Energy-intensive industry: locations and electricity pricesThey dream of green steel production with hydrogen, they wanted this at a time when all the prerequisites for it were lacking.
ArcelorMittal rejected the conversion of 2 steel plants despite €1.3 billion in promised subsidies. It was an offer that could only be rejected. If only you could do the math! But ideologues and dogmatists can't do that. On the contrary, ideologues and dogmatists see mathematics, science and economics as their worst enemies. In the spirit of the cancel culture, they don't want to hear about it. People are dreaming of green steel production with hydrogen, they wanted this at a time when all the prerequisites for it were lacking. There are certainly many hours with negative electricity prices in summer. This is a great way to save money if you have an electric car and charge it at times when the electricity price is negative. If you charge 2,400 kWh at home for 15,000 km per year, then you can choose the 220 hours with the cheapest electricity prices for the usual charging with 16 A three-phase current, i.e. 11 kW. Is a large electrolysis plant with 500 operating hours per year economical? Investment costs must be divided by operating hours. If there are only a few operating hours, the costs will be very high. Negative electricity prices mean very clean electricity from the sun and wind. At other times, electrolysis for hydrogen for steel production produces more CO2 emissions than the conventional process with coke. Of course, you can also produce hydrogen from natural gas, 9.5 kg CO2 per kg hydrogen.
Of course, one day we will do everything with solar power. Global production is constantly increasing and the modules are already incredibly cheap today. The batteries required for day/night balancing are also quickly becoming cheaper. The founding of Tesla in 2003 was a bet on falling battery prices. In 2003, a kWh lithium battery still cost €2,000: The first version of the Model S had an 85 kWh battery. At the battery price in 2003, you couldn't even fit that into a luxury car. Today we are at around €100 per kWh. The founding of GEMINI next Generation AG was a bet on falling battery prices: To take advantage of the daily fluctuations on the spot market to make the home affordable for the richest 90% of the population. Existing offers for the home's battery already make this possible. Bringing the home out of the dirty corner of energy waste and making it the basis of a cost-optimized, functional energy transition. From this perspective, my first project GEMINI habitable solar power plant was clearly the wrong time: when I started in the fall of 1991, photovoltaics were around 50 times more expensive than they are today. There are logical locations for heavy industry. When coal was the only available energy source at the beginning of the first industrial revolution, heavy industry developed in locations where high-quality coal was available. A look at the eastern states of Germany: no heavy industry because there was only low-grade lignite. If you want to run everything on solar power, it's not just the solar yield at the location that counts, but also the cost of summer/winter balancing. Currently, the only realistic method for summer/winter balancing is power to methane or methanol or hydrogen. Efficiencies in a chain must all be multiplied together. Unfortunately, after all these multiplications, the result is only 30%. Although Siemens advertises that the latest planned CCGT power plant will achieve 64% efficiency, as usual it relates the efficiency to the heating value and not to the calorific value. So high up in the north, Germany is 47° to 55° north latitude, the summer/winter balance is a considerable effort. Not a problem when living or driving, but quite a problem when supplying an energy-intensive, export-oriented industry. 36 cents/kWh is not a major problem for living or driving, but 18 cents/kWh is a problem that threatens the existence of energy-intensive industry. The effort and loss in summer/winter compensation can worsen the location disadvantage compared to a very sunny country from 1:2 to 1:4. Let's take 3 prime examples of energy-intensive industries: aluminum, steel and cement. With the high value of aluminum, even small differences in the price of electricity can compensate for the costs of transport over many thousands of kilometers. The situation is quite different for cement and steel. Given the expected price developments, steel produced for the domestic market can compete with steel from North Africa. But exporting steel will then look bad.
Until recently, wind energy fans called this a lie and completely irrelevant. Here is a quote from Google AI: A conflict between the Netherlands and Belgium concerns the use of wind energy. The Netherlands accuses Belgium of using offshore wind farms in its own country to influence the wind in such a way that the efficiency of Dutch wind turbines is impaired. There is talk of "wind theft", as the wind loses energy even before it reaches the Dutch coast, thus reducing the output of the Dutch wind farms.
With the expected price development, a green steel industry to supply the domestic market is possible in the future, but this only accounts for a third of the German steel industry. All that money for hydrogen would have been better invested in batteries. In 2025, almost every sunny day in the summer months will have hours with negative electricity prices. For 16 GW per year of photovoltaic expansion, 40 GWh of batteries would be required. The whole of Germany only has 38 GWh of pumped storage power plants. The existing 101 GW of photovoltaics would require 253 GWh of storage capacity for day/night balancing.
Net zero emissions means reducing greenhouse gas emissions to a level that nature can supposedly absorb for a long time. For the rich, this means Maintain poverty, cause poverty, so that enough emission rights remain for the rich. See the architect and her opinion that Africans don't need roads.
Planetary cleanup back to 350 ppm CO2 means about 47,000 TWh of electricity to filter 1 ppm CO2 from the atmosphere and recycle it into carbon and oxygen. Who can afford that? Only a rich human race, 10 billion people in prosperity can do it. One million km² of energy-optimized settlement areas alone should contribute 150,000 TWh for the necessary electricity for world-wide prosperity and planetary restoration.
It's not about whether the shares will be worth 100 times or 1000 times more in 20 years' time or whether they will only be worth a few cents. It's about the future of us all. Will there be a big showdown between eco-fascism and yesterday's fossils, or will it be possible to overcome the deep divisions in society and inspire supporters of both sides to work towards a great new goal? Global prosperity and planetary restoration instead of saving, restricting, renouncing and climate catastrophe or peak oil and a little more climate catastrophe. Both sides must be convinced that they have no solution that is even remotely viable. On the one hand, it must be shown that net-zero emissions are a completely inadequate target and that the goal must instead be a planetary clean-up back to 350 ppm CO2. The other side must be shown that solar power enables a higher standard of living than fossil energy. It's about survival! The social situation in 2025 compared to 2005, extrapolated to 2045, makes for a horror world! If we are successful and your shares are worth 100 times more, this is just an addition to all the other achievements. A new shareholder said "Me with my very modest investment", but €400 times €1,000 is also €400,000 for all investments up to the creation of the prototype. There is a reward program for recommending the share to others. Two of the new shareholders have become shareholders through this reward program. Here are the details.
The situation has changed fundamentally since this company visited Slovakia. Necessary investment volume reduced by around 90%. Time to marketable product shortened by around one year. The 90% reduction in investment volume also means that each shareholder has significantly more shares. The share price is now lifted towards our targets at each milestone. These milestones can happen in all areas: Financial, new shareholders, new opportunities to attract new shareholders. Contracts to build the prototype, more houses and settlements. Cooperations for realization. Purchase, arrival and testing of important technical components. |
