Climate Change and Renewable Energy News and Discussion

I already posted the Chinese version of this in the scientific and tech thread, but this is quite an interesting development
Basically China is trying to figure out the logistics around Hydrogen fuel development and keeping that separate from Green hydrogen development. The idea is that you don't want to wait until green hydrogen is produced in large quantity before you find out how to move it around and use it in different industrial and transportation applications.

One big question is how to move hydrogen around and I think this development explains it. Methanol is the best way to do so.

However, methanol production in China is extremely dirty right now. 80% comes from Coal.

2020 China's methanol production capacity accounts for about 67% of the world, which is the largest in the world. Due to China's resource characteristics of rich in coal and poor in oil and gas, 81% of methanol production comes from coal, and the share of coal gasification to methanol has been expanding since 2010. The raw material for methanol production abroad is mainly natural gas, which accounts for over 90%.

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They are importing more natural gas than ever, not sure why they don't mandate more usage of natural gas for methanol.

Methanol is used as fuel mainly for methanol-fueled vehicles (internal combustion engines) as well as ships. China has been piloting methanol-fueled vehicles in Gansu, Guizhou, Shanxi and Shaanxi since 2012, and the market holdings have been nearly 30,000 units so far, and are expected to reach 50,000 units in 2025. At present, although the number of methanol-powered ships is not much, and there are no more than 10 related projects in the world, the feasibility of methanol as a marine fuel has been gradually confirmed. -Jianglong" has been launched.

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All these things need to happen, but methanol production itself needs to get cleaner.

Methanol is also an excellent carrier of hydrogen energy. Compared with hydrogen, methanol has higher energy density and is safe for storage and transportation, thus it has been rapidly promoted in recent years, such as methanol reforming to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and methanol hydrogen fuel cell power plants.

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Irina Tsukerman, president of the strategic advisory firm Scarab Rising, says that the total world market for green methanol will grow from $122 million in 2021 to more than $3 billion by 2031. Globally, she says, the big driver of that expansion will be

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. Major logistics players including Cosco Shipping Bulk, China Merchants Group, and Maersk are investing heavily in methanol-fueled cargo ships as a way to decarbonize and reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.

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so basically they really need to push forward on green methanol and green hydrogen.

It's good to have the methanol to hydrogen fuel stations up and running and to get heavy vehicles and vessels to use them. But it's also important to ramp up green methanol production in the first place and also to do more natural gas conversion.

I discussed a little more about green hydrogen transition of oil companies here
Basically, I see oil companies shifting to green hydrogen for its future. The amount of project China has going on is quite astonishing.
Just in Inner Mongolia, they've approved over 500k ton/year of green hydrogen capacity.

And Sinopec is really leading the field here with 2 more approved in January. One that is 100k t and another that is 20k t. 20k t is the second phase of Ordo project which started recently that produces 30k t a year .

And with the technology they are developing here, Sinopec is likely to gain more partners like Saudi Aramco in carbon capture and hydrogen. Quite an interesting thing to see Chinese oil companies leading move in this area.

For example, Shell is building Europe's largest green Hydrogen plant which produces 60t a day -> a little over 20k T a year. That's a fraction of the largest plant that Sinopec is building

In terms of green hydrogen usage. A couple of major sectors where green hydrogen will be critical in 0-carbon transformation.

The facility will include the 300 MW solar power plant, a water electrolysis hydrogen production plant, hydrogen storage tanks, and a hydrogen pipeline, according to earlier reports.

The green hydrogen will replace natural gas-based hydrogen used at Sinopec’s Tahe oil refinery

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The hydrogen produced at the future plant will be supplied to the neighboring Sinopec Tahe oil refinery to replace natural-gas based hydrogen.

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he larger of the two projects approved last week is tagged at 20.5 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) – to be sited in Ulanqab in central Inner Mongolia and targets annual green hydrogen production of 100,000 tons, according to a

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last week from the Inner Mongolia energy bureau.

The Ulanqab project is to be integrated with a wind farm of 1.7 gigawatts (GW) and a solar farm of 804 megawatts (MW) for supplying the renewable electricity required for manufacturing green hydrogen.

The green hydrogen to be produced would be transported via a long-distance pipeline to Sinopec’s Beijing Yanshan petrochemical complex, which already houses a hydrogen purification facility that supplied the Beijing Winter Olympics.

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so first application of green hydrogen from Sinopec is going where you want it to go, which is refineries. makes a lot of sense to first replace the places that currently use grey hydrogen.

The hardest to replace is probably steel making like they are doing in this case

“This project is the world's first zero-carbon green hydrogen-based fluidized bed ironmaking new technology demonstration project. It has completely independent intellectual property rights and can achieve breakthroughs in low-carbon metallurgy technology routes,” says Angang.

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They also produced their first FCEV for mining that can power 136t. These are likely the kind of applications that battery power trucks maybe unsuitable for. We will see. I tend to think vast majority of commercial vehicles can be done with BEVs as energy density continue to improve.

China's first sea water hydrogen fuel production project has kicked off in Dalian. It will likely be able to start production by October 1st and produce 2000t of green hydrogen a year.

海水制氢产业一体化示范项目将充分利用大连市技术研发、储能设备、制氢设备、加氢设备、

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、整车、氢能消纳等可实现完整产业链本地化的优势，打造国内首例，集滩涂光伏、储能、海水淡化、电解制氢为一体，尝试风光耦合及大规模不受上网指标限制的孤网运行模式的氢能源产业一体化示范项目，并在未来积极打造可复制的氢能产业发展“大连模式”。

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need energy storage equipment, hydrogen production equipment, hydrogenation equipment, hydrogen fuel cells, FCEV & hydrogen consumption are all parts of this project. Demonstration project for sea twater.

I'm not sure if this is related to the success they had in dividing sea water from a couple of months ago. Seems a little fast for that.

This interesting, Geely involved in project for 110k ton of green methanol project from recycled carbon. This is the first ever 100k ton+ green methanol project.

The plant uses an emissions-to-liquids (ETL) technology from Carbon Recycling International (CRI) in Iceland. The ETL process converts carbon dioxide into methanol, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprint.

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More on Green Hydrogen
Longi is diving fully into Green hydrogen with electrolysis production. This is quite interesting because they are going along the way of traditional Alkaline electrolysis, which are thought to be inferior to PEM in efficiency, but they've discussed the improvement they've made to its efficiency.

Sinopec spending 5.7B RMB on the largest green hydrogen coal-chemical field which will use wind/solar power to generate 30k t green hydrogen annually and include 288k CM of hydrogen storage. This will be done in Inner Mongolia like many other projects. To be complete by 2024.

今年是内蒙古绿氢的发展元年，全区已经批准31个项目，共52万吨产能，今年将全面开工并形成产能2万吨左右，向绿氢产业大区迈出第一步。

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Inner Mongolia is very active this year. approved 31 projects with 520k t of production. This year will produce 20k t. First step to mass deployment.

Jilin electric also has a major project worth 5.956B RMB. Aims to produce 46000Nm3/h. Based on my calculation assuming 360 days/24 hours work out to be over 30k t of hydrogen when complete.
looks like they want all the equipments for this project delivered by April 2024. Again, very aggressive schedule on these projects.

This is a map of good potential pumped hydro energy storage sites in the world. China is by far the country with the most sites in the world, not surprising considering tibet.

It's interesting to look at the trajectory of the renewable industry in China. In this case Mingyang is deploying their 11MW, 12MW and 16.6MW offshore wind turbine in the seas in order to use sea water to
produce electricity from wind/solar
have fish farm
and produce H2 from sea water.

一是全面向国产化、大型化推进；二是向深远海进军，从固定式到漂浮式，从“双10”向“双100”迈进；三是从海上风电到海水制氢、海洋牧场，向海洋能源与海洋经济的高质量融合发展。

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So the goal for Mingyang is fully using domestic components, build larger turbines. Move further out into ocean, go from fixed to floating turbines. using sea water to generator electricity to produce hydrogen and host fish farm and developed ocean economy.

We know that Longi is already getting involved in the electrolysis market. Looks like Mingyang is also producing Alkaline electrolysis equipment from this. Largest in the world in fact.

10月13日，明阳智慧能源集团股份公司全球最大单体碱性水电解

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装备在广东成功下线。明阳集团氢能事业部总经理李士宏介绍，全新下线的碱性水电解制氢装备单体产氢量为1500-2500Nm3/h，单体产氢能力全球最大，由

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自主独立设计并生产制造，具备10%-110%宽频调谐制氢能力，在消纳可再生能源波动性方面实现了技术突破；该装备可实现一键式操作，无人值守。与同等级设备相比，电解槽长度缩小50%，产氢能损更低；在大规模制氢项目的应用中，单位产能设备投资可以减少30%，为平价绿氢的实现奠定了坚实的装备技术基础。

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This report is from XDI, an Australian climate startup, but I think it still indicates the rising importance of climate change to China:

China is home to 16 of the 20 global regions most vulnerable to climate change, according to data published on Monday (Feb 20), with some of the world's most important manufacturing hubs at risk from rising water levels and extreme weather.
The industrialised Chinese coastal province of Jiangsu, which accounts for a tenth of China's GDP, was ranked the world's most vulnerable territory, followed by neighbouring Shandong and the major steel production base of Hebei. The flood-prone central province of Henan was fourth.

The highest ranking non-Chinese region was Florida in 10th place, with California 19th and New York 46th. Nine territories from India were also in the top 50.

I don't believe any Australia think tank or research institutions about climate change and other economical and political studies. It is a completely bias studies with zero scientific input and a lot of political agendas.