APRIL 10, 2024

Hello! Our latest edition:

• Reporting from Australia, Bill writes about one state’s ambitious clean energy goals.
• Cat has an explainer on how to squeeze out more energy from our current electricity grid.
• In our Data Dive, Cat charts carbon removal growth. 

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.

Send your energy photos, story tips and more to news@ciphernews.com.

Illustration by Nadya Nickels.

Australia’s top renewable energy state aims for more, much more

BY: BILL SPINDLE

ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA — Australia, one of the most fossil fuel-dependent countries in the world, is starting to see itself as a potential renewable energy superpower.

The nation has a relatively small population — just under 30 million people — residing almost entirely on its coastal fringe. The interior is a vast open space soaked in sun most days and swept by strong winds most nights (as well as days). The combination gives Australia some of the best renewable energy resources in the world.

The question, increasingly, is what to do with it. The state of South Australia, tucked into the country’s underbelly, is providing some of the answers, according to renewable energy advocates in the country.

Check out Bill’s full dispatch from South Australia here.

Highlights here:

“It’s not only leading Australia, it’s leading the world,” said Tim Buckley, director of Climate Energy Finance, an Australian think tank that advocates for renewable energy in the country.

At the turn of the century, the state was as dependent on fossil fuels for power as the country is today, which is to say almost completely. It began adding wind power after about 2007 and has seen a burst of solar in recent years, with a surge in battery storage in the past five years.

Now, three years after the state legislature passed a resolution officially declaring a "global climate emergency," the state is generating more renewable energy than it can often use. Wind, solar and batteries are being built up into what state leaders see as a foundation for the growth of clean energy industries. Those include products derived from hydrogen made with clean electricity, such as ammonia and iron ore.

“Our experience is if you challenge the market, the market will respond,” one South Australia government official told Bill during his visit to the state.

Read the full article on Cipher’s website.

Lunchtime Reads and Hot Takes

D.C. Circuit upholds California Clean Air Act waiver — E&E News (subscription)

Amena’s take: The ruling spells good news for 17 other states and the District of Columbia that have adopted California's rules as well as the White House's climate plans for the transport sector.

Lithium Market Struggles to Recover After Epic Boom and Bust — Bloomberg

Bill’s take: Lower than expected demand for EVs is part of the story, but new lithium supplies keep finding their way to market.

Europe needs €800bn to meet 2030 climate targets, says industry — Financial Times (subscription)

Anca’s take: Expect more of these eye-popping numbers ahead of the EU election. Key line: "such large investments cannot be shouldered by the private sector alone, without government support."

The U.S. Urgently Needs a Bigger Grid. Here’s a Fast Solution. — The New York Times

Cat’s take: Cipher had a story on getting more out of our grid yesterday (see below!), and reconductoring, discussed in this NYT article, was one of our key takeaways. We also found grid enhancing technologies and more load flexibility are critical.

Greenhouse gases continue to skyrocket, hitting record-high, NOAA says — Axios

Cat’s take: I think it's critical we keep the big picture front and center of all our conversations on climate change: Greenhouse gas emissions, which cause the planet to heat up, are still going up.

US will not accept Chinese imports decimating new industries, Yellen says — Reuters

Amena’s take: There's some irony here: If it wasn't for China flooding the market with solar panels, the costs of this clean technology wouldn't have declined to the current extent.

Why Biden’s climate law needs a permitting boost — Axios

Amy’s take: We already knew this generally, but the weight of the International Monetary Fund should underscore the urgency and specificity of the risks posed by permitting delays.

More of what we're reading:

• EU launches probe into Chinese wind turbines — POLITICO

• Majority of recent CO2 emissions linked to just 57 producers, report says — Reuters
• A Gates-Backed Startup Is Making Fuel From Water and Carbon Dioxide — Bloomberg

We denote ‘(subscription)’ when publications don’t provide any complimentary articles, but many others may ultimately allow you to read only a limited number each month before subscribing. We encourage those who can afford it to support the journalism you love most!

Surging power demand spurs smarter electric grid use

Illustration by Nadya Nickels.

BY: CAT CLIFFORD

Demand for electricity is shooting up in the United States following two decades of relatively flat electricity use — and yet building more transmission lines to bring new sources of energy online is a slow, bureaucratic process.

This tension is pushing the power sector to rethink how it builds and uses the power grid itself.

The urgency of the issue is mounting. Grid planners project 4.7% electricity growth in the next five years, almost double the growth projected just a year ago, according to a December report from the consulting shop Grid Strategies, which tracks projections grid planners file to federal regulators.

That’s likely an underestimate as more data centers, manufacturing and electrification efforts are set to push demand even higher in coming years, Rob Gramlich, president of Grid Strategies, told Cipher.

To be sure, the U.S. needs to figure out a way to build more transmission lines. But a number of technical and operational improvements could help get more out of the existing grid today.

We highlight three below and click here to dive deeper on our website.

First improvement: Grid enhancing technologies, called “GETs,” combine hardware and software systems to enable utilities to adjust, reroute and track the amount of electricity flowing through power lines in real time.

Without such insights, utility companies make ultra-conservative estimates about how much electricity can go through a wire to prevent it from overheating and sagging.

Second improvement: Reconductoring is a wonky word for a simple idea — replacing existing wires with better, newly developed wires that can transmit more electricity.

By replacing conventional wires with advanced conducting lines made of ultra-pure aluminum wrapped around a carbon fiber core, the company TS Conductor “can triple the transmission capacity” of a conventional electrical line, Jason Huang, CEO of TS Conductor, told Cipher.

Another company in the space, Veir, is developing wires capable of carrying five to 10 times more electricity than a conventional conductor, CEO Tim Heidel told Cipher.

Third improvement: Utilities and customers need to embrace adding more flexibility to grid operations.

“The transmission grid is never utilized at more than 50% of capacity because the whole grid you’re seeing is built for the peak,” Andrés Gluski, CEO of the global renewable developer The AES Corporation, told Cipher.

“But the peak is never 24 hours a day.”

Getting more from the grid we already have requires capitalizing on currently unused hours of transmission capacity. “Think about it. It’s kind of like you have all these beach apartments” sitting unoccupied most of the year, Gluski said. “You could do the Airbnb of transmission.”

Editor’s note: TS Conductor’s and Veir’s investors include Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a program of Breakthrough Energy, which also supports Cipher.

Read the full story on our website.

US investment in carbon removal needs to increase exponentially, finds report

Source: Rhodium Group's Taking Stock 2023 • Values represent Rhodium's mid-emissions scenario. Nature-based CO2 removal includes improved forest management, afforestation/reforestation, soil carbon sequestration and more.

BY: CAT CLIFFORD

To reach net zero by midcentury, the United States will need to be able to remove a gigaton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere per year by 2050, according to a new report out Wednesday from the independent market research firm, Rhodium Group.

A gigaton (one billion metric tons) is about 20% of the 5.5 gigatons of emissions the U.S. emitted in 2023, according to the group.

Currently, the U.S. is removing just a few megatons (one million metric tons) of CO2 each year.

Carbon dioxide removal, or CDR, is an umbrella term for a range of processes and technologies that take carbon dioxide emissions out of the atmosphere. Within CDR, there are two broad buckets: natural CDR and engineered CDR. Natural CDR refers to efforts that expand or accelerate naturally occurring processes, like changing forestry practices. Engineered CDR refers to ways of removing carbon dioxide with man-made technologies, like direct air capture (DAC). (Read this Cipher explainer to learn more).

It costs anywhere from less than $100 per ton to more than $1,000 per ton of CO2 removed from the atmosphere, according to the Rhodium Group, depending on the methodology used.

The U.S. has invested in federal policies to support CDR development, like the regional DAC hubs program, an expanded tax credit in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and funding for natural CDR through the Agriculture Department. Scaling up the country’s CDR capabilities to the level needed will require additional policy efforts, Rhodium says.

The IRA gives support to natural CDR for activities starting in the five years since the law passed, compared to the 10 years given to DAC.

“This is why there’s a surge of natural CDR early and then it starts to decline,” John Larsen, a partner at Rhodium, told Cipher via a press liaison. “Natural CDR doesn’t have an initial scale up constraint” and can be deployed more immediately, he said.

Meanwhile, “DAC barely exists today, and so an industry needs to scale up to support deployment. That’s why it takes a few years for DAC CDR to show up on the chart,” Larsen told Cipher.

AND FINALLY...
Big battery

Bill snapped this photo of the "Big Battery" in Hornsdale, Australia. The power storage system, part of a 316-megawatt wind energy project in South Australia, is made up of 294 Tesla Powerpack systems linked together. It was the largest battery storage device on the planet when it was commissioned and installed in 2017.

Each week, we feature a photo that is somehow related to energy, the thing we all need but don’t notice until it’s expensive or gone. Email your ideas and photos to news@ciphernews.com.

Editor’s note: In addition to supporting Cipher, Breakthrough Energy also supports and partners with a range of entities working to tackle climate change, including nonprofits, corporations, startups and research firms. For more information on Cipher’s editorial policy, click here.