Lithium News

ST. CLOUD — Zero-emission public transportation is the way of the future, and a St. Cloud company is leading the effort. New Flyer of America says they’ve just signed a contract to build eight battery-electric buses for Minneapolis.

New Flyer’s Director of Sustainable Transportation David Warren says the up-front cost to build the bus is more expensive, but the costs even out through energy savings and less maintenance.

He says eventually most major cities will convert to zero-emission options.

Over time, which may be a 12-year time frame, a majority of the buses in the U.S. will convert to electric propulsion. Cities such as Los Angeles have made commitments to go fully zero emissions, and we expect other large cities to follow suit.

Warren says New Flyer has been building battery-electric buses for six years, and are already being used in major cities like Chicago, Washington D.C., and New York City.

Warren says the buses are capable of going at least 100 miles without recharging.

The charging technology and buses for Minneapolis are being supported by a $1.75 million federal grant.

They are scheduled to be on the streets of Minneapolis by next year.

BlackBerry seems to be on its way toward a full recovery. Long after the brand’s demise, TCL has been doing its best to resurrect Research In Motion’s largely abandoned smartphone line, injecting it with modern smartphone elements in a bid to rub shoulders with Samsung or Apple again; to become a heavyweights of the arena just like in the good old days.

That being said, TCL’s efforts have not been radical enough for full resuscitation of a dying brand — it’s certainly enough to keep it afloat, to be sure, but thus far, no TCL-made BlackBerry device has been a real knockout with critics and consumers alike, partly because of a few things: for one, there’s the insistence on putting a physical keyboard on the devices, which, while a nice little nod to classic BlackBerry designs, hurts the devices more than it helps it.

BlackBerry Ghost Battery

But that could change with the upcoming BlackBerry Ghost, rumored to be TCL’s first BlackBerry phone that’s more akin to a modern flagship phone. With Ghost, TCL will do away with the physical keyboard, opting instead for a nearly bezel-less look. New details about the phone have now surfaced, courtesy of industry tipster Evan Blass. He says the phone will sport a whopping 4,000 mAh battery capacity; typical flagships usually hover around the 3,500 to 3,800 mark.

• Arizona regulator Andy Tobin has filed a set of proposed rules that would implement his Arizona Energy Modernization Plan to put utilities on a course to supply 80% renewable or nuclear power by 2050.
• Tobin’s proposal is to merge his plan with the state’s existing Renewable Energy Standard and Tariff (REST), which he says would create no new credits or other rulemaking dockets.
• The resulting Clean Resource Energy Standard and Tariff (CREST) would also require utilities to roll out 3 GW of energy storage by 2030, and implement reforms to grow the use of energy efficiency, electric vehicles and biomass energy.

The real meat of Tobin’s proposal — the clean energy and storage mandate — has been out since January, but he had not yet addressed how to implement the policy. Merging the modernization plan into the state’s existing renewable tariff makes for a simpler process, Tobin told fellow Arizona Corporation Commission members in the July 5 filing.

The CREST rule will serve as “an umbrella to house not only the unchanged REST language and targets, but also the new Clean Peak Standard, Bioenergy Production Requirement, and 2030 Energy Storage and 2050 Clean Energy Goals the Plan originally proposed,” Tobin wrote in the cover letter to the proposed rules.

“I believe this approach not only allows the CREST umbrella to fully unfold before the Commission begins additional processes, but also ensures that each of these important issues is given its full and respective opportunities to be heard,” Tobin said in the filing.

Tobin’s proposal, in addition to requiring energy storage and 80% clean energy, includes the 2030 Clean Peak Standard, which calls for utilities to deliver increasing amounts of emissions-free electricity during peak hours. The proposal also calls for utilities to procure 60 MW of biomass energy to help thin Arizona’s forest underbrush, which worsens wildfires.

The commission is expected to consider the proposal at its next open meeting, on July 19.

The state’s investor-owned utilities have already met Arizona’s 15% renewable energy mandate. Tobin’s proposal comes as the companies are considering how to add resources, amid considerations for natural gas. Arizona Public Service is considering 5.3 GW of gas generation by 2030, more than doubling its current capacity. And Tucson Electric Power’s latest integrated resource plan includes nearly 360 MW of new gas by 2032, a 30% increase in gas capacity.

Utilities have filed comments about Tobin’s modernization proposal, expressing some concern about the potential impacts on customer rates. However, they were also optimistic about their ability to meet the goals.

But there was some outright opposition. Freeport Minerals Corp. and Arizonans for Electric Choice and Competition filed joint comments opposing any government mandates. “Competition is the best energy solution as mandates have unintended consequences,” they told regulators, warning of possible short- and long-term cost increases.

The crypto carbon footprint is something to take seriously. Cryptos like Bitcoin and Ethereum are revolutionary new technologies. Unfortunately, they use a lot of energy. Each bitcoin transaction is estimated to create 500 kilos of carbon.

Ethereum is a more efficient system. An ethereum transaction is estimated to create 35 kilos of carbon. These levels of carbon emissions are not earth-friendly. A Singapore-based company is working on a solution to this problem. New Era Energy thinks that blockchain could solve the crypto carbon footprint problem.

A crypto carbon footprint solution

New Era Energy has created the Carbon Grid Protocol. It is similar to the carbon credit system in use currently. New Era Energy sees numerous potential markets for the Carbon Grid Protocol. New Era Energy has received support from the United Nations. The UN sees their platform as a promising solution to a global problem.

Crypto transactions lend themselves to carbon offset systems. New Era Energy co-founder and CEO Andy Tan had this to say about his company’s goal, “We are trying to enable a per-transaction offset mechanism,” and, “That can happen if we are able to track each transaction.”

Many people that use cryptos are environmentally conscious. The first decentralized payment systems probably weren’t designed with global energy usage in mind. It is estimated that bitcoin transactions use more energy than the nation of Chile on a yearly basis. Decentralized currency is a new technology. Innovative thinking will help it grow into a viable global settlement system.

Finding a path forward

The crypto carbon footprint has been a point of contention. Many critics of cryptos point to the crypto carbon footprint as a reason why cryptos can’t be used at global scale. Regrettably, this is more or less true at the moment. Every bitcoin transaction is estimated to use a megawatt-hour of power. Scaling that level of power usage up to a world scale isn’t possible.

Andy Tan makes a point of how important this issue is, “There is a very big inherent need” he remarked, referring to the huge crypto carbon footprint. He added optimistically, “And they (the transactions) are already on the blockchain, so it’s easy for us to pool all this data.”

Programs like New Era Energy’s Carbon Grid Protocol could be instrumental in pushing other new platforms forward. Today the crypto carbon footprint is offset by the prices people are willing to pay for newly mined cryptos. If crypto users have to cover the cost of the carbon that is created when they make a transaction, systems that prioritize efficiency could benefit.

For a long time (at least in the data centre world) lead acid batteries have remained the preferable choice for uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems.

However, Kokam vice president of the power solutions division Ike Hong says this is now beginning to change, with the transformation accelerating.

“Though the UPS market is still dominated by lead-acid batteries, rising data center interest in more affordable, compact, long-lasting, lightweight UPS systems is growing the market for high power UPS systems using lithium-ion batteries,” says Hong.

Hong says a growing trend they’re seeing is developers and operators of date centers installing backup generators to produce power in the case of a long power outage.

Because of the security provided by the long-term backup generators, the need for UPS systems that can provide a high level of power for a long period of time has diminished as these facilities now only need high power for a short period of time (Kokam says less than 15 minutes) to allow the backup generators to come online.

Despite this, Kokam says most UPS systems use lead acid batteries, which as a consequence of their low power discharge rates, forces data centre developers and operators to opt for high capacity and long duration UPS systems that can address their facilities’ short term and high power needs.

Kokam says further cons to the lead acid UPS system option include that they have large footprints, are hefty, require high maintenance, need significant cooling and ventilation, and finally, they need to be replaced every 3-5 years.

According to Hong, the industry is now opening its eyes to new and more affordable UPS solutions that require fewer batteries than lead acid UPS systems to deliver the same amount of power.

The company has recently launched its new K-UPS series of high power UPS battery racks that feature Kokam’s Ultra High Power Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt Oxide (UHP NMC) battery technology to meet the demand for lithium-ion UPS systems that can deliver high power for a short period of time at a lower cost than UPS systems using lead-acid batteries.

“Our new K-UPS battery racks use our UHP NMC batteries to deliver UPS system providers the industry-leading power discharge rate they need to build high–power UPS systems with the price, size, footprint, weight, lifetime and other characteristics that data center developers and operators increasingly demand,” concludes Hong.

On matters of industrial strategy and international competition, there’s no contrast starker than that between the hapless resignation of Europe and the steely determination of China. Unsurprisingly, it has been China – not Europe – that has proposed, with little success, forming a common front against Donald Trump’s trade tantrums. Even Washington’s bullying cannot awaken European policymakers from their slumber – or, as seems more likely, their moderately lubricated afternoon nap.

Hardly a week passes without a new alarming announcement that Beijing has managed to outmanoeuvre Brussels in yet another domain. Last week brought three such developments.

First, China Merchants Group, a state-owned company, joined forces with SPF Group and Centricus – asset managers based in Beijing and London respectively – to form a $15bn fund to compete with SoftBank’s $100bn Vision Fund, launched to invest in the most promising technology firms worldwide. This comes weeks after Sequoia Capital, America’s finest venture capital firm, closed the first round of fundraising on its $8bn Vision Fund alternative.

Second, Contemporary Amperex Technology, one of the largest manufacturers of lithium-ion batteries in China and a major beneficiary of its government’s efforts to steer this industry towards world leadership, signed a €1bn deal with BMW, with the intention of building its own factory in Europe to satisfy soaring demand for its batteries.

Daimler, another crown jewel of the German car industry, is now reportedly considering placing a similar order.

Third, Bolloré Group, one of France’s most important conglomerates, with activities spanning paper, energy and logistics businesses, entered a deal with Chinese technology giant Alibaba. Bolloré is hoping to use Alibaba’s sprawling cloud-computing empire across its operations, including in its battery-making division.

There is a neutral, even positive, interpretation of these developments. European capital – British in the first case, German in the second, French in the third – is taking advantage of lucrative opportunities. China just happens to offer more of them at the moment.

And yet, each of the three developments reveals major gaps in Europe’s industrial strategy. It’s one thing for European capital to be passively invested into most promising robotics or AI projects worldwide: Daimler, for example, is one of the few European backers of the Vision Fund. It’s quite another thing to be doing it with the goal of creating Europe’s own champions in these fields.

The European Commission’s strategy on artificial intelligence, published in April 2018, rests on the untested assumption that Brussels will succeed in mobilising nearly €18bn of private capital to complement a couple of billions that will be found in existing European programs. This, however, will require convincing the likes of Daimler – whose biggest shareholder today is China’s Geely – that their investments should go to some European tech fund, rather than to SoftBank or China Merchants Group.

It’s a challenge similar to Europe’s efforts, unsuccessful so far, to push European industry towards creating a European manufacturer of batteries for electric cars, if only to minimise its reliance on China and South Korea (the European Battery Alliance, an industry-wide initiative championed by the European commission, was launched last year, but has not borne much fruit yet).

European leaders seem to recognise the battery challenge – and so do Germany’s powerful trade unions – but it’s hard to see how it will be solved when the likes of BMW and Daimler keep placing billion dollar-orders with Chinese battery manufacturers.

The story on cloud computing, increasingly bundled with artificial intelligence services, is not much different: even if the European industry wanted to turn away from Amazon or Microsoft and use a European provider, it just does not have much choice. It is essentially hemmed in by American and Chinese giants.

This dependence was easier to justify when global trade was running smoothly and all industries looked alike (looked equally unimportant from the perspective of national or regional interests). Now that the European car industry finds itself under heavy fire from Trump, Brussels is severely constrained in its response.

When Trump threatens Europe’s most important industry, the logical thing to do would be to threaten retaliation against America’s own most important industry, which, whatever Trump himself believes, is actually based in Silicon Valley and Seattle, not Detroit.

This, however, is not an option: no one is going to believe that Europe, which has inserted services from Alphabet, IBM, Microsoft and Amazon deep into the infrastructure of its hospitals, energy grids, transportation systems, and universities is going to shut them off.

The best it can hope for, at this point, is to diversify its reliance on the US giants by doing some business with the Chinese ones.

None of this bodes well for Europe’s ability to remain at the centre of the global economy. Its industrial giants will not fade away but they will be increasingly dominated by foreign owners and foreign technology. While, in the rosier days of globalisation, this might even have been hailed as laudable, under today’s new normal this strategy borders on the suicidal. Those afternoon naps of European policymakers increasingly look like a coma.