Harry Bradbury

World Energy Congress warned #renewables at risk of ‘resource nationalism’ over critical minerals. "When a commodity becomes strategic we see a trend towards resource nationalism’ says Dr Carole Nakhle of Crystol Energy. https://lnkd.in/e_nbWEA7 #criticalminerals #energytransitions #WEC2024

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⚡ #NuclearEnergy is another source of income for #russia: 🔦 #Rosatom uses a Dutch subsidiary to move "hundreds of millions in profits" ❗ Rosatom controls over 40% of the global uranium market and 17% of the international reactor fuel. 🔌 Through its Dutch subsidiary, Rosatom continues to actively extract raw materials in Kazakhstan and Tanzania. The funds are then routed through the #Netherlands before being transferred to russia. 🔔 In 2022 it made a profit of $240.6 million, of which tens of millions were transferred to the parent company in russia. 🚏 Report: Uranium trading has been generating a "substantial revenue" for the Russian treasury annually, Rosatom contributed over 3.1 billion euros in taxes in 2022. 🛑 Despite this significant influx of funds into the state treasury, Rosatom has not been subjected to European #sanctions. https://lnkd.in/e6ACyX_R

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Partner's News The Energy Hubs – Fill the Backbone report by Hydrogen Scotland member Net Zero Technology Centre highlights the emerging opportunity to export green hydrogen from Scotland into the expanding hydrogen market in Europe. Economic modelling indicates that a 10 GW scale Energy Hub in Scotland producing green hydrogen from floating offshore wind could produce hydrogen for £3.90/kg. To capitalise on this opportunity, Scotland will need to develop strategic Energy Hubs in time to meet this growing demand. https://lnkd.in/gPJgp5SC

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Scotland - a report by Net Zero Technology Centre and German-based Cruh21 has set out a plan for green hydrogen export between Scotland and Germany. The "Enabling Green Hydrogen Exports: Matching Scottish Production to German Demand" report analyses Scottish hydrogen production and German demand. "Two critical developmental stages are identified in the report. The first stage looks at the short term, up to 2030, and encompasses early production and end-use activities preceding the installation of hydrogen pipelines to export 35 TWh of hydrogen. The second stage looks at a period of 2030-2045 and involves the commissioning and ramp-up of pipeline infrastructure to facilitate enhanced distribution at a low cost to export 94TWh of hydrogen." "The scenarios explored to illustrate development options comprise: Scenario A - Maritime Hydrogen Export to Pipeline Transition, and Scenario B - Hydrogen Pipeline Scale-up. Ammonia emerges as a suitable option for accelerating supply chains prior to 2030, with the long-term scale up to 2045 differing in the set-up and integration of GH2, LH2, and LOHC infrastructure." Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero and Energy Mairi McAllan: “Scotland is strongly positioned to become a major exporter of hydrogen to Northern Europe and the UK – contributing to our climate objectives and to green economic property for our nation." NZTC report - https://lnkd.in/gChwYncS

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The Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering have just published a report entitled "Towards a Green Hydrogen Roadmap for the UK. https://lnkd.in/gKCvpKgy Based on an expert workshop in January this year, the report describes the myriad roles green hydrogen could play in the economy, laying out in great detail what needs to happen in the near, medium and long term to summon this miracle into being. Amazingly, it does this without so much as a cursory look at how much it would cost, or looking at alternatives. That's right, there is no data or analysis WHATSOEVER on what green hydrogen costs to produce, transport, store, distribute, use and keep safe, or how much cheaper other solutions would be. I can lay out a wonderful vision for the role of luxury real estate, holidays and fast cars in my life if I don't have to mention their cost. The £ symbol appears just four times in the report, each time associated with funding set aside for subsidies in the UK: £400m in up-front investment support and £2bn in revenue support over 15 years. *So let's see how much hydrogen £2.4 billion of subsidy will actually deliver, and destroy this report with a back-of-envelope calculation.* The inaugural UK hydrogen auction last year revealed that subsidies of £9.49 per kg were required to get green hydrogen projects to happen. This is in line with figures for actual costs in other European countries. (An EU hydrogen auction cleared at a much lower price, but that was on top of other sources of funding, nowhere near enough to cover the full cost penalty of using green hydrogen.) Let's suppose that £9.48 figure can be reduced by a factor of three between now and 2030. That seems ambitious, based on everything I know, but let's go with it. You would still need £3 of subsidy per kg of hydrogen for each green hydrogen project. And since what you are doing is building electrolyser plants, storage, pipelines, etc, you need 15 years of funding committed up-front, because that's the way project finance works. So the current £2.4 billion of subsidies has to cover 15 years of hydrogen production, of which each kg requires £3 in subsidy, which means it gets you 2,400,000,000/15/3/1000 = 53,000 tons of hydrogen per year. Enough to clean up just 8% of the UK's existing grey hydrogen use! So you've spent £2.4 billion - some of which, by the way, you have taken away from Winter Heat Allowances for pensioners at enormous political cost - and you've cleaned up 8% of the UK's existing hydrogen use. YOU HAVEN'T DONE ANY OF THE COOL THINGS IN THE REPORT. How could this happen? Simple. The workshop was a gathering of vested interests in hydrogen. No one representing alternative pathways. No critical figures. A bunch of hydrogen, fuel cell, chemistry and combustion academics. No scrutiny by economists. Doh! * A huge, huge fail by The The Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering *

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The number of foreign direct investment projects secured by Scotland increased to a record 124 in 2023 – a 12.7% rise on the previous year. According to EY's Scotland Attractiveness Survey, it is 2nd only to London in securing inward investment projects for the 9th consecutive year. Projects in the UK rose by just 6%, while Scotland’s FDI flow saw its share rise to 14.4%, up from 13.6% in 2022. It is the 5th consecutive year of increase and its highest over the past decade. “Scotland has demonstrated yet another very strong performance both in attracting FDI and retaining the confidence of investors. Utilities, including renewable energy, plays a strong role in Scotland’s FDI growth story as the country leads in sustainability and low-carbon power generation.” - Ally Scott, EY Scotland Managing Partner. “Today’s fantastic EY results are testament to Scotland’s attractiveness to businesses from around the world. We’ve seen a fifth consecutive year of growth in FDI and we’re the top destination for FDI outside London with more global businesses making Scotland their home and scaling up their operations here. This growth is driven by the deep partnerships that my team in Scotland and overseas build with investors leveraging our Team Scotland approach. It’s great to see utility supply as the top sector for FDI into Scotland last year. This chimes with our focused strategy which identifies the Energy Transition as one of three areas central to transforming Scotland's economy, creating quality jobs and accelerating our path to net zero" - Reuben Aitken, Managing Director of Energy Transition and International Operations at Scottish Enterprise. #scotlandisnow

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More than 40 companies from the UK's oil and gas supply chain have signed an open letter to the Treasury expressing "grave concern" about plans to hike windfall taxes and eliminate investment incentives. They warn that plans threaten £200bn of investment in all forms of domestic energy, including renewables, in an industry that supports 200,000 jobs. The letter, issued by Offshore Energies UK, expresses concern that reduced investment and greater uncertainty would be felt throughout the supply chain "through jobs, and the communities this industry supports, both directly and indirectly." David Whitehouse, chief executive of Offshore Energies UK, told the BBC's Today programme the "vast majority" of the companies which signed the letter were "smaller companies". "These are not the energy giants that people talk about...They are the lifeblood of the UK economy." #energyindustry #supplychain #oilandgas #gasindustry #renewableenergy

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Dedicated Energy Hubs Needed to Transform Scotland into Leading Hydrogen Producer   The Net Zero Technology Centre (NZTC), has today [27 June 2024] launched its ‘Energy Hubs: Fill the Backbone’ report, providing recommendations that will help scale Scotland’s hydrogen production potential and establish itself as a leading exporter of green hydrogen through the development of large-scale energy hubs. 🔽 Find more info in comments below 🔽 #EnergyHubs #Scotland #HydrogenProduction #CleanEnergy #RenewableEnergy #GreenHydrogen #OilandGas #RenewableEnergy #GreenEnergy ⤵️ Click Follow on our page to keep up to date with energy news ⤵️

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Regulatory Capture moon earth core values Understanding Regulatory Capture Regulatory capture, also known as “the economic theory of regulation” or simply “capture theory,” was introduced to the world in the 1970s by the late George Stigler, a Nobel laureate economist at the University of Chicago. Stigler noted that regulated industries maintain a keen and immediate interest in influencing regulators, whereas ordinary citizens are less motivated. As a result, even though the rules in question, such as pollution standards, often affect citizens in the aggregate, individuals are unlikely to lobby regulators to the degree that regulated industries do. Regulated industries devote large budgets to influencing regulators at federal, state, and local levels. By contrast, individual citizens spend only limited resources to advocate for their own rights. This is an extension of the concept of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs of regulation, public policy, and collective action in general, as described by economist Mancur Olsen.

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