New Energy World™
New Energy World™ embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low-carbon technologies.
TEST COPY 2: From linear to circular: making material reuse work across energy assets
3/11/2022
8 min read
Feature
Circular economy principles are moving from aspiration to asset decisions. New cross-sector guidance from the Energy Institute (EI), IPIECA and CIRIA aims to show practitioners how to do it, using case studies that run from nuclear decommissioning to repurposed pipeline steel. New Energy World Senior Editor Will Dalrymple MEI, reports.
Key takeaways
- Circularity is becoming a strategic necessity, not just a sustainability goal
Growing material scarcity, supply-chain disruption and the material demands of the energy transition are making the traditional "take, make, dispose" model increasingly unsustainable. Reusing, refurbishing and remanufacturing materials can improve resource resilience while reducing both embodied carbon and costs. - Success depends more on leadership and collaboration than on technology
Across all the case studies, strong leadership from asset owners and early collaboration across the value chain emerged as the most important enablers of circularity. Organisations that set clear ambitions, engage suppliers early, build partnerships and create robust business cases are far more likely to overcome institutional inertia and perceived risk. - Real-world examples show circularity can work in even the most challenging sectors
The case studies demonstrate that material reuse is practical across a wide range of energy assets. Examples include repurposing an unused nuclear facility in Italy into a radioactive waste store and converting reclaimed oil and gas pipe into construction materials for infrastructure projects. These examples show that circular approaches can deliver cost, carbon and resilience benefits without compromising safety or performance when planned from the out sets.
For most of the industrial era, energy infrastructure has followed a simple sequence: extract, make, use, discard. Pipelines, platforms, power stations and turbines are designed, built, operated and then decommissioned. Questions about what happens to their materials are often left until the end of their lives, when it is too late to do much about them.
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