RBN Energy

For several months there’s been a scramble on to consolidate the U.S. landfill gas collection systems, dairy- and hog-farm digesters, and other assets that produce renewable natural gas (RNG) — a drop-in replacement for conventional natural gas that can qualify for federal and state financial incentives. But what really caught everyone’s attention was BP’s announcement a few weeks ago that it would acquire Archaea Energy, a Houston-based company with more than a dozen RNG projects in operation and many more under development, in a deal valued at $4.1 billion. That’s big bucks in the biogas space. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the BP/Archaea deal and other recent acquisitions of RNG assets, as well as what’s driving the surging interest in RNG.

Prior to the adoption of the assembly line, automotive production was slow and expensive, with Ford needing about 12 man hours of labor to do the final assembly for each new car. With Henry Ford’s installation of the first moving assembly line for mass production in December 1913, followed by additional refinements in future years, the average time dropped to about 90 minutes, with manufacturing costs also falling significantly. Those are the types of improvements in cost and efficiency the carbon-capture industry — which to date has been largely limited to smaller, individual projects — is anticipating as hub-style projects gain wider acceptance and begin to take shape. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the two basic concepts for carbon-capture hubs, the key advantages of the hub approach, and the complications inherent in that strategy.

Capturing carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from industrial and oil and gas activities is already a big challenge but having a safe, permanent place to store them is vital if the goal is to meet or exceed emission-reduction targets. To this end, Alberta, home to most of Canada’s oil and gas industry, including the vast oil sands, is steadily advancing plans to develop carbon sequestration hubs and underground reservoirs across the province in parallel with above-ground CO₂ capture plants and pipelines. In separate announcements this year, the province gave the go ahead to 25 projects to develop sequestration hubs and determine if they can achieve commercial viability. In today’s blog, we consider Alberta’s latest efforts to push forward with its emissions capture and storage plans.

Global demand for electric vehicles (EVs) is on the rise, and with it demand for EV batteries and the key minerals needed to produce them. China is the world’s fourth-largest producer of lithium — perhaps the most important EV component of all — and is far-and-away the #1 lithium processor, giving it a critical edge over the U.S. and its democratic, capitalist trading partners as EV production and sales ramp up. The Biden administration and Congress have been taking a number of steps to enable the U.S. and its compadres to reduce — with an aim to end — our dependence on Chinese batteries going forward. One recent move by the U.S. was to provide EV subsidies only to vehicles whose batteries and battery components come from the U.S., Canada or other countries we can depend on through thick and thin. But much more substantial advances need to be made to encourage lithium production if there’s to be any hope of securing a significant portion of the minerals expected to be required for an energy transition. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss these efforts and the challenges the U.S. and its friends face in becoming “EV-battery independent.”

Lithium is in high demand worldwide for the production of rechargeable batteries used in the rapidly expanding electric vehicle (EV) and utility-scale energy storage markets, as well as a plethora of everyday mobile devices. The problem is, there are relatively few places on the planet that offer rock formations or naturally occurring underground brine reservoirs conducive to the economic production of lithium — and even there the concentrations of lithium in the rock and brine are measured in parts per million. Now, a handful of companies in Alberta and elsewhere are exploring the potential for “direct lithium extraction” from oil and gas well brine, an alternative technique that some view as a potential breakthrough. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the promise — and potential pitfalls — of lithium production from oil and gas brine.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) unveiled its timeline for receiving and reviewing proposals to develop six to 10 clean-hydrogen hubs and said its aim was to decide by the fall of next year which projects will share up to $7 billion in DOE support. The competition for those dollars is sure to be fierce, with some of the strongest proposals likely to come from states like Texas and California that have a lot of renewable energy and ambitions to be leaders in the energy transition. Also, there is a joint effort by three states east and north of Texas to develop a hydrogen hub that would take advantage of their existing and planned hydrogen-production and wind assets, natural gas supply, refinery and pipeline infrastructure, and carbon sequestration potential. In today's RBN blog, we discuss the DOE's recent announcement and the three-state hydrogen-hub plan, which is dubbed H₂ALO.

Not long ago, many considered large-scale industrial carbon capture to be a pie-in-the-sky concept. But neither the capturing of carbon dioxide (CO₂) nor permanent underground sequestration is new — naturally occurring sources of CO₂ have been used in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) for decades. And, with new financial incentives and a renewed sense of urgency regarding climate action, things are changing fast — so quickly, in fact, that the carbon-capture industry may be poised for exponential growth, both in the U.S. and abroad. In the encore edition of today’s RBN blog, we discuss highlights from our second Drill Down Report on carbon capture.