By Julian Singer The Canadian company GH Power thinks it has found a way to produce green hydrogen at a fraction of the cost of electrolysis. Electrolysis uses electricity, renewable in this case, to separate water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The process is only moderately efficient with at least 20 per cent of the [...]
By Julian Singer After some recent problems, doubts have been raised about the Contract for Difference method of encouraging renewable energy investment. Last year the owners of two new windfarms, Triton Knoll and Moray East, both delayed declaring that their projects were commercial at a time when open market prices were much higher than the [...]
By Julian Singer In June the Crown Estate updated its listing of offshore UK wind farms to show 13.7GW fully commissioned projects and a further 65GW committed or under development and pre-planning. A further 9.7GW has been announced. This potential capacity of 88.4GW in offshore wind alone should produce slightly more than the total UK [...]
By Julian Singer Pumped hydro storage was the first long term electricity storage system, having been introduced in the 1890’s in Italy and Switzerland. The total capacity of such systems is still more than from any other technique world-wide. However, in most countries there is not much potential for future development. A natural pumped storage [...]
By Julian Singer In July 2022 the UK government published its Jet Zero strategy with a goal that at least 10 per cent of UK aviation fuel should be sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) by 2030 with at least five commercial-scale SAF plants in construction by 2025. In October 2022 the Department for Transport commissioned an [...]
By Julian Singer On 24 May the energy company SSE published its preliminary results for the year to 31 March 2023, showing an adjusted operating profit of £2.5bn, up from £1.5bn a year ago. This strong showing is not surprising given that the largest segment of the company’s energy production is from thermal power plants [...]
By Julian Singer The UK government’s recently published Energy Security Plan opens by stating that “This Plan sets out…to ensure that the UK is more energy independent, secure and resilient”, and continues “We want our energy to be cheap, clean and British”. It is therefore surprising to read thirty-five pages later that the government is [...]
By Julian Singer On 11 April Harbour Energy and BP announced that the latter had taken a 40 per cent stake in Harbour’s Viking CCS project. It is not the only CCS project in which BP is involved: it is a leader of the East Coast Cluster, which aims to capture and store CO2 from [...]
By Julian Singer ZeroAvia’s mission is to place a hydrogen-electric engine in every aircraft. The company was formed in 2018 and in January this year flew a 19-seater Dornier 228 fitted with one hydrogen-electric engine and one standard engine for ten minutes from its base on an airfield near Cirencester. In the intervening period it [...]
By Julian Singer Sea Twirl is a Swedish company with a novel approach to floating offshore wind farms. The basic idea is to use a vertical axis wind turbine rather than the more conventional horizontal axis. Small versions of the vertical axis wind turbine are occasionally seen on the roofs of buildings. The Sea Twirl [...]