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It is a concern, almost at an alarming level, how easily experts can torpedo an application for a start-up’s funding with VCs. Some admit to taking seconds to dismiss some applications. I have seen some risible bloopers, posting them in a rogue’s gallery I keep for posterity. I would say the level of due diligence for this organisation is a number of steps higher on the ladder, but not completely infallible.
There are quick and easy opinions out there that can snag a competition entry. Just the word “methane” invokes a negative reaction. As an Olympic sport it would attract the high-jumpers among the leaping-to-conclusions competitors. Fortunately, we’re over that obstacle, but more evaluators are waiting in ambush.
Another Batch of Questions
A couple of them arrived today in a follow-up.
“The two Experts saw a lot of merit in your Solution and highlighted both social and environmental benefits potentially arising from your Solution. They were very complementary of the level of detail and quantity of information which you had included in your application.
“However, several comments were raised by the Experts about some key uncertainties about the future of your Solution. In particular, this related to the plan for the re-injection of CO2 into the lake, and the re-use of the CO2. The Experts felt that more time is needed for your Solution to develop and grow, allowing for a plan for these two points to be developed and implemented. Points were also raised about the need for more clarity on the scalability of your Solution, given that this is applied in a very specific context and is still at an early stage in development.
Scalability of Solutions is a vital component of the Solar Impulse Label, as we seek Solutions which can be applied in multiple contexts and where a clear plan is in place to expand and grow Solutions beyond the region/country where they are from. Given the ambitious nature of your project, concerns were raised that the project needs to be further along in its development before certainty can be given about its suitability for the Label.”
How do you carefully respond to a high-stakes question?
In respect of the two areas of remaining concern to SIF, we are pursuing more detailed solutions to both concerns. While we accept that it may take some months to resolve more detail to those questions, we have developed concepts to deal with them. Here is a pair of answers I put forward, not in detail with proof, but an introductory summary of what will come:
CO2 Disposition
Of all the experts that have been involved with the science and engineering of Kivu’s safety solution, Hydragas has paid more attention to the CO2 component than any others. You can’t resolve one without the other. We did a detailed mass balance of the CO2 within the lake during the extraction process and where it goes once extracted. Being a chemical engineer, I generally find that a thorough mass and energy balance exposes the deeper truths of what’s going on in an inarguable way.
It was on this basis that two of us, both chemical engineers on the Expert Group, convinced the rest of the group how the lake gas inventory should be managed more effectively.The two US-based developers now using and building on the lake now have solutions with potentially dire consequences for lake stability. They displace huge volumes of CO2 into shallow water and out of the lake with their produced gas, which is nearly 50% CO2. We correct those issues quite dramatically, consigning most of the CO2.
We are developing options to balance the CO2 in the lake over time by exporting CO2 to industries that convert it to protein or ethanol, or a new and efficient way to use it to accelerate plant growth in greenhouses. This graphic shows a summary of the complexity of potential CO2 disposition. It was done as part of my work with the Expert Group.
We wanted to show mass balance issues in removing gases from the lake occur when the method is problematic. We can resolve and optimize the solution to this issue very neatly with our know how. We aim to demonstrate that with the project we intend to build as soon as possible. Once we can fund a larger engineering team, the updates and data will be completed quickly and efficiently.
Carbon Dioxide Balance in Lake Kivu for an extraction method
A simulation over time of CO2 distribution, based on flows from all sources
Scalability of our Solution
I was discussing this very point with investors this morning. There should not be too much concern with TAM as a target for our scalability, mainly from one salient point:
The amount of methane dissolved in water globally (including methane in hydrates) exceeds the hydrocarbon energy content of all known (past and future) fossil fuels, including natural gas, oil, and coal. The resource is enormous.
This was not my view, but that of the USGS and other research institutions. There is more data available on where all the CO2 in the world resides, showing a simple deduction:
A corollary is that the amount of CO2 dissolved in water exceeds the amount in gaseous form in the atmosphere by a huge margin too.
How Big is the Problem?
Both CH4 and CO2 are present in Lake Kivu and are present in millions of times greater quantities in other lakes and oceans. If exploited (this is not our aim, nor is it as economic to pursue scattered pockets of gas hydrates) gas from water bodies could dwarf the oil and gas industry.
So why are these dissolved gas issues not demanding a huge amount of your attention? They are temporarily sequestrated in water, but how permanent is that as a solution? The warning signs are out, climate change is breaking the fragile stability. These hydrates and their gas content are liable to escape in certain locations as they are in the warming Arctic already, on land, and from the oceans. 10,000 gigatons are at risk of emission with global warming, 5,000 times more than gas from Kivu.
An Absence of Solutions
Since there are virtually no known solutions like ours to manage the threat from dissolved gases effectively, we have a problem. These resources are present globally in quantities millions of times larger than Lake Kivu’s gas resource in situ. If SIF wants to identify the availability of essential solutions for Climate Impact, then compare it to the many wind, solar, and a host of energy efficiency and storage technologies. These all have a role in limiting carbon impact but are readily available and abundant. SIF has recognised many of them as they have important. They are mature solutions in many cases and optimizing.
But what of solutions for managing or stabilizing CH4 and CO2 emissions from water in the lakes and oceans? It’s a giant problem that’s barely getting any attention. It’s a new field. It’s part of why we seek recognition as a Top 1000 Climate Solution.
So to answer, do we have an opportunity to scale up and improve CO2 disposition? Are we a valid Top 1000 Climate Solution?
Yes, we do. Can we? Yes, we can. Will we? That’s our mission, but it’s too big a problem to resolve on our own without large-scale funding from DFIs, and a large team, and hopefully SIF’s help too. Kivu is a microcosm of the problem, but its solutions provide a pathway to resolving much of that gigantic but unaddressed gas-in-water issue. The unfortunate thing is that it’s virtually and practically invisible out in the Arctic oceans and the tundra. It needs attention. We’re giving it all of ours.
A Cleantech Accelerator I completed prompted me to seek recognition for Hydragas. In fact, I had to read up on who qualifies for this label, awarded in recognition for top renewable energy solutions. It is a global recognition judged by the Solar Impulse Foundation (SIF) in Switzerland. Indeed to qualify, SIF must find you worthy of inclusion in their list. Their search was to end when they find 1000 Solutions that are worthy enough to help save the planet, but they have extended the search.
The label is inspired by Bertrand Piccard’s historic flight of the SolarImpulse. As with his SolarImpulse flight, circumnavigating the globe under solar power only, it’s an ongoing process that has a worthy cause and a mission. Following the mission demonstrates the sort of commitment that characterised his approach to that venture. As a legacy, the SolarImpulse Foundation will recognise hard work, innovation, and commitment to the same cause.
“Bertrand dedicates his life to demonstrating the opportunities lying in sustainable development and to raising interest in profitable solutions to protect the environment. He is a pioneer of new ways of thinking that reconcile ecology and economy, and uses his exploration feats to motivate governments and industries to take action.“
Does the Foundation seek out your Solution?
Chances are the SolarImpulse Foundation wouldn’t be able to find you as a start-up. So to get around that, who discovers who qualifies for this label? Likely as not, you are in an under-funded start-up, with no PR budget. But by contrast to start-ups, listed Solution owners include giant corporations with big budgets. If it is a concern that big players dominate the list, the foundation appears to want to take care of that. At least they should.
But it’s not enough to just ask for or to expect this recognition. Indeed, there is a prescribed application process to follow. It filters through a process to see if one created a solution of interest. If this meets their criteria, it is still further verified by their experts in the appropriate field.
The adjudication process follows your completed application. This application form starts with information requirements, detailed data, reports, publications, and references by request. The completed application is forwarded to selected experts to scrutinize your submission of scientific material, based on their broader knowledge and category expertise. After scrutiny, experts eventually get their opportunity to interrogate your submittal. It’s akin to defending an academic thesis.
I expect that their inquiry will be challenging. I say that I expect to be challenged, even with 10,000 hours of R&D on this topic under my belt. We know that the science behind it is complex, and often in dispute. It’s a common cause that it is not settled science. It’s a fast-changing field of developing theories and data discovery, with few subject-matter experts and many opinions. There is too little global experience on lakes like this one. More specific than that, Lake Kivu may just be the only one like this on Earth.
Can we be one who qualifies for this label?
“Our Solar Impulse Label awards efficient, clean, and profitable solutions with a positive impact on the environment and quality of life.“
We sincerely hope that it is us who qualifies for this label. Indeed, the Foundation’s recognition of this as one of 1000 Solutions would give us a right to display this valuable, aspirational label. Therefore we might expect it to give us a credible platform. This helps to attract funding or convince investors. It may also be helpful for governments to assess competitors. Here we can say real experts have checked our claims and validated them. We would wear the label with considerable pride, being part of a select group that takes care of our planet.
But for us, the greater recognition is what our Solution can do for the community stakeholders. For many of them, these impacts have real significance. It would be more meaningful than the outputs of Hydragas’ biogas recovery and power generation on Lake Kivu. Indeed these stakeholders are the communities, and the countries’ governments for can achieve environmental and safety benefits. The beneficiaries also include the users of the energy, our future investors, and the people employed by our organisation. But what are the positives of these claims? Can we back them up? Are there any negatives?
How do we measure a meaningful difference?
Gas Recovery from Source to End-user
Rwanda’s head of the Lake Kivu Monitoring Program, the LKMP, asked this question of us as appointed experts. This was indeed our role in the expert advisory group, through which we offered such support. I had to illustrate the differences that alternate gas extraction methods make to positive engineering and economic outcomes. One has to examine each step of the process of turning the lake’s resource into useful energy. The steps give clarity on how seemingly minor losses cascade into a huge energy loss overall.
Take the five steps in the above diagram for example:
Gas recoverability by Depth Zone: Of 5 zones, 2 have recoverable gas concentrations, while a shallower one has future potential. Most developers have designed to use one, or just half a zone. Hydragas can develop 2, potentially a 3rd. Gas extraction plants’ access to this resource for CH4 capture ranges from 46% to 100%.
Gas Plant Recoverability: The diagram shows how incoming CH4 splits up into six possible destinations. Only one output is useful energy. Hydragas’ multi-stage process gets 89% of the raw gas into the useful energy output.
Parasitic Power Losses: Legacy extraction plant uses too high a proportion of gas output to generate onboard power. This powers pumps and compressors, with legacy plants requiring 20-50%. By contrast, Hydragas’ extraction process uses just 2-6% for parasitic power production on board.
Generation Losses: Gas quality and pressure dictate which generation equipment one can use. Higher quality determines the use of higher-efficiency equipment. Legacy plants produce low-quality gas so engines operate at 33-41% efficiency. High-quality gas enables the use of 45-61% power plant efficiency.
Resource Degradation: The lake density structure breaks down with badly designed equipment and poor operational practices. The outcome is expected to cut the harvest period from 50 years, by up to 50%. The lake’s density structure’s ability to trap gas weakens over time. A weak trap allows gas to escape into shallow strata, where it is unrecoverable.
Total LossesImpact: Each outcome of the five steps seems modest. But multiplying them out shows our best competitor only delivers 10% of in-situ energy as power. Hydragas deliver either 35% (gas engines) or 51% (combined-cycle gas turbines).
Positive impacts: will they make the list of who qualifies for this Label?
Our view is that positive impacts decide who qualifies for this label. Here are our impacts:
Can we produce ethanol or methanol from Lake Kivu as an additional product to methane? If so, how? Methane is the primary energy form in the lake, which contains four times as much unusable CO2 in the reservoir. Academic research news offers a challenge and an opportunity to do much more for energy production options.
Argonne’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science).
Hydragas Energy worked for a decade to prove the leading gas extraction method from Lake Kivu. It gets tens of billions worth of methane out cheaply and effectively. But what if the waste product is worth even more?
Ethanol Production Potential
Can we now achieve this with another innovation? The lake is already a hugely important case for carbon reduction through the production of renewable natural gas (RNG). But we do return gigatons of carbon dioxide to the lake – a huge carbon sink. It is essentially a low-value, unwanted product that continues to accumulate. Carbon dioxide is a by-product of the natural digestion process producing methane. It is scrubbed out during methane extraction to upgrade the product gas. We currently return it to the lake.
Panoramic of Mt Nyiragongo from Lake Kivu in wet season
What if we continue to take the methane out but recover a CO2 stream to shore? With the right process, can we also recover ethanol from Lake Kivu’s CO2? Could this be a cheap supplement to regional gasoline supply, in the form of a carbon-negative fuel? The market is there as a 15% blendstock to imported gasoline from the Arabian Gulf. If so, we can do this by using a newly developed catalyst from the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School. In addition, all one needs is CO2, water, and electrical power – all abundant from the lake. So how big is the potential?
The numbers can add up to a massive economic injection for the region. Q1 2021 prices in the USA are $540 per ton ethanol. With the production potential of one million tons per annum, that is a $25 B market over 50 years. Ethanol sales potential is half the Kivu methane potential, which is already $50 billion over 50 years. How would the economics look for ethanol?
Cheaper fuel – Ethanol from Lake Kivu
Gasoline has a vast, still growing market internationally. Many markets promote the use of up to 15% ethanol blended in gasoline. A subsidy is usually needed to make production economic as ethanol is mostly derived from corn (maize) or sugar cane. These substrates are expensive to produce – hence their subsidy needs. But where the CO2 substrate is available for this alternative production process at virtually no cost, the fuel produced can be much cheaper.
One would expect that it reduces the cost of fuel and the quantity of fuel imports. Ethanol from Lake Kivu can also be sold competitively within the region for fuel blending as gasoline prices inland are close to global highs.
The contribution to a circular regional economy for East Africa is a real contribution to reducing reliance on imports. It enhances the use of the lake for CCUS, or carbon capture, usage, and storage. It is already a vast opportunity, but further enhanced.
“The process resulting from our catalyst would contribute to the circular carbon economy, which entails the reuse of carbon dioxide.” — Di-Jia Liu, senior chemist in Argonne’s Chemical Sciences and Engineering division and a UChicago CASE scientist
Advancing a Clean Economy in Africa
We are looking to build onto an established energy case for a cleaner regional economy. Methane from Lake Kivu can eliminate diesel fuel imports for power generation while replacing charcoal as a domestic fuel. With a power production potential of 600 MW, the produced power can supply power at half the region’s marginal cost of power. However, the use of gasoline as the primary transport fuel in Rwanda, DRC, and other regional users was a complex opportunity. Ethanol from Lake Kivu’s production is an important alternative to supplement imports at a lower cost.
Ethanol production can use some of the vast store of accumulated CO2 gas in Lake Kivu. We currently need to wash this CO2 out of raw gas produced, to make 80% pure renewable natural gas (RNG) as pipeline natural gas.
But now instead of returning the washed-out CO2 to the lake, we can process the wash water to make ethanol. If testing shows that the process is successful and economical, we can hugely enhance ethanol from Lake Kivu as part of a clean energy production phenomenon. Rwanda can, with the Kivu gas project, become 100% supplied with clean non-transport energy. With this added gasoline substitution it can commence the displacement of a significant percentage of transport fuel too.
Is Africa’s Lake Kivu a huge CCUS, or is it CCSU? Can it double up energy production with storage?
The Leader of the Sabyinho Family in the Virunga Mountains
We attribute “net-zero from Kivu’s renewable gas” because a series of Kivu projects achieve that for Rwanda and for Eastern DRC. So Kivu evolves into a hydroenergy battery, on top of being the world’s largest RNG bio-digester. It does much more than double duty for energy storage and energy production.
It’s a 500 cubic km water reservoir elevated 700 m above Lake Tanganyika for hydro and stores that same volume of renewable gas. And there’s more. It can produce RNG for 600 MW power, with 576 MW of hydropower, and can turn stored CO2 into 1 M tpa of ethanol for renewable fuel.
It naturally performs a complex CCS duty of storing gigatons of carbon. Our projects enable 2 gigatons of carbon emission reductions by preventing a build-up to a major gas eruption. Its hydropower potential to generate 576 MW of load-following, run-of-river power on demand. Add ethanol from CO2 and this now becomes a phenomenal nature-based solution, that lowers the cost of energy dramatically. It can also halve fossil fuel imports. It can halt or reverse deforestation. It’s a country-scale CCS, upgradeable to a giant among CCSU systems, and then a whole lot more. It’s a holistic journey to net zero from Kivu’s renewable gas and all these other achievements.
It’s so complex it defies conventional clean energy “taxonomy”
Lake Kivu has an extraordinary list of cleantech credentials. It complicates the simple job of filling out the project information questionnaire. “Which type of cleantech project is this? Pick one.” We need to tick off a series of boxes on a checklist that always demands one choice. It straddles as many as 6 categories. When investors demand a simple label, how do we help them out? They won’t like “It’s Complex”.
So how does this Complex Solution become recognised in the climate change lexicography? Nature has provided potential solutions to get the countries neighbouring Lake Kivu beyond carbon neutral. Are we going to trip up on naming it? It stands alone in this “really-good-for-the-planet” category of climate solutions. How can it also help this gorilla’s habitat survive and thrive?
The carbon-negative renewable natural gas contribution
We illustrate this lake as a leading example of how “Carbon negative” projects can be super-achievers in the great climate challenge of our times.
Even methane from cattle can become part of the solution. Let’s break this argument down further. RNG is known for providing carbon-neutral energy. Take biogas from agricultural waste, where the USA is targeting 40 megatons of carbon reduction by 2030. This one project on Lake Kivu in Rwanda and DRC achieves the USA’s RNG target by itself.
So how does gas recovery prevent gigatons of natural background carbon emissions? What if we can add a side benefit of reversing the destruction of vast equatorial forests to keep that carbon sink viable? This nature-based solution helps preserve the mountain gorilla’s habitat and a pristine lake while exceeding net zero. In reality, these benefits are a step up, adding to being carbon-negative. So “RNG Neg” can be a vital, although easily overlooked climate change solution. The solution has huge scaleability by doing far more than cutting methane emissions.
Let’s look at this specific methane source, created by nature without human intervention. Importantly, this case is where one can both extract natural biogas and reverse carbon emissions. As the add-on in this special case, it can replace forest biomass as the region’s primary domestic fuel within 10 – 15 years. This change in fuel takes deforestation pressure off the mountain gorilla habitat in the Virunga Mountains in Africa. So RNG is an opportunity to buy time for the gorilla habitat and recreate a vast carbon sink.
How carbon-negative is this renewable solution?
More than that, the graphic below shows how we get to the hoped-for impact of buying time in the Climate Change context. Compare it to other methods listed for negative carbon emissions. Most lack much capacity or even credence, requiring thousands of them to make a mark. Well, this unusual one wasn’t on the list. It should be in time, not just as a one-off.
The need to pull carbon dioxide from atmosphere to buy time (Inside Climate News)
Climate activists commonly advocate that natural gas is not “low-carbon” enough and not part of the climate solution. Natural gas suppliers field demands to remove any claim of having real “low-carbon” investments. The louder calls are to advocate the use of hydrogen, PV, or wind. But while hydrogen is in many ways an ideal fuel, it comes with user difficulties, dangers of explosion, and higher supply and distribution costs. It’s costly to transport, has low energy density, and is nearly impossible to move by old pipelines.
We should differentiate clean methane sources from conventional, fossil “natural” gas though. Some of them, like our projects, can even be strongly negative on carbon emissions. That’s a long way better for the planet than neutral.
The Purpose of Kivu gas extraction is evolving
The original Hydragas solution was a needs-driven innovation. It was created to deal with a looming threat at unprecedented humanitarian and environmental levels. Without acting on this threat in our lifetimes, millions of lives were at risk. The negative outcome is also a one-time, catastrophic environmental hit. We can avert this one-day, 2-6 gigaton carbon emission by preventing lake Kivu erupting. In a relative priority sense, the climate impact is a bonus on top of all these lives saved, but meaningful on a global scale.
Now sometimes we may think we have a great invention to talk about. But more importantly, to market it for investment, should we frame it in terms that resonate? Ours has been a 20-year pioneering, technological pursuit. So it isn’t just any cleantech project using available innovative technology. We now know it to be carbon-negative. So it stands out as a high-impact climate changer with added carbon sequestration value.
It took a decade to figure out how to do this project safely and effectively. We filled a need where suitable recovery technology did not exist. It overtook an older, flawed extraction idea and turned it around with an inventive breakthrough.
Our motivation was at first about solving a gas extraction problem. Then it became about saving lives. Then it grew to add the need to turn around carbon emissions. The line must now be: “It saves millions of lives, averting gigatons of carbon emissions, a nature-based solution making a country or two carbon-negative”.
Labeling is key; Can we call it a grid-scale battery, or CCS?
How is it going to sell the concept to investors? So should we re-frame it further? We can make it focused on the climate change problem of the day – energy storage. Should we now claim that; “We see Lake Kivu as a giant battery capable of 263 TWh of renewable energy storage.” We can add that; “This battery trickle-charges itself at 2,600 GWh per year.” What is the key data to place with that label? Renewable gas can produce 600 MW of clean power for the next fifty years.
Like a good battery, we can stretch it out longer though. Look after it and it never degrades. We still have the urgent, initial need to drop the danger level of gas build-up, for say 25 years. Then we could then produce over 200 MW of renewable, clean power for centuries.
Adding a 576 MW Hydropower Investment to the Same Lake
But there’s more to add to this “battery”. This same lake has been producing 18 MW of hydropower, from an old run-of-river station at its outlet, for over 50 years. The Ruzizi River cascade drops another 700 metres to Lake Tanganyika just 50km south of the lake’s outlet. A series of dam-free hydropower projects on this cascade can also deliver 576 MW. So the two projects in combination can yield 1200 MW for the next 25-50 years. The longer view is perhaps for over 800 MW in perpetuity. That’s one big, long-life battery!
An equatorial lake and a volcano, a recipe for an energy opportunity or a lurking nightmare?
So “whose definition is this definition?”
As we hear in the climate debate, any “natural gas” label is in a contentious basket of climate value and recognition as non-fossil due to its recent biogenic origin. It is grouped and assumed to be formed, with its fossil relatives coal and oil. Let’s flex a defining piece of that narrative. In talking of semantics and messaging, what of biogenic gas? Does Mesozoic-age fossil-formed gas rank the same as “fresh” biogas from cow manure in bio-digesters? They are both GHGs. Its formation followed similar pathways, millions of years apart. I studied this comparison with some global experts. Today our conclusion must be that RNG best categorises itself as a carbon-negative renewable gas.
That’s not the end of the argument either. In an ongoing review of the Lake Kivu MPs, governing the lake’s use, some reviewers would like to have a new take. Their view is any biogas already in the lake today is “fossil”, but from tomorrow any additional naturally produced biogas is “renewable”. What crappy, revanchist thinking is this? It is one pool of carbon-negative renewable gas.
The Case for Biogenic, Renewable Status – is it Clear?
The carbon dioxide and methane in Lake Kivu in Africa are biogenic. It’s freshly brewed. A 2020 paper published in Switzerland by students questions this established basis of gas formation. The reason why it is in dispute seems flimsy, in that they measured the 2019 gas content with a new, hitherto untested electronic method. Their measurements showed no increase in gas content, despite the passage of some years. They concluded that suddenly the theory of biogenic gas formation was wrong and perhaps somebody brought in 60 billion cubic metres of fossil methane from the Middle East gas fields and dumped it all into the lake. Perhaps somebody would have noticed? Why do that anyway, as it would have cost tens of billions of dollars, just to confuse everybody? If fish could even live there in anoxic water, one may ask, is something fishy?
I’ll stick with the established theory. Algae consumes dissolved carbon dioxide to grow biomass. Biomass biodegrades in anoxic depths to make methane and carbon dioxide. It uses the acetate process and also methanogens. The world’s largest bio-digester is part of a cycle making carbon-negative, renewable gas. Can we continue down this defining path and call it a bio-battery, powered by carbon-negative renewable gas? It sounds more promising than the theory in the paragraph above.
CCUS: Does it Work Like a Bio-battery or a Bio-digester?
Most of the gas in Lake Kivu now in situ has been generated biogenically. This process is not controlled by any feedback loop that says it is approaching full saturation.
The essential action on us now, with a GHG reserve building up, is to first harvest it to make it safe. The second is to combust methane in power generation or in-home cooking. A third action can be to re-absorb the carbon dioxide made, into the deep lake unless we extract it for other uses. Here it can be a substrate for microbiology that can turn back to methane. A virtuous green cycle is thus potentially possible. Again, it sounds like it works as a battery. Like any battery, its design and operation have room for enhancement. We could speed it up but with due caution.
So we can consider treating it like a giant battery. We keep it in reserve and deplete it when we choose to and we are able to. We are now capable of doing it safely, finally. Now is the time we must do it urgently to constrain climate change.
Defining CCUS
Must we prove to skeptics that it’s renewable and it has negative emissions? I met recently with Foresight, a Vancouver group that champions clean energy solutions. I had this question: “If the gas is naturally biogenic, but not extracted continuously, is it still renewable?” The answer was yes because it can be stored. But that answer would not be so if it leaked out into the atmosphere immediately. But in Lake Kivu’s case, it is fully trapped. This is a huge, natural CCUS reservoir that can store 450 bcm of gas (at the safe-side limit). It is the definition of Carbon Capture, Usage, and Storage/Sequestration (CCUS). But now I’m seeing CCSU in the literature also.
What is the risk if we don’t harvest this lake gas?
We must first deplete this reservoir (or energy battery) by 50% now for safety reasons. That is why we must extract methane for the next 25 years to use up half the partial pressure (or volume) of gas in place. The method used is important, as it is no good to redistribute methane to shallower water as our competitors do. That is dangerous.
Thereafter we can discharge it indefinitely at a lower rate, closer to its natural recharge rate. That would be sensible. But our first order of business lowers the risk of eruption by a factor of two. It makes the lake 100 times safer. 99% risk reduction. We do this by depleting gas from the upper portions of the layered lake’s depths. These portions give rise to the gas in situ most at risk, as they have the highest partial pressure.
With some caution, we can research further into “farming” gas generation. We understand the micro-biology and bio-chemical engineering pathways of using the returned CO2 to generate new methane faster. Key to these actions will be in managing the nutrients flowing to the shallow biozone to enhance algae growth. This is done by water lifted from the nutrient-rich depths. That is the key to multiplying the energy potential in the long term.
Safety Action: Preventing a catastrophic lake eruption
This is a very high-stakes resource management game. Those gigatons of gas, if left until they saturate the lake’s capacity, will erupt. The world’s limnology experts describe the mechanism as a limnic eruption. It’s much quieter, almost silent, but could be 50 times more deadly than Krakatoa’s explosion in 1883. Many casualties may result from lake tsunamis caused by a giant, surging column of gas and water. Waves would radiate out to the lake’s shores. But it’s the toxic and asphyxiating blanket of cloud that follows, emanating from that erupting column that is much more deadly.
So, gas extraction is our pre-emptive action to mitigate a catastrophe. It has to be done properly, with precision and care. Some amateurish and ill-considered legacy methods were used and more were planned. These attempts were worse than doing nothing. They break all the safety rules and bring the danger of eruption forward. The worst aspect of legacy methods is the deliberate breakdown of the lake’s multi-layered density structure. This structure was formed slowly over hundreds of years, strengthening to form a perfect trap for gas forming below.
The lake’s long-term safety plan is still built on the concept of removing the bulk of the lake’s methane in 50 years. After the first harvest, we may pause for perhaps 100 – 150 years to allow gas to regenerate. As the methane inventory reaches a viable concentration again, we begin to extract once more. That’s still in the harvesting plan. The concept is written up in the rules for how Lake Kivu must be developed. But a review in 2019-2020 revisited some of these options.
What carbon is in the envelope we evaluate?
The gases are produced biogenically in the world’s largest, contained bio-digester. Lake Kivu became one of the largest, manageable carbon sinks over millennia. I wrote it up in a breakthrough ventures application. I worked out the data in a painfully complex spreadsheet. It is NRCAN’s government-designed calculator to determine the carbon SSRs. There were guidelines. i.e. Use ISO 14064-2 Section 5.3 “Identifying GHG sources, sinks and reservoirs relevant to the project”. It was highly explicit about every value to be used.
I had already worked out the answer in 20 minutes by normal means. It took 150 hours to use this standardized government-style spreadsheet. The answers were 1.01% different. The specified calculator gave a modestly higher answer. This is miniscule compared to the arguable range of tons of CO2 per ton of CH4; the currently published range is between 25 and 103. There is a long explanation about which number applies when based on when the reduction is most needed. For simplicity, the calculator used 28. Using this range the averted carbon emissions vary from 1.9 to 6.3 gigatons. The high end of this range is very close to the total annual US emissions in 2014, published by the EPA, of 6.89 gigatons.
Why is it so complicated? Was it to ensure one didn’t cheat? In essence, it defines the full envelope. It assesses GHGs and SSRs with a cumbersome methodology. One even includes the GHG impact of building and then demolishing the equipment. One must account for displaced energy when switching to a new source. It presents the data in a spreadsheet common for all applicants. But getting it done is way worse than doing your taxes. The outcome still shows this renewable gas is carbon-negative.
Proving renewable gas is carbon-negative
Net carbon output from generation of 1 kWh of power
The adjacent figure (click on it to expand) shows L-R the improving trend of power generation from coal to natural gas. Hausfather presented the data to show the US power industry gains from replacing coal with natural gas. I added the final bar to show how the proposed Lake Kivu project outperforms. The linked article questions whether natural gas is a bridge fuel to renewables. I would argue that RNG is itself a game changer that goes much further than carbon neutrality. But how can these special cases be replicated on a global scale? There are opportunities for scale-up of averting major emissions in my next post.
I added the final bar to show how the proposed Lake Kivu project outperforms. The linked article questions whether natural gas is a bridge fuel to renewables. I would argue that RNG is itself a game changer that goes much further than carbon neutrality. It transforms from being a clean gas source to the most powerful, renewable battery out there.
But how can these special cases be replicated on a global scale? There are opportunities for scale-up to avert major emissions in my next post. That means going after the biggest resource of all, methane in the oceans.
Let’s not forget how to help the gorillas
But let’s not forget the gorillas in the Virunga mountains. Before even considering deforestation, Africa’s equatorial forests are under threat and so is the gorilla’s mountain domain. Apart from land pressures, the region still uses firewood and charcoal for 80-90% of its non-transport energy needs. Any action that reduces deforestation is also about protecting their shrinking domain. Sustainable, renewable natural gas will help, so let’s make it a strongly carbon-negative renewable gas. It will be hugely impactful at -5500 kg CO2/MWh. 100 MW produced here zeros out the climate impact of another 1200 MW produced from fossil natural gas.
What message sells to investors?
This project needs investment. This type and scale of project is desperately needed. People need to be assured of safety where they live. The gorillas need their forest back. So now we need to pitch the investment, but also the back story to investors. The question is how? It’s a great impact investment with high returns. But for investors? They’re skeptical, as they must be. Any claim we can make to amp up a valuation has to be discounted or countered by them when negotiating an investment deal. At a September 2021 conference in Vancouver, a well-known CEO of a Cleantech investor told me that just having methane in play is a red flag.
This much carbon mitigation (whether 40 or up to 130 megatons per year) can be worth a lot as tradeable carbon offsets. The Canadian government has priced carbon on a rising scale up to CAD 150/ton by 2030. Imagine if we could sell that for $600 M a year. So, inevitably as founders, we should get quizzed on this point. And so it has been. We like to appeal to the investors’ better selves too, with the humanitarian and environmental impacts that are the real drivers. The Lake Kivu project has had a huge impact. The priorities are first to people’s safety, then to the environment, and finally to the community’s bottom lines.
How to market “carbon negative renewable gas”?
As an aside, I would be interested in the stats on this. How many pledges are made to fund renewables? As many as are calling on others to do the funding? How many are calling for funding negative carbon projects or for countries to go net zero? I have seen hundreds. Is it a facile way to get position on the bandwagon? Whatever came of Canada’s Prime Minister’s 2015 pledge at COP-21 in Paris to fund $2.6 B of clean energy projects in the developing world? How much more is being promised at COP-26 in Glasgow in 2021?
Cleantech Finance – Two “Valleys of Death” facing entrepreneurs – FCA
On the other hand, how many of the valid cleantech start-ups with projects eventually do get funded? Worse still, how many are not? Who, among many innovators and developers, crosses the proverbial “valley of death” illustrated here by FCA? Where do these developers, looking and pitching for these funds, get the money? Their enthusiasm is more evident than that of corresponding investment funds.
For that answer, it’s probably from intermediaries. They are like a giant filter that slows the flow of funds to projects and new start-ups with ideas for carbon emissions reduction. I get frustrated by hearing the boasts of new funds saying, like Brookfields, ” We have raised 30 billion dollars for Climate Impact projects in 2021″, but we seldom see any sign of this being spent. Perhaps they hoard it like Scrooge McDuck, earning fees for not passing funds on to the intended recipients.
The Role of the Intermediary, the Aggregator
This clean energy funding marketplace has seen a proliferation of financing intermediaries. They are aggregators of new project prospects, those start-up prospects that couldn’t afford to present at all the conferences. Is this changing now with COVID-19 taking conferences virtual?
Intermediaries don’t raise funds as start-ups, but to aggregate. They provide aggregating vehicles to reduce the hard work for bigger funds and individual climate investors as a conduit for hard-to-pitch-for funds. They can charge fees for their disbursement of other people’s money to projects. In doing so they are earning a 5% slice of the investment without carrying all the downsides of failed investments. They also secure rights to step up investment later at a discount. It’s a sweet gig.
Changing Tactics during the Time of COVID-19
Perhaps the tactic for start-ups and developers lies in two complementary pathways. The first is to present themselves more often at these virtual fundraising events. The formerly prohibitive cost of attending is down by 90%. Secondly is how to frame our projects better for primary investors.
What now of the intermediaries? What will they want to invest in and what makes them worthwhile as intermediaries? Start-ups need to connect with them in a way that works. So let’s present our options as Hydragas. Let’s label Lake Kivu as the promising niche that it is. Let’s see if that is a giant energy storage system or a series of clean projects with gigatons of carbon-negative emissions reduction. We’ll colour it any way the market wishes, as long as we get to fund it. Some ways just cost more than others, but that’s still way better than lingering on zero investment.
Charcoal suppliers in Rwanda – Not Sustainable Cooking Energy
What does it take to help a country make a transition to sustainable cooking energy? Why would the people change their tradition? What then is the most Sustainable Cooking Energy for the East African region? And can you imagine a new idea that puts over 10,000 women entrepreneurs to work to deliver it? Think of these ideas that are working well in Africa.
Biogas from Lake Kivu can provide sustainable cooking energy delivery too. It is a renewable natural gas (RNG). Moving it by pipeline can replace firewood and charcoal more conveniently, at an even cheaper price. It can thus become the region’s primary domestic and industrial fuel. But this switch to supplying pipeline gas needs infrastructure that does not exist. We have a plan for that.
The daily battle for cooking fuel
Firewood or charcoal supplied 90% of non-transport energy usage in 2006. With the present population, usage rates are non-sustainable. By 2018 it was down fractionally to 83%. Deforestation rates are unsustainable. There is a growing need for a more sustainable cooking energy supply at low cost to towns and villages, with less climate impact.
The wood-fuel energy mix changed little despite efforts to increase imports of LPG. The tropical forest has 80% disappeared. The exceptions are the Virunga and Nyungwe forest reserves. Even these national parks aren’t immune from the need. Charcoal-burners encroached into parks, cutting and burning trees to supply demand in the cities.
In the DRC, militias in rebel enclaves “taxed” the transport of charcoal en route to Goma. Their tax is applied by charging carriers of charcoal extortionate fees at roadblocks. Prices escalate well above inflation, sometimes 50% in a year.
The high cost of charcoal
For Rwandans, charcoal costs can absorb 25% or more of a household’s net income. In fact, charcoal cost Rwf 2000 per bag ($3) in 2004. But in 2019, the price has escalated above Rwf 10,000 per bag ($11). A family would typically use more than one bag per month. The 250% increase from 2006 was far above inflation. This will still take 20% of monthly income, with no affordable substitute.
From a financial perspective, charcoal is not a sustainable cooking energy either. In fact it has not improved since the country started to import over 10 million kg of LPG per year in an effort to stem deforestation. But, with LPG being much more expensive than charcoal, its high cost means that usage is low and household energy costs remain too high.
The 2003 Draft Rwandan Gas Law stipulated that Lake Kivu gas is to be used solely for power generation. Fortunately the updated 2008 Draft Gas Law removed the power-only clause, opening up the potential for pipeline gas. In this case renewable natural gas (RNG) can and should supply the pipeline gas alternative to LPG, fuel-wood and charcoal for cooking.
Pipeline RNG must become this viable alternative to biomass in the region’s supply mix. But using a first-world distribution model won’t do it as the capital cost and usage charges would be way too high. The “Vilankulo” option is better. (Indeed, the World Bank named the initiative after Vilankulo, a town in Mozambique.) This low-cost distribution model was first set up there in 1992 to supply sustainable cooking energy.
Expensive power: not used for cooking
Electrical power in the region was, since the 1990’s, and still remains too pricey for most users to use in cooking. One cannot imagine that a power price, which is double that in most countries of Europe, would be affordable to East Africans. They have incomes just a small fraction of the per capita GDP in Europe. Rwandan GDP per capita was less than 20% of say South Africa’s or Zambia’s in 2006. Power pricing was a major socio-economic problem for residents and also for commerce and industry.
Electric power was only affordable to a few. Fixed rates in Rwanda ran from USc 22-26/kWh. But just 6% of the population had a power connection in 2006. Cooking with electrical power was a preserve of very few people.
By 2018, availability of electrical power increased to 60% of households in Rwanda. DRC is lagging with only single-digit percentages of houses connected and using electrical power. But even with connections, the REG utility is concerned that consumption figures are exceptionally low for over 50% of users. Their household usage is below 56 kWh per year. This indicated that usage is limited to lighting and electronic equipment only. Here it is evident that sustainable cooking energy will be in strong demand.
Cleaner domestic energy – future solutions
Hydragas studied and modelled energy supply needs of Rwanda and DRC as part of its gas feasibility studies. We prepared feasibility assessments on RNG energy competitiveness and market size, including at least half a million homes. The market was price sensitive. Our recommended fix was to supply combined power and gas feeds into households. Power alone could not satisfy the needs affordably. This is borne out by the very low (56 kWh per month) power consumption the average home in Rwanda.
The connected customers seem to preferably use it for essential lighting and electronics. Charcoal is preferred for cooking. But the poorer rural users consume only firewood and no electrical power. Indeed gas, once it is available and distributed to homes, can supply the bulk of energy needs in almost all lower income homes. Combined gas and power can be supplied more cheaply and effectively than its alternatives.
Making the best out of competing energy sources
But on the supply side, utilities are faced with the cost of connecting two energy sources. Some coordination can help, as was studied in South Africa. A study for the national power utility (Eskom) and Sasol (gas) looked into a combined feed of low amperage power with a small pipeline gas feed to homes. But the two energy utilities could not forge the necessary cooperation. In the end, like Rwanda, power was not affordable.
So in South Africa, dirty coal made up the lower cost alternative. The coal was sold by the “hubcap” at rates ten times higher than bulk supply prices. Because of the winter extremes of freezing temperatures and low wind, coal smoke blanketed many cities at night. Respiratory disease rates in South Africa’s poorer townships rocketed up to endemic levels.
Several sources have contributed to the growing power supply mix for Rwanda. Unfortunately diesel power dominates the mix. But less alternate sources have been available for cooking fuels. Very few are affordable, as illustrated with low sales of LPG, and biomass continues to dominate.
Balancing thermal energy and electrical power use
But Kivu gas can and should supply thermal energy into this mix. It is a cheap, convenient thermal energy source for households and industry. A key environmental impact, from gas use, is its ability to halt or reverse deforestation. This is done by replacing charcoal as a dominant fuel source.
A major capital investment need is a new national gas network to connect population centres. This network will provide the backbone for gas transmission and distribution around the country. The geography of Rwanda is well-suited for running a cost-effective HDPE gas supply network. It is a small country with a dense population.
Despite being mountainous, medium-pressure, plastic (HDPE) gas pipelines are simple and effective to install. So, quite simply, it uses less piping material to connect more people at lower cost.
Mozambique’s first gas supply started in 1992 with a 110 km pipeline connecting the gas fields to two towns. It was expanded to include three offshore islands. We know it can work better in Rwanda because it is small and the most densely populated country in Africa. Thus, it is density of housing, even in rural areas, that reduces the capital cost per user. We advocate the Vilankulo concept, compatible with newer US and EU-based design standard for pipelines.
How to get gas into houses at low cost?
The Vilankulo design for household connections is simple. We can deploy it with limited training, as in Mozambique. It also supports an “Africa-appropriate” commercial model to supply sustainable cooking energy. This well-studied alternative can make distribution far more cost-effective. It is at the core of what made the gas program effective in Mozambique.
Lake Kivu team: Philip Morkel, Fabrizio Stefani, Fred Wilson and Rory Harbinson
Our team of Rory Harbinson and Fred Wilson led the gas network installation program in Mozambique. They ran it from 1992 to 2014. Their practical solutions led a low cost program for household gas. An element of the simplified approach was eliminating 98% of households gas meters as they made up 50% of the material costs. It took years of gas sales to pay for a meter.
How to simplify a household gas installation?
Commercial gas crews doing street gas main installation
We designed simpler gas systems using small 32 mm plastic piping for back street mains (as shown above). In fact these operate at medium pressure, higher than in old cast-iron street piping in Europe. We buried lines along Mozambican streets with little or no paving. Further, we tapped in 12 mm house feeder lines. They fed gas to a cheap and simple “top-hat” pressure reducer, delivering gas to each house. The basic delivery systems are adequate for any 0.5 – 1.0 GJ per month users, mainly used to supply sustainable cooking energy.
Tying in a gas metered block of houses to a street gas main
In 1992, the cost of connecting a house was $200. It included a two-plate burner. All of them are still operating 25 years later.
By comparison, legacy systems in Europe or even South Africa cost $4,000 – $10,000, 20-50 times more expensive. We believe that the cheaper connection for Rwanda can cost little more than $450 in 2020 for all-in costs from the city gate to the household cooker. This fee includes the starter set-up with a two-plate gas cooker. Indeed, users could also install lighting, water heating, refrigeration, barbecues and full size stoves over time, as needed. Piping needs to be upgraded for commercial users and some larger houses.
A workable commercial model for our times
We prepared feasibility reports in the 1990’s for Mozambique’s local gas and power distribution. To cut costs to users, we made it simple and cheap to operate in rural Africa. One of the donors funding the scheme, from Scandinavia, had a Norwegian expert review our town supply study as they could not believe the low capital cost.
To our amusement, the queries the expert raised included the following: Why no fleet of vehicles for the utility staff? What was the budget for an office block, or for a proper computer billing and administration system? Where is the workshop to repair all the gas meters and test or calibrate them? Also, where are the trench-diggers and earth-moving equipment?
His list would have more than quadrupled the project cost and would have made gas unaffordable. In Vilankulo, a man on a bicycle could carry most needs for a house and he could install in an hour. He would ask for the help of the householder to dig an access trench for the pipe. Needless to say, this remains the way to do it.
Simple lessons from Nigeria on commercial strategy
This was where European and North American standard household installations were too expensive. Our gas project team was looking at how to cut out costs in Mozambique. Here, their revenues would take five years or more to pay off home installation costs. We found that half the capital cost was metering.
Why even install a gas meter that costs 5 years gas usage? It will never pay back. Why specify the legacy household gas fitting to be the same as specified in Europe? In Africa, the cost of that first-world type of household gas installation will exceed the cost of the house itself.
Our commercial gas pricing model originated in Nigeria, where it is used for power metering. A trip to Lagos at the time gave us a clue. Apartment landlords had addressed the same problem with electrical usage. Instead of a meter per apartment, they inspected each tenants connections each year. A light bulb was one point, a stove 15 points, a fan five points etc.
Each tenant’s total was divided into the apartment building’s total points and multiplied by the total bill. It worked for everyone. Indeed it was widely accepted as fair and runs in most cities there. Because of how logically it works, any cheating by a user both hurts and is visible to one’s neighbours.
Lagos city scene – where apartment blocks use a points system to share utility bills
Empowering Women : 10 000+ part-time jobs created
But beyond installation, the processes of commercial operations must simplify. This enables further cost reductions but can increase employment. Our view is of an “Africa-ready” commercial model, that worked well in Nigerian cities. As we observed with Nigerian landlords, there is a simple customer-facing role within a comparable gas model.
This home-based role can create a part-time income for 10,000 – 15,000 home-based entrepreneurial women in Rwanda. They would service the eventual 600,000 homes connecting to gas. Their job is to become the utility operator for the block that they live in. The block may have say 50 houses. They train simply to become “block” franchisees in their neighborhoods. They arrange to connect users, collect tariffs, keep a percentage and pay the town or district franchisee.
We configured a three-tier system with: At the top, a national gas transmission network and management team; next, a second-tier of town or district operators who franchise areas with up to thousands of users; and finally the women operating the “block franchises” would be the third-tier.
Franchising gas distribution
Supplying Sustainable Cooking Energy
These tiers all play their role. These women become the local distributor for say up to 50 households in their “block” or street. Their role is to assess points regularly, monitor excess usage and levy a monthly charge to users on the same metered block basis. They arrange for connections of new users and collect monthly charges not done as mobile phone transactions.
Mobile phone technology exists in Rwanda to manage such billing and payment systems for operators and users. It is widely used as a banking tool for other utilities and services. The block and district or town distributor’s earnings are a percentage of their block or district collections. There is easy visibility through the chain (blockchain?) to audit the chain of transactions. All this is available through a simple mobile phone app, connected to the town/suburb/ district franchisees and on to the national distributor.
Delivering sustainable cooking energy future
Our first post on this topic starts with ideals and the grand plan for a clean energy future in Rwanda and Eastern DRC. The ideas make a difference at country-scale. The concepts on how this is set up are also explained. So I have dived here into the details to explain some of the simpler concepts to roll out RNG as a clean energy too. These are real ideas, and they have gone live in Nigeria and for gas in Mozambique with great success.
The plan’s methods have been adopted by the World Bank as their best practical example for the GGFR initiative. This flaring reduction initiative was a plan to implement in 38 poorer countries with stranded gas. In fact the plan is to make the operation of gas supply and even power supply cheaper to poorer users. These methods are also simple for small communities to implement with entry-level contractors and businesses. There is no need for multi-national utilities to be part of the solution.
10,000 women’s empowerment as gas entrepreneurs
It is our view that the importance of mobilising tens of thousands of small entrepreneurs. Specifically for women, working from their own homes is an important breakthrough. Indeed, it is obvious that legacy utility systems are overrated. Also, the commerce is simplified by using cellphone apps to manage billing and management. East Africa already leads the world in widespread adoption of mobile systems for banking and payments.
These approaches go some way to making energy more affordable, cleaner and more sustainable. These are the building blocks for a sustainable cooking energy solution. In fact, these solutions grew from the ground up.
View of Lake Kivu, City of Goma and Mt Nyiragongo volcano
Few countries achieve a totally clean energy future on non-transport energy. In this post, we discuss the potential for Rwanda and DRC to achieve this with a shared resource. Germany tried with its Energiewende for 20 years. It wanted a full transition to clean power by 2020. Michael Schellenberger of Der Spiegel questions its failings and why. With a year to go it’s achieved only 25% of it. Was it asking too much, too soon? So if not Germany, who then could do it?
How to get clean energy for a net-zero future?
My view is that for the same ambitious plan, Rwanda can do it, and quickly. The DRC can do the same for the Eastern DRC region. Ironically it’s Rwanda’s lack of coal and oil that helps the country get there faster. We know they have the will to achieve clean energy for a net-zero future. But what about the means? It’s not as though Rwanda has the industrial power and capital of Germany, it doesn’t.
But it has two things: (1) a few of the wrong power systems already in place, and (2) a transformational clean energy asset. It can make that future a reality without crowding its landscape with wind turbines, solar panels, and power lines. Rwanda is beautiful. It does not need that blot on its scenery.
Map showing Rwanda and surrounding countries with international borders, provinces, the national capital, province capitals, major cities, major roads, railroads, and airports.
Indeed the country, together with the Kivu provinces of DRC, can build a sustainable, clean energy future. Better still, it would soon have a surplus for export to other neighbours in East Africa. Rwanda can pass this key tipping point to a clean energy future in about five to eight years. The idea is fully sustainable for over half a century. In the same 5 years, they can demobilize the hired power systems that run on imported diesel. If the HFO-fueled power plant is placed on standby, it runs on clean power alone.
Hydropower & natural gas for a clean energy future?
So, this region is poised to be a clean energy bright spot, in the heart of Africa. The key resource, for their sustainable clean energy for a net-zero future, is Lake Kivu. Its potential is a unique case among Africa’s Great Lakes. It’s a source of both hydro and renewable biogas energy. Nature took a millennium to create this water-borne gas resource.
Think of Kivu as a giant, free, clean battery. Its potential is to supply up to 1400 MW for over 50 years and beyond. This output is seven times Rwanda’s current peak power usage rate in 2019. Clean power is just part of the upside. So is cheaper power and the potential for $150 B in power revenues before any carbon credits.
Transport fuels will change more slowly
For now, we do not include transport fuels in their clean energy future plan. EVs remain quite rare in the region, they’re still an expensive luxury. Many vehicles on their roads used to be imported second-hand from Dubai. Until Dubai exports second-hand electric vehicles too, EVs may not be affordable. They may work well in the energy mix, with the cheaper, surplus power at night.
Can natural gas production reduce carbon emissions?
Sure. But we read of activists who reject natural gas as part of the climate solution or any clean energy future. They classify it as low-carbon but still a contributing threat. However, the impact of producing Lake Kivu’s biogas applies a sharp twist to that logic. If we don’t extract methane from the lake, it will eventually super-saturate with gas and erupt. This means catastrophically. Should it, and depending on when it erupts, it releases 2+ gigatons of carbon equivalent in just one day. Therefore the twist of logic is that avoidance of an eruption creates 2+ gigatons credit to the project. It is a climate winner, in a class of its own. For that reason, the methodology of recognising Kivu’s carbon offsets may have to be established.
We know how to produce this lake’s gas, more safely and productively than anyone. Our updated solution is fully designed, pilot-tested, and ready to build at full scale. The outcomes are fantastic, high impact, with great benefit to the country. However, we must also be aware what not to do. Thinking in GHG terms, if Lake Kivu stayed undeveloped it will be a major carbon-emission threat. For this baseline case, i.e. do nothing, it will erupt and emit 2+ gigatons of carbon. That disaster will happen any time within 70 years. Rising methane content is the trigger. It also has a big climate impact.
In our proposal, this threat is balanced by going ahead and producing its 60 bcm (billion cubic metre) natural gas inventory. Then we must use it as discussed here. If done successfully, this avoids and averts the 2+ gigatons of carbon emissions. This is a double impact, positive outcome that can also earn the stakeholders huge GHG (carbon) offsets for that carbon tonnage.
Clean power potential
Lake Kivu has been a source of hydropower for more than half a century. However, current use from either hydro or thermal power reaches barely 5 % of its potential. The southern outflow of the lake drops 700m in the 30 km cascade of the Ruzizi River. Studies show a potential of 576 MW from run-of-river hydro. No major dams are needed, so it’s low impact. To date, just 30 MW capacity has been installed in the four phases mapped below.
But gas in the lake can also produce thermal power. Of that, only 26 MW is operating. Its potential output, with the best available technology and design in operation, is 800 MW. This thermal power combined with hydro provides nearly 1400 MW of clean, renewable power.
Map of the Ruzizi River cascade below Lake Kivu showing run-of-river hydro projects
Three countries will share the future hydro output, as mapped above. After decades of studies and planning, parties signed an accord this week for a consortium to build 147 MW at Ruzizi III. This is another 25% of the river’s potential. The timing is not clear but would take five years or more. In the meantime, other hydropower projects added 28 MW in Rwanda. 50 MW more hydropower should follow at Rusumo Falls on the Tanzanian border.
Biogas: part of the clean energy spectrum
What do we know about this added potential from gas energy in the depths of the lake? Lake Kivu is likely the second largest anaerobic bio-digester and store of methane gas on the planet. The biggest remains the oceans although they defy being dealt with as a single system like Kivu. Oceans store biogas and natural gas seeps in permafrost, and as solid methane hydrates. They are to date untouched, with methane hydrates difficult to recover. But we will concentrate on the permafrost seeps that contain 10,000 to 15,000 gigatons of carbon, increasingly at risk of more rapid emissions. To harvest them, we need to modify and build the next generation of our gas extraction technology to produce. We can test it with the core design element of our Kivu extraction equipment after more R&D on the resource locations.
However, Lake Kivu is unique in sealing and storing gas in solution, in deep water. From 250-500 m depths, the gas-in-water solution is rich enough to produce pipeline-quality natural gas. It takes the right extraction and enrichment technology, which is at the core of our business. It can produce enough biogas to supply the region’s power. In fact, it can make 600-800 MW of carbon-negative power for 50 years or longer. Currently used technologies can do just 15% of that output.
However, this biomethane or biogas from the lake can provide an alternative energy delivery to a needy region. Natural gas by pipeline can replace firewood and charcoal, at an even cheaper price. It can thus become the region’s primary domestic and industrial fuel. But this switch to supplying pipeline gas needs infrastructure that does not yet exist. We have a plan for that.
A past World Bank accolade
The World Bank has credited our Hydragas team for developing a practical, low-cost model for gas distribution for LMIC countries. We developed this model to use stranded gas in Mozambique in the 1990’s. The country was in a civil war at the time. It was also the world’s poorest country. At the time, the country had stranded gas fields in an isolated area. The World Bank funded some of these Mozambican projects. In fact they really liked and appreciated what they saw in Vilankulo.
The World Bank wanted to copy and deploy it globally for poorer countries. Their validation assures us that it is also a good solution for Rwanda and the region. For the Vilankulo project, we built the world’s longest plastic gas pipeline at the time. With half of it offshore, it ran some 250 km. It connected two towns and three offshore islands. In fact, the gas came from a stranded gas supply from the Pande gas field. It had been drilled in the 1960s but had remained unused 30 years on. We used it to supply the community with much-needed power and pipeline gas at a low cost. That system has just passed its 25th anniversary with its availability standing at over 99.9%.
Gas Engine in Vilankulo power plant in 2005
The World Bank adopted this “Vilankulo Model” as the basis for their gas use model in the Greenhouse Gas Flaring Reduction (GGFR) initiative. In the report, they planned to deploy it in 38 poor countries on three continents with a budget of $ 6 B. Flared gas would be used to power up local communities, providing cooking gas and small power. Such gas was previously flared during oil production.
Historic energy shortfalls
Power generation from Lake Kivu has been a government priority. But in the 10 years after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, just 10-12 MW of grid power was available in Rwanda. Across the lake, in the Kivu Nord and Kivu Sud provinces of the DRC, there was even less grid power available in 2009. The Rwanda government planned a 10-20 times increase to cater to the assessed shortfall. It sought know-how and investment to enable its production, neither of which was available. But even less grid power was available in the DRC’s Kivu provinces from Lake Kivu hydro. For example, the city of Goma in DRC receives just 2 MW of hydropower from the Ruzizi cascade from Lake Kivu’s overflow, serving a tiny fraction of the needs of a population of almost 2 million. Hydropower suffers a seasonal drop in generation in both the long and short dry seasons. Being on the equator, dry seasons occur around the solstices. Therefore both the lake’s outflow and thus run-of-river generation drop.
Up to 2006, Rwanda’s power blackouts were an everyday experience. They lasted over half the day, in scheduled rolling blackouts. But at the time, less than 6% of the population had access to electrical power. I used to wonder why most of the rural and even urban population was asleep by 7 pm. But the lighting was simply too costly to run and street lighting was scarce. The exception was Goma on the DRC side. Unlike much of Rwanda, Goma came alive at night as the city partied. Diesel and gasoline generators clattered away in the night, adding to the noise of festivities.
To support the Goma lifestyle and economy, gasoline-fueled generators supplied a small portion of the population, mainly the more affluent users and businesses in Goma with power for lighting. The bars always had light, music, and cold beer. It was a shock to see how much mobile phone owners in Goma paid vendors for a recharge, possibly the highest tariff anywhere. Only government entities and senior politicians had access to grid power.
The daily battle for cooking fuel
Charcoal vendors in Kigali, Rwanda 2003
Firewood or charcoal supplied 90% of non-transport energy usage in 2006. By 2018 it was down fractionally to 83%. Deforestation rates were unsustainable. This changed little despite efforts to increase imports of LPG. The tropical forests has all but disappeared. The exceptions are the Virunga and Nyungwe forest reserves. Even these national parks weren’t immune. Charcoal-burners encroached into parks, cutting and burning trees to supply demand in the cities. Rebel militia in enclaves in DRC “taxed” the transport of charcoal en route. Prices escalated well above inflation.
In Rwanda, charcoal costs could absorb 25% of a household’s income. This could cost Rwf 2000 per bag ($3) in 2004. In 2019, the price has escalated above Rwf 10,000 per bag ($11). A family would use more than a bag a month. The 250% increase from 2006 is well above inflation. The country imports over 10 million kg or LPG per year, but its high cost means that household energy costs remain too high.
The 2003 Draft Gas Law stipulated that gas use is solely for power generation. Fortunately, the updated 2008 Draft Gas Law removed the power-only clause. In this case, natural gas can and should supply the alternative to LPG, fuel wood, and charcoal for cooking. Pipeline gas must become this viable alternative to biomass in the region’s supply mix. But using a first-world distribution model won’t do it as the capital cost and usage charges would be way too high. The “Vilankulo” option is better.
Constraints on power supply
Power in the region was and remains too pricey for most users. It was more than five times higher than in South Africa or Zambia in 2006. The marginal cost of the new power was governed by the cost of diesel generation, with diesel costs very high in the hinterland. Power pricing was a major socio-economic problem for residents and for commerce and industry. Electric power was only affordable to a few, with flat rates in Rwanda from USc 22-26/kWh. Just 6% of the population had a power connection in 2006.
Even today, with more available power, it is being priced more granularly by REG-EUCL. It sells at graduated rates for domestic and industrial users. Power connections are up to 54% in 2020. Also, time-of-use tariffs have been introduced for industrial customers with smart metering. But pricing pressure continues to severely constrain usage. Average consumption is just 56 kWh per year for households. This compares to 1800-2000 kWh per year in Botswana and Mauritius, which are comparably growing economies. Clearly, households will use a bare minimum, typically for lighting and electronics only. Charcoal and firewood are the economic choices for heating and cooking. This is despite their own high costs and inflation.
In the DRC, regulated domestic power use tariffs are much lower than industrial rates. However, up to now, SNEL has severely limited the power supply to Goma. The 2MW grid supply serves a city of almost 2 million people. But this is less power usage than most city blocks typically use in developed countries. Supply was rationed by the utility. Domestic users had no supply despite paying fees for a connection. To comment on pricing is therefore a moot issue. That is until SNEL restores supply to more users.
A clean energy future needs smart solutions
Hydragas studied and modelled the energy supply needs of Rwanda and DRC as part of our Lake Kivu gas production studies. We prepared several feasibility assessments on energy competitiveness and market size. The market was price sensitive. Our recommendation was to supply combined power and gas feeds to households.
We considered that power alone is only affordable to less than 20% of the population. Most customers would preferably use it for essential lighting and electronics. Charcoal was preferred for cooking. But the poorest used only firewood with no power. Gas, if distributed to homes, could supply the bulk of energy needs in almost all homes to complement electricity. The combined gas and power can be supplied cheaper than its alternatives.
Several sources can contribute to the power supply mix for Rwanda. This mix includes hydro, biomass (peat) thermal, solar PV, and thermal power from Kivu’s renewable gas. Wind and solar are seasonally less effective than in other parts of Africa, with power factors poor for 7-8 months a year. This is partly due to a few months annually of sustained winds. There are also short sunny seasons in the north and west, quite different from the south and east.
But the country has looked to retire its hired diesel generation fleet early. This has been its generation mainstay, but the cost is higher than the retail pricing. Power is still subsidized, consuming 2-4% of the country’s budget. They should re-deploy HFO thermal units as stand-by or for peaking power. Then Kivu gas-to-power can supply the base-load demand reliably and cost-effectively. With the further added capacity, this source can begin to supply export power to the East African Power Pool grid.
Balancing thermal energy and electrical power
But at the same time, Kivu gas can and should supply thermal energy. It is cheap and convenient heat energy for households and industries. A key impact of gas use is to halt or reverse deforestation. A capital investment need is a new national gas network. This will provide the backbone for gas transmission and distribution around the country.
The geography of Rwanda is perfect for running a cost-effective gas supply network, as an expanded form of the Vilankulo concept discussed above. It works because Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa. In fact, it is also one of the smallest. This situation, therefore, reduces the capital cost per user. We advocate using the Vilankulo concept, compatible with the new US and EU-based design standards for pipelines. It was developed in Mozambique because conventional North American or European standards could still cost more than the average family house in DRC and Rwanda. It is unaffordable to most residents and would kill the potential for widespread use.
How best to get gas into houses at a low cost?
It is simple to deploy with simple equipment supplies and limited training. It also supports an “Africa-appropriate” commercial model. This well-studied alternative can make distribution much more cost-effective. It is at the core of what made the gas program very effective in Mozambique.
Our team of Rory Harbinson and Fred Wilson, pictured above, led the gas network installation program in Mozambique. It ran from 1992 to 2014. Their practical solutions led to a cost reduction program for household gas. Another simplified approach was to eliminate 98% of the gas meters in households. It took five years of usage to pay for a gas meter for small users.
Lessons from Nigeria on commercial strategy
The commercial pricing model originated in Nigeria. Why even install a gas meter that costs as much as 3-5 years of gas usage? It will never pay back. Why specify the household gas fitting to be the same as Europe? In Africa, the cost of such a household gas installation will exceed the cost of the houses.
Installing HDPE plastic gas pipelines for domestic supply
We designed simpler gas systems using small 63 or 32-mm plastic piping for street mains. In fact, these operated at medium pressure, higher than in old cast-iron street piping in Europe. We buried lines along Mozambican streets with little or no paving. Further, we tapped in 12 mm house feeder lines. They fed gas to a simple pressure reducer, delivering gas to each house. The basic delivery systems are adequate for any 0.5 – 1.0 GJ per month users.
In 1992, the cost of connecting a house was $200. It included a two-plate burner to start. All of them are still operating 25 years later. By comparison, legacy systems in Europe or even South Africa cost $4,000 – $10,000, 20-50 times more expensive. In fact, we believe that this cheaper connection for Rwanda can cost $450 in 2020 for all costs from the city gate to the burner. This includes the starter set-up with a two-plate gas cooker. Indeed, lighting, water heating, gas refrigeration, barbecues, and full-size stoves can follow as needed, with piping upgraded for commercial users and larger houses.
A commercial model for our times
We prepared feasibility reports in the early 1990s for Mozambique’s local gas and power distribution. To cut costs to users, we made it simple and cheap to operate in rural Africa. The donors funding the scheme, from Scandinavia, asked a Norwegian expert to review our study.
To our amusement, the queries he raised included the following: Where is the fleet of vehicles for the utility staff? What is the budget for an office block for a computer billing and administration system? Where is the workshop to repair all the gas meters and test or calibrate them? Also, where are the trench diggers and earth-moving equipment? His list would have more than quadrupled the project cost and made gas unaffordable.
Where’s the budget for all the gas pipeline equipment?
But beyond installation, a key part of the commercial design does have benefits. These include further cost reductions and increased employment. Our view is that an “Africa ready” commercial model worked well in Nigerian cities for landlords in apartment blocks. They allocate points to each apartment by counting lights, stoves, TVs, water heaters, etc. Tenants paid a proportion of the full metered block usage, according to their own “points” count. Indeed it was accepted as fair and runs in most cities there. Because of how it works, cheating hurts and is visible to one’s neighbours.
Women empowerment: tens of thousands of part-time jobs created
A comparable gas model can create a part-time income for 10,000 – 20,000 women entrepreneurs in the Kivu provinces and Rwanda. They can train simply to become “block” franchisees in their neighborhoods. We configured a three-tier system with the following structure: At the top, a national gas transmission network and management team; next, a second-tier of town or district operators who franchise areas with up to thousands of users; and finally the women’s “block franchises” would be the third-tier.
These female entrepreneurs become the local distributor for up to 50 households in their “block”. Their role is to assess points regularly, monitor excess usage, and levy a monthly charge to users on the same metered block basis. They arrange for connections of new users and collect monthly charges. In East Africa, most such transactions are done as mobile phone transactions.
Mobile phone technology exists in Rwanda to manage such billing and payment systems for operators and users. It is widely used for other utilities and services. The block and district or town distributor earnings are a percentage of their block or district collections. There is easy visibility through the chain (blockchain?) to audit the chain of transactions. All this is available as a simple mobile phone app, connected to the town/suburb/ district franchisees and on to the national distributor.
A Black Rhino Held in a Stockade During its Relocation
Rhinos Return to their Original Habitat
Saving the Rhino campaigns have resulted in some of the black rhino being re-stocked back in Rwanda. They were virtually wiped out in 1994. Fast forward to June 2019 and another episode of saving the rhinos is re-establishing the species in a hame territory. They are now relocating with this effort, back to the Akagera Park that once had 50 rhino.
Rwanda has been leading the 25 year effort to save the mountain gorilla population. The Virunga National Park’s gorilla numbers returned from the brink. I visited the Virunga Gorillas National Park in 2003 with my project team. I was impressed to see how well protected they were. The Sabyinho gorilla family had armed guards tracking them. So now the Rhino population must have a good chance of repopulating their original habitat.
The five rhinos from European zoos and safari parks will bring to 20 the number of eastern black rhinos in Akagera. These are in addition to a number of the rhinos from South Africa in 2017.
Saving the Rhino will see animals raised in captivity will live on protected land
Pete Morkel is the veterinarian advising on the animal relocation. He is a cousin who was born in the same town as me in Zimbabwe, though I never met him. Indeed he was part of the 2017 relocation from South Africa. This plan has five rhinos flying from the Czech Republic’s Dvur Kralove zoo. Similarly Pete has many years of work experience with saving the rhino in South Africa. I heard last year that Pete Morkel is suffering from a rare cancer. Family is fundraising to get him on expensive treatment. I hoope he hets back to saving the rhino, as it is a difficult animal to manage safely.
Historically, South Africa has the largest, most threatened rhino population in the world. So there in South Africa, poachers kill up to 400 rhino per year. Most poachers are contracted by East Asian crime syndicates to provide just the horn of the rhino, valued higher than gold per kilogram. There, poachers slaughter herds of rhinos on contract.
They cut off their horns to sell to dealers in the underground markets in Asia. The composition of the horn is virtualy identical to human hair. It’s just keratin.
Imagine now, for a moment, that you go to a technical conference. First of its kind. Almost 150 people are there. Outside the windows we can see Lake Kivu. It’s all calm, pristine. Its blue waters lapped on the sandy beach. But everyone’s aware of strange, unexplained things in the deep. The stories were apocryphal, swimmers disappear, boats sink. So with lots of scientists invited, government staffers too, business people, we could learn. Some 20 countries are represented, maybe 25. Two nations were there, neighbours. But they had not been on speaking terms for years due to wars and even genocide. Quite enough tension and uncertainty at the start. This is where the “Management Prescriptions” started.
Still waters run deep in Lake Kivu
The professors spoke, a mix of authority and leading questions. There were limnologists, volcanologists, environmentalists, hydrologists. Scientists came with questions and their own answers, each setting their stalls as a subject authority. Each seemed sure of their standing; the pre-eminence of their ideas and interpretation. Government teams introduced themselves and let us know they were there to listen. Diplomats and multi-lateral agencies were there to listen too; the subject was complex and no-one seemed sure who actually had the answers.
What had to be agreed in the document?
All of us knew there was much to figure out in reaching consensus and common purpose. We’d heard about dangers, volcanoes and gas eruptions. Going in I only knew few of the attendees, all Ministry of Energy staffers.
This February 2007 conference was between the two countries bordering Lake Kivu, the DRC and Rwanda. The workshop in Gisenyi was held on lake Kivu’s shores. Indeed, the location was a constant reminder to discuss its safe development. The government of Rwanda had opened a cal five years earlier for developers to start producing gas for power. But studies undertaken showed early evidence that competing ideas on how to do that were uncoordinated. At worst they could be conflicting each other’s operations.
As day one rolled into day two, questions started to outnumber answers. And the answers did not all agree. The 1975 data was dated, but some more recent data from 2004 surveys was being interpreted. However some ideas clashed, understandings were at odds. But if anyone had hoped that we’d all come away with all the answers, they were wrong. We now knew more about what we didn’t know than we’d thought beforehand.
Why did we need them?
During that workshop, the two countries signed an MoU on next steps to be taken to establish the bilateral institutional framework. The framework was to be for the monitoring of Lake Kivu, for the safety of the population and for the environment. The starting point of reference was the 1986 “Socigaz” document that had been bilaterally agreed to govern the use of Lake Kivu for gas extraction.
But circumstances and design ideas had changed since then. The program was primarily to discuss the issues at play in organising more coordinated development of the lake and how to confirm or modify the older Socigaz regulations. The organisers also wished to table new data, new issues and further define the rules of use of the lake. Indeed, the core theme was again to promote lake safety.
But for coordination, the conference had to agree on how establishing common purpose and regulate it. As the conference entered its last session, time had run out to complete this objective. The convener co-opted a group of five experts to extend the discussion “for a few hours or days” and then report back to the organisers. This ad-hoc team of experts reviewed and considered acceptance the current version of rules. Their report-back would confirm their findings.
The series of meetings on Lake Kivu
This Expert Working Group of scientists and technicians reviewed the Socigaz document. But the group rejected its validity as a basis for further development of Lake Kivu. The consensus was that the document was insufficient and too simplistic for the purpose. This group then resolved to work on the new version of the rules and regulations for safe gas extraction from Lake Kivu.
In fact, the exercise extended by over six months. By then it was apparent that agreement was becoming more difficult. Many more issues and concerns arose from deeper analysis. Two schools of thought arose. The team started to question the technical premise on how degassing the lake would be done. At the core of the investigation, the team questioned whether the “legacy” method destroyed the natural safety structure, leaving it unsafe for the long term.
Finalising the MP document
EAWAG organised a follow-up conference in Kastanienbaum, Switzerland in October 2007. In it, the parties made significant progress in understanding impacts of extraction methods. They drafted an early version of the discussion. Later in May 2008, COWI facilitated a further conference of the Experts. John Boyle led the team’s first draft the Management Prescriptions for Lake Kivu Development. Dr Finn Hirslund of COWI hosted the event in Copenhagen, Denmark with World Bank sponsorship. The parties agreed to repeat the exercise a year later in Copenhagen to finalise the document.
The outcome of three years of work later was this key document. Then in June 2009 the experts and conveners of the conference issued as the Management Prescriptions for Lake Kivu Development.
Introduction to Management Prescriptions
1.1 Safe gas extraction in Lake Kivu
Countour Mapping of Lake Kivu Bathymetry and Mountains
The governments of Rwanda and the DRC wished to engage leading experts to explore beneficial ways of exploiting the methane resource in Lake Kivu. It needed to be in a safe, environmentally sound, yet economically profitable way. Reduction of the methane and carbon dioxide content of the waters of lake Kivu was necessary to reduce the risk of sudden eruption of these gases. Minister Albert Butare was Minister of State for Energy in Rwanda. In his role he reached out to all stakeholders, including the Ministry of Hydrocarbons in the DRC.
1.2 Rationale for the conferences
Since the signing of the bilateral MoU, the Expert Working Group has elaborated a Management Prescriptions document. This document delineates basic principles for determining the size, number, location and design of extraction operations. Indeed, it establishes mandatory requirements and guidelines for any gas extraction plant’s design and operation.
Copenhagen 2008 & 2009 Conferences Location
Also, the NCEA has provided further advice through its “Advice on Harvesting the Methane Resource and Monitoring the Stratification of Lake Kivu” of 27 August 2007. NCEA also provided its secretariat memo of February 2008. This was on a strategy and action plan for monitoring in Lake Kivu Monitoring, which includes required institutional steps. Meanwhile, the Rwandan government started the extraction of methane through its KP1 pilot plant.
Given that gas extraction operations involved high risk, they need to be done according to agreed-upon safety standards. But without having a bilateral legal and institutional context in which to operate. Thus the Government of Rwanda decided to call for a second conference. Indeed the topic was on safe gas extraction from Lake Kivu. Therefore the conference proceeded in order to come to such arrangements.
1.3 Conference objectives & outcomes
Structure of Management Prescriptions Document
Besides an exchange of most recent collective knowledge and insights, the conference’s objectives were two-fold:
(i) To agree on the need to establish a bilateral authority with regulatory mandate over Lake Kivu. The conference reached agreement on a road map towards it’s establishment and operational mandate;
(ii) To validate and adopt the Management Prescriptions document that the Expert Working Group prepared over the past two years.
Mr. John Boyle (World Bank) coordinated the ad-hoc Expert Working Group from March 2007 to May 2008. The expert working group members were: Dr Finn Hirslund, Mr Philip Morkel and Dr. Klaus Tietze. Then Dr. Martin Schmid and Prof. Alfred Wüest later joined the group.
John Boyle had left the Group before the May 2009 meeting of the experts and interested parties. Philip Morkel assumed the role as scribe for the final document for issue.
Attendees at the 2009 Copenhagen conference on Lake Kivu’s Management Prescriptions
Check out this Hydragas Sway Presentation for more about Hydragas Energy, in this unusual format. For that, you can use this link to access the presentation in Sway, a little used Microsoft Presentation format.
Sway is in fact view-able on any web browser. So try viewing the Sway presentation here now. It will give a quick insight on Lake Kivu’s development. Similarly, it will illustrate the approach used by Hydragas Energy to carry out Lake Kivu development.
See the Hydragas Sway presentation link below:
Panoramic of Mt Nyiragongo from Lake Kivu in wet season
Extract from the BOEM Article Showing the Location of New Under-sea MappingNorthern Gulf of Mexico deepwater bathymetry grid. We create this from 3-D seismic surveys. The grid defines water depth with 1.4 billion 12 × 12 meter cells. BOEM grid coverage is limited to the area defined by rainbow colors.
This article shows the use of high resolution of sea floor mapping. In fact the sea floor mapping in view in this article covers the Gulf of Mexico. So, by using high-res in this case, one provides better resolution and interpretation of sea-floor features. Indeed, this may well include methane hydrate resource patterns and history.
The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has now created and released a new regional seafloor data set. It reveals that dynamic environment with stunning new clarity. The data include detailed seismic surveys originally shot by 15 different companies involved in the oil and gas industry. In addition, BOEM gained permission to release the relevant proprietary data publicly in a freely downloadable aggregate map of the seafloor. The detailed report is referenced below.
A number of examples show the improved interpretation potential of the maps available with the higher resolution. The location of methane hydrates becomes distinctly more possible to determine.
