Not way back, I had the chance to speak with a number of hundred individuals in an Australian Sensible Vitality Council webinar. It was organized to take advantage of my uncommon timezone alignment with Oz as I spend a couple of weeks in New Zealand as a digital nomad. Many extra signed up, anticipating to hearken to the recording later. That recording is beneath the hyperlink within the opening sentence, by the best way.

The organizer Steve Blume, former President of the Council, and I assumed it might be helpful to reply a lot of the dozens of questions in articles and share with the registrants as effectively. That is the fourth of some articles with responses, which can be aggregated and shared by the Council as effectively for individuals. The primary article was on aviation and maritime transport questions, the second coated biofuels and HVDC , the third handled hydrogen and the fourth with fossil fuels.

The framing of my ready remarks was the Radical Electrification of Transportation. I’ve printed lots on the topic as I’ve dug by most modes over the previous 15 years.

Intro slide to Michael Barnard presentation to Australian Sensible Vitality Council webinar

To summarize my presentation, all floor transportation will electrify. That’s automobiles, vans, buses, utility autos, trains, and mining autos. All inland transport and two-thirds of quick sea transport will electrify, with solely the longest routes requiring biofuels. Delivery and rail may also drop in tonnage attributable to elimination of bulk fossil fuels from hundreds. Aviation can be disrupted by electrical regional air mobility, autonomous flight, and digital air visitors management, and solely trans-oceanic flights would require biofuels in 50 years.

Meaning the billions of tons of fossil fuels per 12 months requirement for extraction, processing, refinement, and distribution are going away and being changed by tens of tens of millions of tons of expertise metals comparable to lithium and cobalt, in addition to a couple of hundred million tons of biofuels for aviation and maritime transport. That’s all very doable.

The ready remarks skimmed over all of that in half-hour or so, leaving far too little time for questions, and so I’ve chosen to answer most of them in writing.

Politics & Geopolitics

Have you ever factored main worldwide disruptions into your mannequin to 2100, e.g. pandemics, geo-political conflicts?

Not likely, no. On the decade-by-decade stage, that’s largely noise. COVID had a a lot bigger influence than virtually the rest, however it was dwarfed by the rise of China’s manufacturing and demand since 1990. Every thing else is effectively under the extent of COVID’s influence.

My projection assumes a couple of issues round main geopolitics. The primary is that we received’t be stupidly moving into large sizzling wars between superpowers. China and the USA received’t be coming to blows, Russia can be constrained to its borders greater than not, and North Korea will proceed to be remoted and impoverished. Fixing the issues with rogue states is a multi-decadal effort by itself, however a rounding error globally.

International commerce will proceed regardless of noises about decoupling. There can be some symbolic decoupling and recreation of regional North American and European mineral extraction, processing and manufacturing, however absurd quantities of all of that come all the way down to China persevering with to have important buying energy and Wright’s Regulation benefits which western nations are going to be actually challenged to beat.

Pandemics will come and go, however having had a contemporary COVID, each nation is vastly extra ready for the following COVID, no matter that can be. Having helped construct the world’s most refined outbreak and communicable illness administration resolution within the aftermath of SARS, I merely level to SARS, H1N1, Ebola, and COVID as regular occasions, with COVID being the one which broke by to important world impacts. Pandemics are enterprise as standard with some being larger and decrease impacts, and attempting to foretell which decade they may happen in isn’t a helpful train. 

I do see China’s huge infrastructure build-out coming to an finish, which suggests a really large change in demand for lots of drugs. I see India’s and Africa’s rise being slower than China’s for a wide range of causes, so the demand curves aren’t practically as robust. I see a lot larger downward pressures on shifting good and folks as we worth carbon emissions holding on till we begin actually reaping the advantages of low cost, environment friendly renewables, transmission and storage making power actually low cost, and battery power chemistries being in place to actually exploit that. 

My curves do lean into demographic shifts which might be eliminating inhabitants progress. The UN’s projections are nonetheless peak inhabitants in 2100, however different very credible demographics organizations are projecting rather more speedy peaks, in 2070 and 2050. Personally, I discover the extra optimistic projections to be extra probably. The massive inhabitants progress from 1960 onward goes to be flat, and that’s going to have a big impact on demand curves.

Growing affluence will proceed, however so will growing alternate options to flying. Witness the soon-to-be 50,000 km of high-speed electrified passenger rail in China. And until Africa and India repair governance, the deep inequity will proceed to depart solely a small proportion of wealthy individuals in a position to fly.

My demand curves for the final 25 years of the century are much more nebulous than those for the previous a long time. Meals for thought and argument, not one thing to be thought of remotely dependable.

Primarily based in your modeling, what are the optimum options for power importing economies comparable to South Korea and Japan to satisfy their decarbonization targets?

Identical as in every single place else. As a lot onshore wind and photo voltaic as there’s good useful resource for. Ditto offshore wind, which each nations have numerous room for in territorial waters. HVDC cables in all instructions. Israel is getting linked to Europe with a 1,200 km undersea HVDC cable, so the 90 km from Japan to South Korea and the 350 km from South Korea to China are trivial distances. Pumped hydro the place there’s useful resource availability (and there’s tons) and batteries for a bunch of the remainder. Vitality interconnection much more than power importing.

Transferring molecules for power isn’t obligatory sooner or later when utilizing renewable electrical energy straight is a lot extra environment friendly and it’s low cost and simple to generate renewable electrical energy. The transition can be fraught, however what transition isn’t?

Technically and economically, electrifying most issues is smart to many. There are communities that won’t agree with this strategy, significantly if they don’t see particular person or group profit, which then has an affect in politics. How can we overcome or cope with the opposition to huge electrification?

Two issues are going to kick resistance to the curb. The primary is European management. It stays the second or third greatest economic system on the earth relying on the place you draw the boundaries, does huge commerce with each different economic system on the earth, and it’s going to begin pricing carbon at its borders in 2026 with the carbon border adjustment mechanism. That’s primarily based on its cap and commerce emissions buying and selling scheme, one thing similar to California’s and China’s. Chinese language enterprise executives are effectively conscious of this, as I used to be unsurprised to search out when presenting to a gaggle of them in Dalian close to Beijing not too long ago on Europe’s decarbonization plans.

The European carbon worth has been butting up in opposition to €100 for a few years, is seeing an increasing number of commodities and industries swept into it, is seeing fewer and fewer grants of entitlements like these to aviation and can proceed to extend in worth. Jurisdictions with out carbon costs can be more and more uncompetitive in European markets. Provided that China has a carbon worth and it’s going to see the identical trajectory as Europe’s, which economic system on the earth goes to take a look at that and say that they aren’t going to decarbonize?

The second motive is China. It’s the solely scaled producer of a really massive proportion of the applied sciences required to decarbonize, from electrical automobiles to wind generators to photo voltaic panels to batteries. And since it’s massively scaled, these applied sciences are more and more low cost to purchase, and since these applied sciences are so environment friendly and low cost to function, they’re strongly most well-liked coming and going by consumers globally. I do know Goldwind has a powerful presence in Australia’s wind power as an acquaintance works for them, for example.

China can be approaching a tipping level the place its economic system goes to decarbonize quickly. It’s electrifying its economic system vastly extra quickly than another nation on the earth and it’s constructing extra low carbon era, transmission and storage than any nation on the earth. Sure, it’s constructing coal crops to steadiness the grid, however they’re working at 55% capability elements and that proportion will decline quickly within the coming years as they get shut down as a result of they’re unneeded.

Amongst different issues, China simply launched a 1,000 km route Yangtze electrified small container ship with swappable containerized batteries, and is about to launch one other. They’re going to electrify all of their huge inland water freight simply as they’ve electrified most intercity freight and passenger miles with high-speed rail and most buses and vans with battery electrical autos. Trade is coming subsequent, and it is going to be blindingly swift as effectively. 

Decarbonizing electrical energy system: What’s the probably lengthy period storage the place pumped hydro isn’t an choice, e.g. West Australia?

Properly, West Australia has much more pumped hydro useful resource off protected land and close to transmission than you suppose, I think. The hyperlink is to the ANU pumped hydro atlas. There’s fairly a bit, however it’s not within the inside.

However I fee redox move batteries because the lengthy period storage resolution that can be greatest after pumped hydro.

On value-added minerals processing & recycling, what’s your recommendation on Australia’s potential engagement with China to study on what they’ve been doing on this? Any examples of collaboration in LATAM, AFRICA, ASEAN Australia ought to pay attention to?

My steerage can be considerably trite and superficial on this as there’s a deep historical past between the 2 nations that I’m solely considerably conscious of. Amongst different issues, I used to be stunned to search out that the earlier federal administration really canceled Victoria state Belt & Street Initiative agreements. 

That mentioned, there are some apparent issues to do. Lean into the fact that China is Australia’s greatest bi-lateral buying and selling associate. Lean into the fact that Australia is a part of APAC, not the west, no matter historical past. Work with ASEAN companions to establish the fitting contacts. Leverage present mineral extraction relationships with China to hunt out potential data sharing alternatives. Set up joint Chinese language-Australian analysis packages between Chinese language and Australian companies. Invite Belt & Street Initiative efforts to determine minerals worth add together with iron manufacturing with inexperienced hydrogen created with Chinese language electrolyzers.

As I mentioned, trite and apparent. Additionally actually exhausting to do gracefully within the bizarre political local weather in the intervening time.

Relating to different geographical examples, I don’t have good ones to share, I’m afraid. It’s an attention-grabbing query although, so I’ll concentrate and hopefully discover some.

What’s your view of the battery value curve going ahead? It appears that evidently value reductions have slowed lately, or has this been a short-term impact as a result of demand is growing quicker than new provide can ramp up?

That’s a market demand vs provide bump. What’s going to occur is what has occurred for the previous twenty years, which is that battery power capability will go up for a similar worth and weight level. Additional, the upper market worth for Li-ion signifies that different chemistries that are appropriate for different market segments, like grid storage, have an actual alternative to maneuver. 

Batteries include a number of totally different parts, and most new chemistries like LFP and silicon chemistries that use cell-based batteries can leverage the economies of producing scale of that lithium-ion has created. Pouch-based batteries can achieve the benefits that the laptop computer and smartphone industries created. That’s some extent Vincent Pluvinage, CEO and co-founder of silicon nanowire innovator OneD Battery Sciences made to me not too long ago once we spoke.

New chemistries with effectively differentiated traits can get to market at a less expensive worth level rather more rapidly than was beforehand doable.

And so, one other set of Australian questions on decarbonization, electrification of transportation, hydrogen, and the way forward for Australia’s position on the earth requested and answered.

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