Irina Slav interviews Doug Sandbridge about hurdles to NET ZERO

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

2 minutes ago, Jay McKinsey said:

Not if you are using power that would have otherwise been curtailed because of over production. 

Even though you're capturing energy that would have been wasted, you still have to pay to capture it. Therefore, these systems have an internal rate of return. 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

Just now, TailingsPond said:

The work used to compress could, in theory, be partially captured during decompression.

This is true, but I'd have to determine what temperature would be reached for the cooling fluid, in order to determine if it could do useful work. Do they do this with LNG compression? 

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

Just now, KeyboardWarrior said:

Even though you're capturing energy that would have been wasted, you still have to pay to capture it. Therefore, these systems have an internal rate of return. 

But it is always positive otherwise you wouldn't do it. You will find the most profitable outlet for your energy and if that is hydrogen then you will make hydrogen. 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

I'm curious about how far off the ideal model is, so I'll use the volumetric integrand. I'll obtain final and initial volume using the Van Der Waals EOS. 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

2 minutes ago, Jay McKinsey said:

But it is always positive otherwise you wouldn't do it. You will find the most profitable outlet for your energy and if that is hydrogen then you will make hydrogen. 

It isn't always positive strictly speaking, but as you say, they wouldn't build it if it wasn't positive. I'm just saying they have a rate of return. Am curious to what it is. There's a matter of opportunity cost if it's too low, because you could simply use the money to build more turbines or panels.

However, seeing as we're trying to avoid a blackout, there isn't an associated opportunity cost, because we need storage anyways. Yes? 

Edited March 14, 2022 by KeyboardWarrior

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

Just now, KeyboardWarrior said:

It isn't always positive strictly speaking, but as you say, they wouldn't build it if it wasn't positive. I'm just saying they have a rate of return. Am curious to what it is. There's a matter of opportunity cost if it's too low, because you could simply use the money to build more turbines or panels.

However, seeing as we're trying to avoid a blackout, there isn't an associated opportunity cost, because we need storage anyways. Yes? 

Yes, avoiding the blackout will be factored into the return on hydrogen. People pay a lot for your energy when the other sources dry up.

Once you hit the point of frequent curtailment the marginal value of more turbines or panels rapidly heads towards zero. 

 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

Okay, so not sure if this is correct, but using the volumes derived from Van Der Wals, I'm getting 805 kJ/kg H2 compressed. Somebody check this. 

[markslawson + 1,057]

23 hours ago, Jay McKinsey said:

You underestimate how much can be stored and more importantly you ignore how much can be shipped in when needed. 

No, I don't, or at least I agree that it might be possible to eventually store up enough energy but that the cost would be absolutely horrendous and its all decades in the future, if it happens at all. Green hydrogen is, at best, a nascent technology without any of the infrastructure of LNG - and one where they still haven't solved many of the tech problems of storage and shipment. This was done easily with LNG but H2 liquifies at a much lower temperature and, because the molecule is much smaller, is way harder to store and ship. A better approach, assuming the Ukraine conflict doesn't derail the green agenda altogether, would be to dump green hydrogen and build all these windfarms and such so that the grid is powered when the wind is blowing but have back-up gas plants for when its not. Storage is still needed to tide the grid over after the wind stops and before the gas plants can be ramped up and it will be horrifically expensive, but poor people can pay their power bills knowing that they have substantially reduced emissions. Who knows, maybe that will keep them warm?  

[TailingsPond + 1,006]

34 minutes ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

This is true, but I'd have to determine what temperature would be reached for the cooling fluid, in order to determine if it could do useful work. Do they do this with LNG compression? 

I've used plenty of lab-scale pressure reducing regulators, none of them captured any energy.

In certain circumstances the cooling from decompression could also be useful (using some sort of heat exchanger).

All theory

Edited March 14, 2022 by TailingsPond

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

1 hour ago, markslawson said:

No, I don't, or at least I agree that it might be possible to eventually store up enough energy but that the cost would be absolutely horrendous and its all decades in the future, if it happens at all. Green hydrogen is, at best, a nascent technology without any of the infrastructure of LNG - and one where they still haven't solved many of the tech problems of storage and shipment. This was done easily with LNG but H2 liquifies at a much lower temperature and, because the molecule is much smaller, is way harder to store and ship. A better approach, assuming the Ukraine conflict doesn't derail the green agenda altogether, would be to dump green hydrogen and build all these windfarms and such so that the grid is powered when the wind is blowing but have back-up gas plants for when its not. Storage is still needed to tide the grid over after the wind stops and before the gas plants can be ramped up and it will be horrifically expensive, but poor people can pay their power bills knowing that they have substantially reduced emissions. Who knows, maybe that will keep them warm?  

Salt domes are cheap and excess renewable energy is cheap. Green hydrogen is where solar was 10 years ago, it to will be cheap in a decade. Until then we use NG. Oh and batteries are well on their way to being cheap.

Edited March 15, 2022 by Jay McKinsey

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

2 hours ago, Jay McKinsey said:

Salt domes are cheap and excess renewable energy is cheap. Green hydrogen is where solar was 10 years ago, it to will be cheap in a decade. Until then we use NG. Oh and batteries are well on their way to being cheap.

Can salt domes withstand 500 bar? 

EDIT: Also, do you know the volume of these domes? Because even at 500 bar, the hydrogen is taking up significant volume. 13 meters cubed per kilogram according to the Van Der Waals EOS. 

Edited March 15, 2022 by KeyboardWarrior

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

9 minutes ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

Can salt domes withstand 500 bar? 

EDIT: Also, do you know the volume of these domes? Because even at 500 bar, the hydrogen is taking up significant volume. 13 meters cubed per kilogram according to the Van Der Waals EOS. 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

2 hours ago, Jay McKinsey said:

Big problem with your chart there. That GWh H2 capacity doesn't account for conversion efficiency at the cell or turbine. Really makes me doubt everything else on that chart. 

EDIT: the days of storage accounts for it, but rounds up to 1.7 instead of 1.6.

Edited March 15, 2022 by KeyboardWarrior

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

4 minutes ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

Big problem with your chart there. That GWh H2 capacity doesn't account for conversion efficiency at the cell or turbine. Really makes me doubt everything else on that chart. 

EDIT: the days of storage accounts for it, but rounds up to 1.7 instead of 1.6.

So one is an absolute number that you should be familiar with from you studies and the second is a practical estimation that doesn't quite round like you want. So what?

If they use big fuel cells instead of burning it the conversion ratio will be more like 85%.

 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

2 minutes ago, Jay McKinsey said:

So one is an absolute number that you should be familiar with from you studies and the second is a practical estimation that doesn't quite round like you want. So what?

If they use big fuel cells instead of burning it the conversion ratio will be more like 85%.

 

Big fuel cells don't have the power density to generate sufficient returns. They might in years to come, but for now the best returns come from gas turbines. 

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

4 minutes ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

Big fuel cells don't have the power density to generate sufficient returns. They might in years to come, but for now the best returns come from gas turbines. 

Ok, doesn't change anything.

[Boat + 1,323]

There should be a rule that says NET 50% needs to be reached. We’ll worry about the other 50% when it happens. I know that might steal your opportunity to say it’s impossible. But hey, take it like a man.

[Boat + 1,323]

Computers/tv/porn/music, phones, watching Putin get whipped, seem to get better consistently. Detractors never mention timelines of milestones and projections of various green products. Hey, we can’t get to Net zero. I think your right about that. Kind of irrelevant though. Something easier to grasp, how much of every green product by 2025. I bet our differences in expectations would shrink.

Edited March 15, 2022 by Boat

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

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[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

https://irinaslav.substack.com/p/its-raining-energy-taboos?s=r

It's raining energy taboos

By Irina Slav

Coal could serve as a bridge fuel to renewables. That’s right, not gas, but coal. The gracious allowance comes from the European Commission’s vice president and the man in charge of the Green Deal, Frans Timmermans — the same man who says fossil fuels have no viable future over the long run and who only grudgingly accepted gas as necessary in the transition period to all-renewable energy.

"Things have changed. I mean, history has taken a very sharp turn a week ago, and we need to come to terms with that historic change," Timmermans said in an interview for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme earlier this month.

"Poland and several other countries had plans to transit out of coal, and then temporarily use natural gas and then move to renewables. If they stay longer with coal, but then immediately moved to renewables, it could still be within the parameters we set for our climate policy," the Green Deal chief explained.

Then Belgium joined the U-turners in admitting nuclear energy may have to remain in the country’s energy mix. The U-turn came from none other than Belgium’s energy minister, a member of the Green party. In all fairness, the decision to shorten nuclear plants’ lives was a flexible one, with a provision that speeding up their retirement did not lead to energy supply shortages. Even so, the change of position is telling.

To quote a favourite literary character, well, I’ll be mogadored. After Germany’s Chancellor openly took a stance against a ban on Russian oil and gas imports despite a pro-renewable environmental policy, and after he also suggested Germany may stick with coal and nuclear for longer than previously planned, now this.

Of course, Timmermans is quite right in his assertion that “history has taken a very sharp turn”. This assertion is one more example of the complacent view European governments have been having towards Russian energy supplies for decades. The view has been along the lines of “Whatever we do, they’ll keep supplying us” and indeed the EU has done quite a lot to aggravate bilateral relations, especially with regard to Ukraine, as those with greater memory spans would certainly remember.

Now, it has turned out that Russia doesn’t even need to turn off the taps. Western sanctions for its incursion in Ukraine have done that almost as successfully: traders are shunning Russian oil cargos because of port access and payment problems, and we are seeing the results in oil prices.

Gas prices, meanwhile, are soaring, even though Gazprom continues to deliver volumes consistent with its contractual obligations with Europe. How come prices are so high? Because Europe is looking for alternatives in fear of a supply disruption amid the fighting in Ukraine and as part of that is talking about such disruptions a lot, which acts like a flare gun shot on market speculators. Europe is also talking about coal, and Germany and Belgium are talking about nuclear. Europe, in short, is panicking.

There are pretty good reasons for that. The threat of a supply disruption is a real one as both sides in the Ukraine conflict are quite well aware of the criticality of energy infrastructure. The oil and gas price trends have substantially heightened the danger of a recession, and not only in Europe. That would be quite unfortunate as economies have yet to fully recover from the fallout of the pandemic-related lockdowns.

Sadly, little can be done, except lift Russian sanctions, which is obviously not happening any time soon. And yet instead of looking for ways to minimize the damage, one of which would be accepting that the whole EU may need to stick with fossil fuels for a while longer, Brussels is pushing wind and solar again.

In a series of tweets about sanctions and energy, EC president Ursula von der Leyen said that Brussels was going to “repower the EU by investing in renewables.” That would be the same renewables that require vast amounts of land, substantial amounts of metals, energy to process these metals into components, and whose output varies with the seasons, the time of day, and atmospheric pressure patterns.

The EC then released a document called RePowerEU, in which Von der Leyen said “The quicker we switch to renewables and hydrogen, combined with more energy efficiency, the quicker we will be truly independent and master our energy system.”

A continued focus on renewables is hardly a surprise despite the recent U-turns by individual governments. Renewables are still at the heart of EU transition plans. What has changed is the cost of those plans because if anyone expects the oil and gas price rally to be over by April, they are in for a big surprise. And with energy prices high, everything else’s prices will go even higher. These trends, if they continue for long enough, might give a whole new meaning to “cost overruns”.

Amazingly, by the way, there are still analysts who chant the “low costs” mantra. I just saw this in an FT article: “However, the desire to be more self-sufficient, combined with the lowered cost of renewables and ambitious national climate targets, should trigger a ramp-up in domestic clean energy, analysts said.”

They are saying this while polysilicon prices are hitting record highs, steel prices are surging (and steel plants are cutting output rates), and aluminium is reaching for the sky. And copper? Copper just hit an all-time high last week. None of these metals, nor polysilicon, will be declining soon.

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However, the emphasis that is being put on the short-term part of the output boost hopes will hardly be welcomed by the industry, which has prioritized returns to shareholders over production growth at least in part because of the renewables pivot of the federal government. But that’s not the worst part.

The worst prt was summarised by Occidental Petroleum’s chief executive Vicki Hollobu, also at CERAWeek.

"Nobody really anticipated needing to grow significantly," Hollub said. "If you did not plan for growth, you are not going to be able to achieve growth today."

Yet not only did shale drillers not plan for growth. They have also been hit with the same labor shortages that industries across the United States are struggling with, and on top of that certain materials and oilfield equipment are also in short supply. The drilled-but-uncompleted well inventory has fallen sharply, which means raising output, even if everyone is enthusiastic about it, will take quite a while.

Washington is also reaching out to OPEC, yet again, and has so far hit a wall of unwillingness because, perhaps surprisingly for Biden’s team, the era of unconditional Middle Eastern support for U.S. foreign policy appears to be over. Also, the de facto ruler of the de facto leader of OPEC appears to be a man with a grudge, ready to hold it as long as necessary for his demands to be satisfied.

This is not a good place to be for a government that bet on a fast transition away from fossil fuels. It is an especially bad place to be in an election year. No wonder, then, that the Biden administration is ready and willing to offer an olive branch to the industry it has pointedly been working against since the start of Biden’s term. It also appears ready to offer an olive branch to countries such as Venezuela and Iran, both sanctioned by the previous administration and with sanctions upheld by this one. Talk about U-turns

At home, the Keystone XL cancellation, which took place on Biden’s first day as U.S. president, the federal land drilling moratorium, the annulment of an oil and gas lease sale that the Department of Interior was more or less forced to hold despite its unwillingness, and the cancellation of another lease sale were all clear signals that the Biden administration will not work with the oil and gas industry… until it had to.

Abroad, the Trump administration’s sanctions on Venezuela and Iran were among the few things that the next administration kept untouched even though it did signal a willingness to negotiate a new deal with Iran. And then it reached out to Venezuela after the ban on Russian oil and fuel imports.

That move amounted to nothing less than breaking yet another taboo and as such it couldn’t go down well with lawmakers with a strong belief that the White House has no business handing olive branches to authoritarian governments. It didn’t. But it was one more instance of the simple truth that when push comes to shove, pragmatism trumps considerations such as how other governments are running their countries.

RBC Capital Markets’ Helima Croft said it quite poetically with a charming mixed metaphor: “The White House has embarked on the oil equivalent of a scavenger hunt,” she said, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal. “Given the potential magnitude of the Russian losses, the White House will need something akin to a straight flush to pull it off.”

That energy taboos are falling is certainly a positive development. It suggests that some politicians at least are not too proud to rearrange their priorities when real life shows that the previous arrangement has been less than optimal. Energy security is more immediately important than emission reduction and it is good to see that even Timmermans is inclined to agree. But then again, any politician would agree with anything if failing to do so threatens to cost them the next elections.

Yet the fallen coal taboo and the White House signal that relations with Venezuela are not exactly beyond repair without major reforms on the part of the Venezuelans is only one step in a direction that decision-makers in Europe and the U.S. might need to consider exploring.

This would be the direction of pragmatism, which leads to addressing the most pressing problems of bill-payers first. These would include inflation and food security, ensuring reasonable living standards, and making sure there are no blackouts. As I like to say, if you’ve ever been cold you’d know that when the temperatures drop ideology and climate change anxiety die very quickly.

Edited March 15, 2022 by Tom Nolan

[markslawson + 1,057]

22 hours ago, Jay McKinsey said:

Salt domes are cheap and excess renewable energy is cheap. Green hydrogen is where solar was 10 years ago, it to will be cheap in a decade. Until then we use NG. Oh and batteries are well on their way to being cheap.

Jay - again all straight fantasies. I thought we were talking about Europe and suddenly we're talking about salt domes in the US. Now of course H2 can be stored in a variety of ways but then LNG is much easier to store but then there is no need to store much of it. In other respects you're talking about creating a demand for a gas (H2) in order to drive down costs for its production, then trying to claim it'll be cheaper to use. This hasn't worked to date for renewables - the energy storage and grid balancing costs have proved horrific, and countries using renewables uniformly have far more expensive not cheaper electricity. So why should it work for H2? Combine renewables and H2? That sounds even more expensive. I'll leave the fantasies about batteries for the moment as I must get on to other matters.. Anyway, if you don't want to accept the realities of these matters that's up to you. I've done my bit. I'll leave you to it.  

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

21 minutes ago, markslawson said:

Jay - again all straight fantasies. I thought we were talking about Europe and suddenly we're talking about salt domes in the US. Now of course H2 can be stored in a variety of ways but then LNG is much easier to store but then there is no need to store much of it. In other respects you're talking about creating a demand for a gas (H2) in order to drive down costs for its production, then trying to claim it'll be cheaper to use. This hasn't worked to date for renewables - the energy storage and grid balancing costs have proved horrific, and countries using renewables uniformly have far more expensive not cheaper electricity. So why should it work for H2? Combine renewables and H2? That sounds even more expensive. I'll leave the fantasies about batteries for the moment as I must get on to other matters.. Anyway, if you don't want to accept the realities of these matters that's up to you. I've done my bit. I'll leave you to it.  

Once again Mark you are clueless.

Hydrogen storage in salt caverns

Researchers in Germany have identified salt caverns as a feasible and flexible solution for hydrogen storage. They also revealed that Europe has the potential to inject hydrogen in bedded salt deposits and salt domes, with a total storage capacity of 84.8 PWh. Salt domes are already in use in the UK. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/06/16/hydrogen-storage-in-salt-caverns/

Someday you might figure out that renewables are reducing costs. Your own country of Australia is a great example and you are a beneficiary. Australia is also about to be one of the great green hydrogen providers. 

I'm sure you want to run away from the reality of batteries.

[nsdp + 449]

On 3/14/2022 at 6:08 PM, KeyboardWarrior said:

Okay, so not sure if this is correct, but using the volumes derived from Van Der Wals, I'm getting 805 kJ/kg H2 compressed. Somebody check this. 

Hydrogen is metered in KG not KJ.  You have a 8% difference between LHV and HHV  You are lost like Hanzel and Gretel  in the woods

Edited March 17, 2022 by nsdp

[nsdp + 449]

I need a new supply of weed for my glaucoma.  What are you smoking? Shell starts up Europe’s largest PEM green hydrogen electrolyser  https://www.shell.com/media/news-and-media-releases/2021/shell-starts-up-europes> RWE At present, RWE is taking part in more than 30 hydrogen projects in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. https://www.renewablesnow.com/news/rwe-to-create-hydrogen-unit-within-rwe-generation-725121/

Have you ever been more than 10km for home?

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

2 hours ago, nsdp said:

Hydrogen is metered in KG not KJ.  You have a 8% difference between LHV and HHV  You are lost like Hanzel and Gretel  in the woods

You dumbass, kilojoules per kilogram is a unit of enthalpy. 

Last time you tried to talk thermo you used the ideal gas law to tell me how much energy it takes to boil water. You also started at zero C. I can't take you seriously. 

Edited March 17, 2022 by KeyboardWarrior