What does it mean to be a European Climate Pact Ambassador, and specifically what role could solar thermal technology play in decarbonising the European continent?
First and foremost I want to thank you for the opportunity to take part in this interview, and to share my ideas and thinking on renewables and on solar thermal in particular. Anyone who knows me knows that I am almost an evangelist for solar thermal — a technology that fascinates me and that I believe is crucial to decarbonise the power generation sector, and also instrumental for powering, at night, the Haber-Bosch reactors that will be used to produce green ammonia.
I also want to thank the European Commission for having selected me as one of the European Climate Pact Ambassadors, from among thousands of applicants. The current selection has been based on our experience as outreach communicators, speakers, renewables advocates and environmental activists, since the Commission plans to launch a major media campaign on the matter; in the future, however, the goal is for anyone to be able to apply and be selected. Ultimately, the role of the Ambassadors is to raise public awareness — to remind people that every small action counts and matters.
The mission of the current European Climate Pact Ambassadors is to act as a bridge between civil society, interested stakeholders and the European Commission, and to lead by example in climate action and environmental protection. To that end, each of us has been asked to make a commitment. In my case, this is to support the European solar thermal renaissance, and also to help build a green hydrogen and green ammonia economy in Morocco — enabling Morocco to move from being an importer of two million tonnes per year of grey ammonia for fertiliser, to becoming an exporter of green ammonia to Europe, where again solar thermal would play an instrumental role. Most importantly, generating wealth at the source would not only reduce emissions and slow climate change, but would benefit society more broadly — both Moroccan and European. The European Climate Pact is an initiative that forms part of the wider package of measures included in the European Commission's European Green Deal.
Pacific Green Solar Technologies is very active in the Chinese CSP market. What growth prospects do you see for the Asian giant? What role do you think solar thermal will eventually play in that country, given that today it represents around 750 MW of plants in operation and under construction — well short of the original development plan of 10 GW by 2020?
I believe the Chinese market is currently in a process of reviewing its initial demonstration plan, and once that review is completed we will again see new plant construction announced. That said, the new plants that will be announced in China will be hybrid plants — solar installations that will generate during the day with photovoltaics, while solar thermal will store heat during the day and generate electricity at night. Another point we will see in the new Chinese plants is technological developments that have not yet been deployed elsewhere. China is one of the countries that invests most in R&D across all fields, and that includes renewables and, in this case, solar thermal. We see the future in China with optimism — not only because of our collaboration with Beijing Shouhang IHW, but also because of our joint venture with Power China and our strategic agreements with Shanghai Electric. We should not forget that Pacific Green Technologies is a publicly listed US company, and we are proud to serve as an example of how significant alliances on renewable energy technologies can be built between China and the United States, where we have been pioneers in cooperation.
Many technologies in development could change the energy paradigm over the next decade — batteries (lithium-ion, flow), supercapacitors, hydrogen with its various uses, among others. How do you expect Spain's energy mix to look in 2030? And in 2050?
I have a vision of an energy mix for 2030 in which, if the 5 GW of solar thermal indicated in the PNIEC are installed, we will be able to dispense with traditional thermal generation burning fossil fuels. More than that — I believe that if we genuinely want to advance and decarbonise not only power generation but also industry, then we need green hydrogen and, above all, green ammonia. Looking to 2050, I see a future without fission nuclear plants, and frankly I do not believe we will have a new generation of fusion nuclear plants either; while I think they may very well be technically viable by 2050, they will not be economically viable, which means that ITER and its successor DEMO will never lead to commercially viable plants. I believe instead that the entire mix will be generated from renewables, and that this will include a new generation of combined-cycle plants with new ceramic materials that will allow them to burn hydrogen — which produces no CO2. As this hydrogen is green, it will be one more renewable source, since it is extracted from water and burning it produces water vapour again, making it an inexhaustible source of energy.
Renewable auctions have been announced in Spain for 2021 with a minimum solar thermal capacity to be auctioned of 200 MW. What is your view on this? Do you think it is sufficient to meet the PNIEC objectives? Is Spain a potential market for Pacific Green?
Frankly, I consider the 200 MW of minimum solar thermal capacity included in the current auction calendar for 2021 — and also for 2023 and 2025, totalling 600 MW — clearly insufficient and in fact short of expectations, since the PNIEC's solar thermal objectives for 2030 indicated 5 GW to be added to the approximately 2.3 GW currently installed. Installing those 5 GW of solar thermal would help significantly to meet the decarbonisation objectives of the power sector and would allow us to dispense with combined-cycle plants. People should be clear, and unfortunately the Government in particular does not appear to be, that when we talk about 5 GW of solar thermal we are talking about 50 to 60 GWh of storage, depending on the storage hours of the plants in question. Adding that storage capacity to the grid is crucial for the full deployment of renewables, since solar thermal — and its inherent dispatchability — is essential for the system operator. Reducing the solar thermal capacity indicated in the PNIEC and trying to replace it partially with battery storage systems is a clear mistake, since it increases the levelised cost of storage (LCoS), which translates into higher levelised costs of electricity (LCoE), ultimately reflected in higher electricity bills for the end consumer. To put it differently — meeting the PNIEC objectives and installing the 5 GW of CSP (which I repeat entails 50 to 60 GWh of equivalent storage) will lower the monthly electricity bill of millions of Spaniards, compared with not doing so.
Spain is in fact one of Pacific Green's potential markets, where we will support developers as a technology provider and where we are also willing to take a stake in such developments. Other key markets for Pacific Green are the United States, where we will see a solar thermal renaissance soon — the starting gun for building solar thermal again in the US will be the restart of Crescent Dunes, once its design problems have been repaired. We are also very active in the Chilean market, in Saudi Arabia, and obviously, as you mentioned earlier, in China.
Protermosolar is heavily emphasising the message that solar thermal must be the night-time renewable, not contributing to deepening the duck curve we have started to see this year, but instead capturing thermal energy during the day and dispatching it at night, when renewable generation does not reach 35%. This is undoubtedly a drastic operational shift in plant design from what we have seen historically. From your perspective, what should the role of solar thermal be? Do you agree that night-time dispatch should be prioritised? Should solar thermal be hybridised with photovoltaics, with biomass, or with other technologies?
At current photovoltaic prices, it makes no sense at all to consider generating electricity during the day with solar thermal — it is not competitive. What we will see instead is a new generation of hybrid CSP-PV plants, where during the day solar thermal will heat the molten-salt thermal storage system, while photovoltaics generates the electricity dispatched to the grid. At night, solar thermal will use the thermal energy accumulated during the day to generate steam and turbine it, producing electricity for the grid. To put it in very simple terms, solar thermal will act as the "battery" of photovoltaics — but a battery capable of lasting all night, with capacities of up to 200 MW × 12 h. This will allow these hybrid plants to achieve levelised costs of electricity (LCoE) much lower than those of a combined-cycle plant, and obviously much lower than adding batteries capable of storing the same amount of energy as a solar thermal plant.
In fact, when storage is discussed, most people think only of batteries — but for capacities above 100 MW and storage durations above 6 hours, solar thermal can achieve costs much lower than the equivalent in chemical batteries. As an aside, many people will not be aware that at this moment, on a global level, there are more equivalent GWh installed in molten-salt thermal storage systems within solar thermal plants than there are GWh in battery storage systems (BESS). As an example, each of the three 200 MW parabolic-trough solar thermal plants being built in Dubai for NOOR Energy has a storage capacity of 11.5 hours, which in BESS terms would be the equivalent of three systems of 2.3 GWh each — far more than the largest chemical battery system designed and installed to date, which, if I am not out of date, is the Moss Landing Energy Facility in San Francisco at 1.2 GWh, roughly half of just one of those three parabolic-trough plants.