EV charging infrastructure, for example. A regulatory push such as inner city emissions regulation, or incentives like tax breaks, subsidies, are other ways we have seen help accelerate sustainability efforts,” said Kevin Jungnitsch, project manager & APAC sustainability lead, DHL Consulting APAC office.
Governments have also proven that they can help reduce emissions created by last-mile delivery.
In Singapore, a nationwide parcel delivery locker network spearheaded by the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore allows e-commerce platforms and their customers collect and return online purchases using parcel lockers scattered across the city. It is expected to reduce the distance travelled for delivery purposes by 44 per cent daily and the city state’s CO2 emissions by up to 50 tonnes a year.
Waste also needs to be addressed. Out of the 1.56 million tonnes of household waste generated in Singapore in 2018, approximately one-third was packaging, according to a study by the World Wide Fund for Nature and DHL Consulting published in November. About 2000,000 e-commerce parcels are delivered daily in the city state, and this is expected to grow by about 50 per cent in the next three years.
In a bid to stem the tide of waste, a six-month pilot scheme was launched last month in Singapore to encourage shoppers to return packaging from their online purchases and encourage retailers to adopt a circular waste model. The pilot is an attempt to tackle the mountains of waste caused by the high volume of online shopping.
Navigating the decarbonisation road map
Supply chains are coming under greater scrutiny as firms and countries accelerate efforts to decarbonise. If the transport and logistics industry fails to respond effectively, it is likely to face significant and rapid regulatory tightening, and ever greater scrutiny from capital markets.
Strong public-private partnerships are needed to accelerate the necessary transition to the new generation of technology and new supporting business processes and ways of working in order to get supply chains to net zero carbon emissions, Miller added.
The private sector and government institutions could follow a simple framework to prompt deeper discussion and action surrounding the acceleration of adopting decarbonising logistics. This begins with a discovery phase where current infrastructure, resources and technologies are evaluated, sustainability challenges assessed, and key areas of focus are prioritised.
Embedding sustainability into corporate governance could help influence the decision-making that flows into the supply chain. This includes measures such as introducing mandatory sustainability requirements around reporting and transparency.
The challenge for governments will be to encourage companies to form robust decarbonisation plans with supporting incentives so that no single player is penalised for taking the harder path to sustainability.
Lastly, companies on the path to net zero need to examine each aspect of decarbonisation and identify where they can follow, share or lead on aspects of the net zero journey. While some firms will be able to distinguish themselves as sustainable leaders in some areas, they will also need to make alliances with public and private stakeholders.
But time is of the essence as capping the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — a target key to avoiding the worst climate impacts — is slipping further out of reach.
“Climate promises and plans must be turned into reality and action now,” said Antonio Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, following a clarion call by hundreds of scientists last month to take action against climate change. “It is time to stop burning our planet, and start investing in the abundant renewable energy all around us.”
The workplace as we know it has evolved dramatically during the Covid-19 pandemic, expanding into our homes and complex digital-physical spaces. As organisations and their employees continue to navigate hybrid working arrangements this year, how can technology help to shape green and conducive workplaces of the future?
Many new innovations are aimed at helping workplaces save energy. While energy efficiency may not be the snazziest of climate solutions, it remains a potent and cost-effective way to slash emissions without major reworks of existing infrastructure. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has projected that low-cost measures, such as better ventilation and LED lighting, if implemented globally, could slash 3.5 gigatonnes worth of carbon emissions a year.
The savings would amount to 40 per cent of the emissions that need to be abated to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. With the increased focus on climate mitigation, energy efficiency solutions for the built sector is now a US$340 billion market globally that is set to grow by over 8 per cent through 2027.
In addition, in Singapore, energy efficiency incentives like the Green Mark Incentive Scheme are encouraging companies to pursue smart, sustainable and predictive solutions in the workplace. Companies are paying closer attention to their carbon footprint to support sustainability goals, and this requires more tools to monitor and optimise utilities consumption.
These tools usually come in the form of building intelligence systems, such as SP Digital’s GET Control. The system uses AI and IoT to optimise and regulate air-conditioning and maximise energy efficiency in real-time, based on changes in occupancy, current weather conditions and forecast data. The smart damper system, for example, divides large open-plan office spaces into micro-zones to enable better air-flow distribution and control. With predictive intelligence working together with all the sensors and smart dampers, data is sent wirelessly to a central control unit that recommends and adjusts the dampers dynamically such that the desired temperatures are met, making the office energy efficient and comfortable.
GET Control’s Dynamic Airflow Balancing in real-time is suitable for brownfield and greenfield projects. Image: SP Digital
These heat maps show how air temperature is regulated by GET Control. Left: Before implementation, there are hot and cold spots in the office. Right: After implentation, the office is evenly cooled. Image: SP Digital
Clement Cheong, SP Digital’s vice president of sales and customer operations, says that GET Control responds to the needs of corporate real estate owners and commercial landlords in Singapore.
“Landlords are seeing more occupants coming into work and at different times,” he says. “They need to adapt their buildings and systems to cope with this change dynamically. For example, they do not need as much cooling or fresh air supply at non-peak or low occupancy periods.”
Moreover, he adds that the pandemic has also made employees even more conscious of indoor environmental quality. “They want to have visibility into IAQ (Indoor Air Quality) and the building’s measures to monitor and improve IAQ. Even though occupants may spend less time in the office, they want a better, healthier indoor experience.”
He explains that currently, building owners or tenants have limited visibility into indoor air quality in offices and limited ability to intelligently control it. Traditional air side control and management technologies tend to be “reactive”, that is, facility managers make adjustments when occupants complain of any indoor thermal discomfort. Because such technologies do not take into account dynamic changes in ambient temperatures, they are not as energy efficient as a system with real-time tracking capabilities like GET Control.
He shares a case study from an educational institution in Singapore, where facility managers were faced with frequent occupant complaints about hot and cold spots in the office. Besides the fact that facility managers had to make time-consuming manual adjustments, the building’s cooling efficiency was poor, resulting in high energy use and carbon emissions. When SP Digital’s GET Control was deployed, the site saw more than 30 per cent airside cooling energy savings, enhanced thermal comfort and indoor air quality for employees, and improved operations and productivity.
On a larger scale, some multinational corporations are leading the way in greening their offices, and their examples might provide insights into the future of the sustainable workplace. One of them is Meta, which operates the social media platform Facebook and aims to achieve a 50 per cent reduction in carbon by 2030. At its 260,000 square-feet office in Singapore, spread over four floors at Marina One Tower, this target has translated into environmental control systems that use the latest in automated sensor technology, which can optimise even the smallest indicators of energy efficiency. Numerous sensors are in place to measure temperature, air, light and motion open spaces, meeting rooms and lifts.
Apart from office management, Meta Singapore also uses technology to assist employees to adopt carbon reducing behaviours, and, while in the workplace, to holistically analyse their carbon footprint across the product supply chain, recycling, water and waste management.
Looking ahead globally, the journey to make buildings more sustainable will be a long one. Currently, the built environment is responsible for nearly 40 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions in the world. According to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the 2020 pandemic caused a drop in the buildings sector carbon emissions, followed by a moderate rebound in 2021, but buildings are not on track to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
In Singapore, energy efficiency remains a core tenet of the city-state’s decarbonisation pathway, even as longer-term solutions such as carbon capture and clean energy imports are being considered for the next few decades. Power generation firms are provided subsidies to upgrade their turbines and software; a similar fund is in place for building owners to buy more efficient air-conditioning systems and install motion sensors that automatically switch off appliances when not needed. Buildings contribute close to 15 per cent of Singapore’s national emissions — the high fraction resulting from the almost complete urbanisation of the island-state.
As part of its efforts to reach net-zero emissions around 2050, the government wants 80 per cent of buildings in Singapore – both old and new – to adopt energy efficiency measures by 2030, up from 50 per cent today.
There is growing awareness among businesses that greening their offices makes economic and environmental sense. The Singapore Building and Construction Authority’s Green Mark Incentive for Existing Buildings – a $100 million fund started to co-sponsor the adoption of energy-efficient technologies in existing buildings – has been fully committed, as has a separate $50 million fund which does the same for small and medium enterprises.
This suggests that more landlords in Singapore understand that the initial outlays of such green investments may be high, but returns in the long run justify the cost, given the changes in expectations of workplace experience, energy efficiency and sustainability in post-pandemic times.
Switching lights off when they are not in use, turning up the temperature on air-conditioning, and saving water – these may seem like small actions, but they are vital to the fight against climate change.
Today, buildings are responsible for nearly 40 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, with their construction and operations contributing 11 per cent and 28 per cent respectively. Efforts to improve their sustainability are not going far enough, and buildings remain “off track” to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 according to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in November.
Managing climate-friendly and energy-efficient buildings is crucial to achieving the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping global warming under 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably under 1.5°C, but there are many challenges.
“Since 2010, rising demand for energy services in buildings – particularly electricity to power cooling equipment, appliances and connected devices – has been outpacing energy efficiency and decarbonisation gains,” the IEA said. “Very high temperatures and prolonged heatwaves set records in many countries, driving up demand for air-conditioning.”
The United Nations, in its latest climate assessment published in February, added that if greenhouse gas emissions remain high, all Asian regions studied in the report – Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan and Vietnam – will be affected by dangerously high heat and humidity levels, sea level rise, flooding and other physical climate risks.
As governments aim to meet ambitious climate goals, they will increasingly look to the building sector to reduce its impact on the environment.
By accelerating digitalisation and embracing the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and other innovative digital technologies, we can achieve smarter, healthier and more sustainable buildings.
Chang Sau Sheong, chief executive, SP Digital
In Singapore, for instance, buildings make up over a third of the country’s electricity consumption. The city-state’s Building and Construction Authority (BCA) notes that the built environment plays a “major role” in helping to achieve the national sustainability agenda to tackle climate change and global warming.
This presents huge opportunities, and challenges, for landlords trying to drive efficiencies in commercial buildings. Technology is key in this effort, according to SP Digital, the digital arm of SP Group, a utilities group in Asia Pacific that focuses on low carbon, smart energy solutions.
“By accelerating digitalisation and embracing the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and other innovative digital technologies, we can achieve smarter, healthier and more sustainable buildings,” said Chang Sau Sheong, chief executive of SP Digital.
Mindset shifts key to green buildings
Setting regulatory benchmarks and fiscal policies has helped to green buildings and boost efficiencies. Technologies and smart systems have also improved sustainability. But changing the behaviour of landlords and tenants could prove to be the biggest hurdle yet.
Dr Clayton Miller, assistant professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS) who leads its Building and Urban Data Science Lab, told Eco-Business that there are many underused green building technologies, including innovative cooling systems that tap on high temperature radiant, desiccant dehumidification and mixed-mode ventilation.
“There are too many decision-makers who want to play it safe and stick with conventional systems, because they are afraid that trying something different will bring problems,” he said.
Some property owners and landlords may be put off by the costs and difficulties of retrofitting older buildings for sustainability. For example, installing green technologies may require space that is scarce in buildings not designed for them.
“With the myriad of green technologies out there, one of the key challenges that building owners may face is simply how and where to start the retrofitting process,” added Associate Professor Kua Harn Wei, of the Department of the Built Environment, NUS School of Design and Environment.
A smart way to achieve sustainability
Tenants may be stymied by a lack of data too, noted Chang. “Most landlords and property owners provide monthly utility bills, which makes it challenging for tenants to know how and where to best focus their efficiency efforts, and track how they are faring,” according to Chang.
A typical office in Singapore expends most – 60 per cent – of its energy on cooling, according to BCA. Lighting takes up 15 per cent of consumption.
GET TenantCare is a smart and automated tenant submetering solution designed to help landlords and property owners efficiently manage tenant utilities consumption. [Click to enlarge] Image: SP Digital.
To give tenants and landlords more granular data to manage their energy and water use, SP Digital created Green Energy Tech (GET) TenantCare, a smart and automated tenant submetering solution. Tenants and landlords can get visibility of their utilities consumption in granularity of 30-minute intervals, unlocking more ways to save electricity and water. The platform not only increases operational efficiency, but can improve tenant engagement that will drive sustainability efforts, Chang said.
As a tenant, for instance, you can better understand how you use electricity, get alerted to unusual usage earlier, find out which of your equipment is using a lot of energy, whether through faults or inefficiency, and make changes to lower your energy consumption.
“If you’re a landlord, you can use our solution to automatically calculate your tenants’ energy use intensity, based on their units’ energy usage and gross floor area. You can identify which tenants are using more electricity than expected and engage with them to persuade them to adopt more energy-efficient equipment or habits,” Chang said.
Smart technologies have other advantages. With GET TenantCare’s automated meter readings, landlords do not have to deploy manpower to check on and read the meters. This also eliminates human errors in the readings.
Smart building management systems, connected to motion and other occupancy sensors and weather forecasting systems, can automatically adjust air-conditioning temperatures, switch off unneeded lights, and do more to save electricity and water while maintaining comfort for occupants.
Promoting greener behaviours
With insights from smart technologies leading to quick wins in energy and water savings, landlords and tenants may be more motivated to continue on their sustainability journey.
“If people have good experiences trying out sustainable behaviours, they are likely to repeat them and form green habits over time,” Dr Sonny Rosenthal, cluster director of smart and sustainable building technologies at the Energy Research Institute at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), told Eco-Business.
Other novel systems and ideas could enable tenants and landlords to work in tandem to slash the carbon footprint of the buildings they occupy.
SP Digital’s GET Engaged solution is a digital dashboard that provides updates on buildings’ electricity and water use, and the resulting carbon emissions. When displayed in lobbies and other public areas, the information could spur tenants to make more sustainable choices.
Equipping people with relevant skills is essential too. Last year, the Singapore government launched the Sustainability in Singapore programme, which trains people from organisations to be green ambassadors.
This includes teaching them how to design effective sustainability campaigns to persuade their colleagues and other occupants in their buildings to be more environmentally friendly.
BCA chief executive Kelvin Wong explained: “As a building user myself, we tend to think that staying in green buildings alone is sufficient. But this is not true. Practising sustainable behaviour within building premises is equally important to make the most of green buildings.”
“Hand in hand, both green buildings and sustainable user behaviour would translate to lower carbon emissions, with the added advantage of monetary savings,” he added.
The BCA has also created “green lease” toolkits to guide landlords and tenants in crafting mutually-agreed-upon, sustainability-related agreements for office and retail buildings. These would set out objectives for how the building is to be improved, managed and occupied to reduce its impact on the environment.
Greener buildings go beyond providing environmental and economic benefits, Chang noted. Greener buildings can also enhance occupants’ health and overall well-being.
It has been another record year for renewable energy, despite the Covid-19 pandemic and rising costs for raw materials around the world, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
About 290GW of new renewable energy generation capacity, mostly in the form of wind turbines and solar panels, has been installed around the world this year, beating the previous record last year. On current trends, renewable energy generating capacity will exceed that of fossil fuels and nuclear energy combined by 2026.
New climate and energy policies in many countries around the world have driven the growth, with many governments setting out higher ambitions on cutting greenhouse gas emissions before and at the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow last month.
However, this level of growth is still only about half that required to meet net zero carbon emissions by mid-century.
Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said: “This year’s record renewable energy additions are yet another sign that a new global energy economy is emerging. The high commodity and energy prices we are seeing today pose new challenges for the renewable industry, but elevated fossil fuel prices also make renewables even more competitive.”
According to the IEA report, published on Wednesday, renewables will account for about 95% of the increase in global power-generation capacity from now to the end of 2026, with solar power alone providing about half of the increase.
Raw material prices have risen as the world has emerged from the Covid pandemic and on the back of the energy price rises around the world. These price increases have cancelled out some of the cost falls of recent years in the renewable sector. If they continue next year the cost of wind power will return to levels last seen in 2015, and two to three years of cost falls in solar power will be wiped out.
Heymi Bahar, lead author of the report, said that commodity prices were not the main obstacles to growth, however. Wind and solar would still be cheaper than fossil fuels in most areas, he noted. Permitting was the main barrier to new wind energy projects around the world, and policy measures were needed to expand use of solar power for consumers and industry.
“We need a gear change to meet net zero,” he said. “We have already seen a very important gear change in recent years but we need to move up another gear now. It is possible, we have the tools. Governments need to show more ambition, not just on targets but on policy measures and plans.”
China installed the most new renewable energy capacity this year, and is now expected to reach 1,200GW of wind and solar capacity in 2026, four years earlier than its target of 2030. China is the world’s biggest carbon emitter, but the government was reluctant at Cop26 to commit to the strengthening of its emissions-cutting targets, which many observers had hoped for.
China is targeting a peak in emissions by 2030, which many analysts say is much too late if the world is to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the Paris agreement target that was the focus of the Cop26 talks.
Birol said China’s rapid expansion of renewable energy suggested the country could reach an emissions peak “well before 2030”.
India, the world’s third-biggest emitter, also experienced strong growth in renewable energy capacity in the past year, but its target – set out at Cop26 – of reaching net zero by 2070 is also regarded as too weak by many. Birol said: “The growth of renewables in India is outstanding, supporting the government’s newly announced goal of reaching 500GW of renewable power capacity by 2030 and highlighting India’s broader potential to accelerate its clean energy transition.”
As pressure ramps-up to drastically shrink the carbon footprint of the world’s cities, developers and architects have been tinkering with the recipe for the type of materials that goes into a building. City-planners are banking on technology to make cheaper and greener steel and concrete, to drive down the hefty emissions of built infrastructure.
Building and construction are responsible for 39 per cent of all carbon emissions in the world, according to the International Energy Agency. Concrete, the primary component for most built infrastructure, is responsible for a huge amount of greenhouse gas emissions. The five billion tonnes of cement produced each year account for eight per cent of the world’s man-made carbon dioxide emissions. It would rank third for its emissions if it was a country. Then there is steel — whose production accounts for around seven per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
As countries look to slash their emissions, hard-to-abate sectors like construction are facing more heat with governments joining hands and forming coalitions to signal that, moving forward, they will shift to buy low-carbon steel and concrete for public construction.
At the COP26 landmark climate summit in Glasgow, the governments of the United Kingdom, India, Germany, Canada and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), under a new coalition named the Industrial Deep Decarbonisation Initiative (IDDI), pledged to support the use of low-carbon materials in building construction. “If you make it, we will buy it,” said the five nations in a statement.
The member governments of the IDDI plan to reveal interim targets by mid-2022, to better align their procurement plans with new net-zero goals for the public construction sector. The pledge also includes requirements for members to disclose the carbon embodied in major public construction projects by 2025, said the UK COP presidency in a press release.
Within the next three years, the IDDI aims to have at least 10 countries commit to purchasing low-carbon concrete and steel.
Large steelmakers clean up their act
The public procurement of steel and concrete in the five nations currently represents between 25 to 40 per cent of the domestic market for such materials. Industry stakeholders said that the pledge is a clear market signal from some of the world’s largest steel and concrete buyers believing that it will create green demand across the supply chains of the building sector.
China, India and Japan are the world’s top steel producing countries. Image: World Steel Association
“Global construction accounts for 39 per cent of total global emissions, with buildings equivalent to the size of Paris being built every week. There is now a critical and narrow window for sector transformation,” said Jo da Silva, global director of sustainable development at Arup, a London-based engineering, architecture and city planning consultancy.
“Governments need to make companies feel confident about investing now in the processes of making low-carbon steel and concrete,” she said.
China, the world’s largest steel and concrete producer, is missing from the IDDI list. However, its top steelmaker, the China Baowu Steel Group Corp., formed its own global alliance with other steel producers last Thursday, in a bid to gather resources and exchange information in the development of low-carbon metallurgical technology.
Known as the Global Low-Carbon Metallurgical Innovation Alliance, it has more than 60 members from 15 countries. These include leading global steelmakers and mining enterprises such as Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal, German conglomerate Thyssenkrupp and Melbourne’s BHP Group. About 20 Chinese steel companies are also part of the alliance.
Baowu has committed to carbon neutrality by 2050, a decade earlier than the Chinese government’s national target.
China’s Baowu Steel Group Corp., the world’s largest steelmaker, initiated the formation of a global alliance of steel producers last Thursday, in a bid to gather resources and exchange information in the development of low-carbon metallurgical technology. [Click to enlarge] Image: World Steel Association
Neil Martin, chief executive for property developer Lendlease’s European business, told Eco-Business that the commitment from steel producers and national authorities to seize decarbonisation opportunities is a potential game-changer for the building sector.
Need for sharper approach on embodied carbon
Lendlease currently uses a large amount of steel – what amounts to a volume sufficient for the building of 60 Eiffel Towers per annum – for its global projects. Substituting the material will make a difference for the environment, given how dirty the steel industry is.
The developer targets to be completely net zero by 2040.
“Property developers have made progress in reducing the operational carbon emissions of buildings, but here’s the rub: almost 90 per cent of building emissions are Scope 3 – indirect emissions from the production of building materials along the value chain. We still have to buy a lot of steel, concrete, aluminium and glass, but we do not have control over their production and supply lines,” said Martin.
Currently, much of the push towards greener buildings is devoted to minimising the energy needed to keep them running, but the situation is changing. During COP26, architects, mayors and property developers have been calling for green building certifications that take embodied emissions from materials into account in order to meet net-zero carbon goals.
Traditionally, steel is made by heating and melting iron ore in a blast furnace at high temperature. A by-product of the chemical reaction that takes place is carbon dioxide. Now, there are several other production methods that are cleaner, involving renewables and green hydrogen. These processes, however, are at various stages of development.
Professor Lam Khee Poh, dean of the National University of Singapore’s School of Design and Environment, and its Provost’s Chair Professor of Architecture and Building, said that strong signalling from national actors to industry matters and governments need to go beyond changing their public procurement models.
We need not and should not regard our predominantly steel and concrete jungles as the norm for cities.
Professor Lam Khee Poh, Dean of NUS School of Design and Environment, Singapore
“It is not just that the public sector is often a major customer. Yes, there are economies of scale to be gained, but more importantly, the demonstration of leadership from governments has an impact on the enactment of building codes and standards that will pave the way for a green transition,” he said.
Lam, a strong advocate for net-zero cities, said that building industries around the world typically work to existing regulations and only a handful will adopt voluntary standards to advance the field.
According to COP26 reports, between 2015 and 2020, 19 additional countries have building energy codes in place. However, most construction will still take place in countries without such codes.
“The building sector has historically been fragmented. It will take a revolutionary effort to develop a broadly accepted and comprehensive method of calculating embodied carbon that can be effectively and efficiently implemented in the design process for change to happen,” Lam said.
Better pricing for low-carbon building materials
In Southeast Asia, there is also a need to overcome the biased perception that concrete is cheap, which leads to the inertia to replace concrete use in buildings. The low cost of concrete is mainly due to the use of cheap labour in developing countries, and does not take into account the spillover costs when the production of concrete creates externalities – negative impacts on the environment, said Lam.
Referring to a recently-published McKinsey report, Lam argued that products such as carbon-cured concrete, if positioned differently, can potentially give companies an edge among environmentally conscious buyers and greater pricing power.
Timber as an alternative material should be considered too, especially for tropical cities. “We need not and should not regard our predominantly steel and concrete jungles as the norm for cities,” he said.
Yvonne Soh, executive director of the Singapore Green Building Council, told Eco-Business that the council has recently observed that there is no cost premium for using greener concrete in buildings in Singapore, based on current standards.
Soh also noted that lower-carbon options, whether concrete or steel, are already available.
“In fact, there is a lot of interest among private sector players and many are ready to take the leap to try out new materials. We do not have a lack of willing early adopters,” she said. “The key issue is regulatory barriers, because there are basic safety requirements governing the usage of structural materials in a building.”
“Building professionals must also be comfortable with using the material,” she said, drawing parallels to how governments have educated the public on the safety of the Covid-19 vaccines before they pushed for widespread adoption. “It’s not just about sticking some wallpaper on the wall. We have to ensure that [the use of low-carbon materials] does not compromise the building’s structural safety.”
The Singapore Green Building Council now conducts courses on sustainable supply chains for buildings, to encourage firms and stakeholders in the built environment sector to address environmental gaps in their sourcing and reporting. The council also initiated a pledge for the built environment industry to act on embodied carbon. As of November 2021, more than 75 organisations have signed up.
Judging from how often the H-word came up during this week’s marathon dialogues held to discuss the energy transition in Asia, it is clear that hydrogen is having its big moment.
Even as players in the region acknowledge that it might take some time before their investments in low-carbon hydrogen pay off, many are pinning their hopes on the hydrogen economy redrawing the energy map of tomorrow.
At two separate conferences this week, high-level representatives from energy institutes based in Japan and Australia were especially bullish on the prospects of hydrogen. Both countries are leading the charge in Asia to roll out technological solutions to promote the alternative fuel as part of their energy transition strategies.
Speaking at the APAC Energy Conversations, a virtual event organised as part of the Energy Industries Council (EIC)’s biannual flagship conference, Miranda Taylor, who leads National Energy Resources Australia (NERA), said that her organisation is particularly focused on “the hydrogen journey”.
Australia’s energy institutes are now focused on helping the island continent build a renewable hydrogen industry, said Miranda Taylor, chief executive of NERA (top right in picture) at the recent EIC-APAC Energy Conversations. NERA is also working with authorities to ensure that the decommissioning of coal in Asia is up to standard. [Click to enlarge] Source: GE Gas Power
NERA is a non-profit working to support the island continent’s energy transition, by coordinating the provision of seed funding for companies and innovators. “Within the industry, we all know that the hydrogen story is a complex one. It is also an ‘unproven’ story, because there are doubts about how clean the fuel will finally be. Nonetheless, considerable investments in hydrogen are pouring in,” she said.
Professor Tatsuya Terazawa, chairman and chief executive of Japan’s Institute of Energy Economics, similarly believes that green hydrogen – hydrogen generated from renewables – is the answer if Asia is seeking a “pragmatic approach”.
Not cheap nor lucrative yet
The region, unfortunately, cannot enjoy the growth potential of solar and wind power, due to its land and weather limitations, said Terazawa, at a Singapore International Energy Week (SIEW) dialogue session on Monday. “There are also no transmission lines connecting Asia with regions rich in these renewables. But we can innovate and find a way to lower the costs of transporting hydrogen and it will alter the calculus of the energy transition in Asia,” he said.
It remains unclearhow clean or lucrative hydrogen can be. Hydrogen has been the promised fuel of the future since the 1970s but there have been many false starts in the past decade. More than 95 per cent of the hydrogen used today, commonly known as ‘grey hydrogen’, is extracted from natural gas. The process of manufacturing hydrogen involves electrolysing water to separate hydrogen atoms from oxygen and is hugely water and energy-intensive.
An overview map of where different countries are at developing a hydrogen strategy. Investment in hydrogen production projects worldwide is increasing and the number of countries that already have strategies for the use of the fuel has increased from just three in 2019 to 17 today. Image: World Energies Council
Over the past few years, the industry has been turning to low-carbon energy sources such as renewables and nuclear power to extract hydrogen, but it is still prohibitively expensive. Within the region, countries like Singapore are opting to develop subsea cables to import renewable energy from its neighbours, rather than hedge bets on hydrogen.
The International Energy Agency (IEA), in the Global Hydrogen Review, its new annual publication focused on tracking progress in hydrogen production and demand, estimates that putting the hydrogen sector on a path consistent with global net zero emissions by 2050 requires US$1.2 trillion in investments by 2030.
To curb climate change, about US$90 billion of public money needs to be channelled into clean energy innovation worldwide as quickly as possible – with around half of it dedicated to hydrogen-related technology, the report said.
Within the industry, we all know that the hydrogen story is a complex one. It is also an ‘unproven’ story, because there are doubts about how clean the fuel will finally be.
Miranda Taylor, CEO, National Energy Resources Australia (NERA)
In Asia, Japan is spearheading the Hydrogen Energy Ministerial (HEM) meeting, a multilateral initiative organised to create consensus on hydrogen-related collaborations. According to the Institute of Energy Economics, for the region to realise net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, annual costs could go up to 2.9 per cent of each country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
“It is difficult to get a region that is the growth centre of the world to give up on growth,” said Terazawa.
Japan is banking on transforming hydrogen into ammonia to make it much less expensive to carry in the absence of transmission pipelines, and Terazawa thinks it is the right way forward. To transport hydrogen as a liquid, it needs to be cooled to a temperature of -252 °C, while ammonia can be carried as a liquid at just -33 °C, explained Terazawa.
“It will be the cheapest option for Asia if it wants to decarbonise,” he said.
Where will the gold rush lead to?
Referring to Malaysia’s energy ministry’s announcement this week that it will limit renewable energy exports to Singapore, Andrew Bedford, director of energy transition at US-based consultancy Jacobs, said that governments in Asia are feeling the heat to meet their net-zero targets. This might fuel a more nationalistic mindset when it comes to the way they think about renewables and energy, he said.
“At the same time, it means that [countries that used to be] major energy importers now have an opportunity to invest in emerging areas of opportunities, diversify their energy mix and own a share of a new market,” said Bedford.
Describing the surge of investments in hydrogen-related infrastructure as a “green gold rush”, Bedford said that bigger players are now snapping up “the best areas of land” that are suited to such development.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that hydrogen will become an important part of the Net-Zero Emissions (NZE) scenario, though the fuel forms only one part of the puzzle. [Click to enlarge] Image: IEA
In terms of coming up with comprehensive hydrogen plans, Southeast Asia still has a lot of catching up to do, said Bedford. The number of countries with hydrogen strategies has increased from just three in 2019 to 17 today, but none are from the region.
Singapore is working on one right now, though it is also taking a cautious approach in doing so. The island state announced on Monday that it will be awarding S$55 million to research projects that are focused on improving the technical and economic feasibility of low-carbon technologies, particularly hydrogen and carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), to enable local deployment in the future.
By 2035, Singapore aims to import up to 30 per cent of its power supply by 2035 in a bid to diversify the gas-dependent nation’s energy mix with renewables.
Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong, delivering a speech at SIEW, spoke about low-carbon hydrogen’s potential to “be a game-changer for Singapore’s energy transition”.
Speaking at the opening of Singapore International Energy Week (SIEW), Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong said that the move to import low-carbon energy will be a “key needle mover” in Singapore’s energy transition in the near to medium term. Image: SIEW
For hydrogen to be deployed meaningfully, especially for the power sector, global supply chains and proper infrastructure for hydrogen need to be established and the costs of hydrogen transport, storage and use need to be competitive, said Gan.
Consigning coal to history
Experts at the energy dialogues said that while the viability of green hydrogen is being hammered out, gas is likely to play a role as a bridging fuel in the region’s energy transition.
Shantanu Som, engineering director for GE Gas Power, advocates for a more measured approach. “Companies are getting mixed signals on where they should be headed for. On one hand, Australia is aspiring to be the hydrogen hub for Asia and the government is taking very bold steps. On the other hand, you have China, which has a five-year plan but is just putting small stepping stones in-between in a very cautious manner,” he said.
China’s new road map, launched on Tuesday, pledged to hit peak greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the decade but stopped short of firm commitments to reduce reliance on coal.
When leaders gather at the COP26 summit in Glasgow this weekend, hydrogen is unlikely to prominently feature on their discussion agenda. The world needs to work on phasing out coal first, said energy experts.
Organisations working with authorities on pushing for the energy transition will need to have the capacity to make sure that coal decommissioning is done to the highest standards, said Taylor.
“The Asia-Pacific region, including Australia, has a considerable amount of offshore oil and gas infrastructure, which will need to be decommissioned or repurposed in the next decades. For a just transition to happen, we have to be realistic and make sure that workers are retrained, that they will be equipped with different skills and capabilities to work in a different industry,” she said.
The global pipeline of new coal plant projects has shrunk 76 per cent since 2015, a new analysis shows, putting many countries in a good position to carry out UN Secretary General António Guterres’s call for no new coal investment.
“The economics of coal have become increasingly uncompetitive in comparison to renewable energy, while the risk of stranded assets has increased. Governments can now act with confidence to commit to ‘no new coal’,” reports climate think tank E3G in its analysis.
Based on findings by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), worldwide coal use will need to fall by around four-fifths during the current decade to keep average global warming below 1.5°C. The International Energy Agency says advanced economies will need to cut off coal by 2030, followed by a full global cessation by 2040.
For this to happen, “a pivotal first step is ensuring no new coal-fired power stations are built,” say Leo Roberts, E3G’s research manager for fossil fuel transitions, and Christine Shearer, program director at Global Energy Monitor, in a guest post for Carbon Brief.
To date, say the authors, 44 world governments have committed to stopping new construction of coal projects, and another 33 have cancelled their project pipelines. Seven other countries have no plans to develop new coal at all.
Only five OECD countries are considering building new coal, and projects in four of those five are not expected to come through. For the fifth country—Turkey—“fears of the impact of a potential European carbon border adjustment mechanism and climate-exacerbated wildfires are increasing pressure to cancel the country’s remaining pipeline and explore alternatives,” says Roberts and Shearer.
In China, which accounts for more than half of the world’s planned coal projects, coal capacity has scaled back 74 per cent since 2015. All the other non-OECD countries have reduced their collective pre-construction pipeline by 77 per cent.
In all, “the shift in coal dynamics means that fewer and fewer countries have new coal plants under development—and an increasing list are making this into a formal ‘no new coal’ commitment,” the authors write.
Just 37 countries have remaining pre-construction pipeline projects, and 16 of them only have one project each. In all, more than four-fifths of the planned coal plants can be found in just six countries: China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Turkey, and Bangladesh.
“Because the global distribution of proposed power plants is highly concentrated, firm commitments to ‘no new coal’ by just these six countries would remove 82 per cent of the world’s remaining pipeline, should such pledges be forthcoming,” say Roberts and Shearer.
Although they host a concentrated percentage of the world’s remaining pre-construction coal projects, several within this handful of countries are especially vulnerable to climate change, despite historically contributing only modestly to global emissions. The report from E3G calls on the international community to support these countries in moving away from coal through public and private clean energy finance.
“COP 26 will be a key moment for OECD and EU members and China to demonstrate that such support is available now for all countries that are willing to shift from dirty coal to clean energy,” says E3G in its report.
This story was published with permission from The Energy Mix.
Australia has the potential to develop a substantial offshore wind energy industry from scratch, with abundant resources available near existing electricity substations across the continent, according to a new report.
The Blue Economy Cooperative Research Centre said Australia was yet to capitalise on significant offshore wind capacity despite the International Energy Agency nominating it as one of the “big three” likely sources of renewable energy globally alongside solar and onshore wind.
It found more than 2,000GW of offshore wind turbines – far more than Australia’s existing generation capacity – could be installed in areas within 100km of substations. Environmentally restricted and low-wind areas were excluded from the assessment.
Sites that have traditionally been electricity generation hubs, such as the Hunter and Latrobe valleys and Gladstone, were found to be particularly suitable as they were close to transmission grids and had strong offshore winds at times when solar and onshore wind output was limited.
Dr Chris Briggs, research director at the University of Technology Sydney’s Institute for Sustainable Futures and a contributor to the report, said there had been a view in the energy industry that offshore wind energy would not play as significant a role in Australia as some other countries due to the availability of much cheaper solar and onshore wind energy.
He said that was starting to change as people recognised the scale of the clean energy transition required and what offshore wind could deliver. “The combination of the scale, falling cost and the development of floating wind turbines means it has come into focus,” he said.
Briggs said offshore wind could be built on a much larger scale than solar or onshore wind – up to 2GW for a project – and could generate more electricity per megawatt of capacity. “This could be very valuable in the late 2020s and 2030s as we see coal plants retiring,” he said.
The project’s leader, Dr Mark Hemer of the CSIRO, said offshore wind could be particularly important under “energy superpower” scenarios that involved mass electrification of industry and transport and hydrogen production for domestic use and export.
The report said there were 10 offshore wind projects with a combined capacity of 25GW in development in Australia, all at an early stage. The most advanced is the $10bn Star of the South – a 2.2GW windfarm planned for between 7km and 25km offshore in South Gippsland.
The federal government is yet to finalise the regulatory framework necessary for an offshore wind industry to develop. The report said it could help develop an industry by supporting the technology through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, incorporating it into planning for the national hydrogen strategy, and considering allocation of marine space in commonwealth waters.
The work was partly funded by the maritime, electrical and manufacturing unions. They called on federal and state governments to take immediate steps to support the development of an industry, saying it had the potential to create jobs for workers in fossil fuel industries.
Paddy Crumlin, the national secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia, said the development of an offshore wind industry would give seafarers and offshore oil and gas workers an opportunity “to transition into the important work of delivering Australia’s clean energy future”.
Offshore wind is more advanced in countries with limited capacity to develop renewable energy on land. The report said 2030 targets for offshore wind energy totalled about 200GW, including 60GW in the European Union, 40GW in Britain and 12 GW in South Korea. Japan plans to reach 45GW by 2040.
A report by BloombergNEF and Bloomberg Philanthropies this week found Australia increased support for fossil fuel by 48% between 2015 and 2019, the largest rise in the G20.
It said most of the support had been delivered in the form of tax breaks to oil and gas projects. They included tax capex deductions for mining and petroleum operations, fuel-tax credits and reductions in fuel-excise rates and offset schemes. Australia “lost out on nearly US$6bn in foregone taxes” over the five years, it said.
The Bloomberg report did not include the Morrison government’s support for a “gas-fired recovery” from the pandemic. The government dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars to gas projects in the May budget, including up to $600m for a new power plant in the Hunter Valley that experts say is not needed.
