codesanitize

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Northern Lights, Europe’s flagship cross-border carbon seize and storage challenge, is now able to obtain carbon dioxide for sequestration, with the primary ships within the water and anticipated to start out delivering waste gasoline from prospects this 12 months. It’s being celebrated as a triumph of local weather management and engineering.

However whenever you dig into the economics, coverage scaffolding, and know-how selections—particularly as revealed by subscriber habits and price buildings—it turns into clear that this isn’t a scalable mannequin for decarbonization. It’s a extremely sponsored, narrowly relevant resolution constructed for a particular political second.

Three articles I revealed on CleanTechnica hint the story from a number of angles: who signed up and why, the shaky maritime transport assumptions, and the geology and operational particulars of the Johansen formation sequestration website. Collectively they reveal a system that works, however solely simply—and just for a particular sliver of emitters with uncommon traits or beneficiant authorities assist.

Let’s begin with the subscriber listing. Yara’s ammonia facility in Sluiskil produces a extremely pure stream of CO₂ as a byproduct, making seize comparatively low cost and simple. Norcem’s cement plant at Brevik has been lavished with Norwegian subsidies for years. Celsio’s waste-to-energy plant in Oslo operates in a politically delicate city zone and has political capital to burn. Ørsted’s bioenergy with carbon seize and storage (BECCS) operations are within the combine too, leveraging the phantasm of net-negative emissions to justify important expenditure. (A fast notice: the primary article asserted that Exergi was in part one, however it seems it’s the one dedicated buyer for part 2. Mea culpa.) Each one in every of these companies both has a pure CO₂ stream, direct authorities backing, or each. This isn’t a know-how successful on its deserves. It’s a coalition of comfort surviving on subsidies and exceptionalism.

Then there’s the delivery section. CO₂ is being liquefied and loaded onto custom-built ships for a voyage to the Øygarden terminal in Norway, the place it’s pumped into underground reservoirs. That may sound elegant, however it’s a logistical home of playing cards. The ships are sluggish, the home windows for docking are slender, and the financial case is barely believable even with a long time of upstream oil and gasoline infrastructure experience behind it. The delivery price alone is estimated at round €27 per ton. That is likely to be manageable now, however it’s uncovered to volatility in gas costs, labor, climate threat, and the price of vessel building and upkeep. There’s additionally the truth that CO₂ is a heavy, low-value cargo. Attempt to scale this and also you’ll hit port bottlenecks and ballooning operational prices lengthy earlier than you hit local weather relevance.

The ultimate leg of the journey—into the Johansen formation—is technically competent. The reservoir has good porosity, the caprock is stable, and the injection wellhead is constructed with Statoil’s typical North Sea rigor. Nevertheless it’s additionally a fossil footprint monument. All the things in regards to the website—from the seabed pipeline to the storage dome—is a retrofitted fossil gas asset. This isn’t the way you decarbonize an economic system; that is the way you lengthen its tailpipe.

What does this imply for prices? The breakdown for the 5 Part 1 subscribers is instructive. Seize prices vary from €50 to €150 per ton, relying on course of purity and know-how. Delivery provides one other €30. Sequestration one other €30. That places the full price per ton of CO₂ saved at about €107 for Yara, €207 for Norcem and Celsio, and €157 and €167 for Ørsted (the Avedøre plant is trucking liquid CO2 100 km in about 30 truck masses each day pending a pipeline which can doubtless by no means be constructed). These should not trivial sums. They’re effectively above the EU ETS carbon worth, which implies that none of those would proceed with out direct public subsidies, price pass-through to captive prospects, or an elaborate accounting scheme that inflates the worth of “damaging” emissions.

That brings us to Joe Romm and BECCS. Romm has lengthy been one of many clearest-eyed analysts of carbon coverage and power applied sciences, and his latest 2023 paper dismantles the case for BECCS with forensic readability. He paperwork how all the BECCS idea rests on heroic assumptions: that biomass is really sustainable and net-zero, that seize could be executed effectively at small, distributed biomass websites, and that long-term sequestration really works at scale. He reveals how BECCS not solely diverts coverage and funding away from actual decarbonization, but additionally opens up harmful land-use pressures that displace meals, ecosystems, and folks. The essential perception is easy: BECCS is an phantasm baked into fashions like these from the IPCC not as a result of it really works, however as a result of it makes the maths of overshoot eventualities look higher. In actuality, the logistics, economics, and land-use conflicts render it an implausible local weather resolution. Romm’s twentieth anniversary version of his guide The Hype About Hydrogen will probably be delivery on Earth Day, so preorder your copy know.

And but right here we’re—Europe’s most celebrated carbon storage challenge is being bankrolled by BECCS prospects. It’s the epitome of Romm’s warning: a fancy, costly, and unsure system being legitimized by the promise of damaging emissions that will by no means materialize. The irony, in fact, is that the identical governments subsidizing this effort are additionally dragging their toes on grid interconnection, warmth pump deployment, and direct electrification of business processes—the very issues that might ship near-term, low-cost, scalable decarbonization.

There’s one other lesson or two to attract out of this. Yara is actually the absolute best case for CCS. Its course of emissions from steam reformation of methane are very pure, making seize as low cost because it will get. It’s proper on the water, so its CO2 doesn’t must transit any densely populated neighborhoods, one thing that’s more likely to cease all CO2 pipelines of their tracks. The top to finish system is closely sponsored. But it nonetheless prices over €100 per ton for waste disposal. Consider all of the crops in Europe that don’t have these circumstances of success.

Additional, Johansen formation is near shore and comparatively shallow. 100 km of pipelines underneath the water after which two kilometers down weren’t remotely low cost, however that is about as low cost as offshore sequestration websites are going to be. The delivery part provides plenty of prices per ton, however frankly offshore websites additional away are going to see so much larger prices per ton for sequestration.

As I famous in my international evaluation and projection of cement decarbonization from a 12 months in the past, I’ve lengthy held that CCS would possibly pencil out for cement, underneath two or three circumstances. The primary is that the waste stream be purer CO2 resulting from electrification of limestone kilns, lowering the price of seize. I pointed to Elegant Methods’ electrochemical strategy and its 10 bar, chilly stream of CO2 from turning limestone into quicklime as making that even higher and cheaper. And I mentioned that the sequestration website needed to be both very near the cement plant or the cement plant needed to be waterside with a pipeline to offshore sequestration. These are the necessities for it to pencil out. If you happen to take a look at Norcem’s €207 per ton regardless of huge subsidies from starting to finish of the CCS chain, it ought to change into clear that there is no such thing as a financial mannequin with out subsidies.

Northern Lights shouldn’t be a failure. It’s a functioning demonstration of what you are able to do with limitless capital, political will, and geological fortune. Nevertheless it’s not a mannequin for international local weather motion. It’s a showcase of what occurs when fossil legacy programs are given a second act underneath the inexperienced highlight, and when techno-fixes displace structural reform. Actual decarbonization doesn’t sail in tankers full of gasoline. It comes from altering the system so we don’t pump out the waste gasoline within the first place.

Join CleanTechnica’s Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott’s in-depth analyses and excessive degree summaries, join our each day e-newsletter, and/or comply with us on Google Information!

Final Up to date on: thirteenth April 2025, 11:28 am

The mathematics is just not including up for the worldwide inexperienced hydrogen trade. The electrolyzers that push hydrogen gasoline from water are costly, they usually even have a water downside. They will’t use simply any outdated water. They want clear water, and that places the trade up in opposition to an estimated 4 billion individuals who already lack enough provides of potable water. That’s the place seawater is available in….

The Seawater Resolution For Inexperienced Hydrogen

Underneath the present state of electrolysis expertise, the rule of thumb is 9 liters of unpolluted water to supply 1 kilogram of inexperienced hydrogen. Some analysts anticipate that inexperienced hydrogen demand may whole 500 million metric tons (or extra) per 12 months by 2050, a determine that may require 4.5 trillion liters of unpolluted water to supply. With an estimated 4 billion folks on the earth experiencing water shortage, that’s not a very sustainable situation.

Utilizing seawater to supply inexperienced hydrogen is one apparent various, nevertheless it needs to be purified, and that takes cash. The main Chinese language vitality agency Sinopec is amongst these exploring another pathway that entails engineering new electrolyzers which might be hardy sufficient to deploy straight on seawater.

That takes cash, too. Nonetheless, direct seawater electrolysis might be the profitable ticket, a minimum of for some functions. Sinopec has already deployed different electrolysis programs in China, together with a megawatt-scale PEM (proton alternate membrane) electrolyzer and the primary 100-kilowatt strong oxide mission in China. Final December, it accomplished a pilot-scale R&D mission to discover direct saltwater electrolysis at its Qingdao Refinery in Shandong Province, which sits on the Yellow Sea.

“Seawater comprises roughly 3% salt, and impurities, corresponding to chloride ions, can corrode electrolytic electrodes, whereas cation deposits might clog gear channels, lowering effectivity and inflicting injury,” Sinopec factors out.

Sinopec lists chlorine-resistant electrode expertise and a high-performance electrode plate among the many enhancements to the Qingdao electrolysis system, which was developed in collaboration with the Dalian Institute of Petroleum and Petrochemicals. The system runs on electrical energy from an present floating photo voltaic array that additionally gives electrical energy to the refinery.

Inexperienced Hydrogen And The “Trifecta Of Sustainability”

Sinopec anticipates that its direct seawater electrolysis system will also be utilized to extract inexperienced hydrogen from industrial wastewater, additional lowering the demand on freshwater sources.

When it comes to proactively serving to to unravel water shortage points, although, the direct electrolysis strategy doesn’t assist a lot. Whether or not seawater or industrial waste, non-potable water goes into the electrolysis system, and non-potable water comes out.

Final week, Cornell College reported on a compromise strategy, developed in collaboration with MIT, Johns Hopkins College, and Michigan State College, calling it the “trifecta of sustainability expertise.”

The Cornell-lead examine describes a solar-powered seawater electrolysis system that deploys the photo voltaic panels for double responsibility. Along with offering electrical energy to run the system, the photo voltaic panels present waste warmth to run a distillation course of that yields potable water.

“Most PV cells can solely convert as much as roughly 30% of photo voltaic vitality into electrical energy, and the remaining dissipates as waste warmth. However the group’s gadget is ready to harness most of that waste warmth and makes use of it to heat the seawater till it evaporates,” Cornell notes.

How Does It Work?

“Principally, the short-wavelength daylight interacts with the photo voltaic cell to generate electrical energy, and the longer wavelength mild generates the waste warmth to energy the seawater distillation,” explains Lenan Zhang, an assistant professor in at Cornell Engineering and chief of the analysis mission.

“This manner, all of the photo voltaic vitality will be absolutely used. Nothing is wasted,” Zhang emphasizes.

To realize the thermal evaporation facet of the method, the researchers engineered the floor of their photo voltaic panel to lure a skinny layer of seawater with every passing, enabling them to extend evaporation effectivity by 90%. After the water vapor condenses, it goes to the electrolyzer.

For those who’re considering the seawater additionally gives a cooling impact that improves the conversion effectivity of the photo voltaic panels, that is also within the playing cards. For now, although, Zhang and his group are targeted on bringing down the price of inexperienced hydrogen. In comparison with a benchmark of $10.00 per kilogram, they’re aiming at $1.00.

That’s the brief model. The analysis group printed the lengthy model, with Xuanjie Wang of MIT as lead creator, within the journal Vitality and Environmental Science underneath the title, “Over 12% effectivity solar-powered inexperienced hydrogen manufacturing from seawater.”

“With pure daylight and actual seawater as the only inputs, we experimentally exhibit a 12.6% solar-to-hydrogen conversion effectivity and a 35.9 L m⁻² h⁻¹ manufacturing fee of inexperienced hydrogen underneath one-sun illumination, the place extra 1.2 L m⁻² h⁻¹ clear water is obtained as a byproduct,” they summarized.

Extra Renewable Vitality For Inexperienced Hydrogen

Experimental work apart, some inexperienced hydrogen tasks are already incorporating standard seawater desalination to meet their water necessities. Egypt and France, for instance, have simply reached a handshake settlement on a brand new €7 billion inexperienced hydrogen mission supported by a devoted desalination facility, to be constructed close to Ras Shokeir on the Pink Beach, underneath the umbrella of the French agency EDF Renewables.

The electrolysis system will likely be powered by close by wind and photo voltaic farms, which is able to presumably additionally service the desalination facility.

Ocean waves may present one other coastal supply of renewable vitality for desalination amenities. The worldwide wave vitality trade has been sluggish to realize industrial software, however exercise has picked up in recent times and the US Division of Vitality is amongst these exploring the potential for making use of it to desalination.

Final 12 months, the Vitality Division awarded funding to 2 tasks that mix wave vitality with desalination programs. The fast goal is to assist scale back the expense of desalination for coastal communities going through water shortage, however purifying water for inexperienced hydrogen is among the many different potential makes use of.

One of many tasks is pretty easy. A analysis group at Purdue College will use their grant to develop an vitality environment friendly wave-powered, pumpless desalination system based mostly on hydraulics as an alternative of electrical energy.

Researchers on the College of Minnesota are tasked with the opposite mission, referred to as “Hydraulic Swap-Mode Energy Transformer Energy-Take Off for Wave-Powered Reverse Osmosis Desalination.” If all goes in accordance with plan, the system will deploy wave vitality for twin makes use of. “The facility take-off system converts the ability from waves to generate electrical energy and generates direct hydraulic strain to supply clear consuming water,” the Vitality Division explains.

“The wave-powered desalination system can function independently and with minimal disruptions by having this twin functionality to generate electrical energy and hydraulic strain and may energy different auxiliary processes and programs in utility-scale desalination crops,” they add.

Right here’s hoping. The malevolently incompetent Commander-in-Chief who occupies the White Home retains discovering new methods to maintain the US from exercising its finest self, however innovators elsewhere all over the world are underneath no such burden.

Photograph: Electrical energy from a floating photo voltaic in China array powers an experimental electrolysis system that produces inexperienced hydrogen straight from seawater (courtesy of Sinopec by way of prnewswire).