Tag Archives: Ecosystems & Fitness Landscapes

Molten Salt Nuclear Reactors- so what’s there not to like?

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Visual Source: Seaborg Technologies

Let’s discuss Nuclear in different ways than the present discussion has gone. Nuclear has been not given the debate it deserves. That needs changing in my view.

This is largely from the use of salt! Well, actually, small modular reactors offer a Nuclear future as part of our clean energy requirements.

I wrote a piece recently, “the Elephant that should be in the Energy Debate,” and it is largely because of the technology, safety and reality of what Nuclear offers in new approaches and designs that make it have a real place to be at the Energy Transition table.

Firstly what is a molten salt reactor (MSR)?

It is a class of nuclear fission reactors where the primary coolant and/or the fuel is a molten salt mixture. There are several different designs, all looking to bring small modular reactors (SMR) to market.

MSR has significant advantages over traditional nuclear reactors. Continue reading →

A decade pivotal to a clean energy future.

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Explicit Milestones within this report are staggering in implications

The International Energy Agency (IEA) released its most comprehensive report “Net Zero by 2050: a roadmap for the Global Energy Sector” on 18th May 2021.

The roadmap outlined underscores how pivotal this current decade is to ever reach net-zero by mid-century. In my opinion, it is the next three to five years that will determine this. If we fail to drive down emissions into a really sharp decline through a global political will we are in serious trouble.

It is only through strong and credible energy policies and significant investment into clean energy solutions we will get onto any pathway. If we fail to recognize the overwhelming needs to change we can say goodbye to 2050 as a net-zero target, then that will have colossal economic and climatic consequences. Continue reading →

Mobilizing Innovation around Energy Poverty

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Mobilizing Innovation around Energy Poverty

Credit Muhammad Muzamil, Unsplash

As we look across innovation for our energy transition solutions, let’s think a little more about social innovation. What is energy poverty? Why is this important to turn our innovative abilities towards resolving?

Energy poverty has no universal definition. Each country is at different levels of understanding. Here in Europe, I read a white paper by Schneider Electric, released in 2018, entitled “Overcoming poverty in Europe.”

There is no official definition of “energy poverty”, but to start somewhere, it can be described as the struggle to afford the ever-increasing cost of heating or lighting in homes or being able to cook food or heat water as a result of low income or bills that are too high. Energy poverty leads to suffering from the cold in winter and from the heat in summer. Continue reading →

Planning concurrent shifts in Power Generation

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With so much change in fuel sources, the power generation sector has some significant challenges to tackle

The pressure to reduce the concentration of Co2 in the atmosphere is driving a significant change in power generation management.

The combined forces of a growing source of cheaper fuel generation from renewables (solar and wind), the continuing high levels of global Co2 attributed to fossil fuel combustion above 40% of all global emissions need further change.  Along with the continued, increasing demand for electricity as heat sources in buildings or factories are being replaced from fossil burning to electricity-driven heat pumps, and other equipment for greater efficiency, the power generation industry is arguable undergoing a sea-change on the creation and dispatching of energy.

Emission reductions are needed across all sectors. Continue reading →

Shaping the Power Generation sector

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I recently viewed a Power Generation survey conducted a year or so back and found it valuable to motivate change. It was centred on the Middle East Power Generation sector and conducted by Siemens to help them understand future power generation’s underlying trends.

This Siemens survey had as the main question to the survey: “Which trends do you think are currently having the biggest impact on the power generation sector in your region“.

Now in reading this, we have to recognize this is the Middle East with an abundance of oil and gas, but are the trends similar for other regions of the world? The responses I would suggest are certainly reflecting a global movement; the ranking orders might vary. They bring out the opportunities and challenges all power generation is going through presently, I would think. Continue reading →

Carefully managing and resolving Power Generation

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Visual by dreamstime.com

Currently, renewables are the fastest-growing source of new power generation capacity and meet increased demand for electricity.

This renewable growth, expected to continue well into the future, is a combination of a growing public awareness of climate change issues, the realization that the continued scale of cost declines provides cheaper generation, continued advances in solar and wind technologies, and favourable policies have provided this dramatic shift.

I will be looking across power generation in a series of posts in the coming weeks- so taking this as my opening post.

Is this renewable shift enough on its own to manage the future Power Generation needs? Continue reading →

The crucial role Innovation must play in the Energy system

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Innovation is vital to the energy system’s integration and operation design, and we need to further recognize its crucial role. I believe we undertake a radical transformation in the way we supply, transform, and use energy. This requires a profound transformation in technologies, systems, and infrastructure.

Innovation is made up of many enabling technologies that support energy. This complexity requires innovative approaches to be built in highly systematic ways. Its ultimate result is to offer innovation that can continually look for re-imagining new market designs and business models to stimulate the changes and solutions for our future energy transformation.

Innovation needs to be transformational, offer greater value than what it is replacing, show the real advantage, set out to achieve competitive gains and offer a higher level of sustainability, value and impact.

We need an innovative mantra for energy.

Energy is a vital part of any country’s ability to be competitive. Today half the world’s capital is invested in energy and its related infrastructure as it is the backbone of any industrial and urbanization strategy.

Our need is to keep pushing for discoveries, for experimentation, for demonstrating. We must nurture innovation, and we must continuously look for ways to facilitate its pathway. Continue reading →

Our need for a climate-friendly energy source

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We need to find a climate-friendly energy source that overcomes those current end-use sectors that are hard to electrify as they need to require high-intensity heat levels than coal and natural gas provides. These high-grade industry heat sectors, known as hard-to-abate, such as steel and chemicals, some heavy transport, aviation, shipping, agriculture, and industrial feedstocks, need to put in place a clean energy carrier.

Enter Hydrogen, reinvigorated and repurposed based on Renewables and new Technology designs

Presently Hydrogen is the only feasible route for at-scale decarbonization. It is a highly versatile, clean, and flexible energy vector. So many have evaluated the potential of hydrogen sector by sector that ramping up Hydrogen is needed to achieve any energy transition in an efficient and economically attractive way.

The problem today is that Hydrogen is simply not (yet) fit for large-scale deployment. The accepted wisdom is Hydrogen is a really good solution as a clean energy carrier, feedstock, and fuel. It can facilitate the extensive scale integration of renewables through conversion from H2O to pure Hydrogen (H2). Continue reading →

Are we seeing the Apple of Hydrogen in Plug Power?

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This Monday, January 11th, 2021 Plug Power (PLUG) closed at $53.97 in the latest share trading session, it has gained 98% over the past month. Today with a fresh expansion announcement it is standing at $64.02 at this moment of time. Clearly, Plug Power is outpacing the Industrial Sector. It belongs as one of the alternative energy company stocks that focuses on green hydrogen, the present ultimate answer to as close as you can get to a zero-carbon fuel.

So what is going on? What is causing this incredible jump and market sentiment?

To add a little more to this “what is going on” let me do something else.

Why do I compare Plug Power to Apple in past years? It is simply how its stock has rapidly accelerated away in the past year or perhaps the growing expectation of sizable growth to come, on new products and market penetration. 

A year ago, Plug Power struggled to raise money, but it has been executing on a plan consistently in the past few years that is beginning to pay off. Continue reading →