22/01/2021

(AU) World's First Domestic Hydrogen Battery Developed By Australian Firm

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick O'Malley

The world’s first commercially available line of hydrogen-powered domestic products, including a barbecue, a bicycle and most crucially a unit that creates and stores hydrogen power, has been developed by an Australian company, LAVO, working with the University of NSW.

The LAVO battery, which is about the size of a large fridge, can be hooked up to an existing array of solar panels. Inside it, electrolysers use that power to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Professor Francois Aguey-Zinsou, Chief Scientist at the UNSW Hydrogen Energy Research Centre, with hydride used to store hydrogen in a newly developed battery. Credit: Janie Barrett

The oxygen is vented and the hydrogen stored in a patented hydride - a fibrous metal alloy not dissimilar to iron-filings in appearance - in canisters inside the unit for use as needed.

LAVO’s chief executive, Alan Yu, says the unit can store three times as much power as the largest popular commercially available wall-mounted batteries, allowing it to power the average household for two to three days on a single charge.

Unlike other lithium batteries, it can also constantly recharge itself rather than waiting until it has been fully discharged.

Professor Francois Aguey-Zinsou with a LAVO hydrogen battery. Credit: Nick Moir

He said the system, which costs around $34,000, has a lifespan around three times longer than current lithium batteries and should last users around 30 years. When the hydride is degraded it can be melted down and reused, giving the system significant environmental advantages over its competitors.

How the LAVO system works
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, LAVO
Because the hydrogen is stored in a solid state inside the hydride, the system avoids the risks of fire associated with hydrogen stored under pressure or in liquid form. The LAVO battery system is already available on the market.

The battery would not only act as a hot water service but act as something like a domestic power bank, with users able to remove cylinders of charged hydride from their own units to power household items such as the barbecue and bicycle. LAVO hopes that even people who have not purchased the battery system might be able to use its hydrogen canisters available via exchange like a Sodastream tank .

LAVO’s head of marketing, Matthew Muller, said the company expects its initial customers to include homes and businesses on the edge of the national grid, such as mines and agribusinesses. One eco-lodge is already a customer. 

In addition, Gowings Bros, the investment company that evolved from the famous mens’ clothing business, announced this week it had signed-on as an investor and further committed to buying 200 of the power units for its properties around the country.

Professor Kondo-Francois Aguey-Zinsou, who leads the Hydrogen Energy Research Centre at the University of NSW, and has worked on the system with LAVO, says products like this are crucial to the development of a domestic hydrogen industry and in keeping with the federal government's plans to build a competitive low-carbon economy.

“Hydrogen technology exists in an ecosystem, we can either import technology like this or we can develop it ourselves and build the jobs here,” he said.

He said the hydride used in the LAVO system had the potential for much broader future applications, including as a possible means of exporting hydrogen.

At present hydrogen can be generated at scale using either renewable energy to split water, known as green hydrogen, or using gas, which emits carbon that may in future be captured and stored, known as blue hydrogen.

LAVO's hydrogen-powered barbecue and bicycle. Credit: Nick Moir

Either way future exporters of hydrogen would then have the problem of shipping, which Professor Aguey-Zinsou says could be solved by the hydride used in the LAVO system, which is safer and easier to transport than hydrogen stored under pressure or converted into ammonia.

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(USA) A ‘Nerve Center’ For Climate In The Biden White House

New York Times - Lisa Friedman

President Joseph R. Biden Jr. brings with him the largest team of climate change experts ever assembled in the White House, and action on global warming is expected quickly.

Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Joseph R. Biden Jr. assumed the presidency on Wednesday, bringing an expansive team of climate change experts to staff a White House that is preparing to focus on global warming in a way no other administration has done before.

Mr. Biden enters office with the largest team ever assembled inside the White House to tackle global warming and has installed policy experts at the State Department as well as the National Security Council, the president’s top advisory body for all foreign policy decisions.

The Treasury Department, the Transportation Department and the office of Vice President Kamala Harris all will have dedicated climate policy staff, with more hires expected in the coming days throughout the government.

He has vowed to move quickly. In addition to rejoining the Paris Agreement on Wednesday, the new president intends to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline permit in his first hours in office.

In the following days, people with knowledge of the team’s plans said, Mr. Biden will issue a series of executive orders that start the process of rolling back some of the Trump administration’s most debated environmental decisions — such as restricting the science that can be used to create new air and water protections — and lay the groundwork for ambitious new policies.

An executive order aimed at re-establishing scientific integrity in federal decision-making is high on the list, after four years of an administration that mocked or belittled the established science of climate change, elevated discredited climate denial studies and sidelined scientists who work on the issue.

He also is expected to begin the process of forcing agencies to calculate the costs that carbon dioxide emissions impose upon society.

By raising the costs of climate change, the Biden administration hopes to change cost-benefit analyses in a way that makes strong regulatory action more economically appealing and less susceptible to negative court rulings, two people familiar with the plans said.

Even fossil fuel advocates said they have been surprised by the intensity of the Biden team’s focus on climate change.

“I underestimated the level of seriousness that these guys had about this,” said Thomas J. Pyle, the president of the Institute for Energy Research, an organization that supports the expanded use of gas, oil and coal.

“They are devoting a lot of personnel to the issue set, and I think that just emphasizes the level of influence that the greens have on the Democratic Party,” Mr. Pyle said.

Pipes intended for the Keystone XL oil pipeline in Gascoyne, N.D., in 2017. Credit...Terray Sylvester/Reuters

As with other policy areas, when it comes to climate policy the incoming president has relied heavily on old hands from the Obama administration.

He selected Gina McCarthy, who led the Environmental Protection Agency in the Obama administration, start up a new White House office on climate policy. Ali Zaidi, a former top energy official in the Obama administration’s White House Office of Management and Budget, will be Ms. McCarthy’s deputy.

Last week Mr. Biden appointed David Hayes, who served as the deputy interior secretary in both the Obama and Clinton administrations, to be a special assistant to the president for climate policy. Former Secretary of State John Kerry will serve as Mr. Biden’s international climate envoy.

In the coming days, two people with knowledge of new hires said, Mr. Biden is expected to announce several additions to Mr. Kerry’s team.

They will include:
  • Jonathan Pershing, who served as the State Department special envoy for climate change under President Obama;
  • Sue Biniaz, a former top climate lawyer for the State Department across multiple administrations who played a key role in drafting the Paris Agreement; and
  • Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, who served as the deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury Department for energy and environment under Mr. Obama.

Rick Duke, who served as a special assistant to Mr. Obama on climate change also is in talks to join Mr. Kerry’s team, the two people confirmed.

But Mr. Biden also has reached into the worlds of clean energy development, the youth climate movement and environmental justice activism for key deputy-level positions.

Cecilia Martinez, a prominent advocate for addressing racial inequality in environmental policies, will serve as senior director for environmental justice at the Council on Environmental Quality. Tarak Shah, a former Energy Department official under Mr. Obama is also expected to be chief of staff to Jennifer Granholm, the nominee to be Energy Secretary.

The mix of expertise was applauded by moderate Democrats as well as the liberal wing of the climate movement, which has been critical of some of the incoming president’s policy positions and personnel choices.

“The picks are genuinely encouraging,” said Evan Weber, political director of the Sunrise Movement, a group that pressed for the Green New Deal, an expansive suite of climate and economic policies that Mr. Biden has not embraced in full.

“These are serious advocates who understand the policy details, who have connections to the climate movement and the environmental justice movement,” Mr. Weber said.

Paul Bledsoe, a former climate adviser in the Clinton White House, said the picks showed the White House was becoming the “domestic nerve center” for climate change in the Biden administration.

Credit...Amr Alfiky/The New York Times
 RIGHT: John Kerry brought his granddaughter to a signing ceremony for the Paris Agreement at the United Nations General Assembly in 2016. Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Credit...Alex Wong/Getty Images
RIGHT: Ali Zaidi, President Biden’s deputy national climate adviser. Amr Alfiky/The New York Times
Mr. Bledsoe said Mr. Hayes in particular, with whom he worked in the Interior Department in the 1990s, “has an encyclopedic knowledge of the connection between public lands and climate,” and called him “the perfect complement” to Ms. McCarthy, whose expertise is in mitigating emissions through clean air and water laws.

Working with Ms. McCarthy and Mr. Hayes in the White House Office of Climate Policy will be Sonia Aggarwal, who co-founded the San Francisco-based energy and environmental policy firm Energy Innovation.

There, Ms. Aggarwal helped develop a model called the Energy Policy Simulator to help policymakers drill down on specific clean energy policies and measure in real time the costs and emissions impacts of various plans. She will serve as senior adviser for climate policy and innovation.

One of Ms. Aggarwal’s areas of expertise is the development of a clean energy standard — that is, the percentage of non-fossil fuel sources that utilities must reach in their power generation and sales.

By setting a standard without a source-by-source prescription, the policy is supposed to allow businesses and utilities to determine the most efficient way of meeting the targets.

With the Senate now controlled by Democrats, even with a razor thin margin, the possibility of passing such a mandate could be within reach.

Maggie Thomas, who served in climate adviser roles in the presidential campaigns of Governor Jay Inslee of Washington and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, will serve as Ms. McCarthy’s chief of staff.

Jahi Wise, who was a policy director for the Coalition for Green Capital, a nonprofit group that works to drive investment in clean energy, will be a senior adviser for climate policy and finance.

The expansive White House team, which is not subject to Senate confirmation, has provoked consternation among Republicans.

Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, who will be the top Republican on the Senate Energy Committee, said he believed increased energy innovation and “not the appointment of countless unchecked czars” would be best for both the economy and the environment.

James P. Pfiffner, an emeritus professor of public policy at George Mason University and an expert on the presidency, noted that presidents have increasingly centralized control in the White House by creating special positions around policies of high importance, with mixed results.

A new White House climate office staffed with at least five people is a lot, he said, and a White House “czar” like Ms. McCarthy would have her challenges.

“White House staffers do not have the authority to make decisions on spending or personnel,” he said. “Certainly, they can be powerful, but only to the extent that their policy area is of primary importance to the president.”

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(USA) Biden Returns US To Paris Climate Accord Hours After Becoming President

The Guardian - 

Biden administration rolls out a flurry of executive orders aimed at tackling climate crisis

Joe Biden kicks off his new administration with orders to restore the United States to the Paris climate accord. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
Joe Biden has moved to reinstate the US to the Paris climate agreement just hours after being sworn in as president, as his administration rolls out a cavalcade of executive orders aimed at tackling the climate crisis.

Biden’s executive action, signed in the White House on Wednesday, will see the US rejoin the international effort curb the dangerous heating of the planet, following a 30-day notice period. The world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases was withdrawn from the Paris deal under Donald Trump.

Biden is also set to block the Keystone XL pipeline, a bitterly contested project that would bring huge quantities of oil from Canada to the US to be refined, and halt oil and gas drilling at Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, two vast national monuments in Utah, and the Arctic national wildlife refuge wilderness.

The Trump administration’s decision to shrink the protected areas of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante will also be reviewed.

The flurry of first-day action on the climate crisis came after Biden, in his inauguration speech, said America needed to respond to a “climate in crisis”.

The change in direction from the Trump era was profound and immediate – on the White House website, where all mentions of climate were scrubbed out in 2017, a new list of priorities now puts the climate crisis second only behind the Covid pandemic. Biden has previously warned that climate change poses the “greatest threat” to the country, which was battered by record climate-fueled wildfires, hurricanes and heat last year.

The re-entry to the Paris agreement ends a period where the US became a near-pariah on the international stage with Trump’s refusal to address the unfolding disaster of rising global temperatures.

Countries are struggling to meet commitments, made in Paris in 2015, to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5C above the pre-industrial era, with 2020 setting another record for extreme heat.

“It’s just a huge day to get rid of this myopic, benighted administration and welcome in a new president who manifestly is committed to strong, meaningful action,” said Todd Stern, who was the lead US negotiator in Paris. “Rejoining Paris is just the first step, but it’s a big first step.”

Biden is expected to convene an international climate summit in the spring to help accelerate emissions cuts and will probably submit a new US emissions reduction goal to help it reach net zero emissions by 2050.

“We can’t be afraid or diffident about exercising leadership again but we need a sense of humility in light of what has occurred over the past four years,” Stern said of America’s return to climate diplomacy. “The message is ‘we are back, let’s move hard.’ It will be deliberate, aggressive and strategic.”

Gina McCarthy, Biden’s top climate adviser, said Biden will in all reverse “more than 100” climate-related policies enacted by Trump.

The twice-impeached Republican repeatedly dismissed the science of climate change and spent his term as president weakening or overturning rules to limit pollution from cars, trucks and power plants.

McCarthy said climate change poses an “existential threat” and the administration’s opening salvo “will begin to put the US back on the right footing, a footing we need to restore American leadership, helping to position our nation to be the global leader in clean energy and jobs”.

Biden will be able to unilaterally limit fossil fuel development on federal land and set tougher rules for fuel efficiency in cars and trucks but sweeping climate legislation to make deeper cuts in emissions will be more challenging to get through Congress.

While Democrats control the House, the Senate is split 50-50 and is unlikely to embrace anything styled like the Green New Deal, which has been championed by progressive representatives such as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

Instead, Biden’s hopes of providing huge financial support to boost clean energy such as solar and wind may rely upon funding being included in budgets and infrastructure bills.

“There is a serious backlog of needs in water systems, roads and bridges and other things and my colleagues understand that,” said Kathy Castor, a Florida Democrat who chairs the House’s select committee on the climate crisis. “We know we must go much further much faster. This is a race to the future.”

Scientists and climate campaigners have welcomed the urgency voiced by Biden given the ever-worsening impacts of the climate crisis across the world.

“Even if we can’t get new climate legislation, our executive branch already has many tools to act,” said Leah Stokes, an expert in environmental policy at the University of California. “The best time to cut emissions was decades ago; the second-best time is today.”

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