Gert Jan Kramer

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Full) at Utrecht University

Conceptions of a future hydrogen economy have undergone a significant evolution over the past 50+ years. This study identifies three distinct 'Waves', or periods of high expectations for a hydrogen economy. The First and Second Waves were followed by declining optimism; the Third Wave is ongoing today. The three Waves are analyzed through a multi-m...

High-Temperature Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (HT-ATES) can be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from heating. The thermal recovery efficiency is the main parameter indicating the performance of an HT-ATES system and it is influenced by multiple aquifer properties and storage characteristics. This study presents a method for estimating reco...

Plastic production and consumption contribute to climate change and the depletion of non-renewable fossil resources, necessitating a shift towards a circular economy. This study explored the potential of pyrolysis as a novel approach to managing plastic waste and achieving plastic circularity in the Netherlands. Specifically, we focused on the pyro...

Stand-alone hydrogen production from cheap renewable power, notably solar, has received considerable attention as a way to produce fuel and feedstock for a future climate-neutral energy system. Here we assess the integration of green hydrogen production and the deployment of electrolysers with a power system that is progressively decarbonized by th...

Background To reduce the effects of climate change, the current fossil-based energy system must transition to a low-carbon system based largely on renewables. In both academic literature and non-academic discourse concerning the energy transition, resilience is frequently mentioned as an additional objective or requirement. Despite its frequent use...

To mitigate climate change and safeguard energy security, it is necessary to limit car dependence, reduce car weights, and shift to alternative car powertrains. This study therefore looked into the real-world specific energy consumption and CO2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{...

Reaching the climate goals of the Paris agreement requires massive investments in new innovative low-carbon energy technologies and projects. Project risk is a significant factor to hold back such investments. We examine the role of governments and public investments in the early phases of offshore wind power. We expect that government risk taking...

Introduction Cities are taking up services of social importance under the (re)municipalisation movement. The Dutch government embarked on an ambitious heat transition and proposed in 2022 to make all district heating projects public or semi-public, with a majority public share. This proposal has sparked intense debates among groups in favour of and...

This paper analyses how institutional constellations and their associated mode of risk allocation are reflected in the choice of policy instruments for the promotion of offshore wind power. Using the Varieties of Capitalism framework we expect that governments in Liberal Market Economies (LME) tend to use policy instruments that privatise investmen...

Municipalities are key actors in planning and enabling the transition in the built environment to sustainable heat systems. Literature on the municipal experiences in the early phases of the heat transition is scarce. This paper addresses this gap by depicting the approaches of twenty-eight municipalities in the Netherlands. It aims to assess the m...

This paper analyses how institutional constellations and their associated mode of risk allocation were reflected in the choice of policy instruments for the promotion of offshore wind power in Denmark, the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands between 1990 and 2020. New technologies like offshore wind require large capital investments, expose...

This paper is written in response to the paper “How green is blue hydrogen?” by R. W. Howarth and M. Z. Jacobson. It aims at highlighting and discussing the method and assumptions of that paper, and thereby providing a more balanced perspective on blue hydrogen, which is in line with current best available practices and future plant specifications...

Photoelectrochemical splitting of water is potentially a sustainable and affordable solution to produce hydrogen from sun light. Given the infancy stage of technology development, it is important to compare the different experimental concepts and identify the most promising routes. The performance of photoelectrochemical devices is typically measur...

Climate change affects the business environment, and companies need future‐oriented information to build climate resilience. To this end, companies are encouraged to conduct climate change scenario analysis, as recommended by the Task Force on Climate‐Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). However, companies' actual adoption of this practice is limi...

As the world runs out of time to meet its climate targets, the old saying that energy policy should be ‘all of the above’, namely that we should not rule out options, comes ever closer to being a hard truth. This has particular implications for carbon capture and storage (CCS). For well over a generation the world has had a wavering stance towards...

We used a combination of logistic and multilinear regression models to analyze how the built environment and people's sociodemographic characteristics are related to energy consumption for personal mobility in the Netherlands. This energy consumption was accurately and comprehensively quantified based on distances travelled with a large number of m...

This paper analyses how institutional constellations and their associated mode of risk allocation were reflected in the choice of policy instruments for the promotion of offshore wind power in Denmark, the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands between 1990 and 2020. New technologies like offshore wind require large capital investments, expose...

This work provides a comparative technical assessment of three technologies for CO2 removal from air: two aqueous-scrubbing processes and one solid sorbent process. We compute productivity and exergy and energy consumption using process simulations and mathematical optimization. Moreover, we evaluate the cost range and discuss the challenges for la...

Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) has been recognized as an important means of mitigating global climate change, but apart from several pilots, it has not yet been successfully implemented on the large scale needed to live up to the expectations as a mitigation method. In Netherlands, the option of CCS has been the subject of debate for a long...

The role of hydrogen in future energy systems is widely acknowledged: from fuel for difficult-to-decarbonize applications, to feedstock for chemicals synthesis, to energy storage for high penetration of undispatchable renewable electricity. While several literature studies investigate such energy systems, the details of how electrolysers and renewa...

Seasonal thermal energy storage (STES) holds great promise for storing summer heat for winter use. It allows renewable resources to meet the seasonal heat demand without resorting to fossil-based back up. This paper presents a techno-economic literature review of STES. Six STES technologies are reviewed and an overview of the representative project...

This contribution presents an integer-linear model of a post-combustion carbon capture plant featuring discrete sizing, part load operation and dynamic behavior. In particular, the model covers a design space from 200 tCO2/h (size of Petra Nova) down to 7.5 tCO2/h, a part load operation range from 50% to 100%, and a CO2 concentration range from 7.5...

We review the status of a 1.4 GW, 8 GWh underground pumped hydro storage (U-PHS) project in the southern Netherlands, which has been under development since the 1980s. Its history shows how the prospect of a large-scale U-PHS for The Netherlands (a country whose proverbial flatness prohibits PHS) has been attractive in every decade, based on proven...

The present paper reports a techno-economic analysis of two solar assisted hydrogen production technologies: a photoelectrochemical (PEC) system and its major competitor, a photovoltaic system connected to a conventional water electrolyzer (PV-E system). A comparison between these two types was performed to identify the more promising technology ba...

Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting is a promising approach to drive green, carbon-free production of hydrogen (H2). In ‘classic’ water splitting, oxygen (O2) is formed at the anode as a by-product. It has been suggested that substitution of anodic O2 production with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) could increase the financial attractiveness of PEC...

The deployment of diverse energy storage technologies, with the combination of daily, weekly and seasonal storage dynamics, allows for the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per unit energy provided. In particular, the production, storage and re-utilization of hydrogen starting from renewable energy has proven to be one of the most promisi...

LCA is a well-known assessment tool that identifies and provides insights on the environmental impacts of products and services over their lifecycle. The guidance provided by the existing manuals typically applies to modelling and assessing environmental impacts ex-post, meaning that information is available from empirical experience after products...

A detailed techno-economic analysis of a novel Direct Air Capture (DAC) process has been carried out. In this process, carbon dioxide is separated from ambient air through wet scrubbing with an aqueous potassium hydroxide solution, while the solvent regeneration and CO2 recovery is carried out through Bipolar Membrane Electrodialysis (BPMED), a nov...

A one-dimensional and stationary reactor model is presented to describe the catalytic conversion of a gaseous hydrocarbon fuel with air and steam to synthesis gas by autothermal reforming (ATR) and catalytic partial oxidation (CPO). The model defines two subsequent sections in the reactor, namely an upstream oxidation section, and a downstream refo...

In this work, we investigate the design and operation of an energy system for the production of a carbon-rich CO2-neutral fuel, i.e. where hydrogen reacts with CO2 from air to give synthetic methane. As the systems consists of multiple energy conversion and storage technologies, we make use of the energy hub approach coupled with MILP optimization...

Energy return on investment (EROI) is a useful physical metric to compare the utility of energy production processes and their development over time. The concept has been extended from its physical, process-based origin to one that describes the societal metabolism. As such, EROI has been used to speculate about the prospects of humanity in a late-...

District heating represents a viable way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the built environment. This paper aims to assess the extent to which the market revenues of multiple heat production technologies can cover their fixed costs in a competitive wholesale district heating market. Marginal-cost pricing is applied in a case study of the Nethe...

Transparent, consistent accounting of climate-related energy targets is a fundamental building block to the architecture of international climate agreements. Many of these climate targets focus on the transition of the energy system which has led to the development of various energy transition scenarios. Now that fossil resources are being replaced...

Full decarbonisation of the electricity system is one of the key elements to limit global warming. As this transition takes place, the electricity system must maintain system adequacy and remain affordable to consumers. In liberalised electricity markets investors are seen as key actors driving this transition. Due to the intermittent character of...

Oscar Kraan obtained his PhD in 2019 from Leiden University on the thesis entitled “On the Emergence of the Energy Transition.” His thesis work, done in collaboration between Leiden University and Shell, focused on the development and application of agent-based simulation models for the energy transition. Oscar holds a bachelor’s degree in physics...

We analyse the relation between institutions (political economy) and energy transition, i.e. coal-fired power phase-out. Our comparative research contrasts UK coal policy (liberalisation + market-wide carbon tax, Carbon Price Floor) with less effective policies; decades of negotiations and veto play in Germany, Spain and Poland. Institutions suppor...

The Sabatier reaction (that is, CO 2 methanation) is undergoing a revival for two main reasons. First, the power-to-gas concept offers the prospect of large-scale recycling of (point source) CO 2 emissions, in combination with the use of large quantities of renewable energy to form methane. When this can be achieved in a cost-effective manner, it c...

The deployment of low-emission alternative fuels is crucial to decarbonise the transport sector. A number of alternatives like hydrogen or dimethyl ether/methanol synthesised using CO2 as feedstock for fuel production (hereafter refer to “CO2-based fuels”) have been proposed to combat climate change. However, the decarbonisation potential of CO2-ba...

Understanding the possible transition pathways of the energy system requires the integration of human behaviour in energy system models. In order to model the influence of actor behaviour we have developed ACT (Agent-Based Model of Critical Transitions), an agent-based model inspired by an existing conceptualisation of critical transitions. ACT all...

Meeting climate goals is a particular challenge for countries that combine extensive use of coal as a fuel for power generation with a significant history of coal mining. These countries are locked in on the use of coal as a fuel, even when domestic coal mining is internationally uncompetitive. We show how the institutional constellation of these c...

In this paper we investigate the prospects for the large-scale use of low-emission energy technologies in Africa. Many African countries have recently experienced substantial economic growth and aim at fulfilling much of the energy needs associated with continuing along paths of economic expansion by exploiting their large domestic potentials of re...

Now that renewable technologies are both technically and commercially mature, the imperfect rational behaviour of investors becomes a critical factor in the future success of the energy transition. Here, we take an agent-based approach to model investor decision making in the electricity sector by modelling investors as actors with different (heter...

In this perspective I argue that the term ‘disruptive innovation’ is at best too narrow and at worst meaningless to describe the important transformation of energy in the light of the pressing problem of climate change and the ambition to reach the targets of the Paris accord. Breaking the term apart, however, into disruption and innovation opens u...

To attain a better understanding of the energy transition we have applied Agent Based Modelling (ABM) to Integrated Assessment Modelling (IAM) in an abstract model with which we developed a proof of concept model of society’s response to a changing climate and energy system. Although there is no doubt that large scale neoclassical IAMs have provide...

We introduce several new resilience metrics for quantifying the resilience of critical material supply chains to disruptions, and validate these metrics using the 2010 rare earth element (REE) crisis as a case study. Our method is a novel application of Event Sequence Analysis, supplemented with interviews of actors across the entire supply chain....

Modeling of the surface segregation in Cu-Pt using a DFT-based MEAM potential and Monte Carlo.

In the book Nature’s Economy, the intellectual historian and writer Donald Worster describes how humans’ view of nature has been bookended by two different intellectual traditions through the centuries: Arcadianism and imperialism. The idea of Arcadia is inspired by humans’ desire to live in harmony with nature, while imperialism represents the equ...

Most carbon capture and storage (CCS) envisions capturing CO2 from flue gas. Direct air capture (DAC) of CO2 has hitherto been deemed unviable because of the higher energy associated with capture at low atmospheric concentrations. We present a Life Cycle Assessment of coal-fired electricity generation that compares monoethanolamine (MEA) based post...

The road map of fusion power is compared to the development and deployment of other energy technologies. A generic deployment model is presented, which describes the fastest deployment (of any new technology) achievable with the constraint that the industrial capacity that needs to be built up must be continuous and should not overshoot the replace...

In 2010 Chinese export restrictions caused the price of the rare earth element neodymium to increase by a factor of 10, only to return to almost normal levels in the following months. This despite the fact that the restrictions were not lifted. The significant price peak shows that this material supply chain was only weakly resistant to a major sup...

Neodymium, one of the more critically scarce rare earth metals, is often used in sustainable technologies. In this study we investigate the potential contribution of neodymium recycling to reducing scarcity in supply, with a case study on computer hard disk drives (HDDs). We first review the literature on neodymium production and recycling potentia...

More than 40 years ago, the Club of Rome published the scenario and modeling study The Limits to Growth. Since then, the report has stimulated discussions about the sustainability, or collapse, of the global economy and population. One of its authors, Jorgen Randers, now gives his best guess for the next 40 years.

Within the context of carbon dioxide (CO2) utilization there is an increasing interest in using CO2 as a resource to produce sustainable liquid hydrocarbon fuels. When these fuels are produced by solely using solar energy they are labelled as solar fuels. In the recent discourse on solar fuels intuitive arguments are used to support the prospects o...

Neodymium is one of the more critical rare earth elements with respect to current availability, and is most often used in high performance magnets. In this paper we compare the virgin production route of these magnets with two hypothetical recycling processes in terms of environmental impact. The first recycling process looks at manual dismantling...

The invention relates to a process for the production of hydrogen and carbon dioxide from a hydrocarbonaceous feedstock, comprising: a) supplying a gaseous hydrocarbonaceous feedstock and steam to a reaction zone comprising a steam reforming catalyst and catalytically reforming the hydrocarbonaceous feedstock to produce a reformed gas comprising hy...

There is an increasing need for expanding the scope of traditional life cycle studies to answer system-wide sustainability questions. This has resulted in a framework for life cycle sustainability analysis (LCSA). Since the framework was first published in 2009, as one of the outcomes of the CALCAS project, several views and considerations concerni...

Hydrogen is generally considered as one of the potential fuels of the future transportation. However the high production cost has remained a barrier that is yet to be overcome. There are various H2 production routes based on thermo-chemical, electrolytic and biological processes. These include steam methane reforming (SMR), coal gasification (CG),...

One of the main stumbling blocks to realize large-scale deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the huge upfront costs involved. In addition, the usual geologically-dispersed nature of the large number of CO2 point-sources and sinks calls for a perspective that is beyond matching each source with the nearest sink' and requires a holistic-...

ChemInform is a weekly Abstracting Service, delivering concise information at a glance that was extracted from about 100 leading journals. To access a ChemInform Abstract of an article which was published elsewhere, please select a “Full Text” option. The original article is trackable via the “References” option.

Fuel cells have gained considerable interest as a means to efficiently convert the energy stored in gases like hydrogen and methane into electricity. Further developing fuel cells in order to reach cost, safety and reliability levels at which their widespread use becomes feasible is an essential prerequisite for the potential establishment of a ‘hy...

The work presented is part of the Dutch THRIVE1 project which centers on dynamic simulation of joint roll-out of a hydrogen refuelling infrastructure and a hydrogen vehicle fleet. Currently, cost analysis is not an integral part of the tool. Therefore, simulation output – number of hydrogen vehicles and refuelling units as a function of time – are...

The chemical bonding aspects of the transition state (TST) of methane activation on a Rh{111} surface are analyzed. Three methods are compared: The barrier decomposition analysis of Hu etal. in which the bond between CH is assumed completely broken in the TST (Satterfield, Heterogeneous catalysis in industrial practice, 2nd ed., 1996; Chorkendorff...

We have used reactive force field (ReaxFF) to investigate the mechanism of interaction of alanes on Al(111) surface. Our simulations show that, on the Al(111) surface, alanes oligomerize into larger alanes. In addition, from our simulations, adsorption of atomic hydrogen on Al(111) surface leads to the formation of alanes via H-induced etching of a...

In this work a novel post-combustion CO 2 capture process concept is proposed and developed, based on cryogenic CO 2 freeze-out in dynamically operated packed beds. When feeding a flue gas containing CO 2 , H 2 O and inert gases to a previously refrigerated packed bed, an effective separation between CO 2 , H 2 O and the permanent gases can be achi...

In the first of two pieces on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, Gert Jan Kramer and Martin Haigh analyse historic growth in energy systems to explain why deploying alternative technologies will be a long haul.

A reactive force field, REAXFF, for aluminum hydride has been developed based on density functional theory (DFT) derived data. REAXFF(AlH(3)) is used to study the dynamics governing hydrogen desorption in AlH(3). During the abstraction process of surface molecular hydrogen charge transfer is found to be well described by REAXFF(AlH(3)). Results on...

ChemInform is a weekly Abstracting Service, delivering concise information at a glance that was extracted from about 200 leading journals. To access a ChemInform Abstract of an article which was published elsewhere, please select a “Full Text” option. The original article is trackable via the “References” option.