Asset Retirement Obligation (ARO) is becoming the focus of many oil and gas companies around the world. It is a critical aspect of the Exploration and Production business which has suffered professional neglect for too long. As a subject matter, the principles of ARO owe credence to both national and international legislative perspectives. Its future impact equally draws from visible and disruptive environmental dimension. It is one link that connects the obligation of oil companies to their host governments and surviving communities. ARO will play a major role in valuation of Nigerian petroleum assets. It can also provide a regulatory mechanism to hold a licensee accountable to Nigerian legislation governing environmental liability for field reclamation and retirement of oil & gas installations by end of useful (economic) life of a project. Viewed as the potential elephant in the room, this lifecycle environmental liability can sometimes exceed terminal asset value, unless it is carefully managed. Experts believe that Nigeria’s ARO liability may exceed $9 Billion USD if properly assessed. More so, establishing ARO will help the regulator manage and enforce the law as well as bind the licensees to their contractual obligation to Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and various lenders. To define ARO, certain legislative, financial, technical, environmental and commercial criteria must be considered when estimating and assigning liability. The objective is to identify existing gaps in the Nigerian fiscal, legislative and regulatory practices and proffer ways to improve the situation going forward. This paper therefore reviews the key issues relating to Nigeria’s ARO, ranging from international to domestic legislative provisions, which include, but not limited to laws, regulations and guidelines. On one hand, it highlights relevant global best practices on the subject and makes policy recommendations as suggestions of what can be done to close existing compliance gaps. On another hand, it also outlines various schemes that Nigeria and its operators can adopt to safeguard their long-term economic and environmental interests. Consequently, the proposal could form one of the cornerstones upon which a future abandonment blueprint can be developed for Nigeria starting from proactive and retroactive implementation of the proposed framework.
{"title":"A Review of Asset Retirement Obligations of Nigerian Oil Companies","authors":"K. Ojukwu","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3663048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3663048","url":null,"abstract":"Asset Retirement Obligation (ARO) is becoming the focus of many oil and gas companies around the world. It is a critical aspect of the Exploration and Production business which has suffered professional neglect for too long. As a subject matter, the principles of ARO owe credence to both national and international legislative perspectives. Its future impact equally draws from visible and disruptive environmental dimension. It is one link that connects the obligation of oil companies to their host governments and surviving communities. \u0000ARO will play a major role in valuation of Nigerian petroleum assets. It can also provide a regulatory mechanism to hold a licensee accountable to Nigerian legislation governing environmental liability for field reclamation and retirement of oil & gas installations by end of useful (economic) life of a project. Viewed as the potential elephant in the room, this lifecycle environmental liability can sometimes exceed terminal asset value, unless it is carefully managed. Experts believe that Nigeria’s ARO liability may exceed $9 Billion USD if properly assessed. \u0000More so, establishing ARO will help the regulator manage and enforce the law as well as bind the licensees to their contractual obligation to Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and various lenders. To define ARO, certain legislative, financial, technical, environmental and commercial criteria must be considered when estimating and assigning liability. The objective is to identify existing gaps in the Nigerian fiscal, legislative and regulatory practices and proffer ways to improve the situation going forward. \u0000This paper therefore reviews the key issues relating to Nigeria’s ARO, ranging from international to domestic legislative provisions, which include, but not limited to laws, regulations and guidelines. On one hand, it highlights relevant global best practices on the subject and makes policy recommendations as suggestions of what can be done to close existing compliance gaps. On another hand, it also outlines various schemes that Nigeria and its operators can adopt to safeguard their long-term economic and environmental interests. Consequently, the proposal could form one of the cornerstones upon which a future abandonment blueprint can be developed for Nigeria starting from proactive and retroactive implementation of the proposed framework.","PeriodicalId":311505,"journal":{"name":"EnergyRN: Photovoltaics (Topic)","volume":"102 13","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113945399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
F. Maier, M. Schneider, J. Schrattenholzer, W. Artner, K. Hradil, A. Artemenko, A. Kromka, U. Schmid
The flexoelectric effect describes the electromechanical coupling of a strain gradient to a polarization and vice versa. This effect scales linearly with permittivity and strain gradients can get very high for dimensions on the micro and nanoscale. Even though the flexoelectric effect can be best exploited within micro or nanoelectromechanical systems (M/NEMS) applications, it has not been established in today`s M/NEMS device architectures as other transducer principles, like piezoelectricity. In this work, values of the converse flexoelectric coefficient for one of the most promising flexoelectric materials, titanium dioxide (TiO2) are provided. The experimental results are based on a carefull characterization of IrO2/TiO2/IrO2 cantilevers. Besides CMOS compatiblity TiO2 is selected as functional thin film material as it offers a very high permittivity and shows no hysteresis or saturation effects as it is neither ferro- nor paraelectric. Additionally, it guarantees a low cost, lead-free realization and can be directly integrated in a standard silicon MEMS fabrication process by sputter deposition. In order to correctly determine the flexoelectric coefficient, other electromechanical coupling effects are considered and assessed. The flexoelectric coefficient is shown to be μ eff= 1.78 ± 0.16 nC m-1 at 10 kHz. The flexoelectric coupling constant with a value of 2.75 V is in good agreement with that theoretically predicted by Kogan`s estimate of 3.14 V.
{"title":"Flexoelectricity in Polycrystalline Tio 2 Thin Films","authors":"F. Maier, M. Schneider, J. Schrattenholzer, W. Artner, K. Hradil, A. Artemenko, A. Kromka, U. Schmid","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3539257","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3539257","url":null,"abstract":"The flexoelectric effect describes the electromechanical coupling of a strain gradient to a polarization and vice versa. This effect scales linearly with permittivity and strain gradients can get very high for dimensions on the micro and nanoscale. Even though the flexoelectric effect can be best exploited within micro or nanoelectromechanical systems (M/NEMS) applications, it has not been established in today`s M/NEMS device architectures as other transducer principles, like piezoelectricity. In this work, values of the converse flexoelectric coefficient for one of the most promising flexoelectric materials, titanium dioxide (TiO2) are provided. The experimental results are based on a carefull characterization of IrO2/TiO2/IrO2 cantilevers. Besides CMOS compatiblity TiO2 is selected as functional thin film material as it offers a very high permittivity and shows no hysteresis or saturation effects as it is neither ferro- nor paraelectric. Additionally, it guarantees a low cost, lead-free realization and can be directly integrated in a standard silicon MEMS fabrication process by sputter deposition. In order to correctly determine the flexoelectric coefficient, other electromechanical coupling effects are considered and assessed. The flexoelectric coefficient is shown to be μ eff= 1.78 ± 0.16 nC m-1 at 10 kHz. The flexoelectric coupling constant with a value of 2.75 V is in good agreement with that theoretically predicted by Kogan`s estimate of 3.14 V.","PeriodicalId":311505,"journal":{"name":"EnergyRN: Photovoltaics (Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130904234","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Photovoltaics (PV) is on the way to become a global key energy technology. As PV is replacing fossil fuel based technology, it contributes to reduce the global CO2-emissions. However, it should be kept in mind that the fabrication of PV modules is connected with CO2 emission. To fulfil the Paris climate goals, the global PV industry needs to grow in such a way that it will have a significant share in global carbon emissions. Research-driven approaches to reduce the carbon footprint of PV have strong impact on this development. We identify the glass substrate and encapsulation as the ultimate lower boundary for carbon footprint for long-term stable grid connected PV technologies. By the in-situ concept for perovskite solar cells we introduce a holistic design approach guided by this lower limit for photovoltaic modules with a low carbon footprint of only 5% of current silicon PV. The feasibility of this idea is demonstrated by the fabrication of an efficient pre-encapsulated perovskite in-situ cell. The device shows record efficiencies of certified, stabilized 9.3 %. This is the highest reported efficiency of such solar cells with lowest carbon footprint.
{"title":"Constraints and Opportunities for Co2-Neutral Photovoltaics: In-Situ Perovskite Solar Cell Manufacturing Enables Reaching the Ultimate Carbon Footprint Limit of the Glass Substrate","authors":"L. Wagner, S. Mastroianni, A. Hinsch","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3345549","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3345549","url":null,"abstract":"Photovoltaics (PV) is on the way to become a global key energy technology. As PV is replacing fossil fuel based technology, it contributes to reduce the global CO2-emissions. However, it should be kept in mind that the fabrication of PV modules is connected with CO2 emission. To fulfil the Paris climate goals, the global PV industry needs to grow in such a way that it will have a significant share in global carbon emissions. Research-driven approaches to reduce the carbon footprint of PV have strong impact on this development. We identify the glass substrate and encapsulation as the ultimate lower boundary for carbon footprint for long-term stable grid connected PV technologies. By the in-situ concept for perovskite solar cells we introduce a holistic design approach guided by this lower limit for photovoltaic modules with a low carbon footprint of only 5% of current silicon PV. The feasibility of this idea is demonstrated by the fabrication of an efficient pre-encapsulated perovskite in-situ cell. The device shows record efficiencies of certified, stabilized 9.3 %. This is the highest reported efficiency of such solar cells with lowest carbon footprint.","PeriodicalId":311505,"journal":{"name":"EnergyRN: Photovoltaics (Topic)","volume":"245 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115009235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We do comparison between maximal and daily average production of photovoltaic (PV) and wind energy based on a transmission operator in Germany by using statistical analysis with di erent seasonality function. We adopt sun intensity as a seasonal function for PV and trigonometric function for wind, while the deseasonalized data are modelled by an autoregressive process. The stochastic component of both energies are rather well captured by skew normal distribution. Weak anticorrelation found between PV's and wind's residuals suggest that the well balanced of renewable energy supply is difficult to achieve. However, we can exploit this feature as a risk management strategy such as quanto options for non-renewable energy producers to hedge against high renewable energy generation.
{"title":"Statistical Analysis of Photovoltaic and Wind Power Generation in Germany","authors":"Noor Ibrahim","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3080152","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3080152","url":null,"abstract":"We do comparison between maximal and daily average production of photovoltaic (PV) and wind energy based on a transmission operator in Germany by using statistical analysis with di erent seasonality function. We adopt sun intensity as a seasonal function for PV and trigonometric function for wind, while the deseasonalized data are modelled by an autoregressive process. The stochastic component of both energies are rather well captured by skew normal distribution. Weak anticorrelation found between PV's and wind's residuals suggest that the well balanced of renewable energy supply is difficult to achieve. However, we can exploit this feature as a risk management strategy such as quanto options for non-renewable energy producers to hedge against high renewable energy generation.","PeriodicalId":311505,"journal":{"name":"EnergyRN: Photovoltaics (Topic)","volume":"101 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122682664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article revisits an analysis by Frondel, Ritter and Schmidt (2008) of Germany’s Renewable Energy Act, which legislates a system of feed-in tariff s to promote the use of renewable energies. As in the original article, we argue that Germany’s support scheme subsidizes renewable energy technologies not based on their long-term market potential, but rather on their relative lack of competitiveness, with the photovoltaics (PV) technology enjoying high feed-in tariffs, currently over double those of onshore wind. The result is explosive costs with little to show for either environmental or employment benefits. Indeed, we document that the immense costs foreseen by Frondel and colleagues have materialized: Our updated estimate of the subsidies for PV, at 100 Bn €, exceeds their expectations by about 60%. Moreover, with installed PV capacities growing at a rapid rate, these costs will continue to accumulate, diverting resources from more cost-effective climate protection instruments.
{"title":"Germany’s Solar Cell Promotion: An Unfolding Disaster","authors":"M. Frondel, C. Schmidt, Colin Vance","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2122527","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2122527","url":null,"abstract":"This article revisits an analysis by Frondel, Ritter and Schmidt (2008) of Germany’s Renewable Energy Act, which legislates a system of feed-in tariff s to promote the use of renewable energies. As in the original article, we argue that Germany’s support scheme subsidizes renewable energy technologies not based on their long-term market potential, but rather on their relative lack of competitiveness, with the photovoltaics (PV) technology enjoying high feed-in tariffs, currently over double those of onshore wind. The result is explosive costs with little to show for either environmental or employment benefits. Indeed, we document that the immense costs foreseen by Frondel and colleagues have materialized: Our updated estimate of the subsidies for PV, at 100 Bn €, exceeds their expectations by about 60%. Moreover, with installed PV capacities growing at a rapid rate, these costs will continue to accumulate, diverting resources from more cost-effective climate protection instruments.","PeriodicalId":311505,"journal":{"name":"EnergyRN: Photovoltaics (Topic)","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129221278","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As the Ontario government has recognized that solar photovoltaic (PV) energy conversion is a solution to satisfying society's energy demands while reducing the adverse anthropogenic impacts on the global environment that compromise social welfare, they have begun to generate policy and funding programs to support financial incentives for PV. This paper provides a financial analysis for investment in a 1 GW per year turnkey amorphous silicon PV manufacturing plant. The financial benefits for both the provincial and federal governments were quantified for: i) full construction subsidy, ii) construction subsidy and sale, iii) partially subsidize construction, iv) a publicly owned plant, v) loan guarantee for construction, and vi) an income tax holiday. Revenues for the governments are derived from: taxation (personal, corporate, and sales), sales of panels in Ontario, and saved health, environmental and economic costs associated with offsetting coal-fired electricity. Both governments enjoyed positive cash flows from these investments in less than 12 years and in many of the scenarios both governments earned well over 8% on investments from 100s of millions to $2.4 billion. The results showed that it is in the financial best interest of both the Ontario and Canadian federal governments to implement aggressive fiscal policy to support large-scale PV manufacturing.
{"title":"Financial Return for Government Support Financial Return for Government Support of Large-Scale Thin-Film Solar Photovoltaic Manufacturing in Canada","authors":"K. Branker, Joshua M. Pearce","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2010149","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2010149","url":null,"abstract":"As the Ontario government has recognized that solar photovoltaic (PV) energy conversion is a solution to satisfying society's energy demands while reducing the adverse anthropogenic impacts on the global environment that compromise social welfare, they have begun to generate policy and funding programs to support financial incentives for PV. This paper provides a financial analysis for investment in a 1 GW per year turnkey amorphous silicon PV manufacturing plant. The financial benefits for both the provincial and federal governments were quantified for: i) full construction subsidy, ii) construction subsidy and sale, iii) partially subsidize construction, iv) a publicly owned plant, v) loan guarantee for construction, and vi) an income tax holiday. Revenues for the governments are derived from: taxation (personal, corporate, and sales), sales of panels in Ontario, and saved health, environmental and economic costs associated with offsetting coal-fired electricity. Both governments enjoyed positive cash flows from these investments in less than 12 years and in many of the scenarios both governments earned well over 8% on investments from 100s of millions to $2.4 billion. The results showed that it is in the financial best interest of both the Ontario and Canadian federal governments to implement aggressive fiscal policy to support large-scale PV manufacturing.","PeriodicalId":311505,"journal":{"name":"EnergyRN: Photovoltaics (Topic)","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131798026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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