Metals Tech

Google’s Makani Energy Kite is reportedly nearing take off, and among those watching the fledgling technology is a former director of ARPA-E, the government incubator that nurtured the kite’s early development.

The kite has the potential to disrupt the wind segment of the energy sector, according to Ellen Williams, a University of Maryland professor who served as director of U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy from 2014 to 2017.

“In the early stages, when ARPA-E was funding this project, it wasn’t clear—and it actually to some extent still isn’t clear—whether this project actually was going to have feet. By the time you were done with ARPA-E, it was pretty clear that this project had feet, but it wasn’t clear what the innovation pathway was going to be to speed and scale,” Williams said recently in a Washington D.C. forum hosted by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.

That innovation pathway has proceeded quietly since 2013 when Google paid an undisclosed sum to acquire Makani for its Google X research division. But the Telegraph newspaper reported last week that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is advertising for a human resources director and software engineers to prepare the energy kite’s rollout.

“And so what curve will this new technology follow?” Williams asked before that news broke. “Will it develop new niche markets that just happen to fit in places where standard wind can’t play, or is it actually going to turn out that it’s so economical and so much better than wind that it’s going to drive down and become competitive? We still don’t know the answer to that question. It’s possible that it might go down and become a disruptive learning curve, and it’s possible that it might not.”

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) – world’s fourth largest telecommunications company with an operating revenue of $105bn – becomes first company in the world to join both EV100 and EP100;

NTT commits to electrifying vehicle fleet by 2030 and doubling energy productivity by 2025

Tokyo: Japan’s largest telecommunications provider NTT is betting on a low carbon future, becoming the first company worldwide to commit to electric vehicles (EVs) and smarter use of energy through The Climate Group’s EV100 and EP100 initiatives.

As part of EV100, which aims to make electric transport ‘the new normal’ globally by 2030, NTT will convert its entire fleet to EVs by the same year, targeting 50% by 2025. The company currently operates a fleet of 11,000 vehicles in Japan and overseas through its 17 subsidiaries.

Through EP100, the corporate leadership initiative for energy smart companies delivered in partnership with Alliance to Save Energy, NTT will double its energy productivity by 2025 from a 2017 baseline – meaning it will generate twice the amount of data traffic from every unit of energy consumed.

This is the latest in a series of announcements showing Japan is stepping up on climate action, with a growing group of 16 Japanese businesses now committed to The Climate Group’s leadership initiatives RE100, EV100 and EP100, and Tokyo last month committing to having only zero-emission buses from 2025, and ensuring that a major area of the city would be zero emission by 2030.

Mike Peirce, Corporate Partnerships Director, The Climate Group, said: “As the first company to join both EV100 and EP100, NTT is placing decarbonized, energy efficient systems at the core of its business strategy – demonstrating climate leadership while future-proofing its operations.

“By addressing rising energy use from increased data traffic and rolling out low-carbon transport, NTT is lowering emissions, saving on energy bills, and growing the clean economy all at the same time.”

Jun Sawada, President & CEO, NTT said: “NTT Group consumes around 1% of all the electricity used in Japan. The sharp increase in data traffic seen in recent years has made improving energy efficiency even more important. For this reason, we have set the goals of doubling the energy efficiency of our telecommunication business by 2025, by converting power facilities into Direct-current systems and saving energy in telecom facilities. Furthermore, to ensure low environmental load and cost reduction of vehicles, NTT Group is also transitioning to electric vehicles (EVs) for its corporate fleet, and we have defined the goals of converting 50% of our fleet of general domestic corporate vehicles to EVs by 2025 and 100% by 2030.”

“However, we will not limit ourselves to environmental initiatives. Rather, we will incorporate social and governance perspectives to practice ESG management with the aim of contributing to the accomplishment of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.”

In making the shift to electric vehicles, NTT will first focus on transitioning its standard company cars. Next steps will involve switching its Kei cars – the smallest legal category of vehicle in Japan – to electric as those become available on the market.

To double energy productivity, NTT plans to convert its power facilities to efficient and direct-current systems, such as High Voltage Direct Current power supply systems, and install systems to manage energy more efficiently in its data centres.

Elon Musk has taken his share of hits in the media for his Twitter rants and behavior that is just plain weird for a CEO. We don’t know how Musk’s Tesla Inc. will fare now that competition from Jaguar, Audi and Mercedes is here or soon will be.

But even if Tesla doesn’t make it because of mismanagement and misbehavior by Musk, and if the company goes down in flames like DeLorean, Bricklin and Tucker, there is at least one Musk legacy that is undeniably brilliant: Tesla’s nationwide network of Supercharger charging stations.

Tesla’s Supercharger network is the template for automakers gearing up to launch fuel cell vehicles. Toyota, Honda, Hyundai and General Motors are on the cutting edge of fuel cell technology, with some vehicles available for lease and new, more efficient fuel cell stacks — the component that creates electricity from gaseous hydrogen — on the way.

Musk answered the chicken-and-egg question with electric vehicles by investing more than $1 billion in a nationwide charging network for Tesla vehicles. He short-circuited drivers’ biggest fear of owning an EV: range anxiety.

That same strategy will be necessary for fuel cell vehicles to have wide appeal. Fuel cell vehicles, you’ll recall, are EVs. But instead of storing electricity in a battery pack that weighs hundreds of pounds, electricity is produced from gaseous hydrogen stored in the vehicle under high pressure. A hydrogen fuel cell vehicle can be refilled in minutes, just like a gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicle — and the short time to refill the hydrogen tank is one of the key advantages fuel cell vehicles have over battery-powered EVs.

California leads the nation in the number of fuel cell filling stations, many built by FirstElement Fuel Inc., a company headed by auto industry veteran Joel Ewanick. He agrees a Tesla-like nationwide network of hydrogen fueling stations could help reduce the time it will take for fuel cell vehicles to become economically viable to manufacture.

“All the car companies are trying to find a path to [production of] 30,000 cars,” Ewanick said. “That’s where you start to see real efficiencies in your production, parts and suppliers. Anything below that, it’s a challenge to make these cars at a reasonable price. We are getting to that tipping point in 2020 and 2021.”

Members of the Australian Government revealed in the middle of September that there are no plans to revise the country’s renewable energy target “with anything” after 2020 — a target which, as it stands, is relatively toothless, to begin with. Unsurprisingly, therefore, questions have been raised about the future of Australia’s renewable energy sector.

australia wind farmAustralia’s Energy Minister, Angus Taylor, revealed in Parliament on September 18 that the current government — under the leadership of Liberal Party leader Scott Morrison — would not be replacing the country’s current 2020 renewable energy target “with anything.”

“The truth of the matter is the renewable energy target is going to wind down from 2020, it reaches its peak in 2020, and we won’t be replacing that with anything,” Taylor said. His reasoning — such as it is — states that Australia will reach its 26% emissions reduction target without further policy intervention, so why bother?

Australia’s current renewable energy target sits at a paltry 33,000 gigawatt-hours (GWh) by 2020, representing approximately 23.5% of the country’s electricity generation. What’s even more galling, however, is that this is the amended version, reduced from 41,000 GWh. Australia’s Government has also recently abandoned plans to have the current Paris Agreement target written into legislation, and blocked efforts to have climate change considered as part of the framing of the country’s energy agenda.

Doom & Gloom

It is unsurprising, therefore, that further questions have been raised about the strength and future of Australia’s renewable energy sector.

“The Australian government’s recent decision (Sept 2018) not to revise the country’s renewable energy target (RET) after 2020, in addition to scrapping the National Energy Guarantee (NEG), which aims to reduce emissions by 26% by 2030, has brought about a certain degree of investment uncertainty in the Australian renewable energy market,” explained Arkapal Sil, Power Analyst at GlobalData, in a recent analyst note. “As a result of this uncertainty, we may see Australia increase its conventional power capacity in order to maintain its annual base-load power requirements.”

For Sil and GlobalData, the concern is that the political uncertainty from a Federal level will not only hinder the renewable energy industry, but it will simply result in companies reverting to business-as-normal, i.e., fossil fuels — which, in Australia, traditionally means coal, but has also come to refer heavily to gas.

“Owing to policy uncertainty and a lack of clarity on the future direction of the national energy sector some large international players are looking to exit the Australian renewable market,” Sil continued. “The Chinese wind turbine supplier and project developer Goldwind is reportedly looking to move out of the market by offloading its wind and solar assets. This is a significant development as the sector needs private investment to kick-start projects with the high nature of their initial capital funding requirements. This is also despite the fact that the country is expected to exceed its 2020 renewable energy generation target of 33,000 GWh.”

Goldwind announced in September its intention to sell its Australian portfolio of over 1 GW worth of wind and solar projects, heralding its sale as a “unique opportunity to invest” in Australia’s renewable energy industry.

However, highlighting Goldwind’s desire to exit the Australian renewable energy industry as proof of its demise hides a larger story. Two pieces of news from October alone show that, while the Federal Government remains violently against renewable energy, the same cannot be said for others. Australian banking giant Macquarie Group announced in early October that it had joined a consortium of renewable energy leaders including Intercontinental Energy, Vestas, and CWP Energy Asia in investing in the Asian Renewable Energy Hub, a wind and solar hybrid power plant set to be built in Australia’s northwest which has been expanded once again to over 11 gigawatts (GW) in planned capacity. Only a few days later, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) announced that it would invest in the country’s first Business Renewables Centre which will aim to help businesses and local governments procure 1 GW of renewable energy by 2022 and 5 GW by 2030.

GlobalData wasn’t entirely dismissive of Australia’s renewable energy industry, with Sil explaining that, “Whilst the current uncertainty is limiting investment funding for large-scale renewable projects, smaller state-funded projects have largely been unaffected as they strive to achieve their renewable energy targets. Victoria, has a renewable energy generation target of 25% by 2020 and 40% by 2025, while Queensland’s target is 50% renewable energy by 2030. Companies like Windlab, Tilt Renewables, Genex Power, Kalina Energy and others continue to work on state-funded renewable energy projects like the 336 MW Dundonnell wind farm in the State of Victoria.

‘‘Any sort of regulatory intervention needs to be carefully thought through so as not to affect the commercial viability of the smaller players which could lead to reducing market competition.”

Darren Miller, CEO of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, speaking at the announcement of its investment in the Australian Business Renewables Centre, echoed a similar line of thinking: “The future for energy is a large number of smaller renewable generating facilities often developed by non-generating entities,” he explained. “The Business Renewables Centre will help in that transition in using its vast expertise in running programs, entrepreneurship, innovation, education and other sustainability objectives to make it easier for companies and councils to enter into the renewables market.”

As a result, “According to GlobalData, 30% of Australia’s total installed energy capacity in 2017 was generated from renewables, including 10% from solar and 7% from wind power. By 2030, this figure is estimated to be 57% with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.5%. However solar PV capacity is likely to decline by a CAGR of 5% to 2030 while overall power demand is expected to increase by 20% from 2018 to 2030.”

The Decline of Fossil Fuels

Not everyone is on board with the doom and gloom of Arkapal Sil’s forecasts, however, and there are those working across the Australian renewable energy industry who believe that it has the opportunity to grow significantly.

“Australia has a golden opportunity to play a leading role in delivering a clean economy – RE100 companies are seizing the chance to invest in low-cost renewable electricity because it makes business sense,” said Sam Kimmins, Head of RE100, The Climate Group, speaking at the first RE100 meeting in Australia, held in late-October. “Australia’s lack of clear energy policy direction has led to inflated costs and reliance on antiquated power sources, but forward-thinking businesses are planning for the long term – they want to be competitive globally.”

Confirming Kimmins claims, Barry O’Sullivan, the General Manager for Mars Australia said, “The rise in electricity prices last year accelerated our plans to join Mars sites in the US, UK and 9 other countries in moving to renewable electricity. We acted quickly because the price volatility of energy in Australia made renewables the best option for our business, in addition to getting us closer to our commitment to eliminate greenhouse gasses from our operations by 2040.”

This, in particular, speaks volumes against the vitriolic propaganda being spouted by members of the current Australian Government, who continue to claim that any focus on or increase in renewable energy will only serve to drive up electricity prices. In actual fact, it is the backward thinking and obstructionism of the Liberal Government that is and has been causing electricity price increases. One need only look back to the decision by then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott, another Liberal PM, to scrap Australia’s carbon tax in 2014, which led almost directly to a 70+% decrease in renewable energy investment. If we were to reverse the clock, keep the carbon tax, and support renewable energy investment, would we be in a position where the renewable energy industry has to fight on its own?

Regardless of the past, however, there is evidence to suggest that the future of renewable energies in Australia is brighter than what some may have us believe.

“[The Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis] is firmly of the view that thermal power generation capacity across Australia will progressively and inevitably continue to diminish over the coming decade, as it has been doing since 2010,” said Tim Buckley, Director of Energy Finance Studies, Australasia, for the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). “There is no real business case for either new coal nor gas-fired power capacity, the escalation of fuel costs alone make both power sources for new capacity uncompetitive against new solar and wind at AU$40-50/MWh.

“AGL [one of Australia’s largest generators and retailers of electricity] this month confirmed that absent a major reduction in domestic wholesale gas prices, new gas peaking capacity is uncompetitive vs the combination of low-cost variable renewables firmed by a combination of grid interconnection, pumped hydro storage, DRM, and batteries,” Buckley continued. “AGL mothballed its phase II gas peaking plant development program to 2022 this month for that very reason. The Federal Government’s unwillingness to unwind some of the market power of the gas cartel across Eastern Australia means a sustainable reduction in domestic gas prices is unlikely. The only obvious solution to a clear case of sustained market failure would be the implementation of a domestic gas reservation policy. Meanwhile, 6,000 kcal (kilocalories) coal export prices have doubled since the start of 2016.

“Even acknowledging the clear failure of Federal electricity policy development with the collapse of the NEG, the investment flows into ever cheaper renewable energy infrastructure development across South Australia, Victoria and Queensland, plus maybe 1-2 GW of new renewables in NSW means close to $10 billion of new renewables generation investment is now well underway. Regardless of the RET, with wholesale electricity prices of AU$70-80/MWh, renewable energy projects are clearly cost competitive even when firming costs are added on. What Australia needs is an orderly transition and phased renewables investment working in conjunction with AEMOs NEM grid mapping program to drive a least-cost, planned transition rather than the disorderly transition that comes with the Coalition’s energy policy chaos.”

Similar hope is held by those working outside the energy sector. “WWF believes the future of renewable energy in Australia is very strong because it makes business sense,” said Monica Richter, Senior Manager Low Carbon Futures, WWF-Australia. “The cost of renewable electricity is coming down significantly. When WWF started the Renewable Energy Buyers Forum over four years ago the price of large scale solar PV was over $120/MWh and now only four years later we are seeing prices for solar PV at less than $70/MWh. And big businesses are seeing the real advantages to them of committing to long term corporate renewable energy Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) to secure a long term reliable renewable electricity supply.

“Experts are saying that well-negotiated PPAs can deliver significant cost savings in the order of a 15-50% reduction on electricity bills,” Richter added. “You’d have to be mad or deluded not to see this as a significant business opportunity. The fact of the matter is that the electricity grid is decarbonising and the price of renewable energy will soon outcompete coal-fired electricity, and governments can either stand in the way of this progress or help it through smarter government policies that a support a smooth transition.”

The Future Is Hazy

In the end, it seems that it could be anyone’s guess as to how the future of Australia’s energy industry plays out. The state of play has been further thrown into chaos following a by-election result which lost Scott Morrison his majority in Parliament. Not only will this make governing difficult for Morrison and the Liberal Party but, as it stands, it makes it incredibly difficult for them to hold on to power after a national election in May of next year.

If the Liberals are shunted out of power, what then? The Labor Party, the second of Australia’s big-two political parties, has made several promises as part of its Climate Change Action Plan, including:

• Ensure that at least 50% of the nation’s electricity is sourced from renewable energy by 2030
• More certainty and flexibility with less red tape and more technology options for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation
• Invest $206.6m in ARENA to support a specific Concentrated Solar Thermal funding round
• Invest $98.7m to establish a Community Power Network and Regional Hubs
• Ensure the Federal Government leads by example as a direct purchaser of renewable energy

Whether or not a Labor Government comes to pass — and even if it does, whether or not they bother to follow through with their promises — Australia’s State Governments are already on a path to ensuring a renewable energy future for the country. South Australia and Victoria are making significant strides, and are slowly being joined with other states as the business case for renewables is revealed.

In the end, a lot will come down to the next seven months as the country gears up for another election. Climate change and renewable energy will be big cards for both parties, and only a result in favor of the Labor Party has any real hope for political certainty for renewable energy.

University of Colorado Boulder and University of Wyoming engineers have successfully scaled up an innovative water-cooling system capable of providing continuous day-and-night radiative cooling for structures. The advance could increase the efficiency of power generation plants in summer and lead to more efficient, environmentally-friendly temperature control for homes, businesses, utilities and industries.

The new research demonstrates how the low-cost hybrid organic-inorganic radiative cooling metamaterial, which debuted in 2017, can be scaled into a roughly 140-square-foot array—small enough to fit on most rooftops—and act as a kind of natural air conditioner with almost no consumption of electricity.

“You could place these panels on the roof of a single-family home and satisfy its cooling requirements,” said Dongliang Zhao, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in CU Boulder’s Department of Mechanical Engineering.

The findings are described today in the journal Joule and take advantage of natural radiative cooling principles.

“As Earth’s temperature warms due to the absorbed heat from the sunlight during the day, it continuously emits infrared light to the cold universe all the time,” said Professor Ronggui Yang of Mechanical Engineering and lead author of the study. “During the night, Earth cools down due to the emission without the sunshine.”

The researchers’ film-like material reflects incoming almost all sunlight while still allowing an object’s stored heat to escape as much as possible, keeping it cooler than ambient air even in the midday sun.

“The material, which we can now produce at low cost using the current roll-to-roll manufacturing techniques, offers significant advantages.” said Associate Professor Xiaobo Yin of Mechanical Engineering and CU Boulder’s Materials Science and Engineering Program.

“We can now apply these materials on building roof tops, and even build large-scale water cooling systems like this one with significant advantages over the conventional air conditioning systems, which require high amounts of electricity to function,” said Associate Professor Gang Tan of the University of Wyoming’s Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering.

The researchers tested their system outdoors in a variety of weather conditions, including wind, precipitation and humidity. In experiments conducted in August and September 2017, their proprietary RadiCold module kept a container of water covered by the metamaterial 20 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the ambient air between 12:30 p.m. and 3 p.m., the most intense summer sunlight of the day.

The researchers also introduced an element of dynamic scheduling to their technology, anticipating that structures such as offices may have limited or no cooling demand at night. In a building-integrated system, however, a cold storage unit could be added to capture the cold through heat transfer fluid such as water in this system and allow it to be retrieved during the subsequent day to reduce the cooling strain during peak demand periods.

“We have built a module that performs in real-world, practical situations,” said Yang. “We have moved quite far and fast from a materials level to a system level.”

The RadiCold module could become a viable solution for supplemental cooling for single-family homes, businesses, power plants, municipal utilities and data center facilities among other potential applications, Yang said.

 

A NIMS-Ehime University joint research team succeeded in discovering new materials that exhibit superconductivity under high pressure using materials informatics (MI) approaches (data science-based material search techniques). This study experimentally demonstrated that MI enables efficient exploration of new superconducting materials. MI approaches may be applicable to the development of various functional materials, including superconductors.

Superconducting materials that enable long-distance electricity transmission without energy loss in the absence of electrical resistance are considered to be a key technology in solving environmental and energy issues. The conventional approach by researchers searching for new superconducting materials or other materials has been to rely on published information on material properties, such as crystalline structures and valence numbers, and their own experience and intuition. However, this approach is time-consuming, costly and very difficult because it requires extensive and exhaustive synthesis of related materials. As such, demand has been high for the development of new methods enabling more efficient exploration of new materials with desirable properties.

This joint research team took advantage of the AtomWork database, which contains more than 100,000 pieces of data on inorganic crystal structures. The team first selected approximately 1,500 candidate material groups whose electronic states could be determined through calculation. The team then narrowed this list to 27 materials with desirable superconducting properties by actually performing electronic state calculations. From these 27, two materials SnBi2Se4 and PbBi2Te4 were ultimately chosen because they were relatively easy to synthesize.

The team synthesized these two materials and confirmed that they exhibit superconductivity under high pressures using an electrical resistivity measuring device. The team also found that the superconducting transition temperatures of these materials increase with increasing pressure. This data science-based approach, which is completely different from the conventional approaches, enabled identification and efficient and precise development of superconducting materials.

Experiments revealed that these newly discovered materials may have superb thermoelectric properties in addition to superconductivity. The method we developed may be applicable to the development of various functional materials, including superconductors. In future studies, we hope to discover innovative functional materials, such as room-temperature superconducting materials, by including a wider range of materials in our studies and increasing the accuracy of the parameters relevant to desirable properties.