QU: How are we using technology to capture carbon and develop clean energy?AIM; To assess the feasability of new methods of reducing carbon emissions.

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ST: Solve the dingbats

Biofuels and other renewables are not as carbon neutral as we think.

Discuss (1 minute)What is meant by indirect emissions from land use change for these biofuels? What creates these emissions? Annotate your copy with ideas from your discussion. 3 points at least.

Carbon capture and new technologies are coming to the fore with regards energy production.

There are two approaches to creating less carbon emitting energy pathways.

1 - Continue to use fossil fuels but deal with the CO2 emissions. (carbon capture)

2 - Develop alternative fuels which do not emit CO2.

Either way great expense and technological expertise is needed.

Tasks:

1- Complete the gapfill and read the annotations around the diagram.

Now for the higher end thinking.

2 - Which two capture methods could pay for themselves and how?(Read the diagram annotations)

3 - Read the info below and bullet point the obstacles to carbon capture schemes.

4 - Which players should be responsible for developing and carrying out carbon capture. TNC's? Governments? Explain your choice.

'There are seventeen active commercial­scale CCUS projects around the world (nine in the U.S.), and approximately 22 additional projects are in various stages of development.Once captured, CO2 must be transported from its source to a storage site. Pipelines like those used for natural gas present the best option for terrestrial CO2 transport but incur further costs. Carbon capture raises power plant costs by requiring capital investment in carbon capture equipment and by reducing the quantity of useful electricity. Additional generation capacity is needed at a power plant to power capture equipment. The effectiveness of geological stores is still not known and makes industry and governments reluctant to over invest.'

EXT: What could be done at national or global scales to encourage CCT given the obstacles involved?

A/A*Depending on the quality of your ideas/arguments

Typical CO2 emission profiles of developed world nations

CO2 Emissions by transport type

Approach 2 ­ Develop alternative fuels which do not emit CO2.

Transport is a polluting sector which is relatively easy to target as a way of reducing emissions. Cars are an obvious starting point.

Car companies in particular are racing each other to develop hydrogen cell and electric cars in order to produce the first clean, carbon neutral cars.

Hydrogen Cell

Task: Sort the statements on the next slide under the appropriate heading

Electriccar

Keep in the back of your mind how soon and quickly future ideas and young technologies could advance and become mainstream!

Hydrogen Cell Electric car

Water is the only 'waste' productNeeds charging from main grid- often not a carbon neutral source.

More supporting infrastructure is needed eg. fuel stores anddistribution tankers.

Not found in 'pure' form as a natural resource. Has to be extracted from othersources (oil/gas) which involves Co2 release.

Places a huge demandon electricity production over traditional low demand times ie. overnight.

The same technology has potential to heat housesand power factories, separate from national grids.

Better suited to short journeys

Easier to set up supporting infrastructure.ie. charging points

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Longer term will prove to be the cleanestradical technology alternative.

Toyota Mirai Honda CRZ

Can carry its own fuel

Relies on batteries

Ext: Highlight which characteristics indicate uncertainty about the carbon free credentials of these technologies.Which is the most significant?

Ideally Biomass or Nuclear

The effectiveness of these technologies largely comes down to the energy mix of different countries as charging is needed. Those with renewables will be cleaner all around than those burning fossil fuels as the norm. Iceland has the most potential to be zero carbon on transport due to it's primary energy being geothermal whereas India relies on coal to provide electricity which would subsequently charge the cars.

More often from fossil fuels.

PRIMARYIn summary

Plenary

Jillian Ambrose 29 JUNE 2017 • 12:01AM

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC), an independent advisory body, has urged the Government to set a target that electric vehicles should make up at least 60% of new cars and vans sold in the UK by the end of the next decade.

The drive should include financial support, tax incentives and a strategy to roll out electric vehicle charging infrastructure as well as tougher emissions standards on new car sales beyond 2020, the committee said.

The transport sector made up over a quarter of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions last year, and is continuing to rise. By failing to tackle this sector the Government risks undermining the heavy investment made in cleaning up the electricity generation sector.

Exam relevance... 'Evaluate the costs and benefits of using radical technologies to help solve future energy demands'

Can you link this article to the UK's investment in nuclear energy?

Resource slidesand extra reading

Guardian Nov 2017

Electric cars accelerate past 2m mark globallyChina, US and Europe accounted for more than 90% of electric vehicle sales last year with decreasing costs driving demand

The number of electric cars in the world accelerated past the 2m barrier last year, as prices fell and manufacturers launched new models.

Business Today: sign up for a morning shot of financial news Read moreThe number of battery­powered vehicles numbered just hundreds globally in 2005 and passed the 1m milestone in 2015, but sales jumped 60% in 2016.

China, the US and Europe accounted for more than 90% of electric vehicle sales last year, with China the single biggest market, according to research by the International Energy Agency.

In some European countries, growth has been so fast that electric cars are taking significant market share from petrol and diesel cars.

Nearly a third of new cars sold in Norway are electric, the highest proportion worldwide, followed by 6.4% in the Netherlands and 3.4% in Sweden.

While the UK lags behind on annual registrations, industry figures this week showed that a record 4.4% of new cars sold in May were hybrid or pure electric models. More than 100,000 electric cars have been sold in the UK under a grant scheme launched in 2011.

The growth globally indicated a “rapid market evolution” in electric cars, the IEA said, but it cautioned that they made up only 0.2% of all passenger cars.

Greg Archer, clean vehicles director at the Brussels­based Transport and Environment group, said: “The rapid rise in electric vehicle sales is a consumer­driven phenomenon rather than being down to the efforts of suppliers.”

Toyota Motor Corp. is set to unveil a fuel­cell concept car that aims to offer 50 percent more driving range than its current hydrogen­powered sedan in a technology push that defies a rising wave of battery­driven vehicles.

Toyota’s fuel cell concept vehicle Fine­Comfort Ride.Source: Toyota MotorJapan’s biggest auto manufacturer is targeting a 1,000­kilometer (620­mile) range for the Fine­Comfort Ride concept under local standards, compared with about 650 kilometers for the current Mirai fuel­cell vehicle, according to a statement Wednesday. The concept car, to be introduced at the Tokyo Motor Show next week, will include artificial intelligence and automated driving features.

Toyota is continuing to champion fuel­cell vehicles as the ultimate zero­emission cars, even as the falling cost of lithium­ion batteries has lured a majority of automakers to plug­in technology in the face of ever more stringent environmental standards worldwide. China, the world’s largest market, said last month that it was working on a timeline to end the sale of internal­combustion vehicles, joining countries including France, India and the U.K.

Bloomberg Oct 2017

Although hydrogen vehicles can be refueled in about three minutes and have a substantially longer range than electric cars, they suffer from a lack of infrastructure. There are only 91 hydrogen stations in Japan, with the government targeting 160 by 2020, according to BNEF.

By comparison, Japan has about 7,200 public quick chargers for EVs, according to a Nissan Motor Co. estimate. Nissan’s Leaf takes about 30 minutes to charge and offers about 400 kilometers of driving range.

CO2 storage sites need three essentialattributes. They must be:AffordableThe ready­made transportationinfrastructure will give major emitters,from Scotland and beyond, access to thehuge storage resource 100 miles off thecountry’s east coast. Capturing CO2 frommultiple sources and then consolidatingit in to just one regional network ofshared storage sites within the CentralNorth Sea will also drive down costs.And as a site in one part of the regionreaches capacity it must becost­effective for operators to move to asite in another part of the region withoutthe need for extensive newinfrastructure. There is more than 5,000km of pipeline already installed on thesea bed of this resource rich region.DeliverableWith decades of detailed analysis by oiland gas operators in the Central NorthSea, perhaps more is known about thesub­surface geology in this part of theworld than anywhere else. And one ofthe best understood sites in the wholeof the UK Continental Shelf is theGoldeneye gas condensate field in theOuter Moray Firth. The long termdetailed modelling engineers andgeologists constructed as they extractedgas from the site offers Shell theconfidence to develop CCS in the CentralNorth Sea rather than at any otherglobal site.DiverseAs CO2 capture and transportation develops, the site in which the gas will be stored must be large enough toaccommodate growing demand. The Captain sandstone formation, of which the Goldeneye field is part, is largeenough to hold all the CO2 from the UK’s gas fuelled power plants for the next 100 years.

North sea carbon storage

With cost reduction being one of the key challenges to developing full­scale CCS, the prospect of injecting CO2 into existing oil fields to help extract more of the fossil fuels we are reliant upon is seen by many as a win­win. Not only does it remove large quantities of the greenhouse gas for good, but it extends the life of the field significantly – in some cases by up to a third. Develop that logic slightly further and it’s easy to envisage a scenario where CO2 – far from being a by­product of power stations and heavy industry – one that requires subsidy payments and regulation to achieve reductions, could, one day, become a valuable commodity which can be sold to oil and gas producers. What was once a waste gas becomes an asset if it’s used for Enhanced Oil recovery. It’s known as CCS with EOR in some quarters, but put simply it’s CCS+.

North sea carbon storage

1 ­ CO2 may be injected into a saline aquifer (in the water table) where it may either dissolve in the brine, react with the dissolved minerals or the surrounding rock fixing the carbon.

3 ­ Enhanced oil recovery. Carbon dioxide and water can be used to flush residual oil from a subsurface rock formation between wells. The resulting cavity can become a store for CO2.

4 ­ Cavities created by depleted oil and gas deposits are commonly used to store carbon. The sealing capacity of the caprock, which had sealed the original hydrocarbon in the reservoirs for a geological time, is sufficient to prevent the injected CO2 from escaping into the upper formations.

2 ­ In nature, unrecoverable coal seams also contain gases such as methane. If CO2 is injectedinto a coal seam it displaces themethane, which can then be recovered.The CO2 will remain stored within theseam, providing the coal is neverdisturbed. The sale of the methane produced could help to offsetthe cost of injecting the CO2.

Carbon Capture sites and storage

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a technology that can capture up to______ of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions pro­duced from the use of fossil fuels in electricity generation and industrial processes, preventing the _______________________ from entering the atmosphere.

Furthermore, the use of CCS with renewable biomass is one of the few carbon abatement technolo­gies that can be used in a ___________________________ mode ­– actually taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

The CCS chain consists of three parts; _________________ the carbon dioxide, transporting the carbon dioxide, and securely storing the carbon dioxide emissions, underground in depleted ______ and gas fields or deep saline aquifer formations.

First, capture technologies allow the separation of carbon dioxide from gases produced in electricity generation and industrial processes by one of three methods: pre­combustion capture, post­combustion capture and oxyfuel com­bustion.

Carbon dioxide is then transported by pipeline or by ship for safe storage. Millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide are already transported annually for commercial purposes by road tanker, ship and pipelines.

The carbon dioxide is then stored in carefully selected __________________ rock formation that are typically located several kilometres below the earth's surface.

Much research has been carried out into using old gas and oil fields where _______________ already exist underground as well as infrastructure on the surface.

For example he rocks under the _________ Sea could absorb about 22 billion tonnes of CO2 which is _______ years of CO2 from the UK’s 20 largest point sources: power stations, refineries and cement works. This is a hefty reduction in Britain’s CO2 emissions.

90%

carbon dioxide

'carbon­negative'capturing

oilgeological

cavities North 180

What is Carbon Capture and Storage?

Attachments

North Sea Carbon storage