Archive for the ‘electric vehicles’ Category
a wee post on developments in battery technology for EVs
And now for something completely different.
An article in a recent issue of The Economist (August 26- September 1 2023) , which I read mainly for the political and technological stuff, as economics is largely gibberish to me, deals with the development of solid state Li-ion batteries for EVs, and their scaling up for a new generation of such vehicles. So this piece is for educating myself, or trying to, on solid state electrolysis and how such batteries will, maybe, hasten the end of the infernal combustion engine for families and hoons everywhere.
As the article points out, there are three main issues which might be preventing the greater uptake of EVs – range, cost and charging times. All of which can be fixed with better-performing and cheaper batteries. Easy-peasy.
Current or ‘traditional’ lithium-ion batteries took quite a while to go from the drawing-board to useful application:
Although they were invented in the late 1970s, Li-ion batteries… were not fully commercialised until the early 1990s, at first for portable electronic devices, such as laptop computers and cell phones, and then as bigger versions that could be used to power a new generation of EVs.
The solid state version of these batteries, which are potentially safer, longer lasting and more efficient, have been promised for some time, but they’re now on the point of commercial reality, or just about. But what does ‘solid state’ mean, and why aren’t current Li-ion batteries solid – and what makes them liquid?
It’s all about the electrolyte, the key component of all batteries:
… electrolytes are used in a liquid form for good reason. Ions are charged particles, and are created at one of the batteries electrodes, the cathode, when the cell is charged, causing electrons to be stripped from lithium atoms. The electrolyte provides a medium through which the ions migrate to a second electrode, the anode. As they do so, the ions pass through a porous separator that keeps the electrodes apart to prevent a short-circuit. The electrons created at the cathode, meanwhile, travel towards the anode along the wires of the external charging circuit. Ions and electrons reunite at the anode where they are stored. When the battery discharges, the process reverses, with electrons in the circuit powering a device – which in the case of an EV is its electric motor.
This explanation, from the article referenced below, requires some explaining, at least for me. So, from the beginning, electro-lysis (coined by Faraday) means cutting, or splitting, by means of electricity. Stripping electrons (negatively charged) from atoms, thus ionising them (positive charge). The level of electric pressure, or voltage, required for electrolysis to occur is called the decomposition potential.
So the question I ask myself, in my non-scientific way, is – can electrolysis be applied to any element? Presumably, with a Li-ion battery, it’s applied to lithium, which is an ‘alkali metal’. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia,
Australia has one of the biggest lithium reserves and is the biggest producer of lithium by weight, with most of its production coming from mines in Western Australia.
So, a quick look-up tells me that electrolysis can be and is applied to many elements and compounds and substances, including water (for the production of hydrogen fuel, though that’s a potentially fraught process). Anyway, it seems that, though the electrolyte in a Li-ion battery is liquid ‘for good reason’, I still don’t know what that reason is, though I’m guessing that it’s because the ions can move more readily through liquid to the terminals (cathode and anode). So, ‘the most common electrolyte in lithium batteries is a lithium salt solution such as lithium hexafluorophosphate (LiPF6)’. Polymer gels are also used, but the development of a solid state battery has been a kind of holy grail for some time, as this would, or should, reduce flammability and increase voltage, cycling performance, strength and overall lifespan. One of the major hurdles is cost, as companies seek to develop a particular type to scale up. Over the past ten years or so, as it has become clear that EVs will be the future of motoring, the race has been on to produce effective and economic solid state batteries (SSBs). Here’s how Wikipedia puts it:
In 2013, researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder announced the development of a solid-state lithium battery, with a solid composite cathode based on an iron–sulfur chemistry, that promised higher energy capacity compared to already-existing SSBs. In 2017, John Goodenough, the co-inventor of Li-ion batteries, unveiled a solid-state glass battery, using a glass electrolyte and an alkali-metal anode consisting of lithium, sodium or potassium. Later that year, Toyota announced the deepening of its decades-long partnership with Panasonic, including a collaboration on solid-state batteries.
Various solids are being trialled, including ceramics and solid polymers. The US company QuantumScape has teamed with Volkswagen to mass-produce lithium metal batteries, which use metallic lithium as an anode. My mind is glazing over as I try to understand the technology involved, but here’a a quote from QuantumScape’s website:
QuantumScape’s technology platform is designed to pair with a variety of cathode chemistries — with the potential to significantly improve the energy densities of today’s Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) and Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP)-based battery cells. This capability enables optimization for diverse energy storage applications and gives our platform the flexibility to benefit from future cathode chemistry advancements.
They’re hoping for commercial availablity of their product by the end of next year, apparently. The same webpage tries to answer a number of FAQs, such as the benefits of solid state lithium, re weight and volume, the effects on EV range, the nature of the separator material, and co-existence with other current and emerging technologies.
I think that’ll do for my amateur analysis, for now, but I do hope to keep an eye on this technology, and the rise of EVs and surrounding infrastructure going forward.
References
‘The race to build a superbattery’, The Economist, August 26 – September 1 2023
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_mining_in_Australia
our electric future – is copper a problem?
So I recently had a conversation with someone who told me that electric vehicles were not the future because – copper. I must admit that I immediately got tetchy, even though I knew nothing about the ‘copper problem’, or if there actually was one. My interlocutor wasn’t anti-green in any way, he was more into electric bikes, tiny-teeny cars, and people staying put – not travelling anywhere, or not far at least. Perhaps he imagined that ‘virtual travel’ would replace real travel, reducing our environmental footprint substantially.
It has struck me that his rather extreme view of the future was an example of the perfect being the enemy of the good. I’m all for electric bikes, car-sharing and even a reduction in travelling, within limits (in fact migration has been associated with the human species since it came into being, just as it has with butterflies, whales and countless other species) but although I note with a certain disdain that family cars are getting bigger just as families are getting smaller (in our WEIRD world), I have no faith whatever that those family cars are going to be abandoned in the foreseeable.
But getting back to copper, the issue, which I admit to having been blind to, is that with a full-on tilt to electrification, copper, the world’s most efficient and cheaply available electric conductor, might suddenly become scarce, putting us in a spot of bother. But will it? That depends on who you talk to. Somehow the question brings back to mind David Deutsch’s The beginning of infinity, a super-optimistic account of human ingenuity. Not enough copper? No problem we can’t engineer our way out of…
Currently demand for copper is outstripping supply, but will this be a long term problem? CNBC made a video recently – ‘Why a looming copper shortage has big consequences for the green economy’ – the title of which, it seems to me, is more pessimistic than the content. Copper has been an ultra-useful metal for us humans, literally for millennia. But its high conductivity – second only to silver, which presumably is more rare and so far more expensive – has made it the go-to metal for our modern world of electric appliances. It also has the benefit of being highly recyclable, so it can be ripped out of end-of-life buildings, vehicles and anything else and re-used. But EVs use about four times more copper than infernal combustion vehicles, and wind turbines as well as solar panels require lots of the stuff, as do EV charging stations, and there aren’t too many new copper mines operating, so…
From what I can gather online, though, there’s no need for panic. Apparently, we’re currently utilising some 12% of what we know to be available for mining. The available stuff is the cheap stuff, and until now we’ve not really needed much more. But new techniques of separating copper from its principal ore, chalcopyrite, look promising, and markets appear to be upbeat – get into copper, it’ll make your fortune!
There’s also the fact that, though things are changing, the uptake of EVs is still relatively slow. People are generally talking about crunch time coming in that vaguely defined era, ‘the future’. High copper demand, low supply seems to be the mantra, and all the talk is about investment and risk, largely meaningless stuff to impoverished observers like me. In more recent times, copper prices have dropped due to ‘a manufacturing recession caused by the energy crisis’. I didn’t know about either of these phenomena. Why wasn’t I told? Mining.com has this to say about the current situation, FWIW:
Copper prices typically react to the ebb and flow of demand in China, which accounts for half of global consumption estimated at around 25 million tonnes this year. But this time the focus is on Europe, accounting for 15% to 20% of the global demand for copper used in power and construction. The region is facing surging gas and power prices after energy supply cuts, which Russia blames on Western sanctions over the Ukraine conflict. The European Union has made proposals to impose mandatory targets on member countries to cut power consumption.
Make of this what you will, I have quoted the most coherent passage in a mire of economics-speak. Presumably, supply is affected by the volatile conditions created by Mr Pudding’s testosterone. So everybody is saying that copper is falling in price, and this is apparently bad. Here’s another quote to make sense of:
Due to closing smelters and falling demand from manufacturers, an excess of copper stockpiles has been building up in a number of Shanghai and London warehouses, also contributing to downward pressure on prices.
Meaning copper isn’t worth much currently, though this is probably a temporary thing. Glad I haven’t anything to invest.
I think the bottom line in all this is don’t worry, be happy. Copper availability for the energy transition is subject to so many incoherent fluctuations that it’s not worth worrying about for the average pundit. Here in Australia the issues are – you can solarise your home no worries. Buying an EV is another matter, since none are being manufactured here, so governments need to be pressured to create conditions for a manufacturing base, and the infrastructure to support the EV world. Storage and battery technology need to be supported and subsidised, as is in fact starting to happen, with a more supportive federal government, and state Labor governments here in South Australia, and in Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria.
So, to conclude, having read through quite a few websites dealing with copper as the go-to metal for the transition to green energy (some links below), I haven’t found too much pessimism or concern about Dr Copper’s availability, though there are clearly vested interests in some cases. Australia, by the way, has the second largest copper reserves in the world (a long way behind Chile), and this could presumably be turned to our benefit. I’m sure a lot of magnates are magnetised by the thought.
References
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/A-Copper-Crisis-Threatens-The-Energy-Transition.html
https://intellinews.com/ev-market-may-create-copper-deficit-219864/
some stuff on super-grids and smart grids
In a recent New Scientist article, ‘The rise of supergrids’, I learned that Australia is among 80 countries backing a project, or perhaps an idea for a project, launched at COP26 in Glasgow, called One Sun One World One Grid, ‘a plan to massively expand the reach of solar power by joining up the electricity grids of countries and even entire continents’. My first reaction was cynicism – Australia’s successive governments have never managed to come up with a credible policy to combat global warming or to develop renewable energy, but they love to save face by cheering on other countries’ initiatives, at no cost to themselves.
Our state government (South Australia) did invest in the construction of a giant lithium ion battery, the biggest of its kind at the time (2017), built by Tesla to firm up our sometimes dodgy electricity supply, and, to be fair, there’s been a lot of state investment here in wind and solar, but there’s been very little at the national level.
At the global level, the Chinese thugocracy has been talking up the idea of a ‘global energy internet’ for some years – but let’s face it, the WEIRD world has good reason not to trust the CCP. Apparently China is a world leader in the manufacture and development of UHVDC (ultra-high voltage direct current) transmission lines, and is no doubt hoping to spread the algorithms of Chinese technological and political superiority through a globe-wrapped electrical belt-and-road.
But back in the WEIRD world, it’s the EU that’s looking to spearhead the supergrid system. It already has the most developed international system for trading electricity, according to the Financial Review. And of course, we’re talking about renewable energy here, though an important ancillary effect would be trade connections within an increasingly global energy system. There’s also an interest, at least among some, in creating a transcontinental supergrid in the US.
Renewable sources such as solar and wind tend to be generated in isolated, low-demand locations, so long-distance transmission is a major problem, especially when carried out across national boundaries. Currently the growth has been in local microgrids and battery storage, but there are arguments about meshing the small-scale with the large scale. One positive feature of a global energy network is that it might just have a uniting effect, regardless of economic considerations.
But of course economics will be a major factor in enticing investment. Economists use an acronym, LCOE, the levelized cost of electricity, when analysing costs and benefits of an electrical grid system. This is a measure of the lifetime cost of a system divided by the energy it produces. The Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland used this and other measures to analyse the ‘techno-economic benefits of a globally interconnected world’, and found that they would be fewer than those of a national and subnational grid system, which seems counter-intuitive to me. However the analysts did admit that a more holistic approach to the supergrid concept might be in order. In short, more research is needed.
Another concept to consider is the smart grid, which generally starts small and local but can be built up over time and space. These grids are largely computerised, of course, which raises security concerns, but it would be hard to over-estimate the transformative nature of such energy systems.
Our current grid system was pretty well finalised in the mid-twentieth century. It was of course based on fossil fuels – coal, gas and oil – with some hydro. The first nuclear power plant – small in scale – commenced operations in the Soviet Union in 1954. With massive population growth and massive increases in energy demand (as well as a demand for reliability of services) more and more power plants were built, mostly based on fossil fuels. Over time, it was realised that there were particular periods of high and low demand, which led to using ‘peaking power generators’ that were often switched off. The cost of maintaining these generators was passed on to consumers in the form of increased tariffs. The use of ‘smart technology’ by individuals and companies to control usage was a more or less inevitable response.
Moving into the 21st century, smart technology has led to something of a battle and an accommodation with energy providers. Moreover, combined with a growing concern about the fossil fuel industry and its contribution to global warming, and the rapid development of variable solar and wind power generation, some consumers have become increasingly interested in alternatives to ‘traditional’ grid systems, and large power stations, which can, in some regions, be rendered unnecessary for those with photovoltaics and battery storage. The potential for a more decentralised system of mini-grids for individual homes and neighbourhoods has become increasingly clear.
Wikipedia’s article on smart grids, which I’m relying on, is impressively fulsome. It provides, inter alia, this definition of a smart grid from the European Union:
“A Smart Grid is an electricity network that can cost efficiently integrate the behaviour and actions of all users connected to it – generators, consumers and those that do both – in order to ensure economically efficient, sustainable power system with low losses and high levels of quality and security of supply and safety. A smart grid employs innovative products and services together with intelligent monitoring, control, communication, and self-healing technologies in order to:
- Better facilitate the connection and operation of generators of all sizes and technologies.
- Allow consumers to play a part in optimising the operation of the system.
- Provide consumers with greater information and options for how they use their supply.
- Significantly reduce the environmental impact of the whole electricity supply system.
- Maintain or even improve the existing high levels of system reliability, quality and security of supply.
- Maintain and improve the existing services efficiently.”
So, with the continued growth of innovative renewable energy technologies, for domestic and industrial use, and in particular with respect to transport (the development of vehicle-to-grid [V2G] systems), we’re going to have, I suspect, something of a technocratic divide between early adopters and those who are not so much traditionalists as confused about or overwhelmed by the pace of developments – remembering that most WEIRD countries have an increasingly ageing population.
I’m speaking for myself here. Being not only somewhat long in the tooth but also dirt poor, I’m simply a bystander with respect to this stuff, but I hope to to get more integrated, smart and energetic about it over time.
References
Global supergrid vs. regional supergrids
resetting the electrical agenda
the all-electric la jamais contente, first car to break the 100 kph barrier, in 1899
In his book Clearing the air, Tim Smedley reminds us of the terrible errors we made in abandoning electric vehicles in the early 20th century. Smedley’s focus was on air pollution, and how the problem was exacerbated, and in fact largely caused, by emissions from car exhausts in increasingly car-dependent cities like Beijing, Delhi, Los Angeles and London. In the process he briefly mentioned the electric tram systems that were scrapped in so many cities worldwide in favour of the infernal combustion engine. It’s a story I’ve heard before of course, but it really is worth taking a deeper dive into the mess of mistakes we made back then, and the lessons we need to learn.
A major lesson, unsurprisingly, is to be suspicious of vested interests. Today, the fossil fuel industry is still active in denying the facts about global warming and minimising the impact of air pollution on our health. Solar and wind power, and the rise of the EV industry – which, unfortunately, doesn’t exist in Australia – are still subject to ridiculous attacks by the heavily subsidised fossil fuel giants, though at least their employees don’t go around smashing wind turbines and solar panels. The website Car and Driver tells a ‘funny story’ about the very earliest days of EVs:
… Robert Davidson of Aberdeen, built a prototype electric locomotive in 1837. A bigger, better version, demonstrated in 1841, could go 1.5 miles at 4 mph towing six tons. Then it needed new batteries. This impressive performance so alarmed railway workers (who saw it as a threat to their jobs tending steam engines) that they destroyed Davidson’s devil machine, which he’d named Galvani.
If only this achievement by Davidson, before the days of rechargeable batteries, had been greeted with more excitement and wonder. But by the time rechargeable batteries were introduced in the 1860s, steam locomotives were an established and indeed revolutionary form of transport. They began to be challenged, though, in the 1880s and 90s as battery technology, and other features such as lightweight construction materials and pneumatic tyres, started to make electric transport a more promising investment. What followed, of course, with the development of and continual improvements to the internal combustion engine in the 1870s and 80s, first using gas and then petrol – the 1870s into the 90s and beyond was a period of intense innovation for vehicular transport – was a serious and nasty battle for control of the future of private road transport. Electricity wasn’t widely available in the early twentieth century, but rich industrialists were able to create a network of filling stations, which, combined with the wider availability of cheap oil, and the mass production and marketing capabilities of industrialists like Henry Ford – who had earlier considered electric vehicles the best future option – made petrol-driven vehicles the eventual winner, in the short term. Of course, little thought was given in those days to fuel emissions. A US website describes a likely turning point:
… it was Henry Ford’s mass-produced Model T that dealt a blow to the electric car. Introduced in 1908, the Model T made gasoline [petrol]-powered cars widely available and affordable. By 1912, the gasoline car cost only $650, while an electric roadster sold for $1,750. That same year, Charles Kettering introduced the electric starter, eliminating the need for the hand crank and giving rise to more gasoline-powered vehicle sales.
Electrically-powered vehicles quickly became ‘quaint’ and unfashionable, leading to to the trashing of electric trams worldwide.
The high point of the internal combustion engine may not have arrived yet, as numbers continue to climb. Some appear to be addicted to the noise they make (I hear them roaring by nearly every night!). But surely their days are numbered. What shocks me, frankly, is how slow the public is to abandon them, when the fossil fuel industry is so clearly in retreat, and when EVs are becoming so ‘cool’. Of course conservative governments spend a fortune in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry – Australia’s government provided over $10 billion in the 2020-21 financial year, and the industry in its turn has given very generously to the government (over $1.5 million in FY2020, according to the Market Forces website).
But Australia is an outlier, with one of the worst climate policies in the WEIRD world. There will be a federal election here soon, and a change of government is very much on the cards, but the current labor opposition appears afraid to unveil a climate policy before the election. The move towards electrification of vehicles in many European countries, in China and elsewhere, will eventually have a knock-on effect here, but the immediate future doesn’t look promising. EV sales have risen markedly in the past twelve months, but from a very low base, with battery and hybrids rising to 1.95% of market share – still a paltry amount (compare Norway with 54% EVs in 2020). Interestingly, Japan is another WEIRD country that is lagging behind. China continues to be the world leader in terms of sheer numbers.
The countries that will lead the field of course, will be those that invest in infrastructure for the transition. Our current government announced an infrastructure plan at the beginning of the year, but with little detail. There are issues, for example, about the type of charging infrastructure to fund, though fast-charging DC seems most likely.
In general, I’ve become pessimistic about Australians switching en masse to EVs over the next ten years or so – I’ve read too many ‘just around the corner’ articles with too little actual change in the past five years. But perhaps a new government with a solid, detailed plan will emerge in the near future, leading to a burst of new investment….
References
Tim Smedley, Clearing the air, 2019
https://www.energy.gov/articles/history-electric-car
https://www.marketforces.org.au/politicaldonations2021/
there’s no such thing as a fair election 2: Australia’s systems, and the real value of democracy
Canto: So let’s talk about varieties of representative democracy, because I’ve never been clear about them. Looking at the Australian experience, this government website has a summary which starts thus:
The Australian electorate has experienced three types of voting system First Past the Post, Preferential Voting and Proportional Representation (Single Transferable Vote).
The first-past-the-post system hasn’t been used in Australia since the 19th century. All our elections now use forms of preferential and proportional representation voting. Australia, incidentally is one of only three countries in the world that uses preferential voting in major elections. Under full (as opposed to optional) preferential voting, each candidate on the ballot must be given a preference, from first to last. This tends to favour major parties, whose candidates are recognisable, but it can also lead to a local election being won by a candidate with fewer votes than her major opponent.
Jacinta: Yes, this can occur when no candidate gets a majority on the first count. A second count is then held and the candidate with the least votes is excluded. That candidate’s second preferences are distributed amongst the remaining candidates. This may give the second most voted-for candidate the lead, with over 50% of the vote. Or it may put the most-voted-for candidate over the 50% line. Or neither, in which case a third count occurs, until one candidate scores over 50%.
Canto: Yes, as this shows, minor party candidates need to score highly in the first count to have much chance, as second preferences are more often than not directed (by how-to-vote cards, which they may not choose to follow) to the more high-profile major party candidates. This is why minor parties almost never win a seat in the House of Representatives, which, unlike the Senate, uses the preferential voting system. And overall, there can be a problem with this type of voting in single-member electorates, in that one party may win a few seats by large margins, while another wins many seats by a small margin, and so wins more seats while losing the popular vote. That’s of course why governments often engage in pork-barrelling to swing marginal seats.
Jacinta: Some of the concerns raised by full preferential voting can be alleviated somewhat by an optional preferential system, but that brings its own problems which we won’t go into here. Let’s look now at proportional representation, which in the Australian context is described thus on our government website:
Proportional Representation is not a single method of election, for there are a number of variations in use, including the Single Transferable Vote, two variants of which are used in Australia. One is used in Senate elections, and the Hare-Clark version….. is used for elections to the Tasmanian House of Assembly and the ACT Legislative Assembly.
The Senate model for elections is described thus:
Each state and territory acts as a single, multi-member electorate in Senate elections. In half-Senate elections six senators are elected from each state, and two from each territory. In full Senate elections, which follow a dissolution of both houses of the Parliament, 12 senators are elected from each state and two from each territory.
To be elected, a candidate must achieve a quota of votes. Without going into detail, the system provides a greater likelihood of minor parties gaining a Senate seat, and so a greater diversity of voices tends to be heard in that chamber. This also helps the Senate’s function as a ‘house of review’ as the governing party has difficulty in gaining a majority there.
Canto: In ‘Choices’, a chapter of David Deutsch’s book The beginning of infinity, proportional representation is described even more negatively than other options, as it tends to result in watered-down, compromise solutions which end up pleasing nobody and, more importantly, don’t actually solve the problem at hand. But the real issue is broader. We can try to invoke mathematics and social-choice theory to make political systems more representative, but even if this was ‘successful’, which various no-go mathematical theorems show can’t be done, the question arises as to whether the most ‘truly’ representative system will be the fairest and best. As Deutsch points out, all this argy-bargying about voting and representational systems is about input to the system rather than output in the form of good decision-making – the institution of good policy and the removal of bad policy. The creation of pathways to good policy.
Jacinta: Yes, it’s worth quoting what Deutsch, partially channelling Karl Popper, is aiming for here:
The essence of democratic decision-making is not the choice made by the system at elections, but the ideas created between elections. And elections are merely one of the many institutions whose function is to allow such ideas to be created, tested, modified and rejected. The voters are not a fount of wisdom from which the right policies can be empirically ‘derived’. They are attempting, fallibly, to explain the world and thereby to improve it.
Canto: Interesting that Deutsch is careful not to say anything negative about democracy here, but he’s actually underplaying the role of democracy in decision-making, because we all know, I think, that new and important and worthwhile ideas aren’t created by democratic process, but by intellectual elites of one kind or another. These ideas are often carried forward by elected officials who have either helped to create them or have been persuaded by them. It may be that they don’t work or ‘their time hasn’t come’, but if there is a kernel of truth or real benefit to them, as for example with renewable energy and electric vehicles, they will, with modifications and adaptations, succeed in the end.
Jacinta: Yes, and what this sort of progress has to do with democracy is that there really is no political system that nurtures innovation and improvement in the way that democracy does, even if it does so with what sometimes seems frustrating slowness, and with the blockages by vested interests that so often infect politics, democratic or otherwise. Patience, I suppose, is a virtue.
Canto: Yes, democracy is in some ways a politics of persuasion, an invitation to try and discuss and dispute over new ideas, with accepted rules of engagement, trial and error, modification, exchange and respect, grudging or otherwise. And of course, with ongoing elections, it’s also a politics of renewal and revision, and that’s the fairest way of going about things as far as I can see it.
References
David Deutsch, The beginning of infinity, 2011
electric vehicles in Australia – how bad/good is it?
Following on from the interview with Prof Mark Howden that I reported on recently, I’m wondering what the situation is for anyone wanting to buy an EV in Australia today. What’s on the market, what are the prices, how is the infrastructure, and what if, like me, you might want just to hire an EV occasionally rather than own one?
Inspired by Britain’s Fully Charged show, especially the new episodes entitled Maddie Goes Electric, I’m going to do a little research on what I fully expect to be the bleak scenario of EV availability and cost in Australia. Clearly, we’re well behind the UK in terms of the advance towards EV. One of Maddie’s first steps, for example, in researching EVs was to go to a place called the Electric Vehicle Experience Centre (EVEC), for a first dip into this new world. I cheekily did a net search for Australia’s EVEC, but I didn’t come up completely empty, in that we do have an Australian Electric Vehicle Association (AEVA) and an Electric Vehicle Council (EVC), which I’ll have to investigate further. Maddie also looked up UK’s Green Car Guide, and I’ve just learned that Australia has a corresponding Green Vehicle Guide. I need to excuse my ignorance up to this point – I don’t even own a car, and haven’t for years, and I’m not in the market for one, being chronically poor, and not having space for one where I live, not even in terms of off-street parking, but I occasionally hire a car for holidays and would love to be able to do so with an EV. We shall see.
So the Green Vehicle Guide ranks the recently-released all-electric Hyundai Ioniq as the best-performing green vehicle on the Australian market (that’s performance, not sales, where it seems to be nowhere, probably because it’s so new). It’s priced at somewhere between about $35,000 and $50,000. Here’s what a car sales site has to say:
The arrival of the Hyundai IONIQ five-door hatchback signals Australia is finally setting out on its evolution to an electrified automotive society. The IONIQ is the cheapest battery-electric vehicle on sale in Australia and that’s important in itself. But it’s also significant that Australia’s third biggest vehicle retailer has committed to this course when most majors aren’t even close to signing off such a vehicle. In fact, just to underline Hyundai’s push into green motoring, the IONIQ isn’t just a car; it’s a whole range with three drivetrains – hybrid, plug-in and EV.
I need to find out the precise difference between a hybrid and a plug-in… It’s steep learning curve time.
Anyway, some reporting suggests that Australia’s bleak EV situation is turning around. This Guardian article from August 2019 predicts that EV sales are set to rise significantly, regardless of government inaction:
Modelling suggests the electric vehicle share of new car sales in Australia will rise from about 0.34% today to 8% in 2025. It is predicted to then leap to 27% of new car sales in 2030 and 50% in 2035 as prices of electric car technology fall.
2025 isn’t far off, so I’m a bit skeptical of these figures. Nevertheless, I’ll be monitoring the Australian EV scene more closely from now on.
References
https://www.iea.org/policies/7885-a-national-strategy-for-electric-vehicles
https://www.greenvehicleguide.gov.au/
Maddie Goes Electric, Episode 1: Choosing your electric car (A beginner’s guide) | Fully Charged
climate change – we know what we should be doing
Here in Australia we have a national government that hates to mention human-induced climate change publicly, whatever their personal views are, and clearly they’re varied. I’ve long suspected that there’s a top-down policy (which long predates our current PM) of not mentioning anthropogenic global warming, lest it outrage a large part of the conservative base, while doing a few things behind the scenes to support renewables and reduce emissions. It’s a sort of half-hearted, disorganised approach to what is clearly a major problem locally and globally. And meanwhile some less disciplined or less chained members or former members of this government, such as former PM Tony Abbott and current MP for Hughes, Craig Kelly, are ignoring the party line (and science), and so revealing just how half-arsed the government’s way of dealing with the problem really is. The national opposition doesn’t seem much better on this issue, and it might well be a matter of following the money…
So I was impressed with a recent ABC interview with Australian climate scientist and leading member of the IPCC, Professor Mark Howden, also director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University, who spoke a world of good sense in about ten minutes.
The interview was preceded by the statement that the government is holding to its emission reduction targets – considered to be rather minimal by climate change scientists – while possibly ‘tweaking’ broader climate change policy. This is another example of ‘don’t scare the base’, IMHO. It was also reported that the government felt it might reach its Paris agreement without using ‘carry-over credits’ from the previous Kyoto agreement.
The issue here is that our government, in its wisdom, felt that it should get credit for ‘more than meeting’ its Kyoto targets. As Howden pointed out, those Kyoto targets were easy to meet because we’d have met them even while increasing our emissions (which we in fact did). Spoken without any sense of irony by the unflappable professor.
There’s no provision in the Paris agreement for such ‘carry-over credits’ – however the government has previously relied on them as an entitlement, and in fact pushed for them in a recent meeting in Madrid. Now, it’s changing its tune, slightly. The hullabaloo over the bushfire tragedies has been an influence, as well as a growing sense that reaching the Paris targets without these credits is do-able. Interestingly, Howden suggests that the credits are important for us meeting our Paris commitments up to 2030, as they make up more than half the required emissions reductions. So, if they’re included, we’ll need a 16% reduction from here, rather than a 26 – 28% reduction. But is this cheating? Is it in the spirit of the Paris agreement? Surely not, apart from legal considerations. It certainly affects any idea that Australia might play a leadership role in emissions reductions.
So now the government is indicating that it might scrap the reliance on credits and find real reductions – which is, in fact, a fairly momentous decision for this conservative administration, because the core emissions from energy, transport, waste and other activities are all rising and would need to be turned around (I’m paraphrasing Howden here). So far no policies have been announced, or are clearly in the offing, to effect this turnaround. There’s an Emissions Reductions Fund, established in 2014-5 to support businesses, farmers, landowners in reducing emissions through a carbon credit scheme (this is news to me) but according to Howden it’s in need of more public funding, and the ‘carbon sinks’ – that’s to say the forests that have been burning horrifically in past weeks – which the government has been partly relying upon, are proving to be less stable than hoped. So there are limitations to the government’s current policies. Howden argues for a range of additional policies, but as he says, they’ve rejected (presumably permanently) so many options in the past, most notably carbon pricing, that the cupboard looks pretty bare for the future. There’s of course a speedier move towards renewables in electricity generation – which represents about 30% of emissions, the other 70% being with industry, agriculture, transport and mining (see my previous piece on fracking, for example, a practice that looks to be on the increase in Australia). Howden puts forward the case that it’s in this 70% area that policies can be most helpful, both in emissions reduction and jobs growth. For example, in transport, Australia is well behind other nations in the uptake of EVs, which our government has done nothing to support, unlike most advanced economies. Having EVs working off a renewables grid would reduce transport emissions massively. Other efficiencies which could be encouraged by government policy would be reducing livestock methane emissions through feed and husbandry reforms, such as maintaining shade and other stress-reducing conditions. This can increase productivity and reduce per-unit environmental footprint – or hoofprint.
As to the old carbon pricing argument – Howden points out that during the brief period that carbon pricing was implemented in Australia, core emissions dropped significantly, and the economy continued to grow. It was clearly successful, and its rescinding in around 2015 has proved disastrous. Howden feels that it’s hard to foresee Australia meeting its 2030 Paris targets without some sort of price on carbon – given that there won’t be any deal on carry-over credits. There’s also an expectation that targets will be ramped up, post-2030.
So, the message is that we need to sensibly revisit carbon pricing as soon as possible, and we need to look positively at abatement policies as encouraging growth and innovation – the cost of doing nothing being much greater than the costs involved in emissions reduction. And there are plenty of innovations out there – you can easily look them up on youtube, starting with the Fully Charged show out of Britain. The complacency of the current Oz government in view of the challenges before us is itself energy-draining – like watching a fat-arsed couch potato yawning his way towards an early death.
References
https://iview.abc.net.au/show/abc-news-mornings
https://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/government/emissions-reduction-fund/about
the SUV abomination, or when will we reach peak SUV?
I was amused by a recent rant from Robert Llewellyn of the highly-recommended Fully Charged vodcasts, regarding the rise and rise of petrol and diesel-fuelled SUV sales in this period of carbon emission concern and climate change. So I have to share an anecdote.
As a young perennially poor person in the seventies I hitch-hiked quite a lot. Hitch-hiking is barely a thing nowadays, and I suspect the hitch-hiking experience I’m about to describe, sometime in the eighties, was my last. It often comes back to annoy me.
I was picked up by an overweight middle-aged woman with a blaze of dyed blond hair and a dire Aussie accent, in an SUV. Obviously, it was a kind gesture.
This was my first experience of being in an SUV, and I’ve had very few since. It felt strange to be looking down at other cars on the road. I wondered if this created psychological effects. The woman, I think, tried to elicit conversation but I’m very shy with strangers and pretty hopeless at small talk. So she made her own, which soon developed into a rant against ‘small cars’, which she seemed to regard as death traps and a form of road litter. Certainly there was a strange, disproportionate rage that got to me, as I nodded with an air of non-committal sagacity.
At that point in my life I’d never driven a car – I didn’t get my licence until my late thirties – but I knew the kind of car I wanted to drive, and it was the precise opposite of an SUV, a ridiculous vehicle that was just starting to pollute city streets at the time of this awkward incident. Of course the environment was already a major public issue in the eighties, so I naively thought this woman was on the wrong side of history. The SUV would surely go the way of the dinosaur, in somewhat less than a couple of hundred million years.
But SUV sales are soaring worldwide, in spite of a greater recognition of climate change and anthropogenic global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. I suppose there’s some excuse for them in Australia, this land of sweeping plains (and sleeping brains), but given our apparent indifference to the EV revolution and the phobia re climate change issues of our federal government, we’re just going to have to put up with these tanks continuing to proliferate in our suburbs. And it’s going on everywhere – there’s currently a huge spike in SUV sales worldwide. I mean, WTF?
So, instead of a pox on SUVs, how about a tax on them? It worked with cigarettes here….
Of course I’m joking. Western governments are more likely to subsidise the manufacture of SUVs than to tax them. This US business website presents in graphic detail the surge in SUV sales:
48% of car sales in the United States last year [2018]’were SUVs, which was the highest percentage worldwide, but other countries are catching up. Large cars can be seen as a status symbol, and sales are rising in countries like China and India where the middle class is growing.
The website cites a study which found that the number of SUVs on the road has increased about six-fold since 2010, and SUVs alone were the second largest contributor to the global increase in carbon emissions during that period. So, I wonder, when will we reach peak SUV?
notes on the electrification of air travel
Air travel has become noticeably more popular over the past few decades – due largely to affordability. Even I can afford to catch a plane occasionally these days. And yet …
I realised something was out of kilter when I discovered that, in Europe, you can fly relatively cheaply from one major city to another by plane, whereas travelling by train costs more (sometimes much more) while being more efficient in terms of carbon emissions. So why is that, and what can be done about it?
Planes are generally more costly to run and, especially, to maintain than trains, and labour costs, too, are higher. Yet some of the larger airline companies are prepared to lose money on high-demand short-haul flights to maintain their profile, knowing they can gain on international flights. They can also be (or are) more flexible with their pricing, as this article points out, so that they can get bums on seats at suddenly slashed rates, filling their aircraft for each flight, unlike trains, which have basically operated under the same half-arsed system for over a century.
So, with the steady increase in domestic and international flights, and the lack of government oversight – e.g. taxation – of international airlines that transcend political borders, the carbon footprint of air flight (if that makes sense) is growing. A 2018 report on CO2 emissions stated that ‘using aviation industry values’ there was a 32% increase in aviation emissions in the previous five years. Which of course raises the question – how do we solve the problem of over-use of costly, environmentally-unfriendly jet fuel? The answer, of course, is electric propulsion. No? An electric motor is far simpler and easier to maintain than a jet engine (a turboprop engine has between 7000 and 10,000 moving parts). Energy costs are also cheaper, once a few problems are worked out – ahem.
The biggest problem, of course, is the battery. I’ve heard that AA batteries mightn’t be enough. Nor are the current generation of lithium-ion batteries, though innovation and research in this area is being driven by electric cars hoho. Clearly electric aircraft have to start small and short-haul, and they’re already doing so. I’ve written about this before, but it’s time for an update. Some of the companies involved include Pipistrel, Harbour Air and Eviation, but this is still extremely small-scale stuff as everybody waits for the battery boffins to perform the next miracle. Meanwhile, as with the motor vehicle industry, hybrids have been developed as a kind of stop-gap for larger capacity flights. Another company, Ampaire, has developed small hybrid aircraft with which it hopes to start daily operations in Hawaii in the near future. It’s also working in Norway, where they’re hoping to have all flights of 90 minutes or less to be be either fully electric or hybrid by 2040. I’m glad to hear that my birth country, Scotland is also investing in electric and hybrid planes for similar purposes. If these planes could be shown to be economically viable, then larger aeroplane companies will surely invest in them, as they tend to lose money on regional routes (small turbine engines being very inefficient). This could be the real game-changer, providing reason to invest in battery and other technology for longer electric flight. Changes in technology, combining standard aircraft design with helicopter design, are likely to make air flight more personalised in future, with less need to depend on airports. Of course this will come with regulatory and other issues, but it all makes for a more interesting future in the sky….
References
Electric aircraft? It’s happening, in a small way
I no longer write on my solutionsok blog, as it’s just easier for a lazy person like me to maintain the one site, but as a result I’ve not been writing so much about solutions per se, so I’ll try to a bit more of that. The always entertaining and informative Fully Charged show on YouTube provides plenty of material about new developments in renewable energy, especially re transport, and in a recent episode, host Robert Llewelyn had a bit to say about electric planes, which I’d like to follow up on.
Everyone knows that plane travel has been on the up and up haha for decades, and you may have heard that these planes use up a lot of fossil fuel and produce lots of nasty emissions. According to the Australian government’s Department of Infrastructure and Many Other Things (DIMOT – don’t look it up) Australia’a civil aviation sector contributed 22 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions in 2016. That’s of course a meaningless number but safe to say it’s dwarfed by the emissions of the major aviation countries. I assume the term ‘C02-equivalent’ means other greenhouse gases converted into equivalent-impacting amounts of CO2. For aircraft this includes water vapour, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, lead and other atmosphere-affecting nasties. More innovative and less polluting engine designs have failed to halt the steady rise of emissions due to increased air travel worldwide, and there’s no end in sight. It’s really the only emissions sector for which there is no obvious solution – unlike other sectors which are largely blocked by vested interests.
So, while few people at present see electric aircraft as the big fix, enterprising engineers are making steady improvements and trying for major breakthroughs with an eye to the hopefully not-too-distant future. Just a couple of days ago, as reported on the nicely-named Good News Network, the largest-ever hybrid-electric aircraft (it looks rather small), the Ampaire 337, took flight from Camarillo airport in California (of course). The normally twin-engine plane was retrofitted with an electric motor working in concert with the remaining fuel engine to create a ‘parallel hybrid’, which significantly reduces emissions. After this successful test run, there will be multiple weekly flights over the next few months, and then, if all goes well, commercial short-haul flights are planned for Hawaii.
Of course, here in Australia, where electric cars are seen by power-brokers as some kind of futuristic horror set to destroy our way of life, there’s no obvious appetite for even wierder flying things, but our time will come – or perhaps we should all give up and invade western Europe or California. Meanwhile, Fully Charged are saying ‘there’s no shortage of aircraft companies around the world [including Rolls Royce] developing electric aircraft’, as well as converting light aircraft to electric (the Ampaire 337 mentioned above is actually a converted Cessna 337). A Canadian airline, Harbour Air, is converting 3 dozen seaplanes to electric motors, with first passengers flights expected by late 2021. These will only be capable of short flights in the region of British Columbia – range, which is connected to battery weight, being perhaps the biggest problem for electric aircraft to overcome. Again according to Fully Charged, there are over 100 electric aircraft development programs going on worldwide at present, and we should see some results in terms of short-haul flights in five years. Perfect for Europe, but also not out of the question for Adelaide to Melbourne or Port Lincoln, Canberra to Sydney and so on. Norway has a plan to use electric aircraft for all its domestic passenger flights in the not-too-distant future.
A name dropped on Fully Charged, Roei Ganzarski, seems worth following up. He says ‘By 2025, 1000 miles in an electric plane is going to be easily done. I’m not saying 5000 miles, but 1000 miles, easily.’ Ganzarski is currently the CEO of magniX, an ‘electric propulsion technology company’, based in Seattle. His company made the motors for the Ampaire 337, I think.
It should be pointed out that UAVs (unmanned – or unpersonned? – aerial vehicles), aka drones, are small electric aircraft, so the principle of electric flight is well established. It’s also worth noting that electricity doesn’t have to come from batteries, though they’re the most likely way forward. Solar cells, for example, can directly convert sunlight into electricity, and in 2015/16, using two alternating pilots, Solar Impulse 2 became the first fixed-wing, piloted, solar-powered aircraft to circumnavigate the globe. Fuel cells, particularly using hydrogen, are another option.
At the moment, though, hybrid power is all the go, and the focus is on light aircraft and short-haul flight. General aviation is still a long way off because, according to this Wikipedia article, ‘the specific energy of electricity storage is still 2% of aviation fuel’. As to what that means, I have very little idea, but this steal from a Vox piece on the topic helps to clarify:
The key limitation for aircraft is the energy density of its fuel: When space and weight are at a premium, you want to cram as much energy into as small a space as possible. Right now, some of the best lithium-ion batteries have a specific energy of 250 watt-hours per kilogram, which has already proved viable in cars. But to compete on air routes up to 600 nautical miles in a Boeing 737- or Airbus A320-size airliner, Schäfer estimated that a battery would need to have a specific energy of 800 watt-hours per kilogram. Jet fuel, by comparison, has a specific energy of 11,890 watt-hours per kilogram.
So, specific energy is essentially related to energy density, and I know that getting batteries to be as energy-dense as possible is the holy grail of researchers. So, until that ten-fold or 100-fold improvement in energy density is achieved by the battery of batteriologists beavering away at the big plane problem, we should at least push for light aircraft and short-haul flights to go completely electric asap. Ausgov, do us proud.