Friday 12 June 2015

China energy-storage market to quadruple, says Lux By Darius Snieckus Recharge News in London Friday, June 12 2015

Industrial-scale batteries will grow fast as China pursues more renewables

Industrial-scale batteries will grow fast as China pursues more renewables




Transportation's share of the ESS market will be dominant, worth some $7.4bn by 2015, according to the Boston-based group, accounting for almost 29GWh of a 31GWh demand.
But boosted by China's "aggressive deployment" of renewables, stationary storage such as industrial-scale batteries, though only totaling 2.3GWh, will grow at a much faster 30% CAGR.
"Besides understanding the market dynamics and producing cost-competitive products, most players in these markets will require strong partnerships to succeed," says Luxresearch associate Lilia Xie.
"Early leaders such as BYD will try their best to hold onto their positions but the diversification of the market will gradually create promising opportunities for those who operate with patience and savvy."
The stationary storage market, she adds, will be buoyed by an electricity sector that "preliminary policy developments suggest will implement pricing reforms, encouraging efficiency-boosting technologies including grid storage".

Wednesday 10 June 2015

EXXON Contempt for CLIMATE Solutions and GREED

The article for which the link follows below is an absolutely incredible example of lunacy on steroids - misinformation, half-truths and contempt for solutions to climate change -- from EXXON.

__________________________

EXXON complains about the subsidies for renewables, making for an unlevel playing field where government intervenes to pick winners and losers.  Furthermore, according to EXXON market prices should drive solutions. Fascinating!
1) No sector of the economy receives more subsidies than the fossil fuel sector.  The IMF projected the 2015 global subsidies for fossil fuels at $5.3T/year
2) IMF calculated global subsidies for renewables at $120B/year
3) Thanks to the Republicans and their Big Oil lobbyists, the US wind power subsidy the Production Tax Credit of 2.3 cents/kWh has expired and the Investment Tax Credit of 30% that applies to solar energy installations will expire at the end of 2016.
4) In sharp contrast with the unstable US subsidies for renewables which undermine long term investments, US direct subsidies for the oil and gas industry amount to about $7B/year These generous allowances for the oil and gas sectors a) go as far back as the 1890s b) include a 1926 enacted Percentage Depletion Tax Credit that increases when the price of fuel goes up, and c) allow the industry to write off most drilling costs. Not to be outdone on archaic subsidies, based in US incentives dating back to the late 1700s, the US coal industry incentives now reach $5B/year.
5) The European Wind Energy Association says that wind power can compete without subsidies if fossil fuel subsidies were to be abolished.

____________________________________________

EXXON claims that the oil industry will have to significantly increase production, in particular from unconventional sources (eg tar sands, shale oil, offshore oil), to meet increases in global demands.
1) The Big Oil business model has collapsed. 
"This model is based on: 1) demand for fossil fuels continuing to climb; 2) oil prices remaining high enough to justify continued investments in expensive-to-extract unconventional sources such as the tar sands, offshore and shale sources; 3) high oil prices justifying the pumping out of greater volumes of conventional oil to further increase profits; and 4) the growing concern about climate change failing to affect the bottom line.  
Until recently, this business model worked like a charm, with Exxon earning $32.6B in 2013, more than any company other than Apple. Well as it turns out, all of the above elements of the business model have hit a wall.
According to the US Energy Information Administration, 2015 global oil demand had originally been projected to be 103.2 million barrels/day, but this number has been adjusted to 93.1 million barrels/day, thereby undermining the viability of unconventional investments.
 Low prices cannot sustain the development of tar sands, shale and offshore oil.
This is translating into dangerously high debt loads, with assets being written off in the billions, thus generating a cascade of announcements of abandoned projects around the globe, putting tar sands projects on hold and pushing  shale gas companies into bankruptcy.  The US shale gas and oil sector now has accumulated a debt of $200B!"
______________________________________________________
EXXON sees growth of renewables as limited because they are intermittent source of power.
1) There is massive investment all over the world in energy storage technologies and the linking of clean electricity sources to electric transportation that includes, among other things, bi-directional charging stations that can network the batteries of parked electric vehicles for additional energy storage, as required.
2) In 2011, the Chinese Development Bank committed $45B to smart grid technologies, including energy storage technologies.
3) China doesn't seem to know about the supposed limits of renewables, as per the EXXON assessment
".. in just 2014 China’s new installations of wind and solar capacity amounted to 34 gigawatts (GW – a billion watts) of new electrical generating capacity, bringing the total installed capacity of wind and solar energy in that country to 114.8 GW and 28 GW respectively.  In other words, China’s new clean energy installations added in 2014 represent nearly 3 times BC Hydro’s entire installed capacity of 12 GW and more than 70% of the total electricity capacity of Hydro-Quebec, 46.3 GW – but China installed all of this new capacity in one year!"
4) China's mind-boggling increasing commitments to clean energy along with it's goals for clean transportation, electric vehicles in particular, is galvanizing the development of its energy storage sector, expected to quadruple by 2025 to a $8.7B/year market. Transportation/electric vehicle applications are projected to represent 85% of the revenues of this market, or $7.4B in 2025. Clearly China is a global leader in linking clean energy to clean transportation with integration technologies such as energy storage being a critical component of their green economy game plan.  China's clean transportation commitments are hard to beat regarding 1) $16B for the installation of electric vehicle charging stations, 2) 30% of national government vehicle purchases to be electric beginning 2016 and 3) a target to manufacture 2M eco-vehicles per year by 2020. 
http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/chinas-advanced-energy-storage-market-to-quadruple-to-87-billion-in-2025-2028715.htm
http://commonsensecanadian.ca/canada-quebecs-political-leaders-blind-green-jobs-revolution/
5) Non hydro renewables represented 47% of new electrical generation power installed in the US in 2014 and 75% of new US installations in the first quarter of 2015.


________________________________________________________________

EXXON: While we believe governments will take action to address the risk of climate change, we believe a policy scenario that completely transforms the global energy system at the unprecedented rate, pace and cost needed to stabilize greenhouse gas levels as contemplated in the 2°C scenario is highly unlikely
1) Global emissions reached a plateau in 2014, largely thanks to China's massive investments in clean energy and reduction of GHG and coal use.
2) We don't have any choice but to stay within the 2 degree limit, as not doing so will lead to catastrophic climate change.  The prevailing wisdom is that 80% of the world's fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground to prevent the catastrophic scenario. Even Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England acknowledges that this reality will lead to exceptional growth of stranded assets.
"A growing number of senior figures in the financial community—some of them controlling many millions of dollars worth of investment funds—have been pressing fossil fuel companies to disclose how investments would be affected if energy reserves became frozen or stranded by regulatory moves associated with tackling climate change."

______________________________________
EXXON: Technology has found a way to increase the resource base.
1) This is true except the costs of unconventional sources are prohibitive.  The shale oil sector debt is staggering and all over the globe fossil fuel companies are abandoning their reserves, also known as stranded assets.

________________________________________

EXXON shows it's concern for "the approximate 1.3 billion without electricity and the approximate 2.6 billion globally who use wood or dung stoves for cooking, which can lead to fatal indoor air pollution. What if we could supply all these too with affordable energy?"
1) Local clean energy microgrids are the fastest and cheapest way to bring electrical power to those who don't have any access or insufficient access.  Just as many developing countries skipped the centralized landline telephone stage to go directory to mobile phones, the developing world can skip the centralized expensive distribution infrastructure for delivering energy to isolated communities by setting up easy to install minimal infrastructure community clean energy microgrids.

__________________________________
Conclusion
The views expressed by EXXON show 1) a total contempt for climate solutions, 2) fundamentalist blind faith in a need to increase oil production, even to a point to imply that this is the solution to poverty 3) disregard to the reasons for the decline of the Big Oil business model and the staggering debt levels associated with non-conventional fossil fuels and 4) greed confused with professional skills.

Tuesday 2 June 2015

Norway's Statkraft: Offshore Wind Giant + $ 11M/year for Green Energy Start-ups,By Darius Snieckus Recharge News, June 01 2015 + May 18, 2015

IN DEPTH: Statkraft – Europe's new offshore giant

Construction at Statkraft/Statoil’s Sheringham Shoal wind farm

Construction at Statkraft/Statoil’s Sheringham Shoal wind farm




Last year, the Norwegian energy utility sent enough electricity crackling through the nation’s transmission lines to meet nearly half the power demand of its five million inhabitants.
But since 2009, the company has quietly been expanding into offshore wind, primarily in the UK, as part of a far-reaching NKr60bn ($8bn) global clean-energy investment plan.
After wetting its head on the 317MW Sheringham Shoal wind farm with compatriot Statoil, Statkraft has shifted up a gear. This year, it is kicking off construction of the 402MW Dudgeon project, it has snapped up half of the UK’s giant 900MW Triton Knolldevelopment, and has won consent, as part of the Forewind consortium, for the lead-off phase of the sprawling 9GW Dogger Bank zone.
Announcing its annual results at the end of 2014, chief executive Christian Rynning-Toennesen was unequivocal: “Statkraft has a long-term ambition to grow as an international company within clean energy. In addition to implementing the investment decisions we have made, we are working on concrete projects in all countries where we operate.
“We are exploring opportunities within solar energy and biomass [but] the projects are primarily within hydropower and wind power.”
The company is under no illusions as to the challenge ahead. Decades of experience as a hydropower giant had taught it how to construct industrial mega-projects, and it had worked out how to build onshore wind farms, having built the country’s first large project, the 150MW Smøla 1, in 2002. But it knew next to nothing about offshore wind.
“There was a growing determination in Statkraft to move into offshore wind. But Norway had nothing — you couldn’t even sensibly talk about offshore wind in Norway; Sweden at that time likewise. So we looked into Denmark, Germany and the UK and we very quickly saw that the UK looked particularly interesting, especially in the long term,” Bjørn Drangsholt, Statkraft’s UK country manager, tells Recharge.
“When Statoil took the FID [final investment decision] on Sheringham Shoal, we looked at it and we thought: ‘This is a good project, we have good relations with Statoil, this should be where we enter the market’. In 2009, we only had a business plan and a budget, and two ROCs [Renewables Obligation Certificates from the UK government]. But Statoil had been working on it for a good while and once we partnered with them we were ‘inside’ on an offshore wind farm for the first time.”
Bjorn-Drangsholt-offshore-2.jpgBoth Statoil and Statkraft were on a steep learning curve building one of the biggest offshore wind farms in the world in a blustery, hostile stretch of the North Sea off Norfolk, eastern England.
Arrayed over a 35km2 diamond of water in the Greater Wash, Sheringham Shoalthrew up a variety of complications, which were all “to be expected”, says Drangsholt.
“Many of the lessons come from learning from doing,” he explains. Problems included the foundation installation vessel Svanen being unable to leave harbour because it couldn’t operate in the tricky swell of the Greater Wash (even though the water looked perfectly flat). And cable-laying was thwarted at times because the trenching equipment was not powerful enough to penetrate the hard rocky subsoils.
Yet by the end of 2011, the wind farm had started flowing to the grid and is now generating around 1.1TWh of electricity each year, enough to power more than 220,000 homes.
“Even if Statoil is a very experienced offshore oil & gas operator and knows how to work on projects in the sea, offshore wind is different,” says Drangholt. “So much has been brought in from offshore oil, which is great but it has also meant there has been overdesign, which often adds a lot of cost.
“The industrial culture is changing — we can see this between Sheringham Shoal and Dudgeon — but it takes time. You can’t one day be an oil man and the next a wind man.”
Sheringham Shoal laid the groundwork for Statkraft’s first “proper offshore wind strategy”, says Drangholt. “I have seen so many projects fall apart because of having strategies that were not adequately linked to the financial side of the business. Once we had Sheringham Shoal on line, we had a clearer understanding of what it would take to build even larger, more complex offshore wind projects.
“Very few [developers] have a true understanding of what offshore wind projects take, from a financial perspective.”
He continues: “Project financing has become a bigger and bigger part of the equation — we are talking about billions of kroner for these developments — and we see the sense sometimes in ‘recycling’ by divesting from projects as they come to production so that we can put the money into new developments.”
Sheringham Shoal is a prime example of rolled-forward finance. Late last year, the UK Green Investment Bank bought a 20% stake in Scira Offshore Energy, Statkraft and Statoil’s special-purpose operating company set up for the wind farm, freeing up £240m ($373m) to “enable further investments in other project developments such as Dudgeon and Triton Knoll while still maintaining our industrial role as operator of Sheringham Shoal”.
“The size of wind farm the world needs to build requires huge investment and we need to think creatively about how best to bring this money to the table — and so [we] split risk between developers and government [which owns Statkraft] and the supply chain,” says Drangholt.
“This way we can show our board we are doing things properly, using skill and not luck to make wind farms economic.”
Dudgeon, slated to be brought on line in 2017, has been hatched around 67 Siemens 6MW machines, with annual energy output calculated at 1.7TWh.
Developed with a levelised cost of energy (LCoE) of “well under” £150/MWh, the project, in 18-25 metres of water, is thought to be on the right track as the industry pushes to get to below £100/MWh before 2020.
Creyke Beck, the 2.4GW lead-off project at Dogger Bank, was consented earlier this year, and marks a giant leap in scale.
“Turbines went from 3.6MW to 6MW, which became 7MW, and now 8MW, which might be 8.3MW, with 10MW machines on the horizon. We need to be sure that the type of turbines we choose for future projects like Dogger Bank are the ones that that best value for money.
“Sheringham Shoal, Dudgeon and Triton Knoll have water depth more or less the same [as Dogger Bank], but the wind speed improves greatly [at Creyke Beck] — to 9.8 metres per second — so production improves and the power curves improve. You get more from less, which of course means an improvement in LCoE.”
He adds: “If you think back even 15 years, who would have thought that this industry would have developed as fast and have come as far as it has? And we are still a young industry. We are going to see Asia and the US and so on pushing ahead — and the UK right now is still at the forefront.”
Statkraft is fashioning itself to be a major player in the global energy industry for decades to come. In addition to its hydro and onshore and offshore wind activities, it is investing in solar, biomass, hybrid wind-hydro and even experimental osmotic power.
And with about a quarter of all European hydro storage capacity, it will also be a major “battery operator” for the continent, especially with two major interconnectors to Norway — from the UK and Germany — coming on line by 2021.
“We have the experience that comes with 120 years of hydropower and ten years of onshore wind. Now we have Scira; we are well into Dudgeon with co-developers Statoil and the UK Green Investment Bank; we have just embarked on Triton Knoll; and then there is Dogger Bank — consent for Creyke Beck A and B; Teesside A and B to come. We’re getting better and better.
“We have become the biggest renewables provider in Europe because historically we have had hydropower, hydropower and more hydropower. The hydropower is staying — it is baseload production, it is storage — but offshore wind is going to be a big part of our future.”
The process, Drangholt notes, of building a bridge between “old” renewable energy and “new” is progressing “stone by stone”.
“That way, we can make sure we know what we are doing and get to where we want to go.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Statkraft to put $11m a year into green-energy start-ups

Statkraft's Asbjørn Grundt: 'providing funds to the most promising players'.
Statkraft's Asbjørn Grundt: 'providing funds to the most promising players'.



Based in Düsseldorf, Germany, the "exit-orientated" unit, Statkraft Ventures, will make lead-off investments "in the range up to €2.5m".
"Our mission is to be the preferred partner for ambitious entrepreneurs," says Matthias Dill, who moves from his role as boss of corporate venture capital at Statkraft to head the unit.
"Even though capital is an important part for a start-up's sustainable growth, we know that committed founders are the key to success.
"We strongly believe in the independence of entrepreneurs and support founders as active board members."
Asbjørn Grundt, Statkraft executive-vice president of market operations, adds: "We want to contribute to this ecosystem by providing funds to the most promising players."
Statkraft Ventures will operate in an "evergreen structure" with the ambition of investing as much as €100m over the next decade.