A blog post from Dr Jasmin Cooper, Research Associate at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Sustainable Gas Institute.
The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is continuing to rise despite global efforts to decarbonise energy systems and economies. There was a dip in emissions during periods of national lockdown in the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic but as lockdown measures ease, emissions are returning to pre-pandemic levels (Met Office, 2021). It has become evident that the rate of decarbonisation is not matching the pace needed to meet the climate change goals set in the Paris Agreement and therefore cutting fossil fuels alone is not enough to keep global warming to below 2°C or 1.5°C (McGrath, 2020). Therefore, negative emission technologies (NET), such as those which ‘suck’ carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, have an important role to play in meeting emission targets.
What are NET?
There are a number of emerging NET being used or are emerging, including afforestation and reforestation, direct air capture and bioenergy with carbon capture, some of which are on display in the Science Museum’s Our Future Planet exhibition. These are different to carbon capture for a coal power plant as they remove pre-existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, therefore reducing the atmospheric concentration.
Each NET has its pros and cons; afforestation is simple yet effective but requires large numbers of trees (and therefore land) to be planted in order for significant carbon removal. Bioenergy with carbon capture is multifunctional as it generates heat, electricity or liquid fuels, but the feedstock requirements could conflict with other agricultural needs.
Our work on the environmental impacts of NET
At the Sustainable Gas Institute, we have been examining the environmental impacts of NET. Important factors of all NET are their embodied emissions (emissions from the production of materials and energy used by a NET) and life cycle impacts (impacts from all activities, materials and energy consumed by a NET over its entire lifespan). If these are high, then the overall climate change mitigation effectiveness of a NET could be severely reduced. For example, if a NET emits 400 kg CO2eq. per one ton of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere, then the total amount of carbon dioxide removed is 600 kg. Emissions occur in the materials and energy supply chains, as well as during activities in the life cycle such as maintenance, construction and waste management. Emissions are not limited to greenhouse gases.
Other chemicals are released into the atmosphere that can have negative impacts to air quality, land and water. No NET is emission free, and the magnitude of emissions ranges greatly both between and within NET, depending on the quantity of materials and energy used and the level of decarbonisation within the materials and energy supply chains. Therefore, it is important that these emissions are taken into consideration when developing NET strategies.
Rate of carbon dioxide removal
Another important factor to consider is the amount of carbon dioxide removed over time. Afforestation and reforestation and enhanced weathering can remove large quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but the rate of removal is slow and dependant on factors such as temperature. Direct air capture and bioenergy with carbon capture, on the other hand, can remove large quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere quickly, with capacities of one to four megatons of carbon dioxide per year per facility. However, they are the most sensitive to emissions from their supply chains. Hence, forward planning is an important factor that should be taken into account when devising NET strategies so that variations in rate of carbon dioxide removal are taken into account.
Weighing up the evidence
Overall, NETs do result in a net removal of carbon dioxide across their life cycle but under particular circumstances, the impact of embodied emissions can be so great that there is limited net carbon removal. Therefore, we need to maximise the effectiveness of NET as this is crucial for ensuring no repercussion are experienced from expanding their uptake globally and that there are no further delays to reaching Paris Agreement targets.
Pedro Gerber Machado, a visiting researcher from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, summarises his recent review paper examining the life cycle emissions for road freight transport. The review was carried out in collaboration with the Institute of Energy and Environment at the University of São Paulo, Brazil.
Author: Pedro Gerber Machado
The transport sector is responsible for around 30% of the world’s energy consumption and 16% of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. To achieve an energy transition to guarantee net-zero emissions, reducing emissions from road transport is fundamental. Diesel is still the most common fuel used for heavy road transport and freight. While worldwide there is a move towards electric vehicles, their environmental benefit in reducing emissions depends on the area’s electricity sources. Our review paper examines the total environmental life cycle emissions of different fuel options and technologies for road freight transport (trucks) in 45 studies.
Source: Pixabay
Source of electricity
The source of electricity can make a big difference to greenhouse gas emissions. We found that with greenhouse gas emissions, higher values (3,148–3,664 g/km) are found in places where coal has a significant share in electricity generation. Lower emissions are found where renewables have higher percentages in electricity generation (496 g/km). In China, emissions can reach 5,479 g/km since electricity generation “is mostly from coal.”
Compressed Natural Gas (CNG)
For Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) technology, greenhouse gas emissions vary due to differing efficiency and assumptions about methane leakage during natural gas transportation. But future projections are optimistic due to the potential for improvements in controlling methane emissions (514 g/km in 2050).
Biodiesel
In the analysis, biodiesel had a higher energy consumption and higher emissions profile in the production phase equal to diesel, which is the main reason for its low environmental performance.
Hydrogen
The greenhouse gas emissions intensity from hydrogen varies as it is depends on its method of production such as coal gasification, steam methane reforming (SMR), and hydrolysis. The use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) and liquid or gaseous use also influences its final emission profile.
Fuels vs. diesel
On average, the review showed that biogas, fuel-cell hydrogen, and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) have lower emissions in their life cycle than diesel, with a chance of a 57% reduction in emissions for biodiesel, 77% for fuel-cell hydrogen, and 100% chance for biogas. Interestingly, even though biodiesel is a renewable source of fuel that receives significant attention due to its capacity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in our review, it had a higher average emission than diesel.
Source: Pixabay
Battery electric, hydrogen fuel cells and biogas
We found that if a clean electricity matrix is available, with high renewable energy shares, battery electric vehicles provide the best option. Hydrogen fuel-cells, when hydrogen comes from renewable sources, are also comparable to battery electric vehicles. Biogas can serve as a feedstock for hydrogen production in substituting natural gas in steam methane reform or liquefied for use in Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) trucks.
Further research into biogas emissions, fuel consumption, and its economics is essential. Since biogas production is possible from several sources, it could be suitable for different countries, such as Brazil.
Analysing air pollutants
There is a lack of studies exploring the life cycle of these options when it comes to air pollutants. Even though pollutant emissions in the use phase (for internal combustion options) have received more attention from the scientific community, emissions for the whole life cycle should also be studied. Even so, uncertainties related to the Tank-to-Wheel evaluation can increase the inaccurate values from this side of the analysis and the error propagation, directly impacting the policymakers. For PM2.5, hybrid and LNG options have greater changes in reducing the emissions. Fuel-cell, LNG, CNG, and hybrid trucks have higher chances of reducing nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions. In contrast, sulphur oxide (SOx) emissions came out inconclusive due to a lack of studies.
But what about the economics…
CNG, LNG, and hybrid trucks were the best options from an economic perspective. CNG has lower life cycle costs and fuel costs in most analyses, with values ranging from 50% lower life cycle costs than diesel to a 2% reduction, to 16% average increase. CNG is the most economical fuel for large fleets that conduct urban operations and can support private infrastructure.
LNG could have a payback time of 2.5 years or lower, considering the price differential mostly in long-haul operations due to its lower fuel costs. However, economic viability could be achieved due to the higher cost of LNG vehicles and maintenance and the limited range of LNG trucks relative to diesel. The studies also showed that the fuel efficiency in LNG trucks could dictate its economic viability. Relative efficiencies of less than 80% reduce the chances of lower costs by 50%.
Finally, hybrid trucks show a total life cycle cost from 10% lower to practically no difference. Although the incremental cost of hybrid trucks is expected to become close to zero in the future, additional investments of more than $35,000 in hybrid technology hinder its viability, especially with low diesel fuel costs.
In the developing world…
The question arises then if the best options regarding GHG and local pollutant emissions will ever be a possibility for developing regions. Even though authors point out that electric trucks could cause an increase in emissions in several places in the world and that it is still necessary to evaluate peak power demand to understand the operational aspects of transport electrification, electric trucks in countries with a high share of renewables have the most radical reductions in GHG. However, being the most expensive options, there is a slight chance that governments in poorer countries or even the private sector will be willing to pay the price, based solely on environmental reasons.
The way to go in these countries has been to continue to depend on diesel. Most recently, the discussion on natural gas use in the transport sector has gained some momentum. Cheaper than other alternative options, natural gas might be an option due to its lower PM emissions, even though other pollutants, or GHG emissions, are higher.
Dr. Pedro Gerber Machado works as a Researcher at Imperial Colleges’s Sustainable Gas Institute. Pedro is from Brazil and is interested in the sustainable development of energy production, thorough the development of new technologies and the application of policies. In this blog, Pedro talks about the inaction towards renewable energy in the last 30 years and how we need to change the history in order to have a true energy transition.
The definition of “transition” is not the most controversial definitions of all time, probably not even in the group of the 10 most controversial definitions found in the English language, if not in any language. Even so, the concept of “energy transition” seem to be of great controversy and a theme of great debate more and more as we reach the tipping point of climate change, that point in time which changes will be too late to be made. Taking the Cambridge dictionary definition, “transition” means “a change from one form or type to another, or the process by which this happens”.
Energy transition, nonetheless, has several definitions in academic papers, for example:
Figure 1 – global share of energy supply from 1800-2017 (%).
The arrows show the moment where the so called “energy transition” happened in the world. In a simple way, the transition is said to have occurred from biomass to coal in in the late nineteenth century and from coal to oil in mid-twentieth century. It seems like a true “transition”, in which biomass reduces, coal increases and later on coal reduces and oil increases.
Let’s now take a look at the absolute primary energy supply in the line graph, with arrows showing the same moments in time when the “energy transition” took place.
When it comes to total primary energy supply, there was no “transition” (based on the dictionary definition), but instead what happened was a mere “addition”. In both moments there was no “change from one form or type to another”, simply because the other sources are still around. Traditional biomass was still around long after coal entered the energy matrix (and still exists today) and the same goes for the point when oil was introduced, there was no transition there, only an addition, since coal is still rising alongside oil, not falling.
Figure 2 – Total energy supply from 1800-2017 (TWh
Future transitions
More important than determining if what the world has gone through in the past was a “transition” or an “addition” is what is coming in the future and by the future we mean what is happening now. Transitioning away from our current global energy system is of paramount importance, since its negative environmental and social impacts are of global proportions and we are fast reaching a point of no return.
But it is also important to identify both the similarities and the differences between past and prospective transitions. A crucial issue is that, during past energy additions, both consumers and producers benefited from the new energy source. This is mainly due to lower fuel prices and the new developments in mechanics taking place during that those times. Whereas these private economic and financial benefits are not as obvious for low carbon energy sources and technologies, due to higher prices, generally. Moreover, the introduction of clean, low carbon energy sources has to take place in a real “transition”, and not repeat the same additions the planet has seen in the past.
The bar chart (Figure 3) shows the relative increase of each energy source from 1990 until 2017. This is an important period due to the global increase in environmental concern over these past (almost) 30 years. There was Rio, there was Kyoto, there was Paris and still fossil fuels increased in production.
Figure 3 – Increase of each fuel supply from 1990 to 2017 (%).
The problem, however, is worse when we see that the increase of fossil fuel has been, in absolute terms, higher than renewables in Figure 4.
Figure 4 – Increase of fossil fuels in relation to renewables from 1990-2017
What we see is that, for every 1 unit increase of energy from renewables in the last (almost) 30 years, coal increased 1.93, natural gas 1.77 and oil 1.49. In a world that needs to fully transition to renewables, this is not a good picture.
Unfortunately, this is a repetition of the past. Renewables are just being “added” to the energy matrix, while there is no reduction from the fossil side. This is incompatible with the desired climate change mitigation actions. To have a genuine transition, renewables need to increase in a proportion such that fossil fuels decrease in supply. Only then will the energy transition be an authentic out-of-the-dictionary transition, and not a trifling addition.
Diego Moya works as a PhD researcher at Imperial College’s Sustainable Gas Institute, and is also part of the Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet DTP at the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment. Diego from Ecuador is interested in the sustainable development of the Latin American region and is one of the founders of iiasur (Institute for Applied Sustainability Research). In this blog, Diego explores how the region could move towards a low-carbon economy.
Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) covers an area equivalent to the combined surface area of the USA and China. Despite its vast number of agricultural products and natural resources, and the fact that it has the largest reserves of petroleum (in Venezuela), natural gas, and freshwater, Latin America still has a number of challenges to overcome to achieve widespread welfare and development.
Hydropower plant. Curtesy of Dan Meyers. Source: Unspla
Climate change is also increasing extreme weather events in the LAC region. In 2017, Peruvian president declared a state of emergency after Lima’s worst floods killed 67 people and damaged 115,000 homes. This year in Mexico, wildfires tore through drought areas burning nearly 150,000 hectares. Intense rains, uncontrolled forest fires, agricultural productions losses and long droughts due to intense weather conditions are risking the lives of 660 million LAC citizens.
Having insufficient infrastructure, limited resources and a critical knowledge gap also make the region unable to adapt to such catastrophic climate change impacts. However, past and current emissions produced from industrialised economies are truly the cause of climate change worldwide. Those nations and people who have made the least contribution to climate change are bearing the burden while lacking the wealth to cope with its effects.
What are the low-carbon options to tackle climate change in the region?
Installed Capacity of non-renewable energy. Source: OLADE
Despite having an unfavourable climate change adaptation situation, LAC economies are well positioned to move towards the zero carbon-energy target. According to OLADE (the Latin American Energy Organization), large hydropower remains the biggest renewable power source in the region with a share of 45 % in the total power installed capacity mix. However, extreme weather patterns and the growth of other renewables is changing the mix. Although hydropower will remain strong, other renewables could increase considerably.
Fortunately, there are also opportunities for other cleaner technologies to meet the minimum level of demand on an electrical grids (baseload power demand); the technologies could be geothermal and natural-gas power plants (as a cleaner option to switch from other fossil fuels). While geothermal-based technologies can meet long-term emission targets, geothermal resources are location specific and therefore distribution costs can be unattractive for investors. Expanding natural-gas-fired power would help meet short-term emissions targets when switching from other fossil fuels but would also encourage the long-term reliance and use of it.
So what is the emission reduction potential in LAC’s economic sectors?
Agriculture – enhancing reforestation
Harvesting. Source: Photo by Urip Dunker, Unsplash.com
Although the agriculture sector in the LAC region is not highly industrialised yet (energy consumption is minimum compared with the other sectors), the loss of forest for agricultural land is releasing carbon emissions at shocking rates. Greenhouse gas emissions related to agriculture are linked to livestock, rice production, agricultural soils management and biomass burning.
Forest regulate ecosystems and play an essential part in the carbon cycle. LAC countries contain 22% of the world’s forest area. However, deforestation for agricultural land is a major issue currently facing the region. The rate of deforestation in the region is alarming; between August 2017 and July 2018, an area of Amazon rainforest, equivalent to five times the size of London, was destroyed in Brazil.
Loss of forest also contributes approximately 10% to annual global greenhouse emissions. Therefore, countries that share the Amazon rainforest (e.g. Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia) need to implement strong mechanisms to control land-use and enhance reforestation in the Amazon to achieve carbon mitigation targets.
In 2019, INPE (the Brazilian The National Institute for Space Research) has detected 72,843 fires across the Amazon basin.
The food and agriculture organization of the United Nations (FAO) promotes Sustainable forest management across the region. However, just a few countries have joined the initiative (Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica and Dominican Republic). The program aims to put in practice relevant models of sustainable land use and conservation of forest resources. They work together with local partners to strengthen model forest development in the region.
Finally, policy makers also need to take into account the additional required to modernise the agricultural sector in LAC countries in their energy planning. The use of modern methods would give greater productive yields (e.g. mechanised equipment to plough a field). Although additional energy is needed to power pumps, for irrigation or switch from kerosene lamps to electricity light, this would not only improve agricultural productivity but also, most importantly, it would improve the life quality of people working in the rural sector and farms.
Transport – investing in low-carbon infrastructure
The LAC region lacks a low-carbon transport system. The largest share of energy demand is the transport sector (37%) and the growing rates of car ownership create a market opportunity to both electrifying the sector and expanding cleaner fuels (i.e. bio-fuels, natural gas). The average car ownership rate in LAC countries is 6% annually compared with about 1% in industrialised nations such as the UK, Germany or the USA. More investment is required in public transport systems across the region. Railways, light rail systems and subways to interconnect big cities and countries were not considered in the development of the region.
Transport via tram. Source: Pixabay
But there is still a huge opportunity for foreign investment, capacity building and tackling poverty in the region by developing a sustainable transport system. There are some good examples across the region. In Argentina, the 2008 railway reorganization act resulted in major projects such as the Circunvalar Ferroviario light rail system in Rosario along with electric underground lines in the metropolitan Buenos Aires area and upgrading sections of the Belgrano-Cargas railway. In Chile, use of electric-buses is growing fast; Santiago aims to have 80% of its public fleet driven by E-buses in 2022.
Industry – improving efficiency
The industry sector is responsible for 31% of the total energy consumed in the LAC region. The demand for heat and electricity in industrial processes such as beverages, tobacco, metallurgy, textiles, footwear, cement, steel, and textile has made the region an important focus for clean technologies deployment (i.e. Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Mexico). Electricity penetration and fuel substitution are key for industrial expansion in the region. Process that require to produce heat or cooling are ideal to increase industrial electricity use and reduce fuel consumption.
LAC’s energy intensity – the ratio between energy consumption and GDP of a country – has remained almost constant in last decades. This is mostly due to weak energy efficiency policies and its implementation. The most high-intensity industries in the region are mining, chemicals, pulp and paper, iron and steel, and cement sector. These industrial sub-sectors should promote the use of (1) energy management systems and energy efficiency projects, (2) the best available high-efficiency industrial equipment and capacity training, and (3) energy efficiency products and services from small and medium enterprises (i.e. energy audits).
Residential – the most electrified end-use sector
The residential sector accounts for about 16% of the end-use energy consumption in the region. The region has moved from traditional solid biofuels to more efficient appliances, heating and cooling technologies. However, the consumption of electricity and natural gas is still inefficient due to lack of insulation in buildings, inefficient cooling technologies, inefficient lighting and poor water heating technologies. Although the LAC region is close to achieving universal energy access, still 15 million people live without electricity and over 56 million people rely on traditional uses of solid biofuels for cooking and heating.
Energy efficiency in buildings is also still an issue. Improving building fabric, upgrading insulation, switching to more efficient technology (i.e. electric stoves, district gas networks) and using SMART systems are key to improving life style while keeping low energy consumption in the region.
COP25 Chile 2019: a huge opportunity to discuss the low-carbon future of the LAC region
Now that it is Latin America’s turn to host the next COP25 in Chile later on in November 2019, we can see a huge opportunity to discuss the geopolitical implications of a more sustainable development of the LAC region. COP25 in Chile will highlight a number of current global issues.
The discussion around these topics at the COP25 in Chile is the opportunity to start the debate around the root of the unsustainable development of the LAC region. In my opinion, both the extraction of raw materials without the industrialization of end-use products and the lack of local capacity building, has produced a critical knowledge gap and a lack of technology innovation that has affected the development of our economies.
My final thoughts are that…
Multinational corporations along with governments must commit to developing local capacity to transform cheap raw materials (extracted in the region) into profitable manufactured goods. This would require a set of policy instruments to develop a long-term roadmap to fill the knowledge and technology innovation gaps that would eventually enhance the low-carbon development of our region.
Governments, foreign industry working locally and academia in the LAC region need to work together. We definitely need to explore competitive advantages through innovation by solving local problems at all scales of development in a sustainable way. The implementation of new science and innovation policies and strategies must reflect a sustainable development of the region otherwise we will progress at the expense of the environment.
Acknowledgement
I acknowledge the valuable comments and suggestions made by Dr. Pablo Carvajal.
About the author
Diego works as PhD researcher in the MUSE energy system model Group at Imperial College’s Sustainable Gas Institute and is part of the Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet DTP at the Grantham Institute. Diego is supported by SENESCYT Universities of Excellence Scholarship Scheme and Universidad Técnica de Ambato (UTA). He is a scholar of the Faculty of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Ambato, UTA-Ecuador. Diego is also one of the founders of iiasur (Institute for Applied Sustainability Research) [LinkedIn, Twitter].
Chile is committing to decarbonising its electricity sector with a target of 60% renewable power by 2035, but there are still some challenges with decarbonising the heat sector. Chileans still rely heavily on natural gas to heat their homes. Jorge Salgado Contreras from Chile, visited the Sustainable Gas Institute for two months, funded by the Chilean National Commission for Science and Technology, and tasked with investigating ways of developing heat decarbonisation pathways for cities in Chile. We interviewed Jorge about his research.
What is your background?
I am an industrial engineer and now Head of the Electrical and Electronics Department at Inacap in Punta Arenas University, Chile. I have combined experience in the energy sector, working in academic, private and public sectors. In the private sector, I have worked for both the national gas retailer (Intergas Inc) on both business development and the technical side, as well as in an energy start-up. I also worked for the Ministry of Energy of Chile, on renewable energy and energy efficiency projects, where I was in charge of cogeneration initiatives and lead the long-term energy plans for two cities in Patagonia.
How did you find out about the Sustainable Gas Institute, and what first sparked your interest in working here?
I found the Sustainable Gas Institute website, and it was actually the name that first caught my attention. I really liked the aims of the Institute as it is clear we cannot move to 100% renewables straight away, and a transition is necessary. I also thought the White Paper Series is really trying to address some unresolved issues. Even though the reports are written by academics, they are very influential from a policy context.
The energy mix in Chile (Source: Ministry of Energy, Chile).
Your project is to understand how to decarbonise heat for Chile. Can you tell us why it’s so important an issue?
Chile is actually very cold, especially the southern end which is where I am from; it can go below -10 °C. While Chile has ambitious climate targets to increase renewables to 70% by 2050, these targets have only been set for the electricity sector and there are little targets, plans or research taking place to reduce the emissions intensity of the heat sector.
We currently use so many energy to heat our homes in Chile. Fortunately, Chile does have a good renewables portfolio (22% renewables), increasingly with solar and wind. However, in my region (Magallanes and chilean Antarctica, Chile), we still use natural gas to heat our homes, as you do in the UK. We do have access to our own natural gas and biomass but in other regions, for example in Southern Chile, natural gas is imported from overseas. The natural gas subsidy for residential and commercial use in the Magallanes region is around 100 million US$/year and represents about 70% of the Chilean Ministry of Energy National Budget.
What is the project about and who have you been working with?
I have been trying to understand whether we can work with low-carbon options such as hydrogen to decarbonise the existing gas grid infrastructure. In Chile, there is not much research taking place to understand the role of hydrogen in heat decarbonisation.
I have also been looking at the use of electrification and technologies, such as heat pumps. The recent report by the UK Committee on Climate Change into this was very useful as a case study. The idea is to adapt for the Chilean context, and we could move forward towards a low carbon economy by replacing natural gas with hydrogen.
At the Institute, I have been mainly working with both Dr. Paul Balcombe (an expert in the supply chain for hydrogen) and Dr. Francisca Jalil Vega (who is highly knowledgeable about various heat decarbonisation options).
And finally, have you enjoyed your time at Imperial College? What do you plan to do next?
Map of Magallanes and Chilean Antarctica Region (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
I am hoping to publish a paper with Francisca and Paul, and I will continue working on this during the coming months. I might be speaking in a congress and will present my work to the Ministry of Energy in Chile.
It has been great working at Imperial College because it such a world-class international university and I really like the interdisciplinary environment. There are so many people doing relevant research here!
By the time you finish your masters, you’ll know your thesis inside out. We challenged one of our researchers at the Sustainable Gas Institute to explain their research in a short one minute video as part of the ‘Research in a Nutshell Series’.
Sandro Luh is a visiting Masters student from the ETH Zurich. He is using the MUSE energy systems model to examine the potential of different strategies for reducing CO2 emissions in the industrial sector. This includes measures such as fuel switching, electrification and Carbon Capture & Storage.
The industrial sector is a key sector to decarbonise as it accounts for 24% of the total global CO2 emissions (2014).
As today is International Women’s Day (IWD), we wanted to celebrate the contribution women are making to tackling climate change.
Dr Sara Budinis, a chemical engineer from Imperial College, provides her thoughts on the subject during Women@Imperial Week, an annual celebration of the achievements of female staff and students at Imperial past and present.
What contributions have women made to climate change and future energy?
At Imperial College, women have contributed to finding innovative solutions for providing energy in many different ways.
We also have researchers developing open-source biorenewable system models, providing insights into sustainable design of future biorenewable systems (Miao Guo, Chemical Engineering Department).
What women could do to bring about change and finding solutions to tackle climate change?
I think women’s potential is still unexplored, given that currently only 12.8% of the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics workforce is female.
Can you even imagine what would happen if we could go to 30%, 50% or even above that? At this point in time we need to inspire girls towards science and engineering, and convey our love for our profession to our daughters (and sons ofcourse!).
I recently attended a talk given by our vice-provost for education, Professor Simone Buitendijk, where she said that “you cannot be what you cannot see” and I couldn’t agree more.
This picture was taken during that talk, and the movie “Hidden Figures” was used to show hidden women who changed the world.
How can we nurture women’s leadership in climate change movements?
A recent report from the United Nation has shown how much women are directly affected by climate change, and this should reinforce even more our engagement into this field.
With great power comes great responsibility (yes, we need superheroes and superpowers) and therefore we need to have a system in place to facilitate juggling the multiple commitments women have to face towards their profession but also towards their private life, for instance if they are taking care of children, relatives and family members.
In particular, the parental responsibility should be shared, when possible, among the parents, so that having a family would not affect women more than men when in the workplace.
I am currently modelling how the industrial sector could evolve into the future in order to meet our demand for material commodities while reducing its impact towards the environment.
The aim of the model is to see which innovative technologies could reduce energy costs, improve efficiency, or reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Here are some further thoughts from our team at the Sustainable Gas Institute:-
“There is no wonder that women’s capability in driving technological innovation and conducting statistical analysis should be appreciated. Moreover, women’s advantage in conveying emotion in communication can be very useful in drawing public attention and raising public awareness to help tackling climate change.”
[Yingjian Guo]
“There are many aspects which will make women a key player to limit climate change effects. I believe that the major one would be to educate future generations and increase awareness about our responsibility towards the conservation of the environment.”
[Dr Sara Giarola, Research Fellow]
“Women have a unique position when it comes to climate change due their central role in families and communities in particular in rural regions. Women stand at the front lines in the battle against climate change. They have a broad knowledge and experience in the management of natural resources and higher sensibility to climate change that can be used to change the consumption pattern in their daily lives that shrink their carbon footprint and adapt to new sustainable methods or technologies.
Helping women gain further access to information about new technologies and supporting the expansion of women’s rights and their leadership in climate-related activities can increase the mitigation of climate change worldwide.”
Dr Daniel Crow is a Research Associate at the Sustainable Gas Institute. Daniel’s research is focussed on the mathematical treatment of whole systems approaches to energy modelling.
The good and the great of the international Integrated Assessment Modelling (IAM) community assembled in Potsdam in November for the 8th annual meeting of the IAM consortium. I’m used to attending conferences in slightly off-the-beaten-track places (due, perhaps, to a supposition that relative isolation leads to fewer distractions and a more focused delegation), and this one proved no exception. Perched on the edge of the Spree, in deep forest, our conference hotel was accessible only by foot along an empty track lit by arching, lonely sodium lamps. A wild boar squealed at me on the first night. It all looked a bit DDR.
Academic matters, however, felt decidedly 21st Century. Main themes included a review of the state-of-the-art in IAM and an evaluation of the potential contributions that Integrated Assessment Models could make in the future. Such models typically integrate the knowledge and methods of different academic disciplines (such as Engineering, Physics and Computer Science) to study complex problems at the nexus of the social, economic, environmental and political sciences, such as Climate Change.
Einstein’s Tower
There was much talk of the effictiveness, or not, of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) as a sensible route to implement climate action. Miles Perry (European Commission) pointed out the need for a more “cross-border” approach to emissions targets and, in the run-up to the United Nations COP-21 meeting in Paris, expressed the Commission’s desire to “deliver a robust international agreement” and set “fair and ambitious targets for all countries based on evolving global economic and national circumstances”.
Roberto Schaeffer (COPPE) questioned the “watered-down” tone of the EU’s statement, as well as the continuing focus on mitigation rather than adaptation and resilience. Schaeffer also pointed out that IAMs typically characterise climate mitigation in terms of costs above a business-as-usual scenario, misleadingly failing to include the (potentially much greater) costs of the fall-out from Climate Change: the costs of doing nothing. Perhaps we should all be including an explicit “climate cost” in our objective functions.
The most interesting talks for me were those on uncertainty and the use of IAM projections. James Price (UCL) described a way to explore different future energy scenarios by relaxing the requirement that the model (in this case UCL-TIAM) minimise the total cost. Most normative models calculate the cheapest way in which a climate constraint (such as a less-than-2°C rise by the year 2100) could be achieved. They show us “idealised” transition pathways that are rarely followed in messy reality. Price’s talk explained how to build up a more realistic picture of future energy systems by exploring “maximally different” scenarios, each of which keeps the total cost low without formally minimising it.
Such “wiggle-room” might be a way to capture the uncertainties associated with brute optimization. Although the model we are developing at Sustainable Gas Institute (SGI), MUSE, does not rely on minimising system costs, we might yet pursue some of these ideas as a way to improve the plausibility and robustness of MUSE outputs.
I was struck also by Evelina Trutnevyte’s (ETH) talk on the “impossible mission of embracing parametric and structural uncertainties”. Trutnevyte retro-modelled the UK power system transition between 1990 and 2010 using the bottom-up D-Expanse model and compared her results with what actually happened. Total system costs were around 17% higher than those corresponding to the optimal transition pathway, leading to significantly different transition implications for technology deployment. With a front-row perspective on all the myriad uncertainties that go into an Energy Systems Model, I found myself thinking that missing the mark by only 17% was actually rather impressive.
The meeting ended with a discussion on future perspectives and opportunities for Integrated Assement Modelling. As the political debate involving “who?”, “what?” and “when?” type questions reaches its climax at COP-21 in Paris, it seems evident that IAMs and Energy Systems Models will play an increasingly influential role in providing a more objective rationale behind internationally agreed actions on mitigation and adaptation.
Our models are emphatically not crystal balls to gaze into the future, but faster computers, more data and better methods should give us more and more confidence in the scenarios they produce, and allow us to quantify the uncertainty inherent in those scenarios.
To find out more about the energy systems model, Daniel and the SGI team are developing, please contact us at SGI@imperial.ac.uk.
The last few days in October saw the Gastech conference and exhibition carried out at the massive Singapore Expo. It was a large affair, with all the major gas companies discussing the most pressing issues for them, particularly emerging gas markets and the prospective rise of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). Helge Lund, the CEO of BG group, gave a keynote speech to kick off the conference. He gave his view on the challenges of incorporating gas in a lower carbon world: both a carbon price and a commitment from the industry to reduce methane and carbon dioxide emissions are vital.
It is indeed a challenge to incorporate a fossil fuel into a lower carbon world. Natural gas is likely to play a crucial role on two fronts: reducing the dependency on the more carbon-intensive coal; and providing variable and peak electricity supply as a compliment to intermittent renewables. If we are going to carry on using gas for these services in the short and medium term, the environmental impacts must be minimised.
Our recent white paper at Sustainable Gas Institute published in September, assessed what we know about both methane and carbon dioxide emissions from the natural gas supply chain. The study found emissions to be highly variable, with some significant ‘hotspots’.
In particular, very high methane emissions were found for liquids unloading processes, gas-driven pneumatic devices and compressors. For all of these sources, emissions were very variable and there are technologies and techniques that can minimise or even eliminate emissions. For example, gas-driven pneumatics could be replaced with instrument air drivers, compressors must be inspected regularly and dry-seals are much lower emitters than wet-seals for centrifugal compressors. The economic feasibility of these changes is likely to be variable but in many cases positive: i.e. a lower product loss more than pays for the increased capital or operating cost.
Another finding of the white paper on supply chain emissions was the appearance of ‘super emitters’ all across the supply chain.
Recent studies have found evidence of a small number of facilities or equipment that emit far more than the average, which significant skews the emissions distribution. These super emitters are likely to be due to the faulty or incorrect operation of equipment or ineffective inspection and maintenance procedures. Detecting the super emitters is the key challenge here, but once we do so, average emissions from the supply chain would be reduced significantly.
In summary, no technological innovation is needed to reduce supply chain emissions significantly, only commitment to action from the gas industry. It is very promising to hear words of such commitment from world leading gas producers at Gastech and now is the time to act on this.
If you are interested in finding out more, please download the report, or a short summary note or watch our short video.
A blog by Dr Paul Balcombe from the IPIECA-OGCI Workshop.
On Monday 12th October, I presented at a workshop in Paris which was focussed on understanding methane emissions from the natural gas supply chain. It was a conference organised by IPIECA and OGCI, who are both voluntary initiatives set up by major oil and gas producers to share knowledge on emissions reductions.
It was great to get a chance to present the work of the Sustainable Gas Institute on methane and carbon dioxide emissions from the supply chain to all these new faces: about 30 new perspectives from industry, as well as some from government, academia and NGOs.
The aim of the conference was really to pool together all of our knowledge on what we currently know about methane emissions from the natural gas industry. The idea is that we can identify the most important gaps in our knowledge that we need to fill and to discuss how we can start to do this.
Key headlines
One of the highlights of the conference was a talk by Prof Myles Allen from the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. He delved into detail about the complicated issue of how potent methane is compared to carbon dioxide in terms of climate change. Methane is much more potent in the short term but doesn’t last as long in the atmosphere, so has a much lower lasting effect than CO2. Prof Allen says that, because of this, we need to make sure that we focus on both methane and CO2: if we don’t reduce CO2, we will never stabilise our greenhouse gas emissions; but if we don’t reduce methane, we will have a much larger global temperature when we do reach the peak.
Another eye-opener was from a talk by Steve Hamburg, who heads up the work done by the Environmental Defense Fund on direct methane measurement all across the US. It was great to hear him talk so passionately about the massive task of emissions measurement and reduction. One of the take home messages Steve made was that reducing methane emissions is extremely important because this reduces the speed that we are warming the climate (whereas reducing CO2 reduces the overall temperature).
The key challenges that we summarised from the end of the first day were:
We need to increase methane emissions data collection. We have seen a big rise in data collection in the US which is great, but we need this to continue to other regions and more downstream emissions measurement.
It is clear that emissions are highly variable and it is vital that data represents the high distribution of emissions.
It is also vital that data is validated independently. Much work is going on by the industry to measure and in future publish emissions data, but the data must be validated so that transparency is maximised.
There is real potential to reduce emissions further and the technology is there. The key is to do this in as low cost as possible and to ensure that appropriate mechanisms are in place to detect super emitters quickly.
If you are interested in finding out more about the subject, read our recent paper (or a short summary) on the challenge of methane and CO2 emissions in the natural gas supply chain.
Another important factor to consider is the amount of carbon dioxide removed over time. Afforestation and reforestation and enhanced weathering can remove large quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but the rate of removal is slow and dependant on factors such as temperature. Direct air capture and bioenergy with carbon capture, on the other hand, can remove large quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere quickly, with capacities of one to four megatons of carbon dioxide per year per facility. However, they are the most sensitive to emissions from their supply chains. Hence, forward planning is an important factor that should be taken into account when devising NET strategies so that variations in rate of carbon dioxide removal are taken into account.
