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Since the dawn of the first industrial revolution 250 years ago there has been a clear correlation between the Energy intensity of economies and economic growth. That is certainly still true in many emerging markets. However, when we look at highly developed economies like the USA and parts of Europe the Energy intensity of the economy is declining, but data intensity is rising.

The pursuit of nuclear fusion is inspired by the collision of atomic nuclei in stars, which fuse together to form helium atoms and release huge amounts of Energy in the process. If we can recreate this process we could have an inexhaustible supply of Energy on our hands that brings no harmful by-products, such as carbon dioxide emissions or the radioactive waste generated at nuclear fission-based power plants like Fukushima and Chernobyl.

But to do that we need to create Sun-like conditions here on Earth, which calls to mind one requirement first and foremost – incredible amounts of heat. Tokamak Energy hopes to achieve this through what's known as merging compression, where running high currents through two symmetrical magnet coils generates two rings of plasma, or electrically charged gas, around them.

The ITER tokomak being constructed in the south of France is based on technology from the 1970s. It is coming at the problem of containing plasma by building a big containment unit which is costing upwards of $30 billion. Today, much stronger magnetic fields can be attained through the use of superconductors. That means experiments can be much smaller and cost a fraction of the ITER model.

A few million will be put aside for ‘blue sky’ research but the real money will go to a consortium led by Rolls-Royce to develop a series of 440 megawatt SMRs for £2.5bn each, drawing on Rolls’ experience building PWR3 reactors for nuclear submarines. The company bills it as part of a “national endeavour’ that will create 40,000 skilled jobs. It requires matching start-up funds of £500m from the state. 

I find myself torn since these ambitions are commendable. They revive a homegrown British sector, akin to the success in aerospace. It is exactly what Theresa May’s industrial strategy should be. Rolls-Royce is a superb company with layers of depth and a global brand. It could genuinely hope to capture an export bonanza.  

Yet the venture looks all too like a scaled-down version of Sizewell, plagued by the same defects as the old reactors, less flexible than advertised, and likely to spew yet more plutonium waste.  

Rolls Royce insists that the design is novel and can slash costs by relying on components small enough to be manufactured in factories. “Everything can be cut down to size and put on a lorry,” said a spokesman.  

Rolls-Royce has said the design can slash costs by relying on components small enough to be manufactured in factories It aims for £65 MWh by the fifth plant, dropping to £60 once the scale is ramped up to seven gigawatts (GW), with exports targeting a putative £400bn global market.  

 

A decade ago the UK went from being an oil and gas exporter to an importer, as the North Sea oil fields hit peak production, and the cost of production began to rise. That represents a considerable headwind to growth from a sector which had been a tailwind for decades previously. When people bemoan declining living standards and the rising cost of living, one of the first places to look has to be the Energy sector and absence of a clear strategy to promote Energy independence. 

New York. This is more of a theoretical exercise, since in NY, wind/solar comprise only 3% of electricity generation. But in principle, NY could also reduce CO2 emissions to 90 MT per GWh in exchange for a ~15% increase in system costs. One difference vs California is that NY’s build-out would start from a much lower base. The other difference is that storage is less optimal given lower NY solar capacity factors. Instead, a more cost-effective approach to reaching the deeper 60% emissions reduction target would be to build more wind/solar and discard (“curtail”) the unused amount, and not build any storage.

Conclusions. Scale and innovation are creating cost-benefit tradeoffs for decarbonizing the grid that are more favorable than they were just a few years ago, even when including backup thermal power costs. However, this is likely to be a gradual process rather than an immediate one. Bottlenecks of the past were primarily related to the high capital cost of wind, solar and storage equipment. The next phase of the renewable electricity journey involves bottlenecks of the future: public policy and the construction/cost of transmission are two of the larger ones7. As is usually the case with renewables, there’s a lot of hyperbole out there. The likely trajectory: renewables meet around one third of US electricity demand in 2040, with fossil fuels still providing almost twice that amount

Energy storage solutions have been evolving for a long time but the advances in battery technology has potential to revolutionise the sector. However he cost of those batteries still needs to come down a lot for them to truly have a transformational impact on the cost of generating and storing Energy. What is clear from the above report is that the continued build out of renewable Energy solutions, with or without storage, represents an additional cost for consumers over the lengthy medium term without a major advancement in battery technology.  

“I have been early twice in financing the low carbon Energy transition,” says Bruce Huber, cofounder of the Alexa Capital advisory group. “But we feel it’s third time lucky.”

One reason for his optimism is what he calls the “tectonic plateshifting” in the car industry that is driving down the cost of Energy storage. Storing clean power has long been a holy green grail but prohibitive costs have put it out of reach. This has begun to change as battery production has ramped up to meet an expected boom in electric cars.

Lithium ion battery prices have halved since 2014, and many analysts think prices will fall further as a slew of large battery factories are built.

The best known is Tesla and Panasonic’s huge Nevada “gigafactory”. Tesla claims that once it reaches full capacity next year, it will produce more lithium ion batteries annually than were made worldwide in 2013.

It is only one of at least 14 megafactories being built or planned, says Benchmark Minerals, a research group. Nine are in China, where the government is backing electric cars with the zeal it has directed at the solar industry.

Could this lead to a China-led glut like the one that helped drive solar industry writeoffs and crashing prices after the global financial crisis?

“It’s something to watch,” says Francesco Starace, chief executive of Italy’s Enel, Europe’s largest power company.

The thirst for electric cars, not least in China, means “the dynamics of demand are completely different” for batteries than for solar panels, he adds.

Still, Enel’s internal forecasts show battery costs falling by about 30 per cent between 2018 and 2021 and it is among the companies already pairing batteries with solar panels to produce electricity after dark in sunny places where power is expensive, such as the Chilean desert.

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The main objections to renewable Energy are focused on intermittency and their reliance on subsidies. However economies of scale and the application of technology represent reasons for why we should be optimistic these can be overcome over the medium term. That represents a significant challenge for both the established Energy and utility sectors. 

Right now we are talking about a time when solar and wind will be able to compete without subsidies on an increasing number of projects. However if we continue on that path there is potential for the sector to be a victim of its own success because the lower prices go and the more fixed prices are abandoned the greater the potential for volatility in Energy pricing. 

“Certainly it would be a challenge for anyone to make money at that price,” Osborne said in an e-mail. “The blended cost for most last quarter was about 36 cents to 38 cents.”

The current price is also lower than cost estimates from Trina. The biggest supplier of 2015 expected to reduce costs to about 40 cents a watt by the end of the year, from 45 cents in the second quarter, Chief Financial Officer Merry Xu said in an August conference call. The Changzhou, China-based company’s shareholders on Dec. 16 agreed to a $1.1 billion deal to take the company private. A spokesman declined to comment Friday.

Some companies’ cost structures remain competitive, even with prices this low. Canadian Solar Inc., the second-biggest supplier, reported costs of 37 cents in the third quarter, down from 39 cents in the second quarter. The company has said its costs are among the lowest in the industry, and it expects to reach 29 cents a watt by the fourth quarter of 2017. Many of its competitors expect costs in the low 30s by then, Osborne said.

 

Producing solar cells in an environment where prices are falling and likely to continue to fall as new technologies are integrated into the manufacturing process is a highly competitive business. Companies unable to compete will go bankrupt and even the most successful face the threat of obsolescence. Consumers are the primary beneficiaries. 

OPEC has just decided a headline cut of 1.2 million b/d

We calculate that compared with October secondary sources in the OPEC report, the net OPEC cut from the 11 participating countries in the deal is 0.982 million b/d

Angola was allowed to use September output as the base instead of October

The cartel will use secondary sources to monitor output reductions
Indonesia, Libya and Nigeria is not part of the deal

Since the cartel has distributed quotas to the different countries, have organized a monitoring committee and are using secondary sources, the deal is very bullish to the oil price

 

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Brent crude oil hit a new recovery high today and upside follow through tomorrow would confirm a return to demand dominance beyond what has been an impressive two-day rally. Considering the fact that the price has been rangebound for the last six months the potential for a breakout that is outsized relative to the amplitude of the congestion area cannot be discounted. 

Yer man, while I often feel like I am part of the new old economy. I am not concerned in the near term that electric vehicles will have mass adoption. I am puzzled how the electrical grid will power all these new super cars? Coal which is the worst emitter of GHG's is the primary source of electrical generation in North America and that is being phased out for natural gas as you know. The environmental movement is flawed with hypocrisy and makes no economic sense. In Canada the govt has chosen to demonize the oil and gas industry which funds the majority of our social services and yet we bail out Bombardier and the auto industry. I sound like a grumpy old man.

Thanks for this topical comment to a piece I posted on Friday. It’s been a long time since we shared an apartment in London; when we were both new to London, and I’m glad you’re still in the heat of the action in Calgary. I think everyone finds it hard not to be grumpy when things are not going one’s way at any age. 

This article from the state.com from 2014 estimates that if every car in America was an electric vehicle it would represent only about a 30% increase in electricity demand because electric vehicles are more efficient. 

7. Better Batteries
Solar and wind power have seemingly limitless potential, but since they're intermittent sources of Energy, they need to be stored. That’s why there’s a race to build a better battery. The lithium-ion standard bearer, introduced by Sony two-plus decades ago for personal electronics, can be pricey—especially for large uses—and flammable. So every few weeks comes an announcement of a new idea.

Harvard researchers unveiled a flow battery made with cheap, non-toxic, high-performance materials that they say won’t catch fire. “It is a huge step forward. It opens this up for anyone to use,” says Michael Aziz, Harvard University engineering professor and co-author of a study in the journal Science. (Find out how this flow battery works.) Also this year, MIT and DOE announced promising advances that could make batteries better and cheaper.

The battery push has gone beyond the lab. In May, Tesla’s Musk unveiled battery products that he plans to mass-produce in his $5 billion Gigafactory in Nevada. The products include the sleek, mountable Powerwall unit that SolarCity, a company he chairs, is putting in homes. This month, in the first such offering from a U.S. utility, Vermont’s Green Mountain Power began selling or leasing the Powerwall to customers. (Here are five reasons this battery is a big deal.)

Other companies are challenging Musk. Pittsburgh-based Aquion Energy, a spinoff from Carnegie Mellon University, began selling its saltwater battery stacks last year. German storage developer Sonnen said this month that it’s ramping up production of its lithium-ion battery at its facility in San Jose, California, for use in U.S. homes.

 

Symbiosis is popular in nature but it is becoming increasingly clear that it also has a role to play in sustaining the pace of technological innovation. Renewable Energy technologies such as wind and solar are progressing rapidly but they will always suffer from intermittency without corresponding innovation in storage for both consumer and industrial uses. This has been painfully slow to follow because it takes time for capital invested in research to deliver results and yet the signs are promising that the next really big enabler with occur among chemical companies. 

Stepping back for a moment, on September 3rd, Tesla’s Founder Elon Musk reiterated his commitment to source materials from Nevada. However, that pledge did not necessarily mean another sourcing deal, announced so soon, or that it would be for lithium. Other materials besides lithium will be required. Cobalt and graphite, (among others), will also be needed to feed Tesla’s massive giga-factory in Nevada. I find this agreement to be highly noteworthy in the sense that Tesla’s growing need for lithium, perhaps more so than that for cobalt and graphite, represents the single most important raw material need. I imagine that other lithium agreements will be signed in coming months. Without question, Nevada wants further lithium deals to come from Nevada.

The fall in oil prices has had a knock-on effect on most Energy related sectors as the relative economics of various alternatives have changed. Lithium miners have been no exception and this has been despite the fact lithium prices have not fallen. Demand for lithium-ion batteries in everything from consumer goods to cars and planes has helped fuel major investment and a large number of explorers are now listed. However securing an agreement to supply Tesla’s factory is a major coup for Pure Energy.

If the storage breakthrough is coming, it seems obvious it would happen in California, which has long led the U.S. in supporting alternative Energy. The state has the most demanding fuel-efficiency standards for cars, as well as incentives that have made it the biggest market for solar power in the U.S.

California “is often a lab” for the rest of the country, said Brian Warshay, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. It will “continue to be so on the storage front.”

Older methods of trying to store power have existed for decades, including pumped hydropower facilities in which water is sent to higher elevation reservoirs and released through lower turbines to produce electricity when demand is high.

 

Here is a link to Tesla’s website where they highlight some of the key features of the Powerwall battery. Perhaps the most important consideration today is that almost no one has a battery in their home and that in a decade it could be commonplace. I reviewed the residential battery sector on April 23rd. 

As much as smoothing out supply and demand curves for electricity use in the home are interesting, the industrial and utility sectors are just as exciting.