Tag: decarbonisation

How electric planes could help clean up the skies

7 August 2019

Electrification
Turbine blades of turbo jet engine for passenger plane, aircraft concept, aviation and aerospace industry

You probably haven’t heard the phrase “flygskam” before. But you might have felt it. The recently coined Swedish term refers to the a shame or embarrassment caused by flying and its effect of the environment.

It’s not an uncommon feeling either, with 23% of people in the country now claiming to have abstained from air travel in the past year to lessen their climate impact. From electric cars to cleaner shipping, transport is undergoing dramatic change. However, aviation is proving more difficult to decarbonise than most forms of transportation.

As airports, cargo and the number of passengers flying every day continues to expand, the need to decarbonise air travel is more pressing than ever if aviation is to avoid becoming a barrier to climate action.

For other transport sectors facing a similar dilemma, electrification has proved a key route forward. Could the electrification of aeroplanes be next?

The problem with planes

Aeroplanes still rely on fossil fuels to provide the huge amount of power needed for take-off. Globally flights produced 859 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) in 2017. The aviation industry as a whole accounts for 2% of all emissions derived from human activity and 12% of all transport emissions. Despite growing awareness of the contribution CO2 emissions make to causing the climate change emergency, estimates show global air traffic could quadruple by 2050.

Electrification of air travel presents the potential to drastically cut plane emissions, while also offering other benefits. Electric planes could be 50% quieter, with reduced aircraft noise pollution potentially enabling airports to operate around the clock and closer to cities.

Electric planes could also be as much as 10% cheaper for airlines to operate, by eliminating the massive expense of jet fuel, and fewer moving parts making electric motors easier to maintain compared to traditional jets. These cost savings for airlines could be passed on to passengers and businesses needing to move goods in the form of cheaper flights.

But while the benefits are obvious, the pressing question is, how feasible is it?

The race to electric planes

Start ups are now racing to develop electric planes that will reduce emissions – such Ampaire and Wright Electric. The latter has even partnered with EasyJet to develop electric planes for short-haul routes of around 335-mile distances, which make up a fifth of the budget carrier’s routes.

EasyJet going electric? (Source: easyjet.com)

EasyJet has highlighted London to Amsterdam as a key route they hope Wright Electric’s planes will operate, with potential for other zero-emission flights between London and Belfast, Dublin, Paris and Brussels. The partners aim to have an electric passenger jets on the tarmac by 2027.

Ahead on the runway, however, is Israeli firm Eviation, which recently debuted a prototype for the world’s first commercial all-electric passenger aircraft. Named ‘Alice’ the craft is expected to carry nine passengers for 650 miles and could be up and running as early as 2022.

The challenge these companies face, however, is developing the batteries needed to power electric motors capable of delivering the propulsion needed for a plane full of passengers and luggage to take off. Currently, batteries don’t have anywhere near the energy density of traditional kerosene jet fuel – 60% less.

Alice’s battery is colossal, weighing 3.8 metric tons and accounting for 60% of the plane’s overall weight. By contrast, traditional planes allocate around 30% of total weight to fuel. As conventional jets burn fuel, they get lighter, whereas electric planes would have to carry the same battery weight for the full duration of a flight.

Closer to home, on Scotland’s Orkney Islands, electric planes could be perfectly suited to replace expensive jet fuel on the region’s super-short island hopping service. There’s little need for range-anxiety, with the longest flight, from Kirkwall to North Ronaldsay, lasting just 20 minutes and the shortest taking less than two minutes, between the tiny islands of Papa Westray and neighbouring Westray.

Orkney is already known for its renewable credentials, exporting more wind-generated power to the grid than it is able to consume. The local council plans to investigate retrofitting its eight-seater aircraft, which carried more than 21,000 passengers last year, with electric motors as early as 2022.

Taking electric long haul

The planes currently under development by Ampaire, Wright Electric and Eviation are small aircraft, only capable of short distance flights. This is a long way behind the lengths capable of traditional fossil fuel-powered jets built by airline industry stalwarts, Airbus and Boeing, which are making their own move into electrification.

Ampaire: electric but only for short distances (Source: Ampaire.com)

Even with drastic developments in battery technology, however, Airbus estimates its long-haul A320 airliner, which seats between 100 and 240 passengers, would only be able to fly for a fifth of its range as an electric plane and only manage to carry half its regular cargo load. Elsewhere, French jet engine-maker Safran predicts that full-size, battery-powered commercial aircraft won’t become a reality until 2050 at the earliest.

However, if going fully electric may not yet be possible for large, long-haul planes, hybrid aircraft, which use both conventional and electric power, offer a potential middle ground.

A team comprising Rolls-Royce, Airbus and Siemens are working on a project set to launch in 2021 called E-Fan X, which would combine an electric motor with a BAE 146 aircraft’s jet engine.

Airbus say they may have to reduce their cargo to go electric (Source: www.airbus.com)

Hybrid models aim to use electric engines as the power source for the energy-intensive take-off and landing processes, saving jet fuel and reducing noise around airports. Then, while the plane is in the air, it would switch to conventional kerosene engines, which are most efficient when the plane reaches cruising altitude. Airbus aims to introduce a hybrid version of their best-selling single-aisle A320 passenger jet by 2035.

While start ups and established jet makers jostle to get electric and hybrid planes off the ground, there are other ideas around reducing aviation emissions.

Technology of the future for decarbonising planes

The University of Illinois is working with NASA to develop hydrogen fuel cells capable of powering all-electric air travel. Hydrogen fuel cells work by combining hydrogen and oxygen to cause a chemical reaction that generates an electric current. While the ingredients are very light, the problem is they are bulky to store, and on planes making effective use of space is key.

Researchers are combatting this by experimenting with cryogenically freezing the gases into liquids which makes them more space-efficient to store, but makes refuelling trickier as airports would need the infrastructure to work with the freezing liquids.

There have also been experiments into solar-powered planes. In 2016, a team of Swiss adventurers succeeded in flying around the world in an aircraft that uses solar panels on its wings to power its propellers. With a wingspan wider than a Boeing 747, but weighing just a fraction of a traditional jet, the Solar Impulse 2 is capable of staying airborne for as long as six days, though only able to carry a lone pilot.

While the feat is impressive the Solar Impulse team says the aim was to showcase the advancement of solar technology, rather than develop solar planes for mainstream usage.

Elsewhere, MIT engineers have been working on the first ever plane with no moving parts in its propulsion system. Instead, the model uses ionic wind – a silent but hugely powerful flow of ions produced aboard the plane. Ionic wind is created when a current is passed between a thick and thin electrode. With enough voltage applied, the air between the electrodes produces thrust capable of propelling a small aircraft steadily during flight. MIT hope that ionic wind systems could be paired with conventional jets to make hybrid planes for a range of uses.

A general blueprint for an MIT plane propelled by ionic wind (Source: MIT Electric Aircraft Initiative, news.mit.edu)

Like any emerging technology, it will take time to develop these alternative power sources to reach the point where they can safely and securely serve the global aviation industry.

However, it’s clear that the transition away from fossil fuels is underway.

Flying as we know it has been slow to adapt, but with a growing awareness and levels of “flygskam” among consumers, there is greater pressure on the industry to decarbonise and lay out positive solutions to cleaner air travel.

Climate change is the biggest challenge of our time

Will Gardiner, Chief Executive Officer, Drax Group

28 July 2019

Opinion
Drax Group CEO Will Gardiner

Climate change is the biggest challenge of our time and Drax has a crucial role in tackling it.

All countries around the world need to reduce carbon emissions while at the same time growing their economies. Creating enough clean, secure energy for industry, transport and people’s daily lives has never been more important.

Drax is at the heart of the UK energy system. Recently the UK government committed to delivering a net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and Drax is equally committed to helping make that possible.

We’ve recently had some questions about what we’re doing and I’d like to set the record straight.

How is Drax helping the UK reach its climate goals?

At Drax we’re committed to a zero-carbon, lower-cost energy future.

And we’ve accelerated our efforts to help the UK get off coal by converting our power station to using sustainable biomass. And now we’re the largest decarbonisation project in Europe.

We’re exploring how Drax Power Station can become the anchor to enable revolutionary technologies to capture carbon in the North of England.

And we’re creating more energy stability, so that more wind and solar power can come onto the grid.

And finally, we’re helping our customers take control of their energy – so they can use it more efficiently and spend less.

Is Drax the largest carbon polluter in the UK?

No. Since 2012 we’ve reduced our CO2 emissions by 84%. In that time, we moved from being western Europe’s largest polluter to being the home of the largest decarbonisation project in Europe.

And we want to do more.

We’ve expanded our operations to include hydro power, storage and natural gas and we’ve continued to bring coal off the system.

By the mid 2020s, our ambition is to create a power station that both generates electricity and removes carbon from the atmosphere at the same time.

Does building gas power stations mean the UK will be tied into fossil fuels for decades to come?

Our energy system is changing rapidly as we move to use more wind and solar power.

At the same time, we need new technologies that can operate when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining.

A new, more efficient gas plant can fill that gap and help make it possible for the UK to come off coal before the government’s deadline of 2025.

Importantly, if we put new gas in place we need to make sure that there’s a route through for making that zero-carbon over time by being able to capture the CO2 or by converting those power plants into hydrogen.

Are forests destroyed when Drax uses biomass and is biomass power a major source of carbon emissions?

No.

Sustainable biomass from healthy managed forests is helping decarbonise the UK’s energy system as well as helping to promote healthy forest growth.

Biomass has been a critical element in the UK’s decarbonisation journey. Helping us get off coal much faster than anyone thought possible.

The biomass that we use comes from sustainably managed forests that supply industries like construction. We use residues, like sawdust and waste wood, that other parts of industry don’t use.

We support healthy forests and biodiversity. The biomass that we use is renewable because the forests are growing and continue to capture more carbon than we emit from the power station.

What’s exciting is that this technology enables us to do more. We are piloting carbon capture with bioenergy at the power station. Which could enable us to become the first carbon-negative power station in the world and also the anchor for new zero-carbon cluster across the Humber and the North.

How do you justify working at Drax?

I took this job because Drax has already done a tremendous amount to help fight climate change in the UK. But I also believe passionately that there is more that we can do.

I want to use all of our capabilities to continue fighting climate change.

I also want to make sure that we listen to what everyone else has to say to ensure that we continue to do the right thing.

Acquisition Bridge Facility refinancing completed

24 July 2019

Investors

Private placement

The £375 million private placement with infrastructure lenders comprises facilities with maturities between 2024 and 2029(2).

ESG Facility

The £125 million ESG facility matures in 2022. The facility includes a mechanism that adjusts the margin based on Drax’s carbon emissions against an annual benchmark, recognising Drax’s continued commitment to reducing its carbon emissions as part of its overall purpose of enabling a zero-carbon, lower cost energy future.

Together these facilities extend the Group’s debt maturity profile beyond 2027 and reduce the Group’s overall cost of debt to below 4 percent. 

Enquiries:

Drax Investor Relations:
Mark Strafford
+44 (0) 1757 612 491

Media:

Drax External Communications:
Matt Willey
+44 (0) 7711 376 087 

Website: www.drax.com

Note

(1)  Drax Corporate Limited drew £550 million under an acquisition bridge facility on 2 January 2019 used to partially fund the acquisition of ScottishPower Generation Limited for initial net consideration of £687 million. £150 million of the acquisition bridge facility was repaid on 16 May 2019.

(2)  £122.5 million in 2024, £122.5 million in 2025, £80 million in 2026 and £50 million in 2029.

Britain’s power system has never been closer to being fossil-free

Iain Staffell, Imperial College London

23 July 2019

Opinion
Drax EI header

Electricity generation is decarbonising faster in Britain than anywhere else in the world.[1] Changes to the way we produce power over the last six years have reduced carbon emissions by 100 million tonnes per year.[2]

The carbon savings made in Britain’s power sector are equivalent to having taken every single car and van off our roads.[3]

This puts Britain at the forefront of the wider trend towards clean electricity. Coal generation is collapsing in Germany, having fallen 20% in the last year due to rising carbon prices. Renewables have beaten fossil fuels as the largest source of generation in Europe. A third of America’s coal power stations have retired over the last decade as they switch to cleaner natural gas.

Britain’s coal power stations made international headlines in May for sitting completely idle for two full weeks. But coal is only part of the story.

The second quarter of 2019 saw three major milestones that signal Britain’s progress towards a clean power system:

  1. The carbon content of electricity hit an all-time low, falling below 100 g/kWh across a whole day for the first time;
  2. Renewables hit an all-time high, supplying more than half of Britain’s electricity over a full day; and
  3. For the first time ever, less than a tenth of electricity was produced from fossil fuels.

Going below 100 grams

100 grams of CO2 per kWh is an important number. Two years ago the Committee on Climate Change recommended it as the target for 2030 that would mean our electricity system is in line with the national commitment to decarbonise.

Britain’s electricity has dipped below 100 grams for single hours at a time, but until now it had never done so for a full day.

June 30th was a sunny Sunday with a good breeze that brought a 33°C heatwave to an end. Electricity demand was among the lowest seen all year while wind output was at a three-month high.   The carbon intensity of electricity sat below 100 g/kWh for half of the day, falling to a minimum of just 73 g/kWh in the mid-afternoon. Carbon emissions averaged over the day were 97 g/kWh, beating the previous record of 104 g/kWh set a year ago.

Fig 1 – Britain’s generation mix during June 30th that delivered electricity for less than 100g of carbon per kWh. Click to view/download.

Going above 50% renewables

June 30th was a record-breaker in a second way. Wind, solar, biomass and hydro supplied 55% of electricity demand over the day – smashing the previous daily record of 49% set last summer.

For the first day in the national grid’s history, more electricity came from renewables than any other source.

That day, Britain’s wind farms produced twice as much electricity as all fossil fuels combined. A quarter of the country’s electricity demand was met by onshore wind farms, and 15% from offshore.[4]

Despite several reactors being offline for maintenance, nuclear power provided nearly a fifth of electricity; again, more than was supplied by all fossil fuels.

Heading towards fossil-free electricity

The rise of renewable energy has been a major factor in decarbonising Britain’s electricity, complemented by the incredible fall in coal generation.

Every single coal plant in Britain has sat idle for at least two days a week since the start of spring.

It has been three years since Britain’s first zero-coal hour. A year later came the first full day, and earlier this year we saw the longest coal-free run in history, lasting 18 days. This summer could see the first full month of no coal output if this trend continues.

Fig 2 – Number of hours per week with zero generation from Britain’s coal power stations. Click to view/download.

Attention must now shift from ‘zero coal’ to ‘fossil free’.

Unabated natural gas (without carbon capture and storage) needs to be removed from the grid mix by 2050 to tackle the climate crisis and ensure the UK hits net-zero emissions across the whole economy.

At the start of this decade, Britain’s power system had never operated with less than half of electricity coming from fossil fuels.

As renewables were rolled out across the country the share of fossil fuels has fallen dramatically. By 2014, the grid was able to operate with less than one-third from fossil fuels, and by 2016 it had gone below one-fifth.

On May 26th, the share of fossil fuels in Britain’s electricity fell below 10% for the first time ever.

Fig 3 – The record minimum share of fossil fuels in Britain’s electricity mix over the last decade, with projections of the current trend to 2025. Click to view/download.

This record could have gone further though. During the afternoon, 600 MW of wind power was shed – enough to power half a million homes.

National Grid had to turn off a tenth of Scotland’s wind farms to keep the system stable and secure.

This wind power had to be replaced by gas, biomass and hydro plants elsewhere in the country, as these were located closer to demand centres, and could be fully controlled at short notice. This turn-down coincides with ten straight hours where power prices were zero or negative, going down to a minimum of –£71/MWh in the afternoon. National Grid’s bill for balancing the system that day alone came to £6.6m.

If the power system could have coped with all the renewable energy being generated, fossil fuels would have been pushed down to just 8% of the generation mix.

This highlights the challenges that National Grid face in their ambition to run a zero carbon power system by 2025 – and the tangible benefits that could already be realised today. If the trend of the last decade continues, Britain could be on course for its first ‘fossil-free’ hour as early as 2023. This will only be possible if the technical issues around voltage and inertia at times of high wind output can be tackled with new low-carbon technologies.

Other countries are grappling with questions about whether renewables can be relied on to replace coal and gas. Britain is proof that renewables can achieve things that weren’t imaginable just a decade ago.

Zero carbon electricity is “the job that can’t wait”. Britain only has a few more years to wait before the first “fossil-free” hours become a reality.

[1] Over the last decade, the carbon intensity of electricity generation in Britain has fallen faster than in any other major economy. Source: Energy Revolution: Global Outlook.

[2] In the 12 months to July 2019 carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation totalled 60.5 million tonnes. In the 12 months to July 2013 these emissions were 160.2 million tonnes. Both figures include emissions from imported electricity, and from producing and transporting biomass. See Electric Insights and our peer-reviewed methodology paper for details of the calculation.

[3] In 2017 the UK’s cars emitted 70 million tonnes of CO2 and light-duty vehicles emitted 19 million tonnes. Source: BEIS Final greenhouse gas emissions statistics.

[4] Electric Insights now provides data on the split between onshore and offshore wind farms. Typically, around 2/3 of the country’s wind power comes from its onshore wind farms.

Laying down the pathway to carbon capture in a net zero UK

Will Gardiner, Chief Executive Officer, Drax Group

17 July 2019

Opinion
Humber bridge

The starting gun has fired and the challenge is underway. The government has officially set 2050 as the target year in which the UK will achieve carbon neutrality.

There’s no denying this economy-wide transformation will need a great deal of investment. Reaching net zero carbon emissions will require an evolutionary overhaul of not just Great Britain’s electricity system but the UK economy as a whole. And indeed, the way we live our lives and go about our business.

But that doesn’t mean it’s out of reach. Instead it will fall to technologies such as carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS), as well as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), to make it economical and possible.

The secret to making decarbonisation affordable

The UK’s Committee on Climate Change (CCC) estimates the price of decarbonisation will cost as little as 1% of forecast GDP per annum in 2050.

However, the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Select Committee inquiry found that failure to deploy CCUS and BECCS technology could double the cost to 2%. There are a number of reasons for this, such as the cost to jobs, productivity and living standards of shutting down industrial emitters. CCUS’s ability to contribute to a hydrogen economy can help avoid this.

Moreover, the CCC claims even with industries striving to decarbonise rapidly, as much as 100 megatonnes of hard-to-abate carbon dioxide (CO2) is expected to remain in the UK economy by 2050.

This makes carbon negative techniques and technologies, such as BECCS – which uses woody biomass that has absorbed carbon in its lifetime as forests – alongside direct air capture (DAC), the boosting of ocean plant productivity, much greater tree planting and better sequestration of carbon in soil, essential if the UK is to attain true carbon neutrality.

The importance of BECCS and CCUS in the zero carbon future is clear. Now is the time for rapid development. Not in 2030, not in 2040, but today in 2019 and into the 2020s.

But doing this requires the government to move beyond its historic policies that have failed to support the technology in the past. Progress needs long-term frameworks that provide private sector investors with the certainty they need to kick-start the commercial-scale deployment of CCUS technologies.

Laying down the tracks to negative emissions  

For carbon capture to become an integrated part of the energy system it must deliver value well beyond the energy sector. Establishing markets for products developed from captured carbon will play a role here, but to set the wheels in motion, financial frameworks are needed that can allow BECCS and CCUS to thrive.

One device that can allow the market to develop CCUS is the creation of contracts for difference (CfDs) for carbon capture. These currently exist in the low-carbon generation space, between generators and the government-owned Low Carbon Contracts Company (LCCC). Through these contracts, power generators are paid the difference between their cost of generating low carbon electricity (known as a strike price) and the price of electricity in Great Britain’s wholesale power market. If the power price in the market is higher than the strike price generators pay the difference back to the LCCC, meaning consumers are protected from price spikes too.

It means that the generator is protected from market volatility or big drops in the wholesale price of power, offering the security to invest in new technology. More than this, CfDs last many years meaning they transcend political cycles and the cost per megawatt can be reduced with a longer contract. Creating a market for carbon capture or negative emissions generation could offer the same security to generators to invest in the technology.

A CfD for BECCS should not only incentivise the building of infrastructure to capture carbon, but we must also recognise the valuable role that negative emissions can play. By compensating BECCS producers for their negative emissions, it should provide a lower cost alternative to reducing all other CO2 emissions to zero, while still ensuring that the UK can get to net zero.

Beyond installing carbon capture at existing generation sites, one of the major financial barriers to the wider deployment of CCUS and BECCS is the cost and liability associated with transporting and storing captured carbon.

A Regulated Asset Base (RAB) funding model, would encourage investment by gradually recovering the costs of transport and storage via a regulated return. This approach is currently under consideration as a means of financing other major infrastructure projects.

A RAB allows businesses, including investment and pension funds, to invest in projects under the oversight of a government regulator. In exchange for their commitment, investors can collect a fee through regular consumer and non-domestic bills.

Led by industry; guided by government

Ultimately, the current carbon trading system is based around charging polluters. But as we approach a post-coal UK and in order to achieve net zero, it’s necessary for this to evolve – from economically disincentivising emissions to incentivising carbon-negative power generation.

However, with the cost of carbon capture and negative emissions differing between types of industries and technologies, there’s a requirement to consider differentiated carbon prices to guide industry through long-term strategy. But the need for carbon capture development is too pressing for us as an industry to wait.

At Drax Power Station our BECCS pilot is just the beginning of our wider ambitions to become the first negative emissions power station. Our use of biomass already makes Drax Power Station the largest generator of renewable electricity in Great Britain. The responsibly-managed working forests our suppliers source from absorbed carbon from the atmosphere as they grew so adding carbon capture at scale to this supply chain can turn our operation from low carbon, to carbon-neutral and eventually carbon negative.

And we have bigger plans still to create a net zero carbon industrial cluster in the Humber region, in partnership with Equinor and National Grid. The cluster would deliver carbon capture at the scale needed to not just decarbonise the most carbon-intensive industrial region in the UK, but to put the country at the forefront of the decarbonisation of industry and manufacturing.

Government action is needed to make CCUS and BECCS economically sustainable at scale as an integrated part of our energy system. However, the onus is on us, the energy industry to lead development and act as trusted partners that can deliver the decarbonisation needed to reach net zero carbon by 2050.

Learn more about carbon capture, usage and storage in our series:

What is LNG and how is it cutting global shipping emissions?

5 July 2019

Sustainable business
Oil tanker, Gas tanker operation at oil and gas terminal.

Shipping is widely considered the most efficient form of cargo transport. As a result, it’s the transportation of choice for around 90% of world trade. But even as the most efficient, it still accounts for roughly 3% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

This may not sound like much, but it amounts to 1 billion tonnes of CO2 and other greenhouse gases per year – more than the UK’s total emissions output. In fact, if shipping were a country, it would be the sixth largest producer of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. And unless there are drastic changes, emissions related to shipping could increase from between 50% and 250% by 2050.

As well as emitting GHGs that directly contribute towards the climate emergency, big ships powered by fossil fuels such as bunker fuel (also known as heavy fuel oil) release other emissions. These include two that can have indirect impacts – sulphur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx). Both impact air quality and can have human health and environmental impacts.

As a result, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) is introducing measures that will actively look to force shipping companies to reduce their emissions. In January 2020 it will bring in new rules that dictate all vessels will need to use fuels with a sulphur content of below 0.5%.

One approach ship owners are taking to meet these targets is to fit ‘scrubbers’– devices which wash exhausts with seawater, turning the sulphur oxides emitted from burning fossil fuel oils into harmless calcium sulphate. But these will only tackle the sulphur problem, and still mean that ships emit CO2.

Another approach is switching to cleaner energy alternatives such as biofuels, batteries or even sails, but the most promising of these based on existing technology is liquefied natural gas, or LNG.

What is LNG?

In its liquid form, natural gas can be used as a fuel to power ships, replacing heavy fuel oil, which is more typically used, emissions-heavy and cheaper. But first it needs to be turned into a liquid.

To do this, raw natural gas is purified to separate out all impurities and liquids. This leaves a mixture of mostly methane and some ethane, which is passed through giant refrigerators that cool it to -162oC, in turn shrinking its volume by 600 times.

The end product is a colourless, transparent, non-toxic liquid that’s much easier to store and transport, and can be used to power specially constructed LNG-ready ships, or by ships retrofitted to run on LNG. As well as being versatile, it has the potential to reduce sulphur oxides and nitrogen oxides by 90 to 95%, while emitting 10 to 20% less CO2 than heavier fuel alternatives.

The cost of operating a vessel on LNG is around half that of ultra-low sulphur marine diesel (an alternative fuel option for ships aiming to lower their sulphur output), and it’s also future-proofed in a way that other low-sulphur options are not. As emissions standards become stricter in the coming years, vessels using natural gas would still fall below any threshold.

The industry is starting to take notice. Last year 78 vessels were fitted to run on LNG, the highest annual number to date.

One company that has already embraced the switch to LNG is Estonia’s Graanul Invest. Europe’s largest wood pellet producer and a supplier to Drax Power Station, Graanul is preparing to introduce custom-built vessels that run on LNG by 2020.

The new ships will have the capacity to transport around 9,000 tonnes of compressed wood pellets and Graanul estimates that switching to LNG has the potential to lower its CO2 emissions by 25%, to cut NOx emissions by 85%, and to almost completely eliminate SO2 and particulate matter pollution.  

Is LNG shipping’s only viable option?

LNG might be leading the charge towards cleaner shipping, but it’s not the only solution on the table. Another potential is using advanced sail technology to harness wind, which helps power large cargo ships. More than just an innovative way to upscale a centuries-old method of navigating the seas, it is one that could potentially be retrofitted to cargo ships and significantly reduce emissions.

Drax is currently taking part in a study with the Smart Green Shipping Alliance, Danish dry bulk cargo transporter Ultrabulk and Humphreys Yacht Design, to assess the possibility of retrofitting innovative sail technology onto one of its ships for importing biomass.

Manufacturers are also looking at battery power as a route to lowering emissions. Last year, boats using battery-fitted technology similar to that used by plug-in cars were developed for use in Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands, while Dutch company Port-Liner are currently building two giant all-electric barges – dubbed ‘Tesla ships’ – that will be powered by battery packs and can carry up to 280 containers.

Then there are projects exploring the use of ammonia (which can be produced from air and water using renewable electricity), and hydrogen fuel cell technology. In short, there are many options on the table, but few that can be implemented quickly, and at scale – two things which are needed by the industry. Judged by these criteria, LNG remains the frontrunner.

There are currently just 125 ships worldwide using LNG, but these numbers are expected to increase by between 400 and 600 by 2020. Given that the world fleet boasts more than 60,000 commercial ships, this remains a drop in the ocean, but with the right support it could be the start of a large scale move towards cleaner waterways.

What is a fuel cell and how will they help power the future?

27 June 2019

Carbon capture

How do you get a drink in space? That was one of the challenges for NASA in the 1960s and 70s when its Gemini and Apollo programmes were first preparing to take humans into space.

The answer, it turned out, surprisingly lay in the electricity source of the capsules’ control modules. Primitive by today’s standard, these panels were powered by what are known as fuel cells, which combined hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity. The by-product of this reaction is heat but also water – pure enough for astronauts to drink.

Fuel cells offered NASA a much better option than the clunky batteries and inefficient solar arrays of the 1960s, and today they still remain on the forefront of energy technology, presenting the opportunity to clean up roads, power buildings and even help to reduce and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power stations.

Power through reaction

At its most basic, a fuel cell is a device that uses a fuel source to generate electricity through a series of chemical reactions.

All fuel cells consist of three segments, two catalytic electrodes – a negatively charged anode on one side and a positively charged cathode on the other, and an electrolyte separating them. In a simple fuel cell, hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, is pumped to one electrode and oxygen to the other. Two different reactions then occur at the interfaces between the segments which generates electricity and water.

What allows this reaction to generate electricity is the electrolyte, which selectively transports charged particles from one electrode to the other. These charged molecules link the two reactions at the cathode and anode together and allow the overall reaction to occur. When the chemicals fed into the cell react at the electrodes, it creates an electrical current that can be harnessed as a power source.

Many different kinds of chemicals can be used in a fuel cell, such as natural gas or propane instead of hydrogen. A fuel cell is usually named based on the electrolyte used. Different electrolytes selectively transport different molecules across. The catalysts at either side are specialised to ensure that the correct reactions can occur at a fast enough rate.

For the Apollo missions, for example, NASA used alkaline fuel cells with potassium hydroxide electrolytes, but other types such as phosphoric acids, molten carbonates, or even solid ceramic electrolytes also exist.

The by-products to come out of a fuel cell all depend on what goes into it, however, their ability to generate electricity while creating few emissions, means they could have a key role to play in decarbonisation.

Fuel cells as a battery alternative

Fuel cells, like batteries, can store potential energy (in the form of chemicals), and then quickly produce an electrical current when needed. Their key difference, however, is that while batteries will eventually run out of power and need to be recharged, fuel cells will continue to function and produce electricity so long as there is fuel being fed in.

One of the most promising uses for fuel cells as an alternative to batteries is in electric vehicles.

Rachel Grima, a Research and Innovation Engineer at Drax, explains:

“Because it’s so light, hydrogen has a lot of potential when it comes to larger vehicles, like trucks and boats. Whereas battery-powered trucks are more difficult to design because they’re so heavy.”

These vehicles can pull in oxygen from the surrounding air to react with the stored hydrogen, producing only heat and water vapour as waste products. Which – coupled with an expanding network of hydrogen fuelling stations around the UK, Europe and US – makes them a transport fuel with a potentially big future.

 

Fuel cells, in conjunction with electrolysers, can also operate as large-scale storage option. Electrolysers operate in reverse to fuel cells, using excess electricity from the grid to produce hydrogen from water and storing it until it’s needed. When there is demand for electricity, the hydrogen is released and electricity generation begins in the fuel cell.

A project on the islands of Orkney is using the excess electricity generated by local, community-owned wind turbines to power a electrolyser and store hydrogen, that can be transported to fuel cells around the archipelago.

Fuel cells’ ability to take chemicals and generate electricity is also leading to experiments at Drax for one of the most important areas in energy today: carbon capture.

Turning CO2 to power

Drax is already piloting bioenergy carbon capture and storage technologies, but fuel cells offer the unique ability to capture and use carbon while also adding another form of electricity generation to Drax Power Station.

“We’re looking at using a molten carbonate fuel cell that operates on natural gas, oxygen and CO2,” says Grima. “It’s basic chemistry that we can exploit to do carbon capture.”

The molten carbonate, a 600 degrees Celsius liquid made up of either lithium potassium or lithiumsodium carbonate sits in a ceramic matrix and functions as the electrolyte in the fuel cell. Natural gas and steam enter on one side and pass through a reformer that converts them into hydrogen and CO2.

On the other side, flue gas – the emissions (including biogenic CO2) which normally enter the atmosphere from Drax’s biomass units – is captured and fed into the cell alongside air from the atmosphere. The CO2and oxygen (O2) pass over the electrode where they form carbonate (CO32-) which is transported across the electrolyte to then react with the hydrogen (H2), creating an electrical charge.

“It’s like combining an open cycle gas turbine (OCGT) with carbon capture,” says Grima. “It has the electrical efficiency of an OCGT. But the difference is it captures CO2 from our biomass units as well as its own CO2.”

Along with capturing and using CO2, the fuel cell also reduces nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions from the flue gas, some of which are destroyed when the O2and CO2 react at the electrode.

From the side of the cell where flue gas enters a CO2-depleted gas is released. On the other side of the cell the by-products are water and CO2.

During a government-supported front end engineering and design (FEED) study starting this spring, this CO2 will also be captured, then fed through a pipeline running from Drax Power Station into the greenhouse of a nearby salad grower. Here it will act to accelerate the growth of tomatoes.

The partnership between Drax, FuelCell Energy, P3P Partners and the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy could provide an additional opportunity for the UK’s biggest renewable power generator to deploy bioenergy carbon capture usage and storage (BECCUS) at scale in the mid 2020s.

From powering space ships in the 70s to offering greenhouse-gas free transport, fuel cells continue to advance. As low-carbon electricity sources become more important they’re set to play a bigger role yet.

Learn more about carbon capture, usage and storage in our series:

How the market decides where Great Britain gets its electricity from

11 June 2019

Power generation
Set of vintage glowing light bulbs on black background

The make-up of Great Britain’s power system changes constantly. Demand is always changing; in winter it may peak at 50 gigawatts (GW) but overnight in summer it will be less than 20 GW. Some days wind is the biggest source of the country’s electricity generation, other days it’s gas. Then there are days when, for a few hours, solar takes the top spot in the middle of the day and nuclear during the night.

In the past, Great Britain’s electricity came almost entirely from big coal and nuclear power stations. But as the need for decarbonisation has grown, so has the number of sources feeding electricity to the grid, creating an ever more complex and varied system made up of technologies that behave in very different ways. For example, some sources are weather dependent and can’t generate all day every day others stop and start flexibly to smooth out changes in demand or intermittent generation.

But in the event all sources are available, what dictates which sources actually generate, and when? The overriding influence is economics – the costs of starting up and running a turbine, the price of fuel or taxes on carbon emissions.

In Great Britain, electricity’s wholesale price is not set in stone by an entity such as a regulator. Instead it’s negotiated via trading over the course of a day between generators (power stations, storage and wind turbines) and suppliers, who transmit that electricity to consumers.

As a result, the price of electricity fluctuates every half hour, responding to factors such as demand, cost of fuels, availability of resources (such as sun and wind), and carbon taxes.

For an example of the scale at which it fluctuates, we can look at the period 1-4 June this year, when the index price of electricity ranged from over £55/MWh down to around £5/MWh (see chart, above).

But while these figures speak to the overall price of a megawatt on the system, they don’t reflect all the individual sources, nor their individual costs. Each of the multiple sources on the grid have their own operating costs fluctuating on a similar basis.

These changing prices give rise to what is known as the merit order, a fluid, theoretical ranking of generation sources. This is not set by any regulator, economist or even by traders. Rather it is a naturally occurring, financial occurrence that explains what sources of electricity generation are feeding power onto the grid day-to-day.

What is the merit order?

The merit order dictates which sources of generation will deliver power to the grid by ranking them in ascending order of price together with the amount of electricity generated. This then determines the order in which power sources are brought onto the system. Ultimately, suppliers want the right amount of electricity for the best possible price, so in a system made up of many sources, it is the lowest cost, highest yield option that is brought online first, which in theory helps keep overall electricity prices down.

North Sea Wind Farm, Redcar

This means it is often sources such as wind and solar, which have no fuel costs, that sit at the top of the merit order. Nuclear may come next as it continually generates a large amount of power for a low cost, while taking a long time to turn down or off. At the opposite end of the merit order are sources like coal and oil, which have high fuel and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission costs (such as carbon taxes and the European Emission Trading scheme).

However, the merit order isn’t a set of hard and fast rules. “It’s an assumption used by traders or market commentators to guide what is likely to run and thereby the likely market price,” says Ian Foy, Drax Head of Ancillary Services. “There is no published merit order. It is like Santa Claus – it doesn’t exist, but it makes explaining Christmas easier.”

 The intricacies of being in and out of merit

If a generating unit is required to meet demand then it’s described as ‘in merit’, if it is not required at any particular point in time then it’s ‘out of merit’ – there’s no point in suppliers paying for another power station, for example, to start generating if demand is already being met.

“If the market is efficient, we generate from the lowest cost source at all times,” says Foy. “Costs are not simple, for example, you have to take into account the cost of starting or shutting down generating units. However, costs are not publicly shared so there’s no single view of the merit order. Each party has its own perspective on it.”

It means the merit order changes from season-to-season, day-to-day and hour-to-hour, as rates of supply and demand, and the availability of resources change.

Dungeness Nuclear Power Station in Kent

“An obvious example is gas tends to be cheaper in summer than winter, when it’s not being used for heating. Coal and gas also switch as global prices change,” says Foy. “Availability also changes over the year. There’s more solar in summer, but none in the morning and evening peaks of winter.”

There are also practical issues, such as repairs being made on wind and hydro turbines or planned maintenance outages on thermal and nuclear power stations, putting those generators out of action and knocking them out of merit.

And because the merit order is not an implemented working scheme, it can be deliberately manipulated by outside forces. One of the ways this is most clearly seen is in carbon pricing.

Merit in a changing system

The Carbon Price Support tax paid by coal and gas generators in Great Britain, alongside the European Emissions Trading System have increased the cost of fossil fuel generation: gas, oil and coal. Levied as £/tonne of CO2 emitted this has the effect of pushing fossil generation down the merit order. With coal emitting double the CO2 per unit of electricity compared to gas, we can see how the merit order can be influenced to achieve environmental outcomes.

This has helped steer Great Britain towards record breaking coal-free periods and stimulated the building of low carbon generation sources.

Other sources, such as interconnection with Europe and power storage facilities, also slot into the merit order. Their position often shifts due to highly variable prices dependent on power generation in neighbouring countries or the amount of electricity that can be stored at a low cost, respectively.

The grid is ever-changing. Over the last two decades we’ve seen huge shifts in how power is generated and delivered. This is unlikely to slow down in the near future, but the merit order will remain. Like the grid, it is in a constant state of change, adapting to the many moving parts of the electricity system. As long as Great Britain maintains its open electricity trading market, the merit order will continue to dictate where the country’s power comes from.

How close is Great Britain’s electricity to zero-carbon emissions?

15 May 2019

Power generation
Renewable energy mix, light bulb visual

Demand for electricity might have been 6% lower in the first three months of 2019 than in last year’s first quarter but the demand for lower carbon power is only growing and there’s more pressure than ever for global industries to decarbonise more rapidly.

Aided by a significantly milder winter than last year, Great Britain’s electricity sector continued to make further progress in reducing carbon emissions in the first quarter (Q1) of 2019.

The carbon intensity of Great Britain’s electricity was almost 20% lower in Q1 2019 than in the same period last year. This was driven by a significant decrease in coal usage, with 581 coal-free hours in total over the period – eight times more than in Q1 2018. This trend has only increased, with May seeing the country’s first coal-free week in modern times.

The findings come from Electric Insights, a report commissioned by Drax and written independently by researchers from Imperial College London, that analyses Great Britain’s electricity consumption and looks at what the future might hold.

As public, commercial and political demand for lower carbon emissions mounts, the question for the power system is: can it truly reach zero-emissions?

Keeping a zero-carbon system stable

Quarter after quarter, the carbon intensity of Great Britain’s electricity system has declined. From 545 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2) per kilowatt hour (g/kWh) in Q1 2012, to just over 200 g/kWh last quarter. For a single hour, carbon emissions have fallen as low as just 56 g/kWh. But how soon can that figure reach all the way down to net-zero carbon emissions?

The National Grid’s Electricity System Operator (ESO), believes it could be as soon as 2025. But some serious changes are needed to make it possible for the system to operate safely and efficiently, when you have fewer sources offering balancing services like reserve power, inertia, frequency response and voltage control.

The National Grid ESO believes an approach that establishes a marketplace for trading services holds the solution. The hope is that competition will breed new innovation and bring new technologies such as grid-scale storage and AI into the commercial energy markets, offering reserve power and more accurate forecasting for solar and wind power.

For the meantime, weather-dependent technologies are a key source of renewable electricity in Great Britain, with wind making up more than 20% of all generation in Q1 2019. However, with wind capacity only expected to increase, how should the system react when it’s not an option?

Read the full article, co-authored by Julian Leslie, Head of National Control, National Grid ESO: How low can we go?

We cannot control the weather – but we can harness its power

Today there are around 20 gigawatts (GW) of wind capacity installed around Great Britain, and this is forecast to double to 40 GW in the next seven years. However, average wind output can fluctuate between 2 GW one day and 12 GW the next – as happened twice in January. It highlights the ongoing needs for flexibility and diversity of sources in the electricity system even as it decarbonises.

There are a number of ways to make up for shortfalls in wind generation. The most obvious of which is through other existing sources. There is more solar installed around the county than any source of generation (except gas), at 12.9 GW and sun power helped meet demand during a wind drought last summer. Solar averaged 1.3 GW over the last 12 months, this is more than coal which accounted for 1.1 GW.

However, storage will also be important in delivering low or zero-carbon sources of electricity when there is neither wind nor sufficient sunlight. At present this includes pumped storage and some battery technologies, but in future will include greater use of grid-scale lithium-ion batteries, as well as vehicle-to-grid systems that can take advantage of power stored in idle electric cars.

New fuels, particularly hydrogen, also have the potential to meet demand and help create a wider lower-carbon economy for heating, as well as vehicle fuel, with water as the only emission.

Hydrogen can be produced from natural gas or using excess electricity from renewable sources, or through carbon capture from industrial emissions. It can then be stored for a long time and at scale, before being used to generate electricity rapidly when needed.

Another increasingly important source of Great Britain’s electricity is interconnectors. However, they are not yet being used in a way that can support gaps in the electricity system, with Northern European countries normally all experiencing the same weather – and wind levels – at the same time.

Read the full article: What to do when the wind doesn’t blow?

A bigger future for interconnection

Great Britain added a new power source to its electricity system in Q1 2019, in the form of Belgium. The opening of the £600 million NEMO link between Kent and Zeebrugge added another 1 GW of interconnection capacity.

It joins connections to France, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to bring Great Britain’s total interconnection capacity to 5 GW. These links accounted for 7.9% of the 78 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity consumed over the quarter.

Electricity from imports also set new records for a daily average of 4.3 GW on 24 February, accounting for 12.9% of total consumption, and a monthly average in March when it made up 10.6% of consumption. These records represent the first time Great Britain fell below 90% for electricity self-sufficiency.

With 3.4 GW of new interconnectors under construction coming online by 2022 and 9.1 GW more planned to be completed over the next five years, Great Britain’s neighbours are set to play a growing role in the country’s electricity mix.

However, while interconnectors offer an often cost-effective way for Great Britain to ensure electricity supply meets demand, the carbon intensity of neighbouring countries’ electricity should also be considered.

Read the full article: 10% of electricity now generated abroad

The need for cross-border decarbonisation

The new link to Belgium has imported, rather than exported, electricity every day since it began operations, as Belgium has the lowest natural gas prices in Europe and its power stations pay £16 per tonne less for carbon emissions than their British counterparts. This makes it cheaper to import, and less carbon intense, than electricity from the more coal-dependant Netherlands and Ireland.

Planned links to Germany and Denmark could allow Great Britain to import more renewable power. However, if there is a wind drought across Northern Europe these countries often turn to their emissions-heavy coal or even dirtier lignite sources.

France is currently Great Britain’s cleanest source of imports, mostly using nuclear and renewable generation. However, when the North Sea Link opens in 2021, it will give Great Britain access to Norway’s abundance of hydro-power to plug gaps in renewable generation.

Considering the carbon intensity of Great Britain’s imports is important because the decarbonisation needed to address the global climate change emergency can’t be solved by one country alone. For electricity emissions to go as low as they can it takes collaboration that goes across borders.

Read the full article: Where do Britain’s imports come from?

Explore the quarter’s data in detail by visiting ElectricInsights.co.uk. Read the full report.

Commissioned by Drax, Electric Insights is produced, independently, by a team of academics from Imperial College London, led by Dr Iain Staffell and facilitated by the College’s consultancy company – Imperial Consultants.