Posted on 01/10/2022 9:43:46 AM PST by M. Dodge Thomas
NEW YORK, NY, CHICAGO, IL, AND MONTRÉAL, QC – JANUARY 7, 2022 – Today, Blackstone Inc. (NYSE: BX) announced that funds managed by Blackstone Infrastructure Partners have entered into a definitive agreement with Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) and Invenergy for an approximately $3 billion equity investment in Invenergy Renewables Holdings LLC (“Invenergy Renewables” or “the company”), the largest private renewable energy company in North America. Blackstone’s investment will provide capital to accelerate Invenergy’s renewables development activities. CDPQ and Invenergy management remain the majority owners of the company and Invenergy will continue as managing member.
(Excerpt) Read more at blackstone.com ...
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/26/business/gas-prices-energy-crisis-schwarzman/index.html
This sort of investment on this scale indicates that Blackstone anticipates that we are rapidly approaching an inflection point during which either observers such as Tony Seba are correct, and SWB (solar wind and battery) with high levels of overcapacity will provide reliable electrical energy while underpricing all other sources for many applications:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2021/01/rethinkx-solar-wind-battery-plan-for-the-usa.html
and we are on the verge of one sort of massive technologically driven disruption.
Or, observers such as Schwarzman are correct, and we are on the verge of quite another, a massive energy shortage with extreme social and political consequences.
Blackstone is massive hedging its bets in either case, and the fact that it is investing this heavily in renewables strongly suggests that its own analysis indicates that SWB may, in fact, be viable - or even superior - to carbon-based thermal generation on a life-cycle cost basis by the end of the decade, or even sooner.
The IEA has confirmed that in most of the world solar is already the cheapest energy humans have EVER created.
The amount of solar energy striking a tiny fraction of the Sahara can power all of humanity energy needs ALL of it including transportation and shipping. The amount of sunlight in a single hour can power humanity for over a year striking the earth’s surface this says nothing of the ocean’s surface area.
The bigger area is the whole world the smallest is all of Africa and the middle is the EU which would be the same area for the USA.
https://mobile.twitter.com/martinvars/status/590220317848645633
The issue has never been the amounts of energy science has confirmed there is millions of times more solar energy every year than humans could ever use. It’s storage.for 24/7/365 use as dispatchable energy and transport of energy from the sunny places those those areas not sunny. HVDC lines solves the long distance transmission issue decades ago you can send hundreds of gigawatts across continental distances with 500,000 volt DC lines with less than 5% losses along the way.
Power to X technology is already solving how to store sunlight or wind as liquid or gaseous fuels. AUDI makes benzine from wind and solar power then runs conventional cars off it. They also make power to methane and run CNG/LNG trucks off the gas.
A dozen companies are doing power to ammonia from literally thin air taking the nitrogen needed for NH3 from the air and using water plus wind or solar to.split the water into H2 gas. Why? because the two largest manufacturers of ship diesels have both made huge 100 megawatt engines that can burn ammonia directly this fuels the ship with zero carbon in the fuels directly from thin air. Ammonia stores as a liquid at propane pressures and has nearly three times the density of.hydrogen per unit volume as liquid H2 it’s is the perfect hydrogen vector already used world wide in the billions of pounds per year for fertilizers and refrigeration fluids. It’s well handled in an industrial ISM setting with clearly defined OSHA and international procedures.
These are the heavy weights in the.engine world what they do all other manufacture will follow suit.
https://www.man-es.com/discover/two-stroke-ammonia-engine
You can also run gas turbines on ammonia as well as fire it in retrofitted coal plants with none of the nasty emissions of coal like Mercury,lead ,vanadium or SOx. You actually need an ammonia source with SCR catalysts to clean up gas turbines or coal NOx emissions the ammonia slip from combustion is more than enough to fuel the SCR catalysts in effect ammonia combustion cleans itself up.
The other large source of ammonia would be nuclear power plants supplying off peak power to H2 plants which then use N2 from the air to make liquid ammonia for fuel and crops. China is building 150 new nukes in the next decade a good number of those will be for process heat and hydrogen production for fertilizers
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