Energy history: how much wood can be cut in a day?
…energy cost from gathering firewood comes out to about 12 c/kWh. This is equivalent to paying $35/mcf for natural gas. This is not much cheaper than European natural gas in…
Energy demand forecasts: making predictions about the future?
…for global energy, oil, coal, renewables and sometimes gas, going back to the mid-2000s. Long-term global energy demand forecasts can easily be wrong by +/- 10%. If we look at…
Refrigerants: leading chemicals for the rise of heat pumps?
…with fluorocarbons, which do not deplete the ozone layer, but do have very high global warming potentials. For example, R-134a, which is tetrafluoroethane, is a 1,430x more potent greenhouse gas…
Ethylene vinyl acetate: production costs?
…acetate production occurs via the relatively complex pathway shown below. Natural gas liquids are fractionated into ethane. Ethane is cracked into ethylene. Natural gas is also converted into methanol. Then…
Power grids: opportunities in the energy transition?
…comes from stress testing IRR models of wind, offshore wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, gas CCGTs, gas peakers, coal, biomass, diesel gensets and geothermal. And from 400-years of energy history. The…
Combustion fuels: density, ignition temperature and flame speed?
…cart Gasoline is an excellent transportation fuel. A high energy density of 36 kWh/gal yields a high vehicle range. A low flash point of -40ºC means it is easy to…
Blue steel: construction boom?
…copper!) (page 6). DRI+EAF steel. What are the costs and CO2 intensity factors? We have modeled the DRI pathway converting iron ore (Fe2O3) into direct reduced iron using a syngas…
Global decarbonization: speeding up or slowing down?
…due to underinvestment in gas. Depressingly, progress towards net zero slowed down in the past five years. Reaching net zero requires vast acceleration in renewables, infrastructure, nuclear, gas and nature….
Newlight AirCarbon: bioplastics breakthrough?
…patents, we think methane is most likely to be sourced from landfill gas. And the process screens as carbon negative relative to a baseline alternative where the landfill gas or…
MHI CCS technology: performance, costs and emissions?
…kg/ton of CO2, alongside exhaust gas purity parameters) and their expected amine emissions rates (in ppm of exhaust gas, with or without a water wash unit). Further details on MHI’s…