By REG CROWDER

https://www.maritimesustainabilitynews.com/

If you’ve been following the writing of Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates

[https://www.gatesnotes.com/] you will have heard two fairly sensible observations about the transition to zero carbon emissions by 2050:

(1)  The transition will require a lot of capital investment, although much of that money was going to be spent anyway, even if the world continued to be heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

(2)  A lot of the technology that is needed to complete the transition in a way that makes economic sense has already been developed and is ready to be put to work. BUT a lot of innovative new technology ALSO remains to be developed to reach the objective by the target date and at a cost that the world economy can survive.

So, that leaves me asking where the rest of the money and innovation will come from. MUCH TO MY SURPRISE there is a good answer to that.

Bottom line: PitchBook, the gold standard for information on venture capital, says investors are ready today to finance the transition to a zero carbon emissions world. I was relieved to discover that the analysts at PitchBook and I are worrying about a lot of the same things.

Late last year the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced a successful experiment relating to nuclear fusion. I spent some time looking beyond the headlines and discovered there was less there than met the eye. A clue was that while a few politicians described the results of the experiment as a “breakthrough,” the scientists characterized the achievement as a “milepost.”

No problem with the scientists. They were respecting the data. I’m comfortable with that. The politicians were warming us up for more subsidies for fusion power research. I’m uncomfortable about that. But I’m not going to launch a campaign to stop them. Yet.

My own suspicion is that by 2050 fusion won’t be commercially producing enough electricity to charge my smartphone. One time.

I started worrying that the public might think that the campaign against global warming is on the cusp of being won and that fusion power would miraculously swoop in and fix everything. Then, PitchBook published two analyses, “Fusion ‘breakthrough’ won’t overshadow renewable energy sources” by senior analyst John MacDonagh and “Nuclear fusion need not apply: Planet-saving tech is ready to scale” by senior editor John Thorne. I will quote from both.

MacDonaugh notes that investors in renewable energy startups are putting only a modest portion of their capital into fusion, relative to other approaches:

“Over the last five years, we have tracked 43 deals in fusion startups totaling $4.5 billion. This compares to overall funding levels of $38.6 billion for the entire clean energy vertical, with the solar photovoltaic and grid-scale battery technology segments representing the largest investment areas in the vertical.”

In other words, the people responsible for investing capital in order to deliver financial returns high enough to justify risk-taking and innovation are mostly betting on non-fusion alternative energy technologies. For the moment the spotlight seems to be on solar generation and battery-based energy storage.

Thorne notes that even if things go well commercial fusion is decades away. And we can’t wait that long:

“The task at hand is upending the global energy system, so more moonshots are certainly merrier. But the climate is not waiting, and dozens of other clean energy technologies are ready for prime time. Moreover, politicians finally seem ready to spend money to accelerate their deployment.

“Venture investors say the primary challenge for climate-tech startups is no longer deep-tech breakthroughs. It's time to scale. But how do they do it? New business models, big-name partnerships and gigatons of software.”

One of my personal heroes, R. Buckminster Fuller had some things to say about how to bring about that kind of change:

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.

To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

— Reg Crowder is editor-in-chief of Maritime Sustainability News. Beyond that, he has written the NVCA SmartBrief, published by SmartBrief in partnership with the National Venture Capital Association, since it was launched in 2014. [https://www2.smartbrief.com/rest/sign-up/EC90EF39-E560-458F-82E9-15A63E17EF5A]

Twitter: @RegCrowder

Mastodon:  reg_crowder@mastodon.world

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/regcrowder/

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Sources:

“Fusion ‘breakthrough’ won’t overshadow renewable energy sources,” John MacDonagh, https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/nuclear-fusion-solar-wind-analysis

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“Nuclear fusion need not apply: Planet-saving tech is ready to scale,” James Thorne, “https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/climate-outlook-2023-vc-startups

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“Q3 2022 Clean Energy Report,” John MacDonagh, https://pitchbook.com/news/reports/q3-2022-clean-energy-report

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Photo credit: Solar panels on white roof: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Photovoltaik_Dachanlage_Hannover_-_Schwarze_Heide_-_1_MW.jpg — This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

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Image above: The Hywind Scotland Wind Farm, the world’s first commercial floating offshore wind farm, has just completed its fifth year of producing enough electricity to meet the needs of 34,000 homes. Photo courtesy of Equinor - https://www.equinor.com/ - Copyright © Equinor

By REG CROWDER

The Hywind Scotland Wind Farm, the world’s first commercial floating offshore wind farm, just had its fifth birthday. I think the whole world should be celebrating.

This floating offshore wind technology can’t be dismissed as a theoretical exercise any more. It actually works. I am SO relieved!

If you follow renewable energy closely, you’re going to hear a lot about floating wind farms for the next few years. There’s a reason for that: The technology opens a lot of new options and overcomes a lot of obstacles.

Because floating wind farms are anchored to the sea bottom with cables rather than rigid frameworks, they can be installed in much deeper water than those that rely on rigid structures. That gets them further away from the shore and reduces the likelihood of the wind farm interfering with activities closer to shore. Beyond that, they can be installed further at sea to gain access to more wind and, of course, more energy. 

And let’s not forget that oceans cover just over 70% of the Earth’s surface. Finding a way to get the wind farms into deeper water buys us a lot of new “elbow room” for our technology

In theory, the plans for floating wind farms looked like they would work when presented as proposed pilot projects.. But would they really work in the real world in a place famous for its fierce storms, the North Sea? Five years ago the Hywind Scotland Wind Farm about 18 miles off the coast of Peterhead, Scotland, was commissioned and started generating electricity. And five years later it is still up and running and generating enough electricity to meet the needs of about 34,000 homes.

In the offshore wind industry it is customary to refer to offshore wind farm technology as “offshore wind.” When possible, I will embrace that practice in the rest of this discussion.

Despite waves at times almost 10 meters (33 feet) high, Hywind Scotland has been converting a remarkable proportion of the wind that it captures to electricity. The metric for this efficiency is called the capacity factor. This metric is calculated by dividing the average amount of power generated by the maximum rated capacity of the wind turbines.

The University of Michigan Center for Sustainable Systems  said in its “Wind Energy Factsheet”  [Pub. No. CSS07-09] published in 2021 that by 2022 newly-built offshore wind projects could be expected to reach a 51% capacity factor. The Hywind Scotland offshore wind project HAS ALREADY TOPPED THAT! Hywind Scotland which was placed in commercial service five years ago has achieved an average 54% capacity factor over the five years it has been operating.

This offshore wind project was built by Equinor [https://www.equinor.com/], a global energy company headquartered  in Stavanger, Norway, with the strong support of the Scottish Government [https://www.offshorewindscotland.org.uk/] which has many more offshore wind projects planned to harvest energy from the wind to make life better and more prosperous for the people of Scotland.

William Munn, plant manager of Hywind Scotland, said the experience of operating this offshore wind facility has given Equinor a deep understanding of how to cope with harsh weather, powerful winds and enormous waves:

“Operating the Hywind Scotland project for the past five years has informed Equinor of some of the unique challenges associated with a floating wind farm, and the rewards if we get it right. Because of its location and the harsh weather conditions it encounters, Hywind Scotland has exposure to higher wind speeds than we typically see on a fixed-bottom wind farm, but also has to withstand large waves, while continuing to produce power with wave heights of 10 meters. Due to the environment, unique operations and maintenance methods have been required, such as a high-performance crew transfer vessel that can continue operations in higher-than-standard transfer conditions.”

And Equinor isn’t keeping all of that it has learned to itself. The company is publishing its operational data on Hywind Scotland online so it can be used by academic researchers and energy sector suppliers. [And ME! I didn’t ask anybody for permission. I just went to the website and spent some time reviewing the operational data, to make sure it really was there. It was!}

If you want to get really serious about digging into the operational data, start at this URL:   https://pod.ore.catapult.org.uk

This is what Sebastian Bringsværd, then-head of Floating Wind Development at Equinor, now with Aker Offshore Wind, had to say when  this extraordinary level of transparency was put into practice:

“This initiative shows Equinor’s strong commitment to support dissemination and education in the UK and abroad, as well as providing a platform for collaboration across the floating wind supply chain. Floating offshore wind is a cornerstone in our renewable strategy to become an offshore wind major and we believe this technology will play a key role in delivering the UK’s Sector Deal and decarbonisation goals.”

Bottom line: The real-world success of Hywind Scotland is something to celebrate.

— Reg Crowder Twitter: @RegCrowder Mastodon:  reg_crowder@mastodon.world

Image above: US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm [right] offers her views on the importance of achieving fusion ignition during an experiment at the  National Ignition Facility which is part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. URL:https://www.llnl.gov/news/shot-ages-fusion-ignition-breakthrough-hailed-one-most-impressive-scientific-feats-21st 

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory grants certain permissions to reuse content created by Lawrence Livermore. These permissions are governed by Creative Commons copyright license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, more commonly referred to as "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike." License URL:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/   

By REG CROWDER 

A lot of attention was given to the recent fusion energy “breakthrough” achieved by scientists at  the  Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. And I have no quarrel with that. It WAS  a big deal within the world of science. It was claimed by many to be the first time that fusion initiated in a laboratory produced more energy than it consumed. In a very narrow sense, that may be true.

I quickly became weary of the nonsense from the non-scientists who spoke of a world in which fusion provides unlimited cheap zero-emission energy. Cheap? Just to get this far the taxpayers had to pay for a facility full of lasers the size of a sports stadium. 

But then I drilled down into the numbers and became utterly disgusted. The experiment delivered 2.05 megajoules of energy to a pea-sized target. The scientists are of the opinion that their data shows that the fusion ignition then produced 3.15 megajules of energy, or more than 50% in excess of what hit the target. However, that’s not the whole story. While it is probably true that 2.05 megajules struck the target, the total consumption of energy by all of the lasers used in the experiment was about 322 megajules. In other words the experiment demonstrated that the fusion ignition generated less than 1% of the energy required to create it.

I am not impressed. And I’m not alone. 

Dr. David A. Hammer, a professor of nuclear energy engineering at Cornell University, offered some clarity on the matter of what is going on here, sharing his thoughts with the science and technology journal, Nature:

“It’s a big milestone, but [the US National Ignition Facility at the  Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory] is not a fusion-energy device. NIF was not designed to be efficient. It was designed to be the biggest laser we could possibly build to give us the data we need for the [nuclear] stockpile research programme.”

Similarly, to their great credit, the scientists doing the work are not peddling nonsense about what this “breakthrough” really means. Most of them use the word “milestone” to describe the successful fusion ignition, rather than “breakthrough.”

Dr. Kimberly S. Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, warned of the daunting engineering challenges that would have to be overcome to commercialize fusion energy: “... Probably with concerted effort and investment, a few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plant.” 

My translation: In 2050 will I be able to charge my phone with commercial electricity produced by nuclear fusion? Probably not.

— Reg Crowder Twitter: @RegCrowder Mastodon:  reg_crowder@mastodon.world

Image above: BAR Technologies WindWing system. Photo courtesy of BAR Technologies. Web: https://www.bartechnologies.uk/?s=WindWing

I think it started a long time ago when my beard was black instead of gray. I was a 20-something newspaper reporter leaning up against the rear bulkhead of the bridge of a general purpose coastal tanker delivering refined petroleum products to customers in a tight little harbor that wasn’t terribly forgiving of mistakes in navigation. I thought I had made myself almost invisible in the shadows. It was some time after midnight and at least two hours before local sunrise.

The tide was almost slack and there didn’t seem to be a lot of wind but visibility wasn’t great and we were enveloped in darkness so intense that it seemed to swallow up light when it got more than a few hundred yards from the ship.

The captain watched intently as the harbor pilot gave instructions to the helmsman on the bridge and three tugboats and one line boat maneuvering the tanker toward the next delivery point. When that delivery was completed and things calmed down, the captain turned to me and said in a magnificent Greek accent; “You, reporter boy. You look sleepy. Drink some of this Greek coffee. You no sleep for three day.” The captain was alert to EVERYTHING going on, including the sleepy reporter in the shadows behind him.

We didn’t hit anything or spill anything that night. It was a good night.

On land I had heard passionate arguments about whether a proposed construction project would be a hazard to navigation. That was why I was on the ship. I thought that might help me clarify how I should think about the arguments being offered about this project. It did point me in the right direction. Focus on “what works.”

I didn’t hear any philosophy on the ship that night. I heard people who knew what they were doing working very hard to do their jobs correctly. Our little tanker didn’t do any harm to the Earth that night. Thank you.

I have noticed that a lot of the wind, solar, tidal and wave energy technology being put to work to bring the Earth to zero carbon emissions is making use of the world’s oceans. Most of the world’s population is clustered along coastlines. So, using the oceans to make the energy they need makes all the sense in the world. Of course, maritime technology can also do a lot to conserve energy and minimize the emissions of greenhouse gasses. That is the reason for my specific interest in maritime innovation.

And that’s why I am creating “Maritime Sustainability News.” I want to talk about innovations that have a chance of working in the real world to bring the Earth to sustainability. And if these innovations are already being implemented, and proving their value, so much the better.

— Reg Crowder, Editor-in-Chief, Maritime Sustainability News, Earth