I would recommend listening to Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell’s recent interview with Dieter Helm, the UK Economist and Government advisor on energy and the natural environment, in their podcast called Leading (HERE).
One of the themes of the conversation was that we have to expand the way we look at the energy transition from a local to a global scale. With that in mind this weeks’ Titbits covers big scale themes such as offshore wind, batteries, hydrogen, carbon removal and interconnectors.
COMPANY NEWS
Octopus makes waves with tech disruptor investment
Octopus Energy has invested in Ocergy, a company focused on floating offshore wind solutions.
This partnership aims to innovate the industry by introducing new approaches to design and manufacturing, potentially reducing construction time and costs.
Ocergy’s strategy emphasises localised supply chains, creating job opportunities in areas where wind turbines are deployed.
With operations in the US and France, Ocergy aims to simplify transportation and assembly processes for turbine foundations. (energylivenews)
photo: Octopus Energy
UK NEWS
UK’s Deposit Return Scheme launch pushed back to October 2027
The Department of environment, food and rural affairs (Defra) has published its first policy statement on the UK’s deposit return scheme (DRS), delaying the scheme until October 2027.
Originally slated to go live in October 2025, the policy statement outlines its new timeline for the implementation of the DRS which has been split into three phases:
Phase 1: Regulation and deposit management organisation (DMO) appointment (by Spring 2025)
Phase 2: DMO Set-up (Spring 2025 to Spring 2026)
Phase 3: Rollout (Spring 2026 to Autumn 2027): The final phase focuses on operational readiness, including the establishment of national collection infrastructure, retailer preparations for return point installations and consumer engagement campaigns. By October 2027, the DRS will be fully operational across the UK.
Opinions amongst industry experts have broadly welcomed the annoncement, and are pleased that the scheme is indeed going ahead. (letsrecycle)
photo: Unsplash
Enphase Energy, Octopus Energy announce UK partnership
US microinverter specialist Enphase Energy has announced a new strategic partnership in the UK with the country’s largest electricity supplier, Octopus Energy Group.
The agreement will also allow Octopus Energy’s retail customers to integrate Enphase’s home solar and battery systems into their energy plans. This is a software solution that allows customers to manage their home energy networks, and they will be able to benefit from smart tariffs, saving money on electricity bills each year.
Octopus Energy also plans to use its proprietary Kraken software platform to manage, control, and optimize distributed energy resources (DER), so its customers can create virtual power plants with Enphase’s solar and battery systems. This is expected to support the management of customer batteries and help to reduce overall energy usage when the grid is the most constrained. (pv-magazine)
EV OF THE WEEK
Beijing Auto Show – Pointers for the EV Future
Like it or not China dominates the EV market, so the Beijing Auto Show is a good place to look for emerging trends in the industry. Here are a few:
Europeans need to up their game
VW are showing 44 new models at the show in a determined attempt to return to the top of the sales charts. Half of them are EV’s, and some that are unlikely to make it to the west, like the youth oriented sub-brand called ID.UX.
Always connected vs privacy?
In China almost everything is done through online interfaces; shopping, banking etc. It is therefore not surprising that, especially younger people value connected-ness ahead of privacy. This would explain the stunning level of confirmed orders (75,000, the company say) for the Xiaomi SU7 (below), the first car to be launched by a major phone company. It could have been you, Apple.
photo: Xaomi
Lounge on wheels
On a similar theme were cars designed as living spaces, where the passenger compartment can turn into a sitting room. Geely’s Zeekr division showed off something called the MIX which was an example of this trend.
photo: Zeekr
Battery tech to the fore as always
It is the home show for most of the world’s biggest battery companies. Possibly the most significant announcement came from CATL, the market leader. This was the Shenxing Plus which is a development of their super-rapid charging Shengxing LFP battery announced last year. The new variant offers an energy density of 205 watt-hours per kilogram, almost up to that of the best NCM batteries by using a proprietary honeycomb structure to increase density. CATL claims that this battery will run for 625 miles on a full charge and can gain up to 370 miles of range in 10 minutes.
EUROPEAN STORIES
Attica-Crete leg of Mediterranean super grid due mid 2025
Greece has grand plans for an interconnector network that runs from the Middle East through to the heart of Europe.
There is great imagination in Greece’s interconnection strategy. Recent announcements about plans to connect the Greek grid with networks in Saudi Arabia, Austria, and Germany demonstrate huge ambition. Moreover, in recent years, the country has been steadily working to link with Cyprus, Israel, and Egypt.
The idea of an electricity interconnection running from Saudi Arabia to Greece was first expressed publicly in July 2022, during a state visit by Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Bin Salman told Greek officials at the time that by linking the electricity grids of the two countries, “we can provide Greece and southwest Europe, through Greece, with much cheaper renewable energy.” He added that the two countries are working on hydrogen and that Greece can function as a hydrogen hub for Europe. “That’s a game changer for both of us,” he said.
A year-and-a-half and many meetings later, those ideas are taking shape. The first interconnector to be built is from Attica to Israel via Crete and Cyprus. The Attica-Crete section now has funding and conversations are ongoing for the rest and also for lines to Egypt. (pv-magazine)
Scientists Are Trying to Coax the Ocean to Absorb More CO2
Last May in Grundartangi, a small port in western Iceland, a barge piled high with wood chips began making regular trips to a patch of ocean 190 miles from the coast. By September, almost 20,000 tons — about 1,400 dump trucks’ worth — of “wood waste” had been pushed overboard. This was no attempt to clandestinely offload trash into the sea. Instead, it was one of the latest efforts in the race to rid the atmosphere of excess carbon dioxide.
Running Tide, the seven-year-old U.S.-based start-up that’s experimenting with woodchips in Iceland, is betting that the ocean is just the place to perfect these small solutions, in the form of marine carbon dioxide removal, or mCDR. For billions of years, the ocean has been absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere, reducing it to different forms of carbon that circulate via currents or settle to the seafloor. Today, the ocean soaks up 30 percent of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, a capacity that is 42 times greater than the atmosphere’s.
Follow the link to read the full article exploring this and other mCDR technologies and their effects. (yale360)
photo: Running Tide
FOCUS ON: EU OFFSHORE WIND PROJECTS
The biggest offshore wind tender in Danish history
The Danish Energy Agency has published the tender frameworks for a total of 6 GW across 6 offshore wind farms, the biggest offshore wind tender in Danish history.
With tenders of this magnitude, Denmark enters a completely new chapter. The green power produced will be used not only for Danish consumption, but also for export to our neighboring countries and for green hydrogen production. (Danish ministry of climate)
Giga-scale green hydrogen project announced in Arctic Norway
Norwegian developer H2Carrier has applied for permission to build two massive offshore wind farms in the most northeastern part of Norway to produce green hydrogen and ammonia.
The intention is to build 1.55GW of wind power in total on the north coast of the Finnmark region that would be used to produce green hydrogen and ammonia on board a floating vessel designed by the company and moored at the site. (hydrogeninsight)
photo: H2Carrier
CIP supports Danish Energy Island
A new Danish energy island dedicated to large-scale production of green hydrogen from offshore wind in the North Sea – a “Hydrogen Island” – will be a crucial step for securing Europe’s future green, independent energy supply. A step that, with Denmark as a first-mover, will pave the way for accelerating the deployment of offshore wind in the North Sea, where unprecedented amounts of green hydrogen and electricity will replace European production and import of oil and gas.
The Hydrogen Island provides a concrete solution to securing the North Sea’s role as Europe’s future green power center and achieving the North Sea Summit pledge of 150 GW of offshore wind by 2050.
In the future, energy islands will form the cornerstone of large-scale deployment and integration of renewable energy worldwide. The Hydrogen Island can become a showcase for Danish competencies within offshore wind, Power-to-X and green energy systems.
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (“CIP”) is launching Copenhagen Energy Islands (“CEI”), a new development company dedicated to developing energy islands globally with backing from Nordic, European, and North American investors. (CIPwebsite)
IEA ON BATTERIES
Rapid expansion of batteries will be crucial to meet goals set at COP28
In the first comprehensive analysis of the entire battery ecosystem, the IEA’s Special Report on Batteries and Secure Energy Transitions sets out the role that batteries can play alongside renewables as a competitive, secure and sustainable alternative to electricity generation from fossil fuels – while also underpinning the decarbonisation of road transport by powering electric vehicles.
In less than 15 years, battery costs have fallen by more than 90%, one of the fastest declines ever seen in clean energy technologies. In 2023 alone, battery deployment in the power sector increased by more than 130% year-on-year, adding a total of 42 gigawatts (GW) to electricity systems around the world. In the transport sector, batteries have enabled electric car sales to surge from 3 million in 2020 to almost 14 million last year, with further strong growth expected in the coming years.
“The electricity and transport sectors are two key pillars for bringing down emissions quickly enough to meet the targets agreed at COP28 and keep open the possibility of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. “Batteries will provide the foundations in both areas, playing an invaluable role in scaling up renewables and electrifying transport while delivering secure and sustainable energy for businesses and households. The combination of solar PV and batteries is today competitive with new coal plants in India. And just in the next few years, it will be cheaper than new coal in China and gas-fired power in the United States. Batteries are changing the game before our eyes.”
Battery deployment will need to scale up significantly between now and the end of the decade to enable the world to get on track for its energy and climate goals, according to the report. In this scenario, overall energy storage capacity increases sixfold by 2030 worldwide, with batteries accounting for 90% of the increase and pumped hydropower for most of the rest. (IEA)
Download the report HERE
GLOBAL STUFF
‘Solar for All’ to bring affordable clean energy to low-income families
Clean energy, like so many commodities in this country, is neither distributed evenly nor equally. Disadvantaged communities have far fewer solar panels arrayed across their rooftops than areas with higher incomes. The federal government just took a major step toward crossing that chasm.
On Monday, President Joe Biden announced the 60 organizations that, under the administration’s Solar for All program, will receive a combined $7 billion in grants to bring residential solar into low-income neighborhoods. The funding will flow into state, municipal, and tribal governments as well as nonprofits to support existing programs for low-income solar and battery storage installations and spur new ones. Such efforts are expected to bring affordable clean energy to 900,000 households. (grist)
TECHIE CORNER
New sodium battery that can be charged in seconds developed
Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have developed a high-power hybrid sodium-ion battery that can be charged in seconds.
Sodium is considered nearly 1000 times more abundant than lithium. Therefore, sodium-ion electrochemical energy storage devices are more appealing than traditional lithium-ion electrochemical energy storage.
Led by Professor Jeung Ku Kang from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, the research team integrated anode materials typically used in batteries with cathodes suitable for supercapacitors.
Currently, available Sodium-ion energy storage systems are poor in rechargeability as they have a low power density while providing a relatively high energy density. Currently, two types of sodium storage systems are available, sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) and sodium-ion capacitors (SICs). Therefore researchers focused on sodium-ion hybrid energy storage (SIHES) cells.
SIHES can use the different potential windows of capacitor-type cathodes and battery-type anodes. It has attracted a lot of attention because this storage system, in principle, could simultaneously allow high energy density and fast-rechargeable power density.
The combination helped the battery to achieve high storage capacities and rapid charge-discharge rates. The study indicates that the battery can be a viable next-generation alternative to lithium-ion batteries. (interestingengineering)
photo: Ibedrola
