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“Preem’s board of directors has made the decision entirely for commercial reasons,” said Preem’s new CEO Magnus Heimburg, suggesting that it is not environmental opinion that has pressured the company to withdraw its request to emit one million tonnes. more carbon dioxide. The corona pandemic has caused a drastic drop in demand for aviation fuel and gasoline. In July, a third of the world’s aircraft fleet was operational compared to a normal July.
Peak oil has taken on a new meaning
But the demand for fossil fuels is not falling solely because of the crisis in the crown. More and more people are talking about the term “peak oil” taking on a new meaning. In the past, this meant that the oil supply would soon run out. Today, it has come to mean that demand for oil is falling.
Under the Paris Agreement, both oil and coal will be completely phased out by 2050. The new CEO of British BP (British Petroleum), Bernard Looney, recently said that oil consumption will never reach pre-corona pandemic levels. and that “Peak Oil” is over. BP now stands for “Beyond Petroleum” and will remove 40 percent of all oil in ten years. When they made that announcement, their participation increased by eight percent. Heavy players like JP Morgan warned earlier this year that the climate crisis is a disaster for humanity and said they no longer intend to invest in oil exploration in the Arctic. More and more banks only lend money for fossil-free investments. But oil giants like Exxon and Chevron make a different assessment and believe in decades of oil growth.
Hydrogen is designated as replacement
In Western Europe, coal power is collapsing. The price of carbon dioxide has tripled under the EU’s emissions trading scheme. This causes energy companies in France, Spain, Greece, Portugal and the United Kingdom to decommission their coal-fired power plants before the completion date.
The big question is what will replace oil and coal, which despite the rapid growth of green energy still account for 60 percent of the world’s total energy production (source IEA).
The European Commission launched a hydrogen strategy this summer and singled out hydrogen as a replacement for oil, an energy vector that will help the EU achieve the goal of reducing emissions by 55 percent by 2030. The benefits of hydrogen are that can be saved and therefore can be a kind of intermediate storage for renewable energy from solar and wind energy.
For the transport sector, hydrogen is an alternative to heavy and environmentally harmful batteries, and in the aviation industry, among other things, tests are currently being carried out to fly with hydrogen. Ordinary hydrogen is made from natural gas and has high emissions. Green hydrogen gas, on the other hand, is produced by electrolysis, in which case water is split into oxygen and hydrogen by means of electricity.
A business opportunity
Only now, when the price of renewable electricity has fallen, is green hydrogen becoming a business opportunity. Portugal, the Netherlands and Italy are among the countries that are now in the pillars of large-scale hydrogen projects. The leader is Japan with the world’s largest commercial hydrogen plant and a national strategy to build hydrogen-fueled power systems. The method is still expensive and it is important for Lysekil to fix the green electricity supply so that Preem can build a green hydrogen plant, something Preem needs now when they are going to invest in biofuels. And with that, Preem can go from weather villain to weather hero. The company that wants to be the first to use hydrogen in Sweden, and thus help the Löfven government with the goal of becoming the world’s first fossil-free welfare state, can count on generous grants and green credits.
