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Search results for: “direct air capture”

  • Steel production: costs and energy economics?

    Steel production: costs and energy economics?

    This data-file captures steel production from the reduction of iron ore in a blast furnace and basic oxygen furnace. Our base case is a marginal cost of $550/ton and 2.4 tons/ton of CO2. Decarbonization options such as hydrogen can be stress-tested.

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  • Fuel retail: economics of a petrol station?

    Fuel retail: economics of a petrol station?

    This data-file captures the economics for a fuel-retailing “petrol station” to earn a 10% IRR. A typical EBIT marginย is 17c/gallon; with a c6% margin on direct fuel sales; plus 10-20% of revenues from convenience retail at a higher, c25-30% margin.

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  • Global oil demand: breakdown by product by country?

    Global oil demand: breakdown by product by country?

    This data-file breaks down global oil demand, country-by-country, product-by-product, month-by-month, across 2017-2024. Global oil demand ran at 103 Mbpd in 2024, for +1.0 Mbpd of growth, according to our databases. For perspective, global oil demand rose at +1.2Mbpd per year in the 30-years from 1989->2019, so not much evidence, on face value, that “peak oil…

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  • Formaldehyde production: the economics?

    Formaldehyde production: the economics?

    Formaldehyde producton costs are captured in this data-file, covering one of the ‘top 50’ commodity chemicals intermediates (MDF, wind turbine blades, disinfectants). Marginal cost is $500/ton, a direct linear function of gas prices. Embedded CO2 is 0.75 tons/ton, of which 90% is from methanol inputs.

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  • Wind and solar: cost of grid interconnection?

    Wind and solar: cost of grid interconnection?

    Cost of grid connection is shaping up to be a major bottleneck for the continued acceleration of new energies. A good baseline is to expect $100-300/kW of grid inter-connection costs, or $3-10/kW-km, over a typical distance of 10-70 km. But the requirement to fund network upgrade costs can push grid connections to cost more than…

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  • CH4 context: the largest methane leaks of all time?

    CH4 context: the largest methane leaks of all time?

    Global methane emissions run to 360MTpa. 40% is agriculture, 40% is the energy industry and 20% is landfills. Within energy, over 30% of the leaks are from coal, 30% are from oil, 27% are from gas. This short note quantifies some of the largest methane leaks of all time, and provides context for the recent…

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  • Overview of mining equipment companies?

    Overview of mining equipment companies?

    This data-file is an overview of mining equipment companies. For each company, we have noted its location, size, age, number of employees, number of patents, latest revenues, operating margins, exposure to the mining equipment industry, and a few short summary sentences. Where possible, we have also broken down the company’s revenues by end-market or by…

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  • CO2 offsets: Pachama’s AI platform?

    CO2 offsets: Pachama’s AI platform?

    Pachama is a nature-based technology company, which has raised $79M, to create a portal where buyers can choose “from rigorously vetted forest restoration and conservation projects”, which in turn are tracked using proprietary AI. This data-file evaluates Pachama’s portfolio and our own experiences, using our usual framework for assessing nature-based CO2 removals.

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  • Renewables: how much time to connect to the grid?

    Renewables: how much time to connect to the grid?

    Is the power grid becoming a bottleneck for the continued acceleration of renewables? The median approval time to tie a new US power project into the grid has climbed by 30-days/year since 2001, and doubled since 2015, to over 1,000 days (almost 3-years) in 2021. Wind and solar projects are now taking longest. This data-file…

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  • Servo motors: cost calculator?

    Servo motors: cost calculator?

    Servo motors form a $16bn pa market, used in robotics, precision manufacturing equipment, CNC machines, aerospace and med-tech. This data-file estimates the costs of servo-motors, based on underlying controller costs, motor costs and reduction gear costs. Hence we have attempted a simple servo motor cost calculator.

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