This 12-page note sets out an early-stage ambition for Thunder Said Energy to reforest former farmland in Estonia, producing high-quality CO2 credits in a biodiverse forest. The primary purpose would be to stress-test nature-based carbon removals in our roadmap to reforestation and net zero, and understand the bottlenecks. IRRs can also surpass 10% at $35-50/ton CO2.
The correct way to structure a reforestation project is one of the most important questions in the energy transition, but few seem to have cracked the code. This is our conclusion from hundreds of models and discussions, which are summarized on pages 2-4.
Our own interests in undertaking a reforestation project are set out on 5-8, combining personal circumstances, economics and an aspiration to understand the roadmap to reforestation and process in more detail.
What will a high-quality project need to look like? Our expectations and goals are set out on pages 9-12. As transparently as possible. This is a structured list of questions, and our initial hypotheses, to be addressed in future research.
The short video below is a thinly-veiled critique of carbon markets, their ridiculousness and the lobbying that seems to be taking place against nature based solutions. To do this, use an analogy from the banking sector, followed by some observations on carbon markets, carbon prices and carbon offsets.
The analogy is that if bank debt were like carbon markets, you would never be allowed to re-pay the debt; you would simply be forced to borrow less money every year under a cap-and-trade system, following a byzantine set of rules; until eventually you gave up and went to do business with a different bank.
Conversely, if carbon markets worked like the modern banking industry, using nature based solutions to re-pay the ‘debts’ of carbon emissions, then the world could likely find a genuine, low-cost and verifiable route towards net zero.
Referenced in the video are our latest views on inflation-risks due to energy transition policies, the world-changing potential of nature based carbon offsets, a re-thinking of carbon prices, and hopes for better carbon labelling. Please see below for further details of each one.
A single Bitcoin transaction currently uses c1,000kWh of electricity, which is 1 million times more than a traditional payment. Hence this 8-page note aims to explain how blockchain works, why it has been so energy intensive in the past, and how the energy multiplier could be reduced to maybe 100 – 1,000 x in a best case future scenario. Thus there could be a role for blockchain in some use cases in the energy transition.
Moore’s law entails that computing performance will double every 18-months. It was proposed in 1965. And since then, chips have consistently sustained this pace. We argue such exponential progress has been driven by three positive feedback loops. Can these same feedback loops unlock a similar trajectory for new energies costs? We find mixed evidence in this short, six-page note.
Pages 2-3 explain Moore’s Law for renewables: why it matters for the new energies industry, and why sustained, exponential improvements must hinge upon positive feedback loops.
The first feedback loop is down to the laws of physics, unique to the semiconductor industry, as explained on page 4. It is hard to see how new energy technologies benefit from the same physics.
The second feedback loop is from boot-strapping, as better chips give better computers, which in turn have designed better chips, as outlined on page 5. New energies seem to be doing the opposite of boot-strapping.
The third feedback loop is from learning curves, noted on page 6, which we do expect to occur in new energies. But we must assess each learning-curve case-by-case.
To read more about Moore’s law for renewables, and our top conclusions, please see the article sent out to our distribution list.
The video below contains my top five conclusions on the energy transition, from some eye-opening real world experiences. Specifically, for the better part of the past six months, my wife and I have been working ‘nomadically’, moving to a new location week-after-week. I made it to 44 US States in total, before returning permanently to Europe.
I hope the experiences will make me a better analyst, including some new ideas on energy transition economics, infrastructure, mobility, nature-based solutions and geographic variability…
Below is some actual footage of the trip, illustrating some of those surprisingly tree-filled landscapes in the middle of the country…
Also, as mentioned in the video, here is that Tesla towing a diesel-generator…
A few research reports are also referenced in the video too. Here they are below, on the importance of cost to the transition, the ability to reforest agricultural acreage, and the relative CO2 costs of mobility.. .
Finally, in case your curiosity has been piqued, here is my wife’s take on our US adventures, and our permanent re-location to Estonia, the ‘most digital country in the world’… link here.
CO2 prices and CO2 abatement costs are very different numbers. CO2 prices are incurred by emitters. But abatement costs depend on how much CO2 is reduced. These abatement costs can actually be astronomical if CO2 does not fall by very much. Hence we argue CO2 prices are only effective if nature-based offsets are incorporated.
Economy-wide CO2 prices have been suggested as an effective policy tool to drive decarbonization. For example, our research has shown that a CO2 price could create a level playing to allow a broad range of energy technologies to decarbonize the entire US economy. (note below).
But something is missing from this analysis: what is the relationship between CO2 prices and CO2 abatement costs? The chart below aims to answer this question.
Short-run abatement costs from a CO2 price are astronomically high. To see this, consider the yellow dot in the chart above. Let us assume that a $100/ton CO2 price is imposed on all emitters in an economy. As a result, 10% of those emitters spend c$50/ton to eliminate their CO2 (total cost = $5 per ton of total ex-ante emissions). However, the remaining 90% of emitters continue emitting as before, and simply bear the costs of the $100/ton CO2 price, or pass it on to their customers (total cost = $90 per ton of total ex-ante emissions). Now, to calculate the CO2 abatement cost, we must add these costs together ($90 + $5 = $95/ton of ex-ante emissions) and then we must divide this total by the percent of CO2 that has been abated (10%). The result is a $950/ton abatement cost.
Can this be right? It might seem like a paradox, that the CO2 abatement cost associated with a $100/ton CO2 price could be $950/ton. The reason is that CO2 prices and CO2 abatement costs are very different things. As shown on the chart above, the CO2 abatement cost depends on how much CO2 is actually abated. If a CO2 price is imposed, and no one actually abates their CO2, then you have simply imposed a consumption tax.
Is this risk realistic? Different studies show that the price-elasticity of energy demand is relatively low. One good meta-study finds an average price-elasticity of 13% (here). In other words, a 100% increase in energy prices would likely only reduce energy demand by 13%. Using our data-file below, we estimate that a $100/ton CO2 price, if imposed overnight, would increase retail energy prices by around 35%, which in turn would most likely reduce energy demand (and with it CO2) by around 5%. So if anything, our suggestion of a $950/ton CO2 abatement cost from a $100/ton CO2 price is 2x too low.
The objective of a CO2 price, however, is to incentivize deep changes across an economy, in order to reduce emissions. We studied one such scenario for the US last year (link here). This work found that by 2035, a CO2 price gradually rising to above $100/ton could eliminate around half of all US CO2 emissions (chart below). Here, the CO2 abatement cost comes out at c$180/ton. 50% of emitters continue emitting, and pay $100/ton of CO2 prices ($50). The other 50% of emitters incur an average of $80/ton of CO2 abatement costs to eliminate their CO2 ($40). The total cost is $90. This translates into a CO2 cost of $180/ton, because c50% of emissions are abated on this model.
One problem of this model is that many of the technologies that need to be incentivized have a much higher incentive price than $100/ton. As an illustration, some of the direct subsidies currently offered to different transition technologies are shown below, translated into $/ton terms. A $100/ton CO2 price clearly does not incentivize a technology costing $200-700/ton. So complex additional subsidies would also be needed.
A much more effective iteration of the model allows nature-based solutions into the solution set. Specifically, companies that sponsor reliable nature-based offset projects can use the CO2 abatement from these projects as a credit against CO2 price payments. First, allowing these nature-based offsets is the only way that many industries can realistically get to ‘zero’ CO2. Second, the costs are much lower, and our roadmap to net zero finds that the entire global economy could be decarbonized for an average cost of $40/ton, if 25% of the heavy-lifting is done via nature-based methods (note here).
What is interesting about this scenario, returning to the chart below, is that the average CO2 abatement cost in our ‘best case’ comes in at $40/ton. This is to say, 0% of emitters continue emitting and paying the $100/ton CO2 price (why would you, if you could source nature-based carbon offsets for a much lower price, of $3-50/ton). 100% of erstwhile emitters pay an average abatement cost of $40/ton. And this offsets 100% of emissions, hence the total CO2 abatement cost also comes in at $40/ton.
Note the abatement cost is lower than the CO2 price, in this scenario. This also seems counter-intuitive at first glance. It is a function of two variables: the abatement cost is lower than the CO2 price, and a very high portion of CO2 is being abated. As another example, imagine the government declares a $1,000 fine for anyone caught wearing a yellow T-shirt tomorrow. As a result, no-one wears a yellow T-shirt. The total cost of this policy is therefore zero.
Achieving a low cost transition matters, as our recent work finds that inflation could de-rail high-cost transition pathways (note below). We conclude that CO2 prices can be very powerful. But to be cost-effective, they must genuinely drive decarbonization, rather than simply taxing continued emissions. This is best achieved by integrating nature-based carbon offsets into CO2 pricing frameworks, in our view.
We have reviewed 14 mass extinctions over the past 500M years, in order to draw five conclusions on systemic risk amidst the energy transition. Current policies may be short-sighted. Improved technologies and nature-based solutions could likely fare better.
Mass extinctions are the ultimate “systemic risks” as they tend to wipe out an average of 50% of all life on Earth (for perspective, Coronavirus has wiped out about 0.05-0.1% of humanity). In almost all cases in our data-file, they are caused by exogenous shocks, which also change the global climate, either by warming it or cooling it. Eventually life has rebounded, although it can take 30M years, while re-balancing the planet towards a different mix of species than came before. Full details can be downloaded here.
If you were to draw a spectrum of cataclysmically bad things that can happen to the world, mass extinctions would probably lie at the extreme. Hence five conclusions and insights follow below from our data-set…
(1) Mass extinctions happen every 15-30M years. This includes 14 events over the past 500M years, through to 4 events over the past 65M years. The numbers are likely towards the more frequent end of the range, as the rock record turns over every 100-300M years, making it hard to detect smaller extinction events from the distant past. This implies that for every 15M year period, there is approximately a “one-in-a-million” chance of a mass extinction event threatening the majority of all life on Earth. Small but not zero.
(2) Are risks preventable? A good, common-sense principle of risk-management is that you should care just as much about low-probability high-impact risks as you care about high-probability low-impact risks. This is why people buy life insurance. But it is hard to see how you protect against vast outpourings from super-volcanos (5 events), enormous asteroids (2 events) or supernovas stripping the world of its ozone layer (2 events). My intuition here is that there is no way to “eliminate” systemic risks that might make the world unlivable.
(3) Policies are effectively useless at preventing many systemic risks. Try banning a volcano from erupting, a virus from mutating or a war from breaking out. There are two thoughts here that keep me up at night: (a) policies focused at averting climate change are at the top of every policymaker’s list right now, but is this coming at the cost of ignoring and thereby inflating other significant systemic risks? (b) worse, will policies focused at averting climate change actually exacerbate some systemic risks? Some examples from our research are here, here and here.
(4) Improved technologies may be a better focus area, as they lower systemic risks across the board. I say this after receiving my second dose of the Moderna vaccine this week. And recalling that totally realistic scene in Armageddon where Bruce Willis flies a rocket to an asteroid and blows it up using nuclear weapons. The thought that fascinates me is how inextricably human resiliency to systemic risks is bound up with energy technologies. This is a rationale for our renewed focus on energy technologies (below).
(5) Nature based solutions? We are currently undergoing one of the greatest mass extinction events in the history of the planet, destroying over one-third of the world’s forests since pre-industrial times, over half of some blue carbon eco-systems and threatening up to 1M species. Solving this problem is the direct rationale for nature-based solutions to climate change, which do not simply use trees to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but also tackle the underlying issue of not destroying the planet. We argue nature-based activities will emerge as the single largest focus in the energy transition (note below).
How to risk early stage technologies? We are starting a new strand of research, evaluating the specific energy technologies of specific early-stage companies, to help drive the energy transition. This matters to stress-test our roadmap to net zero, and as increasing numbers of early-stage new energy companies are crossing the screens of decision-makers.
This video lays out our rationale, the key risks for new technologies, and our new methodology, which draws on two years of patent learnings.
Our approach is to read the main patent filings from early-stage technology companies, to glean how their technology works. Then we score the company’s core patent library on the dimensions of problem specificity, solution specificity, intelligibility, focus and manufacturing.
One of our written research report covers in more detail how we developed this framework, for de-risking technologies based on their patents. Or at least that is one aspect. We are also drawing on having our learnings from 15-years in the energy industry, and 4-years specifically diligencing the technologies of earlier-stage energy companies.
These screens are now available via the ‘Breakthrough Technologies‘ section of the TSE insights page. Please contact us if there are specific companies you would like us to assess via our usual framwork, to help you risk early stage technologies.
Global CO2 emissions from wildfires could be c25% as large as anthropogenic CO2 emissions, while burnt areas in the US reached an joint all-time record in 2020. Hence this note reconsiders some nature-based solutions to climate change. Hands-off forest conservation may do more harm than good in fire-prone areas. Sustainable forestry, carbon-negative materials, biochar and biomass energy also look more favorable.
Forest conservation: the advantages?
I took the photo below on New Years Day from the top of a mountain in Vermont, looking East over the forest, which stretches all the way to New Hampshire. If you had asked me then, I would have insisted that forest conservation was a crucial component of the world’s roadmap to Net Zero; and a virtuous source of generating carbon credits, albeit slightly less virtuous than incremental reforestation.
Forests store 200-300 tons of carbon per hectare. Moreover, deforestation contributes 6.5GTpa of emissions, as 10M hectares of the world’s 3.5bn hectares of forests are torn down every year. This is the singles largest anthropogenic emissions source globally (data below).
Viewed from this perspective, stemming the wanton destruction of nature seems like an important climate objective. We have even gone so far as to argue the US could end up placing sanctions on Brazil by the end of 2021, for Bolsonaro’s recent renewed assault on the Amazon.
But there is another side of the coin. This has become more apparent for me, after spending 3-months in Oregon, Utah, Nebraska, California, Colorado, South Dakota and Montana amidst a stint of nomadic working this year. You see a lot of landscapes like this. They are beautiful (especially with a smiling dog in the foreground). But they are bone dry.
Mature forests also stop sequestering CO2 at some point between 50-200 years of age. First the rate of tree growth slows down by 50% (chart below). Moreover, the rate of CO2 release from the decomposition of dead matter eventually catches up to the rate of CO2 fixation via photosynthesis. And other dead matter accumulates on the forest floor and dries out…
This amplifies the risk of forest fires in older forests. One estimate in the technical literature is that 600M hectares of the Earth burns each year, emitting 12GTpa of CO2e. For perspective, this equates to 0.3% of the world’s forests burning every year, and the total toll of wildfires may be as large as 25% of global anthropogenic CO2.
In the United States, 2020 saw 10.1M of acres burning in wildfires, which is the joint-highest of any year on record (chart below). Interestingly, the prevalence of wildfires has actually fallen by 20%. But the average fire is around 3x larger, when fire does break out.
The single largest cause, cited in technical papers that we reviewed, was the accumulation of biomass in unmanaged forests. US forest cover has grown for 70 continuous years. And a second cited cause is climate change.
Seen from this lens, forest conservation policies may need to be re-thought. Is it possible, especially in dry geographies, that forest conservation simply encourages the accumulation of biomass that will later lead to life-threatening conflagrations and carbon releases?
Wildfires in theory?
Three elements are needed for a fire to occur: heat, fuel and oxygen. There is little chance of controlling heat or oxygen in the environment. Hence the only practical option to prevent wildfires is to remove fuel. Note this is totally at odds with the strictest forest conservation practices, which restrict any removal of biomass from a natural ecosystem.
There are also different types of fire, but crown fires are most expansive and most devastating.Specifically, ground fires consume mostly duff layers, produce few visible flames and can even go undetected, smoldering for days or weeks. Surface fires produce small flaming fronts that consume needles, moss, lichen and vegetation. They can kill up to 75% of trees, but can also be fought by ground crews. Full blown crown fires become active when there is enough heat and a “ladder” for the fire to climb up into tree canopies. They can kill 100% of trees and also burn off 10-60% of the carbon in soils beneath forests.
Fire kills trees by killing the cambium layer of living cells inside the tree bark that produces new wood and bark. Foliage is also scorched, buds are killed off and roots are damaged. Thus what remains is a charred stock of dead biomass (as pictured from the car window below, East of the Cascade mountains, in Oregon). It can take 125-years for a forest to “recover” the carbon stocks burned off in such a conflagration.
Finally, a “Crowning index” is a metric used to quantify fire proneness. It is defined as the minimum wind speed that is necessary to sustain a crown fire in the canopy layer. 25mph translates into high hazard, 25-50mph is moderate and >50mph is low hazard.
How are wildfires prevented?
The only practical way to prevent wildfires is to remove surface fuels. But this can take many different approaches.
One common approach is controlled burning or “underburning” of specific areas, or the gathering and burning off of “slash”. The idea is to remove biomass (fuel). (I witnessed a controlled burn project last week in Oregon, in April-2021, where a dry summer is anticipated). It is justified as a form of ‘carbon insurance’, giving up the carbon in the burned off material, in order to safeguard the remainder. But clearly, burning off forest carbon is not the best option from a CO2 removals perspective.
Thinning is another approach that fells small and vulnerable trees, while leaving behind larger trees with thicker bark (that insulates the cambium). A related approach, thinning from below, removes trees of intermediate height, which could enable a fire to jump from the ground level to the canopy layer. Lower limbs below 10-12′ may also be pruned for similar reasons. Again, this biomass may be burned in a controlled fire, or piled up to decompose. Again, from a CO2 perspective, there should be better options.
Mastication is a mechanical technique for fuels reduction, chopping, mowing and mulching ladder fuels such as brush and smaller trees. The resultant wood chips form a compact layer of material, which can be distributed evenly around a site and may make the area more resistant to fire. An advantage is that the carbon is not burned off. But it does decompose over time. Another drawback is the potential to wound trees if the operator is not skilled. The duration of fires in masticated fuels may also be higher than other fires.
Species selection may be a practical way to improve fire resistance. For example, Ponderosa pine is noted as a good fire species as it has an open crown, high moisture content in the foliage, and thick bud scales that help it survive fire. Some hardwoods, such as bigleaf maple, red alder, Oregon white oak, have high moisture content, less volatile oils in their foliage and as a result, they burn at low intensities, if they do catch alight.
Digging a fire line down to mineral soil deprives the fire of fuel and will stop its progress. This requires harvesting all of the fuel from a particular area. It can integrate well with sustainable forestry, if a line is cleared through a large forest stand each year, during harvesting, forming a natural break for fires (example below).
Comprehensive forest management is likely to be most effective, based on the studies we reviewed. This encompasses the systematic removal of biomass until tree coverage is only 40-50ft2 per acre, primarily comprising the largest and most fire-resistant trees. One study showed that this strategy increased the crowning index of a high-hazard lands from around 25mph to 82% mph, moving 90% of all treated acres into low-hazard conditions, while 73% of the land would still be classed as low-hazard 30-years afterwards. This was substantially more effective than thinning or fifty percent biomass removals. It also generated a profit of $675/acre, while the other methods cost -$300-700/acre. The disadvantage is that you have lessening the risk of forest fires by lessening the extent of the forest. So this option may need to be reserved for select areas.
What conclusions for forest conservation carbon credits?
Our conclusion from evaluating wildfires is that forest conservation projects have very debatable carbon credentials, especially in fire-prone areas, and as the Earth warms. This adds to our prior fear that they are the least “incremental” for of nature based solution.
Active forestry, with periodic harvesting and re-planting can sequestering around 2x more CO2 over a century than a simple approach of restoring a forest and walking away.
This realization is also what we are seeing, when we assess the nature-based carbon offsets being undertaken by 35 large corporations. Reforestation projects are now 3x more prevalent than forest conservation projects in 2018-20.
We argue corporations will increasingly establish new internal groups to vet and procure the most reliable and cost-effective carbon removals. This will likely de-prioritize forest conservation, and instead prioritize reforestation, and a variety of active forestry initiatives.
Active forestry as an effective tool for climate mitigation?
“Active and responsible forest management is more effective in capturing and storing atmospheric carbon than a policy of hands off management”, according to one technical paper that we reviewed. Hence what are the best options that align with our research?
Comprehensive biomass removals from select, high-risk forest areas is likely to be the most effective fire-prevention method of the options reviewed above. An advantage is that larger trees can be used to make carbon-negative construction materials, such as cross-laminated timber, for use in buildings, or even in novel applications such as wind turbines. Our note below reviews the opportunity, which is among the most favored in our research, and even more so after this review of mitigating forest fire risks.
Forest residues can also be gathered and turned into biochar, a miracle material with uses in agriculture. Our models yield 20% IRRs without any policy support, at biochar prices of $600/ton, while allowing producers to pay $40/ton for biomass feedstocks (including transportation). An advantage is that biochar can be made from offcuts and other forest debris.
We are also growing more constructive on biomass power, in small quantities, where the burned material comes unequivocally from forest debris, which might otherwise exacerbate the risk of fires. But it is still debatable. The chart below shows how CO2 credentials vary: the left-hand of each range assumes all biomass fuel would otherwise have decomposed, while the right-hand assumes all forest carbon would otherwise have remained standing.
Bowyer, J., Bratkovich, S., Frank, M., Fernholz, K., Howe, J. & Stai, S. (2011). Managing Forests for Carbon Mitigation.
Fiedler, C. E., Keegan, C. E., Woodall, C. W. & Morgan, T. A. (2004). A Strategic Assessment of Crown Fire Hazard in Montana: Potential Effectiveness and Costs of Hazard Reduction Treatments. United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service.
Fitzgerald, S. & Bennett, M. (2013). A Land Manager’s Guide for Creating Fire-Resistant Forests. University of Oregon, EM 9087
Loehman, R. A., Reinhardt, E. & Riley, K. L. (2014). Wildland fire emissions, carbon, and climate: Seeing the forest and the trees – A cross-scale assessment of wildfire and carbon dynamics in fire-prone, forested ecosystems. Forest Ecology and Management 317 9–19
Industrial facilities that can shift electricity demand to coincide with excess renewables generation will effectively start printing money as renewables get over-built. They also help more renewables integrate into the grid. Oil and gas assets are generally less able to demand-shift than other industries. But this note outlines the best opportunities we can find, uplifting cash margins by 3-10%.
What is demand shifting and who benefits?
Demand-shifting is one of the most exciting opportunities for companies in the energy transition. Specifically, the idea is that renewables are going to get ‘over-built’ (chart below). In turn, this means that power prices will become increasingly volatile. Around one-third of the time, when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, power could effectively be free. Another one-third of the time, when these renewable assets are not generating, power prices will likely spike to 15-30c/kWh.
Why does this create an opportunity? If you run an industrial asset where the electricity demand is flexible, you can lower your overall operating costs by timing the demand for when power prices are very low and NOT timing the demand for when power prices are high. This could lower aggregate power prices, and help accommodate another 10pp of renewables in the grid (note below).
Not all industries can demand shift. It is not a good idea for life-support machines! It is only going to work where there is minimal operational disruption. Ideally, there may also be an energy saving for electrifying and demand-shifting a process (examples below).
Who is best placed? The ideal demand-shifting opportunity has four criteria, based on our models. (1) Electricity is one of the largest input costs (2) cash margins are low (3) the industry is not highly capital intensive and (4) utilization rates are naturally constrained by some other factor. The reason that (1) and (2) matter is that a reduction in electricity costs will have a disproportionately large impact. The reason that (3) and (4) matter is that demand shifting requires an asset NOT to run at the times when renewables are not generating and power prices are expensive. But amortizing high capex costs over fewer units of output cost can dramatically increase unit costs.
Can the oil and gas industry demand shift?
The purpose of this report is to assess whether the oil and gas industry can generate any incremental income via demand-shifting. We find oil and gas assets are generally less capable of demand-shifting, compared with other industrial assets. This means the over-building of renewables places other industries at a greater relative advantage
Oil and gas assets generally have some of the highest utilization rates of any assets, as quantified in our data-file below. The average manufacturing facility in the US runs at a 78% utilization rate. Refineries and oil and gas processing plants actually lead the screen, with utilization rates sometimes surpassing 90%. It takes days to re-start a refinery or an LNG plant after an outage. This makes them poorly placed for demand shifting.
Oil and gas assets have some of the highest capital costs of any assets. We all know the stories of $50bn+ mega-projects. Once you have built an LNG plant costing $750/Tpa (chart below), you want to run it flat out to recover your capex costs.
Oil and gas assets may be less likely to use electricity, because they naturally have a cheap alternative on site (i.e., oil and gas). For example, in our model below of an ethane cracker, the natural energy source to power the two most energy intensive units (feedstock pre-heater and main ethane cracker unit) is the off-gas coming out of the reactor itself, which would otherwise need to be cleaned up and recirculated, at a cost.
Can some oil and gas processes become demand-flexible?
The best examples we can find around the oil and gas industry are in lifting and in EOR at mature oilfields. These processes actually meet all of the criteria we laid out above for good demand-shifting opportunities.
CO2-EOR operation is the best of the best examples we can find. Across CO2-compression and lifting operations, we estimate there could be as much as 35kWh of electricity used per barrel of oil production. CO2 injection does not need to take place constantly, but compressors may have spare capacity to dial up and dial down their activity over a period of days-weeks, as long as the overall volume of CO2 injection hits a monthly target. Lowering the average electricity price from 7.5c/kWh to 3c/kWh uplifts cash margins by around 10%. Our note on CO2-EOR is below.
Water injection operations have a similar demand flexibility, but the economics are not as compelling. Specifically, a water-flood will aim to inject 0.75-1.25 barrels of water per barrel of fluid that is lifted out of a reservoir, in order to achieve a particular voidage replacement ratio. But again, this is only a monthly basis, allowing the injection rates to vary day-by-day. Only 12kWh/bbl of electricity is assumed in our model below. Hence the margin uplift from flexing demand is a mere 3%.
Similarly, at mature fields, pumps may not operate all of the time lifting oil out of the reservoir. They may periodically turn on and turn off, in order to allow the reservoir near to the wellbore to ‘re-charge’. Or there may be an optimal production rate that is well below the full-time production capacity of the pump. Maybe these pumps use 1.5kWh/bbl on average, and it is possible to save around 5c/bbl.
Finally, pipelines may have spare capacity, and may be able to dial-up or dial-down their power draw depending on grid prices. Generally, we assume pipelines run at high utilization rates, while the energy needed to move each mcf of gas through a 1,000km pipeline is relatively low, at around 0.5kWh per mcf. While the power may not be very material in absolute terms, it could yield a 2-5% uplift, when you think that the average cash margin for a 1,000km pipeline is around $1/mcf.
Despite their high uptime requirements and their usual reliance on on-site oil and gas for the majority of process energy, many industrial facilities in the oil and gas industry also use electricity. Often this electricity is generated on site, using a co-generation facility. This is an excellent opportunity for grid-smoothing.
The idea is to absorb cheap renewable electricity from the grid when it is available in abundance (i.e., whenever the power price is cheaper than your on-site generation costs). And then produce your own power whenever renewables are not available. Our economic model for a gas-fired co-gen facility are here. If your baseline power price is 7c/kWh, you might be able to generate 2c/kWh overall savings by absorbing cheap renewables and running the gas turbines less frequently?
Returning to our ethane cracker example above, we estimate that each ton of ethane requires 24mcf of gas (around 7,000kWh of energy) to provide process heat, but the plant also uses around 1,200kWh of electricity to power compressors and coolers. If we can lower our overall power price from 7c/kWh to 5c/kWh, this is equivalent to uplifting cash margins by around 3%, or around $1/bbl. This is a good opportunity.
If this is correct, then we would expect an expansion of cogen capacity at large industrial assets, as a counter-balance to the overbuilding of renewables. We argue this remains one of the most exciting and direct ways to gain exposure to the theme. Our research note on the topic is linked below. Within it, there is a screen of relevant turbine makers.
Please contact us, if you would like to discuss other demand-shifting opportunities, or if you would be interested in a deeper-dive into the demand-shifting opportunities within your own asset base or portfolio.
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