Inexperienced Builder Sustainability Symposium Presentation – Slides & Transcript

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In mid-2023, Inexperienced Builder Media’s CEO Sara Gutterman reached out to me to see if I have been all in favour of presenting at their annual Sustainability Symposium. It’s been operating yearly for near a decade, and with COVID it transitioned to digital and gained’t be going again. That occasion occurred a few weeks in the past, and I used to be privileged to current my optimistic perspective on the transformation between RMI CEO Jon Creyts and Jeremy Rifkin, creator and advisor to governments on a number of continents. Over a thousand individuals have been on-line for the digital occasion. The next is the frivolously edited transcript of my remarks and the query and reply alternative.

For many who like movies and speak speak, right here’s the YouTube.

Thanks for the fantastic introduction, and thanks, Jon, for the overview of the superb work that RMI has executed and continues to do. I’ve extra future-oriented stuff. You’ll see a number of themes out of Jon and RMI’s glorious work that might be projected ahead into the longer term. Our low carbon future is coming quick, and it’s coming amazingly rapidly, and it’s very spiky. I search for pockets of the longer term, and the pockets of the longer term are very broad.

I like to start out with this. It’s not as dangerous a watch chart as some, however this can be a Sankey diagram of vitality in the USA for 2022. What it says is, right here’s all of the vitality that is available in on the left hand aspect into the USA financial system. That is extrapolatable to each financial system. The vitality goes by electrical era, goes into residential, business, industrial, and transportation and use circumstances and comes out right here.

The explanation that is necessary is due to this huge grey field up right here on the proper, rejected vitality. Rejected vitality is the vitality that is available in out of major vitality, which Jon talked about, however we don’t truly get any use out of it. That’s as a result of just about all these items down right here within the decrease left, the petroleum, the coal, and the pure gasoline., once we burn it for vitality, that’s a really inefficient course of. We throw away a number of the vitality as waste warmth, and we truly make much more carbon dioxide.

For this reason we’ve received an issue in the present day as we take into account these vitality pathways. One of many methods I like to explain fossil fuels is that once we burn them, they create CO2 and waste warmth. And, oh, by the way in which, some helpful work for us. That’s one thing that’s going to vary.

As we glance by comparability at these low carbon types of era up within the higher left hand nook — photo voltaic, nuclear, hydro, wind, and geothermal — there’s loads much less rejected vitality. We don’t even have to interchange all the vitality on the left, we simply need to construct out the rather more environment friendly pathways, drive them by electrical energy, and electrify all these finish factors, and we get to radically decrease vitality necessities for a similar financial and luxury values for a society.

I’ve executed the maths on this. I do serviette math on monumental numbers of topics, which is a part of the rationale I’m privileged to be right here in the present day with Jon and with Jeremy Rifkin, who follows me. However different folks have executed actually deep math on this, like Mark Z. Jacobson and workforce out of Stanford. They’re those who’re liable for the projections of 100% renewables by 2050. A really credible state of affairs, imperfect in some methods, as are all of mine, and I’ll share mine, however they’ve executed the identical math. And beneath 50% of the first vitality coming into the USA is definitely required once we transfer to renewables and once we transfer to electrified vitality providers. Saul Griffiths additionally did that work, and he calculates that solely 42% of the vitality we truly use in the present day is required to get all the pieces we want and to not lose any consolation.

For this reason I annoy long-term effectivity boffins, as a result of I take into account effectivity to be a secondary query. Electrification is first, effectivity is used to make it value useful and extra economical.

A warmth pump takes three models of vitality from the setting for each one unit of electrical energy, as a result of we will try this with electrical energy. So all the transportation is three to 4 instances extra environment friendly when electrified than non-electrified. Is that an effectivity measure, or is it an electrical advantage of electrification? I are likely to name it a advantage of electrification, which is why my brief checklist of local weather actions that may work begins, as so many do, with electrify all the pieces.

In fact, the large query is, what electrical era are we going to do? Jon talked concerning the plummeting prices of wind, photo voltaic, and batteries. That’s been absurdly useful. We now are constructing extra wind and photo voltaic than the remainder, than anyone may have projected.

The IEA received it fallacious, famously, as Jon identified with certainly one of his charts, however they’re getting higher. The IEA was shaped as an oil, gasoline, and coal group about 50 years in the past, and Fatih Birol is slowly turning the helm of an ultra-large crude provider.

Extra to the purpose, we see wonderful grid reliability. All of the questions, all of the issues about intermittency of renewables are being answered. California is seeing 100% supply of electrical era wants by renewables for a lot of days, for a lot of hours over many days.

Over the previous few years, Denmark recurrently sees over 100% from wind vitality alone, and Germany is now approaching 60% renewables on its grid. Denmark and Germany have among the many most dependable grids on the earth, 13 minutes of outages per buyer per yr. This isn’t truly that tough to do. It’s a metamorphosis. We’re remodeling our grids and our era, however we’re doing it very successfully.

The extra renewables are on our grid, it seems the marginally extra dependable the grid turns into. The transformation enhances issues. This is a sign that that is the place we’re going. I’m not going to dwell on it, as a result of it’s one of many extra apparent issues.

However what about longer period storage? One of many huge questions is how will we retailer all this electrical energy? What occurs when the wind doesn’t blow and the solar doesn’t shine? There are a few solutions to that. That is my projection of grid storage necessities by 2060. It’s barely adjusted primarily based on the decline in cell-based battery prices just lately, but it surely nonetheless holds true in my view.

The primary query about intermittency that we have now to ask is how intermittent are wind and photo voltaic in actuality? The wind doesn’t blow on a regular basis. That’s not fairly true. The wind doesn’t blow as strongly on a regular basis. The solar doesn’t shine as brightly on a regular basis. And at night time, in fact, it doesn’t shine in any respect. Wind farms truly generate electrical energy 85% of the yr, simply not at 100% of their most potential.

We truly get 85% protection of some demand from wind farms. And for photo voltaic farms? Each time the solar is shining from the start of the day to the tip of the day, some electrical energy is popping out of photo voltaic farms. So we even have overlapping curves with wind and photo voltaic, that are simpler to accommodate than you may assume. It’s not like a nuclear plant. If the nuclear plant shuts down, as occurred in Texas a pair years in the past within the ice storms, that’s simply off. There’s no degradation, there’s no gradual ramping down of a nuclear plant.

However what is going to work? Pumped hydro goes to be the dominant one for vitality storage on grids, simply as it’s in the present day, simply because it’s been since 1907 when the primary one was constructed. This can be a extremely commoditized answer. It’s nice for coal nation. I’m fascinated that the discourse in the USA doesn’t embody turning coal employees in coal nation to constructing pumped hydro extra. It’s simply an apparent factor utilizing very strongly overlapping abilities and area information.

It’s going to proceed to develop. I’ve a proof level for that. One of many issues I’m doing is an ongoing sequence of discussions with India’s utilities beneath the auspices of India Good Grid Discussion board. Which means I’m spending extra time studying about India.

They’ve 19 gigawatts of pumped hydro beneath improvement, and so they have projected a capability of 106 gigawatts. I feel that’s mild, primarily based upon the work of the Australian Nationwide College. Their GIS mannequin reveals monumental closed loop off-river pumped hydro useful resource capability simply north of the extremely populated New Delhi area in northern India. I’ll be speaking about that explicitly inside a few weeks.

We even have redox move, which is mainly huge tanks of chemical substances with the battery half in between as a substitute of all of the chemical substances contained in the battery. You’ll be able to scale up vitality storage and have the ability storage decoupled from that. I’m bullish on redox move as we transfer ahead.

Cell-based batteries are actually sizzling proper now, lithium-ion particularly, however they’ve limits. They’re value efficient for 4 to eight hours. They’re nice for placing sunshine from the afternoon into the night, however we want longer period than that.

After I talked to Mark Wilson of Clever Land Investments in Scotland just lately, he had simply bought his developed pumped hydro facility on Loch Ness to Norway’s Statcraft, which is constructing pumped hydro globally. Mark and firm are additionally delivering cell-based battery options at an incredible charge within the UK. His perspective, nevertheless, is that your complete projected demand for that brief time period battery storage, which is so extremely invaluable within the UK, might be completed in 2028 or 2029. It’s a brief time period alternative to place these in. Then it’s a alternative as they age out.

The expansion potential for cell-based grid storage will not be almost as huge as assumed. A few of that’s as a result of we’re going to construct extra renewables, and a few of it’s as a result of we’re going to construct a number of excessive voltage direct present interconnecting main geographical areas.

I wish to say that top voltage direct present transmission is the brand new pipeline, but it surely’s additionally the brand new oil tanker and LNG tanker. As we generate much more electrical energy inside international locations and since we’re utilizing it a lot extra effectively in electrified options, we don’t truly need to import as a lot vitality into fossil gas poor areas.

Each place has sunshine. I lived in Singapore, the tiny dot on the backside of Malaysia right here. Even Singapore can attain 15% of its electrical energy demand in the present day with photo voltaic, and it’s constructing a number of photo voltaic on high of all its rooftops. Native renewables inside a rustic, and rather more environment friendly use by electrified techniques, means loads much less vitality wants to come back into the nation or area by pipelines or tankers or LNG tankers.

This diagram is from GEIDCO, which is the worldwide vitality interconnection improvement cooperation group. It’s a UN group, but it surely was kicked off by China in 2015 or 2016. To think about how critically China takes this, the premier of China was on the launch. The manager chairman of GEIDCO is the one individual on the high of all grid planning and improvement and deployment in China, and the individual liable for the event of the Asian Supergrid. This can be a large part of what we’re speaking about.

As one proof level on this, the Belt and Highway Initiative is in nearly the identical international locations as GEIDCO. The Belt and Highway Initiative and GEIDCO have been concerned in a 12-country, 10,000-kilometer sub-Saharan Africa Supergrid evaluation to hyperlink the western sub-Saharan a part of Africa throughout to the east, into Kenya and down south into South Africa, offering a robust spine for electrical energy sharing throughout renewable zones in Africa to help in electrifying the billion folks that stay there.

There’s an incredible quantity of labor that’s being executed on this house and it’s considerably invisible to North American audiences. There’s actually excellent news taking place globally around the globe with these kind of issues.

Once we begin speaking concerning the efficiencies of use, I at all times like to start out with transportation. This can be a enjoyable ChatGPT and DALL-E generated picture of a futuristic San Francisco with all electrified transportation.

Proper now, battery-electric vehicles have gained globally. There isn’t any different that’s delivering the identical worth proposition. Their vary is rising. Costs are coming down. There’s a blip within the west round slowing buying of electrical autos proper now, however I like to match that to once I flew from Singapore to Las Vegas in 2014 for WindPower 2014 beneath the auspices of the American Wind Vitality affiliation.

Everyone in Vegas was depressed due to the looming finish of the funding tax credit score. And I used to be wandering round considering, why is everyone so down-faced? As a result of I’d been in Singapore and I used to be taking note of China’s wind vitality improvement, to Latin America’s wind vitality improvement, the place I frolicked in São Paulo speaking wind overlapping with hydro in that nice nation, and likewise taking a look at Australia, and in every single place else wind was booming.

What we’re seeing by way of the narratives round electrical autos proper now, in different phrases, are a blip and so they’re extra of a geographically constrained blip. Progress within the greatest automobile market on the earth, China, will not be of inside combustion autos and EVs usually are not slowing down. Equally, India, the place I’m spending a good quantity of my consideration nowadays, they’re anticipated to have 50,000 electrical buses on the roads by 2027. And so they even have hundreds of electrical buses on their roads proper now.

One good factor that India has is that they don’t have the expectations that we have now of getting a 100% alternative for our present best-in-breed answer. They’re rather more all in favour of right-sizing. One of many issues that they’ve executed with their buses is that they mentioned, how a lot battery do we have to service our completely different routes? They’ve purchased buses with smaller batteries for shorter routes, medium batteries for medium routes, and greater batteries for greater routes, and put much more buses on the roads. As an alternative of getting each bus be capable of service the utmost route, they’ve buses to serve their minimal routes. It’s an apparent factor, not likely executed in North America or Europe in the identical means, however great stuff there.

Equally, on trucking I spent numerous my time prior to now six months going by worldwide organizations and analysis papers on electrification and decarbonization of freight trucking on the bottom. I used to be concerned with a Swedish examine, which was simulating all freight trucking for Europe. When you tear aside the assumptions, the fact is battery-electric freight trucking goes to dominate.

We’re already at some extent the place within the North America, the North American Council for Freight Effectivity’s Run on Much less program in September of 2023, a few Tesla semis had service days of over 1000 miles every. That was an electrical truck with two or three drivers over the course of the day, a few quick expenses, driving 1000 miles in a single day, delivering a lot of Pepsi, flats of Frito Lay, and the like. Whereas the Tesla Semi is head and shoulders above the remainder, as a result of it’s constructed from the bottom up for battery-electric trucking, it’s not alone. There have been 5 – 6 different distributors, all robust battery-electric vehicles. All have been doing service deliveries of 500 miles a day.

It’s apparent that with the battery enhancements that we’re seeing and megawatt-scale charging, just like the 960kW liquid cooled charging system {that a} Chinese language producer simply unveiled, which supplies 400 kilometers or 250 miles of vary in 36 minutes of charging for a freight truck that’s greater than a category eight freight truck in the USA, that that is all technically doable — it’s engineering and economics.

The remainder of the world exterior of North America is simply electrifying railroads. The Trans Siberian railroad, 9300 km by among the most inhospitable terrain on the earth is operating, is galvanized. China’s large progress of excessive velocity rail, now 45,000 km, is all electrified. India is definitely going to be completed electrifying all of its heavy freight rail this yr. I’ll say the USA is admittedly recalcitrant on the purpose of electrifying rail. There are causes for it, however the USA is lagging by way of rail and it’s lagging by way of freight vehicles and buses. China has 1.2 million electrical vehicles and buses on its roads whereas the USA is simply getting began.

So nice information around the globe on floor transportation. However what concerning the hard-to-abate sectors like maritime delivery? There’s some nice information there too. Do you know that 40% of bulk delivery that’s crossing our oceans is coal, oil, and gasoline? And that’s going to go away within the subsequent few many years. In different phrases, all of the fossil fuels we burn to maneuver bulk cargo throughout the oceans are going to decrease naturally as we cease utilizing fossil fuels. And that’s not all. One other 15% of bulk is uncooked iron ore. Most of these ship masses are steaming to the identical ports the coal ships are going to, the place they’re put into blast furnaces. As we decarbonize maritime delivery, the price of gas will go up a bit.

As we decarbonize uncooked metal, which I’ll speak extra about later, we’re going to cease utilizing coal for that and we’re going to start out utilizing inexperienced electrical energy for it in a few other ways. Which means we’ll truly be capable of course of the uncooked iron ore into iron, and even metal merchandise a lot nearer to the mines, and ship simply container a great deal of iron versus bulks of iron ore.

Whereas container delivery of processed and completed items will improve, it gained’t improve as quickly. We had a really fast improve from 1980 to 2019, however a number of that was as a result of unprecedented velocity of progress of China’s manufacturing capabilities and delivering stuff to the west for our shopper economies. Whereas India, Brazil, and Indonesia are rising, they don’t have the situations for fulfillment to develop as quickly as China did. Their progress might be slower than China’s, whereas nonetheless enviable to these within the west whose fast progress intervals are largely behind us. They’re going to be bringing their populations out of poverty, and as Jon mentioned, leapfrogging, most often extra slowly than China.

The mix is admittedly excellent news as we transfer ahead, however there’s additionally extra excellent news. We don’t truly need to burn fuels in a number of the ships. In my projection of maritime delivery by 2100, I checked out all inland, brief sea, and deepwater delivery necessities, and I labored out the maths on it. I unified the datasets as a result of they’re completely different segments in the way in which the delivery business thinks of them, in order that they don’t have a unified information set. And all of the inland delivery, the stuff that goes up the Mississippi or the Yangtze, that may all electrify. Most brief sea delivery, like within the Caribbean, for instance, or between Norway and Germany or Denmark and Sweden, that may all electrify. These are routes which might be simply not that lengthy.

However size of routes isn’t actually the purpose, it’s the economics. A 2022 examine that was printed in Nature did the maths and mentioned, if we had batteries that value $100 per kilowatt hour of capability, for instance a Tesla 60 kWh battery pack would value $6,000, if we had that freight journeys of as much as 1,500 kilometers, about 900 miles can be viable with batteries with just about no lack of cargo capability.

Once we speak about batteries and ships, ships carry large quantities of stuff, and so they have a lot of quantity. Batteries don’t take away that a lot house. $100 per kWh was breakeven for 1500 km, besides that we’re already under $100 now. This yr CATL, which Jon talked about a few instances, are projecting that they’re going to be promoting their fundamental batteries for $56 per kilowatt hour this yr. We’re seeing very possible $30 per kilowatt hour, a 3rd of that $100 breakeven level, in 2030. The transformation on this house goes to be great.

Right here’s one other proof level. Final yr, a Chinese language delivery group launched two 700-container ships. They’re not big. The most important container ships are 24,000 containers. However 700 containers will not be one thing you set in your storage. That is 700 containers which might be eight and a half ft tall, eight and a half ft huge, and 20 to 60 ft lengthy. 700-container ships, two of them, they’re touring 1000 km — that’s 600 miles — routes on the Yangtze with containerized batteries. They winch the battery container off and drop it on the transshipment port the place it will get plugged in to recharge, and so they winch a full battery again onto the ship. That is very simple to do. It’s already being executed.

That doesn’t imply that we don’t want some burnable fuels for crossing oceans, however we want loads lower than most individuals assume. In my projections, I don’t declare to be proper, I merely declare to be much less fallacious. Take this as a projection that’s possible from one particular person. There are different projections which must also inform any strategic choice making you make.

But when my projection is correct, we solely want about 70 million tons of maritime diesel or equal to burn for all delivery in 2100. And per the Worldwide Vitality Company’s renewables replace from late final yr, we already make 70 million tons of biodiesel, we simply waste it on floor transportation, which as I shared, is all going to be electrical.

So there’s actually excellent news. Which means the carbon curve for delivery goes to plummet. Biofuels have gotten more and more useful as we use them with waste biomass. I’ll speak a bit extra about that later.

However what about aviation? What can we do with aviation? It’s one other hard-to-abate section.

COVID was proof that we don’t need to fly as a lot as we do. We identical to to fly. The restoration from COVID isn’t completed, and it’s not going to have the expansion projections that it had prior to now. As soon as once more, the speed of world change of affluence between 1980 and 2019 was unprecedented. I don’t anticipate it can proceed as a lot.

There are a number of inhibitors on the expansion of aviation. One of many key ones is just that as we decarbonize aviation and we substitute that with sustainable aviation biofuels, they’re going to be costlier than present fuels. The airline business has 19% of their bills as gas. If that doubles or triples in worth, these get added to tickets. It’s a major sufficient buy for most individuals that it’s going to scale back their probability of taking flights.

Additional, excessive velocity rail is rising globally. We’re seeing monumental numbers of passenger miles being taken in China, the place folks have simply mentioned, why would I trouble to fly once I can go downtown by subway, get on a prepare, get off a prepare with out going by a lot safety. A pair hours later and I’m in Beijing. It’s simply extra handy to take the prepare if the prepare goes 350 kilometers per hour. We’re seeing a major discount in flight progress there.

There’s extra excessive velocity rail in India, Indonesia, and even in Africa than there may be in all of North America, which is kind of exceptional to me. Europe has about 19,000 kilometers of excessive velocity rail and is seeing a major shift of passenger aviation, passenger motion to rail by coverage and governments. France has made it a coverage that if there’s a rail line that goes between two cities, and beneath 2.5 hours, they’re not going to permit flights between these locations. Why would we help aviation between these when the prepare will get right here quick sufficient?

The battery vitality density that Jon was speaking about, by way of CATL’s 500 watt-hours per kilogram. Many organizations thought we wouldn’t see that until 2050, and we noticed it in 2023. We’re seeing rather more fast progress than most thought. Battery-electric drivetrains are vastly extra environment friendly. They’re 80% to 90% environment friendly versus 50% environment friendly for contemporary jets when the fashionable jets are at 38,000ft at optimum cruising velocity.

Battery-electric is simply as environment friendly on the tarmac when it’s taxiing, when it’s taking off, and when it’s touchdown. We’ll begin with smaller airplanes. Battery vitality density proper now are ample for a hybrid drivetrain in a turboprop that will carry 100 passengers 600 km, with divert and reserve.

That we’re not doing that already is partially due to certification to make sure security, partially as a result of the main OEMs in aviation have sadly had some actually fascinating instances and are having bother innovating. They will invent and so they can do demonstrations, however the challenges that Boeing had just lately with its main new airplane are indicative of an issue within the aviation business that’s going to go away.

Solely about 110 million tons on high of the 70 million tons of diesel for maritime use is required at peak. We already make 100 million tons of biofuels, and we have now a number of waste biomass capability, which I’ll speak about a bit extra.

Right here’s the CO2 projection. It goes down loads. Contrails go down, the nitrous oxides go down, and agriculture and waste biomass derived fuels truly may arguably make aviation gas carbon adverse.

This can be a optimistic story about aviation rising extra slowly, however nonetheless rising, and decarbonizing rather more quickly than you may assume. That is actual zero, not web zero, in my projection. We don’t get right down to actual zero in 2050, however we’re shut.

Singapore Airways has Neste offering 1.5 million tons of sustainable aviation biofuels in Singapore for its operations in the present day. There might be carriers who’re precise zero by 2050 fairly simply.

What concerning the minerals? Thanks to Visible Capitalist for the infographics. Over on the left, we have now about 20 billion tons of fossil fuels between coal, oil, and gasoline that we extract, course of, refine, and distribute, largely to burn as soon as. It’s not reusable, there’s no recyclability.

Regardless of discussions about carbon seize and carbon seize use, we will’t reuse or recycle that a lot waste as a result of 20 billion tons, once we burn them, turns into 40 to 60 billion tons of carbon dioxide. Your entire world marketplace for carbon dioxide in the present day is 230 million tons, many orders of magnitude under that. About 90 million tons of that CO2 is used for enhanced oil restoration. Be skeptical each time any person says we’re going to seize carbon and sequester it as a means out of our dilemma.

On the proper, right here’s some quantification of that query that was requested earlier. The commercial metals are 0.2 billion tons, three orders of magnitude under fossil fuels. Recyclable long run sturdy items, aluminum, copper, chromium. Expertise metals, which is to say the battery metals like lithium, is 0.002 billion tons.

It’s a rounding error in comparison with the extraction of fossil fuels in the present day. The vary between these two is gigantic. Sure, we have now to double or triple our extraction of a few of these metals, but it surely’s from a really small base. A part of the rationale our lithium scarcity final yr and the blip in battery costs disappeared was as a result of companies simply turned on extra capability.

There are a number of minerals beneath the earth, and there’s one thing else occurring, materials substitution. Materials substitution says, I’ve a copper electrical energy wire. Effectively, I may have an aluminum wire as a substitute. Most overhead wires that we see as we drive round even have aluminum cores with metal for a little bit of reinforcement.

Now we’re seeing composite transmission strains and reconductoring. The composite cable has a carbon fiber core as a substitute of a metal core, with annealed aluminum conductors round it. It’s stronger and lighter than metal core transmission cables, doesn’t sag as a lot when it heats and may tolerate greater warmth. We are able to truly reconductor present transmission strains with these new composites and put 30% or 40% extra electrical energy by them fairly simply.

We are able to construct new transmission strains with the pylons additional aside, and so they’re cheaper. So within the house of electrification, we have now huge potential to substitute whereas within the house of fossil fuels, you’ll be able to burn coal or you’ll be able to burn liquid pure gasoline or you’ll be able to burn crude oil, however you don’t have a lot different substitutability there. Substitutability is a key message that will get missed within the supplies dialogue.

We’re already recycling monumental percentages of metals. There’s a disinformation meme on the market saying we’re solely recycling 5% of batteries. That’s the 5% of the batteries in my Apple Watch. Once we come to EVs, the place there are huge batteries, we’re already at 95% recycling of EV batteries, even at this nascent stage, as a result of there’s a lot top quality, pure minerals in them in a single accessible ton.

The final lever is simply reuse. Name it 80 kilograms of lithium in a battery in a Tesla Mannequin 3. It operates for ten years and will get recharged hundreds of instances. It’s simply getting used over and over with out being depleted in any respect, with out creating CO2. Then, we are going to take a bunch of them out of the Mannequin 3s at finish of life and stack all of them collectively and create a behind-the-meter battery storage facility for a lightweight industrial web site in order that we don’t have to extend transmission to it. We use it for an additional ten years till it’s degraded to 70 or 80%, after which we mine these batteries and switch them into new batteries.

Michael Liebreich refers to this as one of many superheroes of the transition. As we get much more environment friendly in any respect this stuff, we get near the purpose the place we have now a completely round financial system for battery minerals. The diploma of disinformation in that is rife.

To tug a thread from the start, we don’t have to interchange the vitality in 20 billion tons of fossil fuels, we have now to interchange the vitality providers due to all of the waste that comes from these. Then we get time and again and over reuse, we get materials substitution and we get recyclability. Our necessities for minerals are a tiny fraction of fossil fuels, and we’ll simply be utilizing them increasingly.

I promised a bit on biofuels. That is the chart from the Worldwide Vitality Company 2024 Renewables replace. Should you depend all of it up, we’re already manufacturing 100 million tons of biofuels yearly, and about 70 million tons of it’s biodiesel. Between renewable and renewable diesel, there are completely different classes and methods to chop it. We’re already bunkering biokerosene in jet plane and biodiesel in ships.

Right here’s a barely pungent story. The EU has 1.4 billion tons of livestock dung waste a yr now. Livestock dung, you assume? One of many issues you are able to do is flip it into kerosene for jets. It’s an engineering downside and an financial query, not a scientifically troublesome factor. It’s simply biomass. Each ton of dried biomass turns into about 0.4 tons of top of the range biofuels. And so if in case you have 1.4 billion tons of livestock dung and say 50% of that mass is water you’re right down to 700 million tons. At 0.4 tons of biofuel per ton of dried biomass, that’s 280 million tons of biofuels simply from livestock executed in Europe, which proper now emits a number of excessive world warming potential methane.

That’s not the one waste stream. We even have 2.5 billion tons of meals waste. That’s a full third of the energy we manufacture yearly globally. We throw it in landfills. There isn’t any caloric poverty, there’s a distribution downside relating to energy. There isn’t any “biofuels competing with energy for folks” downside besides in micro native locations. We’re losing huge quantities of biomass, which incessantly turns into methane, and we have now to repair that. A part of the repair is popping it into the comparatively small numbers of biofuels we require for lengthy haul aviation and delivery once we electrify all the pieces we will.

However what about heating? I’d like to attract your consideration right down to the underside left nook of the horny versus meh, sensible versus silly quadrant chart. I did a sequence of those charts throughout a number of decarbonization dimensions, and I’ve iterated them couple of instances. Simply take a look at all of the applied sciences within the sensible and meh quadrant.

Warmth pumps, they’re wonderful. 45% of commercial warmth is beneath 200° Celsius. We have now warmth pumps that may ship 200° Celsius warmth.

Induction stoves are higher to prepare dinner with than gasoline innumerable methods, and so they’re throughout a lot of the remainder of the world. I used to be doing a digital nomad spell in New Zealand final yr for a couple of weeks, doing a talking tour about transformation of radical electrification of transportation and different issues. Each unit we stayed in had an induction range. It’s simply widespread throughout Asia. Electrode boilers, electrical arc furnaces. I’ll speak a bit extra concerning the as much as 3,000° Celsius warmth utilized in electrical arc furnaces for scrapping metal. We have now all of the heating options we want. District heating is large. Mixed warmth and energy with biomass, so long as it’s mixed warmth and energy, I’m considerably okay with it, however I’m contemplating shifting it over to the silly quadrant.

Electrical plasmas at the moment are as much as the temperature of the solar and are used for sure lessons of ceramics which might be fascinating. Electromagnetic frequency, like microwaves. Industrial microwaves are there. And sure, insulation. Insulation helps too.

We even have the rising space of warmth storage. It’s not a slam dunk, it’s a bit overhyped in some methods. It’s an excessive amount of into the horny and silly house, particularly when it talks about getting used for storing electrical energy after which retrieving electrical energy, that’s a really inefficient pathway for electrical storage. However once we speak about industrial warmth, the place we have now one course of which creates warmth, and a course of a couple of hours later which wants warmth simply due to the mechanisms, warmth storage is sensible. Warmth storage is sensible even down on the home stage. I frolicked with Harvest Thermal’s CEO, and so they’ve constructed a sizzling water heater that’s a CO2-based warmth pump that places sizzling water into an enormous tank of water after which makes use of that for home heating and home cooling. California innovation and now being utilized to cell unit residential buildings in Brooklyn and elsewhere.

One of many issues I did is a broad view of metal. I seemed throughout all the prevailing metal, the expansion of metal since 1990 over right here, and that fast ramp-up when China was constructing absurd quantities of infrastructure. Right here’s an information level for People. Originally of 1988, China didn’t have a freeway. Now it has 177,000 kilometers of highways, second solely to the USA in size of highways. The US has, I feel, 350,000 km. That’s a part of China’s large infrastructure buildup.

In 2007, they didn’t have excessive velocity rail wherever. Now they’ve 45,000 km of excessive velocity rail, they’ve constructed cities, they constructed highways, they constructed railroads, they constructed bridges, they constructed monumental quantities of stuff, and that’s what that curve is. However they’re on the finish of that curve. Their home demand for infrastructure is now tailing off. They’ve constructed sufficient infrastructure for his or her complete financial system and their complete inhabitants, and now they’re changing issues just like the worst coal crops that they constructed with hyper vital coal crops.

On that word, by the way in which, coal is projected to peak in China this yr. Gasoline was peak final yr in China, per the top of Sinopec, the most important gasoline refiner and retailer in China. And as Fatih Birol has identified, the Worldwide Vitality Company says peak fossil fuels is that this decade. After this, the decline.

For steelmaking, we already make 100 million tons with direct discount of iron. That’s mainly taking an artificial gasoline and mixing it with a excessive temperature course of with uncooked iron ore and derusting it, turning rusty iron ore into unrusted iron. We put that into metal manufacturing services.

The great factor about DRI, that artificial gasoline at the moment comes from methane from coal or pure gasoline. We are able to use biomethane as a substitute. We even have, and I’ve checked out and executed the maths on the HyBrit inexperienced metal answer and H2Green Metal answer, northern European inexperienced hydrogen discount of iron ore to create iron, to create metal. I’ve additionally seemed on the Boston metallic answer and the Fortescue answer, which used electrolysis and no hydrogen in any respect to show any grade of iron ore into iron, after which therefore metal.

There’s one other piece, the EAF piece right here. EAF is electrical arc furnaces, electrical metal mini-mills. This can be a place the place the USA has been main globally for a very long time. This can be a place the place the USA can positively pat itself on the again. 70% of US metal demand is met from metal from electrical arc furnaces. Comparably, Europe is simply 40%. Which means they’re not scrapping their metal and making new metal with it. They’re making new metal from iron ore for his or her metal calls for.

The optimum might be about 75%. That electrical arc furnace 1500° to 3000° Celsius warmth will be powered by renewable electrical energy and more and more is, so nice information there.

As soon as once more, a plummeting carbon dioxide emissions from metal. Within the coming many years, we’ll see a flattening of demand, we’ll see rather more scrapping, particularly of fossil gas infrastructure, just like the 912 very giant crude carriers floating around the globe, or the three million miles of pipeline of fossil gas pipelines in the USA. I like to think about them as linear mines which might be buried 6ft deep. And they also’ll cease being wanted as a result of HVDC is the brand new pipeline. Why do we want pipelines when we have now electrons? We’re going to be beginning to see rather more scrapping and rather more low carbon manufacturing with DRI of a number of varieties.

Metal is definitely a solvable downside with applied sciences we have now in hand. It’s an financial and transformation and capital query, not a technological one. This may be a bit optimistic, but it surely’s totally doable.

A bit on agriculture. That is one other DALL-E generated picture I put collectively for my India discussions. Agriculture is a significant local weather downside. Inexperienced ammonia constructed from inexperienced hydrogen is an enormous a part of the local weather answer, however drone-based agriculture can be an enormous a part of it.

We’re already doing drone seeding throughout giant farm areas. We’re seeing Hylio, out of the USA, with 200 kilos of product being utilized from a single 14-foot-diameter wingspan hexacopter and two of these models with all the bottom station and all the pieces costing about 200 grand. A tractor from Jon Deere, which may do the identical spraying per day and compacts the soil when used, is about $700,000 to purchase. The tractor burns about 13 gallons of diesel an hour. Drones sip at electrical energy.

Drone-based agriculture is an incredible transformation. We’re seeing crop dusting changed with electrically powered drones. We’re seeing aerial surveillance and oversight for information gathering, for precision agriculture, changed with drones with sensor packages. We’re seeing that every one integrating in on-line platforms powered by machine studying. It’s an incredible space of progress and an incredible space of decarbonization.

And as soon as once more, agricultural waste. Once we divert that into biofuels, it doesn’t flip into methane and it stops being a greenhouse gasoline downside.

We don’t have an arable land downside. What we have now is a scarcity of handiest automation for industrialized agriculture. We have to transfer subsistence farmers off the land. That is all solvable. It’s all occurring simply due to demographic traits. The agricultural areas globally are diminishing in inhabitants. Cities are burgeoning. Automation is going on.

This can be a heterodox projection on hydrogen by 2100. The factor that doesn’t get instructed typically sufficient within the hydrogen story is that proper now it’s a local weather change downside on the dimensions of all of aviation, about 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide and equal per yr from manufacturing hydrogen. There’s a extremely excellent news story about how we’re going to unravel that downside.

A part of it’s a full third of that’s being utilized in refineries to make gasoline, diesel, and kerosene for jets. And guess what? Effectively, that’s going away. We’re not going to be eliminating refining fossil fuels as a result of we nonetheless want petrochemicals. However we’re not going to be taking Alberta’s crude out of the bottom and spending a lot of hydrogen on it to show it into diesel for tractors or gasoline for vehicles. The use circumstances are happening. As we decarbonize hydrogen, will probably be costlier, so the petroleum we extract would be the lighter, decrease sulfur crudes which don’t want as a lot hydrogen.

Subsequent is fertilizer. A full quarter of hydrogen in the present day is used for ammonia and that comes from pure gasoline or coal. Once we make that into inexperienced hydrogen, it’s costlier. However with precision agriculture we scale back the requirement for fertilizer for a similar crop yields. Biogenetic options, like Pivot Bio out of the USA, flip off the nitrogen sensor in microbes that exist round plant roots anyway in order that they preserve fixing nitrogen no matter how a lot fertilizer we add. Usually, if there’s sufficient nitrogen, they are saying, I’m simply going to get fats, completely happy, and multiply. As an alternative, they only preserve making extra nitrogen on the root of crops the place it’s wanted. Pivot Bio already has over 1,000,000 acres of corn in the USA beneath use with their product and are seeing a 25% discount in fertilizer.

Hydrogen goes to cease being an issue, but it surely isn’t a transportation or vitality answer. To be actually clear, this can be a case the place electrification is being confirmed so efficient and so environment friendly there are only a few use circumstances left and each one proposed retains falling off.

I’ve ten minutes or so for questions, so let’s speak.

Host Query: Michael, thanks a lot. Similar to with Jon, your presentation was riveting and my head is spinning. You probably did an exquisite job of outlining the market elements which might be driving these enabling applied sciences and creating transformation. So thanks a lot for that. So many good particulars. I’ve one query after which I do know Mike has a query for you as properly. So let’s see if we will get to each of these within the jiffy that we have now left. You had talked about that you just don’t assume that carbon seize is possible. And I definitely perceive that as a result of we’re speaking about applied sciences at scale which might be very costly. And also you clearly outlined that there are higher methods to part out extremely emitting merchandise, manufacturing, issues like metal. And everyone knows concrete’s in there as properly, taking a look at options that inherently scale back carbon emissions.

However I’m curious to listen to somewhat bit extra about why you assume that carbon seize at scale will not be possible and that you just don’t imagine the hype.

Reply: Let’s be clear about what I assert about carbon seize and sequestration. It’s totally potential to seize carbon dioxide. We’ve been doing it in industrial processes for 150 years. The Solvay course of, which makes the baking soda we put in our fridges to maintain them odor-free, that captures CO2 in a single a part of the method, to make use of it within the subsequent step in a course of. We all know how to do that, and we’ve been doing it at industrial scales for a very long time.

Equally, we’ve been shoving carbon dioxide underground for many years as properly, in enhanced oil restoration, and we’ve been placing it in pipelines for that goal as properly. None of that is technically non-viable. There are vital issues of economics and options. It will get actually costly actually quick and there are options.

Boundary Dam in Saskatchewan tried to plug carbon seize onto its coal plant as a way to use it for enhanced oil restoration to get some financial profit out of it. And so they, on the finish of the challenge, mentioned we’re by no means going to do that once more as a result of it’s too costly and it’s a waste of time. This can be a coal plant that desires to persist, and enhanced oil restoration that desires to persist. They mentioned, that is simply financial suicide.

Equally, as we glance around the globe, the locations the place you’ll be able to put carbon dioxide in excessive volumes are hardly ever close to the place the carbon dioxide is created. A cement plant needs to be close to to the marketplace for cement as a result of cement is a extremely heavy substance. You wish to reduce the transportation of it. However cement crops aren’t close to nice locations for carbon seize and sequestration — beneath the North Sea in Europe, for instance. It’s a must to construct large CO2 pipelines.

Satartia, Mississippi, is a cautionary story for CO2 pipelines. It’s a tiny city, inhabitants 41, midway up Mississippi on the western aspect. A CO2 pipeline that’s used for enhanced oil restoration within the area had dense part CO2 in it, which suggests it was compressed and liquefied. The pipeline sheared due to a landslide due to extra rain. That dense part CO2 was 590 instances the quantity of gaseous CO2. CO2 is heavier than air.

It rolled downhill in a thick blanket into Satartia a mile away throughout a freeway, put 46 folks into convulsions, unconscious on the bottom, and induced the evacuation of over 200 folks. 46 folks have been hospitalized for observations and possibly have some vital ongoing well being challenges. Inner combustion, emergency autos, and evacuation autos didn’t work as a result of they want air too.

Any vital progress of carbon seize sequestration would require vital numbers of CO2 pipelines by closely populated areas in North America and Europe as a way to get the CO2 from the place it’s being created to the place it must be sequestered. The protection issues usually are not a coverage dialogue proper now and should be.

This doesn’t imply we gained’t use carbon seize and sequestration. You talked about cement. As soon as we electrify all the pieces else in a cement plant, once we bake the limestone to show it into quicklime, that chemical course of releases a number of carbon dioxide, but it surely’s nearly pure, simple to seize. We nonetheless must do one thing, however even there, that’s rather more costly than in the present day, as a result of they only use the environment as an open sewer in the present day. Sooner or later, what options exist and can they be value aggressive?

My assertion is, in lots of circumstances, options to carbon seize might be value aggressive, and so we are going to use electrochemistry and different options as a substitute of conventional options bolting on carbon seize.