Dynamic Life Cycle Assessment of Energy Technologies w/ Different Greenhouse Gas Concentration Paths

[NNadir]

Last edited Mon Jan 24, 2022, 08:31 AM - Edit history (1)

This morning I came across this paper: Dynamic Life Cycle Assessment of Energy Technologies under Different Greenhouse Gas Concentration Pathways Kai Lan and Yuan Yao, Environmental Science & Technology 2022 56 (2), 1395-1404. The authors are out of Yale University.

Based on the positive feedback he's received from his applications thus far, his conversations with faculty members, we are very hopeful that my son will be accepted into a major nuclear engineering Ph.D. program and with this in mind, given he's having a gap semester having completed his Master's degree requirements, we are discussing the technology of increasing the thermodynamic efficiency of nuclear plants to unprecedented levels.

This may seem counterintuitive but the best approach to minimizing the carbon impact of a technology is to utilize the highest temperatures possible. The efficiency, at the simplest (Carnot) level, depends on a temperature difference between the temperature in the system and the temperature of the heat sink, which is the surroundings, in power plants, generally water.

My son, probably correctly, objects to my use of the term "heat network" which to him implies simple district heating with waste heat (where upon the heat is not actually wasted) whereas what I have discussed with him using the term "heat network" to imply a network of heat exchangers to conduct both process chemistry and a network of "combined cycle" generators. He's agreed to let me use the term "heat exchanger networks," "combined cycle," and "process heat intensification" in our discussions.

OK kid. OK Boomer.

The temperatures we saw this summer on the Pacific Coasts of the United States and Canada, some as high as 49°C (120°F) - temperatures which would be nearly immediately fatal were they to occur under conditions of high humidity, and are highly problematic with regards to health even in low humidity - obviously would result in lower energy efficiency in any heat engine system, be it coal, gas, nuclear, hydrogen, whatever.

It is notable that these temperatures occurred in the context of vast expenditures on so called "renewable energy" in the 21st century and prattling about it for decades before this century, my favorite prattling being that of the dangerous anti-nuke Amory Lovins in 1976, and similar prattling by his dangerous friend Joe Romm, both of whom pretended to give a shit about climate change but nonetheless did everything in their power using their questionable influence to assure we would arrive here, where we are today.

Where are we today?

Here's the readings this morning for the weekly data from the Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide Observatory:

Week beginning on January 16, 2022: 417.62 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 415.26 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 392.90 ppm
Last updated: January 23, 2022

The increase over ten years ago, 24.72 ppm is in the 98th percentile of ten year readings, the 37th highest out of 1942 data points going back to 1984. The 52 week running average of such increases is 24.58 ppm/10 years, compared to 15.29 ppm/10 years in the third week of the year 2000.

Congratulations to Joe Romm and Amory Lovins! Heckuva job guys!

Back to 1984...doublespeak.

When I first joined DU, over 19 years ago, writing in this forum, the prevailing opinion was that the purpose of throwing vast sums of money - and they have been so thrown - at so called "renewable energy" was not to displace dangerous fossil fuels but rather to replace nuclear energy.

This rhetoric was endorsed official governments in a few places, notably Germany, where as of this morning (1/23/22 11:23 US EST) the carbon intensity of German electricity is 480g CO2/kwh, whereas that of France, which didn't buy into the pixilated dogma of Amory Lovins and Joe Romm, is 92g CO2/kwh. The much vaunted wind industry in Germany is producing 5.87 GW of electricity, a capacity utilization of 9.17% of 64 "GW" of stated capacity (which is never actually realized). Solar is producing 2.64 GW of electricity out of a stated capacity of 58.4 GW (also never realized), 4.52% capacity utilization.

Electricity Map

Germany has shut most of its nuclear plants to burn coal. This morning Germany is producing 25.3 GW of electricity by burning coal, and 9.79 GW by burning dangerous natural gas. The gas alone exceeds the summation of solar and wind. I guess in Germany, nuclear energy is "too dangerous" but climate change isn't "too dangerous."

Numbers don't lie.

The numbers of estimations of the carbon intensity of various forms of energy under deteriorating climate conditions are shown in a graphic I will shortly produce from the paper. The paper is filled with interesting equations which one can access if one can access the full paper, but here is the equation free introduction, including happy talk about so called "renewable energy" as if it were remotely useful or remotely sustainable although it is neither.

The energy sector is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the world and accounts for 73% of total global GHG emissions in 2016. (1) To reduce GHG emissions, different climate change mitigation scenarios have been proposed by adopting emerging technologies such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and renewable energy (e.g., solar and wind) for the energy sector. (2?7) Quantifying and comparing the climate change mitigation potentials of different technologies and adoption scenarios from a holistic, life-cycle perspective is critical for energy policymaking and technology development. (8) Such comparison is challenging given the dynamic nature of both climate and GHG emission profiles of energy technologies. (9,10) Global warming potential (GWP) is a standard metric widely used in life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare the climate impacts of different technologies. (11,12) GWP is calculated by the integrated radiative forcing of an emitted GHG and the reference gas carbon dioxide (CO2). (11,13) The radiative forcing of a GHG over a time horizon is given by multiplying radiative efficiency and GHG remaining in the atmosphere after the pulse emission (well-known as the impulse response function (IRF)). (11,14) Most LCA studies are static analyses and they use fixed GWP conversion factors for non-CO2 GHG emissions. Several studies proposed dynamic frameworks considering the temporal effects of GHG emissions and varied time horizons, (8,9,13,15?24) and a few of them applied the dynamic approaches to LCA. (9,13,15?17,23,24) Several studies also presented dynamic GWP characterization factors with considering the temporal effects of GHG emissions, most of which focused on biogenic carbon issues. (16,17,22,24) Other studies developed correction methods for the fixed GWP factors (e.g., GWP*) to consider the warming equivalent effects of short-lived climate pollutants (e.g., CH4). (25?27) The detailed review is available in Supporting Information (SI) Section 1. However, few studies have included the temporal changes of future background atmospheric GHG concentrations that have significant impacts on GWP results given its large correlation with radiative efficiency, a key parameter used in the radiative forcing calculation. (18,28) Quantitative understandings of the life-cycle GWP impact of diverse energy technologies are essential to determine and compare the net climate change mitigation potential of different technologies. The static LCA method excludes dynamic factors such as the future changes in the atmospheric GHG concentrations that impact the life cycle GWP results, limiting the understandings of prospective climate implications of different energy technologies. In the current context of decarbonization, considering the dynamics of GHG emissions, decay, and atmospheric concentration changes in GWP accounting contributes to a fuller picture in the policy-relevant analysis (e.g., analyzing GWP reduction target (9)), especially in the analysis with emission profiles over a long time (typically longer than 20 years). (13,18)

To address the challenge, we developed a dynamic method integrated with LCA that is capable of modeling temporal dynamics of background GHG concentrations in the atmosphere and GHG emissions associated with energy systems. The method was used to analyze the dynamic life-cycle GWP of energy technologies under different trajectories of atmospheric GHG concentrations. In this method, the radiative efficiency is dependent on atmospheric GHG concentrations by using Representative Concentration Pathway (i.e., RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6, RCP8.5), (29) instead of being fixed values in traditional GWP estimations. To understand the impacts of varied future atmospheric GHG concentration pathways on life-cycle GWP of energy technologies, this dynamic method was applied to nine power generation technologies (e.g., coal, natural gas, wind) and then scaled up for the U.S. electricity generation projection from 2020 to 2050 under varied CCS technology adoption scenarios...

They authors feel free to discuss jokes, for instance the wide adoption of CCS technology. "RCP refers to various 'scenarios' generated in IPCC reports. For further details one can access one.

Here is table 1 from the paper which gives some insight to "scenarios:"



Here is the figure from the paper that gives the global warming potential calculated under the scenarios, note the differing scales on the ordinate, the "y-axis":



The caption:

Figure 2. Life-cycle GWP of energy technology (functional unit: 1 kWh) under different RCP using our method compared with the results of traditional static and dynamic LCA approaches: (a) CO2-emission-dominated systems with large operational emissions; (b) CH4-emission-dominated systems; (c) CO2-emission-dominated systems with large embedded emissions but small operational emissions.

The bar graphs under heading "a." refer to reliable forms of energy, two very dirty, and one clean.

The bar graphs under heading "b." refer to a CSS fantasy that will not take place; there is no way to permanently store 35 billion tons of CO2/year.

The bar graphs under heading "c." refer to forms of energy that are unreliable, as they depend on the weather at precisely the time we are vastly destabilizing the weather by throwing vast sums of money on stuff that doesn't work to address climate change as opposed to that which demonstrably can.

There is one, and only one, reliable form of energy which in all scenarios show GWP under 7 CO2 eq/kwh. There is one, and only one, reliable form of energy which can add infrastructure designed to last well over half a century. There is one, and only one, reliable form of energy which has low land use impacts, and which need not depend on the mining of billons of tons of metals and other elements.

Like Vaclav Smil always says, "numbers don't lie." I offer the corollary that "people do lie, not only to each other, but also to themselves."

Early in my tenure here I was a fairly regular contributor to the E&E forum, this forum, but ultimately, I gave up on it. I saw too many insipid ROFL smileys in response to my commentary, almost always based on readings in the scientific literature, on th rapidly and accelerating degradation of the environment. (This acceleration is still underway, worse than ever.) I saw too many cut and paste remarks from websites devoted to the worship of electric cars with the pretense that all that destroyed wilderness devoted to wind turbines made a difference. It doesn't. I saw too many specious attacks on the only technology that has any chance - albeit something of a long shot in the age of the celebration of ignorance - of addressing climate change, and perhaps, a longer shot, of restoring some of what has been lost.

I don't know why I find myself writing here. It will do no good.

But I have my son, the engineer, to whom I can talk. The responsibility for addressing this mess falls on his generation, not the generation of bourgeois boomers, a class of which I am a member, who created this mess via the generous application of fear, ignorance, and selective attention. I am very pleased that my son has planned to rise to the challenge. His generation seems vastly superior to mine in terms of seriousness and commitment. I have to spend more time with that kid, even if it means I can't say "heat network."

History will not forgive us, nor should it.

Have a pleasant Sunday afternoon.

[John ONeill]

1. Podcast

You probably don't listen to podcasts, but you might appreciate one called 'Decouple', hosted by Chris Keefer, a Canadian emergency theatre doctor, on 'technologies that decouple human wellbeing from its ecological impacts...(and) politics that enable these technologies'. He's done over a hundred interviews with experts on subjects you might like, such as the desirability of saving Diablo Canyon, Candus, radiation health effects, and the German counter-example. Upcoming is a promised dip into the work of Amory Lovins. https://www.decouplepodcast.org/

[NNadir]

3. Thank you. I wouldn't necessarily call what Amory Lovins does "work" but I'm always pleased...

...to hear commentary on this rather pernicious cultist and his faith celebrating bourgeois myopia from his high Temple in the very upscale Snowmass, Colorado.

He calls himself a "scientist." So do "Christian Scientists."

His "work," such as it is, will probably go a long way to assuring that future generations will need to change the name of Snowmass to something else.

I am rather proud of some commentary I wrote about him just over seven years ago, just before the year before the last time anyone now living would see carbon dioxide concentrations below 400 ppm. (2015)

...Seen from this perspective, Lovins’ writings are all marked by myopic bourgeois provincialism. The huge flaw in his 1976 conceit, and his conceits forever thereafter, was that for him, people living in the United States, and maybe Western Europe, represented the only human life that mattered. Chinese and Indians, for two examples, may as well have not existed if one reads his 1976 fantasy; he blithely assumed that they would agree to remain unimaginably impoverished while Americans pursued hydrogen HYPErcars[5] in every suburban garage and solar heated molten salt tanks[6] in every suburban backyard. Apparently, from his high perch in the überrich suburb of Aspen – Snowmass, Colorado – where he lives today in a super-efficient McMansion, he continues to issue rhetoric equally oblivious to the status of the larger fraction of humanity, this while collecting “consulting fees” from companies that among other things, mine and refine oil sands[7]. Consideration of the two to three billion people defined by the IEA today as living in “energy poverty”[8] – 1.3 billion of whom lack access to electricity for any purpose, never mind for the purpose of charging up their swell Tesla electric cars, and/or the 38% percent of human beings on this planet who lack access to what the IEA calls “clean cooking facilities” – is definitely not in the purview of a person who writes books with awful titles like, um, “Winning the Oil Endgame.[9]”

Out of sight, out of mind…

Current World Energy Demand, Ethical World Energy Demand, Depleted Uranium and the Centuries to Come

But I can't hold a candle to Vaclav Smil's commentary on this deadly fool: Rocky Mountain Visions

I will see if I can find time to check out the Podcast. I bookmarked the site. There seems to be a number of interesting talks there.

[NNadir]

4. I really want to thank you for directing me to these fine and often enlightening podcasts.

I checked out the one on Amory Lovins, which was more generous than I would have been in consideration of the fool, but damning enough. I found it enlightening to understand that all other issues were subsidiary to his fear and contempt of nuclear energy. They also paid a decent level attention for his contempt for the impoverished.

I also listened to the fascinating young man Noah Jakob Rettburg, who renewed my attention to the fact - despite his youth he had a remarkable sense of German energy history - that climate change is something of a secondary goal of the so called "greens," that there main effort was fear of and contempt for nuclear energy and that climate change is merely an afterthought. Historically they were aligned with coal and clearly as the events in Germany show in these last weeks, still are.

I'm sick today, with a mild case of break through omicron covid, a perfect day for listening to podcasts.

You're right; I'm not a podcast kind of guy, although I did show up for a couple that Rod Adams put together, but I will definitely enjoy some more of these as time goes by. I bookmarked the site.

[John ONeill]

7. Decouple

Glad you liked it. Besides the subject matter, Chris Keefer and Mark Nelson have interesting back stories. Keefer's early years in the Yukon sound as though they were character-building, and Nelson, despite coming from an Oklahoma oilworker's family, studied nuclear engineering in England and Russian lang and lit in Moscow.
All power to your T-cells; New Zealand has managed to stave the virus off till now, but Omicron is just starting to bust out of quarantine.

[NNadir]

2. I inadvertently uploaded the wrong table from another paper for Table 1 in the original post.

I didn't have time to proof read.

The correct table has been added.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Ummm ... these are extrapolated to 75 and 100 years. Stuff wears out.

Even for systems with "large embedded emissions but small operational emissions" I would think things would reach a steady state long before that, as old equipment is replaced with new. I know dams (hydropower) can last a long time, but question how realistic their conclusions are re the other technologies (in that regard at least -- I haven't digested the details enough re other aspects).

[NNadir]

6. This is certainly a valid question. My suspicion is that...

...they are looking at systems very much like those we have today, and considering the thermodynamics of systems of today.

We can certainly gather a lot from thermodynamics; the laws of which have proven through history to be rather immutable, and we can certainly learn a lot from forensic analysis of existing systems.

To be clear, I did not read this paper carefully; I merely skimmed it. However, opening it again, and looking at the "methods" section, it seems to be based on a literature search, EIA projections, and IEA projections with "scenarios." Having looked at these projected scenarios over decades of readings of the World Energy Outlook, they all prove to be consistent with "BAU," Business as Usual.

Now, all these wonderful what if projections aside, I am encouraging my son to think of a "different" thermodynamics where we utilize very high temperatures exploiting the rising golden age of materials science. External heat conditions will not matter of the system temperature is, say 1700K and the heat sink is at 1000K, but it will matter if one gets to a steam cycle, a Rankine cycle and is rejecting heat to a body of water, a river, or ocean at 300K. 300K and 310K (or even higher) makes a difference in this case My personal vision, which may or may not be naïve, if not insane, would be to exploit heat pumps with the shipping of heat, perhaps as a supercritical fluid, for use in process or storage as a reheating medium.

Of course, it is difficult to state whether a particular material kept at 1700K in a neutron flux will last less than 20 years, like a wind plant, or 80 years, like the Bruce Power plant is being refurbished to do. I think this is a reason to consider modular components of modular systems.

As for dams, aside from silting up, like all other systems dependent on the weather, so called "renewable energy" systems (excluding of course geothermal energy) it's not clear they will have working fluid reliably, that is water. We need only look at the dying Colorado River system to appreciate this. Even the Columbia River is troubled.

I fully credit what you say however; the farther one projects, the less accuracy one can expect, not that this ever bothered Amory Lovins. He just moves the goal posts, "by 'such and such' year" for the outbreak of nirvana every 20 years like they do in the fusion programs.