Happy Monday 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.
We are back with some fascinating stories for you - as ever do let us know if there are topics you would like us to cover more of.
This week on the Green New Spiel:
🏔🛢 Reaching the peak - oil demand
🛢🌽 Bio-oil making big strides
🌊 Blue energy - go with the tide
☀️ Sunny Rome - Fiumicino’s solar farm
💨 Windy times ahead - challenges for Siemens Gamesa
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🏔🛢 Reaching the peak - oil demand
Peak oil is ‘in sight’ according to the IEA, forecasting that global demand will slow due to high prices and concerns about supply security, driving the transition towards cleaner energy technologies.
Global demand is expected to rise by 6% between 2022 and 2028, annual demand growth will shrink from 2.4m barrels per day this year to only 0.4m barrels per day in 2028, indicating a peak in demand is on the horizon. It is expected however that the use of oil for transportation fuels will decline after 2026 due to the increasing adoption of electric vehicles, biofuels, and improved fuel efficiency.
🛢🌽 Bio-oil making big strides
Charm Industrial is a carbon capture bio-oil start-up which we wrote about back in March (read here) - since then they have had some tremendous updates (coincidence? I guess we’ll never know…)
As a reminder, they take carbon naturally captured in biomass (think agricultural waste), heat it to 500°C in a few seconds without burning it (a process called fast pyrolysis), producing a bio-oil and ash. The carbon rich oil is pumped deep underground and solidified, avoiding the risk of it escaping back into the atmosphere. The ash instead can be used as a fertiliser.
They have since:
signed a $53m deal with Frontier in which Frontier will pay Charm to remove 112k tons of carbon between 2024 and 2030;
signed another deal just a few days later with JP Morgan to remove 28.5k tons of carbon over five years;
a $100m Series B fundraising round; and as a final bonus point:
Since the beginning of the year they have increased tons of carbon removal delivered per week 5x.
Q2 2023 is going pretty well for them we’d say!
🌊 Blue energy - go with the tide
Blue energy is a term often used to describe energy harnessed from natural ocean forces (think tides and waves) to generate electricity. The International Energy Agency estimates that blue energy could make up 10% of the global energy mix by 2050.
Tidal energy, one of the two main forms of blue energy, is highly predictable and can generate significant amounts of power, utilising small areas given the high energy density of water.
One challenge however is the speed of deployment which has been slow in part due to the harsh and abrasive nature of the marine environment, creating design and installation challenges. The EU are attempting to rectify this with a recent commitment to invest €300m in ocean energy R&D. Allez allez!
☀️ Sunny Rome - Fiumicino’s solar farm
Enel, a global energy business, has partnered with Circet to deliver a 22MW solar plant to meet c. 50% of Rome’s main airport’s electricity needs. Work is due to begin this year and will complete by the end of 2024. The new solar energy plant will be complemented with a storage system based on second life electric vehicle batteries.
Once completed, it will be the largest solar system ever installed at a European airport. This is one way to start to reduce the wider global aviation carbon footprint…
💨 Windy times ahead - challenges for Siemens Gamesa
Siemens Energy issued a warning last week that it may need to spend over €1 billion over the next several years to address various technical faults. The challenges faced by Siemens Energy's wind turbine business, Siemens Gamesa, led to the company abandoning its profit outlook for the year. The issues include difficulties with rotor blades, bearings, and other components, in particular within legacy turbines.
The problems come at a difficult time for the industry, which has been grappling with rising costs and supply chain disruptions.
Thankfully the company has stated that it remains committed to wind energy in the long term: Christian Bruch, CEO, said he was “still convinced the energy transition [could] only be managed with the help of wind energy”.
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Ciao,
Carlo and Rob