APRIL 3, 2024

Good day!

In our latest edition:

• Reporting from northern Spain, Anca charts cleantech challenges facing ports.
• A Voices article looks at Europe to offer fossil fuel lessons.
• In our Data Dive, Amena documents U.S. manufacturing rising.

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

Illustration by Nadya Nickels.

Europe’s wind ambitions require a makeover for the ports

BY: ANCA GURZU

BILBAO, Spain — Dozens of giant, white-coated wind blades are meticulously stacked across designated areas of an industrial port here in northern Spain. The areas are like parking spots for huge wind turbine components, the workers maneuvering around them tiny in comparison.

This massive port — it has 10 miles of docks alone! — offers a microcosm of the crucial yet often overlooked role ports play in the wind industry value chain.

Indeed, the European Union is at the leading edge of what will be a global challenge: Adapting and expanding ports to move around the massive pieces of infrastructure meant to help the world tackle climate change, everything from wind turbines to hydrogen.

Read more from Anca’s reporting trip to Bilbao here.

Highlights here:

In a meeting room near the port in Bilbao, Andima Ormaetxe Bengoa, the port’s operations chief, warns of the pressures ports like his are facing to accommodate not only a growing volume of wind turbine parts but also exponentially bigger sizes.

“The efforts that are asked from ports are increasing day by day,” Ormaetxe, who also handles logistics and strategy at the Port Authority of Bilbao, said during a visit to the site in March. “The scale of [wind turbines] is growing enormously. This is stressing the ports because, of course, the infrastructure is not prepared.”

Port makeovers require billions of dollars in investments and solving for space constraints, challenging ports’ traditional business models and their preparedness for a fast-changing cleantech industry.

A study out last year commissioned by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency found the ambitious offshore wind goals of nine countries around the North Sea are at risk unless port development speeds up.

Ports will need to transform how they function — but they won’t all play the same role. Three examples stand out.

• In Bilbao, Spain, the port serves as both a producer and exporter for the wind turbine sector, while also maintaining its traditional maritime traffic.
• Port Esbjerg in Denmark has transformed into the world's largest offshore wind port, from where wind components are dispatched to be installed at sea or exported around the world.
• Port la Nouvelle in southern France is gearing up to become a hub for novel wind technologies such as floating offshore wind, requiring a different port configuration.

Europe is now facing a “double whammy of bigger turbines needing bigger ports and more turbines requiring more ports,” said Chris Willow, head of the floating wind department at RWE Offshore Wind, a German wind developer.

Ports will also need to make sure adapting their infrastructure to handle the scale and volume of wind turbines makes business sense.

To speed up ports’ transformation “governments may need to step in because there's often a wider economic benefit to port infrastructure,” Willow said. “You start to get supply chain growth around that, jobs are created.”

Read the full article on Cipher’s website.

Lunchtime Reads and Hot Takes

Can We Engineer Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis? — The New York Times

Cat’s take: The piece acknowledges the controversy around engineered climate solutions. Key quote: “We need more information so we can make these decisions in the future... Which is riskier: to do it, or not to do it?"

Europe’s new energy risk: Trading Russia for America — POLITICO

Anca’s take: The article analyzes the pros and cons in the context of the energy transition, but it's the chart that drew my attention. Look at the EU's huge increase in U.S. gas imports, especially since 2019.

Green steel is possible and even affordable, but still unlikely — Reuters

Amy’s take: This is an important read about a difficult topic. I wish it would have included what percentage of the overall cost of, say, building a skyscraper the green premium would comprise.

Biden administration to hand out $4B in advanced energy tax credits — POLITICO Pro (subscription)

Amena’s take: Rolled out under the Inflation Reduction Acts, the tax credits will spur domestic manufacturing of parts for renewables, electrolyzers, fuel cells and critical minerals across 35 states including in communities where fossil fuel production was the mainstay.

A Building Boom in the Himalayas Threatens Climate Disasters — Bloomberg

Amena’s take: A fascinating read that traces how Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government is ignoring risks posed by heavy construction on lands prone to subsidence and now vulnerable to climate-fueled impacts.

DOE promotes loans for clean energy projects at old industrial sites — E&E News (subscription)

Cat’s take: This recent announcement spotlights the potential job creation and increase in income a new nuclear plant could bring to the local community and avenues for job retraining.

Explainer: Why some countries are aiming for ‘net-negative’ emissions — Carbon Brief

Anca’s take: I didn't know Suriname, Panama and Bhutan produce net negative emissions. These countries are covered in forests, have small populations and little industrial activity.

‘Garbage Lasagna’: Dumps Are a Big Driver of Warming, Study Says — The New York Times

Cat’s take: Landfills release methane at almost three times the rate reported to federal regulators, a new study finds. “You can sometimes get decades of trash that’s sitting under the landfill,” the scientist who led the study told the NYT. “We call it a garbage lasagna.”

EPA sets strict emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks and buses in bid to fight climate change — AP News

Amena’s take: Manufacturers will be able to choose the emissions-control technology they use, be it battery electric, hydrogen, hybrid or advanced internal combustion engines, to meet the new standards.

More of what we're reading:

• Shell says landmark emissions ruling won't help climate goals — Reuters

• EU hits roadblock in reaching green milestone as elections loom — Financial Times (subscription)
• Oil Giants Plan to Bury Massive Amounts of CO2 in Southeast Asia — Bloomberg

A political surprise in coal country could provide a lesson for oil country

Illustration by Nadya Nickels.

BY: PETE HARRISON

Harrison is the Environmental Defense Fund's executive vice president for regions, based in Brussels. You can reach Pete at officeofpeteharrison@edf.org.

Conservative states like Texas with deep historical and economic connections to the fossil fuel industry could learn from a surprise election result in Europe last year. A long-time coal advocate changed his stance to support clean energy in the heart of Polish coal country — and came out in front.

Hard economics pushed him to embrace wind and solar, and the people understood.

Read the full article on Cipher’s website.

US battery and solar factories surged last year

Source: 2024 Sustainable Energy in America Factbook, Bloomberg NEF and The Business Council for Sustainable Business.

BY: AMENA H. SAIYID

Battery and solar factories are driving the build-out of domestic cleantech manufacturing in the United States following the passage of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, a new report by Bloomberg NEF and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy shows.

Despite headwinds posed by high interest rates, supply chain disruptions, permitting and grid connection challenges, the number of announced cleantech manufacturing facilities in the U.S. continued to rise throughout 2023, primarily thanks to the IRA.

The law has so far doled out more than $50 billion in tax credits, loans and grants to boost domestic clean manufacturing, including $30 billion in tax credits specifically to ramp up the solar, wind and battery sectors, according to the Blue Green Alliance.

By the end of 2023, the number of factories planned in response to the law rose to 104 total, drawing over $123 billion in investments. Solar and batteries dominated with 34 factories each, followed by 14 each for wind and electric vehicles, seven for electrolyzers and one mining facility.

With $303 billion in clean energy spending, the U.S. was the second largest investor in the energy transition in 2023 after China, which spent more than twice that amount, according to the report.

The clean energy transition is now “hardwired” into the U.S. energy economy, with federal policies sending clear signals to the market, and the market responding in kind, Lisa Jacobson, the council’s president, said at a press briefing about the report in late February.

To meet climate goals though, Jacobson said the U.S. will need to iron out the permitting and infrastructure challenges holding it back.

AND FINALLY...
Side of solar

I noticed this solar wall array while on a recent run in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. I had never seen solar on the side of a building before; this Solar Power World article suggests it can be effective, especially in certain geographies that, seasonally, get limited direct sunlight — like Seattle!

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.