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Hidden hydrogen

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The idea of using hydrogen as a fuel or an energy source has been around for a long time.  Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, but most of it is locked up in various chemical compounds, such as water.  Hydrogen is a clean fuel; burning it or using it to generate electricity in a fuel cell produces no greenhouse gas emissions.  But more than 99% of the hydrogen that people current produce is obtained by methods that result in greenhouse gas emissions.

A new study by scientists at the University of Oxford, the University of Durham in the UK, and the University of Toronto looks at geological environments in which naturally occurring hydrogen could be hiding.  According to the study, over the last billion years, the Earth’s continental crust is likely to have produced enough hydrogen to satisfy the energy needs of modern society for 170,000 years.

Much of that hydrogen is likely to have been lost or is inaccessible; most of it is not economically feasible to extract.  But even the relatively small amount of hydrogen left could provide thousands of years of energy for us.  We just have to be able to find it.

The researchers have developed what they call an “exploration recipe” which identifies where natural hydrogen might be located as well as where it could be commercially feasible to extract.  These places with hydrogen have so-called reservoir rocks and geologic formations that prevent the gas from leaking into the atmosphere.

A few such places have already been identified such as one in Albania.  There are various candidates to explore, even including an area in Kansas.  The study’s authors have founded a company whose mission is to find these natural sources of hydrogen.

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Scientists Say Hidden Hydrogen Could Power the World for 170,000 Years

Photo, posted October 4, 2019, courtesy of Tony Sprezzatura via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Making hydrogen using bioengineering

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Hydrogen has great potential for helping society to reach net-zero emissions.  The problem is that the most economical and established production methods for hydrogen depend heavily on fossil fuels and result in roughly a dozen kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions for every kilogram of hydrogen produced.

The carbon-free way to produce hydrogen is by splitting water into its component elements.  This process generally requires the use of catalysts and lots of energy.

Researchers at the University of Oxford are developing a synthetic biology approach to the production of so-called green hydrogen.  The idea is to replace expensive, exotic metal-based catalysts with a highly-efficient, stable, and cost-effective catalyst based on genetically-engineered bacteria.

There are specific microorganisms that can naturally induce the chemical reaction that reduces protons to hydrogen by the use of hydrogenase enzymes.  While these reactions do occur naturally, they are limited to low hydrogen yields.

The Oxford researchers genetically engineered the bacterium Shewanella oneidensis by inserting a light activated electron pump called Gloeobacter rhodopsin as well as adding nanoparticles of graphene oxide and ferric sulfate.  All of this tinkering with the bacterium resulted in a ten-fold increase in hydrogen yield.

The researchers believe that their system, based entirely on biological methods rather than traditional chemical approaches, could be scaled up to produce ‘artificial leaves’ that, when exposed to sunlight, would immediately begin producing hydrogen.  The Oxford work was published last summer in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

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A green fuels breakthrough: bio-engineering bacteria to become ‘hydrogen nanoreactors’

Photo, posted July 27, 2016, courtesy of Blondinrikard Froberg via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Fertilizer from thin air

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Ammonia is one of the largest-volume synthetic chemicals produced in the world. Globally, manufacturing plants produce about 200 million tons of it each year.  About 70% of ammonia is used to produce fertilizers.

Most ammonia is produced using the Haber-Bosch process, which converts hydrogen and nitrogen into ammonia.  The process is energy-hungry, running at over 900 degrees Fahrenheit, and therefore results in lots of greenhouse gas emissions – about 1% of the world’s annual CO2 emissions.

Researchers at Stanford University and King Fahd University in Saudi Arabia have developed a prototype device that can produce ammonia using wind energy to draw air through a mesh.  The method allows sustainable production of ammonia using the nitrogen in the air.

The process gets nitrogen from the air along with hydrogen from water vapor.  A mesh coated with catalysts facilitates the necessary chemical reactions.  The process operates at room temperature and standard atmospheric pressure, eliminating the need  for the high temperatures and high pressures of the Haber-Bosch process.

In principle, farmers could run a portable device onsite, eliminating the need to purchase and ship fertilizer from a manufacturer. 

The device is two or three years away from being market ready.  The developers are designing increasingly large mesh systems to produce greater quantities of ammonia.  Ammonia has more uses beyond fertilizers including its use as an energy carrier that can store and transport energy more efficiently than hydrogen gas.

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New device produces critical fertilizer ingredient from thin air, cutting carbon emissions

Photo, posted September 2, 2013, courtesy of Chafer Machinery via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Hydrogen-powered aviation

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The transportation sector is responsible for about a quarter of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions.  Most of the energy used by transport systems comes from fossil fuels.  The transition to electric vehicles – cars, trucks, and buses – is making a real difference.  However, the emissions from the aviation industry have continued to grow faster than those of other forms of transportation.  There have been increased efforts to develop hydrogen-powered aircraft, but the challenges are substantial.

Hydrogen can be used for aviation both as a directly combusted fuel, or to power electric fuel cells.  Its advantages are that its use produces no carbon dioxide, and, in fact, hydrogen produces more energy per pound than jet fuel.

A study by researchers at MIT looked at the prospects for hydrogen use in aircraft and what needs to be done to make it practical.  The biggest issue is that the extra bulk of a hydrogen fuel tank and fuel cells in a plane would have to be offset by weight reductions elsewhere, such as reducing payload (cargo or passengers).  This would mean there would need to be more flights, thereby reducing the gains made.  The researchers argued that improvements in fuel cell power and more weight efficient fuel systems could eliminate the need for additional flights.

The bigger challenge is the infrastructure for generating and distributing hydrogen.  There needs to be green hydrogen – hydrogen produced without carbon emissions – and the infrastructure for getting it to planes where it is needed has to also not produce substantial emissions.

The study suggests that the rollout of hydrogen-based aviation should start at locations that have favorable conditions for hydrogen production.

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Fueling greener aviation with hydrogen

Photo, posted December 20, 2016, courtesy of Dylan Agbagni via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The race for fusion power

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The sun is powered by fusion energy.  Hydrogen atoms fuse together into helium atoms, liberating vast amounts of energy in the process.  Our understanding of this process emerged early in the 20th century and by the 1950s, research efforts were underway trying to replicate the process on Earth.  If it could be done, fusion would be a source of almost unlimited clean energy.  But there has been a cynical saying going around for half a century:  fusion power is the energy source of the future, and it always will be.

However, in recent years, there has been progress in developing fusion power.  Extraordinarily expensive and colossal machines have produced fusion energy albeit consuming more energy than they make.  However, for a brief moment in 2022, a fusion reactor at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory did produce more energy than it took to run the machine.

Despite the less than encouraging history, there are now multiple start-up companies dedicated to developing fusion energy and they are optimistic that there will be significant progress over the next few years.

One such company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, located 40 miles northwest of Boston, is building a fusion reactor called SPARC, that they claim will be producing net energy in 2027.  They say that their next machine, called ARC, will generate electricity for paying customers in the early 2030s.

A handful of other companies, including Type One Energy, Thea Energy, Realta Fusion, Zap Energy, General Fusion, and Helion Energy are also pursuing fusion reactor designs and also expect to have machines running over the next 5 to 10 years.

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The Quest to Build a Star on Earth

Photo, posted April 21, 2015, courtesy of John Spiri via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A better way to produce green hydrogen

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Hydrogen has great potential as a fuel and an energy carrier for many applications.  Burning it or consuming it in fuel cells does not produce carbon emissions.  As a result, there has long been the vision for a future hydrogen economy.  Whether the hydrogen economy would ever come about given how various other technologies have evolved over time is questionable.  But regardless, hydrogen is valuable for many industrial and commercial applications including the manufacture of ammonia and the refining of metals.

Hydrogen is produced in industrial quantities from natural gas by a carbon-dioxide-producing process known as methane-steam reforming.  To take its place as a green energy source, hydrogen needs to be produced by splitting water into its constituent oxygen and hydrogen components by the process of electrolysis. 

The problem is economic.  Methane-steam reforming produces hydrogen at a cost of about $1.50 per kilogram.  Green hydrogen costs about $5 a kilogram.

Researchers at Oregon State University have developed a new photocatalyst that enables the high-speed, high-efficiency production of hydrogen.  The material, called RTTA, is a metal organic framework containing ruthenium oxide and titanium oxide.  Ruthenium oxide is expensive, but very little is needed.  For industrial applications, if the catalyst shows good stability and reproducibility, the cost of the small amount of this exotic material becomes less important.

The photocatalyst, when exposed to sunlight, quickly and efficiently splits water yielding hydrogen.  The Oregon State discovery has real potential.

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Oregon State University research uncovers better way to produce green hydrogen

Photo, posted July 7, 2023, courtesy of Bill Abbott via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Fusion energy

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Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the sun.  Two atoms of hydrogen unite to form one helium atom and release energy in the process.  Hydrogen bombs work in this way and since their development in the 1950s, scientists have sought a way to use fusion to generate electricity.  Many scientists believe that the key to a fully decarbonized future is a combination of solar, wind, and fusion power.

Nuclear fusion does not involve radioactivity and thus does not have the dangers associated with the nuclear fission used in existing power plants.  Over the decades, billions of dollars have gone into fusion research, but the challenges faced in peacefully triggering a fusion reaction have made success always seem to be extremely far off in the future.

The world’s largest fusion project – the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor or ITER – was initiated in 1985.  The project involves 35 countries, and the reactor, still under construction in France, has yet to deliver any tangible results.

In the past couple of years, there have been important demonstrations of new and different ways to create nuclear fusion.  A system using laser fusion achieved fusion ignition, in which a reaction briefly became self-sustaining.  A system using magnetic confinement fusion produced a plasma that generated 11 megawatts of power for a world-record five seconds.

There are more than 30 companies competing in the race to deliver fusion energy.  Governments and private investors are funding efforts around the world.  Whether any of them will succeed remains to be seen.  The challenges are immense but so are the potential rewards.

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Will Tech Breakthroughs Bring Fusion Energy Closer to Reality?

Photo, posted July 31, 2010, courtesy of Steve Jurvetson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Natural hydrogen

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Hydrogen is considered to be a potential substitute for conventional fossil fuels in applications where electricity cannot easily be used such as in blast furnaces, cement works, industrial heating, long-distance aviation, and shipping.  But most hydrogen is manufactured by separating it from methane, which is energy-intensive and produces carbon dioxide.  So-called green hydrogen is made by splitting water using electricity.  It is a carbon-free process if the electricity is from renewable sources, but it is pretty expensive.

A small community in Mali gets its electricity by burning natural hydrogen, which bubbles up from underground into a village well.  It has long been known that processes in the Earth’s crust can make hydrogen gas from water under certain circumstances.  But conventional wisdom has been that this occurrence is rare and that the hydrogen produced is either inaccessible or seeps away.

An increasing number of geoscientists now are convinced that there is actually an enormous quantity of hydrogen beneath the planet’s surface and that we just haven’t been looking for it in the right places, or at all, for that matter.  Some say that there could be trillions of tons of hydrogen, and more is being generated all the time.

Prospectors have recently been drilling for hydrogen in France, Australia, Morocco, Brazil, and in the United States, in Nebraska, Arizona, and Kansas.  Will extracting natural hydrogen be practical at the scale required and will it be economical?  The jury is still out on all of this, but if it turns out as proponents claim, natural hydrogen could be a very big deal.

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Natural Hydrogen: A Potential Clean Energy Source Beneath Our Feet

Photo, posted November 4, 2012, courtesy of Heather Paul via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Sustainable hydrogen from methane

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Hydrogen could serve as a viable alternative to fossil fuels that can be used directly as a fuel or can be used to generate electricity to power cars and other devices. However, large-scale production of hydrogen currently relies on fossil fuels and creates carbon emissions in the process.

So-called green hydrogen involves using electricity to split water into its component elements to produce it.  If the electricity is generated without emissions, then the hydrogen is truly green.

Another way to get hydrogen is by breaking down hydrocarbons like methane, which itself is a very powerful greenhouse gas.  This so-called blue hydrogen could be environmentally friendly if an appropriate method for producing it can be developed.

Existing techniques for converting methane into hydrogen involve the use of metal catalysts – often nickel – that are energy-intensive to mine and manufacture, and can negatively affect the environment.  Research at the University of Surrey in the UK has shown promising results for the use of nitrogen-doped nanocarbons as metal-free catalysts for the direct conversion of methane into hydrogen.  One of the biggest problems with using metal catalysts for hydrogen production is that they get poisoned by carbon.  The carbon that comes out of the methane ends up stopping the catalyst from continuing to do its chemical job.  It turns out that the doped nanocarbon approach to hydrogen catalysis appears to be resistant to this problem.

The development of sustainable hydrogen production methods, including efficient and sustainable electrolysis of water as well as catalysis of hydrocarbons like methane, is crucial to realizing the potential of hydrogen fuel as a clean energy source.

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‘Game-changing’ findings for sustainable hydrogen production

Photo, posted April 30, 2021, courtesy of California Energy Commission via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A giant underground battery

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Two up-and-coming energy technologies are coming together near a tiny town in central Utah.  Outside of the town of Delta, population 3,600, two caverns, each as deep as the Empire State Building, are being created from an underground salt formation to be used to store hydrogen gas.  The gas will be used as a fuel in a new electricity generation plant.

The plant will replace an aging local coal-fired power plant.  The new plant will burn a mixture of natural gas and hydrogen – green hydrogen produced without emitting greenhouse gases. To produce the hydrogen, the facility will operate 40 giant electrolyzers that will use excess solar and wind power generated at times of low demand to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.

The caverns were created by a process called solution mining in which high-pressure water is pumped down into salt deposits that are dissolved. The resulting caverns are 200 feet in diameter and 1,200 deep and lie 3,000 to 4,000 feet below the surface.  Hydrogen cannot escape through the thick salt layers.

The amount of energy that can be stored in the form of hydrogen fuel in these caverns is massive – far more than all the battery storage installed in the U.S. to date.  Chevron has a majority stake in one of the projects and will supply the natural gas.  The facility is expected to go online in 2025.

While this will produce far fewer emissions than existing coal plants, it is not carbon-free.  Currently, turbine technology cannot operate with pure hydrogen fuel.  The Delta plant will run on only 30% hydrogen.  The hope is that turbine technology will improve in the future and permit operation on pure hydrogen.

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A Huge Underground Battery Is Coming to a Tiny Utah Town

Photo, posted September 9, 2013, courtesy of Scott via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Food and the climate crisis

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Agriculture is a major part of the climate problem and remains one of the hardest human activities to decarbonize.  It’s responsible for approximately 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions. 

Many experts contend that alternative food sources – like insect farming and seaweed aquaculture – are part of the solution.  Additionally, expanding production of climate resilient food crops, including quinoa, kernza, amaranth, and millet, likely also have a role to play. 

But according to a new study led by researchers from the University of California – Irvine, another solution to this problem may be to eliminate farms altogether.  In the study, which was recently published in the journal Nature Sustainability, the research team explored the potential for wide scale synthetic production of dietary fats through chemical and biological processes.  The materials needed for this method are the same as those used naturally by plants: hydrogen (in water) and carbon dioxide (in the air).   

The research team highlighted some of the potential benefits of farm-free food, including reduced water use, less pollution, localized food production, and less risk to food production from weather. 

Cookies, crackers, chips, and many other grocery products are made with palm oil, a dietary fat that continues to be a major driver of deforestation around the world.  However, it remains to be seen how consumers would react if the oil used to bake their cookies came from a food refinery up the road instead of a palm plantation in Indonesia.     

According to the researchers, depending on food refineries instead of tropical plantations for dietary fats could mitigate lots of climate-warming emissions while also protecting land and biodiversity.

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UC Irvine-led science team shows how to eat our way out of the climate crisis

Photo, posted July 15, 2008, courtesy of Quinn Dombrowski via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Electricity from chicken feathers

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The food industry generates enormous amounts of waste and by-products.  Each year, 40 million tons of chicken feathers are incinerated, causing adverse environmental effects.  Not only does it release large amounts of carbon dioxide but also produces toxic gases such as sulfur dioxide.

Researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have developed a way to put chicken feathers to good use by using them to make fuel cells more cost-effective and sustainable.

Using a simple and environmentally friendly process, they extract the keratin from the feathers.  Keratin is the protein that helps form hair, nails, the outer layer of skin, and feathers.  The extracted keratin is then converted into ultra-fine fibers known as amyloid fibrils.  The keratin fibrils are used in the membrane of a fuel cell.

Fuel cells generate clean energy from hydrogen and oxygen with only heat and water as byproducts.  At the heart of every fuel cell is a semipermeable membrane that allows protons to pass through but blocks electrons, thereby producing an electric current.  Fuel cells are the primary way hydrogen is used to directly generate electricity.  Hydrogen cars run on fuel cells.

Conventional fuel cells typically use membranes made from highly toxic chemicals.  The new ETH membranes essentially replace these toxic substances with biological keratin. 

The researchers are investigating how stable and durable their keratin membrane is and to improve it if necessary.  The team has already applied for a joint patent and is looking for partners and investors to further develop the technology and bring it to market.

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Generating clean electricity with chicken feathers

Photo, posted July 10, 2016, courtesy of Matthew Bellemare via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Solar thermochemical hydrogen

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For decades, there has been talk of the hydrogen economy in which hydrogen would take the place of fossil fuels in a wide range of domestic and industrial applications.  Over time, hydrogen’s potential advantages in some applications have diminished but it is still seen as perhaps the most promising way to decarbonize long-distance truck, ship, and plane transportation as well as many heavy-duty industrial processes.

Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, but here on Earth, it is tightly bound up in chemical compounds, notably water and hydrocarbons.  Extracting hydrogen from these compounds takes lots of energy.  To date, most hydrogen is produced from fossil fuel sources, resulting in carbon dioxide emissions.  So-called green hydrogen is made by splitting up water into its component elements.

Getting hydrogen from water generally uses electrolysis, which requires lots of electrical power.  That is why it isn’t the standard way to produce hydrogen; it costs too much to pay for all that power.

MIT scientists have been developing a process to make solar thermochemical hydrogen, or STCH.  STCH uses the sun’s heat to split apart water and no other energy source.  An existing source of solar heat drives a thermochemical reaction in which a heated metal surface grabs oxygen from steam and leaves hydrogen behind.  MIT did not invent the concept; their efforts are to make it practical.

Previous STCH designs were only capable of using 7% of incoming solar heat to make hydrogen.  The MIT process may be able to harness up to 40% of the sun’s heat and therefore generate far more hydrogen. 

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MIT design would harness 40 percent of the sun’s heat to produce clean hydrogen fuel

Photo, posted August 23, 2017, courtesy of Evan Lovely via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Hydrogen hubs

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The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 earmarked $7 billion in federal funding aimed at accelerating the commercial-scale deployment of hydrogen as well as driving down its cost.  Clean hydrogen is considered to be a key technology for cleaning up hard-to-decarbonize industrial sectors like refining, chemicals, and heavy-duty transport. 

On October 13th, the Department of Energy named seven regional clean hydrogen hubs which will provide clean hydrogen production, storage, delivery, and end-use components.  The so-called H2Hubs are expected to collectively produce three million metric tons of hydrogen annually. 

One selected project is the Appalachian Hydrogen Hub that includes West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania.  Another is the California Hydrogen Hub, that will produce hydrogen exclusively from renewable energy and biomass.  Then there is the Gulf Coast Hydrogen Hub, centered in the Houston, Texas region.  A fourth hub is the Heartland Hydrogen Hub, which includes Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.  A fifth hub is the Mid-Atlantic Hydrogen Hub, that includes Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey.  The sixth is the Midwest Hydrogen Hub that includes Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan.  Finally, there is the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub that includes Washington, Oregon, and Montana.

Each of these hubs involve multiple partner organizations in their regions and each has specific goals and strategies. The seven centers are located all around the country and are intended to jumpstart a national network of clean hydrogen producers, consumers, and connective infrastructure.

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Hydrogen hubs have arrived. Here are the big winners of the $7 billion sweepstakes

Photo, posted August 17, 2010, courtesy of David Stanley via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Hydrogen And The Methane Problem | Earth Wise

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Theoretically, hydrogen could be the fuel of the future.  It is the most common element in the universe and its combustion produces no harmful emissions.  Most industrial hydrogen comes from a process called steam reforming that extracts it from natural gas – basically methane.  Carbon dioxide is a byproduct of the process.   But it is also possible to get hydrogen by breaking down water resulting only in oxygen as a byproduct.   There is a great deal of ongoing development of so-called green hydrogen.

New research from Princeton University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has uncovered a potential problem associated with the use of hydrogen as a clean fuel. 

There is a molecule in the atmosphere called the hydroxyl radical.  It is known as “the detergent of the troposphere”.  It plays a critical role in eliminating greenhouse gases such as methane and ozone from the atmosphere.  It turns out that the hydroxyl radical also reacts with any hydrogen gas in the atmosphere and there is only so much hydroxyl to go around.  If large amounts of hydrogen were to enter the atmosphere, much of the hydroxyl radical would be used up reacting with it and there would be much less available to break down methane.  As a result, there would end up being more methane in the atmosphere, and methane is a powerful greenhouse gas.

The bottom line is that there would need to be proactive efforts to limit the amount of hydrogen getting into the atmosphere whether from producing it, transporting it, or anyplace else in the value chain.  Otherwise, the hydrogen economy would cancel out many of the climate benefits of eliminating fossil fuels.

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Switching to hydrogen fuel could prolong the methane problem

Photo, posted June 12, 2021, courtesy of Clean Air Task Force via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Fuel From Wind And Water | Earth Wise

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Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe and it can be used as a fuel to run cars, trains, and even airplanes.  Using it produces no harmful emissions.  However, to date, the way it is economically produced is not clean and green.  It is made from natural gas and leaves behind lots of carbon dioxide.

Around the world there are many projects working on so-called green hydrogen.  Producing hydrogen by splitting water into its component elements is called electrolysis and produces only oxygen as a waste product.  The problem with electrolysis is that it takes prodigious amounts of energy and therefore is very expensive.

A new project taking place in north Texas hopes to create the country’s first large-scale producer of green hydrogen.  The project is building a 900-megawatt wind farm along with a 500-megawatt solar farm.  The 1.4 gigawatts of total production capacity is more energy than the city of Austin consumes.  That energy will be used to produce 200,000 kilograms of hydrogen a day.

This project is among the largest proposed green hydrogen projects in the U.S.   There are green hydrogen proposals in Europe, Australia, Africa, and the Middle East that range from 10 GW to 67 GW. 

The Texas project, being developed in partnership by Air Products and AES, has been enabled by government support from the Inflation Reduction Act.    

There are a few thousand hydrogen-powered cars, boats, and trains but without substantial, cost-effective hydrogen infrastructure, the market is very limited.   Subsidizing the development of the necessary infrastructure is essential if there is any real chance to create the long-imagined hydrogen economy.

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Texas Project Will Use Wind to Make Fuel Out of Water

Photo, posted June 5, 2005, courtesy of City Transport Info via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Renewables Will Overtake Coal | Earth Wise

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According to a recent report by the International Energy Agency, worldwide growth in renewable power capacity is set to double in the next five years.  In fact, by 2027, the world will add as much renewable power as it did over the previous 20 years.

Of particular significance is that renewables are going to overtake coal as the largest source of electricity generation by early 2025.

The global energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine has had multiple effects on the evolution of the energy system.  While the war has driven a resurgence in fossil fuel consumption in Europe in order to replace gas from Russia, that resurgence is expected to be short-lived.  Instead, the current energy crisis may turn out to be an historic turning point toward a cleaner and more secure energy system.

Soaring fossil-fuel prices triggered by the war have caused many countries to respond by embracing wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear power plants, hydrogen fuels, electric vehicles, and electric heat pumps.  In the US, Congress approved more than $370 billion in spending for clean energy technologies as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.  China, India, South Korea, and Japan have all increased their national targets for renewable power.   However, heating and cooling buildings with renewable power remains a sector needing larger improvement, according to the energy agency.

Overall, the expansion of renewable power over the next five years is now projected to happen much faster than what was projected just one year ago. The new IEA report revised last year’s forecast for renewables growth by 30% as a result of the introduction of new policies by many of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters.

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Renewables Will Overtake Coal by Early 2025, Energy Agency Says

Photo, posted March 8, 2021, courtesy of Stanze via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Green Steel | Earth Wise

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The Inflation Reduction Act provides $369 billion in investments to ramp up renewable energy generation and manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines, energy storage, and electric vehicles. 

Every megawatt of solar power deployed requires 35 to 45 tons of steel.  Every megawatt of wind power uses 120 to 180 tons of steel.   Estimates are that it will take 1.7 billion tons of steel just to build all the wind turbines needed to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

This is a big problem because steel production accounts for roughly 10% of global carbon emissions and is one of the most carbon-intensive industries in the world.

Making steel is a complex and age-old process that hasn’t changed much over time.  Green steel is steel made with little or no carbon emissions.  There are a few ways to do it.  One is called the direct reduced iron method that uses green hydrogen instead of fossil fuel gas to produce iron and then a renewable-powered electric arc furnace to make the steel. 

Molten Oxide Electrolysis is an alternative green steel approach that doesn’t depend on having a green hydrogen infrastructure.  It uses electrolysis, powered by renewable energy, to separate the bonds of iron ore and produce liquid metal while releasing only oxygen in the process.

Green steel solutions rely on the availability of renewable energy, but the ultimate success of renewable energy will depend on the success of green steel.  The U.S. steel industry will leverage about $6 billion under the Inflation Reduction Act to make progress on it.

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Building tomorrow’s clean energy systems on green steel

Photo, posted October 30, 2008, courtesy of Paul Bica via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A Better Way To Recycle Plastic | Earth Wise

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The current state of plastic recycling is not very effective.  Plastic recycling is only able to replace 15-20% of the fossil-fuel-derived raw material needed to produce society’s demand for plastic.

Researchers at Chalmers University in Sweden have now demonstrated how the carbon content in mixed waste could be used to replace all of the fossil raw materials in the production of new plastic.  In principle, their technology could completely eliminate the climate impact of plastic materials.

According to the researchers, there are enough carbon atoms in waste to meet the needs of all global plastic production.

The Chalmers process is based on thermochemical technology and involves heating waste to 1100-1500 degrees Fahrenheit.  The waste is thereby vaporized and when hydrogen is added, becomes a carbon-based substance that can replace the fossil-fuel building blocks of plastic.  The method does not require sorting the waste materials.  Different types of waste, such as old plastic products and even paper cups, with or without food residues, can be fed into the recycling reactors.  The researchers are now developing the techniques required to utilize their recycling technology in the same factories in which plastic products are currently being made from fossil oil or gas.

The principle of the process is inspired by the natural carbon cycle in which plants break down into carbon dioxide when they wither and die, and then photosynthesis uses carbon dioxide and solar energy to grow new plants.

Producing new plastics would no longer require petroleum or other fossil fuels as raw materials.  If the energy needed to drive the recycling reactors is taken from renewable sources, plastics could become the basis of a sustainable and circular economy.

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Pioneering recycling turns mixed waste into premium plastics with no climate impact

Photo, posted August 10, 2013, courtesy of Lisa Risager via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Storing Sunshine To Make Electricity On Demand | Earth Wise

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Researchers at Chalmers University in Sweden have developed an entirely new way of capturing and storing energy from sunlight.  The system is called the Molecular Thermal Energy Storage System or MOST.  It is based on a specially designed molecule that changes shape when it is exposed to sunshine.

The molecule is composed of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen.  When sunlight hits it, it changes into an energy-rich isomer – a molecule made up of the same atoms but arranged together in a different way.  That isomer is stable and can be stored for many years.  When a specially designed catalyst is applied, the stored energy is released in the form of heat and the molecule returns to its original form and can be reused. 

The Chalmers researchers sent some of the energy-laden isomer to researchers in China who used it to operate a micron-thin thermoelectric generator, which used the heat released by the isomer material to generate electricity.  The generator is an ultra-thin chip that could be integrated into electronics such as headphones, smart watches, and telephones.  It is currently only at the proof-of-concept stage, but the results are quite promising.  The integration with the MOST technology provides a way that solar energy can generate electricity regardless of weather, time of day, season, or geographical location.  The results of the study were recently published in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science.

In effect, for this demonstration, Swedish sunshine was sent to the other side of the world and converted into electricity in China. The ultimate goal of this research is to create self-charging electronics that uses stored solar energy on demand.

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Converting solar energy to electricity on demand

Photo, posted March 11, 2013, courtesy of Steve Slater via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

WAMC/Northeast Public Radio is a regional public radio network serving parts of seven northeastern states (more...)