Sun, wind and batteries the only solutions waiting for new technologies
Imagine having to walk three hundred kilometers across the desert to escape an imminent threat. Imagine leaving with water only for the first hundred kilometers. You will tell yourself that the prospect of encountering an oasis after a hundred kilometers is likely and with that you set out on the road. But for now you don’t know where the oasis is.
The energy transition in which Europe is embarking is thus: a bet, with no alternatives, on what will happen next; a hope in technologies that are glimpsed but, in their present form, do not solve the problems.
No one today can say when the discoveries that will make it possible to preserve the climate by 2050 will be available. Yet the situation is so serious that postponing decisions would be irresponsible.
The 197 governments gathered in Glasgow these days are therefore asked to impose sacrifices on their citizens without knowing how much they will serve. This was seen a few days ago, when the United Nations published the report on the commitments undertaken by individual countries under the 2015 Paris Agreements. Governments must update the UN every five years regarding their targets for cutting gas emissions greenhouse effect. For now for the 162 governments that wrote to the United Nations draw the profile of a failure.
According to the UN, a 45% cut in greenhouse gas emissions (from 2010 levels) is needed by 2030 just to contain global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. The COP26 states are not going in that direction. The commitments of the main countries (all except China) foresee a 10% drop in emissions, less than a quarter of what is necessary. If China is added, the UN expects a 15.9% increase in greenhouse gases by 2030.
In Glasgow, climate Sherpas already understood that their negotiations would not dissolve the threat. Only new technologies can do this. But are they ready?
The World Energy Outlook for 2020 from the International Energy Agency (IEA) provides the most sincere answer. The necessary CO2 abatement would presuppose – we read – a change of pace in the speed at which technological innovation takes place and in the scale at which the decisive technologies such as the capture, use and sequestration of carbon, hydrogen and small modular nuclear power plants.
The most important answer for now must be added to the list: renewable sources, on which the Italian Recovery is also focusing. Because all these answers would be useful: none are enough on their own, none completely ready and all carry with them unresolved contradictions.
Given the climate of our country, the plan for renewables assumes, for example, a contribution from photovoltaics for over four fifths of the total. But precisely the calculations on Italy reveal how this is a response to the emergency, at the same time necessary and in itself insufficient in the long run.
In fact, an underlying problem of renewables is their intermittency: at night there is no sun and the wind does not always blow. It makes it necessary to store the electricity accumulated in batteries that today require rare materials such as lithium, cobalt or nickel.
But is it possible to ensure the transition only with light and wind? Giuseppe Zollino, professor of technology and economics of energy in Padua, estimates that to power Italy with renewables even at night, batteries with a storage capacity of 400 Gigawatt hours would be needed.
Yet in 2019 the entire world production of lithium-ion batteries generated a lower storage capacity than what Italy needs at night: just 320 gigawatt hours. And lithium or cobalt is scarce. It is no coincidence that the first increased by 290% in the last year, the second by 77%.
The fact remains that Italy has a strong need for renewables to reach the CO2 cut expected by 2030. After that, it will need technological breakthroughs that for now can only be glimpsed: metal-air coils that do not use rare metals or a clear progress in recycling which, without progress, according to the IEA by 2040 will be able to cover only 8% of the demand.
Since 1996 Equinor, the Norwegian hydrocarbon giant, has been capturing CO2 from the spill in its Sleipner field in the North Sea. So the technology exists and can be applied to gas-fired power plants or chimneys of steel and cement factories.
Capturing emissions costs around € 70 per tonne, just over the current price of emission rights. But in the long run, there would be no room to sequester the captured carbon. And the capture of CO2 in the atmosphere, where it is much more dispersed, requires enormous amounts of energy. Bill Gates is betting on this mode, but a lot of progress will be needed.
the modular nuclear power plants, no bigger than a container, they already power submarines and aircraft carriers. The next ten years will tell if they are replicable for civilian use. And the next few decades will tell when the nuclear fusion, which can solve many problems because it does not produce waste. The only way to find new technologies, says Zollino. For now, we cannot afford to rule out any approach. The journey started. The oasis, at the moment, marked in pencil on the paper.
November 3, 2021 (change November 3, 2021 | 07:44)
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