Plus: Saudi’s invest $2B in electric cars; Blockchain to provide chain-of-custody for bunker oil; India’s 1st Ikea uses electric rickshaws
Hi Everyone,
It felt like a slow week for pithy stories, so I am posting the main ones I came across this past week. Happy to have you along for my reading journey.
Interesting to see Vancouver received a $386,000 grant from the Federal government to study driverless vehicle tech, while Canada’s first self driving shuttle is coming to Candiac, Quebec.
Consider forwarding this on to others who may be interested.
Thanks,
Peter
The Economist: The world is losing the war against climate change
This quick read touches on a theme I’ve been thinking more about lately. Not because my home city of Calgary had a heat wave and set a new record high. Rather, I’m asking myself how will the effect of losing this battle play out in public attitudes, consumer behaviors and expectations of public policy. Can we foresee an inflection point ahead for the collective will to do more? How might this change the many forecasts for the energy mix? If you missed it, check out last week’s update with a piece from Oxford on the speed of the transition.
Excerpt: Successes can turn out to be illusory. Because China’s 1m-plus electric cars draw their oomph from an electricity grid that draws two-thirds of its power from coal, they produce more carbon dioxide than some fuel-efficient petrol-driven models. The Economist
World’s biggest oil exporter bets $2 billion on electric cars
Excerpt: The Financial Times reported Tuesday that Saudi Arabia has acquired an “undisclosed stake of between 3 and 5 per cent of Tesla’s shares this year.” The position is worth some $2 to $3 billion, making the Saudis “one of Tesla’s largest shareholders.” In other words, the world’s biggest oil exporter — whose entire economy is built around more than $100 billion in oil and oil-related exports a year — has placed a massive bet on the company whose entire goal is transitioning the world off of oil. Think Progress
India’s first Ikea store opens with deliveries by solar powered electric rickshaws
Excerpt: The first Ikea store in India is now open, and the store will be using a form of delivery vehicle that might seem strange to many westerners: electric rickshaws powered by solar panels on the roof of the store. Electrek
Oil giant Shell leads investment in startup with ‘Electric Cars for Everyone’ goal for charging tech
Excerpt: Shell’s VC arm Shell Ventures confirmed that it is leading a $31 million Series A round of financing in Ample, which describes itself as “a technology company focused on solving the energy delivery challenge for electric cars.”
The startup is still very much in stealth mode and not much is known about its technology, but they have released broad details about what they are working on in a press release for the announcement of the round of investment:
“Ample has invented an economical, rapidly deployable and widely accessible platform that delivers a full charge to any electric car in minutes. An alternative to traditional charging, Ample uses autonomous robotics and smart-battery technology, making it feasible for anyone to own an electric car regardless of driving needs, economic means, or geographic location.” Electrek
With a trace: New blockchain initiative to track shipping fuel supply chain
Comment: Years ago, campaigns against logging practices deemed less sustainable were waged by shaming their customers. The Victoria’s Secret campaign was a good example that helped spur sustainability certification for the forest sector. If you still get paper mail from your bank – the FSC logo will likely be on the back of the envelope proving the paper came from a sustainable logging operation. It would appear that the advent of blockchain raises the prospect of ‘chain-of-custody’ for oil too. This particular use case is aimed at ensuring bunker fuels meet the 0.5% sulphur limit which comes into effect in 2020. How hard is it to imagine much broader ‘chain-of-custody’ for oil and gas sometime in the future?
Excerpt: The group will explore how blockchain technologies could help to provide an “efficient, tamper-resistant and auditable chain of custody” for bunker fuels, providing assurances that can help operators meet tightening global regulations governing carbon emission reporting and air pollution. GreenBiz
Honda offers demand response charging program to EV drivers
Comment: Yet another example of how ‘demand response’ (rewarding customers to shift their electricity use to an off-peak time) is helping customers save money.
Excerpt: Honda has partnered with eMotorWerks to offer southern California drivers of its Fit electric vehicle (EV) a service which can help them determine the most environmentally-friendly charging times — while possibly earning monetary incentives to move that demand off-peak. Utility Dive
Trump administration to freeze fuel-efficiency requirements in move likely to spur legal battle with states
Excerpt: Over thousands of pages, the administration proposal argues that the costs of meeting federal mileage requirements over the next few years would boost the sticker price of vehicles, prompting people to continue driving older cars and trucks rather than buying newer, more efficient ones. That would in turn increase the risk of accidents, it says.
If California were to prevail in the likely legal clash to come, the state could set tougher standards than the federal government, leaving automakers with the prospect of manufacturing vehicles that meet different rules in different states — something the industry has said it does not want.
Some automakers have expressed unease about an abrupt freezing of fuel-economy standards and the specter of having to meet different requirements in different states. and stressed that they continue to support fuel-economy increases. Washington Post
World Reaches 1,000GW of Wind and Solar, Keeps Going
Excerpt: Total installed capacity has grown 65-fold since the year 2000, and more than quadrupled since 2010. We estimate that the first 1TW of wind and solar required approximately $2.3 trillion of capital expenditure to deploy. The second terawatt will cost significantly less than the first. Based on estimates from our New Energy Outlook 2018, capital expenditures on wind and solar generation will total about $1.23 trillion from 2018 to 2022 inclusive. Bloomberg New Energy Finance
Webinar: Shifting Power From Utilities To Consumers Via Solar Plus Batteries
Comment: I had never heard of The Energy Democracy Initiative before. I found the speaker, John Farrell, knowledgeable and balanced – being sure to qualify his statements all throughout the ~45 min presentation. Lots of impressive proof points. The biblical analogue of ‘the four horseman of the utility apocalypse’, namely: energy efficiency, solar power, internet-of-things, and energy storage – was amusing, yet effective. His main point is that solar combined with storage is already cheaper than natural gas fired power plants in many places in the US, with utilities generally being slow to realize both the threat and opportunity. In related news, I saw that GTM Research projects that by 2023, 90% of residential energy storage installations will be coupled with solar power. This webinar came courtesy of CleanTechnica.