Michael Barnard, Author at CleanTechnica

Another Day, Another Hydrogen Transportation Firm Sinks Into Its Inevitable Fate

Michael Barnard — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 20:38:47 +0000

It’s been a while since I bothered to bash hydrogen for transportation or cleantech special purpose acquisition corporations (SPAC), but the intersection of the two just crossed my screen. I’m talking about Hyzon, the SPAC-funded US-based manufacturer of heavy vehicles. Let’s start with SPACs and cleantech. These “blank check” companies ... [continued]

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Decarbonizing Industrial Heat Means Electrifying It — Transcript Of 2nd Half Of Podcast With Paul Martin

Michael Barnard — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 16:56:54 +0000

Recently I sat down virtually with professional chemical process engineer Paul Martin of Spitfire Research on my podcast Redefining Energy – Tech to discuss how much industrial heat can be replaced with electrical heat technologies (tl’dr: virtually all of it directly). In the theme of providing transcripts of presentations I’m ... [continued]

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Proven Climate Solutions — A New Book On Accelerating Change

Michael Barnard — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 18:20:01 +0000

A couple of years ago, BF Nagy contacted me, asking if I would be interested in contributing to a book he was assembling. He already had Bill McKibben, Mark Z. Jacobson and others signed up, so how could I disagree? Fast forward two years, and the book, Proven Climate Solutions: ... [continued]

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Fixing Industrial Process Emissions — India Utility Seminar Transcript & Slides

Michael Barnard — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 19:44:09 +0000

Under the auspices of the India Smart Grid Forum, the think tank founded as an umbrella organization over India’s 28 state utilities to provide thought leadership, share leading practices, and bring international insights to India, I’m delivering bi-weekly webinars framed by the Short List of Climate Actions That Will Work. With the ... [continued]

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Canada Follows Europe, China, & USA With Anti-Greenwashing Provisions, Oil & Gas Industry Freaks Out

Michael Barnard — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 21:39:34 +0000

You might be surprised to know that the oil, gas, and coal industries make claims that aren’t completely aligned with reality, and indeed often make claims that have no discernible relationship to it. I know, I know, it’s a shocking revelation. That’s why Canadian firms in the sector are leading ... [continued]

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Cement Displacement & Decarbonization Decade By Decade Through 2100

Michael Barnard — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 21:40:05 +0000

Cement is the gray glue that holds our economy together. It’s ubiquitous, if often hidden behind paint or plaster. It holds together the rock, sand, and steel that keep our buildings upright, our bridges spanning chasms, and our dams holding water for irrigation, generation, and recreation. And it’s a carbon ... [continued]

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Dense Fluid Pumped Hydro Doesn’t Make Any Sense & A Mea Culpa

Michael Barnard — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 19:29:31 +0000

A recent online discussion on gravity storage brought the usual suspects out of the woodwork. Proponents of heavy fluid pumped hydro reared their sludgy heads this time. Follow along for why this is a silly idea, as all gravity storage options that aren’t pushing water uphill turn out to be. ... [continued]

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Decarbonizing Industrial Heat Means Electrifying It — Transcript of Podcast With Paul Martin

Michael Barnard — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 16:55:11 +0000

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Cement Is One Of Few Industries Where Carbon Capture May Be Competitive In Niches

Michael Barnard — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 18:49:50 +0000

As concrete month draws nearer to a close, it’s time to look at an option not previously explored, continuing to use limestone but bolting on carbon capture and paying for waste disposal in permanent sequestration sites. After fifteen years of assessing carbon capture technologies, pilots and proposals, this is one ... [continued]

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No, AI Queries & Images Aren’t Carbon Bombs, So Stop Hyperventilating

Michael Barnard — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 16:05:37 +0000

Regular readers will either appreciate or hate that for roughly 20 months I’ve been decorating my articles and presentations with images generated by artificial intelligence algorithms. I’m not going to address the full range of reasons, but will just do some basic math on the electricity use to get a ... [continued]

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Two Threads Converge To Alleviate Climate & Steel Inequity Concerns

Michael Barnard — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 16:01:13 +0000

How much steel does a person need to have a “first world” standard of living? Most people in the developed world never think of this question. They just get up from their beds held together with steel screws and bolts, stand on their floors which are held up with steel ... [continued]

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Decarbonizing Cement & Concrete Is Noble, But Why Will Developers Pay For It?

Michael Barnard — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 17:55:33 +0000

During what has become concrete month, I’ve explored the full range of actual and purported solutions to the climate problem that is the cement, steel, and concrete used in construction. The industry’s emissions are high, with every ton of reinforced concrete having a carbon debt of 0.3-0.4 tons of carbon ... [continued]

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Steel Reinforcement Is The Invisible Miracle Of Concrete Construction, But Comes With A Carbon Price

Michael Barnard — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 15:25:28 +0000

Reinforced concrete was invented in the mid-19th century, a game-changer in the construction world. French gardener Joseph Monier is often credited with its creation. While experimenting with materials to build stronger garden pots and tubs, he had the idea to combine concrete with iron mesh in 1849. Monier patented his ... [continued]

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Gravity Storage 101, Or Why Pumped Hydro Is The Only Remotely Real Gravity Storage

Michael Barnard — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 17:50:15 +0000

In my recent article celebrating the great month that pumped hydro had, between the Loch Ness Red John facility selling to Statkraft, the UK finally settling on cap and floor for the technology and China having 365 GW of power and 4 to 8 TWh of energy storage under construction, ... [continued]

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Concrete Is A Geography, Minerals, & Waste Game Played With Billions Of Tons Of Chips

Michael Barnard — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 17:35:12 +0000

As cement day turns into concrete week turns into concrete month, it’s worth considering how the absurd tonnages of concrete manufactured changes, often radically, depending on where specifically in the world the concrete is needed. That’s all because those absurd tonnages means that we move the stuff that goes into ... [continued]

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Just When I Thought I Was Done With Cement Replacements, A Look At Geopolymers

Michael Barnard — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 16:46:28 +0000

One of the many people who have suggested I look at something in the space of cement and concrete decarbonization suggested red mud. All I knew was that it had something to do with aluminum, and hence I thought it would be another metal slag supplement to cement. You know ... [continued]

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Fracking The Same Underground Volume Isn’t Energy Storage, It’s Mining For Unusable Sand

Michael Barnard — Sat, 08 Jun 2024 17:05:06 +0000

It’s not often that a novel energy storage solution crosses my screen. It’s vastly rarer that it doesn’t immediately fail a few basic sniff tests. A solution that pumps water under high pressure a few hundred to a thousand meters underground doesn’t immediately fall apart in technical terms or claims. ... [continued]

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Publishing On Cement Decarbonization Brings Challenges, Corrections, & More Approaches

Michael Barnard — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 16:15:59 +0000

A few days ago I went deep on cement again, using an assessment of the processes of American clean cement startups to define the scope and magnitude of the problem, the chemistry and energy requirements of cement, why fixing it is critically important, and incidentally evaluate a couple of companies’ ... [continued]

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How Much Does Sand, Grit, & Gravel Add To Concrete Carbon Emissions?

Michael Barnard — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 17:55:16 +0000

During concrete day… errr … week … errr … verging on two weeks this time, I’ve explored a lot of carbon emissions solutions for the full value chain of the gray glue that ensures our buildings don’t collapse, our bridges stay up, and our underground working chambers don’t pancake. We ... [continued]

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Fly Ash, Silica Fume, & Natural Pozzolans Are Terms To Know When Talking Green Cement

Michael Barnard — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 17:35:48 +0000

Every domain brings with it a wealth of new language. Being the domain junky that I am, my head is creaking at the seams with jargon and technical terms from a multitude of places. Cement and concrete are no different. Today’s exploration is of the interesting world of supplementary cementitious ... [continued]

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US Industrial Natural Gas Consumers Could See 56% Higher Bills With Methane Leak Price

Michael Barnard — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 16:35:14 +0000

Remarkably, in 2022 the USA managed to get a greenhouse gas price through Congress. It wasn’t on carbon dioxide, the biggest problem, but it was on methane, the second biggest greenhouse gas problem we humans create. Perhaps more remarkably, it was explicitly on the oil and gas industry and excluded ... [continued]

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Many Green Cement Roads Lead Through Electric Arc Steel Furnaces

Michael Barnard — Thu, 30 May 2024 18:50:23 +0000

An electric arc furnace is like a giant, high-tech kitchen appliance for melting metal. Imagine a huge, robust pot where you throw in scrap metal, like old cars or broken appliances. Instead of using gas or coal to heat things up, this “pot” uses powerful electric arcs — think of ... [continued]

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Epoxy Concrete Won’t Solve Cement Emissions Problem

Michael Barnard — Wed, 29 May 2024 18:09:01 +0000

As I’ve been looking at solutions that people are proposing for eliminating cement’s high carbon dioxide emissions, a set of criteria are clearly emerging to assess whether they are going to be material. These include the source material availability, cost, and distribution. They include integration into worksites. They include the ... [continued]

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Calcined Clays Are Not A Cement Decarbonization Slam Dunk

Michael Barnard — Tue, 28 May 2024 21:25:06 +0000

Cement is the gray glue that holds our modern cities and infrastructure together. We use about 4.1 billion tons of it a year, and every ton has a carbon debt of about a ton of carbon dioxide. That’s about 10% of our global emissions, so it’s a big problem. From ... [continued]

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Data On Battery Swapping For Heavy & Light Vehicles Is Nuanced

Michael Barnard — Tue, 28 May 2024 02:50:45 +0000

A few days ago I published a reaction to a set of reactions to an article on the plummeting cost of batteries and how they enable megawatt scale charging. What were the reactions about? Battery swapping, which many people seem to think is the bees knees and should be everywhere. ... [continued]

The post Data On Battery Swapping For Heavy & Light Vehicles Is Nuanced appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Levers To Reduce Cement’s Use, Along With China’s Slowing Demand, Are A Good News Story

Michael Barnard — Mon, 27 May 2024 16:10:04 +0000

Cement has reared its gray and flaking head into my attention again recently. The global use of about 4.1 billion tons of the stuff to make perhaps 40 billion tons of concrete is responsible for around 10% of all carbon dioxide emissions globally. It’s one of the few industrial products ... [continued]

The post Levers To Reduce Cement’s Use, Along With China’s Slowing Demand, Are A Good News Story appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Another Day Another Bad Bought & Paid For Hydrogen Pipeline Report, This One From Arup

Michael Barnard — Sun, 26 May 2024 15:16:24 +0000

One part of the weird obsession with hydrogen for energy over the past several years, especially in Europe but also in the USA, are the number of reports analyzing how and where the pipelines will go and what will be required in ports. It’s all a house of cards as ... [continued]

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Biden’s 100% China EV Tariff Fails History 101

Michael Barnard — Sat, 25 May 2024 13:56:57 +0000

Perhaps Biden has forgotten the last time America’s land yachts, marketed to the most affluent, became impossibly expensive symbols of conspicuous consumption. It was the same year he entered Congress after all, 52 years ago. But America and its car companies have indeed faced almost exactly the same situation as ... [continued]

The post Biden’s 100% China EV Tariff Fails History 101 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Balancing Renewables Requires Big Grid Storage, But What Kinds? (India Seminar Slides & Transcript)

Michael Barnard — Sat, 25 May 2024 04:57:42 +0000

The post Balancing Renewables Requires Big Grid Storage, But What Kinds? (India Seminar Slides & Transcript) appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Sheer Scale & Complexity Of Reefs Makes Adaptation & Preservation Challenging

Michael Barnard — Fri, 24 May 2024 19:55:49 +0000

Recently I hosted Professor Amy Wagoner Johnson, a US materials scientist who is leading a global research project on coral reef restoration, on my podcast Redefining Energy – Tech. In the theme of providing transcripts of presentations I’m giving in various places for people who prefer the written word, this is ... [continued]

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Electrochemistry Might Help Solve Cement’s Carbon Problem

Michael Barnard — Thu, 23 May 2024 22:34:41 +0000

One thread I’m pulling on across industrial solutions is the ability of electrochemical processes powered by green electricity to replace industrial processes powered by fossil fuels. Today someone handed me the end of a thread leading to Sublime Systems, a Massachusetts, USA, firm that’s using electrochemistry to make low-carbon cement. ... [continued]

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EV Battery Swapping Will Have Some Big Niches But Mostly Won’t Be Used

Michael Barnard — Tue, 21 May 2024 12:01:45 +0000

Every time I publish anything on electric vehicles, the battery swapping fans come out of the woodwork. It’s remarkable that there is barely any battery swapping being done with electric vehicles today and yet some people think every EV of every scale will be treating the most expensive component as ... [continued]

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Dirt Cheap Batteries Enable Megawatt-Scale Charging Without Big Grid Upgrades Right Away

Michael Barnard — Sun, 19 May 2024 14:27:40 +0000

Battery prices have continued to plummet, frankly faster than even battery optimists such as myself dreamed of. We’re seeing commercial, scaled, price points that we didn’t expect to see until 2030 or later. That has big implications for electric trucking. In 2022, a kilowatthour of battery capacity cost US$159. In ... [continued]

The post Dirt Cheap Batteries Enable Megawatt-Scale Charging Without Big Grid Upgrades Right Away appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Last Mile Delivery Is Standardizing With Two Cubic Meter Roro Boxes For E-Cargo Trikes

Michael Barnard — Sat, 18 May 2024 22:55:30 +0000

In the past year I’ve been observing a trend that’s on at least a couple of continents. Delivery trikes now come without boxes of their own. The boxes are separate and they get packed in distribution centers with the intent of being delivered to a pickup point for an electric ... [continued]

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Electric Trucks Are Already Lower Carbon Than Rail In Much Of North America

Michael Barnard — Fri, 17 May 2024 16:39:26 +0000

In 2010, I was consulting to Canadian National Railroad, at the time with the legendary Hunter Harrison as CEO. It was one of many times my decarbonization proposals bounced off of organizations, something that’s been inordinately useful in helping me understand how hardcore businesses view the space. At the time, ... [continued]

The post Electric Trucks Are Already Lower Carbon Than Rail In Much Of North America appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Of Camels, Sponges, & Tesla’s Supercharging Team Firing

Michael Barnard — Wed, 15 May 2024 20:15:39 +0000

A great deal of digital ink has been spilled on Tesla laying off a lot of its Supercharger team recently. I’m not in the business of commenting on Tesla and Musk’s every twitch and tweet, so I don’t have fourteen hot takes already. But I have a hypothesis and it ... [continued]

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ATCO’s Proposed Edmonton Hydrogen Subdivision Would Pay 4-10 Times Current Cost For Heat

Michael Barnard — Tue, 14 May 2024 16:35:23 +0000

Every time I publish an article or post something on LinkedIn pointing out the economic folly and inevitable cul-de-sac of hydrogen-for-energy, commenters drag out new examples of bad hydrogen schemes, whether as ideas they think are proving my point or examples that disprove my thesis. After publishing on Canada’s $25 ... [continued]

The post ATCO’s Proposed Edmonton Hydrogen Subdivision Would Pay 4-10 Times Current Cost For Heat appeared first on CleanTechnica.

EU Wisely Stiffens Road Freight & Passenger Emissions Guidance

Michael Barnard — Mon, 13 May 2024 22:17:44 +0000

A month ago, I spent some time assembling statistics on major geographies’ split of domestic freight tonnage across different modes: road, rail, and water. I was surprised to find that road freight was so much more dominant in Europe than rail compared to other major geographies. I think of Europe ... [continued]

The post EU Wisely Stiffens Road Freight & Passenger Emissions Guidance appeared first on CleanTechnica.

$25 Billion Up For Grabs In Canada’s Progress-Light, Reality-Deficient Hydrogen Strategy

Michael Barnard — Mon, 13 May 2024 17:12:54 +0000

Over the past few years I’ve published assessments of the hydrogen strategies of multiple jurisdictions, including the United States, Australia, Japan, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, the EU, and the Canadian province of Ontario, among others. News of the German chancellor coming, cap in hand, begging for liquid natural gas and hydrogen ... [continued]

The post $25 Billion Up For Grabs In Canada’s Progress-Light, Reality-Deficient Hydrogen Strategy appeared first on CleanTechnica.

HVDC, Reconductoring, & Smart Balls Supercharge Grids

Michael Barnard — Fri, 10 May 2024 18:47:44 +0000

The post HVDC, Reconductoring, & Smart Balls Supercharge Grids appeared first on CleanTechnica.

From Bones To Reefs: Pioneering Coral Conservation

Michael Barnard — Fri, 10 May 2024 15:28:25 +0000

Recently I hosted Professor Amy Wagoner Johnson, a US materials scientist who is leading a global research project on coral reef restoration on my podcast Redefining Energy – Tech. In the theme of providing transcripts of presentations I’m giving in various places for people who prefer the written word, this is ... [continued]

The post From Bones To Reefs: Pioneering Coral Conservation appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Compressed Air Storage Redux — LightSail & Hydrostor

Michael Barnard — Thu, 09 May 2024 21:08:01 +0000

The other day, I published my doorstop assessment of the thermodynamics and operational challenges that limit compressed gas storage solutions, pushing them into the 100 GW of also-ran capacities. In comments in various places, people reminded me of the long-defunct LightSail and the now-getting-press Hydrostor. A bit of followup with ... [continued]

The post Compressed Air Storage Redux — LightSail & Hydrostor appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Compressed Gas For Electricity Storage Claims Are Mostly Hot Air

Michael Barnard — Tue, 07 May 2024 19:19:35 +0000

Three years ago, I published my projection of grid storage demand and solutions through 2060. At the time, various compressed gas electricity storage solutions such as compressed air, liquid air, and liquid carbon dioxide were in my also-ran technologies. My review of the literature over the preceding years had made ... [continued]

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Green Builder Sustainability Symposium Presentation — Slides & Transcript

Michael Barnard — Mon, 06 May 2024 18:48:44 +0000

In mid-2023, Green Builder Media’s CEO Sara Gutterman reached out to me to see if I were interested in presenting at their annual Sustainability Symposium. It’s been running annually for close to a decade, and with COVID it transitioned to virtual and won’t be going back. That event occurred a ... [continued]

The post Green Builder Sustainability Symposium Presentation — Slides & Transcript appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Wind & Solar, But What Else? — India Edition Transcript

Michael Barnard — Sun, 28 Apr 2024 23:11:09 +0000

The post Wind & Solar, But What Else? — India Edition Transcript appeared first on CleanTechnica.