In focus: Governments take the lead in funding energy transition projects

Although the year draws to a close and embraces the holiday spirit, the global energy transition shows no signs of slowing down. In the week behind us, we witnessed that governments spare no expense to support clean energy projects and step up the(ir) energy transition game.

One of the biggest government grants in the week between 6 and 10 December came from Denmark. The country’s government has approved funding totaling about $41 million for two carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects.

The CCS projects will use the existing oil and gas infrastructure in the North Sea, all with a goal to support the country’s wider CO2 emission reduction targets for 2030 and beyond.

The Danish Energy Agency, a part of the Ministry of Energy, Utilities and Climate, has granted funds to the Ineos-led Greensand and the Bifrost project, led by the Danish Underground Consortium, which is operated by TotalEnergies.

Decarbonizing oil and gas infrastructure is part of the UK’s decarbonization strategy as well. UK’s petroleum regulator, the OIL and Gas Authority (OGA), has selected three winners for its £1 million offshore electrification competition, aiming to advance oil and gas electrification plans.

The three winners — Orcadian Energy, Ørsted and Katoni Engineering –are sharing a £1 million, or about $1.3 million, prize for ideas that could help cut greenhouse gas emissions by moving forward the drive to electrify platforms in the North Sea.

Acting on another energy transition front, the UK also supported two tidal energy projects led by major companies Nova Innovation and Magallanes Tidal Energy. The projects have been selected to receive a share of £116 million to drive forward green innovation in the UK.

The new funding will support British businesses developing new green technologies to reduce carbon emissions and utility bills and remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

In the second week of December, seven wave energy projects were selected as part of the €20 million EuropeWave scheme to further develop their concepts in the first half of 2022. The projects were selected as part of EuropeWave’s innovative pre-commercial procurement (PCP) process and will share a budget of €2.4 million to streamline their technologies.

Another EU-funded project, Ocean DEMO, has awarded recommendations for support to six offshore renewable energy developers to test their ocean energy products at Europe’s world-leading test centres.

The technology developers — Aquantis, Dutch Wave Power, LHYFE Labs, Mocean Energy, OV Wind and the University of Edinburgh — applied for support packages to test multi-device farms or single devices looking to scale up to multi-device in the future, according to Ocean DEMO.

Going to the Netherlands, eight projects from the maritime, aviation and automotive sectors won government subsidies for their solutions aimed at making these sectors more sustainable. Three of the projects come from the maritime and clean fuel sectors.

One of them is the Methanol as an Energy Step Towards Zero-Emission Dutch Shipping (MENENS) maritime consortium. The consortium has been awarded a €24 million grant to conduct research into accelerating the use of methanol as a low-carbon fuel within the shipping industry.

Sponsored by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, the research project aims to develop clean energy technology with a high degree of flexibility and broad applications within the shipping industry, from yacht building to offshore work ships and high-powered dredgers.

The second grant is for the LNG-ZERO concept, an ambitious research project originally introduced by Dutch research institute TNO.

Specifically, the project wants to develop technology and strategy for reducing exhaust emissions to contribute to the sustainable shipping industry. This will be achieved by capturing the carbon dioxide (CO2), reducing methane slip (CH4) / N-emissions and bringing the captured carbon to shore for new applications or directly offshore for permanent geological storage.

“LNG-ZERO is ahead of future IMO regulation and in this project, we’re developing technology which can ensure total decarbonisation of the maritime industry – which enables us to fight the worldwide challenge regarding the climate crisis.”

The third aforementioned project backed by the Dutch government is Sustainable Hydrogen Integrated Propulsion Drives (SH2IPDRIVE). The project received a €24.2 million subsidy for developing maritime hydrogen applications.

The consortium aims to collaborate on what is said to be a broad and ambitious innovation project. The focus is on accelerating the introduction of hydrogen as a marine fuel.

On the American continent, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) has made available nearly $1.3 million to support redevelopment data collection in the New York Bight Wind Energy Areas (WEAs) to facilitate responsible offshore wind development.

Through a competitive solicitation, NYSERDA seeks to identify contractors to develop acoustic and oceanographic surveys to collect and analyze field data and conduct site assessment in the wind energy areas.

According to NYSERDA, these surveys will provide critical information to developers, regulators and stakeholders which will improve the understanding of the marine environment, reduce project risk, help inform construction windows and permits and accelerate project timelines.

Building partnerships is becoming key to (government) grant award

In the past week, major Japanese shipbuilding, marine engineering, and service company, Imabari Shipbuilding, has entered into a capital and business alliance with the compatriot startup, PowerX, to jointly develop a prototype automated Power Transfer Vessel. Imabari is investing ¥1 billion ($8.8 million) in PowerX.

The vessel, Power ARK 100, is a 100 TEU trimaran specifically designed for transferring renewable energy in Japan’s coastal waters. The duo plans to co-develop and build the prototype Power ARK 100 by the end of 2025, with the participation of third-party companies as necessary.

Although the project is still in its infancy, it has all prerequisites — the most important being collaboration and innovation — to attract a government grant.

This was the case with the Topeka project which was awarded $24.18 million in Norwegian state aid last month.

The project focuses on the construction of two ro-ro vessels that will transport hydrogen to different filling stations where local ferries and other vessels as well as land transport will have hydrogen as a ready-to-use fuel. Led by Wilhelmsen, the project embraces 14 European partners collaborating on the design and construction of the vessel.