News | Headlines
Vestas cyber attack ‘was ransomware’
Denmark Cyber security Integrated wind energy company Vestas suffered a cyber attack on 19 November that caused it to shut down internal operations. To counter and contain the attack, which the company described as a ‘cyber security incident’, IT systems were shut down across multiple business units and locations. Following the attack Vestas and its external partners worked to re-establish normal operations. On 29 November, having conducted ‘extensive investigations, forensics, restoration activities and hardening of its IT systems and IT infrastructure’ it was able to announce that almost all its systems were up and running.
Henrik Andersen, president and CEO, said “We have been through some tough days … and executive management and the directors are … very pleased that the incident did not impact wind turbine operations and almost
all our IT systems are running again. There is still a lot of work ahead of us to and we must remain extremely diligent towards cyber threats.”
Although Vestas said that it was close to resuming normal operations, the work and the investigations are still ongoing. However, the company maintains that there is no indication that the event has impacted customer and supply chain operations, which is supported by the forensic investigation carried out with the assistance of third-party experts. The cyber incident, which its investigations indicate was ransomware, impacted Vestas’ internal systems and resulted in data being compromised. In its latest statement the company said that the extent to which data has been compromised is still being investigated, but for now it appears that the data relates primarily to Vestas’ internal matters.
Call for
meaningful support for carbon removal
Nuclear research leads to storage breakthrough
Denmark Energy storage Research in molten salts at Danish company Seaborg Technologies originally intended for molten salt nuclear reactors has led to a potential breakthrough that could enable low cost, grid-scale energy storage. The company has developed a method to control corrosion of the otherwise highly corrosive sodium hydroxide, NaOH. Backed by the investment of €10m from current shareholders, Seaborg has launched a sister company, Hyme Energy ApS, to commercially pursue energy storage. The goal is to build a pilot plant within the next 18 months. The first commercial facility is expected to be under construction within three years. “Our mission in Hyme is to bring inexpensive, large-scale high-temperature energy storage to the market in significant quantities to help solve the challenges of fluctuating solar and wind energy. Thermal energy storage can be key in ... accelerating the deployment of wind and solar,” commented Ask Emil Løvschall-Jensen, Hyme CEO and co-founder of both Seaborg and Hyme.
The unique technology in Hyme is a technique for chemistry control that inhibits corrosion by sodium hydroxide. This technology was developed by Seaborg for its next generation Compact Molten Salt
Reactor. Hyme expects to be able to halve the price of long-term and large-scale energy storage facilities independently of geographical constraints.
CEO and co-founder of Seaborg, Troels Schönfeldt, said: “Normally no chemist in their right mind would look at anything as corrosive as sodium hydroxide. However, in the development of our reactor, we needed to use sodium hydroxide and were forced to develop these methods.”
Ask Emil Løvschall-Jensen says: “We are pursuing the commercialisation of hydroxides as the key component in large-scale energy storage, and doing it in a separate company allows our new company, Hyme, to focus on succeeding with energy storage while still leveraging the synergies that come with collaborating with our sister company, Seaborg.” ● Sodium hydroxide is produced from seawater as a by-product of chlorine production and is available at about 16% of the price of the salts currently used for storage. Sodium hydroxide also has a higher specific heat capacity, making it more space efficient. A 1 GWh facility with NaOH occupies a similar footprint to the plot of a typical family house. Together these effects reduce the specific cost of salt as a storage medium by approximately 90%.
10 | November/December 2021 |
www.modernpowersystems.com
Europe Carbon removal Carbon Gap, a not-for-profit independent research and advocacy launched at COP26 in Glasgow, has called on UK and European governments to lead on supporting and scaling up techniques to remove carbon directly from the air (usually referred to as carbon removal), alongside immediate emissions cuts. Carbon Gap wants to shine a spotlight on the need to accelerate progress on carbon removal and the unique opportunities for European governments to lead in this crucial sector. This includes developing standards, investing in research and innovation, and providing deployment incentives. Carbon Gap also advocates for increased ambition to reach net-zero targets faster and begin delivering net-negative emissions, in order to address historical emissions already in the atmosphere. The new organisation is funded by leading climate philanthropies, including the Quadrature Climate and Grantham foundations, and does not take funding from any corporate actors in order to ensure independence and objectivity.
“Carbon removal is essential, and while it isn’t a substitute for emissions cuts, it cannot wait. I’m proud to be supporting Carbon Gap to drive carbon removal policy in Europe. Taking climate change seriously requires significant government action, and Carbon Gap will be a leading voice for how carbon removal can begin to scale quickly and responsibly,” commented Baroness Bryony Worthington, lead author of the UK’s 2008 Climate Change Act.
Carbon Gap points to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s scenarios for keeping warming below 1.5°C, which show that billions of tons of carbon dioxide need to be removed from the atmosphere cumulatively before 2050, and on a continuing basis after 2050. More recent analysis from the Energy Transition Commission showed the need for 220 billion tons of cumulative CO2 to be removed from the atmosphere and stored by 2050, the equivalent to five to six years of today’s emissions. Given increased recognition of carbon removal’s role in achieving climate targets and the increased urgency for action, Carbon Gap believes carbon removal will move from the periphery of the climate debate to join emissions reductions as another major pillar in achieving our climate goals. It expects to see a focus on carbon removal at COP27 in Egypt in 2022.
Carbon Gap’s intends also that its policy work will also focus on ensuring that the carbon removal industry is a lever for economic development and global climate justice.
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