The World Economic Forum & Davos - Setting the agenda on fossil fuels, global regulations, etc.

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

Renewable Energy Stocks See Record Investments

By Haley Zaremba - Jan 11, 2021, 2:00 PM CST

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Renewable-Energy-Stocks-See-Record-Investments.html

As a global community, we’re known for a long time now that it’s imperative for the worldwide economy to decarbonize rapidly and in earnest if we have any chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. But as clear as this message has been and as loud as the pleading from the scientific community and elite international consortiums like The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has gotten in recent years, global leaders and the private sector have been excruciatingly slow to lead the charge toward a more climate-friendly world.   It turns out that maybe all we needed was a global apocalypse to finally catalyze the global clean energy transition. The novel coronavirus dealt such a sweeping interruption to the economic status quo and the monumental momentum of business as usual that, for the first time since the industrial revolution, the world was able to take a breather and make a real attempt to realign our industrial and economic trajectory. 

Organizations as respected as the World Economic Forum have advocated using the pandemic’s disruption as an opportunity to create a “new energy order” and a “great reset.” International agencies such as the United Nations, the International Energy Agency, and the European Union, are all drafting or already imposing green stimulus plans. Even the private sector is getting on board--a surprising number of blue-chip companies are pushing for a green energy stimulus. But, until now, the United States has been resistant to follow the sweeping transition toward cleaner, greener practices. 

Now, with a new administration coming into power and the Democratic party taking control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, it looks like the United States might finally be on track to take a place at the helm of the decarbonization movement. Already, the news of the blue wave solidified by this week’s runoff elections in Georgia has “stoked a record flood of cash into renewable-energy exchange-traded funds” according to a Bloomberg report released on Friday. 

Back in April, at what proved to be just the very beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, Oilprice reported that “the coronavirus pandemic is one of the biggest and unprecedented seismic shifts in the global economy that we’ve ever seen in modern history, and it’s just getting started.” That statement has proven to be a fortuitous one, and the upcoming “financial revolution” described in that article is now well underway as the Environment, Sustainability, and Governance (ESG) investment trend is proving to be a lasting one. 

Just this week, “the $6.2 billion iShares Global Clean Energy ETF (ticker ICLN) lured a record $691 million of inflows so far this week, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Meanwhile, the $4.6 billion Invesco Solar ETF (ticker TAN) is on track to take in nearly $370 million this week -- another all-time haul,” Bloomberg’s Friday report detailed. 

Investors are banking on the hope that with the combined forces of Joe Biden at the helm of the federal government and Democrats ruling Congress, green energy is going to get a huge boost from a green stimulus package as well as new and supportive policy measures, “boosting the appeal of ‘clean’ funds.”

The boost to clean funds, of course, is not universally celebrated. Fossil fuel tycoons and out-of-work laborers in the shale patch fear that the focus on developing green energy alternatives and diverting funds to ESG will come at their expense. But there is a strong argument to be made that even in West Texas, clean energy is the way forward and the key to job creation. Peak oil is upon us, and fossil fuels may never bounce back to their former glory. Various opinions from industry experts indicate that Texas would be better off placing its hopes in solar energy or renewable energy storage than in a revival of the shale play. 

Furthermore, regardless of the current administration or the economic bottom line in the short-term, climate change will be very, very expensive for all of us. A 2018 report by scientists within the Trump administration found that global warming will cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars each and every year, and that’s not even accounting for the massive impact on human and ecological health. Letting go of allegiance to the shale revolution is not only a smart environmental move, the data shows that it's also a great financial move regardless of your politics. 

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

Are Clean Energy Stocks In Bubble Territory?

By Alex Kimani - Jan 11, 2021, 4:00 PM CST

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Are-Clean-Energy-Stocks-In-Bubble-Territory.html

[SPECIFIC STOCKS ARE MENTIONED AND THEIR RATING]

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

Renewables To Dominate New U.S. Power Capacity In 2021

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Jan 12, 2021, 9:00 AM CST

https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/Renewables-To-Dominate-New-US-Power-Capacity-In-2021.html

Renewable energy, mostly solar and wind, are set to account for more than two-thirds of the new electricity generation capacity that the United States will install this year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its latest inventory of electricity generators on Monday.

A total of 39.7 gigawatts (GW) of new electricity generating capacity is expected to start commercial operation in 2021, with solar photovoltaics (PV) accounting for 39 percent of the new capacity. Wind power generation capacity will represent 31 percent of the newly installed U.S. electricity generating capacity this year, followed at a distant third by natural gas with 16 percent of new generation.

The capacity of utility-scale battery storage is set to more than quadruple, as 4.3 GW of battery power capacity additions are scheduled to come online by the end of 2021. Battery storage will account for 11 percent of all U.S. planned capacity additions this year. About 3 percent, or 1.1 GW, of the new capacity will come from the new nuclear reactor at the Vogtle power plant in Georgia.

Solar installations of 15.4 GW are set to beat this year the 2020 record of 12 GW, according to EIA estimates. Four states will host more than half of the new utility-scale solar PV capacity in 2021—Texas, Nevada, California, and North Carolina.

In wind power additions, Texas and Oklahoma will account for more than half of the new wind capacity in 2021, while more than 70 percent of the planned 6.6 GW natural gas-fired capacity additions will be in Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

Despite market uncertainty and construction delays in the pandemic, U.S. renewable power capacity installations surged to a record in 2020.

Both the solar and wind power markets registered record capacity additions in 2020, while electricity generation from those renewable energy sources saw double-digit increases amid a decline in the overall U.S. power generation market due to reduced consumption in the pandemic.   

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

Big Tech is part of the Oligarchy moving the world towards "The Great Reset", where individuals are a commodity, something to monitor and manipulate...a newer age of covert and overt slavery.  Only the uniformed are whisked away in singing unison towards the goals of "The Great Reset" and that CO2 is the enemy.

Google Looks To Turn Data Centers Into Energy Storage

By Haley Zaremba - Jan 12, 2021, 3:00 PM CST

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Google-Looks-To-Turn-Data-Centers-Into-Energy-Storage.html

When most people imagine the internet, the last thing that comes to mind is huge, on-the-ground facilities and thousands of miles of wires across the ocean floor, but even the digital age depends entirely on material things. Even the cloud, whose very name suggests an ethereal, floating datasphere free from servers, towers, and wires, is housed in data centers around the world.  And those data centers require energy--a LOT of energy. As more and more people get connected to the internet around the world and spend increasingly lengthy amounts of time online, that means that the internet’s energy and ecological footprints are massive and growing. Especially now, when so many people around the world are working online all day before retiring to a relaxing evening online before sleeping next to a phone that is still awake and connected to the internet to receive all those emails and notifications while you dream, the energy usage of the data warehouses that run the internet has become astronomical.

“Google estimates that each search emits roughly 0.2 grams of CO2 into the atmosphere, due to the energy it takes to power the cables, routers, and servers that make Google work,” Wired reported back in 2018. “Watching or uploading a video to YouTube is worse for the environment: 1 gram of carbon for every 10 minutes of viewing.” All of those clicks really add up: internet companies emit as much carbon dioxide as the airline industry--and that was before COVID-19 grounded most planes.

Google, a company that has long taken an interest in curbing climate change and supporting green energy tech, is now hard at work trying to reverse the public perception of its massive data centers’ insatiable hunger for energy. You may have noticed that Google proudly boasts on their homepage that they’ve been carbon neutral since 2007--a major accomplishment considering the amount of carbon emissions they need to offset. So far, they’ve been achieving that by purchasing renewable energy credits and investing in solar and wind energies.

But carbon neutral is a far cry from carbon-free. Currently, Google relies on diesel-powered backup generators to keep their data centers running, a decidedly emissions-intensive model. For as loud as Google has been about their green energy innovations and carbon neutrality, however, the company has been mum about exactly how often their diesel-powered generators run and how much carbon dioxide they are emitting. But climate news outlet Grist reports that, according to Google’s own estimates, “worldwide, there are more than 20 gigawatts of diesel generating capacity in service across the data center industry, which is the equivalent of nearly 63 million solar photovoltaic panels — enough to power more than 833,000 homes for a month.”

In spite of these less-than-stellar stats, Google aims to be carbon-free 2030. One step toward that ambitious target: converting one of its massive server farms into one insanely big battery. Converting the diesel-powered backup system into a battery-powered model will have a two-fold advantage: a much smaller carbon footprint and the potential to store renewable energy when the batteries are not otherwise being used before distributing that energy to the local grid. 

Google is already in the process of testing this method out at its data center in Saint-Ghislain, Belgium. If this new venture is a success, according to Google’s own vice president of global data centers Joe Kava, this new hybrid model of data centers that moonlight as renewable energy storage facilities could soon become “critical components in carbon-free energy systems.”

The innovation is timely: as the global emissions crisis becomes ever more urgent and more dire and Big Tech receives more attention and outrage from environmental activists, a solution to the energy-guzzling nature of data centers will be a huge boon to the planet as well as to Google’s reputation.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

 

Edited January 13, 2021 by Tom Nolan

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

Big Tech Cleans House! - Everything We Want You To Think

(11 minutes of REAL NEWS...and it is a sad joke)  The Technocrats want to control mankind.

 

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

Most people do not have a clue as to how Big Tech evolved... ...and the intent is for a Global Technocracy to control the population ("population control").  Watch this or be in the dark as they suck our lives away.

TRANSCRIPT with SOURCE LINKS - https://www.corbettreport.com/siliconvalley/

Once a sleepy farming region, Silicon Valley is now the hub of a global industry that is transforming the economy, shaping our political discourse, and changing the very nature of our society. So what happened? How did this remarkable change take place? Why is this area the epicenter of this transformation? Discover the dark secrets behind the real history of Silicon Valley and the Big Tech giants in this important edition of The Corbett Report.

(43 minutes)

 

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

8 minute video

The Weird DARPA/Facebook "Coincidence" You Never Heard About

 

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

16 minutes

The Weaponization of Social Media

 

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

15 minutes

The Information-Industrial Complex

 

 

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

58 minutes

Data is the New Oil

 

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

16 minutes

The Weaponization of Information in the War of Terror

 

 

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

Wind Power Overtakes Coal In Texas For The First Time Ever

By Haley Zaremba - Jan 13, 2021, 4:00 PM CST

https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Wind-Power/Wind-Power-Overtakes-Coal-In-Texas-For-The-First-Time-Ever.html

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

Biden's Boom: The $30 Trillion ESG Sector Is Set To Explode In 2021

By Dave Petersen - Jan 13, 2021, 7:00 PM CST

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Bidens-Boom-The-30-Trillion-ESG-Sector-Is-Set-To-Explode-In-2021.html

[ARTICLE DESCRIBES THE ESG TREND AND PLUGS DIFFERENT STOCKS]

Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) refers to the three central factors in measuring the sustainability and societal impact of an investment in a company or business. These criteria help to better determine the future financial performance of companies (return and risk).

[specinho + 467]

On 1/12/2021 at 6:50 AM, Tom Nolan said:

VIDEO DESCRIPTION

The orchestration of humanity's demise goes by many names: The Great Reset, Agenda 21, Agenda 2030, the 4th Industrial Revolution and The New World Order, . No matter the name, the goal remains. It is the complete servitude of the world’s population under the guise of righteousness. The elites will stop at nothing to manipulate and change the minds of people, having them believe up is down, good is bad, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength. But humanity is resilient and endures, we will not be overcome.

SOURCE ARTICLE ABOUT THE GREAT RESET

https://winteroak.org.uk/2020/10/05/klaus-schwab-and-his-great-fascist-reset/

Things might have started in the 70s, as kind intentions of elders to offer inclusivity, equality, reduce poverty, emphasis humanity etc etc. And may be some foresights on possible sci fi becoming reality.....

There used to be a game called " Repeat what I say and do"........

So a team of people would line up. The team leader would be given a task. He or she has to say what is given exactly, or act exactly, so that the next person could repeat it perfectly.

For example, the task started off as " According to the latest research, bullshitting has been proven to be one of the healthiest activities in the modern world. Bullshit once a day, keeps the doctor away. Do you still need apple?"........

At the end of a line of say 20 or 30 persons, it will become something like this :" According to the doctor, defecate as big a  pile as bullshit a day is healthier than eat an apple a day."

The moral of the story is.................. the initial information and instruction might be skewed after changing a few hands and mouths. We should always cross check what we hear...... Our understanding and interpretation may vary. The discrepancies are caused by different personal capability, and the capability of those who are teaching or giving instruction, no?

 

 

 

 

caption: we are just following instruction .........

Edited January 14, 2021 by specinho

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

6 minute video from 2015 which is very applicable today...  (THE VIDEO DOES PLAY)

A Message to the Environmental Movement

 

Edited January 15, 2021 by Tom Nolan

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

Microsoft, Big-Tech Coalition Developing Rockefeller-Funded COVID Passports

Friday January 15th - Long article.  EXCERPTS...

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/microsoft-big-tech-coalition-developing-rockefeller-funded-covid-passports

A coalition of big tech companies, including Microsoft is developing a COVID passport, with the expectation that a digital document linked to vaccination status will be required to travel and get access to basic services.

The group is calling itself the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI), and includes Microsoft, Salesforce and Oracle. ...

... The Commons Project has received funding for the project from the Rockefeller Foundation, and that it is being implemented by all three major airline alliances. ... “With a single platform to help deliver safe and continuous operations and deepen trust with customers and employees, this coalition will be crucial to support public health and wellbeing,” Patterson claimed. ...

 

 

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

FORBES - January 14th

America’s Biggest Owner Of Farmland Is Now Bill Gates

https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielshapiro/2021/01/14/americas-biggest-owner-of-farmland-is-now-bill-gates-bezos-turner/?sh=2d0602bc6096

and Zero Hedge

Bill Gates Becomes America's Largest Farmland Owner While 'Great Reset" Says Future Is 'No Private Property'

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/bill-gates-becomes-americas-largest-farmland-owner-while-great-reset-says-future-no

Bill Gates, the fourth richest person in the world and a self-described nerd who is known for his early programming skills rather than his love of the outdoors, has been quietly snatching up 242,000 acres of farmland across the U.S. — enough to make him the top private farmland owner in America.

After years of reports that he was purchasing agricultural land in places like Florida and Washington, The Land Report revealed that Gates, who has a net worth of nearly $121 billion according to Forbes, has built up a massive farmland portfolio spanning 18 states. His largest holdings are in Louisiana (69,071 acres), Arkansas (47,927 acres) and Nebraska (20,588 acres). Additionally, he has a stake in 25,750 acres of transitional land on the west side of Phoenix, Arizona, which is being developed as a new suburb.

According to The Land Report’s research, the land is held directly and through third-party entities by Cascade Investments, Gates’ personal investment vehicle. Cascade’s other investments include food-safety company Ecolab, used-car retailer Vroom and Canadian National Railway. 

While it may be surprising that a tech billionaire would also be the biggest farmland owner in the country, this is not Gates’ only foray into agriculture. In 2008, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced $306 million in grants to promote high-yield, sustainable agriculture among smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The foundation has further invested in the development and proliferation of “super crops” resistant to climate change and higher-yield dairy cows. Last year, the organization announced Gates Ag One, a nonprofit to advance those efforts.

It is not entirely clear how Gates’  farmland is being used, or whether any of the land is being set aside for conservation. (Cascade did not return Forbes’ request for comment.) However, there is some indication that the land could be used in a way that aligns with the foundation’s values. Cottonwood Ag Management, a subsidiary of Cascade, is a member of Leading Harvest, a nonprofit that promotes sustainable agriculture standards that prioritize protections of crops, soil and water resources. 

Gates is not the only billionaire on The Land Report’s list of top private farmland owners. Wonderful Company cofounders Stewart and Lynda Resnick (net worth: $7.1 billion) ranked number three with 190,000 acres. Their farmland produces the goods for their brands including POM Wonderful, Wonderful Pistachios and Wonderful Halos mandarins.

While Gates may be the country’s biggest farmland owner, he by no means is the largest individual landowner. In its list of 100 top American landowners, The Land Report gives the top spot to Liberty Media Chair John Malone, who owns 2.2 million acres of ranches and forests. CNN founder Ted Turner ranked number three with 2 million acres of ranch land across eight states. Even Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is investing in land on a large scale, landing the 25th spot with his ownership of 420,000 acres, mainly in west Texas.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

World Economic Forum - The Great Reset and Fourth Industrial Revolution

Here's how life could change in my city by the year 2030

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/how-life-could-change-2030/

EXCERPTS

Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city - or should I say, "our city". .. First communication became digitized and free to everyone. Then, when clean energy became free, things started to move quickly. Transportation dropped dramatically in price. It made no sense for us to own cars anymore, because we could call a driverless vehicle or a flying car for longer journeys within minutes. We started transporting ourselves in a much more organized and coordinated way when public transport became easier, quicker and more convenient than the car. Now I can hardly believe that we accepted congestion and traffic jams, not to mention the air pollution from combustion engines. What were we thinking? ...

...My biggest concern is all the people who do not live in our city. Those we lost on the way. Those who decided that it became too much, all this technology. Those who felt obsolete and useless when robots and AI took over big parts of our jobs. Those who got upset with the political system and turned against it. They live different kind of lives outside of the city. Some have formed little self-supplying communities. Others just stayed in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages.

Once in awhile I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. No where I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.

All in all, it is a good life.

....

.

 

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

The Big Red Pill Renewable Fans Need To Take

https://community.oilprice.com/topic/22343-the-big-red-pill-renewable-fans-need-to-take/

 

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

Discussion THREAD on all sides of the issue...

Whats Wrong With Wind and Solar  - Video from Prager University

https://community.oilprice.com/topic/22324-httpswwwpragerucomvideowhats-wrong-with-wind-and-solar/

 

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

German Tech Giant Places Major Bet On Green Hydrogen

By Irina Slav - Jan 16, 2021, 4:00 PM CST

Hydrogen is turning into the next media star after solar and wind. In its latest claim to fame, two spinoffs of German tech conglomerate Siemens are joining forces to advance green hydrogen technology by building wind-to-hydrogen systems to help decarbonize the global economy. Green hydrogen is touted as a solution to many climate change problems: the element can be an energy carrier, it can be used to store energy and it can be used in fuel cells to power vehicles. Green hydrogen is a particularly attractive option because its production comes from hydrolyzing water using electricity produced by renewable systems, meaning it has a much lower carbon footprint than gas- or coal-sourced hydrogen.

Siemens Gamesa and Siemens Energy have therefore joined a growing group of green hydrogen proponents, many of whom see it as the ultimate solution to the planet’s pollution problem.

The two plan to invest $120 million over five years to develop a fully integrated offshore wind-to-hydrogen system that involves a turbine with an electrolysis system integrated into it, the companies said in a press release this week. They are aiming for a full-scale demonstration of their pilot by 2025 or 2026.

“Our wind turbines play a huge role in the decarbonization of the global energy system, and the potential of wind to hydrogen means that we can do this for hard-to-abate industries too. It makes me very proud that our people are a part of shaping a greener future,” the chief executive of Siemens Gamesa, Andreas Nauen, said in the release.

“With these developments, the potential of regions with abundant offshore wind will become accessible for the hydrogen economy. It is a prime example of enabling us to store and transport wind energy, thus reducing the carbon footprint of economy,” said the head of Siemens Energy, Christian Bruch.

But for all its promise, green hydrogen production is not a trouble-free technology. It is a very expensive technology that has made some experts warn it is unlikely to be economically viable for years and maybe decades to come. And yet, some are forecasting major cost drops for the technology.

Wood Mackenzie analysts, for instance, last year wrote in a report that they expected the production costs of green hydrogen to fall by as much as 64 percent by 2040 and in some places, even sooner.

“On average, green hydrogen production costs will equal fossil fuel-based hydrogen by 2040. In some countries, such as Germany, that arrives by 2030. Given the scale up we’ve seen so far, the 2020s is likely to be the decade of hydrogen,” the author of the report, senior research analyst Ben Gallagher wrote, adding, “Rising fossil fuel prices will boost green competitiveness, further strengthening the case for this technology in the coming years.” 

And yet, this cost reduction will require quite a solid effort: right now, green hydrogen production costs between three and six times more than gas-derived hydrogen. On the other hand, the prices of gas-derived hydrogen may rise as demand for gas rises, somewhat leveling the playing field. This, however, suggests that green hydrogen would depend on gas prices for its competitiveness rather than on technological advancements that would make the process itself cheaper.

That the energy transition will come at a cost is clear. The question is, how high this cost will be, and how much of the world will be able to afford it. Solutions such as the one Siemens Gamesa and Siemens Energy are working on sound like the way to make the process cheaper and bring green hydrogen closer to mainstream reality. However, it’s worth bearing in mind these solutions would be region-specific rather than universal. For now, mainstream green hydrogen remains more of a promise than a reality.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

Explaining The Great Reset to Conspiracy Beginners

https://www.corbettreport.com/interview-1600-james-corbett-explains-the-great-reset-on-the-highwire/

via The Highwire: HighWire goes to a place we’ve never gone before. Is there something more behind the global coronavirus response? Why are so many leaders using the same language when talking about the future of their countries and the world? What is the Great Reset? Journalist James Corbett joins Del to separate facts from fiction.

(40 minutes)

Watch on Archive / BitChute / LBRY / Minds / YouTube or Download the mp4

SHOW NOTES:
The Highwire with Del Bigtree

Your Guide to The Great Reset

The Great Reset book

The Great Reset | Launch session 3 June 2020

Yuval Noah Harari: the world after coronavirus | Free to read

COVID-19 Transformation Map

You Won’t Believe What They’re Planning To Do With “Vaccines”

Grover on The Great Reset podcast

Solutions on The Corbett Report

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

QUOTE FROM ARTICLE

"And in this case, it’s difficult to make oil the monster."

Are Your Netflix Binges Killing The Planet?

By Alex Kimani - Jan 17, 2021, 12:00 PM CST

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Are-Your-Netflix-Binges-Killing-The-Planet.html

[LENGTHY ARTICLE WITH STATISTICS / SOURCES]

One EXCERPT

...You’ve probably heard rather outrageous claims such as watching 30 minutes of Netflix generates as much carbon emissions [1.6 kg of CO2] as driving almost 4 miles thrown around as facts by reputable sites such as the New York Post, CBC, DW, Yahoo, Gizmodo,BigThink and Phys.org. That means your Tiger King binge created as much carbon emissions as if you were to have driven over 1200 miles. 

Yet, contrary to a slew of misleading media coverage, the climate impact of bingeing on Netflix and other video streaming platforms is actually relatively modest, though the internet overall is playing a significant role in killing our planet. So, it really depends who you want to blame, the chicken or the egg....

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

These are great articles and videos, Tom. Thanks for sharing them.

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

Three Energy Tech Trends To Watch This Year

By Irina Slav - Jan 17, 2021, 2:00 PM CST

https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/Three-Energy-Tech-Trends-To-Watch-This-Year.html

Transition will be the word of the year in energy, no doubt. But this transition involves a host of technologies that many believe will help the world move beyond the fossil fuels era. Many will need years to become commercially available, which has made some industry observers skeptical about the future of this transition. The dominant sentiment, however, appears to be optimistic, despite the considerable challenges.

Here are three technology areas that, according to a recent report by Lux Research, will dominate the energy discourse for the observable future.

Green hydrogen and fuel cells

Green hydrogen is the new EV revolution in terms of media coverage. From an occasional mention in renewable energy analyses, hydrogen has won its own place among the energy transition stars. The most abundant element in the universe has been touted as an energy carrier, energy storage option, and fuel. With such versatility of use, one might imagine that economies would already be running on hydrogen.

But things are rarely as simple as they seem.

First, not all hydrogen is made equal. For the energy transition revolutionaries such as the European Union, green hydrogen is the one to aim for. Produced through the electrolysis of water using electricity generated by renewable sources, green hydrogen features heavily in the EU’s energy transition plans: it wants to build at least 40 GW of electrolysis capacity by 2030, with 6 GW of these to be up and running by 2024.

Green hydrogen, many believe, will be the best way to help industries that have proved hard to decarbonize reduce their emissions in line with the Paris Agreement. How? First, it can be used as a fuel for freight vehicles; second, it can be blended with natural gas and used to heat buildings; third, it can be used to store electricity produced by solar and wind farms.

There is just one problem with all this: it is expensive, prohibitively so at the moment. Yet the outlook is optimistic, according to most, with the costs of electrolysis expected to fall significantly.

Fuel cells are another potentially widespread use for hydrogen, but they have been off to a slow start, again because of cost constraints. Fuel cell passenger vehicles are still a rarity despite their major advantage over EVs: much faster charging time. According to the California Fuel Cell Partnership, the biggest obstacle in fuel cell cars’ wider adoption is the lack of a charging station network—a problem that is being addressed.

Direct air capture

Carbon capture, storage, and even reuse, have been the topic of discussion for years. What better way to reduce emissions by capturing them, after all? Yet like green hydrogen, carbon capture is a costly process, so it has not been adopted as widely as it needs to be to make a meaningful difference in global emissions.

Direct air capture involves one of two technologies to date: either filtering air through a liquid chemical solution that traps the carbon dioxide and then returns the air, or using solid filters with absorbent chemicals that bind to the CO2 and remove it from the air.

Related: Biden's Boom: The $30 Trillion ESG Sector Is Set To Explode In 2021

According to the International Energy Agency, there are just 15 direct air capture facilities in operation globally. Together, they capture 9,000 tons of CO2, which is a meager amount. There is a million-ton facility being built in the United States, however. Under IEA’s sustainable development scenario, the global direct air capture capacity should increase to almost 10 million tons annually by 2030. Government help will likely be instrumental in making this scenario materialize.

Direct air capture would be particularly well suited to the needs of the oil and gas industry, which is currently trying to reinvent itself as a more environmentally responsible industry. Meanwhile, Big Oil is teaming up with carbon offsetting companies, investing in other ways to reduce the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. These mostly focus on forest protection and restoration and other carbon sink projects.

Long-duration energy storage

This is arguably the most crucial development we need to see if the energy transition is to be successful. Sure, hydrogen can be used for the storage of electricity generated at solar and wind farms, but it takes up a lot of space, and vast underground caverns are not exactly available everywhere. Battery storage seems to be the obvious solution to the storage problem.

Batteries right now are not fit for the task, however. Even the biggest installations—in Australia—will only be able to store enough power to supply half a million households for just an hour. This is enough for brief power outages caused by some incident or other, but it is nowhere near enough to make the grid dominated by renewable energy unless it’s hydro energy. 

The solution to the long-duration storage problem will need to address two issues: energy density and durability of the battery. Labs across the world are working on all sorts of new batteries addressing these issues, but for now, the ultimate battery that can store electricity enough for hours and hours of supply remains a chimera. According to some, it will forever remain a chimera because there is only so much energy density you can pack in a battery array without it taking up as much land as a country.

The energy transition holds the promise for a better, cleaner world, but the journey will come at a steep cost and will take quite a lot of time.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com 

 

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

A New Topic Needed for Eco & Energy Conservation?

https://community.oilprice.com/topic/22336-a-new-topic-needed-for-eco-energy-conservation/

[The 5 minute Samsung video is a clever PR marketing approach towards the new ESG of the Global Great Reset trend.  ]