Good morning all and welcome back to the Green New Spiel, the newsletter bringing you the latest stories and developments in the world of clean-tech, green energy and other climate related news.
Today’s Green New Spiel covers the following stories:
🔋 Ammonia powered trucks and freights
🍰 Carbon capture and baking soda
🦠 Microalgae building infrastructure
🛩 Hydrogen and the airline industry
💡 Lots of renewable installations but we need more
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🔋 Batteries too small to power trucks and freighters? Ammonia might just be the answer
Amogy are working on decarbonising the heavy transport sector which is harder to electrify than passenger cars. Ammonia might be a potential solution particularly due its energy density, allowing it to occupy less space on shipping vessels than traditional sources of fuel. It also does not contain carbon so no CO2 is emitted when used as fuel. Amogy have retrofitted tractors with ammonia tanks, but they’re looking to go beyond agriculture.
Last week they announced the closing of a $46 million fundraise, with support from Amazon, Saudi Aramco and SK Innovation, to “accelerate scaling up this technology so that [they] can demonstrate it on an 18-wheeler and a cargo ship at the beginning of next year.”
The larger implications of the safety of ammonia will be discovered in due course, however, it is promising to see such developments. Note - ammonia is green only if produced in a green way: the majority of ammonia unfortunately is still made using fossil fuels.
🍰 Baking soda, I got baking soda
Tata Chemicals Europe (“TCE”) have opened a new carbon capture and usage plant in Cheshire which is looking to capture 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, the equivalent to taking over 20,000 cars off the roads and reduces TCE’s carbon emissions by more than 10%. TCE are hoping to then use the captured CO2 to make baking soda, which will be known as Ecokarb. Cakes and cookies wont be so much of a guilty pleasure anymore!
🦠 Microalgae building infrastructure
Further to our post on Cleancrete the other week, we now present Prometheus Materials, a Colorado based company, which recently closed a Series A financing round with backing from the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund. They make bio-cement by using microalgae and a natural process of biomineralization: that's the process of living organisms producing minerals that form structures such as shells and reefs. The microalgae get to work immediately and apparently only need a day for the concrete to be suitable for construction.
As a reminder, cement is a key ingredient in concrete and its production process is hugely carbon intensive, emitting c. 8% of global green house gases. Prometheus Materials’ concrete absorbs CO2 in the process, rather than emitting it, and thankfully is already in commercial production.
🛩 Hydrogen and the airline industry
ZeroAvia is looking to flight-test is 19 seater hybrid plane this summer in the UK. The two dual-engine aircraft will use fuel cells — which convert hydrogen into electricity to drive propellers — and batteries on one side, while the other side will use a conventional jet engine. From what we can see, this would be the biggest hydrogen aviation test to date - previous tests have involved much smaller planes with usually only one or two passengers.
Hydrogen continues to be the most likely feasible alternative fuel that the aviation can use to try to reduce its carbon footprint. Hopefully ZeroAvia can help accelerate that: they claim to be on track to launch their services commercially within the next three years.
💡 Lots of renewable installations, but they have to accelerate
America needs a swift transition of their energy production and 2022 has gotten off to a positive start, with renewable energy equating to 23.5% of U.S. electricity generation in Q1, a new record. This was largely due to 80 new wind and solar plants going online. Now this if of course good news, but we need to look at the rate of the renewable roll out.
Why? Because as old fossil fuel power plants come off the grid and new solar and wind farms are installed, we need to be cognisant of the fact that the new plants are intermittent sources. As such, the MW hour capacity is less than a the fossil fuel plants which could run all day. Wind and solar have some of the lowest operational costs which is fantastic, yet they generate some of the least electricity relative to capacity. This means it we need to install considerably more renewable capacity than that which we’re taking off the grid. It can’t be one for one. We also think it builds an increasingly compelling case to build more nuclear too as part of the non-intermittent base load.
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Ciao,
Carlo and Rob