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Decarbonization, how to move from fossil fuels to renewables

por World Energy Trade
Decarbonisation, how to move from fossil fuels to renewables

Although the objective, the goal, of the energy transition is to move to renewable sources, abandoning coal in the short term must ensure stability and resilience of the grids, this is where natural gas plays a key role.

It sounds easy to say goodbye to coal, but what does decarbonization really mean? The energy transition to more sustainable energy production cannot be solved by a simple and sudden abandonment of fossil sources.

Instead, the process has to provide for a gradual phase-out and manage it in such a way as to ensure the stability, resilience and efficiency of the grids.

The tool of change is electrification, i.e. the progressive replacement of fossil fuel technologies with technologies that use electricity from renewable sources only in all sectors, from cooking in our homes to heating and transport. This will also reduce air pollution in cities. And thanks to the help of digitization of the grids, energy efficiency will improve significantly.

The importance of flexibility

The transition from fossil to renewable energies, a key point in the fight against climate change and aimed at sustainability, represents a paradigm shift. We are moving from a fully programmable energy generation model to a scenario in which the intrinsic characteristic is non-scheduling.

It is therefore a path that poses technical and infrastructural challenges, because we cannot afford to destabilize the grids, or cause blackouts or service interruptions.

If we try to imagine what the energy management of the future will be like, flexibility will certainly come into play. Sudden changes in the balance between energy demand and supply, network stress and exceptional situations are already imposing management with plants that are able to anticipate and tolerate critical situations, to deal with them in real time and then return to normal conditions.

The biggest challenge to be faced is to find a way to manage the daily differences between demand and supply. In fact, wind and photovoltaic power plants generate a misalignment between energy production and consumption, which is partly predictable and partly dependent on weather conditions.

The response must follow two main directions. Firstly, the enhancement of energy storage systems to defer energy supply according to actual demand. And then, in a temporary phase, the replacement of coal by other less polluting sources, but which are also capable of guaranteeing a programmable energy supply.

From this perspective, natural gas currently represents a promising and efficient alternative and is an excellent ally in the current energy transition.

Why gas is the best transitional solution

Natural gas has many advantages over coal. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has quantified them, highlighting an improvement in efficiency: from 40% in traditional coal-fired power plants to 50% in methane-fired plants, which can reach 60% if state-of-the-art technologies are used.

With regard to emissions, the same amount of electricity generated can reduce by up to half the amount of carbon dioxide produced.

Finally, a feature not so important for the environment but fundamental for human use of the transition from coal to gas is that it allows greater agility of use, improving the above-mentioned stability and resilience of the networks.

In the medium term, if energy consumption will be increasingly intermittent, gas could best meet practical requirements, at least until the combination of renewable sources (for generation) and batteries (for storage) is sufficiently developed to ensure optimal performance.

Among the advantages of gas, there is the possibility of intense peaks in energy production. This peculiarity, which is embodied in the so-called peaking power plants, is one of the characteristics that make gas a facilitator for the entry of renewable sources into the energy markets.

In fact, by compensating for peaks in demand, the main problem of wind and sun is solved. A prospect confirmed by the figures in the energy report produced by BloombergNEF in 2020, which forecasts annual gas growth of 0.6% in steady progression until 2050.

However, much will depend on the technological objectives achieved. We have just mentioned that, with the latest class of turbines, we have gone from a maximum of 50 megawatts per minute to 100.

And if innovation is aimed at raising this threshold further, we will be working in parallel to further reduce the environmental impact, both by improving efficiency and by introducing catalysts to collect carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides, preventing their emission into the atmosphere.

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