6 minute read
Guest editorial
EIC guest editorial
by Fabrizio Fabbri
East Hemisphere Executive Vice President EthosEnergy
The journey to net zero greenhouse emissions is underway. As the energy transition increasingly takes centre stage, particularly with COP26 in November, it’s incumbent on all companies to ensure we meet critical targets. This focus is driving one of the top trends impacting our industry today, ESG – Environmental, Social and Governance. While ESG isn’t a new concept, more organisations are laying out roadmaps and targets, taking a holistic approach to sustainability. There has been a continuing shift towards tackling environmental and social issues, which has been amplified over the last year as the pandemic hit us. As the world ground to a halt and travel plummeted, we were inundated with stories of how air pollution had significantly decreased as well as images shared globally across city skylines previously marred by smog. This focus won’t change as we see travel increase. We need to be more conscious as humans about how we impact our planet, and businesses are no exception. We already see B2B and B2C have less difference than traditionally, the same drivers shaping the decision making process. This is especially prevalent in younger generations, and as our industry sees these generations move into decision making positions the importance of ESG factors increases. There needs to be alignment between business, social and environmental factors to achieve success. As companies continue to ramp up ESG in support of the energy transition, it is important to understand the changing landscape for business investment as well as attracting new talent. Investors are increasingly analysing a business’s ESG performance as a deciding factor; and candidates are becoming progressively aware of organisations’ core values when applying for jobs. EthosEnergy is no different, our recently launched ESG programme follows the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and will weave and integrate into every aspect of our business; this is part of our energy evolution. Sustainability will change how we do business in a fundamental way, we must shift all aspects of what we do; it’s not enough to watch the game, we have to be playing. This energy evolution is not and will not be an easy journey, it’s a long-term goal and will take effort and resources to get to where we need to be. The change of energy is challenging across a number of areas; transportation, storage and stability of supply. We need to be investing in new processes, energy types and ways of improving availability to support the energy transition. At EthosEnergy we have already developed a suite of life extension and emissions compliance solutions to support current assets in meeting targets. We reduce the environmental impact of current assets to make them more efficient, this allows for life extension and minimises the requirement for replacement. It’s not simply about cost reduction but a significant impact on CO2 emissions across two fronts; one where avoiding production of new equipment and emissions during the manufacturing process, and the second avoiding or postponing the recycling of aged assets. Hydrogen (H2) represents a key enabler for the energy transition and EthosEnergy strongly believes it will drive future global energy businesses considering the pressure that, not only the European Union, but all major countries are putting on decarbonisation. The decarbonisation of the power generation sector can be achieved by increasing the share of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. However, these renewable sources provide a fluctuating electricity supply which needs to be balanced by other forms of reliable, affordable and sustainable power generation. The introduction of hydrogen as a fuel in gas turbines can be the solution. Hydrogen gas turbines would complement the intermittent nature of wind and solar power, easily being used as a vehicle to energy storage. Hydrogen can be produced via electrolysis (green hydrogen), using excess renewable power or by steam reforming of natural gas, which is also carbon neutral if CO2 capture technology is added (blue hydrogen). Reforming, coupled with carbon capture and storage is the first step to create sufficient hydrogen supply in the short term and enable the creation of a hydrogen infrastructure.
Green hydrogen will progressively grow; the European Union under COM/2020/301 is committed to the installation of 40GW of electrolysers by 2030. The global hydrogen production by 2028 is projected to be 3,5 Mton/ year of blue H2 and 0,6 Mton/ year of green H2 with Europe and North America contributing most. If we consider the average H2 consumption for one E class 40MW gas turbine operating base load is approximately 0,03 Mton/year, while an F class 170MW is about 0,1 Mton/year, thinking of 100% fuelled gas turbines in the short term is unrealistic. The availability of green hydrogen is limited due to its high price if compared with natural gas (about 5x more). With current technology setup, producing 40MW with a gas turbine fed by 100% green hydrogen would imply the installation of 10km2 of photovoltaic panels. From the numbers above, it’s clear that in the short term low hydrogen blend fuels (less than 25% volume) would be available on a large scale. Many infrastructure companies are developing solutions to blend low percentage hydrogen with natural gas into existing pipelines. The development of retrofit solutions for existing gas turbines will be crucial for the implementation of hydrogen gas turbine technology. The first steps can be achieved with relatively small modifications to existing combustors, allowing co-firing of hydrogen at low blend rates. A 25% blend rate represents a reasonable, short term goal. Increased field experience will enable further developments, such as new types of combustors allowing up to 100% of hydrogen firing without the need for diluents for emission control.
We have recently invested significantly in our hydrogen programme and have partnered with the Polytechnic University of Turin for the research and development of technology to allow conversion of 40MW size gas turbines to accept a hydrogen blend. As the energy industry spotlight increasingly centres on hydrogen, it is more crucial than ever that we collaborate with our trusted partners across various sectors to achieve this common goal. Part of COP26 is to ‘bring governments, business and civil society together to drive action across sectors of the economy to reduce emissions’ and we believe fundamentally in partnering to achieve goals. Although the energy transition will be a long-term journey, success will be realised by the steps we begin to collectively take as an industry through research and action. Working innovatively with our partners to discover more efficient, reliable, and sustainable solutions to protect our people and planet. In our journey through the energy evolution, we are taking steps to provide multi-frame retrofit solutions: • Assess the current capability to burn hydrogen blend fuel into the existing TG20/W251B8 and FR6B combustion systems (target from 25 to 40%). • Assess the capability to reduce NOx to reasonable levels (25ppm@15%O2) by means of water/steam injection.
• Develop a multi-frame retrofit solution that can interface with both engines able to burn from more than 40% H2 blend.
As a global leader in power generation and rotating equipment solutions, it is our responsibility to support our customers providing safe, sustainable, affordable and reliable power. EthosEnergy is committed to becoming a leader in sustainability. Beyond this, we aim to be leaders in decarbonisation, without sacrificing on reliability or efficiency. It’s not just about success as a company but we believe we have a moral responsibility to take a leading role in shaping a better future for us and for generations to come.
© EthosEnergy Group Ltd
