Karim Amin of Siemens Energy reveals what he believes are five home truths that everyone involved in energy and climate needs to accept and act upon.
“The answer to net zero is not as simple as ‘plug-in renewables, stop the gas’,” says Karim Amin of Siemens Energy.
He’s talking at a press conference at the company’s gas turbine centre in Finspang, Sweden – also home to the company’s Zero Emission Hydrogen Turbine Centre – and is warming up to revealing what he calls the “five uncomfortable truths about the energy transition”.
But before he gets to that particular quintet, he stresses that his above statement is not based on the fact that “we are a gas turbine company and therefore that we want this to be the answer. No, it’s because this is what the market is saying.
“For every 1MW of fossil fuel power we shut down, we need 3MW of renewables because the renewables are intermittent. So to shut down 1GW of coal, you need 3GW of renewables.”
He also explains that the long-term future of gas – despite current security concerns – is far from bleak: quite the opposite.
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He cites growth in distributed generation on both new installations and in service, due to electricity demand increase in industries, and particularly oil & gas customers who are facing urgent decarbonisation requirements.
And then there’s heat: there’s an increased demand for decarbonisation of heat: for electric heat pumps to decarbonise coal- and even gas-based district heating & cooling and industrial processes.
“This is happening big time,” he highlights.
So: what of those five comfortable truths? Here they come:
- Fossil is the answer
“Sometimes, it’s like a taboo to talk about gas as the future,” says Amin. “But it is the future. There is no back-up solution to the intermittency of renewables that does not involve gas.
“The question is,” he adds: “How to make the impact of that as minimal as possible on climate and the environment. Because there’s no doubt about the impact of gas on climate change: the impact is there; we see it; we don’t deny it; we want to be a driving force to find a solution.”
- Renewables don’t come for free
“Renewables have a cost,” says Amin, and he’s not stating the obvious about the cost of building the initial installations, be they wind or solar.
“In the best countries in the world, solar is only available for eight hours. You have to invest much more, in the grid, and in storage. Governments need to put in this money and the private sector needs to put in this money.
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“And not everybody is familiar with this, that there is this price. And then when they are aware – not everyone is willing to pay it.”
- Technology is not the issue
The ability to make gas turbines run on clean fuels, particularly hydrogen, is not awaiting a technological breakthrough, stresses Amin: the technology is here already.
“Is it mature? No. Do we need to invest more? Yes. But the technology is not the issue,” says Amin.
Because the elephant in the room is…
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- Infrastructure is an issue
“If you want to move green electricity from where it is generated offshore to onshore and then to another country, you need pipelines or forms of transport for green hydrogen. And this needs policy; it needs regulation; this is the true price of CO2.
“We always get the questions: ‘when will your gas turbines be able to burn hydrogen? Followed by: ‘how much hydrogen can they burn’?
“And now my answer is: ‘How much have you got? And can you transport it to where we need it? How much is that going to cost you? Are your off-takers or customers willing to pay this price?
“So it’s not a question of how much can we burn. It’s a question of how fast can you create the infrastructure around it in the order of magnitude that we need and with an affordability level.”
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And fifth but not least:
- We can’t do it alone
“It needs all the players on the technology side, on the financing side, the governments, the regulators, to come together.
“It is not a simple straightforward solution. Sometimes I talk to people who are very engaged and concerned about climate, but they believe the problem is as very simple as about the greed of corporates or the indecisiveness of governments.
“It is more complex than that and it needs to be handled with the gravity that it deserves.
“These are the five truths that we work with.”
