Stikstofcrisis, Klimaatakkoord, Schone Lucht Akkoord: allemaal redenen om het gebruik van diesel en dieselmotoren in de bouw terug te dringen. Maar nu gaat ook nog de arbeidsinspectie zich ermee bemoeien!

Door de stikstofcrisis weet heel Nederland opeens dat er bij bouwprojecten veel NOx-emissies vrijkomen. De boosdoeners zijn de dieselmotoren. Bijna alles draait op diesel in de bouw: transport, graafmachines, aggregaten en kranen.

De dieselemissies staan in de sector in de schijnwerpers. Naast de stikstofcrisis zijn er het Klimaatakkoord en het Schone Lucht Akkoord. Het Klimaatakkoord maakt CO₂-reductie urgent en geeft speciaal aandacht aan het terugdringen van CO₂-uitstoot van mobiele werktuigen en bouwtransport. Het Schone Lucht Akkoord wordt waarschijnlijk dit najaar afgesloten tussen de rijksoverheid en decentrale overheden. Hiermee wil de overheid de gezondheidseffecten van emissies (met name fijnstof) terugdringen en ook dit akkoord geeft speciaal aandacht aan mobiele werktuigen. Allemaal redenen dus om het gebruik van diesel en dieselmotoren terug te dringen en over te schakelen naar schonere en ‘zero-emissie’ werktuigen.

Er is echter nog een ontwikkeling die veel impact gaat hebben. De Arbeidsinspectie heeft aangekondigd zich te gaan bemoeien met dieselmotoremissies (DME) omdat deze emissies kankerverwekkend zijn. In een nieuwe ‘Basisinspectiemodule’, die half oktober 2019 werd gepubliceerd, staat het volgende: “DME is geclassificeerd als genotoxisch carcinogeen. Dat betekent dat iedere mate van blootstelling aan DME gevaar voor de gezondheid met zich meebrengt”.

De maatregelen die de Arbeidsinspectie voorschrijft verschillen voor situaties binnen en buiten en zijn gebaseerd op de technische beschikbaarheid van alternatieven. Een heftruck (tot 8 ton), die deels binnen wordt gebruikt, dient te worden vervangen. Ander dieselmaterieel, dat alleen buiten wordt gebruikt, waaronder oa. graafmachines tot 30 ton en dieselaggregaten, zouden moeten worden uitgefaseerd. Hierbij geldt het principe dat vervanging door materieel zonder schadelijke emissies (elektrisch materieel of materieel dat LPG, waterstof of aardgas gebruikt) gaat vóór het nemen van bronmaatregelen, waarbij gebruik van een machine met een minder emissies (betere ‘stage’-norm) wordt gezien als een bronmaatregel.

Dit zijn verrijkende maatregelen, maar het is nog niet duidelijk wanneer de Arbeidsinspectie op basis van deze inspectiemodule gaat handhaven. Eerst zal een overgangstermijn bekend gemaakt worden.

De emissies van bouwmachines hebben lang weinig aandacht gekregen van de overheid, maar die tijd lijkt definitief voorbij. In aanbestedingen zullen overheden aannemers uitdagen of verplichten om zo min mogelijk emissies uit te stoten en anders komt wel de arbeidsinspectie langs. De dieseldampen op de bouwplaats worden binnen een paar jaar verleden tijd.

In order to keep climate change below levels agreed under the Paris Agreement, all economic sectors need to adapt. Even a difficult to abate construction sector needs to set course for net-zero emissions. As in other sectors, this is not easy and requires changes to existing practices. Because one thing is certain. Maintaining existing practices also means maintaining existing emissions levels.

In this post I don’t want to go into the many technological possibilities that are out there to reduce emissions in civil engineering projects. A good overview of possibilities and directions can be found in the reports of Mission Possible ‘reaching net-zero carbon emissions from harder-to-abate sectors by mid-century’. Instead I want to discuss why progress is slow and outline how the Dutch construction sector is trying to set course for net-zero emissions.

All civil engineering projects have in common that they require large volumes of materials (steel, concrete, asphalt, sand), that are transported and handled at the site, using heavy machinery and loads of fuel. Especially steel, concrete and asphalt are materials that come with ‘embedded carbon’, large volumes of greenhouse gas emissions are associated with the production of these materials.

A specific characteristic of this sector is the focus on projects. Every project is unique, and, for the contractor, every next project is uncertain. Projects are developed and tendered by a principal with a fixed scope; and won by a contractor with a fixed price. A process that sets strict boundaries for the execution of the project.

The main hurdles to reduce emissions in construction projects are related to this focus and make implementing new practices a slow and time-consuming process. Here, I’ll discuss three of these hurdles.

The not-in-scope hurdle

Civil engineering projects are complex projects with long timelines and many different stakeholders. Projects go through several phases (definition, design, procurement, realization) involving many different people, internal and external. Managing these projects is a hell of a job, making sure that everybody involved keeps an eye on the ball. To the project manager everything within the scope of a project is important, everything outside of the scope is ‘noise’. Principals need to make sure that sustainability and CO₂ reduction are part of the scope of a project, right from the start and also in every transition from phase to phase. Otherwise, sustainability is part of the ‘noise’.

The ‘proven solution’ hurdle

The contractors often create innovative solutions and are aware of new equipment, materials and methods. Principals, on the other hand, have a ‘better safe than sorry’ attitude. Principals rely on proven solutions that have worked before and done the job. These get into the requirements for new projects, resulting in tenders that are often based on dated concepts and technology. Before new solutions can be accepted in a tendering procedure proof of reliance, lifetime expectancy and maintenance costs is required. Proof that can only be created by using new solutions in actual projects.

Therefore, principals need to allow for alternative solutions and provide room for experiments in their tenders, otherwise it is impossible for innovative solutions to get a foot in the door.

The ‘which alternative is better’ hurdle.

To make civil engineering projects more sustainable it must be possible to ‘measure’ improvement. How do you value very different environmental aspects such as CO₂, air quality, biodiversity? Is a design with a shorter lifespan, but fully circular better than a design with a much longer lifespan?

Use of internationally accepted LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) methodology can provide answers to this kind of questions. However, the use of LCA data in design, procurement and realization of infrastructure does provide extra challenges to ease of use, availability of data, reliability and verification. Principals and contractors working in the construction sector need to develop common procedures to be able to make use of LCA data in civil engineering projects.

Green Deal in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands there is a ‘Green Deal sustainable infrastructure’ that provides tools and methods to address these hurdles. The active role of the principal is supported with several methods to address sustainability in a project. One tool supports identification of opportunities and priorities for sustainability among stakeholders in a specific project, another tool enables a brainstorm on ambitions and possible directions for more sustainable solutions. Using these tools early in a project has proven to be valuable. Many solutions and measures do not have to cost extra money, but require awareness and attention early on in a project, making sure they become part of the scope of the project.

As a common language, the software and data tool ‘DuboCalc’ has been introduced. It enables the calculation of an ‘environmental cost indicator’ for an infrastructural project or object, based on internationally accepted LCA methodology and data. It is used in the design phase to evaluate the environmental impact of different solutions. in a tender procedure it can be used to challenge contractors and compare bids. A lower impact results in a better chance of winning the tender.

The tools of the Green Deal are getting more and more traction in the Netherlands. They are used by large principals such as Rijkswaterstaat and ProRail, responsible for rail, highways, waterways and water safety in the Netherlands. The instruments are finding their way to other public principals, such as provinces and municipalities. The approach shows that it is possible to make this sector more sustainable, although progress does come slowly.

About a year open now, I had the chance to visit The Green House in Utrecht and enjoy their pizza. It is not my custom to review restaurants, but this one is special. I was shown around by Rogier Joosten, who was project manager for realising the building and the operational concept.

The building is fully circular, built using materials from the adjacent renovated office building. Other necessary elements such as carpets and lighting are rented. The contract for the building ends in 15 year, meaning the building will be taken apart and rented products will be returned to the producers.

The kitchen uses no electricity, the cooking is done in a large wood oven. The menu is mainly vegetarian and vegan, using locally sourced products. Meat and fish are 'optional', not standard, menu items. Upstairs are meeting rooms and an urban farm, where veggies grow under LED light.

I was presently surprised how well thought through the whole concept was and how warm and professional the atmosphere.

Even the social aspect has not been forgotten. Very friendly staff running around, some of them apparently with 'employability issues'.

Very good to see what circular economy means in practice!

The first climate strike took place today in the Netherlands. School children are taking to the streets to underline the urgency of climate action. It is their future!

The impact of climate change will be felt most by people that did not create it: our children and generations to come. Climate change is essentially a generation conflict. What previous generations polluted for free will cost future generations dearly, to clean up and to adapt. It is only logical that the younger generation is taking to the streets. Proud that my daughter is taking part in it.

A new Dutch start-up, ATEPS, shows there is a market for grid scale energy storage.

Two years ago I participated in a study by SQ Consult on regulatory bottlenecks for energy storage. The study was an assignment for the European Parliament.

Conducting this study, I learned that there was a huge potential for energy storage, especially at grid level to balance instabilities in the electricity grid. These instabilities are caused by unexpected changes in supply and demand, due to weather events which changes wind and solar predictions, unexpected maintenance of traditional power producers or disturbances at large power consumers. Prices for battery storage were falling, due to the uptake of electric vehicles and, more specific, the investment by Tesla in the Gigafactory. These falling prices are not only relevant for electric driving. They open up many other applications for energy storage.

The study showed shortcomings in the EU and Member States electricity regulations, such as an unclear regulatory status for electricity storage and double taxation of stored electricity in several countries, that hindered implementation of energy storage.

Around the same time, a former colleague of mine, Jaap Willems, co-founded ATEPS, providing battery storage for utilities, wind farms and solar fields. With a true entrepreneurial spirit, ATEPS saw opportunities, not bottlenecks.

ATEPS is now operational and supplies grid scale battery systems that are located near wind farms, solar fields or urban areas with a lot of rooftop solar. Next to battery packs, neatly stacked in large containers, their product includes a battery management system that prolongs the life of the batteries and makes it possible to react swiftly to price changes in supply and demand of electricity.

ATEPS shows there is a market for grid scale storage solutions, also in the current regulatory environment in The Netherlands and in other countries in Europe. Money can be made with energy storage, especially in situations where a battery can provide multiple functions such as peak shaving, reacting to price spikes in the electricity system and increasing predictability of electricity supply from renewables production.

At regulatory level, several EU countries are organising, or discussing, capacity markets (see article by SQ Consult), in which money is paid to have power production capacity available on demand (additional to paying for actual electricity produced) to counterbalance the variability that is brought into the electricity system by renewable sources such as wind and solar. Due to the growing market share of renewables, investing in traditional power plants is becoming less attractive. Yet, somehow, capacity needs to be available in times when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. This could provide yet another source of income for energy storage.

It can be expected that this market for grid scale storage will show strong growth in the coming years: falling prices for batteries, increased growth of electricity from renewable sources, more extreme weather events due to climate change and the development of capacity markets all point in the same direction. With a proven track record of several products operational in this growing market, ATEPS has a very good starting position to become the Dutch Tesla for grid scale energy storage in Europe.

Interesting report, ‘Expect the Unexpected’ (feb. 2017), by Carbon Tracker and Grantham Institute (Imperial College London). It shows that, because of cost developments, by 2030, both solar energy and electric vehicles (EV), will have significant market shares in their respective markets. By 2040, these cost reductions will have pushed both fossil fuels used for electricity production and cars driving on fossil fuels largely out of the market. These developments will cause major shifts in the oil, gas and power markets worldwide.

This scenario study illustrates that predictions made by Tony Seba in his book ‘Clean Disruption of energy and transportation’ (2014) are becoming reality. In this book he refers to Moore’s law (microprocessor technology improves at an annual rate of about 41 percent) and Hendy’s law (the number of pixels, used in cameras, per dollar doubles every 18 months) and shows that similar ‘natural’ laws apply to the improvements and cost reductions of solar cells and EVs.

In ‘Expect the Unexpected, the disruptive power of low carbon technology’, the latest 2016 cost projections for solar cells and EVs are used to model the market share of different technologies for power generation and transportation under different scenarios. These scenarios take into account different assumptions on economic development and on implementation of the Paris agreement on climate change. Remarkably, the authors have not included a Business as Usual (BAU) scenario. Reasoning is that, according to the authors, there is no plausible BAU scenario. Taking the Paris agreement and technological developments into account, there is no business as usual. Period.

The scenarios differentiate in a ‘weak’, ‘NDC-level’ or ‘strong’ implementation of the Paris agreement. ‘NDC-level’ meaning that implementation of the Paris agreement will be in line with the pledges made in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that countries have put forward in the process towards the Paris agreement in 2015. These pledges are in itself not sufficient for staying below the 2 degree Celsius threshold, agreed upon in Paris. In a ‘weak’ scenario, countries do not fully live up to their pledges, modelled by a relatively low CO₂ price of 10 per ton CO₂, starting in 2020, with a price increase of 5% per year.

The report shows that, by 2030, both solar energy and EVs, will have significant market shares in their respective markets, even when implementation of the Paris agreement is ‘weak’. In 2040, under the ‘weak’ scenario, solar power, combined with other renewables will grow to more than ¾ of the market, EV will have about 50% market share in both ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ scenarios. These scenarios show that, independent of climate policies, technological development and cost reductions will cause these markets to shift towards more sustainable technologies in the next 20 years, making traditional, fuel based technology such as power generation from coal and cars with internal combustion engines obsolete.

The report also looks into consequences of these developments for investors and companies in the oil, gas and power sector. Although oil use for the transportation sector is only 1/5^th of total consumption worldwide, these scenarios will lead to a significant reduction in overall demand for oil, causing oil production to peak somewhere in the next decennium (2020-2030). For gas, the scenarios are less clear. Gas use for heating will be reducing, but gas will be needed for power production to balance, together with energy storage, the intermittency of renewables. However, it is uncertain to what extent investments needed to provide this balance will be made. It is not attractive under current market conditions to invest in installations that only provide back up for periods where there is no sun and wind and which stand idle for most of the time. Therefore adjustment to market conditions for power production are needed to pay for the availability of production capacity (capacity markets).

The moment that market disruptions will take place are inherently difficult to predict. According to Tony Seba, these disruption will come much sooner than these scenarios predict. Taking the ‘nature’ laws into account, these disruptions are inevitable. And when they come, a complete turnover can take place in just a few years time.

Or, according to Seba: ‘The horse and carriage era did not end because we ran out of horses’.

Driven by the EU renewable energy policy, 46% of all palm oil exported to Europe is now used for transport fuels. Does that make sense? This rapid growth accelerates deforestation and does not result in CO₂ reduction. The recast of the Renewable Energy Directive is an opportunity to fix this error.

Palm oil is a very versatile oil, used for eating, cooking, toiletries and also increasingly as fuel. According to Transport and Environment, (based on statistics published by Oil World), in Europe the use of palm oil for fuel has grown strongly, from 10% in 2010 to 46% in 2015.

The logic behind the use of biofuels is nice. Carbon is used in a closed circle, thus avoiding CO₂ emissions. Biomass is grown, harvested and used to produce fuels. The fuel is combusted, emitting CO₂. The biomass regrows, catching a similar amount of CO₂ from the air, until it is harvested again. It is seemingly a closed circle, the basis for the European biofuels policy and also the reason why CO₂ emissions from biomass are counted as zero within the European emission trading system.

But the simplification of a closed circle overlooks a few important aspects of palm oil that result in high GHG emissions:

- Link to indirect land use change (ILUC) and deforestation: Many of the palm oil plantations are standing on land that used to be rainforest or peat land forest just a couple of years ago. And still new forests are cut down to make place for palm oil plantations. Rainforests contain a very high carbon stock. Peat land forests contain even higher amounts of carbon stock (due to the fact that fallen wood does not completely decompose and piles up of thousands of years). Removing the forest (often by burning) releases most of this carbon content directly into the air. Not to mention the damage done to all life in the forests, including Urang Utangs and all other biodiversity).

- Harvesting, transportation and refining. The palm oil needs to be collected, transported and refined, all resulting in CO₂ emissions.

Including deforestation and processing energy in the equation makes fuels made from palm oil a much worse alternative compared to fossil fuels. According to another analysis made by T&E, using data from a study commissioned by the EC (the Globiom study), GHG emissions from palm oil fuels are 3 times HIGHER, compared to normal fossil fuels.

But of course policy makers have thought of this and require that biofuels have to meet sustainability criteria to avoid deforestation?

Well, yes and no. Yes, biofuels have to meet sustainability criteria that include requirements that biomass cannot come from plantations that have been deforestated after 2007. Producers in Europe require certificates, providing proof that the palm oil they buy has no direct link to recent deforestation. And in an ideal world, where all palm oil can be traced to certified plantations, this would be sufficient.

But no, in the real world only about 20% of the palm oil comes from certified plantations. So now the demand for palm oil has grown strongly, due (a.o) to the European biofuel policy, the effect is that certified oil from older plantations is shipped to Europe and non-certified oil from newer plantations is shipped to markets where there is no requirement for certification (e.g China, India). Unless everybody joins in certification, it only results in a shift where palm oil is sourced from, but it does not stop deforestation.

Replacing palm oil with other vegetable oils to be used as biofuel is not a good alternative. Palm oil is a much more efficient oil crop compared to other vegetable oils. The use of other vegetable oils as biofuel results in even more land to be converted for biofuel production.

The European Union recently published a recast of the Renewable Energy Directive, including proposals to slowly reduce the amount of ‘conventional’ biofuels (which includes palm oil) after 2020. This proposal will be discussed with Member States and the European Parliament in the coming months. It would be a good moment to completely ban the use of palm oil as fuel.

Energy storage can contribute to Energy Union goals such as decarbonisation, energy security, energy market integration and increased competitiveness. But its deployment is hindered by existing regulations that do not provide a level playing field.

Please read the full article at SQ Consult www.sqconsult.com

The article is based on a report ‘Energy storage, which market designs and regulatory incentives are needed?’ written by SQ Consult, in cooperation with Fraunhofer ISI and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, for the European Parliament, ITRE Committee, supporting Committee discussions on the Energy Union.