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Clean energy and jobs

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America’s clean energy industry is unquestionably under attack by the Trump administration.  The administration is blocking renewable energy projects on federal lands, slashing clean tech tax credits, and putting in place new regulatory hurdles for solar and wind power and electric vehicles.  During the first half of the year, businesses cancelled $22 billion worth of clean energy projects, which would have created more than 16,000 jobs, ironically mostly in Republican areas.  Federal clean energy tax credits have generated billions of dollars in economic value annually, providing a strong return on investment for every federal dollar spent.

Last year, clean energy jobs grew three times faster than the rest of the economy.  The U.S. added nearly 100,000 jobs in solar, wind, batteries, energy efficiency, grid upgrades, biofuels, and electric cars.  In total, more than 3.5 million Americans hold jobs related to clean energy. 

Clean energy investments create substantial economic growth.  The clean energy transition creates opportunities in manufacturing, engineering, installation, and maintenance.  These new jobs far outweigh job losses in the fossil fuel sector.  Investments in clean energy had been projected to create massive numbers of new jobs and significantly boost the U.S. GDP by 2030, often providing new opportunities for rural communities.

Overall, clean energy has been one of the hottest and most promising job sectors in the country.  Now that clean energy job growth is at serious risk, so is the health of the overall economy.

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More Americans Working in Clean Energy Than as Servers or Cashiers

Photo, posted July 28, 2025, courtesy of Bronx Community College via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The cost of electric vehicle batteries

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The battery pack in an electric car is the most expensive part of the car. Currently, it accounts for as much as 30% of the price.  But EV batteries last a long time.  Most are guaranteed for 8-10 years and are likely to last as long as 20 years.  In practice, only 1.5% of electric cars need battery replacements for one reason or another.

The economics of EV batteries has changed dramatically over time and will continue to do so.  EV battery capacity is measured in kWh, the units you are charged for your home electricity.  An EV with a 300-mile driving range will have a battery pack that holds something like 75 kWh.

In 2008, when electric cars were just starting to enter the market again after earlier false starts, lithium-ion battery packs cost $1,355 per kWh.  When the Tesla Model S was introduced in 2012, packs were about $800. By 2019, packs broke the $200 per kWh barrier. Last year, lithium-ion battery packs reached $115 per kWh.

A combination of technology improvements and strong market competition with growing supplies is driving prices ever lower.  Industry analysts expect battery prices to drop well below $100 this year and reach about $80 next year.

The result of all of this cost reduction is that EVs will be cheaper than equivalent internal combustion vehicles, which in fact is already the case in China. Apart from cost, batteries for cars continue to improve so that the driving range of EVs will continue to increase making the cars more attractive and very practical for nearly all drivers.

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How Much Do Electric Car Batteries Cost to Replace?

Photo, posted January 22, 2019, courtesy of Steve Rainwater via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Grid reliability and grid-edge resources

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A new study by MIT researchers looked at the potential for grid-edge resources to enhance the ability of the electric grid to respond to unforeseen power outages.  Grid-edge resources are devices found close to consumers rather than located near central power plants, substations, or transmission lines.  These include residential solar panels, storage batteries, electric vehicles, heat pumps, smart thermostats and smart water heaters.

These grid-edge devices can independently generate, store, or tune their consumption of power and increasingly, they are online internet-of-things devices.  The MIT study outlined a blueprint for how such devices could reinforce the power grid through a local electricity market.  Owners of grid-edge devices could subscribe to such a market and essentially loan out their device as part of a microgrid or local network as on-call energy resources.

Electric vehicles could provide power rather than consuming it when necessary.  Storage batteries could do the same.  Devices like smart dishwashers and thermostats would reduce their power demands when necessary.

In the event that the main power grid is compromised, an algorithm would determine which grid-edge devices were available and trustworthy and would either use them to pump power into the grid or reduce the power they are drawing from it in order to help mitigate the power failure. 

The MIT researchers illustrated this grid resilience strategy through a number of grid attack scenarios including failures from cyber-attacks and natural disasters.   Their analysis showed that various networks of grid-edge devices are capable of defeating various types of grid failures.

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Rooftop panels, EV chargers, and smart thermostats could chip in to boost power grid resilience

Photo, posted October 10, 2019, courtesy of Noya Fields via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Clean energy in New York

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The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority – NYSERDA – recently issued a report on clean energy progress in the state during 2024.  The report highlighted continued and increased growth in heat pumps, electric vehicles, and solar energy.

Heat pumps, which provide both heating and cooling, have outsold gas furnaces countrywide for three straight years.  Air source heat pumps outsold gas furnaces by 37%.  This does not include ground source heat pumps, also known as geothermal heat pumps. New York offers Clean Heat rebates to offset the cost of installing heat pumps.

2024 was a good year for electric vehicles in New York with 90,221 new registrations.  More than 60 car models are eligible for New York’s Drive Clean state rebates.

New York achieved its Climate Act goal of having 6,000 MW of distributed solar power in October.  The state is expected to have more than 10,000 MW of distributed solar by 2030.

Nationwide, solar energy represented 64% of all the new electricity generation capacity installed in 2024, up from 55.5% in 2023.  Utility-scale solar generation in the lower 48 states was 36% higher in the summer of 2024 than in summer 2023.

NYSERDA’s report points out that converting to clean energy technologies can bring multiple benefits that include energy efficiency, cost savings, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.

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Heat Pumps, Electric Vehicles, and Solar Scale Up Through 2024

Photo, posted April 6, 2017, courtesy of Stephen Yang / The Solutions Project via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The year in energy

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Last year saw some major trends in the global energy sector. Perhaps the most dramatic was the shift to renewable power, which continued to outpace the projections of both financial analysts and industry experts.  2024 saw new highs in renewable installation, largely due to China, which accounted for more than half of all the solar power installed globally.  Huge solar installations also came online in California and Nevada during the year.  On the other hand, the amount of coal burning for the year also exceeded expert predictions, also largely due to China.

A second trend was increasing sales of electric vehicles, which reached a new high, although short of expectations.  A major driving force in EV sales is the dropping price of lithium-ion batteries, which fell by 20% in 2024.  Again, China was a major factor with roughly half of all its domestic vehicle sales being electric.

Coal’s decline is being slowed by the rising demand for electricity.  The increased use of electric heating and cooling along with the increasing use of EVs are major factors.  But the proliferation of energy-hungry data centers incorporating artificial intelligence capabilities is driving up the demand for power even more. 

Perhaps the clearest indication of the future for global energy comes from investors, who put about $2 trillion into clean energy last year.  That is twice as much as invested in oil, coal, and natural gas.

The history of energy has seen the Age of Coal and the Age of Oil.  By all indications, we are now heading into the Age of Electricity.

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The Year in Energy in Four Charts

Photo, posted November 23, 2024, courtesy of Mussi Katz via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Tourism and greenhouse gas emissions

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Tourism is a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for about 9% of the global total.  Over the past 15 years, its emissions have grown more than twice as fast as those of the rest of the global economy.

Unless the tourism industry finds ways to slow down its growing emissions, those emissions will continue to increase by 3 to 4% each year, meaning that they will double every 20 years.  The major drivers behind tourism’s growing emissions have been slow improvements in tourism-related technologies coupled with the rapid growth in demand.

Transportation is tourism’s main source of greenhouse gas emissions.  Planes and cars generate the most carbon dioxide but there are contributions from tour buses, boat rides, ferries, and trains as well.  The increasing demand for international travel has been the largest contributor to the growth of tourism-related emissions.  But just as people’s homes generate emissions from energy use, so do hotels and other lodging used on vacations.

The United States, China, and India are responsible for 60% of the total increase in tourism’s carbon footprint.  Generally speaking, it is the world’s wealthiest nations that have the most tourists exploring the world.

Researchers from Australia’s University of Queensland recommended several measures to slow the growth of tourism’s carbon emissions.  These include reducing long-haul flights, imposing carbon dioxide taxes, setting carbon budgets, and the use of alternative transportation fuels.  At the local level, tourism businesses making use of renewable energy sources and electric vehicles would help.

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Tourism leads the pack in growing carbon emissions

Photo, posted September 14, 2014, courtesy of Gary Campbell-Hall via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Electric vehicles and health

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Much of the discussion about the benefits of electric vehicles centers about the climate impact of not burning fossil fuels as well as about reduced operating costs.  A new study by the University of Toronto looked at the health benefits of large-scale adoption of electric vehicles.

The Toronto researchers used computer simulations to show that widespread electrification of the U.S. vehicle fleet when coupled with significant use of renewable energy to power the fleet could result in health benefits worth between $84 and $188 billion dollars by 2050.  Expressing these benefits in dollar terms is a way to quantify those benefits, but clearly what is most important is people’s health.

Carbon dioxide coming out of tailpipes is what is most harmful to the climate, but there is much more than CO2 vehicle exhaust.  There are many air pollutants that have a significant, quantifiable impact on human health.  These include nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, and small particles known as PM2.5. 

The study simulated levels of air pollution across the United States under various scenarios of adoption of EVs and the use of renewable energy.  The simulations clearly showed that the combination of widespread use of electric vehicles and the greening of the power grid would result in huge cumulative public health benefits.  But these benefits will take time to accrue.  The internal combustion vehicles being sold today will still be on the roads for many years and will continue to spread pollution everywhere there are roads.

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New research reveals how large-scale adoption of electric vehicles can improve air quality and human health

Photo, posted May 7, 2020, courtesy of Mark Vletter via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The carbon cost of wind farms

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Opponents of electric vehicles and renewable energy often try to make arguments to the effect that the carbon footprint associated with producing electric cars, solar panels, and wind turbines negates their advantages over legacy technologies that involve burning fossil fuels.  These arguments have been soundly refuted for the case of electric vehicles but there have been fewer studies related to other green technologies.

A new peer-reviewed study by engineers at the Te Herenga Waka Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, has analyzed the carbon emissions associated with wind farm operation.

The main result is that after operating for less than two years, a wind farm can offset the carbon emissions generated across its entire 30-year lifespan.   The study takes into account everything from the manufacturing of individual turbine parts, to transporting them and installing them into place, to decommissioning the entire wind farm at its life’s end.  The environmental impacts of the installation and transportation phases are important, accounting for about 10% of the overall emissions.

The decommissioning phase is also important.  The study recommended the development of a recycling process for end-of-life turbine blades.  Currently, such blades are disposed of in landfills, but a recycling process could reduce emissions.

The manufacturing of wind turbines is the primary contributor to the carbon and energy consumption footprints and continues to be the subject of efforts to be improved.

There are other aspects of wind farms that are subject to criticism including physical impacts on the local environment and various social, wildlife and economic impacts.  But with respect to carbon emissions, wind farms are a winning strategy.

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Wind Farms can Offset Their Emissions Within Two Years, New Study Shows

Photo, posted April 2, 2017, courtesy of Ian Dick via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Clean energy investment at record levels

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According to a new study by the International Energy Agency, global clean energy investment will be nearly twice that of fossil fuels this year.  The surging funding for clean energy is being driven by a combination of lower costs for renewable energy and by improving supply chains.

In 2024, the world’s investments in energy are expected to surpass $3 trillion dollars for the first time.  About $2 trillion of that will be directed at green technologies that include renewable power sources, grids, and energy storage; electric vehicles; low-emission fuels; nuclear power; and heat pumps and efficiency improvements.  The remaining amount of just over $1 trillion will fund oil, gas, and oil projects.

The record growth in clean energy investments is taking place in spite of challenging economic conditions related to high interest rates, which demonstrates the momentum behind the global energy transition.

The IEA report does caution that there are big imbalances and shortages in energy investment in various places around the world.  For example, there is a low amount of green energy spending in developing and emerging economies outside of China.  Countries like Brazil and India are leading the way for this sector by having investments in excess of $300 billion.

More money is currently going into solar power development than all other electricity generation technologies combined.  In 2024, solar photovoltaic power investment is set to grow to $500 billion as the falling price of solar modules spurs new investments.

The largest renewable investments will come from China at $675 billion, followed by Europe and the U.S. at $370 billion and $315 billion, respectively.

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Global Clean Energy Investment Will Nearly Double That of Fossil Fuels in 2024: IEA Report

Photo, posted October 2, 2015, courtesy of John Englart via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Benefits of electric school buses

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There are about half a million school buses in use in the U.S.  A large number of them are older, highly polluting diesel buses.  There are well-established health and climate benefits of switching from diesel vehicles to electric vehicles but making the switch is expensive.  Diesel buses generally cost between $65,000 to $120,000, depending on the type and configuration.  Electric buses cost about $250,000 each.

The substantial cost makes it a difficult decision for local, state, and federal officials, particularly since the actual magnitude of the benefits is not well known.

A new study by researchers at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health has quantified these benefits.  According to the study, replacing each bus may yield up to $247,600 in climate and health benefits. These benefits derive from fewer greenhouse gas emissions and from reduced rates of adult mortality and childhood asthma. 

The study compared the amounts of carbon dioxide emitted from diesel bus tailpipes to the emissions associated with generating electricity for the buses and producing their batteries.  It also compared how these respective emissions contribute to fine particulate air pollution, which is linked to adult mortality and the onset of childhood asthma.  The study concluded that particularly in dense urban settings, the savings incurred from electrifying older school buses easily outweigh the costs of replacing them.

An important question not tackled in the study is how electric school buses impact children’s exposure to in-cabin air pollution while riding the bus.  This issue could further inform policy decisions.

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Electric school buses may yield significant health and climate benefits, cost savings

Photo, posted May 9, 2008, courtesy of Christine H. via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Iceland power

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Iceland burns very little fossil fuel to power its economy and heat its homes.  About 85% of its energy comes from geothermal power and hydropower.  Its unique geology provides it with the highest percentage of renewable energy in the world.  The fossil fuel that Iceland does burn is primarily used to power cars and trucks as well as boats in its fishing fleet.  And Iceland is rapidly embracing the use of electric vehicles.

Iceland can make far more electricity than its 373,000 people can use.  The majority of its electricity is essentially exported as bars of aluminum.  Iceland is one of the world’s largest refiners of aluminum.  The aluminum ore comes from other countries but gets shipped to Iceland where electricity is cheap.  Refining aluminum is so energy-intensive that some say that aluminum is basically just pure electricity in solid metal form.

Electricity-rich Iceland is finding other ways to make use of its resources.  There is a proposed project called Icelink, which is an electricity interconnector between Iceland and Great Britain.  The high-voltage direct current link would run between 620 and 750 miles and would be the longest sub-sea power interconnector in the world.  It is controversial in Iceland and it may or may not happen.

Another technology that is establishing an early foothold in Iceland is carbon capture.  An Icelandic company called Carbix is doing leading work on taking captured carbon dioxide and sequestering it underground.  Capturing and storing carbon dioxide is energy-intensive and the promise of cheap, clean geothermal power makes Iceland an attractive place to do it.

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Iceland Is Living in our Future

Photo, posted July 2, 2012, courtesy of  Emily Qualey / PopTech via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Record energy transition investments

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Global investment in the energy transition – that is, the transition away from fossil fuels – increased by 17% in 2023, reaching a new high of $1.8 trillion dollars.  That number includes spending on electric vehicles and their associated infrastructure, electrification of the power grid, and various other changes to the energy system.

Electrified transport was the largest sector for spending, accounting for $634 billion dollars.  This figure includes spending on electric cars, trucks, buses, two- and three-wheeler, and commercial vehicles, as well as charging stations and other associated infrastructure.

The renewable energy sector – including wind, solar, geothermal, and biofuel power plants – accounted for $623 billion.  The third largest investment was $310 billion in power grid investments.

China spent the most of any country by a large margin, investing $676 billion. The EU, U.S., and UK combined accounted for $718 billion. 

These numbers reflect the rapid growth of clean energy across the globe and are obviously quite large.  However, the pace at which clean energy technology is growing is not fast enough to achieve the goal of net-zero emissions by mid-century that most countries have set.  By many accounts, energy transition investments would need to average $4.8 trillion per year for the rest of the decade to be on track.  This is about 5.6% of the global gross domestic product that is currently about $85 trillion per year.  By comparison, the U.S. currently spends about 5.7% of its GDP on energy.

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Energy transition investments hit record $1.8 trillion in 2023

Photo, posted November 22, 2008, courtesy of Oregon Department of Transportation via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Lower carbon emissions in the U.S.

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American greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 fell by 1.9%.  In total, U.S. emissions have now fallen by over 17% since 2005.  The largest factor in the decline has been the reduction in the burning of coal to produce electricity.  Coal-fired generation has fallen to its lowest level in half a century.

There was a huge drop in emissions at the start of the covid pandemic when large segments of the economy shut down.  But then there was a sharp rebound in emissions in the following two years when economic activity resumed.  But over the long term, American emissions have been trending downward as both cars and power plants have become cleaner and greener.

The decline in emissions is a good thing but hasn’t been nearly enough to meet the nation’s goals for trying to slow down global warming.  The U.S. has a goal of reducing emissions by 2030 to half of the 2005 level.  To achieve that goal, annual emissions would have to fall more than three times faster than they did last year for the rest of the decade.

The emissions data used for the current assessment included those from transportation, electricity generation, industry, and buildings.  It did not include pollution from agriculture, which accounts for about 10% of the nation’s greenhouse gases.

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act provided record amounts of money for low-emissions technologies like solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear reactors, electric vehicles, and hydrogen fuels.  The full impact of these federal investments has yet to be seen, since many companies are still ramping up their efforts in clean energy.  How quickly emissions will fall as these efforts come to fruition remains to be seen.

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U.S. Carbon Emissions Fell in 2023 as Coal Use Tumbled to New Lows

Photo, posted May 17, 2020, courtesy of Frans Berkelaar via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Sodium-ion batteries

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The transition away from fossil fuels is driving a rapidly increasing need for batteries.  Both electric vehicles and energy storage for the electric grid are enormous consumers of batteries.  At present, lithium-ion batteries are almost universally used for these purposes.  They have been getting better all the time and cheaper all the time and are likely to be the answer for the foreseeable future.  But they are not perfect.

Lithium is only found in a relatively small number of places and mining and extracting it is fairly expensive and environmentally unfriendly.  Lithium-ion batteries also frequently contain cobalt, which has its own set of problems.  There are also safety issues related to the flammability of lithium-ion batteries. 

As a result, there continue to be numerous efforts to identify and develop alternative battery technologies.  One of these is sodium-ion batteries, which are similar in many ways to lithium-ion batteries but in which sodium replaces lithium as the cathode material.

Sodium is extremely common – it’s found in ordinary salt – and sodium-ion batteries have a high energy density and are easy to produce.  They should have a long lifetime and have a more benign environmental impact than lithium-ion.  Many companies and researchers are working on sodium-ion batteries and are making good progress.

A study by Chalmers University in Sweden looked at the potential for sodium-ion batteries and found that the batteries are particularly promising for use in energy storage even in their current state of development and could eventually be used in cars.  Whether sodium-ion batteries can be good enough and cheap enough quickly enough to give lithium-ion a run for its money remains to be seen.

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Resource-efficient and climate-friendly with sodium-ion batteries

Photo, posted March 12, 2013, courtesy of Chris Hunkeler via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Airplanes, corn, and groundwater

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The aviation industry wants to slash its greenhouse gas emissions.  One proposed strategy is to replace ordinary jet fuel with ethanol.  Ethanol in this country mostly comes from corn.  The airlines are enthusiastic about the idea; corn farmers are enthusiastic about the idea.  Ethanol suppliers are obviously enthusiastic about it.  But is it a good idea?

Today, nearly 40% of America’s corn crop is turned into ethanol.  Twenty years ago, the figure was around 10%.  The massive growth was the result of mandates for ethanol augmentation of gasoline for environmental reasons.

But the environmental benefits of corn ethanol have always been controversial at best when all the energy factors are considered. But apart from that, a very serious issue is that corn is a water-intensive crop, and it can take hundreds of gallons of water to produce a single gallon of ethanol.  As the climate warms and corn crops expand, groundwater in many corn-growing areas is being increasingly depleted and groundwater provides half our drinking water and meets far more than just the needs of corn farmers.

Corn farmers and ethanol producers see the rapid growth of electric vehicles as a threat to their lucrative business of supplying the auto fuel industry.  The ambitious goals of the airline industry to reduce its emissions would likely require nearly doubling ethanol production.

The situation is a powerful example of the tradeoffs that can arise as the world tries to make the transition away from fossil fuel.  Even green solutions can have their own environmental cost and sometimes that cost may be too steep.

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Airlines Race Toward a Future of Powering Their Jets With Corn

Photo, posted September 2, 2007, courtesy of Rosana Prada via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Global climate progress is too slow

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According to a new report by the World Resources Institute, the world is making progress on climate, but the progress is not fast enough.  The report looked at 37 indicators of climate progress towards the goals set forth by the Paris Agreement.  In some areas, the progress has been substantial, but in six areas, the world has been moving in the wrong direction entirely.

The rapid growth of clean energy has brought the world to the brink of peak fossil fuels, but to avoid the catastrophic effects of warming, countries need to build out wind and solar power nearly twice as fast and shut down coal plants seven times faster.  There has been progress in curbing deforestation, but the world needs to stem forest loss four times more quickly.  More work is needed to clean up heavy industry and the consumption of meat needs to be limited more than the present level.

Areas where things are getting worse rather than better include the use of public funds and subsidies for preserving the use of fossil fuels.  Because of wars and supply shocks affecting energy markets, countries have actually ramped up fossil fuel subsidies to combat rising prices.

One area where the world is moving at the pace required to meet climate goals is in the sales of electric vehicles.  EVs accounted for 10% of car sales globally last year and if trends continue, they are predicted to account for more than 75% of cars sold by 2030.

The faster-than-predicted progress on electric cars demonstrates that transformative change is possible and could happen in other areas.

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World Making Too Little Progress on Climate — Except on EV Sales, Report Finds

Photo, posted May 24, 2022, courtesy of Ivan Radic via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A Huge American Lithium Discovery | Earth Wise

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Human history has often been described in terms of a succession of metal ages:  the copper age, the bronze age, and the iron age.  In many ways, we have now entered the lithium age.  The light metal goes into the batteries that power smartphones, electric vehicles, and massive storage banks for the power grid.  Lithium has become a critical strategic resource.

As it stands now, the U.S. gets most of its lithium from imports from Australia and South America.  Major lithium sources are not commonplace; in 2022 there were only 45 lithium mines in the world.  Many of the known deposits are not in North America but in Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, China, and Australia.  The current largest known lithium deposits lie beneath the salt flats of Bolivia.

Lithium Americas Corporation, a company dedicated to advancing lithium projects to the stage of production, funded research over the past decade that has identified vast deposits of lithium-rich clay in a dormant volcanic crater along the Nevada-Oregon border.  The McDermitt Caldera is estimated to hold between 20 and 40 million tons of lithium, which would make it the largest deposit in the world.

There are many questions still to answer.  It is not clear how easy it will be to extract lithium from the clay, in particular how expensive or carbon-intensive it will be.  There are also political complexities since the area where the lithium deposit was found is considered to be unceded ancestral land for both the Paiute and Shoshone tribes.

Apart from a dearth of domestic sources of lithium, the US also lags well behind China in lithium processing capabilities.  The country has catching up to do in the new lithium age.

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America Just Hit the Lithium Jackpot

Photo, posted April 19, 2020, courtesy of Ken Lund via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Aluminum In Batteries | Earth Wise

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Batteries are playing a bigger and bigger role in our lives.  Apart from their use in ubiquitous smartphones, laptops, and other devices, millions of electric vehicles are hitting the roads, and utilities are installing giant banks of batteries to store energy generated by wind and solar farms.

The necessary characteristics of batteries are high energy density and stability.  The latter is needed so that batteries can be safely and reliably recharged thousands of times.  For decades, lithium-ion batteries have been the go-to for all these modern battery applications.  And they have gradually gotten better and cheaper all the time.  But the improvements are getting smaller, and the price reductions have limits.

For these reasons, researchers are always looking for batteries with higher energy density – so that, for example, electric cars can drive farther on a charge – and that can be made more cheaply, are not flammable, and are very stable.

Since the 1970s, researchers have investigated the use of aluminum for the anode of batteries because its properties would allow more energy to be stored.  However, when used in lithium-ion batteries, aluminum developed fractures and failed after a few cycles.

Researchers at Georgia Tech University have developed a type of aluminum foil with small amounts of other materials that create specific microstructures.  Used in battery anodes, this material does not degrade and appears to be a path to a better battery.  When incorporated into a solid-state battery that does not contain the flammable liquid found in standard lithium-ion batteries, the result is a battery that checks most of the boxes in the search for a better battery.

Much more work is needed to assess the potential for the aluminum-based battery, but it looks very promising.

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Aluminum Materials Show Promising Performance for Safer, Cheaper, More Powerful Batteries

Photo, posted August 27, 2019, courtesy of Marco Verch via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Big Oil And Big Lithium | Earth Wise

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The world’s big oil companies have worked pretty hard to prolong society’s dependence on petroleum.  When there are trillions of dollars at stake, there is plenty of motivation.  But those companies do see the writing on the wall.

An Exxon Mobil-funded study last year estimated that light-duty vehicle demand for combustion engine fuels could peak in 2025 and that electric vehicles of various types could grow to more than 50% of new car sales by 2050.  This is pretty pessimistic compared with most other surveys, but it is still a big number.  Exxon also projected that the global fleet of EVs could reach 420 million by 2040.

As a result of all this, Exxon is preparing for a future far less dependent on gasoline by drilling for lithium rather than oil.  The company recently purchased mining rights to a sizable chunk of Arkansas land for over $100 million from which it aims to produce lithium for electric car batteries.

Exxon’s consultants estimated that the 120,000 acres in the Smackover formation of southern Arkansas could have as much as 4 million tons of lithium carbonate, enough to power 50 million cars and trucks. 

Exxon plans to spend $17 billion through 2027 on cutting carbon emissions and developing low carbon technologies.  Other large oil producers have also been looking at the lithium business.  At the same time, some large oil companies like BP and Shell are investing in renewable energy.

The prospect of EVs dominating transportation in the coming decades is a strong incentive for oil-and-gas companies to adapt their businesses to the new world.

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Exxon Joins Hunt for Lithium in Bet on EV Boom

Photo, posted August 16, 2014, courtesy of Mike Mozart via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Explosive Growth Of Electric Vehicles | Earth Wise

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Not long ago, electric cars were a rarity.  Ten years ago, annual global sales of EVs were only a few hundred thousand.  As of today, globally, still less than one percent of all the cars on the road are electric.  But that is changing rapidly.

In fact, electric vehicles are expected to capture nearly 20% of the global market this year.  Global sales of EVs were 3 million in 2020 and 6.6 million in 2021.  Last year, sales of electric vehicles hit 10 million and are expected to reach 14 million this year according to the International Energy Agency.

Analysts at the IEA have had to repeatedly revise their projections for future EV sales as the numbers keep going up faster than predicted.  Last year, they projected that EVs would account for 21% of global sales by 2030.  Now, they expect that EVs will reach 35% of sales by that year.

In the US, the EU, and China, policy efforts are in place to boost EV sales.  In the US, the Inflation Reduction Act both supports the EV industry and subsidizes consumer purchases with tax credits. As a result of such policies, the IEA expects electric vehicles to account for 60% of sales across these three large markets by 2030.

Part of what is driving the boom in EV sales is that prices continue to come down for the vehicles.  When operating and maintenance costs are figured in, the EVs come out considerably cheaper to own.  In addition, there are starting to be price wars in the EV industry as competition heats up in the sector.

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EVs to Capture One-Fifth of Global Market This Year Amid ‘Explosive Growth’

Photo, posted May 7, 2022, courtesy of Sharon Hahn Darlin via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

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