Charles Jillings, CEO of Utilico, energized by strong economic momentum across Latin America. Watch the video here.
The OP asked is saltwater a concern and to just dismiss it by stating things you have is misleading because they are poor comparisons. If meygen gets built in full that will be some 200 turbines, phase 1A was 4 turbines and last year I believe 2 turbines spent a considerable amount of time out the water. This is literally first of a kind so nobody knows how this is going to perform long term. I as a shareholder, aware of the damage the can be caused in such hostile environments, the problems suffered by the wind industry (surprisingly cables are the biggest victims in wind) and the large costs associated with pulling turbines out the water to rectify, I think it’s a good idea to keep a close eye on turbine issues reported. Not simply say, oil rigs are fine and Lockheed is in town so don’t worry.
Yes contrary to what the previous poster wrote, this is a genuine concern, but the same concern is there for offshore wind, it’s in the same environment and that’s the current poster child. To make out that wind/tidal turbines etc share any parrallels to rig design is almost laughable to me. Rigs hundred of millions to build and in return over there life will return many many billions in oil resource, it’s justified to over engineer a rig to seal out the affects of salt water corrosion. A tidal/wind turbine will only Harvest a few million £ in wind/tidal energy, so cost and complexity of turbines need to be tightly controlled. But this is what people are not understanding about our energy future, it will resemble nothing like today, if it indeed actually gets there, all of these are fossil derivatives ultimately. Low EROI resources means a lot more of society is dedicated toward the production of energy, today is around 5%, in a renewable World it could be 10-20-30% it’s unknown yet but it’s a certainty, more people making and maintaining and higher energy costs.
Johnson said he is committed to developing a tidal power industry and issuing CFD’s to ensure costs come down in response to Ian Blackford’s question.
Look at the reality here, govts want to phase out coal for the virtue signalling shills, however, there is no battery system available to store on a grid scale and at current metal/mineral mining capacity you’re looking at 600 years. Gas is proving volatile and increasingly being used by Russia to apply political and military pressure and we also have a waste problem. I was always pessimistic on Simec, was here for Atlantis but starting to see how these solutions could fit into the jigsaw if only BOJO could get in touch with reality that there’s no free lunch in all this.
Darlonil, what does your mate in renewables think about the current state of the UK energy market? Seems to be going well with all these cheap renewables we’ve dispatched ??
Don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with wholesale prices but at this rate we probably won’t even need a cfd!
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/jbjBC/5/
Over the past few days we’ve seen prices in the £1000’s per mwh for grid balancing, wind has been slack while we’ve had nice weather. Cannot understand the blasè complacent attitude about it, this will bite the consumer hard soon. Source - LCP energy: https://mobile.twitter.com/LcpEnergy
I mean the solutions they are developing will be used but I think it would be foolish to try implement them where there is more efficient options. It’ll be valuable stuff in industries like steel. Ultimately we pay for these inefficiencies in everything we do and buy, not just energy bills.
As for SUP I don’t know, I do know that the likes of viridor are being blasted because of their emissions being worse than coal, a lot of that is down to plastic they burn, but we have to do something with it, it’s piling up pretty fast. https://www.source-material.org/blog/dirty-white-elephants
Chasable! Yes I have been telling people this for so long and I still see people falling for the articles of ‘hydrogen heating our homes on the Grid’ ‘powering planes by 2035’ even as a method of transporting power back from floating wind, it’s horrific, just run some thermodynamics calcs and you can see it makes no sense. Advocates will say just install more generation to make up for it as wind and sunshine is free, wow!!!
Tidal is definitely set to gain, storage is so expensive and if gases are involved inefficient. I seriously doubt we can do grid scale storage for many days worth of energy with lithium batteries, Electric cars are touted as the perfect balancing solution but that is making an assumption that we are just going to replace every ICE car with EV, EV’s are expensive now and their cost is only going to go one way, especially as the usage of rare metals and lithium skyrockets elsewhere. Who is going to pay for the grid upgrades for EV charging and grid ties in houses! Consumers ultimately! Public transport will play the key role, cars maybe a community item.
The solution set to gain the most has to be predictable reliable power not necessarily cheap I’ll explain later. Tidal has 11GW potential capacity on our shores so it’s not going to lift the whole load, but of that 11GW capacity I bet we can harvest a good proportion of that as apposed to wind that today has 24GW installed and averages 6GW (pathetic) but I’ll save my opinion on wind for another day. The CFD strike price for tidal is there, its high £300/MWh ish so should provide the industry time and investor confidence, govt are now waking up to the opportunity as wind isn’t quite what they thought, Atlantis have the expertise and have proven record. My gut feeling is in a few years there will be a big push on tidal like we have seen offshore wind, it won’t even matter if stream cannot go merchant, Govt will pay the CFD to tidal just as they will to nuclear (as its a necessity) to ensure reliable supply as the alternative is massive expensive battery banks, which is dead money, batteries don’t generate electricity! Just my opinion anyway, don’t take as gospel :D
Urm another issue I’d foresee with making SAF in Philippines then shipping it half way round the world to its point of use is, Given SAF is a fairly Low EROI fuel, you need to expend as little energy as possible in its manufacture and distribution to point of use, closer you get to a ratio of 1 you may aswell not bother. I still don’t know what EROI SAF possesses (I am searching) but for reference Biodiesel is about 3 and fossil fuels will be around the 15-25 mark but can be as low as 6 at point of use. I’d expect SAF to be around 3-7max. It is very important for SAF to have local supply chains and be manufactured close to point of use, sticking this stuff in a tanker is just silly in my opinion.
https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/e7ef8ba0-418b-4b9d-9eff-9590f128135d
Tidal current being discussed
Very interesting link oldtramp thanks! A predicted UK tidal capacity of 8.5gw, given current consumption average of 35gw with government predicting that will double by 2050, so a shade over 10% of demand untapped, non-intermittent, low carbon energy up for grabs. If the government don’t take that seriously then Jesus Christ.
Quel, I am also skeptical Enerkem claims that they are able to transform over half the input weight of essentially trash into fuel that can propel a 747 at 600mph.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/19/shell-pulls-out-of-joint-venture-to-build-uk-sustainable-jet-fuels-plant
Nicely balanced article which sums up the situation
I think it’s important to realise a netzero aviation future is one of reduced air traffic. Wether you’re looking at SAF, Hydrogen or electric, there’s no great underground wells full of fully charged lithium or liquid hydrogen we can drill into. We have to generate the energy to convert it to those formats using very low exergy supplies such as wind and solar. SAF is a little different probably provides the highest EROI (marginally) of those 3 methods and that’s fairly critical!
Sets an important precedent in my eyes, the article goes on to say this is the first time a fossil fuel major has been taken to court over its future commitments to curb emissions, it has always been for past occurrences to seek damages.
It is five years since the Netherlands lost a court action forcing it to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. It was the first time a government had been compelled by law to take action on climate change and was upheld by an appeals court in 2019, meaning that Dutch authorities have to reduce emissions by 25 per cent compared with 1990 levels.
The case, brought by climate group Urgenda, argued that the state’s lack of action was putting Dutch citizens in danger. And the court agreed.
Now the lawyer behind that 2015 case — Roger Cox — has a new target, Royal Dutch Shell, in a legal fight in The Hague that some believe could force oil and gas companies to accelerate a shift away from fossil fuels and push other corporate polluters to reassess their carbon footprint.
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https://www.ft.com/content/04a0ab91-0853-4888-b3e3-fb0244181dc4
In an opening statement in December, Mr Cox, acting on behalf of a group of activists including Milieudefensie, the Dutch wing of Friends of the Earth, said the Anglo-Dutch group’s business model and corporate strategy “is on a collision course with global climate targets” and presented “a great danger for humanity”.
The activists want Shell — valued at close to £113bn — to cut its total carbon dioxide emissions by 45 per cent by 2030, compared with 2019 levels, ultimately stopping short of an initial push to get the company to eliminate them entirely by 2050. It would force the energy group to completely overhaul its operations and corporate strategy. Mr Cox says the environmental campaigners “asked me if an Urgenda-style case could be brought against a fossil fuel company [and it] made me think that we had a realistic chance of winning a case against an oil major.”
The biggest con on that Renewables chart is biomass, drax basically, burns an area of forest 18 miles squared every year!
Yes your point about weather patterns is very important, the jet stream is slowing down and there is strong consensus when artic ice has gone, temperature differential between equator and North Pole will change dramatically due to the reflectivity of dark ocean vs white ice, scientist predict weather will ‘stick around’ longer, can only assume that will mean wind speeds change too.
You say that but how long till Elon musks goes mining the moon for bits for his electric cars.... haha