Plus: electric car batteries find more places for second life; a cool new map for tracking the US scooter craze
Hi Everyone,
I’ll be taking a break from preparing ‘Energy Shift’ next week, so watch for the next one on November 4th.
I was in a meeting this week where I heard the claim that “it takes 52 tonnes of coking coal to make a wind turbine”, with the point being that mining companies and mining engineers are still needed. This brings up two questions: 1) what’s going on with electrification of steel-making? and 2) when does a wind turbine and solar panel ‘pay off’ its carbon debt from the manufacturing process? If you have good material on this, send it my way please.
Feel free to ask question, send me comments and forward on to others who may be interested.
Thanks,
Peter
Indian Coal Mining Companies Plan $1.6 Billion Solar Investment
Comment: Some interesting insights into how companies in India are planning to meet demand: two fifths coal, three fifths solar. Still lots of new coal. Again, how the energy/climate nexus is being navigated in places like India, China and other parts of Asia is key to solving the climate change challenge.
Excerpt: The world’s largest coal mining company, Coal India Limited (CIL), and India’s largest lignite mining company, NLC India Limited (NIL), have announced a joint venture to set up 3 gigawatts of solar power capacity. Apart from the solar power capacity, the two companies will also cooperate on setting up 2 gigawatts of coal-based power capacity. …more from CleanTechnica
Plug-In Cars = 60% Of New Car Sales In Norway In September
Norway continues to impress. CleanTechnica charts the journey so far, plotting Norway and other countries on the electric vehicle adoption curve.
Electric car makers find second life for batteries
This is not new, just more companies are getting on this bandwagon.
Groupe Renault launches stationary energy storage system using EV batteries
Excerpt: Renault’s Advanced Battery Storage will eventually have a storage capacity of at least 60 MWh, provided by 2,000 EV batteries – equivalent to the daily consumption of 5,000 households. …more from Charged EVs
BMW will give EV batteries new life with recycling program
Excerpt: BMW is leading a consortium of companies with the goal of giving electric vehicle batteries new life after they’ve kicked the bucket as a car power source. The partnership with Belgian recycling firm Umicore and Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt will repurpose EV battery cells, using them for energy storage before stripping them of raw materials that can be reused in other products. …more from Engaget
Nissan & EDF Partner To Explore Potential Of Demand Response
Excerpt: Nissan and EDF Energy have partnered up to explore the potential to leverage second-life plug-in vehicle batteries in EDF’s demand response platform, PowerShift. …more from CleanTechnica
V2G: What’s the state of play with vehicle-to-grid, vehicle-to-home technology?
This is a very good intro to this topic: learn why V2G and V2H is not likely to become a ‘thing’, this relatively short piece offers a quick education into the challenges and reasons. …more from The Driven
And yet, here is this story I cam across this week…
First V2G innovation project to complete in May as potential begins to be realized
Excerpt: The first vehicle-to-grid trial project from the £30 million government competition, thought to be “the largest, most diverse” project of its kind in the world, will be completed in May 2019 according to Innovate UK’s lead on the project. …more from Current
Duke Energy Could Spend Half a Billion Dollars on Battery Storage — Or a Lot More
Comment: Let’s keep this in perspective. Utility Dive noted that by 2033, Duke forecasted 66% of new capacity would be gas, with solar, efficiency and demand side management making up 30%, and energy storage contributing 4%.
Excerpt: Energy storage means radically different things depending on where you are. In PJM, it’s a commonplace frequency regulation asset with a decade of run-time. In California, it’s an established local capacity tool that could soon take over for gas plants as a peak power source. In Arizona it’s a trusted mechanism for storing bountiful midday solar production, among other uses. Almost anywhere else, it’s the stuff of pilot projects, if it’s being considered seriously at all. …more from Greentech Media
Car free days and emission free zones
Cities are looking at ways make their downtown areas more liveable, pedestrian-friendly and healthier. Besides Paris, Brussels and others, now London is considering an emission free and one city councilor in Boston is pushing for more car-free days.
Smart Cities Dive introduces Dockless Mobility Hub
Excerpt: The Smart Cities Dive team has long struggled to keep up with every new operator, every pilot program and every piece of bike- or scooter-share drama that makes headlines. We figured you’ve been overwhelmed, too. So we built a resource to help: introducing our Dockless Mobility Hub.
Can the price of rooftop solar keep falling?
Credit: from LBNL’s Tracking the Sun
Excerpt: “If prices keep dropping, [rooftop solar] adoption will continue and a smart utility CEO would watch the market and think about ways utilities can have some control over distributed resources.”
Installers everywhere face similar costs for modules, inverters and other residential solar hardware, LBNL reported. Yet the U.S. installed price was twice that of Germany’s $1.50/W and significantly higher than Australia’s $1.80/W, although both countries are comparable to the U.S. in other factors, like labor and safety standards. …more from Utility Dive
Tesla secures land in Shanghai for first factory outside US
Excerpt: Tesla, based on Palo Alto, California, announced plans for the Shanghai factory in July after the Chinese government said it would end restrictions on full foreign ownership of electric vehicle makers to speed up industry development.
Those plans have gone ahead despite tariff hikes by Washington and Beijing on billions of dollars of each other’s goods in a dispute over Chinese technology policy. U.S. imports targeted by Beijing’s penalties include electric cars. …more from Yahoo
EU promises billions to kickstart European EV battery industry
Excerpt: European battery storage market likely to be worth €250 billion, and the EU is now looking to kick-start investments in batteries as EV demand soars. …more from The Driven
One of the best insights into the e-scooter craze in the US
Excerpt: Skip co-founder and CEO Sanjay Dastoor believes that the scooter problem is not really about the people riding scooters. They’re happy, more or less, based on the company’s experience in Washington, D.C. Riding on a scooter is, after all, a fun experience for the individual! The problem is that the people who are not riding them aren’t happy. Scooters take from the city commons. During trips, they clog bike lanes or endanger pedestrians on sidewalks. Parked, they block ingress and egress, clutter yards, and otherwise inconvenience people. There is, to borrow a phrase from transportation economists, “a gap between [the] private and social cost” of scooter travel. In economic terms, whatever the utility of the scooter for the rider, the public bears the externalities. …more from City Lab