Greenify #92: Illegal Mining, Hydrogen Breakthroughs And Much More
January 5, 2024
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📌 Fact of the week
Germany’s total greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 amounted to 673 million tonnes, hitting a 70-year low 🙌🏻
Hottest news of the week…
Regulation 🗃 – Mine hunting in Brazil
What happened: Brazil is hunting down illegal gold mining across the Amazon. The Federal Police and a government’s biodiversity conservation agency, ICMBio, have joined forces in an attempt to catch illegal gold miners and destroy their camps and equipment. Their modus operandi looks a lot like a warfare videogame, as the federal police fire automatic weapons from helicopters and set fire to excavators used for mining. In the last three weeks, the agents found 20 mining sites in the forest.🌳
Zoom out: Brazil’s new leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, “Lula” for all, has been very vocal on his ambitions for the Amazon, as he plans to end deforestation completely by 2030. Illegal mining is a common practice in Brazil, particularly in areas of the forest inhabited by indigenous populations, degrading the forest and damaging the ecosystem. While with former president Bolsonaro illegal miners enjoyed a higher degree of freedom in their operations, it sounds like the music has changed. 🤞
Business 💰 – Reinforcing dams to avoid disasters!
What happened: Statkraft, Europe's largest renewable energy producer, is investing €700m to upgrade more than 70 hydropower dams in Norway to increase their resilience against climate change. The initiative is a response to the growing unpredictability of weather and is crucial not only for energy security but also for environmental protection. 💪
Zoom out: The investment by Statkraft reflects a wider trend in the hydropower sector, as the vulnerability of infrastructures to climate change-induced heavy rains and extreme weather events has prompted the need for significant safety upgrades. Given that Statkraft's hydropower plants constitute the majority of its 19GW generation capacity, the significance of these upgrades extends beyond immediate safety concerns. 🙏🏻
Innovation 💡 - Potential breakthrough in green hydrogen production
What happened: Researchers at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) have developed a new nanocatalyst for high-temperature water electrolysis that can double the rate of green hydrogen production in lab tests. A nanocatalyst is a nanoparticle that facilitates/speeds up chemical reactions without being consumed in the process. The development aims to reduce the production cost of green hydrogen, which is currently about $5 per kilogram. 👌
Zoom out: Green hydrogen is produced through water electrolysis, a process that uses renewable energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Water electrolysis technology can be low-temperature or high-temperature, with the latter offering higher efficiency but facing challenges like thermal stability and degradation. The nanocatalyst synthesis technique developed by the team suppresses the formation of compounds causing degradation, showcasing an opportunity to increase hydrogen production efficiency and reducing its costs. 🤞
Deep dives of the week…
Chart of the week - Putting some numbers on illegal mining
In this week’s edition, we touched on a critical theme: deforestation. The Amazon, the world’s largest tropical rainforest, has seen the level of illegal mining across indigenous land skyrocket in recent years. In 2020, nearly 10,000 hectares of indigenous land were exploited for illegal mining. However, we would expect this figures to decrease in the coming years, given the newly elected government’s intentions. 📉
Deal of the week - India’s Gujarat pushing on the green transition 🟩
Gujarat state in India has announced a number of investment agreements reached with different corporates in a number of areas ahead of the state’s biennial Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit, running from January 10 to January 12. Among these, we include some interesting ones related to the green transition.
ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India signed a $14 billion pledge for a green hydrogen project and an expansion of its steel manufacturing footprint. 💸
NTPC Renewable Energy Limited proposed an $11 billion investment to create 15 GW renewable energy parks.⚡️
Torrent Power signed an agreement to invest $6 billion to create solar power projects.☀️
👋 See you next Friday, for the best sum up of this coming week!
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