Welcome back.
Recently concluded COP26 climate talks in Glasgow featured a lot of promises from diplomats, along with plenty of street demonstrations – like those demanding banking giant JP Morgan Chase cease fossil fuel investment. It’s significant that most of the climate fight is being led by young women, while high-level negotiations are primarily conducted by older men.
The old guys made incremental progress, but left many of the hard decisions till next year. Hooray for something… but science requires a more robust and urgent agenda, and activists continue to press for that through protests and actions. This week, No Fracked Gas in Mass, Mothers Out Front, and others, mounted an action to urge all three Massachusetts public gas utilities to comply with their legal obligation to establish a clean energy transition plan by March – and weighed in with demands to drop natural gas and hydrogen in favor of clean electrification.
Meanwhile, opponents of the planned Peabody peaking power plant rallied to insist that additional environmental and public health reviews be conducted to assess the gas plant’s likely effect on nearby residents who already bear the environmental burden of poor air quality. Similarly, Springfield City Councillor Jesse Lederman is asking utility Eversource to perform a cost-benefit analysis of their planned pipeline expansion project. The common theme connecting all of this is that activists continue to pressure fossil fuel interests to justify new infrastructure in light of climate, public health, and fiscal considerations, compared to clean energy alternatives.
Post COP26, it’s worth taking a breath, appreciating the fact that there were some real successes, and readying ourselves to keep on keepin’ on, as Pete Seeger always did. We lead our Climate section with some good advice on how to approach all this in a healthy, balanced way.
Developing and sustaining the green economy is going to take some re-thinking of supply chains. COVID-19 disruptions have forced a reckoning, and the US solar industry is currently too dependent on materials and products from abroad. Domestic wind power is in much better shape, supply-wise, and costs for offshore wind keep falling as turbines grow taller and more efficient. Meanwhile, all this solar and wind power needs to partner with lots of energy storage, which is set to grow exponentially to a global capacity of one terawatt-hour by 2030. One TWh is a watt of electric power with twelve zeroes behind it, run for an hour. It would support over 400 million 100W devices for 24 hours.
Connecticut is a good example of a congested state with limited good places to put all the solar power it wants. A recent study shows the benefits of building arrays over parking lots. Lithium mining is another potentially destructive enterprise whose harm can be mitigated through careful site selection. A new geothermal energy plant near California’s Salton Sea is drilling toward a super-heated reservoir and rich lithium source. If successful, the plant will generate clean electricity along with a whole lot of lithium for electric vehicles.
But lithium isn’t the only element that can move us around. Already, the clean transportation industry is actively experimenting with other, cheaper metals for batteries. And from our Department of Extreme Innovation… Plasma Kinetics has developed a way to store hydrogen in solid form at room temperature on thin film – which is released by exposure to laser light to power vehicles using fuel cells. Long haul heavy transport, farm and construction equipment, and even aviation has been waiting for something like this.
We’ll close with a few last words on COP26, and how some of the agreements were squishy enough to be spun by fossil fuel interests for PR points. Such is the case for coal, the fuel that has contributed more than any other to global heating. Australia’s conservative government wasted no time in claiming victory there. Likewise, the UK’s huge Drax biomass power station used the conference to fake up a “Sustainable Bioenergy Declaration” that wasn’t even an official conference agreement – it’s just another layer of greenwashing over that destructive industry.
For even more environmental news, info, and events, check out the latest newsletter from our colleagues at Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT)!
— The NFGiM Team
PROTESTS AND ACTIONS
Protesters call for Berkshire Gas to move off fossil fuels. The company called police.
Mothers Out Front, 350 Massachusetts, Berkshire Environmental Action Team members advocate for clean heat
By Danny Jin, The Berkshire Eagle
November 17, 2021
PITTSFIELD — Calling for Berkshire Gas to move from fossil fuels to clean heating sources, climate activists Wednesday did not get the meeting they desired with the company’s leadership.
Instead, they got a brief visit from police, who responded to a call from the company after protesters arrived at the Berkshire Gas headquarters on Cheshire Road.
The state, which has set a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, requires all local distribution companies, including Berkshire Gas, to submit a decarbonization plan by March 2022 to the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities.
About a dozen protesters said they want Berkshire Gas to submit a proposal that is “all-electric, safe and affordable for all,” rather than propose controversial sources, such as hydrogen or renewable natural gas.
Members of the Berkshire Environmental Action Team and the Berkshire node of 350 Massachusetts, as well as a representative from the Cambridge-based national nonprofit Mothers Out Front, demonstrated Wednesday, holding signs as they walked from Allendale Plaza to the Berkshire Gas building on Cheshire Road.
They tried to deliver 151 postcards, signed by residents from the company’s Berkshire County and Pioneer Valley service areas, urging the company to adopt “real climate solutions.” A woman inside the building asked the protesters to leave private property and said protesters could not drop off the postcards outside.
Rosemary Wessel, who led the demonstration, said the new plan is to send the postcards by mail and to request a formal meeting with Berkshire Gas President Sue Kristjansson.
» Read article
Young Women Are Leading the Climate Fight. Who’s Leading the Negotiations?
By The Energy Mix
November 14, 2021
Many of the fiercest climate activists attending COP 26 were young women, while many of the most powerful negotiators at the conference were older men, a demographic siloing that risks serving the interests of the fossil status quo.
“The two sides have vastly divergent views of what the summit should achieve. Indeed, they seem to have different notions of time,” writes the New York Times, pointing to the legions of young activists who were angry about the slow pace of the negotiations.
Illustrative of this imbalance at COP 26 were two reactions to the results. On one hand, 77-year-old U.S. climate envoy John Kerry declared midway through the conference that he was impressed at the progress they had made. “I’ve been to a great many COPs and I will tell you there is a greater sense of urgency at this COP,” Kerry told reporters.
That “sense of urgency” was not obvious to someone like 24-year-old climate activist Vanessa Nakate of Uganda, who, expressed her dissatisfaction with the summit towards its end. She demanded urgent action to cut emissions and support those being ravaged by the climate crisis.
“1.2°C is already hell,” Nakate observed, her views aligning with those of protesters outside the barricades who had declared the conference a failure. Nakate said the protesters were committed to keep up the pressure, “to continue holding leaders accountable for their actions,” the Times reports.
For Nakate and her fellow activists, the incremental approach advocated by most official climate negotiators forfeited its claims to credibility decades ago. The Times notes that “world leaders have been meeting and talking about the need to address climate change since before most of the protesters were born, with few results.”
It’s that failure, combined with the negotiators’ adherence to the same, slow path, that “makes the climate movement’s generational divide so pointed—and the fury of the young so potent,” the Times says.
» Read article
» More about protests and actions
PEAKING POWER PLANTS
Peabody Generator Opponents Petition State For Additional Reviews
North Shore elected officials joined advocacy groups in demanding an environmental and health study of the proposed ‘peaker’ plant.
By Scott Souza, Patch
November 17, 2021
PEABODY, MA — North Shore elected officials joined opponents of a planned 55-megawatt surge capacity generator at the Peabody Waters River substation in demanding additional environmental and health reviews of the fossil fuel-powered generator on Wednesday.
State Sen. Joan Lovely (D-Salem) and State Rep. Sally Kerans (D-Danvers) joined more than 30 advocates and community representatives in delivering a petition with more than 1,200 signatures to the office of Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Katherine Theoharides calling on the state to reopen the state Environmental Protection Agency process based on current regulations and the status of portions of Danvers, Peabody and Salem as state environmental justice communities.
“A Health Impact Assessment of the proposed Peabody peaker plant project is a reasonable request and that’s why neighbors, ratepayers and advocates for action on climate change are appealing to Secretary Theoharides,” Kerans said in a statement to Patch. “Without it, residents and ratepayers won’t be fully knowledgeable about its impact on our air.
“It’s disrespectful to our communities given that Essex County has a ‘D’ rating in ozone air quality and this community has been so overburdened in the past.”
The MA Municipal Wholesale Electric Co. (MMWEC) has repeatedly said the new generator is expected to operate about 239 hours a year and is 94 percent more efficient than current generators being used across the state.
Opponents have argued that any new plant or generator that uses gas or diesel oil — regardless of how efficient — has potential climate and health implications and violates the spirit of 2021 state climate legislation aimed at making the state carbon neutral by 2050.
» Read article
» More about peaker plants
PIPELINES
City Councilor Lederman calls for cost benefit analysis on gas pipeline proposal in Springfield
By Waleed Azad, WWLP.com, 22 News
November 15, 2021
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – Springfield City Councilor Jesse Lederman, chairman of the City Council’s Committee on Sustainability and Environment, is calling on the state department of public utilities to do a cost benefit analysis of Eversource’s proposed secondary gas pipeline through Springfield.
According to the news release, the pipeline is reported to potentially cost over $40 million, as well as their larger proposal which includes hundreds of millions in statewide proposals. Councilor Lederman is calling on the DPU as well to refuse any request by Eversource to further increase the cost by allowing their shareholders to profit from projects that are necessary for public safety.
“Ratepayers in the City of Springfield deserve to know what the impact to their bills will be from this proposed pipeline and whether it is actually necessary,” said Councilor Lederman, “Furthermore, ratepayers should not pay a premium to Eversource investors for projects they claim are safety related. Safety projects should be required, not incentivized, and recouped at cost, not at a profit. We deserve to know who stands to profit from this proposal at our expense and by how much.”
» Read article
» More about pipelines
DIVESTMENT
‘Shame On You’: Indigenous Campaigners Demand JPMorgan End Fossil Fuel Finance
The major American bank is helping fund the Coastal Gaslink pipeline, which threatens First Nation lands in Canada.
By Phoebe Cooke, DeSmog Blog
November 11, 2021
GLASGOW, SCOTLAND — Indigenous activists on Wednesday staged a protest outside JPMorgan Chase headquarters in central Glasgow as pressure on banks to halt oil and gas extraction grows.
A crowd of over a hundred chanted “enough is enough” and “shame on you” outside the American multinational bank’s office building, just over a mile from where crucial talks at the COP26 climate conference are currently taking place.
JPMorgan Chase is the world’s biggest financier of fossil fuels, according to environmental organisations. In 2020 the bank pledged to end fossil fuel loans for Arctic oil drilling and phase out loans for coal mining. However, a recent report shows the bank provided £230 billion in support for fossil fuels between 2016-2020. A DeSmog investigation also found that every one of Chase’s board of directors had connections to polluting industries.
This includes the Coastal Gaslink pipeline being constructed in British Columbia, Canada, which is set to cross through Indigenous lands and is threatening vital ecosystems.
Speakers also criticised Line 3, a proposed pipeline expansion to bring nearly a million barrels of tar sands oil per day from Alberta in Canada to Wisconsin, part-funded by JPMorgan.
“Banks need to stop financing fossil fuels, because they are killing our people and they are killing our territory,” Nemo Andy Guiquita, director of women and health for the confederation of Indigenous nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (CONFENIAE), told the crowd.
» Read article
» More about divestment
GREENING THE ECONOMY
Democrats stress need to beef up clean energy supply chains as Republicans knock rising gas prices
By Emma Penrod, Utility Dive
November 18, 2021
Two-fifths of global power now comes from zero carbon sources, and consumers are on track to purchase 5 million EVs this year, up from a half million in 2015, Ethan Zindler, head of Americas for BloombergNEF, testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s energy, and environment and climate change subcommittees on Tuesday. As demand for renewable energy and electric transportation grows, he said, the need for related materials such as steel, glass and copper, and rare minerals such as lithium and cobalt, will increase dramatically, presenting enormous financial opportunities for those industries.
But while the U.S. is one of only six countries that can produce all components of an onshore wind turbine domestically, Zindler said, the U.S. is “essentially a nonplayer” in solar supply chains.
“I am an industry analyst, not a policymaker,” he said. “I can just tell you if the U.S. is going to install 30 GW of solar capacity this year, 80-90% will be imported materials. Is that something you want, or something you would like to adjust?”
While Zindler and other experts warned that U.S. supply chains are not prepared for an influx of demand for renewable energy and electric vehicles, Republicans spent most of Tuesday’s hearing saying that the federal government should spend less time on clean energy and more time on the current crisis of rising gasoline and home heating costs.
» Read article
Denmark and Costa Rica Launch Anti-Oil and Gas Alliance at COP26
The countries involved produce only a small proportion of global oil and gas supply, but see the world-first diplomatic effort as a starting point.
By Rich Collett-White, DeSmog Blog
November 11, 2021
A group of countries and regions led by Denmark and Costa Rica have pledged to phase out oil and gas production in a new initiative launched today at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow.
Wales, Ireland, France, Greenland, Québec and Sweden have joined the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA) as “core” members, which requires winding down any existing projects by a Paris Agreement-aligned date and not issuing new licences.
California, Portugal, and New Zealand are associate members of the initiative, having adopted policies to restrict fossil fuel supply but not yet banned licensing of further developments.
Italy has signed up as a “friend” of the alliance, signalling its support for BOGA’s objectives but not taking action to cut fossil fuel production at this time.
None of the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers, such as the US, Saudi Arabia and Russia, have joined, and the total oil production of those signed up makes up a small proportion globally. The UK hosts of the summit also shunned the effort.
But Denmark’s climate minister pointed out at the launch that his country was the EU’s largest oil producer as of 2019, and Greenland had “huge” reserves, enough to cover global oil demand, which it would now not be exploiting.
The initiative marks a stark contrast to the message other countries have been giving at the summit, with only two of them – Denmark and South Africa – mentioning the need to cut fossil fuel production in their official pavilions.
The subject of fossil fuels has long been taboo at UN climate summits, with the landmark Paris Agreement omitting any mention of them.
» Read article
» More about greening the economy
CLIMATE
1.5° Goal ‘Hanging by a Thread’: COP 26 Makes Small Gains, Leaves Toughest Issues to Next Year
By Paul Brown with files from Mitchell Beer, The Energy Mix
November 14, 2021
Glasgow’s COP 26, billed as the last chance to save the world from catastrophic climate change, failed to make the radical steps scientists said were needed but finally ended in a political consensus agreement 24 hours later than planned.
The UK’s stated aim to “keep 1.5°C alive”, in other words to keep the planet’s temperature from exceeding that dangerous threshold of warming, was not achieved by the agreements at the conference. The world is still on course to warm by 2.4°C if all the country’s promises in Glasgow are kept. The hopes of keeping to 1.5°C were left “hanging by a thread”, said UN Secretary General António Guterres, relying on actions at next year’s COP 27 in Egypt and beyond.
The ministerial declaration by 197 countries did go further than at any past COP in pushing for more action on climate change. But much of it was in language “urging” governments to act, which #FridaysforFuture founder Greta Thunberg memorably characterized as “Blah, Blah, Blah.”
Countries were told, however, that to rescue the 1.5°C aspiration they must increase their efforts to reduce carbon emissions and come to COP 27 with updated plans for deeper emissions cuts by 2030.
Beyond that weak outcome, the whole conference nearly foundered on the issue of money for the developing world. There was an ambition to double the US$100 billion-a-year fund to adapt to climate change, but no separate funds to cover the sweeping loss and damage the world’s most vulnerable countries are already experiencing. This is a long-standing demand by the developing world for a reparation fund from the rich countries to help them survive and repair damage caused by extreme weather events like typhoons, floods, droughts, and sea level rise.
» Read article
» More about climate
CLEAN ENERGY
Inside Clean Energy: For Offshore Wind Energy, Bigger is Much Cheaper
Consumers stand to win in the race to build larger offshore wind turbines, new research shows.
By Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News
November 18, 2021
Five years ago, when workers off of Rhode Island installed the first offshore wind farm in the United States, the 6-megawatt turbines were almost disorienting in their size, nearly double the height of the Statue of Liberty and its base.
But big keeps getting bigger.
Last month, GE Renewable Energy said it has begun operating a prototype of a 14-megawatt offshore wind turbine, nearly three times the height of the Statue of Liberty and its base, in the waters off Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
Siemens Gamesa and Vestas, two other leading turbine manufacturers, are developing 15-megawatt models. The growth will continue, with companies and analysts saying that a 20-megawatt turbine is within reach.
This race to build bigger turbines has a practical purpose. As turbines get taller and increase their generating capacity, they become more efficient and their electricity becomes cheaper for consumers.
A recent paper, published in the journal Applied Energy, shows the scale of the savings with a level of detail that was not previously available. The research, by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, shows a 24 percent savings per unit of electricity for a hypothetical wind farm using 20-megawatt offshore wind turbines, compared to a wind farm using 6-megawatt turbines.
The decrease in costs is a big deal, to the point that it makes offshore wind competitive with the costs of electricity from natural gas power plants. (Onshore wind and solar are still cheaper than all other alternatives).
“A 20 percent change is significant, it’s very significant,” said Matt Shields, an engineer at the energy lab and lead author of the report.
» Read article
» Read the study
» More about clean energy
ENERGY STORAGE
Terawatt-hour of energy storage by 2030: BloombergNEF forecasts boom in installations
By Andy Colthorpe, Energy Storage News
November 15, 2021
The 2020s are “the energy storage decade,” and the world will surpass a terawatt-hour of installations by the time they are over, according to predictions made by analysts at BloombergNEF.
From 17GW / 34GWh online as of the end of 2020, there will be investment worth US$262 billion in making 345GW / 999GWh of new energy storage deployments, with cumulative installations reaching 358GW / 1,028GWh by 2030, the firm forecasts in the latest edition of its Global Energy Storage Outlook report.
“This is the energy storage decade. We’ve been anticipating significant scale-up for many years and the industry is now more than ready to deliver,” BloombergNEF head of decentralised energy Yayoi Sekine said.
Just over half of that new capacity will be built to provide energy shifting, storing surplus solar and wind generation for dispatch to the grid and to be used when it’s most needed at a later time. This is already being seen in the growing popularity of renewable energy-plus-storage projects, particularly solar-plus-storage.
While large-scale, front-of-the-meter energy storage is likely to dominate those capacity additions, about a quarter will be deployed at residential and commercial & industrial (C&I) scale, with consumers seeking both higher shares of renewable energy integration and the back up power capability that energy storage can provide.
» Read article
» More about energy storage
SITING IMPACTS OF RENEWABLES
Study: Connecticut could conserve land by installing solar above parking lots
A study published in the current issue of Solar Energy shows that Connecticut could generate more than a third of the state’s annual electricity consumption with solar canopies built over large, existing parking lots.
By Lisa Prevost, Energy News Network
November 15, 2021
Connecticut could greatly expand its solar energy capacity without displacing farms and forests, according to a study published in the official journal of the International Solar Energy Society.
The study, which appears in the current issue of Solar Energy, identified 8,416 large parking lots across the state that are suitable for power-producing solar canopies. Together, those sites could generate 9,042 gigawatt-hours annually, the equivalent of 37% of the state’s annual electricity consumption.
“It’s not that we can do everything in parking lots — we’re still going to need some utility-scale arrays,” said Mark Scully, the president of People’s Action for Clean Energy, or PACE, which commissioned the study. “But there are significant advantages to putting them on this already-degraded real estate. And they can be placed in environmentally disadvantaged and underserved communities.”
Solar canopies are elevated structures that sit over land already being used for something else. They can provide shelter from the elements for parked vehicles, reduce the urban heat island effect, and support electric vehicle charging stations.
Because the siting of solar in Connecticut can be highly contentious when projects are proposed for farms or woodlands, Scully said, PACE wanted to figure out what the potential is on existing paved sites.
» Read article
» Read the study
Drilling for ‘white gold’ is happening right now at the Salton Sea
By Sammy Roth, Los Angeles Times
November 15, 2021
Barely a mile from the southern shore of the Salton Sea — an accidental lake deep in the California desert, a place best known for dust and decay — a massive drill rig stands sentinel over some of the most closely watched ground in American energy.
There’s no oil or natural gas here, despite a cluster of Halliburton cement tanks and the hum of a generator slowly pushing a drill bit through thousands of feet of underground rock. Instead, an Australian company is preparing to tap a buried reservoir of salty, superheated water to produce renewable energy — and lithium, a crucial ingredient in electric car batteries.
The $500-million project is finally getting started after years of hype and headlines about the Imperial Valley someday becoming a powerhouse in the fight against climate change. The developer, Controlled Thermal Resources, began drilling its first lithium and geothermal power production well this month, backed by millions of dollars from investors including General Motors.
If the “Hell’s Kitchen” project succeeds — still a big “if” — it will be just the second commercial lithium producer in the United States. It will also generate clean electricity around the clock, unlike solar and wind farms that depend on the weather and time of day.
General Motors plans to introduce 30 electric vehicle models by 2025 and to stop selling gasoline-fueled cars by 2035, in line with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s target for California. Ford expects to invest $22 billion in EVs over the next few years, including the all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck. Overall, Consumer Reports says nearly 100 battery-electric cars are set to debut by 2024.
As prices have fallen, batteries have also become popular among utility companies looking to balance out solar and wind power, and among homes looking for blackout insurance. There are already 60,000 residential batteries in California, and that number is expected to grow substantially as the electric grid is battered by more extreme fires and storms fueled by climate change.
Those energy storage systems will require huge amounts of lithium. Industry data provider Benchmark Mineral Intelligence projects that demand for the metal — sometimes known as “white gold” — will grow from 429,000 tons this year to 2.37 million tons in 2030.
Today, most of the world’s lithium comes from destructive evaporation ponds in South America and hard-rock mines in Australia. Proposals for new lithium mines in the United States — including the Thacker Pass project on federal land in Nevada and plans for drilling just outside Death Valley National Park — face fierce opposition from conservationists and Native American tribes.
The Imperial Valley resource, by comparison, could offer vast new lithium supplies with few environmental drawbacks.
» Read article
» More about siting impacts of renewables
CLEAN TRANSPORTATION
Plasma Kinetics May Revolutionize Hydrogen Storage For EVs
By Gustavo Henrique Ruffo, Auto Evolution
August 13, 2021
Alex Guberman interviewed Paul Smith, the company’s founder.
Smith has a background in computer chip manufacturing, and he approached the hydrogen storage issue with the same idea. In chips, engineers try to “layer up materials and get the conductivity the way you want it.” In Plasma Kinetics’ invention, they did the same to conduct light through a “whole bunch of negatively charged material.”
What happens is that his negatively charged material absorbs hydrogen. When light passes through it, the polarity of the bonds changes to positive, and the hydrogen is released. That’s a much better process than compressing hydrogen to 5,000 psi up to 10,000 psi, as today’s fuel cells need. For example, the Toyota Mirai holds 5.5 kg of hydrogen at that pressure.
This material Plasma Kinetics developed can be used as a disc or as a film that is just one-tenth of the thickness of a human hair. At first, the discs helped the company to explain the technology: hydrogen would be released when the laser hit it as a compact disc would “release music” when the laser reader hit it. However, the nano graphite film proved to be a better means to deal with hydrogen storage.
One of the main advantages it presents is mass. The “cassette” with this hydrogen-filled film would offer the same amount of hydrogen a tank with hydrogen pressed at 5,000 psi would without the extra energy for compressing the gas. That would allow the Plasma Kinetics solution to store hydrogen generated by renewable energy sources such as solar or wind power plants.
Being more specific, Smith said that a 15-pound roll of this film could get an FCEV to drive 20 miles. Trucks get a 370-lb (168-kg) cylinder that offers 570 mi (917 km) of range. Even aircraft companies would be considering using it. The Plasma Kinetics founder said that his company’s solution weighs only one-third of batteries for the same amount of energy.
» Read article
» Watch video: Energy Storage Breakthrough – Solid Hydrogen Explained
China’s EV battery manufacturers race to develop new technologies that are less reliant on pricey metals
By Daniel Ren, South China Morning Post
October 23, 2021
At present, nearly all batteries used to power EVs fall into the category of lithium-ion, or Li-ion, batteries.
Li-ion is a type of rechargeable battery in which lithium ions move from the negative electrode through an electrolyte to the positive electrode during discharge, and back the other way when charging.
It comprises four main parts: cathode, anode, electrolyte and separator.
The battery is usually named after its cathode materials, as in the case of an NCM battery or LFP battery.
NCM, composed of lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese, LFP made up of lithium, iron and phosphate, and NCA that contains nickel-cobalt and aluminium are the three major types of battery to power the world’s bestselling electric cars.
CATL produces LFP and NCM batteries. BYD makes LFP batteries known as blade batteries because of their long, thin shape.
Technically, those batteries containing the more expensive metals, nickel and cobalt, have the advantage in energy density.
Watt-hours are used as a measure of power output.
In mainland China, LFP batteries are now more widely used than their NCM and NCA counterparts by EV assemblers.
CATL is developing a new sodium-ion battery which uses cheaper raw materials.
The company claims to offer EV makers an alternative to existing technologies that use cobalt as the main ingredient.
The new technology enables the prototype battery pack to have an energy storage capacity of 160Wh per kg, and the next-generation product’s density is expected to exceed 200Wh per kg, according to Robin Zeng Yuqun, founder and chairman of CATL.
» Blog editor’s note: this article offers a fairly comprehensive summary of EV battery technologies – current and under development.
» Read article
» More about clean transportation
FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY
Australia hails COP26 “green light for more coal,” won’t budge on 2030 target
By Sophie Vorrath, Renew Economy
November 15, 2021
With the ink barely dry on the Glasgow Climate Pact, the Morrison Coalition government has settled straight back into its domestic routine of climate obfuscation and obstruction, proudly declaring its intent to ignore one of the global pact’s most urgent requests, to ratchet up weak 2030 emissions targets.
On Sunday, Australia’s minister for emissions reduction Angus Taylor issued a statement welcoming the “positive outcomes” of COP26, among which he appears to count one of its most widely lamented failures – the down-playing of the urgency to phase out fossil fuels.
The last minute watering down of the pact – which quite literally brought tears to the eyes of COP26 president Alok Sharma – changed the wording of the agreement to call for a “phase down” of unabated coal use, as opposed to a “phase out.”
And while that aberration has been attributed to India and China, it is just fine with the Morrison government, including resources minister Keith Pitt, who quickly welcomed it as an endorsement of “our commitment … that we won’t be closing mines and closing coal-fired power stations.”
Equally thrilled was fellow Nationals MP Matt Canavan, who took to Sky News to hail the agreement struck at COP26 as a “green light for more coal production,” which in turn, he argued, would bring more and more people out of poverty.
» Read article
» More about fossil fuel
BIOMASS
‘Sustainable Bioenergy Declaration’ Signed by Drax During COP26 Talks ‘Incompatible’ With Paris Agreement, Expert Warns
The ‘sustainability principles’ outlined in the document could in fact contribute to increased carbon emissions in the atmosphere, a policy analyst has claimed.
By Phoebe Cooke and Rachel Sherrington, DeSmog Blog
November 12, 2021
A bioenergy declaration signed by Drax during COP26 is further proof of the company’s “greenwashing”, campaigners have claimed.
The Yorkshire-based biomass giant is among over a dozen signatories to an industry-backed document that claims bioenergy could increase its output to nearly threefold, and reduce net global emissions by over one billion tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2050.
However, campaigners and experts say the document, which cites the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Net Zero Emissions scenario, is fundamentally misleading.
“This so-called ‘Glasgow declaration on sustainable bioenergy’ is not an official COP document,” Sally Clark, from biomass campaign group Biofuelwatch, told DeSmog.
“It is simply another attempt by Drax and other companies in the wood pellet and biomass industries to greenwash dangerous false solutions. Our forests and climate are under threat like never before and polluters like Drax should have no place at climate talks.”
Drax, which last year received over £800 million in UK government subsidies to burn wood pellets for energy, previously operated one of Europe’s largest coal-fired power stations.
The company has now converted four of its six plants to biomass, which is categorised as a renewable energy under UK law.
“Converting Drax power station to use sustainable biomass instead of coal transformed the business into Europe’s biggest decarbonisation project and has helped Britain decarbonise its electricity system at a faster rate than any other major economy,” said a Drax spokesperson.
Recent research has found that Drax is the single biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the UK. The Yorkshire power station, which sources wood pellets from the southeastern United States and from Canada, has piloted the BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture storage) technology since 2018, and aims to deliver its first fully operational plant by 2027 as part of plans to become a “carbon negative company” by 2030.
Studies have raised major concerns over the sustainability of the wood Drax uses to make pellets, the carbon footprint of transporting wood pellets thousands of miles from Louisiana in the U.S. to Yorkshire, in the UK, and the emissions impact of burning wood for power.
» Read article
» More about biomass
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No Fracked Gas in Mass 