Green Energy

E.On has put two 10 MW batteries into operation in Texas.

The Texas Waves lithium-ion energy storage units are providing system services for the market. The batteries are able to react quickly to fluctuations in the power grid and thus improve security of supply for customers.

E.On’s concept is to stabilize the grid by combining renewable energy production and battery storage. Texas Waves is therefore an integral part of E.On’s Pyron and Inadale wind farms. E.On has already completed a similar project in Arizona. The Iron Horse project there is coupled with a 2.4 MW solar system.

E.On has developed, built and operated more than 3,600 MW of solar and wind power plants in the United States.

There is a technical revolution taking place today. Transport has broadly been run on liquid hydrocarbons the last 130 years. This is about to change. In the small country of Norway, every third new car sold is an electric vehicle and the world’s first electric ferry is crossing a Norwegian fjord 34 times every day. We are thus presently in the forefront of this change.

With just over 5 million inhabitants, in the big scheme of things we do not make much of a difference. But on the other hand, the biggest wave always starts with the smallest ripple. In Norway, the wave is gaining strength. Right now, India could look to Norway to see how green transportation solutions work in practice.

India is a big country. In every sense of the word. The Indian population is set to surpass China and become the largest in the world in the years to come. With a population of such a magnitude, many of India’s choices going forward will have global implications, also for Norway. It will come down to big countries like India, if this mounting wave will bring about the transformation in transportation that will save our planet and create business opportunities for all.

Norway is currently the world’s demonstration project for green transport solutions. We have the highest EV penetration rate in the world. Nearly 40% of new cars sold are EVs. Infrastructure, technologies and solutions are being developed, tested and assessed in Norway. Valuable lessons have been learnt from looking at customer behaviour. For example, the fear of running out of battery power, or range anxiety, has been highlighted as a barrier to EV uptake.

While many drivers experience range anxiety at first, this fear quickly subsides. In fact, only 4% of Norwegian EV drivers report having run out of battery power. Businesses and governments from all over the world are looking to Norway to gain insights into how the beginnings of a mass market for EVs functions in practice.

But how did Norway achieve this? It is the result of targeted and stable transport policies. Firstly, we have a clear goal of selling only zero-emission vehicles and buses by 2025. Secondly, we give tax exemptions to EVs and shift the tax burden to combustion engine cars instead. And thirdly, we invest in EV infrastructure, having built 8,755 charging stations – 1 per 21 electric or hybrid cars.

While the development of EVs are gaining attention, there is still little talk about transport on seas and rivers. Norway is a maritime nation with longstanding traditions of shipbuilding and offshore activities. We have been a global leader in pushing for higher environmental standards in shipping.

The Norwegian ship building industry and shipping industry is now taking steps to develop a new fleet of environmentally friendly ships. The new ships will use the same technology as an electric car but with a battery the size of a storage container, or a combination of battery power and liquid natural gas (LNG), or some other cleaner-burning fuel such as hydrogen.

Right now, we have the world’s first battery driven ferry operating a passenger ferry route crossing the Sognefjord in Norway. The power consumed by the MS Ampere for a single crossing of 6 km costs about Rs 400 – the equivalent of a cup of coffee at Starbucks, and yet it’s enough to transport 360 passengers and 120 cars.

For longer distances, ships fuelled by LNG are an important alternative. Norway has the world’s largest fleet of LNG ships. The environmental benefits are massive compared to diesel-fuelled ships – 30% lower CO2 emissions, 85% lower NOx emissions and absolutely no particulate emissions to pollute the air.

The number of vehicles on Indian roads is projected to grow from over 160 million to over 550 million in 2030. This begs the question: Will these cars run on diesel, or will they be electric? In order to service 390 million additional cars on the roads, new infrastructure must be developed. Will there be new gas stations built, or charging stations? For India and for the rest of the world, there is a big difference between these two choices.

There are certainly positive signs that India intends to go green going forward. An ambitious target has been set: 100% of new vehicles sold will be electric by 2030. We believe India should set a similar ambitious target for their shipping fleet.

In this country, you also have vast stretches of rivers and canals. The government’s focus on moving freight on ships on these inland waterways, rather than by trucks on the highways, could reap huge environmental benefits, both in terms of reducing local air pollution and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Greening the Indian transport sector will boost India’s energy security by becoming less reliant on imported oil. Currently, India spends over $235 million a day on oil imports. Increasing the share of electrical vehicles, especially in the big cities, will also help reduce the lethal smog encapsulating many Indian cities every year. According to the renowned medical journal Lancet, over 2.5 million Indians die every year because of the toxic air.

While the wave of greener transport solutions is gaining momentum in Norway, we need the weight of big countries, like India, to make it a tidal wave. Norway is eager to support India in this endeavour.

All-electric taxis might be pretty thin on the ground at the moment, but it might not be too long until they become commonplace. And this week was a landmark day for the electric taxi cause as the very first example of the all-new electric TX taxi from the London EV Company (LEVC) was handed over to a very eager and excited driver. The driver in question was 49 year-old David Harris from Chingford in north East London, and he’s been a driver of the UK capital’s iconic black cabs for 21 years. Harris was one of the first of his ilk to be forward-thinking enough to put down a deposit for one of the new electric taxis when the order books were originally opened back in the summer of last year.

Before embarking on a career as a black cab driver, Harris was actually a professional tennis player who would spend something like 40 weeks of the year traveling around the world. Now he spends his working hours touring the streets of London, but in the new TX he will be doing so in pretty unrivaled comfort. Of course, it will also be the same for passengers as the new TX boasts the likes of class-leading wheelchair accessibility, on-board Wi-Fi, phone/laptop charging, a very spacious six-seat cabin, wide opening rear hinged doors, contactless card machines, and even a panoramic roof.

The TX is currently the world’s cleanest and most advanced taxi ever, and claims to offer zero emissions operation thanks to eCity technology. eCity technology is comprised of an advanced battery electric powertrain with a small range-extending petrol generator as a back-up, which then offers a total range of up to 400 miles, including as much as 80 miles of pure electric driving.

Harris said of his new workplace, “I’m absolutely delighted to get the keys to my new TX electric taxi, and there are two reasons I bought the cab. First, I can’t wait to see the response from passengers. I know that they’re going to love it. And second, I’m going to see some a significant saving on running the electric taxi. Even though I can’t charge the vehicle at home, I should be able to charge the cab once a day at Heathrow. Combined with lower servicing and overall running costs, this means I should end up £500-£600 a month better off before I even go out to work.”

SMART ECONOMICS

A long awaited clean energy revolution may soon become reality as renewables are set to outprice fossil fuels by 2020, according to the latest report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

But as businesses show increasing interest in the promises of clean energy, governments need to step up too, says the agency in a separate analysis. Money is needed not only to deploy more solar panels, but also to facilitate the transition of communities that still rely on fossil fuels to low carbon sources. According to the World Economic Forum such a shift is likely to be painful, involving disruptions of the labor market as well as societal and geopolitical risks.

Adnan Amin, head of IRENA, believes that the change is already underway and looks at the bright side. At the agency’s annual summit in Abu Dhabi, he said that “turning to renewables for new power generation is not simply an environmentally conscious decision, it is now overwhelmingly a smart economic one.”

Renewable energy is already competing with fossil-fuels in many areas of the world, but for now it remains mostly reliant on government subsidies to stay afloat in the energy market. IRENA’s analysts agree that simply building more solar and wind farms is not going to solve the problem.

MIXED RESPONSE

One of the biggest setbacks to solar and wind energy is that we can only generate power intermittently, when the sun is shining or the wind is strong enough. In order to function, human communities need a steady and predictable flow of energy, which at the moment is not guaranteed by clean electricity, which cannot be stored for long periods.

IRENA’s analysis finds that a combination of more stable, low-emission sources, including hydropower, geothermal, solar thermal, or even nuclear power will be key to tomorrow’s energy mix. However, these sources come with challenges such as geographical limitations, cost, or issues with public perception, as for example in the case of nuclear power.

Extensive battery units could also help store energy at times of high output and low demand, for use when output is low and demand is high. Battery technology is certainly promising at this juncture, as Tesla’s recent installation in Australia has shown. But for now batteries remain expensive and deploying them at scale would no longer make renewables financially prudent.

Despite the current challenges, IRENA reports that global competition is not only helping in terms of prices, but also with best practices, reducing the risks normally associated with investments in young technologies. This feedback loop, the agency expects, will be key to making its predictions reality by 2020.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are starting to revolutionize the car market in 2018, with BMW recently announcing new designs for electric versions of a dozen of its leading models. The BMW effort is being replicated across the car market by its competitors, as technological advances transform vehicle designs in the biggest shift to hit ground transport since the invention of the internal combustion engine. Even roads are changing with the gradual arrival of the energy generating and storing “solar panel roads.” These new EVs come with one drawback from carmakers’ perspectives however; they require a great deal of the rare mineral cobalt. A typical EV battery needs 21kg of cobalt to function properly, and as the mining sector has woken up to the prospect of fleets of EVs on our roads by the 2020s, the price of cobalt has spiked.

Early in January, business outlet Bloomberg reported the price had climbed from $600 to $1700 in 16 months. There is another problem for carmakers however: 60 percent of all known cobalt supplies come from the unstable and corrupt Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). War is also brewing there after the DRC’s autocratic leader President Joseph Kabila refused to step down at the end of his term in 2016. With fossil fuels falling out of favor due to their environmental impact, carmakers do not have the luxury of refusing to engage with the DRC, but how they avoid tying themselves too tightly to the decaying Kabila regime will be a crucial consideration. In the interim period between the end of fossil fuels’ monopoly of the motor industry and the rise of credible alternatives to cobalt (recycling dead batteries is often mentioned), the DRC will have a disproportionate amount of international leverage relative to its tiny and highly dysfunctional economy.

Background

A legacy of dictatorship. Security in the DRC has taken a sharp downwards turn in 2017 as the peace agreement which ended the devastating Second Congo War in 2003 fell apart. President Joseph Kabila, who took over as the DRC’s leader upon the assassination of his father Laurent-Désiré Kabila, went on to serve two full terms as the “elected” leader of the DRC. This was all that was allowed him under the post-war DRC constitution, whose creators wanted to avoid another ‘president-for-life’ in the mold of the DRC’s notorious former military dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Mobutu was leader when rebel forces under Laurent-Désiré Kabila took power 1997. He had helped to murder the DRC’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, by turning him over to secessionist forces in the rebelling state of Katanga, who promptly had Lumumba shot. He also overthrew the DRC’s first president, Joseph Kasavubu, in 1965.

Corruption in the DRC. This tradition of coups, assassinations, and violent rebellion has plagued the DRC ever since. Joseph Kabila’s refusal to step down at the end of his final term in 2016 has sparked violent conflict in both the Congo’s southwestern Kasai region and in the DRC’s unstable east. While fear of his own personal safety is undoubtedly one reason that Kabila has repeatedly pushed back elections (he now says they will take place in December 2018, two years after his term officially ends), corruption is another. Kabila and his circle are estimated to have amassed a considerable fortune during his brutal 17-year reign, such that there is no sector in the DRC’s economy which is free from their influence — including the lucrative mining sector.

Impact

Acquiring cobalt from the DRC is therefore a PR nightmare for leading Western carmakers and their developed democratic equivalents in states like Japan and South Korea. For starters they are dealing with a country where the central leadership is facing outbreaks of political dissent in the periphery, and the capital only survives through brute force and playing the opposition off against each other.

The national environment is not a place for safe and stable business arrangements. Conversely it is an excellent one for becoming identified with the regime of an authoritarian despot, risking brand damage over the regime’s human rights record and complications dealing with whatever government succeeds Kabila.

Then there are concerns about just who is operating at the far end of the supply chain where the raw materials are extracted. Carmakers are already exploring the possibilities of sourcing some of their products from the DRC’s inefficient artisanal mines, which still produce around a fifth of cobalt exports. The approach is problematic because the artisanal mines frequently employ child labor, they have been linked to forced labor and militant groups in the recent past, and they are corruptly awarded their mining licenses, if they’re licensed at all. Meanwhile seven of the 10 largest producers in Congo as of 2016 were Chinese-owned according to Bloomberg. These companies operate in a far looser regulatory environment, and as a result have a reputation for condoning terrible work conditions, environmental destruction, and for working hand-in-glove with corrupt rebel warlords, dictators, and organized criminal syndicates.