"Median cradle-to-gate carbon footprint of lithium-ion batteries
between 48 and 120 kg CO2e kWh−1."
Coal generation is almost 1 kg CO2e/kWh, gas around 0.5.
Split the difference and the battery embodies 90 kg/kwh, divided by 0.75 kg/kWh avoided fossil generation emissions, divided by 80% depth of discharge, seems to yield about 130 battery cycles for a battery to offset its embodied emissions if the cycled variable renewable generation would have otherwise been curtailed and fossil generation used instead. If the battery is cycled half the days, that seems like about 8 months emissions payback. Not too bad IMHO.
In any case for any storage, duty cycle or similar capacity factor is important to payback of emissions, energy, and $ invested. Kinda like if you drive your pickup 1000 miles/year, you shouldn't buy a Rivian to save the planet. Instead contribute to BEV buses for you school district or transit authority which are driven 40,000+ miles per year.
The existing PHES reservoirs in CO don't need plastic or concrete or asphalt linings. Many reservoirs don't. The lithium batteries I see are located at PV power plants. Even if they located at an old powerplant to take advantage of the grid, the ones in CA are clearly packing in the PV during mid day and releasing it to avoid evening fossil generation. CAISO has oodles of data on that.
As far as Moss Landing, seems like a good case for LFP instead of NMC, and hey Thomas Edison almost burned down the Vanderbilts' house. And did burn down a bunch of other stuff.
I am a simple-minded, or at least simplicity-minded, economist, who finds the simple path to survival to be found in treating terrestrial carbon, that would otherwise be in the atmosphere, like the ultimate scarcity good---the basis for a carbon economy in which *every* item is priced in Tonnes Avoided CO2 (TACs).
Our production cost models (I am an expert on the PROSYM family, which shows how old I am) we minimize Dollars or other nominal currency. It is not so hard to change terms to TACs. I suspect that LADWP is using their house interface to do stochastic structural modeling of the WECC, for example to build the business case for that big wind--and-transmission project they are doing with Anschultz
My claim to membership in the energy elder club is my proficiency at text-mode DOE-2 building energy modeling.
I'm kinda simplicity-minded myself. I'm a big fan of understanding when calculations result in "precision without accuracy," hence my two significant figures and wide input ranges for my little calc of battery GHG "payback."
For something that can be presented as numerically precise as TACs by switching from gas to electricity, or deploying VRE and storage, widely varying conclusions can be drawn from using different methods for looking at carbon emitted in future years by electric supply at any given location. Annual averages, short run marginal or average hourly, long term marginal or average hourly. All will give different answers, and depend on VRE deployment rate assumptions. Then, how, and how much, do we attribute methane leak & vent to gas use in either remaining powerplants or heating systems?
I think we would agree that as the time period in long-term energy storage for VREs gets longer, the number of cycles goes down and the embodied carbon and dollar cost goes up for each unit of stored energy, to the point some solutions may actually emit more hidden embodied carbon than they save.
I'm usually dubious (but not totally cynical) about forest or agriculture sequestration and offsets. But if we electrify most everything and generate only 10% of the that electricity with fossil fuels, using those bio GHG sinks and GHG avoidances to offset small remaining fossil GHGs might be "better" than Herculean efforts at long duration storage of VRE.
Offsets were (note tense) a successful industrial policy action, that gets things moving in the right direction.
In the carbon economy, the basic unit of value is TAC. Carbon firms maximize TAC, and all the values of conventional microeconomics can (and, in our crisis, must) be expressed in those terms. Like wages, ferinstance.
Go browse my Substack and ask me questions there. Or here...I don't want to poach readers from this great site,
"I have found my people" is something I have been looking forward to thinking. I think I may be right!
I want to know whether batteries are really better (in TAC terms) thatn the locally-produced biofuels for hauling the surplus biomass that forest recovery requires. From the perspective of the pathologically overgrown forest, which wants to sequester carbon not send it all up into the atmosphere at once, the biomass facility helps with its waste product; the challenge is to get the highest value work out of the waste biomass. The main value is in the forests (with all the birds and bees and nematodes riding along for free in the carbon economy).
Google "lithium batteries carbon footprint per kwh"
and get "The dependency of global lithium-ion battery emissions on production location and material sources" 2024
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652624011739
"Median cradle-to-gate carbon footprint of lithium-ion batteries
between 48 and 120 kg CO2e kWh−1."
Coal generation is almost 1 kg CO2e/kWh, gas around 0.5.
Split the difference and the battery embodies 90 kg/kwh, divided by 0.75 kg/kWh avoided fossil generation emissions, divided by 80% depth of discharge, seems to yield about 130 battery cycles for a battery to offset its embodied emissions if the cycled variable renewable generation would have otherwise been curtailed and fossil generation used instead. If the battery is cycled half the days, that seems like about 8 months emissions payback. Not too bad IMHO.
In any case for any storage, duty cycle or similar capacity factor is important to payback of emissions, energy, and $ invested. Kinda like if you drive your pickup 1000 miles/year, you shouldn't buy a Rivian to save the planet. Instead contribute to BEV buses for you school district or transit authority which are driven 40,000+ miles per year.
The existing PHES reservoirs in CO don't need plastic or concrete or asphalt linings. Many reservoirs don't. The lithium batteries I see are located at PV power plants. Even if they located at an old powerplant to take advantage of the grid, the ones in CA are clearly packing in the PV during mid day and releasing it to avoid evening fossil generation. CAISO has oodles of data on that.
As far as Moss Landing, seems like a good case for LFP instead of NMC, and hey Thomas Edison almost burned down the Vanderbilts' house. And did burn down a bunch of other stuff.
Thank you! There is a lot to digest here.
I am a simple-minded, or at least simplicity-minded, economist, who finds the simple path to survival to be found in treating terrestrial carbon, that would otherwise be in the atmosphere, like the ultimate scarcity good---the basis for a carbon economy in which *every* item is priced in Tonnes Avoided CO2 (TACs).
Our production cost models (I am an expert on the PROSYM family, which shows how old I am) we minimize Dollars or other nominal currency. It is not so hard to change terms to TACs. I suspect that LADWP is using their house interface to do stochastic structural modeling of the WECC, for example to build the business case for that big wind--and-transmission project they are doing with Anschultz
My claim to membership in the energy elder club is my proficiency at text-mode DOE-2 building energy modeling.
I'm kinda simplicity-minded myself. I'm a big fan of understanding when calculations result in "precision without accuracy," hence my two significant figures and wide input ranges for my little calc of battery GHG "payback."
For something that can be presented as numerically precise as TACs by switching from gas to electricity, or deploying VRE and storage, widely varying conclusions can be drawn from using different methods for looking at carbon emitted in future years by electric supply at any given location. Annual averages, short run marginal or average hourly, long term marginal or average hourly. All will give different answers, and depend on VRE deployment rate assumptions. Then, how, and how much, do we attribute methane leak & vent to gas use in either remaining powerplants or heating systems?
I think we would agree that as the time period in long-term energy storage for VREs gets longer, the number of cycles goes down and the embodied carbon and dollar cost goes up for each unit of stored energy, to the point some solutions may actually emit more hidden embodied carbon than they save.
I'm usually dubious (but not totally cynical) about forest or agriculture sequestration and offsets. But if we electrify most everything and generate only 10% of the that electricity with fossil fuels, using those bio GHG sinks and GHG avoidances to offset small remaining fossil GHGs might be "better" than Herculean efforts at long duration storage of VRE.
We need to talk forests and the carbon economy.
Offsets were (note tense) a successful industrial policy action, that gets things moving in the right direction.
In the carbon economy, the basic unit of value is TAC. Carbon firms maximize TAC, and all the values of conventional microeconomics can (and, in our crisis, must) be expressed in those terms. Like wages, ferinstance.
Go browse my Substack and ask me questions there. Or here...I don't want to poach readers from this great site,
"I have found my people" is something I have been looking forward to thinking. I think I may be right!
I want to know whether batteries are really better (in TAC terms) thatn the locally-produced biofuels for hauling the surplus biomass that forest recovery requires. From the perspective of the pathologically overgrown forest, which wants to sequester carbon not send it all up into the atmosphere at once, the biomass facility helps with its waste product; the challenge is to get the highest value work out of the waste biomass. The main value is in the forests (with all the birds and bees and nematodes riding along for free in the carbon economy).