Carlton Supporters Club

“Urgent and ongoing investment in renewable energy, long-duration storage and transmission is needed to reliably meet demand from Australian homes and businesses,” AEMO Chief Executive Officer Daniel Westerman said in a statement.

Utilities are rushing to shutter aging coal operations citing the eroding viability of the plants amid competition from cheaper solar and wind. Origin Energy Ltd. last year moved up the retirement of the Eraring Power Station in New South Wales by seven years, while AGL Energy Ltd. advanced its closure plans by a decade. The companies intend to add new renewable energy generation and battery storage as a replacement.

Investment in large-scale renewable energy projects in Australia jumped 145% in 2022 to about $5.9 billion, with around 5 gigawatts of solar and wind installed, BloombergNEF analysts including Tushna Antia said in a January report. Spending is forecast to remain strong with at least a further 3.7 gigawatts of projects expected to reach financial close this year, the analysts said.

Seems to me that the story is a fairly common tale of business going to war with attempts to restrain environmental damage and harm to workers.

Focussing on the miners and companies is the point. That doesn’t change whether the end user is an EV manufacturer or not.

I see you didn’t bother to say whether the employment and environmental practices of mineral mining in Australia are better than those in Indonesia. I’m guessing that means they are.

I agree that there should be complete accounting for externalities so attention can be paid to ameliorating production chains. But expanding the base for green technology is important as we have a chicken and egg problem. Delaying a switch to green fuel for cars means the infrastructure won’t improve and that will be a disincentive to switch over. That would gladden the hearts of fossil fuel advocates everywhere. As I’ve noted previously, battery technology is improving dramatically. Far from wanting to allow EV manufacturers to hide dirty links in their supply chain, a full accounting of externalities will spur R&D into cleaner battery technology.

It’s a bit like carbon offsets and the definitions of renewable energy which can be used to distort efforts to battle climate change. I still can’t understand how the EU was allowed to get away with including wood-fired power plants in its contribution to that fight. Make sure all externalities are included and shell games are eliminated. That might be a big problem for blue hydrogen which relies on optimistic assurances that greenhouse gases will disappear as if by magic.

All the Indonesian mines have to do is promise that they’ll bury the pollutants in the ground or convert them into chemicals which can be used by industry in unlimited quantities and the problem goes away, no?

Swiss battery manufacturer Leclanché says it has made a breakthrough in the environmentally friendly production of modern G/NMCA cells. Leclanché is able to reduce the cobalt content in NMCA electrodes from 20 to five per cent in an environmentally friendly water-based process.

In the process, Leclanché completely eliminates the use of the highly toxic organic solvents (NMP, short for N-methylpyrrolidone) that are otherwise common in the production process. According to Leclanché, the new G/NMCA cells offer a 20 per cent higher energy density compared to conventional NMC cells – with the same size, weight and very good performance. The “G” stands for the graphite in the anode, NMCA for a cathode based on nickel-manganese-cobalt-aluminium oxide.

One thing is clear: NMCA cathodes based on water-based binders are easier to dispose of and recyclable. The newly developed G/NMCA cell is said to have a nickel content of around 90 per cent, which increases the energy density and allows the cobalt content to be significantly reduced by 15 per cent. At the same time, according to the company, it offers a longer service life, high cycle stability and good chargeability.

Thanks to the high volume density and high cycle stability, the new cells are said to be particularly well suited for “electric cars as well as heavy-duty applications such as ships, buses and trucks” . Leclanché’s new G/NMCA cells are expected to be available on the market in 2024.
…
Company representatives also emphasise in the release, however, that the real breakthrough lies in the production that is now possible. “With the water-based production of the high-capacity NMCA cathodes, we have reached a decisive milestone in lithium-ion technology,” says Hilmi Buqa, Vice President R&D at Leclanché. “Until now, producing them using environmentally friendly processes was considered impossible. But, now we have mastered the process.”

Leclanché has been using aqueous binders in its battery production for many years. Among other things, because the previous production processes based on these binders did not allow for such high energy densities as were required for automotive use, Leclanché batteries have so far mainly been used in commercial vehicles and in the shipping industry for hybrid ferries or electric ships.

By the way, with the water-based process, Leclanché can already dispense with energy-intensive processes for drying, flashing off and recycling the solvents. Energy consumption is therefore said to be ten to 30 per cent lower.