LNG elephant in the room, efficiency gets corporate backing and monster trucks
In this issue:
The LNG elephant in the room
While we do our best to avoid stories that have run in the mainstream media, we will sometimes point out extra morsels of information that haven’t been aired in those channels. This week the NZ Government announced it was going ahead with first steps to import LNG, notably against the advice of its electricity market review’s authors and the report’s peer reviewers. The debate has been interesting and while concerns over exposing NZ to exchange rate risk and supply chain risk insecurity through geopolitical concerns have been aired, we hadn’t heard mention of the report the week before from the IEA about the decline in gas fields. In its accompanying press release, the Executive Director of the IEA, Dr Fatih Birol, said: “Decline rates are the elephant in the room for any discussion of investment needs in oil and gas”. Since 2010, natural gas decline rates have risen from 180 billion cubic metres (bcm) per year to 270 bcm. So, not only is New Zealand pursuing a solution that is more expensive than renewables, higher emitting than renewables and will expose us to supply and currency risk but it also locks in dependence on a fuel that will see significant price increases as current fields decline further and replacements become more and more expensive to exploit. We couldn’t let this salient point remain unsaid but will leave you to draw your own conclusions on this path.
Efficiency gets major corporate backing
Over 150 major US companies or organisations have just released a collective pledge to double the rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030. Doubling energy efficiency has been long advocated by the IEA and is included in the Action Agenda for COP30. The letter was delivered to the President and CEO of COP30.
Fortescue to go EV
Giant Australian mining company Fortescue has just signed up to buy 200, 240 tonne electric trucks from XCMG of China. The trucks have a payload of 250 tonnes, can ascend an incline of 17% and travel at over 50Km/h.
Big lithium find in Germany
This week saw the announcement of another big lithium find, this time in the Altmark region of Germany. The find is estimated at 43 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent, enough to satisfy the demand needed for the manufacture of 500,000 cars a year in the 2030s. The find will likely make a significant impact on Europe’s dependence on China for lithium.
Renewables better nuclear for data centres
That’s the conclusion of a new analysis from the Centre for Net Zero, which found a microgrid combination of renewables with gas backup would be over 40% cheaper on average than a small modular reactor solution and be quicker to instal. The report predicts the saving will likely increase as renewables and storage continue to fall in price.
An EV for Bond
No, we don’t have insight into the detail of the next Bond movie but he would surely appreciate a car that fires its battery out the side to cause mayhem in its surroundings. The ejecting battery has been designed as an alleged safety measure. If it starts to catch fire the vehicle ejects the battery out to the side at pace. Great for the car owner, not so good for anyone in the firing line.
Did you know …..
As well as championing the alternating current, Nikola Tesla was the mastermind behind the Niagara Falls power plant, which came on line in 1896 and remains the largest generation site in New York state? Today, there are 25 turbines which are spun by a flow of 2.8 million litres of water per second. The network generates 2.6 million kilowatts of electricity per year.
