According to TechExplore, David Cuesta from the Spanish energy consultancy IDels managed this pioneering project called MEFCO2, to demonstrate the industry’s role in preserving renewable energy and absorbing the fluctuations in its production.
The project used carbon capture technology in a coal-fired power plant in Germany, and then stored the emissions resulting from it in the form of methanol, and this process serves to reduce the European Union’s imports of methanol, which is easy to store and transport, and it is currently produced from crude oil. As a renewable fuel, methanol is popular with energy companies interested in reducing carbon emissions.
The project, Cuesta said, “helps certain industries to de-carbonize, and make a profit from, the process, without it being a huge burden.”
Andrea Palarino, from Italy’s Institute of Intelligent Industrial Technologies, organized the Symbi Optima project for cooperation between factories as a source of emitted carbon, and energy companies, to take advantage of this as additional income for the plant in exchange for reducing costs for the company that produces energy and avoiding the purchase of some primary raw materials, and the project proved that cooperation between companies In this way, it reduces energy costs by 10% to 15%.
Palarino indicated that the aim of cooperation is to achieve financial benefits and to make permanent use of scarce resources in the production of renewable energy.
