“The main cause of the climate emergency is fossil fuels. Coal, oil, and gas are responsible for almost 80% of all carbon dioxide emissions since the industrial revolution. Phasing out fossil fuel production, and fast-tracking progress toward safer and more cost-effective alternatives, will require unprecedented international cooperation….”

Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Language
Calling for a) Non-Proliferation, b) Fair Phase-Out, and c) Just Transition

SSAB claims to have produced the world’s first fossil-free steel, created with green hydrogen instead of coal and coke. The green steel was delivered to the Swedish auto manufacturer, Volvo, where it will be used to create prototype electric vehicles.

Coal-based steel production accounts for 7 – 9% of global greenhouse gas production. To address this concern, the Swedish HYBRIT partnership was formed between SSAB, LKAB, and Vattenfall. HYBRIT aims to replace coking coal, traditionally needed for the production of steel, with renewable electricity and hydrogen. It is now making fossil-free steel at its plant in Lulea in northern Sweden. Commercial production is slated to begin in 2026. Using the HYBRIT steel technology, SSAB expects to cut Sweden’s total CO2 emissions by 10% and Finland’s total emissions by 7%.

According to InceptiveMind, ArcelorMittal is building a zero carbon emissions steel plant in Sestao, Spain. Gates Notes presents Boston Metals in Massachusetts that is also working on a carbon-free steel-making process. The conventional process to make steel is a chemical reaction. A blast of air goes in and passes over a form of carbon and converts it to a carbon monoxide gas. That gas reduces the iron oxide to iron by taking away its oxygen. In the process, carbon monoxide gains an oxygen and becomes CO2. Instead, Boston Metals uses a process called “molten oxide electrolysis.” It uses electricity instead of carbon from coal. The passage of an electric current causes the iron oxide to decompose, leaving liquid iron. The process only emits oxygen, no CO2. Boston Metals is on a path to make the green steel, “better, cleaner, and cheaper.”

An article headline caught my eye, “Wing’s drone delivery service hits 100,000 delivery milestone.” Really? Are drones consistently delivering? Is this technology commercialized? What about theft? What about things being broken? I learn about leading drone delivery initiatives and wonder, what will our neighborhoods look like with “unmanned aerial vehicles” (drones) on the loose?

Here’s how the Australian Wing drone delivery system works. Wing drones have six miles of flight radius… thus quick trips. The drone flies to a home or business with its package and then descends to 23 feet. At that point, it lowers the package to the ground and releases the package on the ground.

In Logan, Australia, near Brisbane, its 110,000 inhabitants in the past six months have received more than 50,000 deliveries by Wing drones. That includes more than 10,000 cups of fresh barista-made coffee and more than 1,200 “hot chooks,” Australian for roasted chicken.

Wing is partnered with Walgreen and FedEx as well as local businesses, currently operating in four locations: Christiansburg, Virginia, Helsinki, Finland, Canberra and Logan City in Australia. The Wing drones have 12 vertical rotors, and two wings and can fly like a plane and take off and land like a helicopter. Combined with test flights, Wing has had nearly a half million drone flights. And, it has no concern delivering fragile objects… like eggs.

UPS Flight Forward was the first company to earn commercial drone delivery approval in the United States. It began delivering medical supplies for a hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina. UPS is now partnered with CVS to deliver prescription medicines to residents of The Villages, a Florida retirement community with 135,000 residents. UPS also partnered with Wingcopter which deploys drones for humanitarian applications such as medical air services. Based in Germany, it began as a drone manufacturer and is now offering delivery services. It has partnered with Unicef for vaccine delivery in remote areas of Vanuatu.

Prime Air Delivery is planned by Amazon. Prime Air will deliver packages up to 5 pounds in weight in less than 30 minutes. After earning FAA approval in 2020, Amazon Prime Air has been testing its drone delivery platform at development centers in the U.S., U.K., Australia, France, and Israel.

Flytrex delivers packages up to 6.6 pounds for restaurants. It started in Israel in 2013, then began delivering groceries and other goods in Reykjavik, Iceland. It has also tested programs in North Dakota and North Carolina. Walmart has announced that it will be using Flytrex drones as part of a pilot program in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Flirty is an independent drone service that helps businesses unlock new markets. Zipline is a San Francisco-based company with the mission of delivering critical and life-saving products. Boeing is also in the drone delivery business but focused on larger unmanned cargo air vehicles.

Peter Asmus, Research Director at Guidehouse Insights, has been tracking the development of microgrids for over a dozen years. He’s written 100+ articles on microgrids. In a recent episode of The NetPositve Podcast, he talks about the genesis of microgrids. For the most part, they originated out of necessity in the developing world. Many if not most microgrids in the world today are not connected to the grid.

But now, microgrids are coming of age in the “developed world” where there is a grid. They operate in parallel with the grid for resilience. Asmus noted that initially Europe scoffed at that concept because its grid was so reliable. But today, given extreme climate events throughout the world, including recent and devastating flooding in Europe, and thanks to dramatic drops in solar and storage prices, coupled with smart control technologies, microgrids make sense in many applications and locations. In some cases, they can pay for themselves through daily operations. They can be financed. Microgrids have come a long way.

In the podcast, Asmus talks about barriers to the implementation of microgrids. He characterizes the state of microgrids as “inching along to full commercialization.” He notes that yes, there’s lots of activity. Lots of microgrid projects are providing values. But he explains that microgrids are held back in some ways.

Deployment is still hampered to some extent by old-school, monopoly rules, like the “over the fence” rule. In most states, you cannot run a line over the fence and power your neighbor’s property. Not even during an outage. That will change in time.

Another factor at play is a utility culture inherently rooted and opposed to distributed generation and storage and by extension, microgrids. Differing rules and varying decisions on interconnection has challenged timely engineering and installation. The engineers that install and hookup microgrids say that we need to clarify and ease the interconnection process. Asmus notes that we are moving toward modular microgrid architecture, plug and play style, and all UL listed and approved, to make interconnection as smooth process.

Regulatory proceedings are underway, but policies are not yet set on how to fully capture the value of microgrids to society as a whole. Asmus explains that it’s not just the value of a microgrid to the winery, or warehouse, or wealthy homeowner, it’s also about community resilience and grid support. To spread the costs of microgrids, the multiple values of microgrids to the specific site, utility, and community need to become embedded in policy and ultimately in tariffs.

As of April 2021, and according to Microgrid Knowledge, lawmakers in 20 U.S. states had introduced 69 microgrid-related bills in legislatures. This has been driven by the need for grid modernization, energy resilience, and by extreme weather events, fires, floods, heat waves, cold plunges.

Barriers aside, there is great proof that there’s lots going on in the microgrid space. Asmus points to incredible technological advances in the years that he has been tracking microgrids: Solar costs are way down, storage costs are following a similar trajectory. Controls have dramatically advanced. Asmus says that they’re the key technology to making microgrids work, orchestrating sophisticated energy management protocols.

So, are we inching along, or are we charting a radically different power course? Perhaps some of each. To fully attain the value of microgrids, based on currently available technology, we need to move faster. No more mobile generators (Morbugs), mostly diesel, to respond to climate-induced harsh realities and PSPS events. We need clean energy resilience. We need modular and carbon-free solutions. Easy to permit and to interconnect. We need to be able to finance these systems and their values for “energy as a service” and “resilience as a service.”

Switch Maritime will shortly operate the world’s first commercial vessel powered solely by hydrogen fuel cells. Its vessel is currently undergoing trials ahead of its planned passenger operations in the San Francisco Bay Area. The ferry named “Sea Change,” is a 70-foot, 75-passenger catamaran that will have the same operational capabilities as conventional, diesel-powered ferries but with zero emissions and lower maintenance costs.

Sea Change has 246 kilograms of onboard hydrogen storage. The hydrogen is used in fuel cells to generate electricity, which in turn is used to power a pair of 300 kW (402 horsepower) electric motors. The ferry has a range of 300 miles and a top speed of 23 mph. Its fuel cells were developed by Cummins, best known for its diesel engines. Cummins is promoting hydrogen fuel cell semi trucks.

How far out is this concept? A German start-up company — Magment GmbH — is working to make highways that charge electric vehicles as they pass over coils are embedded in the concrete. Now the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) along with Purdue University will bring the technology to America. Cars will be fitted with a receiver coil to pick up the charge as they go along. The actual Indiana testbed will be a quarter-mile of pavement. Testing will involve large trucks at draw upwards of 200 kW.

There are a number of similar charging technologies: An Israeli start-up, Electreon, has demonstrated a wireless charging system on a short stretch of Swedish highway. The company also began testing its technology on a bus route in Tel Aviv. In 2017, Qualcomm showed off hardware that charged a small van as it traveled at 60 mph. In related news, Sweden has electric rails on some highways that allow the largest vehicles to charge by way of an electric arm from their undercarriage that draws power from the rail. Siemens is building a scaffolding of cables and wires above a three-mile stretch of road outside Frankfurt, a system similar to city trams.

In July 2021, the 1,600 MW Moorburg hard coal (black coal) power station in Hamburg was closed down for good just six years after it began operations. Moorburg became operational in 2015 and was one of the most modern stations in Germany. How did this happen? Usually coal plants run for 40+ years.

Under German law, the “Coal Exit Law,” all coal plants in the country must be shuttered by 2038. There is a shorter timeline for the closure of lignite (brown coal) stations. To reduce generation with hard coal, the government is auctioning incentives for early retirement in a tender scheme. In the first German auction, companies operating coal-fired power plants were asked to hand in bids for a total of 4 GW of capacity to be phased out. In December 2020, the Federal Network Agency announced that both units of Moorburg had been awarded the contract in the first auction process.

Vattenfall, the plant’s owner, had experienced a drop in profits from the plant as the price for CO2 emissions under the European Emission Trading System (the EU ETS) have been rising. Vattenfall had stopped operating the plant in 2020 and served only as a back-up reserve. Therefore Vattenfall calculated that the decommissioning compensation was greater than generation values –coupled with pollution penalties — at the plant.

Vattenfall successfully competed in the decommissioning tender for payment in return for the early shut down. Some claimed that taking older stations out of service would have resulted in greater emissions reductions. Perhaps. But, Vattenfall now plans a hydrogen project at the site, turning offshore wind into green hydrogen.

Meanwhile Vattenfall’s last coal plant in the Netherlands — the 650 MW Hemweg-8 — will be closed by year end. Reportedly, “Vattenfall sees no future for coal.” The company will be fairly compensated through Dutch law which has also phased out coal. The plant’s closure will be five years earlier than planned.

Recently Released:

• This edition of EcoNet News, Volume 23, Issue #8 is also available in podcast format.

• The NetPositive Podcast: A Conversation with Johnny Weiss, international solar leader

• The NetPositive Podcast: A Conversation with Susan Joy Hassol, Climate Communications

• The NetPositive Podcast: A Conversation with Bryan Hannegan, CEO and President, Holy Cross Energy

• The NetPositive Podcast: A Conversation with Monica Favand Campagna, Artist and Glendale Environmental Coalition activist

Please check out and subscribe to The NetPositive with Ted Flanigan on Spotify, Apple, and Google.

Episodes include Convos (Conservations), the News (EcoNet News), and Uni (the EcoMotion University).