As the world grapples with lingering issues from the past century, a significant portion of the global population is turning their focus towards the imminent end of the fossil fuel age. It's clear that traditional energy sources are on their way out, but are their alternatives ready to step into the spotlight?
The E2DT Conference: A Gathering of Minds for Energy Transition
From October 22-26, Palermo city will host the E2DT Conference, a gathering of leading minds in chemical engineering and related fields. Organized by the Italian Association of Chemical Engineering (Aidic) and supported by the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (Efce), the conference will delve into the complex topic of energy transition. This essentially refers to the shift from fossil fuel-based energy production to renewable resources, a challenging journey impacted heavily by cost considerations.
Politics and Science: The Struggle for Energy Transition
While scientific advancements play a pivotal role in this transition, many energy decisions are also influenced by political forces. A recent example of this is the European Commission's decision to phase out thermal combustion engines by 2035, a directive that has sparked much debate and controversy. The concern here is the potential risk of abrupt changes. Would a more gradual approach be more effective? These are questions that politics alone cannot answer, and where the role of science becomes crucial.
Technological Response to Energy Transition
Despite these challenges, the technological response to the energy transition is progressing rapidly. Developments in electric vehicle efficiency and cost reduction are ongoing, alongside research into more sustainable energy storage materials. However, current battery technologies still depend heavily on scarce resources with significant environmental impacts.
Metals in Transition: The Role of Lithium, Chromium, Cobalt, and More
An electric vehicle battery, weighing around 206 kg, contains a variety of metals including graphite, copper, nickel, manganese, and smaller amounts of cobalt, chromium, and lithium. Lithium, in particular, plays a significant role in the production chain and international scenarios. Recent mining agreements in Ghana with Atlantic Lithium Ltd, Chile's consideration of nationalizing lithium deposits, and China's agreement to exploit lithium deposits in Afghanistan reflect this influence.
As for Europe, research into local lithium sources remains limited. Therefore, in the near future, Brussels may need to navigate the predominantly Asian or US battery energy market as a buyer. The energy transition journey is far from simple, but through platforms like the E2DT Conference, we can continue to explore potential solutions and strategies.
Energy transition: the prudent way forward
Aidic (Associazione Italiana Di Ingegneria Chimica) in the run-up to the congress, has produced several position papers in which it analyzes the current situation of the energy transition and derives some solution hypotheses. Several times it is pointed out that batteries not only affect electric mobility, but also a myriad of devices and objects of daily use; but most importantly, they also greatly affect the efficiency of renewable sources with storage systems. So the demand for the critical materials, mentioned above, is set to increase exponentially. Also in Aidic's paper, a more prudent path is indicated: "banning endothermic engines in Europe from 2035 may not solve the climate change problem and expose Europe and part of the rest of the world to tensions due to the supply and management of critical minerals," notes Giuseppe Ricci, president of Aidic. It would, in short, be "prudent to carefully consider for transportation, the use of alternative energy carriers to electricity and hydrogen, derived from waste, from biomass obtained without competing with food production and without deforestation or from CO2 hydrogenation."
Hydrogen
The moderate path to energy transition proposed by Aidic's president assumes the exploitation of hydrogen as a fuel. This topic has been discussed for a long time and expectations for full development of the technology are high, but currently, applications are niche. Aidic's president is keen to point out, "Hydrogen combustion, to generate energy, produces only water vapor as a byproduct and its energy density per mass, that is, the energy obtainable per weight of hydrogen is very high." Sore notes that limit the application, unfortunately, do exist and are mainly related to the properties of the gas. Hydrogen is very rarefied, therefore, its use presupposes compression, but currently because of the low density, the costs of compressing hydrogen are very high. The amount of energy required to compress hydrogen is 5-10 times greater than that required to compress methane, making it difficult to lower production costs. However, research wants to make progress on this issue, and many projects have sprung up to abandon technological problems; the hope is that there will be substantial funds from government institutions to finance this work.
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