Climate science predicts that the world faces a climate calamity unless global mean temperatures are contained within 1.5 ^oC of its pre-industrial levels.

The leading cause of global temperature increase is human-produced greenhouse gas emission, the annual value of which continues to increase each year.  To avoid climate calamity, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stipulates that the net value of these annual emissions must reach zero by 2050.

Net-Zero and the Energy Transition

The global race to meet this emissions target is on. But the net annual emissions must start falling first before they reach zero. That is, they must peak first before they start declining. There seems to be a consensus that this must happen around 2030 if we want to reach the 2050 target in a reasonable way. 

The largest emitters are fossil fuels (comprising coal, oil and gas) used mainly in power generation and transportation. Coal is the worst culprit. In 2018, it produced 10.1 gigatonnes, which was a whopping 30% of the total fossil fuel emissions of 33.2 gigatonnes. This is 20% of the total 2021 global emissions of 50.1 gigatonnes.

The message is clear – to strive to reach the emissions targets, we must change our energy sources from fossil fuels to renewable energy. This realisation has produced a global transformation in the way we produce and use our energy. It is called the energy transition, and has spawned the emergence of new fuels such as hydrogen and ammonia (and the lesser known biomethane and pyrolysis oils), and new ways of storing intermittent renewable energy such as wind and solar in batteries and fuel cells. It is also beginning to produce a revolutionary change in land transportation from combustion engine vehicles to EVs.

To understand this global energy revolution and its relevance to climate change mitigation, one must first understand the basic science behind the production and use of both fossil fuels and bioenergy, and the policies and standards that regulate their production and use.  An insight into the drivers of the global trade in fossil fuels and the production of renewable energy is provided by examining the global politics and economics of energy.

The new book

Titled Bioenergy for power generation, transportation and climate change mitigation, this new book was released internationally this month by the Institute of Physics (IOP) Publishing.

The book is primarily about the production and use of bioenergy, a form of renewable energy that has been gaining increasing attention recently due to its role in climate change mitigation. But significantly, it also touches upon the human side of energy use.

The first three parts of the book covers the technical side of the production and use of solid, liquid and gaseous biofuels. Part 1 begins with an overview of bioenergy at the global level, looks at solid biomass as an energy source, and describes the thermochemical, biochemical and electrochemical pathways by which biomass is converted to forms more amenable for use.

National grids can be powered by a mix of power sources consisting of fossil-fuel powered thermal power plants, and renewable energy sources. These may be either dispatchable sources (ie. available immediately on demand) such as coal, oil, gas or hydro and biofuel power plants, or intermittent, such as wind and solar power.

The transition to clean energy requires phasing out the fossil fuel sources and using more intermittent sources.  Unfortunately, this produces grid stability issues. One way of solving the issue is to feed the intermittent energy indirectly into the grid through energy storage systems such as rechargeable batteries and reversible fuel cells. These improve grid stability by acting as dispatchable sources. 

Part 2 of the book discusses the principles and techniques of generating and storing electrical energy from bioenergy through thermal power plants and energy storage systems.  It describes the principles of operation of the range of bioenergy-fired power plants in operation today. It ends by looking at the roles of electrolysers, fuel cells and batteries in the storage and conversion of electrochemical energy, and traces the evolution of primary and rechargeable batteries in use today.

Part 3 is about the science, technology and legislation behind the production and use of liquid and gaseous biofuels. It discusses the production and use of the established biofuels bioethanol, biobutanol, biodiesel, biomethane (renewable natural gas) and the emerging biofuels HVO, syngas, pyrolysis oil and hydrogen for power generation, transportation and climate change mitigation.

The fourth part focuses on the human dimensions of global energy use. It begins by discussing the political forces that drive and deter renewable energy production on the global scale, and demonstrates how global politics and economics are combining with climate change policy to produce the revolutionary change in energy use known as the energy transition. Suggestions are made for a new approach for addressing global challenges such as climate change, sustainable development and pandemics that is based on an integrated development framework.

Readership

The book was originally meant as a reference text for graduate and academic researchers who wished to keep abreast of the latest development in bioenergy and climate change mitigation. But the growing interest in the search for new fuels for emissions reduction made it necessary to enlarge the scope of the book to include energy practitioners and decision-makers. It may be viewed at

https://iopscience.iop.org/book/mono/978-0-7503-3555-3

and is available in e-book and print formats.