How Australia Will Adapt To A Decarbonizing World Was Prime Of Thoughts For Oz Webinar Attendees

Not way back, I had the chance to speak with a number of hundred members in an Australian Good Power Council webinar. It was organized to take advantage of my uncommon timezone alignment with Oz as I spend just a few weeks in New Zealand as a digital nomad. Many extra signed up, anticipating to hearken to the recording later. That recording is below the hyperlink within the opening sentence, by the best way.

The organizer Steve Blume, former President of the Council, and I believed it might be helpful to reply a lot of the dozens of questions in articles and share with the registrants as effectively. That is the fourth of some articles with responses, which will likely be aggregated and shared by the Council as effectively for members. The primary article was on aviation and maritime delivery questions, the second coated biofuels and HVDC , the third handled hydrogen and the fourth with fossil fuels.

The framing of my ready remarks was the Radical Electrification of Transportation. I’ve printed quite a bit on the topic as I’ve dug by way of most modes over the previous 15 years.

Intro slide to Michael Barnard presentation to Australian Good Power Council webinar

To summarize my presentation, all floor transportation will electrify. That’s vehicles, vans, buses, utility automobiles, trains, and mining automobiles. All inland delivery and two-thirds of quick sea delivery will electrify, with solely the longest routes requiring biofuels. Delivery and rail may also drop in tonnage as a consequence of elimination of bulk fossil fuels from masses. Aviation will likely be disrupted by electrical regional air mobility, autonomous flight, and digital air site visitors management, and solely trans-oceanic flights would require biofuels in 50 years.

Meaning the billions of tons of fossil fuels per 12 months requirement for extraction, processing, refinement, and distribution are going away and being changed by tens of hundreds of thousands of tons of know-how metals akin to lithium and cobalt, in addition to just a few hundred million tons of biofuels for aviation and maritime delivery. That’s all very doable.

The ready remarks skimmed over all of that in half-hour or so, leaving far too little time for questions, and so I’ve chosen to reply to most of them in writing.

Politics & Geopolitics

Have you ever factored main worldwide disruptions into your mannequin to 2100, e.g. pandemics, geo-political conflicts?

Not likely, no. On the decade-by-decade stage, that’s largely noise. COVID had a a lot bigger affect than nearly anything, however it was dwarfed by the rise of China’s manufacturing and demand since 1990. The whole lot else is effectively beneath the extent of COVID’s affect.

My projection assumes just a few issues round main geopolitics. The primary is that we gained’t be stupidly entering into huge sizzling wars between superpowers. China and the USA gained’t be coming to blows, Russia will likely be constrained to its borders greater than not, and North Korea will proceed to be remoted and impoverished. Fixing the issues with rogue states is a multi-decadal effort by itself, however a rounding error globally.

World commerce will proceed regardless of noises about decoupling. There will likely be some symbolic decoupling and recreation of regional North American and European mineral extraction, processing and manufacturing, however absurd quantities of all of that come right down to China persevering with to have important buying energy and Wright’s Regulation benefits which western international locations are going to be actually challenged to beat.

Pandemics will come and go, however having had a contemporary COVID, each nation is vastly extra ready for the following COVID, no matter that will likely be. Having helped construct the world’s most subtle outbreak and communicable illness administration resolution within the aftermath of SARS, I merely level to SARS, H1N1, Ebola, and COVID as regular occasions, with COVID being the one which broke by way of to important international impacts. Pandemics are enterprise as normal with some being increased and decrease impacts, and attempting to foretell which decade they may happen in is just not a helpful train. 

I do see China’s huge infrastructure build-out coming to an finish, which implies a really huge change in demand for lots of gear. I see India’s and Africa’s rise being slower than China’s for a wide range of causes, so the demand curves aren’t almost as sturdy. I see a lot better downward pressures on transferring good and folks as we value carbon emissions holding on till we begin actually reaping the advantages of low-cost, environment friendly renewables, transmission and storage making vitality actually low-cost, and battery vitality chemistries being in place to essentially exploit that. 

My curves do lean into demographic shifts which might be eliminating inhabitants progress. The UN’s projections are nonetheless peak inhabitants in 2100, however different very credible demographics organizations are projecting way more fast peaks, in 2070 and 2050. Personally, I discover the extra optimistic projections to be extra seemingly. The large inhabitants progress from 1960 onward goes to be flat, and that’s going to have a huge effect on demand curves.

Rising affluence will proceed, however so will rising options to flying. Witness the soon-to-be 50,000 km of high-speed electrified passenger rail in China. And except Africa and India repair governance, the deep inequity will proceed to go away solely a small share of wealthy individuals capable of fly.

My demand curves for the final 25 years of the century are much more nebulous than those for the previous a long time. Meals for thought and argument, not one thing to be thought-about remotely dependable.

Based mostly in your modeling, what are the optimum options for vitality importing economies akin to South Korea and Japan to satisfy their decarbonization targets?

Identical as all over the place else. As a lot onshore wind and photo voltaic as there may be good useful resource for. Ditto offshore wind, which each international locations have a number of room for in territorial waters. HVDC cables in all instructions. Israel is getting linked to Europe with a 1,200 km undersea HVDC cable, so the 90 km from Japan to South Korea and the 350 km from South Korea to China are trivial distances. Pumped hydro the place there may be useful resource availability (and there’s tons) and batteries for a bunch of the remaining. Power interconnection much more than vitality importing.

Transferring molecules for vitality isn’t mandatory sooner or later when utilizing renewable electrical energy immediately is a lot extra environment friendly and it’s low-cost and simple to generate renewable electrical energy. The transition will likely be fraught, however what transition isn’t?

Technically and economically, electrifying most issues is smart to many. There are communities that will not agree with this method, significantly if they don’t see particular person or group profit, which then has an affect in politics. How will we overcome or take care of the opposition to huge electrification?

Two issues are going to kick resistance to the curb. The primary is European management. It stays the second or third largest financial system on the planet relying on the place you draw the boundaries, does huge commerce with each different financial system on the planet, and it’s going to start out pricing carbon at its borders in 2026 with the carbon border adjustment mechanism. That’s based mostly on its cap and commerce emissions buying and selling scheme, one thing similar to California’s and China’s. Chinese language enterprise executives are effectively conscious of this, as I used to be unsurprised to search out when presenting to a gaggle of them in Dalian close to Beijing not too long ago on Europe’s decarbonization plans.

The European carbon value has been butting up towards €100 for a few years, is seeing increasingly commodities and industries swept into it, is seeing fewer and fewer grants of entitlements like these to aviation and can proceed to extend in value. Jurisdictions with out carbon costs will likely be more and more uncompetitive in European markets. On condition that China has a carbon value and it’s going to see the identical trajectory as Europe’s, which financial system on the planet goes to take a look at that and say that they aren’t going to decarbonize?

The second cause is China. It’s the solely scaled producer of a really massive share of the applied sciences required to decarbonize, from electrical vehicles to wind generators to photo voltaic panels to batteries. And since it’s massively scaled, these applied sciences are more and more low-cost to purchase, and since these applied sciences are so environment friendly and low-cost to function, they’re strongly most popular coming and going by consumers globally. I do know Goldwind has a powerful presence in Australia’s wind vitality as an acquaintance works for them, for instance.

China can also be approaching a tipping level the place its financial system goes to decarbonize quickly. It’s electrifying its financial system vastly extra quickly than another nation on the planet and it’s constructing extra low carbon era, transmission and storage than any nation on the planet. Sure, it’s constructing coal vegetation to steadiness the grid, however they’re operating at 55% capability elements and that share will decline quickly within the coming years as they get shut down as a result of they’re unneeded.

Amongst different issues, China simply launched a 1,000 km route Yangtze electrified small container ship with swappable containerized batteries, and is about to launch one other. They’ll electrify all of their huge inland water freight simply as they’ve electrified most intercity freight and passenger miles with high-speed rail and most buses and vans with battery electrical automobiles. Trade is coming subsequent, and it is going to be blindingly swift as effectively. 

Decarbonizing electrical energy system: What’s the almost definitely lengthy length storage the place pumped hydro is just not an possibility, e.g. West Australia?

Properly, West Australia has much more pumped hydro useful resource off protected land and close to transmission than you assume, I believe. The hyperlink is to the ANU pumped hydro atlas. There’s fairly a bit, however it’s not within the inside.

However I charge redox stream batteries because the lengthy length storage resolution that will likely be largest after pumped hydro.

On value-added minerals processing & recycling, what’s your recommendation on Australia’s potential engagement with China to study on what they’ve been doing on this? Any examples of collaboration in LATAM, AFRICA, ASEAN Australia ought to concentrate on?

My steering will likely be considerably trite and superficial on this as there’s a deep historical past between the 2 international locations that I’m solely considerably conscious of. Amongst different issues, I used to be stunned to search out that the earlier federal administration truly canceled Victoria state Belt & Highway Initiative agreements. 

That mentioned, there are some apparent issues to do. Lean into the truth that China is Australia’s largest bi-lateral buying and selling companion. Lean into the truth that Australia is a part of APAC, not the west, no matter historical past. Work with ASEAN companions to establish the fitting contacts. Leverage current mineral extraction relationships with China to hunt out potential information sharing alternatives. Set up joint Chinese language-Australian analysis applications between Chinese language and Australian companies. Invite Belt & Highway Initiative efforts to ascertain minerals worth add together with iron manufacturing with inexperienced hydrogen created with Chinese language electrolyzers.

As I mentioned, trite and apparent. Additionally actually onerous to do gracefully within the bizarre political local weather in the intervening time.

Concerning different geographical examples, I don’t have good ones to share, I’m afraid. It’s an attention-grabbing query although, so I’ll concentrate and hopefully discover some.

What’s your view of the battery price curve going ahead? It appears that evidently price reductions have slowed lately, or has this been a short-term impact as a result of demand is rising quicker than new provide can ramp up?

That’s a market demand vs provide bump. What’s going to occur is what has occurred for the previous twenty years, which is that battery vitality capability will go up for a similar value and weight level. Additional, the upper market value for Li-ion signifies that different chemistries that are appropriate for different market segments, like grid storage, have an actual alternative to maneuver. 

Batteries include lots of completely different parts, and most new chemistries like LFP and silicon chemistries that use cell-based batteries can leverage the economies of producing scale of that lithium-ion has created. Pouch-based batteries can achieve the benefits that the laptop computer and smartphone industries created. That’s some extent Vincent Pluvinage, CEO and co-founder of silicon nanowire innovator OneD Battery Sciences made to me not too long ago after we spoke.

New chemistries with effectively differentiated traits can get to market at a less expensive value level way more rapidly than was beforehand potential.

And so, one other set of Australian questions on decarbonization, electrification of transportation, hydrogen, and the way forward for Australia’s function on the planet requested and answered.

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