Accelerating smart grids roll-out.

7 minutes read: OpEd "?Accelerating smart grids roll-out?”?| Over the Horizon "Tomato pigment enhanced solar panels?" + news on Ben & Jerrys Cow's methane diet, US Supreme Court & Climate Change, G-7 Climate Club , from the desk of The Green Link's team.?

Op-Ed_

[ Accelerating smart grids roll-out ]

Energy producers are putting pressure on individual consumptions.

In a recent joint-announcement in France, EDF, Engie and Total Energies have tried to pass-on the guilt of potential winter energy shortage on current individual consumption - urging consumers to drastically reduce their energy usage.

Though it is true that with Ukraine's invasion and economic sanctions on oil & gas imports from Russia, Europe has a whole is potentially facing tougher times in the coming months up and until a stronger transition to renewable energy can be achieved.

But should the guilt be put on individual consumers, yet again?

It's not just Russia, it's also due to climate change.

Agreed, as Europe phases out imports from Russia, current stocks of gas especially will dwindle down as alternative sourcing are put in place or local renewable energy production capabilities are ramped-up. Being energy conscious is obviously the right thing to do, across the board.

However, it would be really unfair to put all the burden on individual consumption. If gas imports are absolutely suffering from recent decisions, we can also ramp-up biogas production capabilities - though these can be more locally produced and not managed by large companies like Total Energy.

And as for nuclear energy production, it's not that we're lacking nuclear fuel, far from it. The situation we have is an ageing nuclear plants park as well as life preservation restrictions that prevents EDF to operate at full capacity when the temperature of rivers, used to feed cooling tubes that ends up rejected back, is so high that dump-water temperature would kill the underwater biodiversity. That rise in temperature of rivers is due to climate change - and it puts a ceiling to how much nuclear energy can be produced so we do need renewable alternatives.

But alternative measures doesn't mean just lower energy consumption - especially by putting the guilt on individuals.

Thinking about energy as a finite quantity - one that we should share in an equal manner - is a 20th century fossil-fuel obsessed linear mindset.

If you take into consideration the potential of renewable energy production, then one of the solutions it to look for alternatives to grow the supply of energy. Adopting this growth mindset will help unleash new local jobs opportunities, increase local resiliency and yes, as a collateral effect increase the number of energy producers that will come on board, take risk and reap financial benefits at national level. This was in essence part of the message addressed Thierry Breton - Europe's Commix- in a rebuke to the joint statement by EDF, Engie & Total Energy.

Let's be frank, incumbent players are never keen to let newcomers in. That's where EU regulations and policies are needed. Because we are all in this together, we should collectively build the energy crisis solution roadmap.

We need regulation & policy support for the transition to electric "prosumers".

I was fortunate to be part of a panel in Brussels this Tuesday, as part of Microsoft "#EDT22 Europe Digital Transition" event, where hosted by Petra Cicek, Microsoft CEE Sustainability Lead and with fellow panelist Deirdre Cune, Member of the European Parliament, Phillip Cornell from Economist Impact, and Erik Sejetne from Northern Light. We discussed on "Digital and Sustainable Solutions supporting the twin transition".

Among the insights shared, one that struck me most was Phillip Cornell expressed concern about the pace at which Europe could support - both from a regulatory and financial perspective, and spearhead the roll-out of smart grids.

This underlying infrastructure is critical to allow both business and consumers to take advantage of the ever-dropping price of renewable energy systems - especially solar - to be able to both produce for their own needs and push back to the grid, and for the common good, the surplus of energy.

Now putting in place such a smart-grid will have its technical challenges no doubt, but maybe the most important one would be legacy oil & gas or energy producers that will fight like hell to defend what has been their territory over the past decades - being the only organisations allowed to create & distribute electricity or gas.

Yes, we have seen alternative energy suppliers to break down existing monopolies but we've seen from first-hand experience how infrastructure legacy organisations slow down the roll-out of local production capabilities at business and consumer level when the intention was to sell it back to the grid.

That would mean a massive change for these national infrastructure management organisation, switching from handling a few commercial relations with a small number of energy producers to being prepared to handle millions of suppliers (there are an estimated 37 million house in France and 42.5 million house in Germany just to start).

If Europe is serious about this energy transition, then it's time to act & fast. A little less conversation, a little more action. Please!

Call to action

One thing business cannot do is to wait for all regulations to come-in. Energy is critical to make a company run and with the current uncertainty about energy supply, the more autonomous one can become, the more resilient it will be. Now there are a couple of pragmatic actions that can be taken.

• Assess your current energy consumption level.
• Identify low-energy efficiency tools & machines and start looking for upgrades.
• If not already done, retrofit with LED-based lamps & neon-tubes as well as presence-detector
• Ask IT to track zombie servers & databases and implant a nightly shutdown policy for non critical electronics.
• Map-out where might you be able to install solar panels or even urban wind turbines and start planning implementation as quickly as possible.

Summer is almost here, but there's no time like the present. Winter is coming - as they say...

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Over the Cleantech horizon_?

[Tomato pigment enhanced solar panels?]

We need more renewables – there is no question about it. Solar panels legacy technology involved is silicone-based - an abundant element found in sand, so it’s rather inexpensive which has help bring down costs exponentially. It is estimated that about 95% of solar panels on the market today use either monocrystalline silicon or polycrystalline silicon as the semiconductor.

Silicone-based solar panels efficiency is somewhat limited to 32% - meaning it can only convert a third of the sun’s energy into electricity.?A typical silicon solar panel lasts for 20–25 years without significant performance losses.?

However cheap silicone-based solar panel technology is, it is not cheap enough to power the massive adoption we need, transforming every single building to “prosumers” – both producing and consuming onsite – reinjecting the surplus to a smart grid.

This is why scientists have turned to other raw-material for solar panel.??We’ve seen things from the James Dyson Award’s organic luminescent compounds made from fruits & vegetables - that have the ability to turn high?energy?ultraviolet (which silicone doesn’t address) into electricity – to rock-based approach’s using perovskite materials which are completely inorganic and particularly inexpensive / easy to manufacture.??

One of the beautiful things about perovskite is that it is an abundant raw material that can be found in the earth’s crust. However promising perovskite is – there are 2 main limitations that have been known to limit it from going mainstream and helping massively scale solar panel adoption.?

The first is due to the very nature of perovskite based solar-cells – because it’s a mixed material, it tends to degrade more rapidly than its older silicone counterpart. This original flaw has since been addressed with recent breakthroughs from Princeton Engineering researchers developing commercially viable solar cells with and expected of around 30 years, far more than the 20 years used as a threshold for viability for solar cells.

The second is perovskite’s energy efficiency – in 2009, it barely reached 3% but since has steadily improved to reach over 25% today.?A group of Chinese researchers from Jilin University is taking a new approach to tackle the efficiency issue using Lycopene – a natural antioxidant pigment found in vegetables like tomatoes, helping them become red. By adding this pigment, the team’s results indicate that lycopene can even reduce the density of electron traps, which improves the flow of electricity.?

There is great confidence that by combining all the current approaches, perovskite-based solar cells could be a game chance in the years to come.

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In the news_

[Ben & Jerry’s cows diet fights methane emissions]

It is a well-known fact that agriculture is a significant contributor to GHG, especially Methane which is 80 times more impactful than CO2. Cows are especially prompt due to their physiological system to release Methane whether from enteric emissions (burping) and manure (excrements).

The ice-cream maker Ben & Jerry’s is launching a project called Mootopia with 15 participating farms (split between the US and the Netherlands) to put in place new practices to lower methane emissions.?

This program includes innovative seaweed-based feed additive for cow’s food called Brominata and made the Blue Ocean Barns?company from dehydrated red seaweed grown in tanks in San Diego and Hawaii.?More details on the Mootopia program here.

[US Supreme Court could reverse climate change regulations]

The US Supreme Court recent reversal of Roe vs Wade on abortion might not be the only attempt to reverse things back to regressive 20th?century way of doing things. The New York Times reports that also in pipeline is another case - West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency – on which the US Supreme Court could severely limit the federal government’s authority to power plants CO2 emissions.

Interestingly, this case is brought by West Virginia, the same state, that we reported on in last week’s Catalyst, that is prohibiting major US banks, who have actively banned financial support to fossil-fuel companies, to do any business with the West Virginia State.

The US Climate Change agenda might suffer a significant blow if we have a one-side, fossil-fuel friendly US Supreme Court.??Strongly recommending reading this great NYT article by Coral Davenport – is has some great insights on the entangled stakeholder map.

[G-7 launches Climate Club]

A few days ago, as part of their regular meetings, the G7 members agreed to create a Climate Club – a mechanism aimed at taming international diversions carbon regulations. So far just an announcement - we definitely need more details on how this is going to work - but the plan is to have a working Climate Club by end of 2022.

As of today, dozens of such national regulations exists and their diversity could increase the risk of new trade conflicts around carbon pricing, green tariffs and carbon levies on imported goods from less environmental-friendly countries.

The hope is to spearhead, yet again, the climate transition but in a fairer way, helping mitigate disadvantages faced by companies doing business in regions with more ambitious carbon-reduction goals while putting pressure on non-members to adopt stricter climate protection measures. Additional details can be found here.

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