07Energy· Vision Team

Energy too cheap to meter

Science

// The science behind it

March, 2051, 5 am. It’s a sweltering hot day in Durban – the mercury rising just above 39°C. The 75% humidity doesn’t help either. Mlungisi grabs his last kombucha from the fridge to cool him down before the big day ahead. As he closes the fridge door, it flashes an order confirmation sent to his local gigamarket to restock his favourite drink. He has thirty minutes before he needs to head off to the stadium to enjoy a breather and plan his day. He lies back on his smart sofa that automatically moulds to his body shape according to its pre-programmed memory, enjoying the crisp air of the air conditioner blowing over the room. As he checks emails and schedules on his smart glasses, he hears a beep from the other room. It must be his SolarHydro hydrogen battery that has run low on stored power, clicking back into the solar panels on his roof to pull in new energy. Mlungisi happily pays his flat-fee subscription to SolarHydro which affords him unlimited electricity just like his unlimited 5G internet plan.

Today is day three of the Commonhealth Games, held in Durban for the first time. Bringing together like-minded nations that have pioneered renewable energy, it includes a range of reimagined summer and winter sports in simulated environments. Mlungisi is the image engineer of all the South African teams. Today will see the surfing team compete against the USA, China and Japan. The Springboks are hailed as the favourites to win the indoor surfing competition. He hops on his suave Batman-black enclosed electric tricycle, starts the engine with a fingerprint scan and sets off to the stadium. It’s a hive of activity since the government’s ambitious port revamp was finally completed in 2049. It now boasts colossal container storage capability and it can accommodate much larger vessels bringing spectators from abroad.

The jewel in the crown? The zero-emission natural gas power plant that now produces enough blue hydrogen to power the city of Durban and enough green ammonia to export to Europe. It has become an important refuelling stop for green ammonia cargo ships too. Run 90% on renewable energy, this ecosystem has been a much-celebrated success story of the country’s establishment of a hydrogen-linked ‘Platinum Valley’ in the 2020s. This successful industrial corridor pulls from SA’s massive platinum reserves (the largest in the world) starting in the province of Limpopo, and carries through to the Johannesburg-to-Durban corridor. It’s powered by one of the country’s largest solar farms located in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands.

As Mlungisi pulls into the stadium, he can’t help but gasp at its magnificence. Inside, it’s basically like four seasons under one giant dome. There is the water world with soliton wave technology for today’s surfing competition (inspired by Kelly’s Slater pioneering Surf Ranch). Next week will see an extreme kayaking race take place. Powered by hydrogen-fuel hydrofoils, it can serve up waves of up to eight feet. Next door, there is a multi-purpose ice rink cum skate park, where the first ice rugby game will kick off later this afternoon, followed by a skateboard competition between humans and bipodal robots. Back to ice tomorrow, teams will face the ultimate Yukigassen (snowball fight) challenge.

Before meeting his teams, Mlungisi spots the RainDance powership pulling out of the harbour. This floating powerplant-meets-desalination-hub is heading to Port Nolloth on the far north-western coast of South Africa to deliver water to an area plagued by drought. It makes him smile to think that, as the ship sails, it is filling up reservoirs of fresh drinking water that will quench the thirst of humans and animals living 1700kms away. The wonders of technology never cease to amaze.

Completing the energy puzzle

Imagine living in a world with abundant green energy and unlimited fresh water for everyone. Sounds utopian? Not if we get the mix of affordable, clean energy right. The famous vision of Lewis Strauss, chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), came from a 1954 speech where he predicted that “it is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter.”

Nearly 70 years on, we’ve still not seen this come true. The only chance we have to meet the world’s energy and climate demands is if nuclear energy becomes a bigger part of the energy-generating mix. The time is ripe for a complete nuclear rethink. Today, most commercial nuclear plants are still run on uranium – a fuel that will not see us through to 2051 (not to mention the conundrum of what we’re going to do with the nearly 300,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel piling up at reactors around the world). Alternatives like thorium are three times more bountiful in the Earth’s crust than uranium, produce much less waste compared to other nuclear fuels, and the radioactivity levels of thorium waste fall in a much shorter time period. Thorium is fertile rather than fissile, so it can only be used as a fuel in conjunction with a fissile material such as recycled plutonium. Thorium fuels can breed fissile uranium-233 to be used in various kinds of nuclear reactors, like heavy water reactors, molten salt reactors, high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, light water reactors and fast neutron reactors.

Thorium was already under the spotlight by Oak Ridge National Lab in the 1960s. Under the leadership of director Alvin Weinberg, the famous Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) operated more than 13,000 hours during its four-year run. The MSRE proved that a fission reaction in molten fluoride salts could be contained in Hastelloy-N, and that a molten salt fuelled reactor concept was viable. The reactor was fundamentally different from all others: instead of fuel sitting in the reactor core while coolants circulated through, the molten salts act both as a carrier and coolant for the fuel.

The idea of building a molten salt reactor dates back to 1946, when the US Air Force created plans for a nuclear-powered supersonic jet. Weinberg had a vision for the future that would use liquid and thorium-fuelled reactors to make electricity, plus turn ocean water into fresh water. He wanted to go beyond the constraints of fossil fuels, hydropower and existing nuclear technology. Get it right and you’d not only boost USA power supplies but also aid parts of the world with little access to reliable power and fresh water.

At Oak Ridge, Weinberg and his team used molten salt technology to develop high-temperature, low-pressure, passively safe reactors. They had all the makings to work as breeder reactors. It could make fuel as it operated, with no need for solid-fuel changeouts and fuel- and control-rod mechanisms. Yes, there were concerns about corrosion but given the time, they would’ve come to the safety controls that exist today. Alas, the project lost funding and was shut down in 1973. The West chose to back uranium. Why? Because nuclear energy and atomic bombs have always gone hand in hand. Uranium’s by-products are much easier to weaponise. The investment in solid fuel was too far along to change.

The molten salt concept lay dormant for many decades, until the year 2000, when NASA engineer Kirk Sorensen came across a book describing what the programme had accomplished at Oak Ridge. He tracked down the old technical reports, begged NASA to pay to have them scanned and uploaded it to a website he funded himself (energyfromthorium.com). As more and more people became interested in this new (old) idea, the concept slowly gained traction. Sorenson founded one of the first molten salt start-up companies in 2011. Called Flide, it believes that the Lithium Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) is the key to producing lifesaving cancer treatments and clean, reliable, sustainable energy. Sorenson has been on a mission since to commercialise the LFTR that was envisioned at Oak Ridge back in the 1960s.

According to Flide, LFTR will be the most efficient energy source ever developed. Because a fission reaction releases millions of times more energy than a chemical reaction, a liquid-fuelled reactor can take advantage of this efficiency. Solid-fuelled reactors only use one percent of their fissile material, discarding the rest as nuclear waste. On the other hand, a liquid-fuelled reactor can consume almost 100% of the fissile material. That means no long-lived radioactive waste and the added bonus of increased fuel efficiency. LFTRs also produce no CO2 or other emissions harmful to the environment.

Who is first in line actually testing a LFTR? China, of course. Like Sorenson, it launched its molten-salt reactor programme in 2011, investing $500 million into the project. In 2021, it will switch on its experimental thorium reactor located in Wuwei on the outskirts of the Gobi Desert. It will be the first molten-salt reactor operating since Oak Ridge in 1969. Starting quite small, it will produce just two megawatts of thermal energy – enough to power up to 1000 homes. If this ‘perfect technology’ is successful, it has powerful potential. China hopes to build a 373-megawatt reactor by 2030, which could power hundreds of thousands of homes.

Other countries, including the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, are also testing thorium as a fuel and are working on molten-salt reactors to generate cheaper electricity from uranium or to transform waste plutonium as fuel. As China makes headway towards carbon neutrality, it may very soon replace coal-fuelled power plants with new types of reactors, or retrofit existing ones. The Chinese government plans to build more of these reactors across the deserts and plains of western China, as well as in up to thirty countries.

As a very power-hungry nation, India is also pouring huge investment into nuclear programmes. With dwindling uranium deposits and one of the largest reserves of thorium in the world (especially in its beach sands), it sees thorium as a long-term hedge. Although India is fourth in the world for installed wind capacity and fifth for solar, that won’t be enough to guarantee carbon-free energy for a population that could be well over 1.7 billion by 2060. Its only saving grace will be nuclear energy.

Miniature power stations

When most people think of nuclear power stations, they probably imagine something like Springfield in the Simpsons – vast towers with billowing smoke, bubbling liquids and luminous radioactive rats. But the future of nuclear is smaller, much smaller. China’s prototype measures three meters tall and 2.5 metres wide – about the size of a small caravan.

Instead of two of three enormous power stations, several companies are pioneering smaller designs. Small modular reactors (SMRs) are nuclear fission reactors that are a fraction of the size of conventional reactors, making them much more affordable. Parts can be manufactured in factories and shipped by truck, rail or water for on-site assembly, making the process much faster and safer.

This type of technology is nothing new. SMRs were first developed in the 1950s for use in nuclear-powered submarines and icebreakers. But they have been virtually non-existent in power generation up to now. Many countries are working on these safer, cheaper, less wasteful small-scale reactors. Russia was the first to put an SMR live. Called Akademik Lomonosov, it’s also the world’s first floating nuclear reactor. It is expected to generate enough power to serve about 200,000 people and have a lifespan of 40 years. Danish start-up Seaborg has also come up with turnkey floating power plants that are completely modular and can produce from 200 to 800 MW of electricity (with a lifespan of 24 years). Whereas MSRE used liquid fluoride salts, Seaborg is proposing to use another molten salt, namely sodium hydroxide (NaOH). Their novel reactor concept is made of metal alloy tubes carrying flowing molten fuel salt, which pass inside a larger tube of molten salt working as a moderator. Seaborg is proposing to mount its reactors on floating nuclear power barges and supply power to shore as a direct replacement for coal power plants, starting in southeast Asia.

France is pouring €1bn funding into state-backed utility EDF to help it develop its own SMR technology by the early 2030s. In the UK, a consortium led by Rolls Royce will develop a 440MW SMR, with plans to construct up to 16 SMRs with government funding. Oregon-based NuScale was the first company to get approval from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build test SMRs in Idaho.

Just think what we could do if everyone in the world had access to a nuclear reactor blueprint? That’s exactly how the OPEN100 project wants to share its vision for ‘cheap nuclear’. It will provide open-source blueprints for the design, construction, and financing of a 100-megawatt nuclear reactor, which can be built for $300 million in less than two years. This will significantly decrease the per-kilowatt cost of nuclear power. Artist impressions of these (relatively) tiny plants show them in city centres, surrounded by greenery. While many regulatory mountains will have to be moved to make this happen, it’s exciting to think that these smaller powerhouses could safely live among us, generating endless cheap and green energy.

With nuclear energy, there is always the elephant in the room of nuclear waste. SMRs can be built on the sites of retiring coal or nuclear plants, making them more acceptable to local communities. Oklo, a new start-up, is working on fast reactors that use the spent fuel from conventional nuclear reactors to operate. These modern-looking A-frame structures look nothing like the massive, unsightly towers mentioned before. Oklo’s first reactor will be one of the world’s smallest, producing just 1.5 megawatts of electrical energy. The vision is that they would seamlessly slot into city design, powering factories, campuses, large businesses or very remote locations.

One thing is certain: the SMR industry is going to boom over the next few years. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there are currently almost 70 different SMR technologies under development.

Unlocking the hydrogen economy

Another much-hyped and potentially game changing energy carrier is hydrogen. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), demand for hydrogen is expected to grow eight times to satisfy an ask of over 550 million tons in 2050. This will be as a feedstock, but also for transportation, building heat, and power generation. The hydrogen that is currently produced – known as ‘grey’ hydrogen – comes from natural gas and generates significant carbon emissions. The cleaner version of this is ‘blue’ hydrogen, where carbon emissions are captured and stored, or reused. The ultimate version? ‘Green’ hydrogen, which is generated by renewable energy sources (sun, wind, tides, hydro, biofuels) without producing carbon emissions in the first place. While this idea is exciting, it’s currently very expensive to produce.

Green hydrogen is somewhat of a chicken and egg situation. Solve the cheap electricity conundrum, and you’ll have green fuel for days. Hydrogen is produced through a process called electrolysis where water is split into its components: oxygen and hydrogen. This hydrogen can be transported across any distance, either in liquid or gaseous forms, or mixed with other elements like ammonia or methanol. In the short-term, blue hydrogen will be cheaper than green hydrogen. But this will change fast as the costs of electrolysers and renewable power will come down fast. BloombergNEF predicts that green hydrogen will outcompete blue hydrogen on cost by 2030. But that’s not to say it’s remotely affordable yet. Bank of America analysts estimate that green hydrogen prices would need to fall by 85% to be competitive with regular hydrogen – something only likely to happen by 2030.

If you want one more colour of hydrogen, it’s ‘gold’ hydrogen. This natural hydrogen in the Earth’s crust will soon cause a gold rush. Just as oil barons drilled into the ground in search of fuel, hydrogen prospectors will chase fairy circles to try to work out where this gas can be found. Earlier, we mentioned electricity too cheap to meter. How about electricity that’s completely free? That’s what the African village of Bourakébougou, 60km from Mali’s capital of Bamako, is enjoying. Here, natural hydrogen wells are used to produce clean electricity, distributed free of charge to the local population. The company in charge, Hydroma, came across the H2 by chance, whilst drilling for fresh water. Instead, it found the purest naturally occurring hydrogen ever discovered: estimated at 8km in diameter with a concentration of 98%. Imagine sitting on that sort of energy goldmine. Over the time, the hope is to not only meet Mali’s energy needs but also other countries on the African continent. And Mali might not be a once-off. There are reports of 100s of global occurrences of over 10% gas concentration, which could mean a potentially inexhaustible source of green energy.

While green hydrogen is first prize, we need governments to support both electrolysis and carbon capture hydrogen. As with nuclear reactors, once the right policies are in place to incentivise or make green energy mandatory, countries can make the switch from grey to green hydrogen and change from coal and gas to hydrogen. The dominoes just need to start falling… One of the most promising and groundbreaking carbon capture technologies is the Allam-Fetvedt Cycle – essentially a zero-emission natural gas power plant with hydrogen production.

This cycle uses the oxy-combustion of carbon fuels and a high-pressure supercritical CO2 working fluid in a highly recuperated cycle that captures all emissions by design. The only by-products: liquid water and a stream of high-purity, pipeline-ready CO2. The beauty of this process is that it can use many types of fuel, from natural gas, unprocessed raw and sour gas, to gasified solid fuels such as coal or biomass. The 50MWth Allam-Fetvedt Cycle demonstration facility is currently operating in La Porte, Texas, with several natural gas projects are currently in development. They’ve also made good progress on a coal-based system.

Home power plants and hydrogen cars

Will we see hydrogen power in our homes? Most definitely. In 30 years’ time, there will be no excuse not to have your home off the grid, as solar panels will be as affordable as painting your roof white (which we should all do). Tesla’s Powerwall uses lithium batteries as a way was to store the energy you generate. But soon you could also integrate a hybrid hydrogen battery to keep the lights on. Australian energy company Lavo has created a storage system that connects to a home’s solar inverter and mains water, through a water purifier. Using solar energy to electrolyse the water, it splits oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen is released and the hydrogen is stored in the LAVO’s patented metal hydride “sponge”. The hydrogen gas is then converted back into electricity when it is needed, using a fuel cell. Voila – your very own small power plant. Lavo boasts almost three times the capacity of Powerwall 2 and stores enough to power a home for two days.

Apart from clean electricity, green or natural hydrogen can also be used to decarbonise the transport sector. Japan is one country that doesn’t want to be dependent on fuel imports forever. As a pioneer in hydrogen technology and a champion for carbon capture and storage, Japan sees hydrogen as the fuel of choice in its quest to reduce emissions from all sectors. Automotive heavyweights, Honda and Toyota, are leading the way when it comes to fuel cell technology development. In case you need a refresher, fuel cell electric cars beat battery-operated ones since they can generate power through a chemical process using hydrogen fuel. Thus, there is no extra pressure on the electricity grid to charge batteries. Can you imagine if every household charges their car at the same time at night? Complete chaos.

Toyota is coming to the party by dramatically reducing the price and size of the system compared to previous fuel cell vehicles. By 2050, Toyota aims to cut global average CO2 emissions from its new vehicles by at least 90% compared to 2010. The manufacturer has also trialled fuel cell technology for forklifts, buses and delivery trucks. Honda is using electric air turbo air compressors for a pioneering system that generates the necessary electricity for propulsion by using an enhanced hydrogen and air mixture.

In the USA, California has the largest number of hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) of any state and one of the largest hydrogen refuelling station networks in the world. It will be interesting to see how its hydrogen fuel journey unfolds as more and more manufacturers make and sell hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. We’re seeing much more variety in models and prices have already come down. Not stopping at cars, the California Fuel Cell Partnership has a vision of 70 000 heavy-duty fuel cell electric trucks on the road by 2035, supported by 200 hydrogen stations. That’s a bold goal, but one way to get to 100% zero-emission trucks by 2045.

We know this transition is going to be gradual and that fossil fuels won’t disappear overnight. Porsche is one car manufacturer that believes that there can be a place for internal combustible engines in the world – it all just comes down to clever engineering of carbon emissions. Teaming up with Siemens, Porsche is building its first synthetic fuel production plant in Chile, hoping to produce its first batch of carbon-neutral fuel in 2022. Initially, this will be used for its racing cars and Experience Centre cars, with the hope to produce 550 million litres by 2026 and being completely carbon neutral by 2030. The plant will generate clean electricity from wind turbines built by Siemens, then make fuel by dissociating hydrogen and oxygen molecules from water. CO2 filtered from the air will then be combined with hydrogen to make synthetic fuel.

Keeping our cool

We need energy to switch our lights on, cook our food, run our businesses, get from A to B. But how often do we talk about the energy it takes to keep us comfortable? Air conditioning is what the IEC calls one of the “blind spots of the global energy system” – an industry that has evolved very little over the last 100 years. The world faces a “cold crunch” if, by 2050,

2/3 of the world’s households could have air conditioners.

Things need to change, fast. Air conditioning is one of the biggest culprits for CO2 emissions. Globally, about 12% of non-carbon dioxide emissions come from refrigeration and air conditioners, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. And then there is a humungous amount of energy they gobble up. As the middle class grows over the next few decades, global energy demand from air conditioners is expected to triple by 2050, requiring new electricity capacity the equivalent to the combined electricity capacity of the United States, the EU and Japan today.

Air conditioning perpetuates a vicious cycle: the hotter it gets, the more we blast cool air. The more we use air conditioning, the warmer it gets. For countries like India and Bangladesh, it’s not a question of comfort but of survival. Research has shown that some areas of northeast India will become so hot that being outside for more than a few hours could be deadly.

So what’s the solution? For start-up Gradient, it’s by creating HVAC systems that use very little energy to heat and cool, and to power them with renewable energy. Gradient is solving the first ask by using a different refrigerant (R32) to the usual hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants, known to be over a thousand times more potent than carbon dioxide. Gradient’s heat pump can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75% compared to conventional systems.

India has opened up this challenge to a wider audience, launching The Global Cooling Prize – a global competition to completely re-think how we cool the spaces in which we live and work. With lots of skin in the cooling game, we’re going to see many cooling disruptions come out of India. The first round had two winners – aircon giant Daikin with partner Nikken Sekkei Ltd, and team Gree Electric Appliances, Inc. of Zhuhai with partner Tsinghua University. Both winners showcased breakthrough technologies with five times less climate impact than conventional AC units. Daikin also believes that HFC-32 (R32) is the most balanced refrigerant in terms of safety, energy efficiency, economy and the environment. This plays right into its Environmental Vision 2050, which has a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050.

As for the cooling of large events, one will have to see how Qatar’s ‘outdoor air conditioning’ effort works out for FIFA 2022. As the Washington Post aptly puts it, in wealthy countries like Qatar, “climate change is merely an engineering problem, not an existential one". But this isn’t a luxury sub-Saharan Africa can afford, where heat waves and droughts are already making life almost unbearable. One can just hope that cooling will be high on the agenda of reasons to solve cheaper, more accessible energy. Else, those who live in corrugated tin houses with summer temperatures north of 45C will only have rudimentary (yet super clever) solutions like the Bangladeshi zero-electricity Eco Cooler – made from plastic bottles.

Probability rating: 50/100

How are we doing on the Net-Zero front? The goal to bring global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions to net-zero by 2050 is the only chance we have to limit a global temperature rise of 1.5 °C. Staying on track means that every possible available clean energy technology should be deployed – electric vehicles, nuclear, hydrogen, biofuels, solar, wind, the whole shebang. Worldwide clean energy investment will need to more than triple to around $4 trillion by 2030. For solar power alone, it’s the equivalent of installing the world’s current largest solar park every day.

If we have unlimited energy, it also means we can theoretically have unlimited fresh water. Desalination has always been thought of as incredibly energy intensive. But with the right mix of renewable and/or nuclear energy and leading technologies like multiple-effect distillation (MED), this might just be possible in 2050. MED is a proven method to produce distilled water with steam or waste heat from power production or chemical processes. This method boasts very low electrical consumption (less than 1.0 kWh/m3) compared to other thermal processes such as multi-stage or membrane processes (reverse osmosis). It’s easy to install, has very low maintenance and can operate 24/7 hours a day with minimum supervision. If you’re generating round-the-clock power, does it not make sense to turn that waste heat into 24/7 water distillation too?

We will continue to innovate renewable energy. Nothing will be a sacred cow. Take wind turbines. They are super expensive and, although eerily beautiful, a bit of an eye sore. Then German start-up Kitekraft came up with flying wind turbines that require ten times less materials to develop than turbines. Consisting of a small ground station, a flexible line and a

specially designed ‘turnkey kite’ (basically one single rigid wing), the kite then performs figure eight movements to produce electricity and prevent the line from snagging. In the long run, one of these kites will have a wingspan of up to 16 meters and generate 500 kW.

The world will take some seriously convincing to leave fossil fuels behind. But with a non-negotiable climate crisis timeline and entrepreneurs stomping at the bits to get their share of the action, the future of energy is evergreen.

Sources

// Sources & further reading

Completing the energy puzzle

Miniature power stations

Unlocking the hydrogen economy

Home power plants and hydrogen cars

Keeping our cool

Probability rating: 50/100

Sources

SA & hydrogen

Thorium

SMR

Hydrogen

Vehicles

Air conditioning

Flying turbines

LEONARDO