Supporting the energy transition: Decarbonising Mena’s gas turbine fleet

As we approach the new year, the challenge to provide affordable and sustainable electricity to the planet’s population remains a major challenge for policymakers. In this endevour, gas-fired power generation provides an easy solution in the absence of reliable sources of renewables across the world, experts say.

Up to 770 million people around the world still lack access to reliable electricity and while renewables are growing rapidly — and these investments are essential — increases are not occurring fast enough. Renewable energy is still projected to provide less than half of global electricity supply by 2040. Furthermore, high renewables penetration can lead to fluctuations in power supply that cannot yet be addressed by today’s battery energy storage solutions. “The challenge in the power sector is not quite as straightforward as simply providing lower carbon power. We need to solve for the energy trilemma of supplying more reliable, affordable, and sustainable power, in the context of increasing global demand for electricity,” explains Joseph Anis, President & CEO of GE Gas Power Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

Gas power provides flexible, dependable capacity that can be ramped up or down quickly regardless of the time of day, season, or weather. It also has the benefit of the lowest carbon emissions of fossil fuel-generated electricity. Furthermore, existing and future gas power plants can avoid carbon dioxide lock-in by using low-carbon fuels, combined with carbon capture technologies. “The accelerated deployment of renewable and gas power together can enable substantive emissions reduction at scale now, while continuing to advance the technologies for low or near-zero carbon power generation,” Anis said.

Experts say that the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region has many ingredients needed to produce blue and green hydrogen — vast amounts of land for renewable energy projects; access to sunshine and sea water; depleted oil and gas reservoirs to safely store carbon dioxide; and large reserves of natural gas. Mena also has a strong concentration of energy-intensive industries such as smelters, oil and gas, cement, and others. Carbon capture solutions can be deployed effectively in these industrial clusters.

Given this important role of gas power today and into the foreseeable future, as well as the billions of dollars invested in gas turbines in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) and around the world, it is critical to see how the installed base can be decarbonised both in the immediate and longer terms. “When looking at the power sector, decarbonisation can be thought of as the reduction of carbon emissions on a gram per kilowatt hour basis. Anything we can do to reduce the intensity of carbon emissions helps climate efforts,” says Anis.

Upgrades: immediate solutions that pay for themselves

Here is where upgrades can come in. “Upgrade solutions that are available today can simultaneously increase the efficiency of gas turbines, while reducing fuel consumption per kilowatt hour of electricity generated. These solutions pay for themselves and can be implemented in a few months,” said Steven Kessinger, vice-president of contractual services at GE Gas Power.

In the UAE, GE Gas Power enhanced the efficiency and performance of a GT13E2 gas turbine by  installing the MXL2 upgrade on it during a project executed in 2020. The initiative followed the successful completion of similar upgrades on two other gas turbines in Abu Dhabi. Despite the significant challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic at the time, the project was completed within six months. The technology upgrade increased the total output of the turbine by up to 10.7 MW, using the same amount of fuel.

In Qatar, GE is providing its Advanced Gas Path (AGP) upgrade to install on four 9F gas turbines at a smelter. It is expected to help increase power output by up to 96.7 MW across the four units with improved plant efficiency and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions for the same level of power output by up to 67,000 tonnes annually — the equivalent of taking up to 14,000 cars off Qatar’s roads.

Looking ahead, as these solutions scale up further and become more economical, they offer potential pathways for gas turbine technologies to help address the energy trilemma and become destination technologies in the transition to net-zero carbon emissions.

• Business