German-American-Israeli trilateral symposium “Energy Solutions”, October 11 – 12, 2023
www.leopoldina.org/energy-solutions
Organizers: the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
00:01:10 Carla Seidel, BASF, Ludwigshafen
00:18:21 Markus Oles, thyssenkrupp/Carbon2Chem, Essen
00:37:49 Patricia Hidalgo-Gonzalez, University of California San Diego
00:57:17 Discussion; Chair: Lioz Etgar, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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I’m Leo Edgar from the e University um one of the organizer of this Workshop conference um unfortunately as you heard all the terrible situation in Israel we were not able to arrive this is really a recording in progress something that we planned um just from a personal point of view um
I have a friends who are now fighting at the borders and some people which I know who are murdered and so um I will try to do this session as as best as I can but uh forgive me if there will be some uh some which will be not so accurate um
First also Professor alad gross from the HEB University will not join us to this session so we we have just three speakers here so you will have more time yeah later on the conference um okay so the session is um actually continue the first one this one discussed the the
Carbonization and the theorization which actually kind similar things um first how to reduce carbon from what we are using if it’s fuels or any other energy resources and also to develop some new way of renewable energy which are not using at all carbon this is the main idea here as I
Said we have three speakers um the first one will be Carla zidel from BASF um already here and ready and so Carla the stage is yours yeah yeah thank you very much um and uh first of all I would also like to um really um convey my sincere
Condolence um for all the lives lost and the injured and the terror attacks over the last days and I think I speak also on behalf of my company BF and uh our thoughts are with the families and with the friends um and I’m really deeply impressed by the commitment of uh all
The participants uh from the israelian delegation in this Symposium um it’s really something that um I think is um yeah um heartwarming to see that that we stand together also in these um um changing challenging times yeah um dear scientific committee dear distinguished members of the
Academies um I would like uh to start the session um on a view of the chemical industry transformation that is ahead of us because I strongly believe um that it’s uh closely connected um to the energy transformation and I would like to take uh the time to um elaborate
On how to take the next step in climate protection from this perspective and I think we and the International Community all know that um there are um big challenges ahead of us um when it comes to climate protection limited use of resources and the supply of of energy in
The future and at the same time I think we live in times of groundbreaking Innovation which um has also um already showed in the in the first sessions uh that um we attended and we as BSF live up to our uh corporate purpose we create chemistry for a
Sustainable future and uh in this purpose it’s clearly reflected what we do and why we do it so we want to create or by by doing this by creating chemistry for a sustainable future we do this for our customers but also for society and uh we focus on the best uh
Use of uh the available resources in an environmental uh context so just a quick recap um where um the company is active in and uh with u more than 100,000 employees worldwide um we Supply um a number of Industries um with our uh products uh our product range uh comp
Prices uh chemicals up to agricultural solution products um also uh materials um for various applications um dispersions resins performance chemicals catalysts and codings up to um care chemicals and uh U materials for so vitamins and alike for nutrition and health and uh as uh a strong player was
Headquarters in um Europe the European green dealer is also um for us really um a key um um aspect to consider and uh it is not only about climate neutral uh neutrality in Europe in 2050 um but it is a broad um a plan that the EU Maps out currently at an
Unprecedented speed um to become um to beside becoming climate neutral decouple economic growth from resource use and to strive for an environment free uh of pollutants and um I think taking this into consideration you can imagine that uh the chemical industry is is really uh
Affected uh in in these many areas um by the um plans of the EU um at the moment yeah looking at our commitments uh to sustainability um now what does it mean concrete also BSF has committed to uh reach Net Zero emission CO2 emissions by 2050 and to reduce emissions by 25% by
2030 and uh in addition it’s not only about um the CO2 emissions it’s also about how to Embark into um the secularity um for the future and there our goal is to double our sales our circular sales by 20 30 um to 177 billion
Euro when we look at uh what is ahead of us um when we want to achieve our CO2 our um greenhouse gas emission targets you see that um we focus on two dimensions on the one hand on the on our sites and on the other hand on our
Products and um so we have identified five key levers um to address and reduce the main main sources of greenhouse gas emission of CO2 emission um it starts um in the energy production with uh gray to green and power to steam um focusing on avoiding CO2 emissions um from power and
Steam generation and uh then um on the uh chemical production um in the in the chemical production um it uh tackles emissions from our upstream and to a lesser extent also from our Downstream processes um by applying uh new technologies and also um biobased Renewables and at the fifth lever um
It’s continuing what we have done successfully in the past at what we called contous operational excellence programs to um tackle Energy Efficiency however our customers are not so much interested in our processes at the side level our customers one product with Net Zero or with low carbon footprint and that’s why we have
Also um in parallel uh started um the initiative um to um really make transparent what is the CO2 emission by product associated with the raw materials uh including the associ associated uh emissions with the raw materials and so um we uh make this product related transparent uh from Cradle to grade uh
In form of a product C footprint um and we have now made it available for um our 45,000 products yeah when we now look into the different levers let’s start with the topic of um electricity uh and electrical power and um coming from uh uh the 1960s 1950s 1960s of coal uh then
In the ‘ 80s ’90s until today the natural gas as a as a key raw material um there’s now the time to Embark into um the renewable energy and uh we follow different strategies um on the on the one hand um we drive uh the transformation of our power supply by
Co-investing into um offshore wind Parks um very prominently now just inaugurated um a few weeks ago uh our joint project with wfal and Alliance uh in the um in the North Sea um this offshore Wind Farm uh will be fully operational um in the course of the next months and uh it comprises
Almost 40 turbines and with a capacity of 1.5 gws um in addition to this we also invest into a new solar power plant for our German site Schatz near Dron um and we do this in a joint venture with uh NVM um the local um utility supplier and um this
Will uh result um in a in a solar park with a 24 megawatt Peak capacity um and um will comprise um 40 uh 52 ,000 uh PV modules um in addition to these um joint ventures we also concluded um a couple of long-term Supply agreements for um
Renewable energy in the US um and also our new fabun site in China um will be um supplied by um renewable energy together with Partners um in China yeah on the one hand renewable energy Supply is key but um the the most um or or the
The the major share of our um energy consumption is related to heat yeah we discussed it also yesterday it’s not only electricity but it’s also the the heat management and uh CO2 free um steam production is is crucial and um today um steam generation processes u in the
Central power plants um have a major contribution to our CO2 emissions so by electrifying the steam generation with renewable electricity CO2 emissions at the chemical sites can be significantly reduced so in order to implement this it’s um not only um uh the um measure to move to heat pumps but it’s also to
Include e boilers and e drives um into the system so overall also a trans um formation that we need in this area yeah when we now uh go um more into um the um the production side um so um there are um around um 10 basic chemicals that um relate to 70% of
Our CO2 emission um and hydrogen and and the respective nitrogen uh uh sorry the respective um ammonia thinis together with steam reforming is a key contributor to this um and uh if you uh then think about the topic that we discussed already um yesterday and and
Saw hydrogen will be a a key um lever and so I would like to share the two projects that we um run um on the Lut Haven side uh in order to tap into the future of how the um hydrogen economy will look like for for us um on the one
Hand oh sorry um just going back to the electricity um so electrifying processes as just shifting gear back um is also crucial uh to avoid um the emissions in our um steam cracker so um today um the heating of uh the steam cracker is done
By burning uh natural gas and uh we have now started a project uh to look into um the heating um wire Electric it and together with sabic and Linda we have started the construction of the world’s first demonstration plant for large scale electric electrically heated um
Steam cracker furnaces um at uh the Lut halfen side yeah and with that now coming to the um hydrogen topic so on the one hand we have a pilot project uh to run an water electrolyzer in lud Haven um resulting in uh at full capacity 8,000 tons of hydrogen uh
Taking the 250,000 tons that we need for Lut Haven it’s it’s a pilot project and on the other side Professor schluger mentioned uh we are also Embark uh we have been embarking um into the topic of myth and paralysis um the um the first test plant um has been also uh started
Up um last year and uh we’re in the middle of of of the process development here um you can imagine with um the uh stom metric reaction um generating 3 Kg um carbon for 1 kg hydrogen um if there are any um great ideas to um utilize the
Carbon um for for uh value adding um um applications this will also make a big difference um on the economy of these uh processes yeah and then um when we come and please allow me this um bit of detour when we come to the utilization of our products it is really
About um how we live um the the kind of uh um pyramid of of uh um the the the the recycling uh approach so reduce reuse recycle is a key for um implementing circular Solutions and we have um three areas um that that we are
Focusing on on the one hand um it is circular feed stocks um on the other hand it’s new material cycles and new business models because economy always kicks in and um um here is also Professor schuger you also mentioned this it’s not it’s not and and one um
Solution fits all um that will bring us into the new um into the future but it will be really a a a massive transformation of the chemical industry that is needed if you look into um the various uh technologies that you need uh that that will be needed um for really
Making this um transformation um possible in the future and um being an analytical chemist by training I also uh would like to make a plea here not only to look into the um synthesis into the process engineering part but also into the enabling Technologies Professor schuger you said
What knowledge do we need uh for the future and I think we have already seen a couple of uh uh images um from uh electron microscopy and the like so in order to understand structure property relations in order to to Really zoom into the uh materials uh that we need
Into the processes um we we I think need also um to accelerate um the development of um the analytical uh methods and the material physics um that we need in order to accompany this yeah with that Um I would like to come to an end if the technque allows Um no no finally yeah so finally let me return to my opening statement I think enormous challenges are ahead of us and this means that we must now boldly tackle the transformation not only of the um of the science of of the uh chemical industry but also um of uh the
The environmental and societal impact and uh we are taking this path as a company um straightforward and in a systematic approach but I’m a strong believer that research and development is at the core of uh what is is needed and um so I’m very optimistic um with um
The the team that we have but also with the collaborations that we have that we can make it but uh we need this we need in the next step the close collaboration with science and uh politics so let’s act now thank you thank you very much and so our second speaker is Marcus
Soles yeah okay from te group yeah okay hello Marcus um okay Marcus will share with us some of his recent advance in renewable energy green hydrogen cular economy please Marcus yeah thank you very much uh first of all I’d like to thank you for the invitation to speak in front of so much
Expert scientist as an industrial guy I think that is not self-evident to do that uh but on the other side I personally believe uh that we only get progress that we only can achieve our CO2 reduction targets when we really work hand inhand scientists and uh guys or industry uh really to achieve
Progress otherwise uh we we stay or where we are and uh we we can’t protect our climate and our planet of course um you maybe have seen or you have seen uh that slide uh in the presentation uh of Mr schugel um there’s a reason of course for that we work
Really close together in a project called carbon to chem and what you see there is our pilot plant uh in the middle of our steel plant in dubur where we use top gases out of our steel production and use that top gases uh and hand it over to the chemical industry as
A new feed stock uh for chemical synthesis of course and there are a couple of uh challenges uh we have to overcome for that um and I try to address some of that challenges uh we have and uh which and how we solve that together uh with colleagues uh from
Academia um yeah first of all uh I like to address a little bit the discussion about Def fossilization and decarbonization so I personally believe uh more on decarbonization than on Def fossilization um and there are a couple of reasons uh for that uh the main reason is maybe I have also a background
In biology um and I personally know that uh life oh that’s too fast that life is not possible without carbon yeah and I try to bring that a little bit in an order where carbon is absolute necessary and uh where we have a chance really to substitute carbon WIA renewable energy
Or whatever and what you see on the left hand side of course that is human or plants biomass there is an absolute need for carbon and in total uh the carbon content over the whole planet in that three categories is about 30 to 50% of
The dry Mass when we going to cement and Limestone which also is part of our project carbon to chem that’s really hard to Abate uh there is carbon in the process and unfortunately uh there is also CO2 as an output of the process for Mobility is maybe a little bit different
Uh that we really have a chance to substitute some parts of Mobility uh without e fuels for chemical and steel industry it’s a little bit different uh of course core of the activities in the chemical industry is to please to modify a little bit carbon
Let’s say it that way um for the steel industry is of course uh an ingredient uh to reduce ore uh but there are alternatives I come to that later about process seed we have heard e-mobility of course we can totally deforce I uh and renewable of course
Too so I I like to start with with two um um yeah statements uh first decarbonization and Def fossilization needs more renewable energy we have heard that um we have an increase in the moment uh with renewable energy but this is absolute needed and I come to that
Later because uh at least in the steel industry we have really in huge demand of more energy more green energy and the second statement uh is um decarbonization and Def fossilization needs more cross industrial and I have to add that uh also uh cooperation with Academia otherwise we will not solve uh
All the problems we have yeah maybe start uh with with um steel production and uh I will not give now a lecture in metalogy um but um today uh in duburg we have a production capacity of approximately 11 million tons of steel what which is nearly 25% of the steel
Production in Germany and that uh production is based on carbon totally based on carbon and that’s uh to be honest part of the problem if we use carbon as redu producing agent uh we have of course steel but also a lot of CO2 I mentioned that 20 million tons of
CO2 for 11 million tons of steel that means uh steel producers are more gas producers and steel producers at least in in amount so when you what what is the alternative um the alternative is hydrogen yeah that needs a little bit different Technologies uh that we easily
It’s not so easy as it sounds uh substitute carbon by hydrogen and the byproduct uh of the steel will be uh the muster or water uh but what is important to understand here when you look on the slide in the middle so when we have a metalogy based on carbon uh we have
Approximately 50 megga um energ energy demand for 1 kogam of Hot Melt uh so that is based 100% on fossils so when we go on the right hand side um so we have a little bit less energy demand it’s only 30 in me megga for 1 kilogram uh but that is 100%
Renewable otherwise uh it is not feasible really to reduce the CO2 emissions and to give you some figures um for one uh ton of Steel we need approximately 60 kogam of hydrogen that’s less than the coal of coal you need approximately 250 kilog um but when you sum that up and
Say okay if we let’s say transform a site like duburg we have a demand of approximately 70 ter hours which means that are 700,000 uh uh tons of hydrogen just for one side when you sum that up for Germany you have 3 million tons uh of hydrogen demand and when you now say
Okay we would like to produce that on site yeah then you need for and I have calculated that uh an electrolyzer within cap capacity of approximately 16 Gatt so that’s really much more than the German um um government is committed Germany is committed to 10 gwatt and
Just the steel industry needs 16 gaw and in terms of energy that means uh 150 terawatt hours just going in the production of hydrogen so that more than half of our renewable energy installed in the moment in the system so that shows you it it’s nearly impossible
Uh that and plus plus that yeah we need additional energy for the process yeah for the melters and so on so that means uh the steel industry will take the majority uh of the renewable energy and if if we not import hydrogen yeah and this is of course uh on the table for
The steel industry to import hydrogen uh but what is needed uh of course is um we need additional Pipeline and infrastructure for that I like to address a second uh point of in in this transformation uh and I like to underly this is not a green field operation so this is an operation
Uh in where where we substitute our blast furnaces and we have four blast furnaces uh in uh duburg step by step um but that means uh we start with a final investment decision two months ago and we hopefully have our first direct reduction unit installed end of 26 and
Then step by step we substitute um each blast furnaces with a new direct reduction we do that because we have the strong commit to be climate neutral uh until 2045 uh but to be very honest um if we switch to 100% uh hydrogen there is a remaining part of
CO2 and the remaining part is not let’s say just a few kilograms that in the range of two to 4 million tons of CO2 and that’s the reason uh why we said okay we we need a strategy where we also be able to handle that remaining part of
CO2 and uh the approach to do that is a c tocam approach I come to that later um I like to summarize that part uh a little bit uh with some figures uh which I have found in different studies um just to to give you an overview how much more
Additional energy we need uh just for the decarbonization and that is really a huge number that’s for the chemical industry steel Refinery mobility and so on and in Europe it will be in the range of 4,000 or more than 4,000 terawatt hours so that is really a huge amount uh
Which which we have to bring in the system maybe to the second part uh working in Cross industrial networks I mentioned uh that we we start uh with the carbon to project um with the idea to hand over CO2 emissions carbon monoxide uh hydrogen from one industry to the other
Industries and I mentioned that we have a lot of uh so-called top gas or processed gas in in steel making by the way that’s the same for Waste incineration Limestone industry and so on uh but in duburg we are focused uh on on steel production and with a
Conventional um route which is based uh on on uh blast furnaces um we use a couple of that uh gases uh top gases uh to produce heat of course yeah we burn that and we have to substitute that uh by the way uh also when we switch to
Let’s say uh 100% hydrogen based metalogy so that sometimes s uh is forgotten that we also have to do a lot or a hell of work in the downstream process um uh Mrs zidle mentioned that uh with electrification uh but also in the steel industry in the glass industry
And so on there is really a huge uh challenge uh to switch uh to all that heating process industrial heating process to Fossil free energy and of course we need elect izer yeah and I mentioned that the scale we need but in the future and that is a
Little bit The Challenge yeah we have a system which is changing changing from let’s say 100% uh fossil based to in the future 100% hydrogen based yeah and uh if we say we like to hand over uh top gas uh which is uh in the beginning
Based on 100% fossil based yeah and try to convince the chemical industry to say um yeah we are on a journey by the way which uh takes 20 years uh but trust us yeah uh but make your final investment decision now uh that’s really a challenge uh because uh a lot can happen
During that way of course yeah um but there we have uh to work hand in hand and beside the let’s say uh investment decisions there are also a couple of really challenging questions yeah in how does a top guas change and I give you an example where industry and Academia work
Really hand in hand together with the max plank Institute which has really a highly sophisticated analysis or had met an highly sophisticated analysis of our top gases they found more than 2,000 substances and components in our top gases we didn’t know before yeah on the PPM level yes but nevertheless if you
Hand that over to the chemical industry the chemical industry is highly interested uh also on that PPM level otherwise they destroy uh really uh their Catalyst and I guess this is a nice example which shows it it’s not all done yeah uh there’s a a lot of work to
Do also during that process uh which we by the way do in the C to cam project so maybe um a last uh or not really the last slide how who is part of of the the C to cem project and when you look on the leftand side uh it is
Absolut necessary that we had a lot of Partners uh from yeah chemical industry uh chemical engineering um electrolyzer uh but and also recycling industry but also on the right hand side uh really and we are very proud of that uh a lot of Highly ranked U scientific partners with Max plank Society frer
Society a aren university and so on and we really work close together to solve that problem which is really beside um solving the problem really a good interaction between scientists and guys from the industry and what you see on the left hand side our idea is of course
To close the carbon cycle and uh Professor schugel mentioned it um we if we really close that uh really want to close a cycle 100% uh we have also deliver solutions for uh CO2 emissions which are not Point emissions yeah that means the CO2 in the atmosphere we have to extract
And for that reason of course uh direct air capture is essential uh to to at least uh bring uh or share um part of uh of the reduction to CO2 not in in the next 10 years I personally believe that not because just the energy uh is not there
And there will be a fight around uh the renewable energy um which is very important so last not least um um is there a market for that yeah and uh I’m working for an industry um and at the end of the day uh the customer have to
Pay for the products yeah and if if there is not a customer there to take over the product yeah so the industry will die and uh the whole society will more or less die so the challenge is really that we we are in on a journey
And a journey where we have less CO2 emissions uh which is good no question about that uh but uh we have have to trust potential investors uh to switch to a new raow material of CO2 in the middle it’s a little bit small uh you see uh the technology it’s
Not 100% available uh but it is available in terms of use CO2 to produce uh chemicals yeah that’s that’s given and on the right hand side you see there’s also a demand the carbon demand in the chemical industry is really huge and uh they can’t substitute that by nitrogen for example yeah
Because then they have a complete or hydrogen then they have a complete different product so that are really hard to Abate in in their products um and we personally believe there is a market also for CCU Technologies wrong way so last slide i’ like to thank you once again and uh we
You what what you can do is you can also read all our results in Publications like shimi engineer and this really it’s good to see that that in in that Publications scientists and guys from the industry really publish papers together and this is I guess personally um believe that um it is Absolut
Necessary uh that from an indust point we are more open also to Academia and bring our problems also on the table but also the other way around um to say okay um it it is of course to make money yeah uh but it’s also to implement uh new Solutions thank you very
Much thank you so much for having me and and for hosting this meeting I’m super excited to be here and to learn about all the work that all of you have been sharing uh so with that uh my name is Patrice Gonzalez and I’m an assistant professor at the University of California San
Diego so today I’m going to be talking about some of our long duration storage modeling specifically for the western North American grid but before getting into that I’ll briefly talk about what are some of the research directions that we have in my laboratory that relate to the decarbonization question that we’ve been
Discussing and then I’ll go into the details of this most recent work that we’ve been doing for the California energy commission thank you is that better you can hear me all right all right so my lab is called the Renewal Energy and advanced mathematics lab and we have the
Mission to develop mathematical tools for the integration of renewable energy but what we keep at heart is that we want solutions that can be implemented so being mindful of the Legacy systems that we have and the concerns of the different partners that we have have in our
Grid and in terms of the re research thrust that we have we do work on long-term planning in Power Systems for the United States and other regions as well we also look at real-time operations and control schemes for low inertia systems as you’ll hear from some
Of our colleagues in in a few hours and I’ve also been working in the development of datadriven techniques that are safe from a perspective of control theory in particular for Power Systems for which I’m part of I task force and in addition to this um more of
Our recent projects are looking at what could be the electricity Market redesigned or tariff redesigned so we can have a more resilient and reliable grid with an emphasis on vulnerable communities in California so this Project’s particularly focusing on environmental justice and energy Justice and last but not least we also
Work on management of distributed energy resources from the perspective of developing methods to control these assets and also from the perspective of deployment in the microgrid that we have at UC San Diego that was recently awarded uh $40 million from the National Science Foundation so it’s a great
Playground to have so if any of you are interested in testing your algorithms you’re all welcome to join us and from the methodological perspective um we draw from techniques in optimization control theory and machine learning and I’m very grateful for the institutions that have been funding our work of
Course and today I’ll be focusing on one of the projects where we look at long-term planning in the US with the focus on long duration storage so this work uh it’s led by my student Martin staaker and we’re looking at the value of long duration storage as a function of different conditions that
The grid my experience in AER missions future so the motivation for this work is that we still don’t know in the United States how much duration and energy capacity therefore power capacity we will need for storage to support this growing demand and a Ser emissions great
In the future and some Studies have been reporting that this is possible to achieve with 100% renewable energy with and without storage some of them say uh others rely on clean firm power and others even take it further and they say that myomas could enable a negative emissions
Future and another set of Studies have been focusing at intraday storage as well as some seasonal storage in a few cases most recent recently so with that uh the contributions of this work that I’m going to be discussing today focus on a couple different different aspects that determine what would be that optimal
Deployment of long duration storage as well as the optimal operation so first we look at what would be the benefits in terms of electricity pricing if we were to have a set of either federal or state mandates that would require a certain energy capacity of long duration storage
Um in in the we as you’ll see in a couple slides and we also look at what would be the optimal deployment of LDS or long duration storage as a function or depending on a few different factors that we can experience in the grid so
The first one we look at what happens if we have regions that are more solar dominant or more wind dominant what would be the optimal duration and characteristics of that storage to support those regions we also look at uh a very politically relevant question in the United States it’s that what would
Happen if transmission expansion were to be restricted because of all the regulatory processes that go in that um aspect so we want to understand if we’re not able to expand transmission the way that an optimal model will tell us what would we require in terms of storage
Deployment and we also look at a sensitivity on the cost Target for different long duration storage and the idea here is not to prescribe or try to predict what those cost targets would be but more as a use use it as a lookup table where different companies can say
If we get to this certain cost Target what would be the optimal deployment in the work so they can understand what would be their Market penetration if they were to get to that cost Target and last but not least we also look at what happens as a function of the hydrop
Power availability so from the perspective of climate change if we see our Hydro resource being impacted this is one of the key flexibility sources in the United States so it would definitely um require more um long duration storage in this case uh because of time I’ll
Focus only on three of these factors so we’ll be looking at the impacts of having LDS mandates the impacts of having either more solar or wind dominant regions in the western North America grid and the impact of these different cost targets for long duration storage and in terms of the methodology
That we use we use a capacity expansion model that I’ll briefly describe in the next few slides Where We Are are sampling 6 hours per day and we are modeling all 365 days in 2050 so we can actually capture the operation of a long duration storage asset and we are forcing a zero
Emissions future for the W in 2050 as well so for this work we have been using the switch W model which is an open- Source model you’re welcome to download or get a clone from our GitHub repo we have a few examples so you can start playing with that model you can also
Customize it for your regions and we’re always looking for more contributors so definitely go ahead and play with the model if if you’re interested so in in this broader description it’s a capacity expansion model for this particular study we’re running it as a deterministic program that’s linear however the model has the
Capability to be run as a stochastic program for example to take into account the uncertainty from climate change as we’ve done in the past and also we Al we have the the capability to run it with unit commitment uh hence it wouldn’t be a linear program anymore but it would be
A mixed interger program instead but for this particular set of research questions we focus on the deterministic version and linear version and as a capacity expansion model it minimizes the total cost of operating the power system in terms of transmission and generation is Investments and also operation geographically we cover the Western
Electricity coordinating Council so the area in Orange in that map and we split it in 50 load zones meaning that we have 50 independent projections for hourly loads uh over 50 smaller regions in the W and in terms of time this model it’s really flexible so depending on the user
You can customize what will be your investment periods so you could have for example investment periods every one year or every 10 years and in the case of this studies we only look at one investment period in 2050 similarly the time resolution is it’s also very
Flexible and up to the user and in this particular study we model as I said before three all 365 days and sampling every four hours so we can capture the operation of long duration storage but that being said depending on the research question you can also sample a
Subset of days uh to be able to reduce the computational complexity of the resulting model and here’s to give you a sense of the inputs and therefore outputs that we can get from this model we used all existing 3,000 generators in The Wack we used roughly a little bit over 7,000
Potential new generators for solar and wind power so in those figures what you’re looking at are the already filtered and clustered potential locations for wind candidates in the W and also for solar candidates in the bottom figure so this comes from a highly uh resolution data set from enr
The wind tool kit for example where they had 2 km Square resolution for the wind data and then on that we added we added layers of removing uh land where you couldn’t deploy any of these projects and also then we SE selected the top 10 performing uh 10% performing in terms of
Capacity factor and also being mindful of what would be the cost of connection to the closest sub station so that’s how we downscale from all the data that enil has into what will be most likely to be deployed um generators in the future and for in the case of transmission we
Aggregate the lines so this can be tractable and we have hourly loads for all these 50 zones that we have as well as hourly capacity factors for wind and solar power and of course we use as inputs uh cost projections for these Technologies and for outputs the classical outputs from a capacity
Expansion model where we look at what would be the optimal investment by decade or for 2050 in our case study also we obtain what would be the hourly dispatch if we’re modeling with an hourly resolution and also we get what be the transmission expansion and operation of new and existing lines as
Well as emissions by generator and total cost um of that resulting scenario so now let’s get into some of these results of this study so in this first set of results um okay you can see that uh I’ll be focusing on the question on what happens
If we have a more solar or wind dominant grid so in these two figures you’re looking at results from two separate scenarios the one on the left over here we’re forcing exogenously to have a more solar dominant W where we have 90% solar power versus roughly 10% wind power and
The figure on the right is looking at a more wind dominant grid where we have 40% solar and 60% wind and in the pie charts what you’re looking at it’s a capacity buildout by technology labeled by the different colors so for example in the southwest we see a lot of yellow
That’s representing solar power and a little bit of light green which is representing storage and another key aspect of this figure that I want to highlight is the dots that are in the center of the pie charts those are colored in shades of pink and that’s representing the duration of storage
That gets optimally deployed for all these 50 regions that we have in the W so in terms of the results as you can see if we look at the the solar dominant uh regions for example here in the south West in both scenarios we see that we have a light pink dot that’s
Representing 6 to 10 hours of duration get optimally deployed to support solar power and then in the case of the zones for example that we see more in the rock is over here if I move oops there so in the darker blue that’s the wind deployment we see that we have a darker
Pink representing 10 to 20 hours of storage duration now we shift years uh a little bit and we look at the other set of scenarios where we were testing different cost targets to understand what would be the optimal deployment of long duration storage across the W so in
This case the different uh rows that we have in the table are representing individual scenarios that we were testing where what we changed across these scenarios is the energy storus cost that we assumed and here with this range we’re not trying to prescribe what’s going to happen in terms in terms
Of cost assumption but we want to better understand what if scenarios so meaning if a certain technology for long duration were to achieve any of these cost targets what would be the optimal for example uh total terawatt hours deployed in the W or what would be for example the largest storage duration
That we would see in the W and and other relevant metrics so what I want to uh draw your attention to it’s a couple of these results rather than going through the Full Table of of course so with this range that goes from roughly $100 per
Kilowatt hour all the way to 0.5 per kilowatt hour we see that the energy capacity ranges uh substantially so it goes from 1.5 tratt hours optimally deployed all the way to 36 terawatt hours optimal deployed in the cheapest cost Target that we’re testing now if we look at what that
Means in terms of the largest duration that we would observe W wide we see that that number also r just substantially going from roughly 9 hours all the way to over 800 hours duration and last but not least uh given that storage can complement transmission as a flexibility asset we also observed
That if some technology were to get to the lowest um cost assumption the one the $0.5 per kilowatt hour at the bottom we would see um a reduction in 75% of transmission needing to be deployed W wide which is a huge um decrease so we definitely want to be mindful of that as
We might continue encountering political hurdles to expanding transmission so now uh shifting and gears again a little bit let’s see if I can oops okay this move forward a little faster but let me walk you through this figure first so on the figure on the left we’re looking at the Y AIS those
Are electricity prices and that we get from the Dual value of the constraint in our model where we force it to meet the load at every hour that we’re modeling and then on the x-axis we’re looking at different storage energy capacity mandates so basically each of the points
That we see across the x- axis is representing the results that we get from one scenario that we run so in the case of zero we’re not forcing any mandate and we’re obtaining the distribution for lmps uh in that scenario where we wouldn’t have any storage mandate and as we move through
The x-axis we’re looking at different mandates that we were testing uh for different scenarios so for example we tested what would happen if we forced to have two tratt hours of energy capacity installed in the W and then what would happen for example when we have 20
Terawatt hours all the way to 64 terawatt hours being forced in in the work so the first result here that I want to highlight that it’s going to be guiding Us in this analysis is that across all the mandates that we were testing the one where we force the 20
Terawatt hour of duration being installed that one results in the one that um drastically reduces the variability of lmps that we observe more so relatively than any other increasing mandate for energy capacity so we will focus our attention on that 20 terawatt hours that we observe has a big
Impact now on the second figure on the right we’re still looking at prices of electricity on on the Y AIS and the same scenarios of storage mandates that we were exploring but now we are breaking this this down by different regions so if you recall we had 50 regions in our
Model and here we’re clustering so it’s easier to visualize what’s happening so as expected uh different regions are going to experience different lmps as we experience nowadays but even more this tendency will continue in a 2050 future where we have zero emissions and now in this third panel
We’re still looking on the y- axis to lmps and then the different storage mandates that we tested on the x-axis but now we’re clustering by hour that we simulated so the result that we see over here is that the hours that have the lowest lmps are going to be between 8:00
A.m. and 400 p.m so these three curves over here and that’s because that’s when we have the highest generation from solar power so that brings our lmps substantially down and again uh no matter how we’re cutting and slicing this data we always see that the 20 tratt hours it’s the
Storage mandate that would have the most substantial relative impact from the ones that we tested and last but not least I also want to show you what happens if we do this clustering but now by month so here we still see lmps the different storage scenarios that we tested on the x-axis
And the two curves uh at the top are representing the L PS that we obtain in December and then in July and those are the highest ones and that makes sense because that’s when we experience the highest cost I mean the highest demand uh W wide and similarly we see that when
We get to the scenario where we force 20 terawatt hours of storage mandate or more that volatility gets substantially decreased and then the prices start converging as we have a higher uh energy capacity mandate so with that I would like to conclude that as we saw depending on the
Grid composition if it’s either solar dominant region or either wind dominant region we will obtain different optimal durations to support that type of generation so in the case of solar power we see 6 to 10 hour duration optimally supporting solar and in the case of wind
Dominant regions in the work we saw 10 to 20 hours of duration optim supporting uh that region we also observe that R&D can play a key role in determining that optimal deployment of LDS or long duration storage and to give an example here if the energy capacity Capital cost would
Get to $5 per kilowatt hours that would enable for example optimally deployed 20 28 hours of mean duration work wide observing a maximum of 400 hours wewi as well and last but not least this is part of what I think it’s super important to consider as we move forward regulation
Can have a huge impact as we’ve been discussing so in this case I wanted to portray what would be the importance and uh the value of having storage mandates in the face of mitigating the volatility of prices of electricity in a Ser emissions grid so with that I’ll be happy to take any
Questions and probably open it to the other speakers as well thank you [Applause] again there is one from J okay so let’s start so um patri thank you that was an absolutely delightful talk uh so I just want to confirm what I saw that even at a half a dollar per kilowatt hour
Seasonal storage is not feasible all you get is a month right so we get different results I’ll I’ll be happy to discuss but we do see seasonal storage with that type of cost Target so maybe depending on the power capacity cost that was assumed so maybe we’re a little more optimistic on that
End uh but yeah I’ll be happy to show more figures because we start seeing seasonal storage at at that lowc cost Target okay and you know because your curves show that you’ve naturally depressed prices how do you pay for even the one month storage that you have
Absolutely so that’s part of what we discuss in this paper that I hope the preprint comes out in the next few weeks I’ll be happy to share but that’s an open challenge in my perspective how would the market then remunerate that type of Arbitrage that we don’t have
Like that market scheme nowadays in the United States so we need to think do we need to create new ancillary services to then provide the right signals for that behavior to take place because in the current market there’s no incentive to do any anything like that or should it
Come from uh subsidies for instance as we were discussing earlier so that’s certainly an open question U yeah thank you for the question so we have have another 10 minutes of question and answers in total and many questions already so I think deac is next
Ifil and then the others yes I see um I have a lot of questions but I’m going to give one right now for Marcus I think um loved your presentation glad to see all the progress you’re making um we’ve been following uh molten oxide electrolysis
Uh which can directly use uh uh you know kind of renewable energy to do electrolysis of molten ion oxide at 600° c um any comment on that is that something you guys are looking at because seems to be less complex and more modular and more distributed than a large besser kind of
Plant so to be honest we are not working on that area because the history of T CP is a little bit different uh the history is coming from Chlor alkaline electrolyzer and that’s the reason why we are now shifted to alkal electrolyzer okay next one if yeah I have a question
To you Patricia so you considered wind and solar so why didn’t you consider geothermal you have the largest production in the world in California and you have the largest potential in the world across the Basin and Range so it would perfectly fit to your area yes so we do consider geothermal and biomass
Um and other technologies that I didn’t mention but in terms of the cost projections from enr that’s what we were using the mod projections we see a lot more solar and wind power deployed but we are considering geothermal absolutely yes but maybe we need to be a little more
Progressive in the cost projections that we have if I may add this I think you it would be nice to come up with a new uh model including geothermal and basically showing what is the need from geothermal because then you could replace also the topic of storage quite a lot so I 100%
Agree we could do the same type of analysis but with a cost sensitivity on geothermal what would it take to see it deployed yeah thank you so next one Granger Morgan and B afterwards so Carla that was a great talk um you have an enormous amount of of uh Capital
Intensive hardware and you’re talking about increasing the amount of u uh variable and intermittent energy input can you talk to us a little about issues of capacity factors yeah I mean um that’s that’s right and I think uh the the the challenge is that uh if you look into
Our um into our um current um energy um consumption um we it is uh almost um worldwide uh um 53 uh terawatt hours a year and uh out of this um 40 terawatt hours of steam uh so so uh steam is really the guiding uh The Guiding uh uh
Principle so I can save Steam and that’s how I can smooth yeah and uh and I think it uh it it it will um require also the continuous uh supply of renewable energy so um I mean we at least that I would say is the current assumption that uh
That uh whatever is produced will be transmitted to the sides already in a way that that there is a kind of uh continuous Supply um so so it’s then part of the utility Al it’s it’s a question who takes care yeah uh and uh of course if you think about our
Investment uh in the joint U project at the North Sea um between the North Sea and L halfen there are I don’t know a few hundred kilometers um to um or a couple of hundred kilometers um that that we also need the grid uh kind of connection that can handle these amounts
And I think it’s also true for t t c and then on side we also need to then um upgrade our our electrical Grid in order to cope with um the um additional electricity um that we have to handle and we assume that by 40 the electricity
Demand increases by three to four times so that gives you a feeling on what does it also mean for the grid uh on site as well as um the transmission lines and and Transformers and alike to the to the sides thank you um DEA yui kield and Valerie and you Elsa on also
So yeah thank thank you very much I just would like to add a short uh comment from the German perspective on the long-term storage which you both discussed um because it would just have been published numbers on cost for digging the caverns from Salt domes and they were exactly at 50 Cent per
Kilowatt hour of storage capacity in pure hydrogen so this fits well into this and then the other thing is a big discussion how to finance um the gas power plant which are needed to reel Electrify the gas and there are two different schools so one says we leave
It to the market there will be very high cost for electricity sometimes and this will pay for everything and but many people have lost confidence that politics really will let run these high costs after what we have seen in the last year due to the Russian war in the
Ukraine the prices went high and politics at the first moment said okay now the market is not very good anymore so we have have to counterbalance this um and therefore um even several or um commissions uh which cons to consultancy to the government has said we need something like capacity markets so we
Have to pay um The Operators of the gas turbines for being there and this is yeah then it’s becoming more or less an part as of the infrastructure as a grid yeah the grid is also paid for being there and not for the transmission they are doing and this would be quite
Similar but that’s indeed an key fact and the German power plant operators wait for the final decision how these markets will be because we need a lot of them until 2030 because until then we have a shut down of several of our Coal Power plans and we need replacement and to be in
Time with the power plant we need now political decisions and they are pending ye please got a couple question the first one for markers so you mentioned hydrogen refining uh how mature is the hydrogen reduction process uh to make steel right now uh because of hydrogen is so
Reactive with the I mean I repeat that again the hydrogen embedment problem of that furnace right is that a d deal how how how mature is that so uh as far as I know as Stanford we have some research going on on that process it seems to me
It’s uh not so mature but love to learn yeah okay that’s really OD question um so we have just received a funding of two billion uh to invest in that technology uh from let’s say um we at least the steel industry and not saying tsen C but but also tsen C is
Highly committed on that the whole steel industry indry in Germany at least I can overview uh is highly committed to that technology and uh is is pretty sure uh that this is a technology which runs at the end of the day so we have some smaller demonstration and I guess that’s
What what you what you like to make some point uh which which were in operation and uh but we we believe uh there there are evidence that it works so and another word is uh maybe not so mature yet but with this investment right it will be mature uh is that my understanding
[Laughter] correct that that’s okay if it’sing your business no there are really huge companies yeah who invested in in the Technologies and this is not only the steel industry it’s also the the producer uh of all the equipment yeah the SMS tenova and so on they had a lot
Of experience and at least to be a little bit more serious um we we absolute uh know that the reduction with natural gas yeah runs so there many many installations worldwide uh where with 70% uh nitrogen content yeah this installations produce a perfect pig iron yeah so at least there’s a a good
Base where we can start yeah thank you second question for patri also for the great expert right here so the long duration energy storage often time I’ve seen is um people say hey it’s 4 hours 6 hours 8 hours or 12 hours think about single uh duration but in reality if I’m
The owner of a long duration energy storage I have 12 hours capacity I’m going to use that for hour by hour as well not just 12 hours then there a mixture of Economics come coming in Patricia so how do you handle that problem I through my startup company
When we have the a customer we can see the next coming is very flexible time scale of energy storage that makes sense it’s not a single hour uh love to hear your thoughts absolutely I think that’s part of the unexplored uh new landscape that we will have so from that perspective
When I refer to duration it’s just the ratio between energy capacity to power capacity but you could operate that however you want so if you want to do daily Cycles even though you could do seasonal Cycles you could from the perspective of how we’re modeling it however depending on the technology you
Are going to have different efficiencies so that’s going to determine how much you cycle from a cost perspective um tendency but if if there were to be a technology that it’s doesn’t care about if you’re cycling hourly or per day or per season uh the model can be agnostic
Like that and let it cycle with that pattern for sure yes so yeah I agree it’s an open landscape okay three more questions and then we have to finish keld first please okay so my question would go to Patricia but to some extent also no to Patricia um
Predominantly um um so you modeled scenarios for 2050 and I was and you mentioned that basically this is also influenced by the changing climate and changing energy energy demand um you mention seasonal and darnal fluctuations I was wondering about the scenario that you take into account I mean by 2050 the
Different um scenarios for decarbonization are not completely decoupled but um they come with several constraints regarding climate modeling absolutely I 100% agree and in this work we didn’t incorporate climate impacts for example for hydrop power we took if I recall correctly the Medan Year from the historical data that we
Had however in results that I didn’t show then we run sensitivities around that looking at what happens if we restricted to 50% availability and even though in the work that’s roughly hydrop power has like roughly 10% or 15% of the generation reducing it to 50% it had a
Huge impact on the duration of storage that we would expect even though in generation is pretty low the share but it’s a substantial impact uh and we have another paper that I didn’t show that it’s under review right now where we look at the climate impact so there we
Use 10 different climate models that are predicting what would happen with hydropower and loads and then we run all these scenarios and try to understand what are the shortcomings if we were to model our future only looking at one projection so we want to understand more holistically that grid operators cannot
Be or cannot ignore anymore the climate impacts uh as we move forward so I’ll be happy to share that preprint when it comes out but it’s not there yet thank you for the question uh we have yel sason online yel do you hear us please your question I know and then to
Thank you um we learned from Mary in the morning that methane is a critical component in uh as greenhouse gas and that there are many uh escapes of methane from various facilities now at the same time we didn’t hear not from Marcus and not from claraa that their companies are doing
Anything about it and I wonder why so anybody wants to answer yeah thank you very much for this uh question I think uh um actually it was also discussed during uh the dinner conversations earlier um um at at at the trip um and I think uh not only in terms
Of methane but also in terms of hydrogen um I mean from an environmental uh point of view we have to monitor any way the emissions uh of any plant I don’t talk about um the uh uh the pipes um the pipelines but uh but I will take it I
Don’t have a I don’t have a a comprehensive answer to it I’ll I’ll take it back um and uh it it is something that yeah um a challenge that uh that was not so obvious to me but uh it seems that it’s uh it’s also great to
Hear that in the um academic uh um working groups that is um yeah under scrutiny and um I’ll take it back and and come back to you with that thank you two more and then we have to finish Valerie yes so my question is actually from Marcos on the I guess refining a
Little bit E’s question what should the research priorities be for academics um in this area of hydrogen direct reduced iron so is it around um the process itself and uh the encapsulation of unreduced material that can come sometimes has been found to occur in the peer-reviewed literature
Which can again um create problems in the actual furnace or is it more after the fact in terms of transportability and storability and uh properties of the hydrogen reduced material material ra compared to the um natural gas uh or carbon based process if you could I mean
You give maybe trying to think about some um some productive areas uh or is it going to be all settled within the next few years with the new projects coming online or are there areas of research that academics can usefully take up I guess there are a couple of areas for research um
Maybe the most important for the steel industry is you have different qualities of ore uh and how to handle that uh and Al what what are the right parameters to to get the the best product as possible I guess uh that’s something what is really of high
Importancy and of course uh also to qualify let’s say lower grades of or for that process M thank you thank you and the last one patri please um the question is for Dr sidel so it was very nice to see that BSF is now also looking into
Electrolysis and um I was surprised to see actually I I’m aware but uh you were speaking about PM technology and um we see in Germany recently that several of the large companies are trying to move away from the pem technology because of the idium cost is this something that um you are
Considering and was there a reason to choose pem for your effort yeah thank you for the question I think um I mean you you can imagine with um the focus on the methan paralysis let me let me go one step back um we um in the first step
Also ask ourselves should we in uh should we pilot also other Technologies um and uh then finally the decision was uh yes because um it is not so much about the technology itself at the moment it’s more how to integrate it into the site um how to um really also
Run a project like this um uh on site and and um I mean in in in terms of um don’t talk about the technology but in terms of deployment it’s also numbering up so it’s really get get acquaintance uh to the to the technology and I think
Um it is too early to to discuss any um longer term investment into into larger scale and I think as with all these new technologies the question is what will be will there be a final winner uh probably in in in in in the electrolyzers world um there might be
But but for others um for other approaches um there will be um um I think a need for for different Technologies for the different uh requirements so um first is is really to get into um working with Electro with an electrolyzer installing it working with it in integrating it our um hydrogen
Network um on site um and and having um this experience as as a foundation um for the other um decisions to be made in the next years so thank you very much I give now the word to Leos uh for the closing remarks yeah thank you okay so I think
The discussion was H was already complete and long um um I think it’s an important area in my opinion H to be honest decarbonization and the defiz are quite um going to the same Target or maybe similar um but it seems that from the company’s point of view H there is
Some a um at least an attention and progress um and sure we have a lot still lot to here like and I think there is still a lot of of of thing I I think from from the Academia point of view um yeah and then by that I want to close the session
And