The ever-evolving effects and impact of climate change continue to remain a defining challenge around the world. As such, more companies, communities and governments than ever before have been laying the groundwork to implement and meet their individual net-zero commitments.
Integral to the success of these bold pledges to reduce emissions will be industry participants’ ability to leverage all available resources at their disposal—including lower-carbon gases, other advanced fuels, efficiency and existing world-class infrastructure—while investing in revolutionary technologies and services that will unleash innovation and enhance global energy reliability.
To meet an economywide net-zero target by midcentury, industry participants must leverage large amounts of renewable and low-carbon gases and electricity, as well as an array of innovative negative-emissions technologies. This is due, in part, to the fact that our existing gas storage and delivery systems are designed to reliably serve customers through spikes in consumption—enabling a more effective, reliable and resilient energy transition that minimizes negative impacts for consumers.
With research ongoing into new solutions to facilitate decarbonization, leveraging our current gas infrastructure can help ensure global energy transitions remain affordable and equitable for all consumers and communities, maintain reliability, enhance resiliency and accelerate decarbonization pathways.
For businesses and governments to deliver on their net-zero emissions commitments by 2050 while minimizing risk, a diverse portfolio of solutions across the energy economy will be required. Only through continued collaboration across the energy industry can we develop the technological innovations at a scale necessary to achieve our mission of a decarbonized future in this time frame.
As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change pointed out in its AR6 report, we have a limited carbon emissions budget to remain within 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming. Thus, the “shape of the curve” to net-zero by midcentury matters, and we must employ known emissions reduction solutions in the near term. Energy efficiency meets this need and should remain a primary focus for the industry.
From a consumer standpoint, improved energy efficiency is a win-win as it helps to achieve low-carbon outcomes with minimal financial burden—and in many cases a financial benefit. To effectively address barriers to employing energy efficiency, industry stakeholders must promote policy solutions, financial investments and new, groundbreaking technological advancements. For example, GTI Energy’s work in advancing thermal heat pump systems, hybrid gas/electric space conditioning, combined heat and power, and integrated energy systems has brought significant energy efficiency improvements to the market for immediate impact.
Mitigating methane emissions is another key area of focus for the industry. Securing more accurate measurements and targeted reductions of methane leaks will be a primary strategy for reducing greenhouse gases.
Currently, the market lacks a standardized protocol for measuring methane emissions. This is why GTI Energy launched the Veritas initiative to develop a consistent, transparently developed methodology for companies to find and report methane intensity—not unlike the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP, in the financial accounting community. By standardizing measurement methods, Veritas helps ensure that companies, investors and policymakers are accurately informed about the efficacy of mitigation technologies that the energy industry is using to meet methane emissions-reduction targets.
Lastly, when crafting the solutions necessary to achieve a net-zero future by 2050, it will be paramount that we leverage all available forms of low-carbon gas, including renewable natural gas and low- or zero-carbon hydrogen. We have only just scratched the surface with regard to the potential of these renewable and low-carbon energy carriers.
RNG from dairy farms, landfills and wood waste offers a renewable source of supply into our existing natural gas systems. As such, GTI Energy’s biomass gasification research and technologies are helping to enable RNG production at a scale suitable for utility supply.
Clean hydrogen offers similar promise, offering the same advantages as other gaseous energy carriers related to long-duration, large-scale energy storage. Our Hydrogen Technology Center continues to lead research and develop solutions aimed at producing hydrogen cleanly, moving it into our existing gas storage and delivery systems, and using it to meet low-carbon energy needs in industry, transportation and buildings.
For example, GTI Energy’s high-efficiency hydrogen production technology captures high rates of carbon dioxide at low cost for near-zero hydrogen. In the HyPER project, a state-of-the-art 1.5-megawatt thermal pilot plant is being constructed at Cranfield University in England to demonstrate the technology.
Our researchers continue to evaluate the performance of steel, cast iron and polymer pipes and are performing life-cycle assessments of hydrogen blending and evaluating its effects on safety, leakage, durability and integrity for metallic and nonmetallic materials—building off of extensive knowledge on how to inject renewable gas safely and effectively into the infrastructure.
GTI Energy is also performing preliminary research into the challenges and opportunities for large-scale, seasonal storage of hydrogen below ground.
An important element of advancing hydrogen markets is the deployment of hydrogen at scale, moving beyond singular technology demonstrations. With our H2@Scale in Texas and Beyond project, in partnership with Frontier Energy, University of Texas at Austin, and dozens of industry stakeholders and sponsors, we are building an integrated renewable hydrogen network spanning production from wind, solar and renewable gas; on-site storage; and end-use in power generation, vehicles and drone applications.
A primary challenge with clean hydrogen production is that different production methods involve very different carbon footprints. This is why GTI Energy recently announced the launch of its Open Hydrogen Initiative, which will provide clarity in the carbon intensity of hydrogen production from various sources and aid in performance-based resource allocation.
Relatedly, the use of carbon capture, utilization and storage, or CCUS, will be instrumental for hard-to-decarbonize applications continuing to use natural gas, as well as for bioenergy to achieve negative carbon emissions in certain applications. For example, GTI Energy’s ROTA-CAP™, a scalable, integrated, industrial carbon-capture system that intensifies the carbon dioxide capture process, is at the National Carbon Capture Center for full-scale testing. The modular system can fit on a semi-trailer truck, making transportation to a site much simpler and more cost-effective. Advancing this super-efficient carbon-capture technology can have a significant impact on reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
While CCUS is commonly thought of as a carbon emissions solution for large-scale combustion applications such as power generation, GTI Energy is also doing research at a smaller scale to advance CCUS technologies for multi-unit building heating systems—capturing carbon in a solid form that can be utilized in commercial products.
GTI Energy’s research capabilities and expertise, as well as its reputation as a relied-upon convener of industry, policymakers and other market stakeholders, has placed it in a role to help guide and inform key decision-makers through their net-zero commitments. The diversity of convening a full range of energy market participants provides more information that is of better quality and more representative of the real world, helps de-risk solution development for partners and leverages innovation breakthroughs to maximize widespread investments in research.
Reducing costs and risks through effective collaboration, disruptive innovation and strategic leveraging of existing investments is what is needed to get to net-zero in an equitable manner.