You Loved the Hydrogen Ladder (I know, Version 6.0 is long overdue!), meet the Electrification Staircase. Electrify Everything is dead; long live Electrify Almost Everything. And here's the road map.
Thank you, I found the value in the hydrogen ladder to be in disabusing the notion that hydrogen could be anything, and soon. This is a good first step, but the competitive position against hydrogen isn’t as clear for this.
Thanks Darren. The Hydrogen Ladder was intended to puncture a bunch of nonsense - it was in a sense destructive. The Hydrogen Staircase is creative - it demonstrates what you can do, not what you can't, which is always harder.
In the UK, with its solar pv capacity factor of 11%, for every (intermittent) TWh of electricity generated, 70X more copper is used than a TWh of (24/7/365) electricity from a Gen III+ nuclear power plant (NPP), be they Large Reactors or small modular reactors (SMRs).
For intermittent offshore wind, the figure is 67X; for intermittent, environmental and ecosystem destructive onshore wind, it's 26X. Add to that the copper used in the Rube Goldberg technologies (including BESSs) renewables supporters call upon for when the wind don't blow (often) and the Sun don't shine (every day) and 'a pipedream' is not hyperbole.
The era of SMRs is already underway with the advanced build of the first of 4 GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy BWRX-300 SMRs to come on line in 2030 at OPG's Darlington site. Rolls-Royce SMR Ltd. will build 3 of their 470 MW SMRs at the Wylfa site in the UK. Both companies have dozens of potential orders in the pipeline in North America and several European nations.
Without doubt, exponential growth of SMR technologies is now underway as the only pragmatic and economical way to decarbonise electricity generation.
But what about decarbonising all other sectors of energy use like all forms of transport and industrial processes? It won't be too long, as renewables wither and die, that worldwide decision makers realise greener-than-green, nuclear enabled hydrogen (NEH) uniquely answers that question:
By using the heat property of nuclear power, SOEC electrolysers in combination with Gen III+ NPPs can manufacture NEH at a 40% higher production rate than wind and solar are able to do by 'cold' electrolysis.
In nuclear-ready nations, it can save $billions every year and millions of premature deaths/vile illnesses by eliminating the 'evils' of the burning of fossil fuels:
Gen III+ NPPs and NEH can decarbonise nearly all sectors of energy use whilst virtually eliminating the need for energy storage, which is the Achilles Heel of renewables. It is the Occam's Razor solution to a cleaner world free of fossil fuel pollution (including GHGs) at minimal 'cost'.
Minimal investment
Minimal environmental impact
Minimal mineral/energy/material/manufacturing use
Minimal seabed and land area use
Minimal ecosystem destruction
Minimal biodiversity loss
Here's hoping, very soon, that all nuclear power advocates across all media/social media platforms start to recognise Gen III+ NPPs combined with SOEC electrolysers answers all the questions and 'WE' should be 'selling it as the Silver Bullet package.
I’ll second that agricultural machinery might be worthy of breaking out into its own category. It’s a huge sector, and farming can carry big political weight. Tractors are starting to happen, but understanding how far along we are to achieving electric combine harvesters for example could be a useful item for policy makers. Or do they stay with liquid fuels like bio diesel?
Great work! There are however two points where "electrify everything" is questionable. First steel, where the two Swedish projects Hybrit and Stegra are advancing with (electric) hydrogen reduction rather than molten oxide electrolysis. They will do it in the next few years, rather than decades.
The other is cement. Alternative binders, such as volcanic material, calcinated clay and other stuff can cut emissions fast and much. They are already doing it. Electric cement with CCS may not be feasible at all, at least not soon and at an acceptable cost.
very informative! Well done. It would be useful to complement with rough estimates of other parameters that go with the steps, like potential ghg reduction or some energy measurement like useful or final. “Just step one takes us this far…”
Would a step zero/ground level category be useful for use cases where electricity use is common and alternative fuels or processes are competitive but not decisively so? Gas ovens seem to be pretty rare these days and almost all metro systems are electrified as is most suburban rail. I would have thought secondary steel would be in this category as arc furnace technology is widespread. This would show where the lowest of low hanging fruit is as the technology is mature, markets are established and a supporting infrastructure and business ecosystem is in place globally if not locally.
Electric road vehicles would remain in Step A for now while charging infrastructure is rolled out, battery prices find their level, and EVs remain second to ICE vehicles in numbers manufactured and sold in nearly all markets.
I would put all domestic use cases where gas is an option in Step 0. Domestic electrical resistance space heating, water heating and cooking are century old technologies and widely used, especially where electricity is cheaper or gas wasn't piped in. Heat pumps and induction cook tops could be seperated out and put in A or B.
All rail transport could move to Step 0 if regional and remote rail is made a separate category for cases where battery locomotives are needed.
Here in WA, remote iron ore mines are starting to replace the diesel locomotives for battery electric but are still used in conjunction with diesels, so I would place this category in step C or D.
Pilbara iron ore rail is an interesting case and may be too unusual to be an example here. There are four separate, overlaping private rail networks owned by competing mining companies (in one case, three networks run lines down the same corridor). There are large distances involved. There are no major urban or industrial centres nearby or even connected to the networks to support the growth of new industries. The ore trains are the longest trains in the world requiring for locomotives each. And The Pilbara is a remote region in a remote state in a remote country. The cost of electrifying the networks would be prohibitive even if they were consolidated. Not to mention the fact that private interests avoid spending on infrastucture where returns can be delayed by years.
People have made proposals for electrification for years, even before the battery age, afterseeing resistant radiators on the diesel locomotives glow red at night while dumping power. The decent to the coast of a mega tonne ore train from 700m elevation could send enough power down overhead wires to power whole mining towns. When batteries became a thing, the idea was to charge up on the way down and get a free ride for the empty train's return trip.
Diesel supply is relatively cheap and secure when you are a global resource company controlling vast logistic chains. Accoringly, it is only second tier companies, namely Hamersley Iron and Fortescue, who are starting to electrify their rolling stock while the the super giants, Rio Tinto and BHP, are hardly even bothering to adopt mine site solar power in this sunniest of regions. Involvement in the nearby gas industry might also have something to do with it.
For a lot of the cases where battery electric rail might work it would be as likely that overhead or third rail electrification would be an option until reducing battery cost and rising diesel prices make battery trains more competitive against both wired electric and diesel.
Great ladder and certainly a useful framing to get Australian policy and investment better prioritised.
I assume that agriculture is included in the non-road mobile machinery. I would suggest this be made a separate category at either the same level, or perhaps in early trial at the next tier. Ag production as an industry is more conservative and while open to change, the assets they have and use patterns may lend themselves to separate category. Change here (like perhaps many other sectors), will be as much behavioural and capital related than whether it can be technically, or even techno-economically achieved.
Thank you, I found the value in the hydrogen ladder to be in disabusing the notion that hydrogen could be anything, and soon. This is a good first step, but the competitive position against hydrogen isn’t as clear for this.
Thanks Darren. The Hydrogen Ladder was intended to puncture a bunch of nonsense - it was in a sense destructive. The Hydrogen Staircase is creative - it demonstrates what you can do, not what you can't, which is always harder.
A typo in the second sentence: ".....Electrification Staircase......"
A total and utter pipedream for technologies that use copper inefficiently when compared to competitive technologies that minimise the use of copper.
Wind/solar/BESSs/EVs and EV charging will all die lingering deaths at the hands of the Copper-Crunch which is already underway:
https://substack.com/@colinmegson/p-178194459
In the UK, with its solar pv capacity factor of 11%, for every (intermittent) TWh of electricity generated, 70X more copper is used than a TWh of (24/7/365) electricity from a Gen III+ nuclear power plant (NPP), be they Large Reactors or small modular reactors (SMRs).
For intermittent offshore wind, the figure is 67X; for intermittent, environmental and ecosystem destructive onshore wind, it's 26X. Add to that the copper used in the Rube Goldberg technologies (including BESSs) renewables supporters call upon for when the wind don't blow (often) and the Sun don't shine (every day) and 'a pipedream' is not hyperbole.
The era of SMRs is already underway with the advanced build of the first of 4 GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy BWRX-300 SMRs to come on line in 2030 at OPG's Darlington site. Rolls-Royce SMR Ltd. will build 3 of their 470 MW SMRs at the Wylfa site in the UK. Both companies have dozens of potential orders in the pipeline in North America and several European nations.
Without doubt, exponential growth of SMR technologies is now underway as the only pragmatic and economical way to decarbonise electricity generation.
But what about decarbonising all other sectors of energy use like all forms of transport and industrial processes? It won't be too long, as renewables wither and die, that worldwide decision makers realise greener-than-green, nuclear enabled hydrogen (NEH) uniquely answers that question:
https://substack.com/@colinmegson/p-121228909
By using the heat property of nuclear power, SOEC electrolysers in combination with Gen III+ NPPs can manufacture NEH at a 40% higher production rate than wind and solar are able to do by 'cold' electrolysis.
In nuclear-ready nations, it can save $billions every year and millions of premature deaths/vile illnesses by eliminating the 'evils' of the burning of fossil fuels:
https://substack.com/@colinmegson/p-146111400
Gen III+ NPPs and NEH can decarbonise nearly all sectors of energy use whilst virtually eliminating the need for energy storage, which is the Achilles Heel of renewables. It is the Occam's Razor solution to a cleaner world free of fossil fuel pollution (including GHGs) at minimal 'cost'.
Minimal investment
Minimal environmental impact
Minimal mineral/energy/material/manufacturing use
Minimal seabed and land area use
Minimal ecosystem destruction
Minimal biodiversity loss
Here's hoping, very soon, that all nuclear power advocates across all media/social media platforms start to recognise Gen III+ NPPs combined with SOEC electrolysers answers all the questions and 'WE' should be 'selling it as the Silver Bullet package.
I’ll second that agricultural machinery might be worthy of breaking out into its own category. It’s a huge sector, and farming can carry big political weight. Tractors are starting to happen, but understanding how far along we are to achieving electric combine harvesters for example could be a useful item for policy makers. Or do they stay with liquid fuels like bio diesel?
Great work! There are however two points where "electrify everything" is questionable. First steel, where the two Swedish projects Hybrit and Stegra are advancing with (electric) hydrogen reduction rather than molten oxide electrolysis. They will do it in the next few years, rather than decades.
The other is cement. Alternative binders, such as volcanic material, calcinated clay and other stuff can cut emissions fast and much. They are already doing it. Electric cement with CCS may not be feasible at all, at least not soon and at an acceptable cost.
very informative! Well done. It would be useful to complement with rough estimates of other parameters that go with the steps, like potential ghg reduction or some energy measurement like useful or final. “Just step one takes us this far…”
Would a step zero/ground level category be useful for use cases where electricity use is common and alternative fuels or processes are competitive but not decisively so? Gas ovens seem to be pretty rare these days and almost all metro systems are electrified as is most suburban rail. I would have thought secondary steel would be in this category as arc furnace technology is widespread. This would show where the lowest of low hanging fruit is as the technology is mature, markets are established and a supporting infrastructure and business ecosystem is in place globally if not locally.
Electric road vehicles would remain in Step A for now while charging infrastructure is rolled out, battery prices find their level, and EVs remain second to ICE vehicles in numbers manufactured and sold in nearly all markets.
I would put all domestic use cases where gas is an option in Step 0. Domestic electrical resistance space heating, water heating and cooking are century old technologies and widely used, especially where electricity is cheaper or gas wasn't piped in. Heat pumps and induction cook tops could be seperated out and put in A or B.
All rail transport could move to Step 0 if regional and remote rail is made a separate category for cases where battery locomotives are needed.
Here in WA, remote iron ore mines are starting to replace the diesel locomotives for battery electric but are still used in conjunction with diesels, so I would place this category in step C or D.
Pilbara iron ore rail is an interesting case and may be too unusual to be an example here. There are four separate, overlaping private rail networks owned by competing mining companies (in one case, three networks run lines down the same corridor). There are large distances involved. There are no major urban or industrial centres nearby or even connected to the networks to support the growth of new industries. The ore trains are the longest trains in the world requiring for locomotives each. And The Pilbara is a remote region in a remote state in a remote country. The cost of electrifying the networks would be prohibitive even if they were consolidated. Not to mention the fact that private interests avoid spending on infrastucture where returns can be delayed by years.
People have made proposals for electrification for years, even before the battery age, afterseeing resistant radiators on the diesel locomotives glow red at night while dumping power. The decent to the coast of a mega tonne ore train from 700m elevation could send enough power down overhead wires to power whole mining towns. When batteries became a thing, the idea was to charge up on the way down and get a free ride for the empty train's return trip.
Diesel supply is relatively cheap and secure when you are a global resource company controlling vast logistic chains. Accoringly, it is only second tier companies, namely Hamersley Iron and Fortescue, who are starting to electrify their rolling stock while the the super giants, Rio Tinto and BHP, are hardly even bothering to adopt mine site solar power in this sunniest of regions. Involvement in the nearby gas industry might also have something to do with it.
For a lot of the cases where battery electric rail might work it would be as likely that overhead or third rail electrification would be an option until reducing battery cost and rising diesel prices make battery trains more competitive against both wired electric and diesel.
Great ladder and certainly a useful framing to get Australian policy and investment better prioritised.
I assume that agriculture is included in the non-road mobile machinery. I would suggest this be made a separate category at either the same level, or perhaps in early trial at the next tier. Ag production as an industry is more conservative and while open to change, the assets they have and use patterns may lend themselves to separate category. Change here (like perhaps many other sectors), will be as much behavioural and capital related than whether it can be technically, or even techno-economically achieved.
Thank you for your work and the new ladder. Very unsefull and nice as your hydrogen ladder!