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Michael Liebreich
@MLiebreich
Host of . CEO Liebreich Associates, Managing Partner EcoPragma Capital. Founder & Contributor . UK Board of Trade. Olympic skibum dad.
Michael Liebreich’s posts
Dear Australians. I woke up this morning choking on the smell of bushfire smoke in my hotel room. This is your Opera House. UK got off coal in 7 years; Norway is preparing for life after oil. What is your plan? Where is your leadership? Where are your leaders? This is shameful!
A thread for those who think we're going to be importing lots of hydrogen over vast distances.
1. Shipping liquid hydrogen is not going to be a thing. To understand why, you need to understand that hydrogen is basically liquid, -253C escapey, explodey expanded polystyrene.
Hilarious. Any engineer can tell you hydrogen is not like LNG. 30% energy lost in liquefaction; 38% of the volumetric energy density; 6x the boil-off; embrittles; -253C; etc. Transport cost 2-3x production cost? No more than homeopathic quantities of H2 will ever move by ship.
Wow. , CEO of , has been caught funding the anti-heat-pump PR behind the rash of misinformation stories in the UK press. Did the board of the EUA authorize those campaigns? If so, they all have to go. Shocking revelations.
Substitution curves: "The first 1% takes forever; 1% to 5% is like waiting for a sneeze – you know it’s inevitable but it takes longer than you think; then 5% to 50% happens incredibly fast. Clean energy is entering this period of rapid transformation.
Looks like Daimler Benz is ceasing all internal combustion engine development and switching efforts to electric propulsion. For the first time since 1885 there will be no new generation of Daimler IC engines under development. Absolute. End. Of. An. Era.
financialexpress.com/auto/car-news/
Heating with hydrogen from renewable energy is 6 times less efficient than using the same electricity in a heat pump. I don't know a single serious energy analyst not affiliated with the gas industry who thinks hydrogen heating will be a thing. please call!
Fascinating data on the hidden cost of fossil fuels. Companies are paying 10% to 20% "environmental hardship allowance" to get staff to move to China or India, and then spend $5k to $10k annually on pollution protection measures. We have created a monster. news.yahoo.com/asias-pollutio
“It’s absurd,” says Michael Liebreich, energy expert and chairman of Liebreich Associates, of Germany’s nuclear shutdown. “I think it’s an epic, epic mistake. I’ve called it a climate crime.”
So, my lovelies, I just dropped Version 4 of the Clean Hydrogen Ladder! For anyone new to all this, the ladder is my attempt to put use cases for clean hydrogen into some sort of merit order, because not all use cases are equally likely to succeed. 1/10
"What is a self-charging hybrid?" Let me tell you: it's a fossil-fueled car being marketed to people without knowledge by people without ethics. That's all.
Listen up, climate folks. You need to stop complaining about that coal mine, and figure out how to make clean steel so cheaply that you put it out of business. There can be no Just Transition based on shutting off supplies of affordable steel, or energy, or cement, or anything.
Fascinating news out of Hawaii to start the year: 262 MW of solar plus 1048 MWh of storage at an average price of 9c/kWh (down 42% in 3 years). That's enough to shut down 40MW of oil-based generation. Much cleaner. Much cheaper. Job done. HT
Anyone who expects solar panel costs to stop falling is a fool. We will see record unsubsidised solar power prices hit 1c/kWh within the coming decade: only got to halve once more after falling 99.8% in the past 42 years.
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2. What this means is that any comparison with LNG is, ahem, bollox. We cracked LNG shipping, but it's the most expensive gas on the market. And shipping the same BTUs as liquid hydrogen would require 3-4 times as many ships. Because of physics, not lack of learning, scale, etc.
They took nuclear electricity, made some #hydrogen, used it to generate electricity, and switched on the lights. 19 century technology, 70% losses. And the Minister of Finance and Economy is bragging about it. We need a #H2ysteriaAward - the Darwin Award for hydrogen foolery.
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Hier soir pour la première fois de l’histoire, la Tour Eiffel était éclairée avec de l’hydrogène !
Here is why blending clean #hydrogen into gas grids is such a colossally wasteful thing to do. Basically you go to all the cost, effort, leakage risk, etc of making clean hydrogen, and then do a bunch of low-value things with it. Taxpayers/ratepayers should rise up against this.
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Tesla short sellers, who bet that the price of a stock is likely to go down, have lost $8.4 billion in the last seven months, according to financial analytics firm S3 Partners cnn.it/2R7t9dk
We cannot get off fossil fuels fast enough. That's all.
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This fire in the Gulf of Mexico looks like something out of the Lord of the Rings.
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3. Liquifying hydrogen is also a complete bear. It currently consumes 35% to 45% of the Lower Heating Value of the input. If you don't know about LHV and HHV, or about ortho-para isomer conversion, please read more and tweet less about liquid hydrogen!
pubs.rsc.org/en/content/art
Lesson for climate activists from current events: driving down fossil fuel supply before you can meet demand cleanly is a recipe for price spikes (check), political pushback (check) and geopolitical instability (check). This is not what a Just Transition looks like - change tack.
Please meet my new favourite mediaeval windmill, the V236-15.0. It may only be able to reach its 60% design capacity factor in great wind locations, but each one of these that gets built anywhere is a chunk less gas and coal that gets burned.
Cyclists Spend 40% More In London's Shops Than Motorists.
I'm feeling quite vindicated. For a few years I was a lone voice on the TfL board making this argument.
Note to Chiswick CS9 opponents: cyclists don't just drive past shops, they spend money!
forbes.com/sites/carltonr
So: video of my keynote at Hydrogen World Congress !
1. We need clean hydrogen;
2. First Decarbonize 94MT fossil H2;
3. Then aviation, shipping, long term storage;
4. The rest is +/- bollox;
5. H2 is all about hubs, industry & giga-projects.
"If fossil fuel companies are ever found liable for the full extent of climate damage that could be caused by their products, and expected to make reparations, they would immediately be insolvent."
My latest for
At midnight on Wednesday, Britain's power system will have gone two full months without burning coal. Renewables have generated more than fossil fuels this year. And Twitter is breaking because so many sceptics are busy apologising for being wrong (not).
bbc.co.uk/news/science-e
One hydrogen chart to rule them all! My shameless (and credited) adaptation of the classic.
I don't think investors have yet realised that VW is essentially betting the company on EVs. If the bet doesn't pay off, it's hard to see the company survive in it's current form. If it pays off, we will be in a different world - and we'll know by about 2022.
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Volkwagen's electric revolution. By 2022, the giant carmaker will have eight factories worldwide building electric vehicles.
By @Rauwald and @ElisBehrmann
bloom.bg/2PaTojv
It will take until 2030 to reign in the current bout of hydrogen mania, embark on a real plan to eliminate the 2.3% of emissions currently caused by 94 Mt/year of grey & black hydrogen, and target its use on a few otherwise hard-to-decarbonise sectors. We are in the foothills. 1/
In Dec 2019, I said onshore wind and solar would see world record LCOEs below $10/MWh by 2030. Based on what I'm hearing now, I think we'll get there by 2025. Pair that with super-cheap batteries, HVDC, floating offshore wind, electrolysis, heat pumps, digitisation... buckle up!
Please welcome South Korea to the Net Zero 2050 club - first Asian country to commit! Thank you for showing leadership on climate as well as pandemic control, we need more countries like you. And we forgive you for the uncontrolled spread of Gangnam Style.
France is pushing for a postponement of the adoption of the EU Sustainable Finance Taxonomy because it excludes nuclear power and includes natural gas. If you believe that we are in a climate emergency, you have to admit they have a point.
A little something for the weekend: looks like we are going to see EV batteries good for 1 million miles. This changes the economics of the car industry, the battery industry, the mining industry and the grid in such profound ways my head is spinning. HT , .
To all the armchair experts who still say only coal can deliver energy access to people in the developing world: the , the greatest all-round body of energy experts in the world, says four times as many will be empowered by renewables as by coal. Because economics, you see.
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The declining cost of #renewables & innovative off-grid business models are transforming the way #energy access is delivered, especially in rural areas bit.ly/2zxZ9Q2
China is providing aid to Italy. Let that sink in.
One of these is a mediaeval windmill, the other is modern offshore wind turbine, 1500x more powerful, 60% capacity factor. Is there anyone out there who can't tell the difference?
Breaking! Wind and solar will generate 50% of global electricity by 2050, with coal down to 11%. Because economics. You think they are cheap now? They're gonna get cheaper. As are batteries.
More #NEO2018 highlights here: about.bnef.com/new-energy-out
Crucial data for any debate about future roles of nuclear, CCS and hydrogen.
Mean project cost over-runs:
Nuclear power 120%
Oil and gas 34%
Mining 27%
Fossil thermal power 16%
Wind 13%
Energy transmission 8%
Solar 1%
Source: 's new book. enr.com/articles/55774
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June 2011, IEA: "Are We Entering A Golden Age of gas"
Jan 2021, EIB: "Gas is over"
My latest for : "We need to talk about #nuclear power. And I mean really talk, in a truth-and-reconciliation, moving-forward kind of way, not a let’s-all-shout-slogans-at-each-other, my-tribe-versus-your-tribe kind of way."
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12. So that's why imports of hydrogen and its derivatives will be far lower than you might think. Clean Hydrogen is vitally important to decarbonise certain sectors, but claims it can deliver 20% of CO2 abatement by 2050 are an order of magnitude too high. Electrify everything!
"We have secured 1500 square km of desert in Morocco and we are putting 10.5GW of solar and wind on that site, along with some battery storage. We are then running 4 HVDC cables back to the UK for 8% of the UK's electricity requirement." No big deal. youtube.com/clip/Ugkxq-Kgl
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9. So that leaves ammonia. Yes, we can and will ship ammonia. The question is WHY SHIP AMMONIA? If it's for fertiliser or industrial use, go clean ammonia! But if it's to import green electricity, nested inefficiencies mean huge cycle losses - and HVDC kills it. Systems thinking!
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5. Can liquid hydrogen re-use infrastructure created for LNG? Power supply and docks, sure; 70% of pipelines may be re-purposed. But not the liquefaction and gasification plants, compressors, storage tanks, etc. Vital to listen to independent experts!
Expect to read this story repeatedly over the next decade: 1) politicians seduced by H2FC technology; 2) Price signals suppressed throughout the value chain - subsidised hydrogen via subsidised distribution to subsidised vehicles; 3) Thermodynamics and economics spoil the party.
By 2030 all you investors and executives will be operating in a world with either dramatically lower emissions or zero remaining carbon budget. That's just two business cycles away - don't waste them!
My last long piece of the year for .
Apparently some Belgian "professor" is claiming battery electric cars have to drive 700,000km to beat their internal combustion equivalent. It's absolute bollox. As usual, straightens him out. Spoiler alert, the correct figure is 25,000 to 55,000 km (and dropping).
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Does it take 697 612 km (440 000 mi) before an electric vehicle becomes greener than a conventional car?
That was the calculation a Belgian prof. made on TV this week.
The number was used by MANY Dutch and Belgian newspapers.
But it's 20x too high or so.
ad.nl/auto/elektrisc
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6. OK, are we done with the absurd notion of transporting liquid hydrogen? In fact, LH2 will have no role anywhere in energy and transport. The only way to transport hydrogen economically is by pipeline. Or of course as ammonia, or in metal hydride or liquid organic carriers.
Part II of my hydrogen deep dive: the demand side. TLDR: Hydrogen will play a vital role as chemical feedstock, including for shipping and aviation fuels, and as guarantor of resilience in a renewables-based power system. EVERYTHING else goes electric.
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4. Then there's the fun stuff. Hydrogen, which is liquid at -253C and much less dense than LNG, is likely to have up to 9x more boil-off (ie loss during transit, of which only part fuels the ship) and 2x more "sloshing", which is dangerous.
100% wind, water and solar. "Storage can be... lowering and raising heavy weights." Please, somebody, make this nonsense stop.
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Addendum IV: To those Australians saying your emissions are too small to make any difference on a global scale. You contributed less than 2% of Allied troops in WW2, so by your logic you need not have bothered. The world is very grateful that you did. And those coal exports...
I absolutely hate #EarthHour.
Turning off all lights on earth for an hour would reduce total energy use by 0.002%.
Ah, you say, it's about communicating. And I agree! All about communicating how virtuous you are, without doing anything difficult, like thinking.
Count me out.
Is this the most important paper of the year? If you ask people to switch to marginally more costly clean energy, 3% do so. If you make it the default choice, 80% stick with it. We need to make choosing the polluting alternative an active decision.
nature.com/articles/s4156
The carbon footprint of EV batteries has just gone down by 70%. Recycling at scale is here.
We are approaching the point where each attempt by oil producers to extort money from consuming nations will be met by an acceleration in the uptake of electric transportation. Enjoy the last dance folks, it's going-home time soon!
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Riyadh on Sunday announced it would slash output further by one million barrels per day in a bid to prop up prices, despite fears of a recession.
The cut is for July but "can be extended", Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told reporters in Vienna twitter.com/AFP/status/166…
"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already what is laid before him." Tolstoy
Covid-19: The Low-Carbon Crisis. My latest for is a deep dive into the implications of the pandemic on the energy and transport transition. TLDR: it changes everything:
To all those who say the Russian invasion of #Ukraine is the wake-up call that will get the EU to reduce its gas use, I offer you this news story from 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
At this rate #COP26 is going to be a raging success. Particularly if Biden wins the presidential election and commits the US, that would be 73% of the global economy committed to net zero near mid-century. I did not see this coming.
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Climate neutrality target 2050
Carbon neutrality target 2060
Carbon neutrality target 2050
Climate neutrality target 2050
Next? asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/EnviThis is such a tragedy. In a parallel universe, in the climate negotiations, instead of insisting on the right to develop along the same filthy path as Europe and US, India would have focused on securing financial and technological support to leapfrog to a cleaner pathway.
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This is Delhi NCR (Noida) today. It literally smells like burning leaves. AQI is over 900.
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I'm not an activist, I'm an analyst and commentator. But if anyone wants to get involved and raise their voice, here is the Australian version of Beyond Coal - which in the US has helped close 299 out of its 530 target coal plants since launch.
"As analyst Michael Liebreich told the hundreds of attendees at the opening of the World Hydrogen Congress in Rotterdam yesterday, it was a brave choice for the organisers to ask him to be the keynote speaker." It was, and I truly salute them for doing so!
Happening right now: a new UK record for the number of hours without coal in our generating mix - 68 hours and counting. And no power cuts.
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Automated
UK National Grid: #Coal is currently generating 0.00GW (0.00%) out of a total of 23.85GW
Continuous hours without coal: 68
That French nuclear fleet, which launched a billion tweets about nuclear being the only way to decarbonize the world, now has a lower capacity factor than a decent offshore wind farm. As Mencken said "for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong."
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New warning from @EDFofficiel on its nuclear output in year 2022
The new estimate is 280 to 300 TWh down from previous estimate 295-315 TWh
This suggests that France nuclear capacity factor in year 2022 could be as low as 52%
lesechos.fr/industrie-serv
You want to talk clean energy subsidies? Why isn't every crappy little fossil fuel developer required to escrow funds to seal or decommission wells if they go bankrupt? Let's get rid of *all* energy subsidies and price in *all* externalities. That's it.
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10. Japan is hanging its entire decarbonisation strategy on clean ammonia imports. OK it can't import power via HVDC, but it can do nuclear and vast amounts of offshore wind. Betting on ammonia will mean punitive power prices and de-industrialisation. Sad.
Dear : this utter bollox about how EVs have higher emissions than internal combustion vehicles has been multiply, brutally rebutted (by and countless others). WTF are you doing giving it a new lease of life? 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
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Are electric vehicles really so climate friendly? theguardian.com/environment/20
"A year after commercial launch, Lower Saxony has abandoned ideas for future hydrogen trains, arguing that battery-electric models 'are cheaper to operate'." Shame no one warned them that hydrogen trains are daft before they spent €93 million! Oh, wait...
Maersk CEO challenges his organisation, industry and suppliers to start producing zero-carbon ships by 2030. This is spot on. We need more investors and executives to understand they have just 12 years, two business cycles to restructure their operations.
So, it looks like the world record solar power price just got a Brazilian!
#PV at 1.65c/kWh - the cheapest power from any technology ever, anywhere in the world, in the history of the planet (assuming it is confirmed subsidy-free).
#RoadTo1cSolar
mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/af
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Here's another shot of the Sydney Opera House this morning. This. Is. Not. Normal.
#ClimateChange
Here's a Danish bank saying it won't provide lease finance to internal combustion cars any more, only EVs. Pretty brave, given that EVs were only 4.2% of vehicle sales in 2019 in Denmark. PS - Google Translate rocks.
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7. Let's deal with Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers (LOHC). Bung H2 into benzyl toluene and it's stable at ambient temp & pressure. Great! Except you get just 54kg H2 for every m3 of solvent, even worse than liquid hydrogen. May work for stationary storage, useless for shipping.
Fake emission figures, an embattled carmaker and a sock puppet PR company. I wrote up the story of #Astongate and what it means - on LinkedIn.
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The most successful people I've met:
1. Have rich parents
2. Are utterly ruthless
3. Read only airport books
4. Are grossly unhealthy
5. Show no interest in culture
6. Think they know everything
7. Are divorced
8. Believe they're above the law
9. Demand subservience from others
Toyoda-san - the man who squandered 's lead in electric vehicles - steps down. The planet breathes a little easier tonight.
The Hydrogen Ladder has made it into the Economist (that sound is Hopium addicts choking on their cornflakes) and I've been upgraded from the usual "analyst" to "guru"! HT to for the idea and to all of you for your critiques and improvements.
amp.economist.com/briefing/2021/
I have a new favourite word: #agrivoltaics. There is an ever-growing body of work showing that land under #solar panels can be agriculturally productive. We could see higher crop yields, cooler and more efficient panels, more bees, and shade for workers. google.com/search?q=agriv
There is 10 years of data from the EU and the USA that show absolute decoupling of consumption-based emissions. The debate about whether increasing wealth and climate protection are compatible is over. Now let's talk about how to do it better and faster.
ineteconomics.org/perspectives/b
The precautionary principle is being used to shut down EU's largest source of zero-carbon electricity, block the most promising route to agricultural productivity, and impede the distribution of vaccines during a pandemic. Paying lip-service to safety while perpetuating harm. 🤯
Multiple effective Covid vaccines ✅
UK targets 78% CO2 cut for 2030 ✅
EU targets 55% CO2 cut for 2030 ✅
71% world GDP pledges net zero ✅
Electric vehicles breakout year ✅
Clean energy resilient growth ✅
Brexit deal agreed ✅
Trump dumped ✅
Humans smart ✅
Happy Holidays!
OK #energytwitter - here's an updated version of One Hydrogen Chart To Rule Them All (concept HT and ), incorporating your great tips and feedback. Feel free to download and use (credited, obvs). And keep the feedback coming! drive.google.com/file/d/1JTNAm8
Calling all energy, climate, transport wonks - a splendid, powerful initiative:
#freethemodels!
RT if you agree that any energy and transport model produced using public funds should be open-source. No more poorly-built black boxes.
More info: . HT
That 1.5°C report in short: we should be investing in clean energy and transport like there's no tomorrow.
The past decade has seen $350 billion per year invested in clean energy. But, according to this report (based in part on Bloomberg data), just 33 global banks are still funnelling $630 billion per year into fossil fuel companies. Mad, mad, mad.
banktrack.org/article/bankin
"No serious analysts have hydrogen playing more than a marginal role in the future of space heating. [...] It's time to stop the fight: the judges are unanimous and the winners are district heating, heat pumps and electrification."
Did you know hydrogen buses have fabulous range? That's right, they drive and drive until the subsidies run out.
“We are going to waste huge amounts of money on the wrong use cases for #hydrogen and the wrong infrastructure in the wrong places. Worse than wasting money, we will also be wasting time – and that is the one thing we don’t have.”
I've always said the end-game for oil is not when it reaches $200/barrel, it's when it settles at $20/barrel. Looks like we may be about to see our first run at $20 in the coming months. After coronavirus, expect a volatile decade, followed by structurally low prices from 2030.
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And if it's ammonia, then they should just call it fertiliser, not hydrogen. There will only ever be homeopathic volumes of ammonia shipped for power generation because power->H2->ammonia->liquid->shipping->power currently has a round trip efficiency of ~15% vs ~85% for HVDC.