04. Two Immediate Issues
Heavy Industry is a problem It needs decarbonizing. Photo: Wikipedia Steelmaking. CC BY 2.0
01. Decarbonising heavy industries
The three biggest industrial sectors that create an enormous amount of CO2 and use a lot of energy in the form of electricity and heat are the iron and steel, cement / chemical and oil, gas, coal sectors. These sectors account for about 50% of the total global CO2 emissions. For the mostly permanent sectors ie. iron / steel and cement / chemical their CO2 impact can be fully or mostly dispensed with by the use of renewable electricity or heat from CSP (Concentrated Solar Power). HDR (Hydrogen-based Direct Reduced iron) is a process that can reduce by about 97% the CO2 emissions from steel production. In Australia it is currently proposed to replace coal powered electricity for green hydrogen power in these industries. And
02. Levelized Cost Of Electricity (LCOE)
A serious problem that nations and power companies have to pay attention to and in particular with electric power production is that of Levelized Cost Of Electricity (LCOE). LCOE is a measure of a Power Plants average total present cost of electrical power production over its lifetime. LCOE = (Sum of Cost Over Lifetime) divided by the (Sum of Electrical Energy Production Over Lifetime. It should indicate if calculated correctly how much a power plant should be selling a unit of power that it produces in order to cover its running, maintenance and cost of construction, disposal.
As one example, coal power plants used to have a dominant percentage of most nations electrical energy production and they worked at max production 24/7 365 days a year. Over the past decade or so alternate sources of power production and batteries have provided a significant amount of energy and support to their grids. This in some countries has had a result of moving coal power plants from a dominant power provider to one of a back-up, supportive role. This enabled some nations to shut down some of the coal power plants. The less time a coal or any power plant spends working because it is supporting rather than running an electrical grid the harder it is for it to be competitive in price. Usually resulting in it being shut down.