Projections See World Heading To A Lithium Shortage
https://www.thefinancialtrends.com/2...hium-shortage/
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
The Other Shoe Drops
https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2023...er-shoe-drops/
By
eric -
September 1, 2023
We are told that replacing the cars and trucks we have with battery-powered devices that cost more and weigh a lot more and that entail using up more natural resources is a necessary transition.
In fact, it is “necessary” . . . to set the stage for the next transition.
That being the elimination of personal transportation. They didn’t tell us this at the beginning of this transition, of course – for all the obvious reasons. Just as they did not tell us that a “case” does not mean someone’s sick, that “masks” don’t work and that “vaccines” won’t stop the spread.
Now they are telling us what will become “necessary” – once the transition to battery powered devices becomes a fait accompli.
“Heavier EVs are Causing Safety and Pollution Problems,” reads the banner headline in today’s Automotive News. “The progress automakers made taking weight off vehicles over the past decade is quickly being erased by EVs, jeopardizing safety and causing pollution.”
This is all true, of course.
EVs are almost . . . ludicrously heavy, on account of the weight of their batteries. A typical small EV weighs a third again more than an otherwise similar non-electric car. Electric trucks weigh as much as two (or more) mid-sized non-electric cars. And this weight adds weight – the heavier structure needed to handle the weight of a battery that weighs a lot more than most V8 engines (the latter weigh about 500 pounds fully dressed; a typical EV battery pack weighs close to twice that and some – as in EV trucks – weigh four times that). Plus the additional weight necessary to protect that fire-prone battery from being damaged – and catching fire.
All of that weight bears down on the EV’s tires, which must be larger to bear all of that weight and which wear out faster – resulting in more oil being used and (here it comes!) emissions of particulates, which actually are pollutants in that particulates do foul the environment, unlike carbon dioxide.
Which the manufacturing of EVs – in particular, those massive EV batteries – also causes more of, thereby obviating the putative justification for this “essential” transition.
More, in other words, will inevitably lead to less.
Just not quite yet. Not until the trap has been sprung. Once there is no longer an alternative to battery powered devices, problems will be found with battery powered devices.
Like the other problem attending all of this gratuitous weight. Which cannot be reduced absent some Great Leap Forward in battery technology. The one we’ve been hearing is right around the corner since circa 1995.
The faithfully Leftist (and so, faithfully anti-car) journal Nature tells us all about the weight problem in a study quoted by Axios: “The authors — while warning this is a back-of-the-envelope tally — say the cost of extra lives lost by adding 1,500 pounds to a truck ‘rivals the climate benefits’ of avoided emissions.”
In other words, EVs aren’t safe.
This is also true. It is physics. If your 3,300 pound non-electric car is T-boned by a 9,063 pound (yes, really) Hummer EV you will find out all about it.
In the next world.
So, if EV emissions aren’t reason enough to force most of them off the roads, as EVs themselves are in the process of being used to do to cars that are safer and that “emit” fewer “emissions” overall (by dint of requiring fewer materials to manufacture them and by dint of burning through more resources to power them) then safety will serve to do the same.
These “risks” can be “addressed” – the words chosen are always soft-sell ones, designed to efface the hard truth of the force that will be applied to “address” the “risks” created by the use of force in the first place – via “policy changes” such as “vehicle registration charges based on weight to encourage the use of lighter vehicles.”
Italics added.
When they say “encourage” they mean force, of course.
Such force will be applied to get EVs off the roads once that’s all or mostly what’s allowed on the roads. If you are worried about being able to afford a $50,000 EV – the latter being the average price paid for a new EV – don’t worry about it. Because you won’t be able to afford what it will cost to register it. And if that’s not “incentive” enough to “encourage” you to “walk, bike or take public transit,” as the Nature piece puts it – there are always other “incentives” available in the tool kit of “stakeholders,” which doesn’t include you.
These include – but are by no means limited to – increasing the cost of the electricity they intend to make you exclusively dependent upon, by eliminating alternatives to it and by increasing demand for it while decreasing the available supply of it.
One it becomes extortionately expensive to keep the lights (and ‘fridge) in your home on, it will become . . . unsustainable to drive the EV you probably couldn’t afford to buy.
Or register.
And if that’s still not enough enough, then how about driving you off the road by taxing you extortionately for every mile you drive? The EV can debit your CBDC account as you drive. Watch your balance evaporate along with your range.
This will, in the words of the Nature study’s authors, “ensure a better future for everyone.”
“It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no ‘proposition nation’ can erase." -- Pat Buchanan
If America is only an idea, then there is no need for masses of immigrants to come here since they can just create the idea in their own countries. - Random Thought from the Interwebs.
And, of course, mass tends to be unmaneuverable, because Newton's Laws. And you can't put big enough tires under it to correct for that.
So, swerving, emergency lane changes, which typically can happen in under a fourth of the vehicle's stopping distance at the same speed (or could), become a much less viable option.
We ought to cross-post these in the dreaming up new ways to kill us thread.
Why wind and solar power are running out of juice
https://nypost.com/2023/09/02/why-th...source=twitter
Jonathan Lesser - September 2, 2023
Green energy and the push to electrify everything have been in the news recently but for all the wrong reasons.
Instead of the green energy nirvana politicians and green energy advocates have promised, economic and physical reality has begun to set in.
Start with the economic realities.
Wind turbine manufacturers like Siemens and General Electric have reported huge losses for the first half of this year, almost $5 billion for the former and $1 billion for the latter.
Among other problems, turbine quality control has suffered, forcing manufacturers such as Siemens and Vestas to incur costly warranty repairs.
In Europe, offshore wind output has been less than promised, while operating costs have been much higher than advertised.
Offshore wind developers in Europe and the US are canceling projects because of higher materials and construction costs.
In Massachusetts, Avangrid, the developer of the 1,200 MW Commonwealth Wind project paid $48 million to get out of its existing contract to sell power to ratepayers.
That way, the company can rebid the project next year at an even higher price.
Close by, the developers of the 1,200 MW SouthCoast Wind Project off Martha’s Vineyard will pay about $60 million to exit their existing contract.
Rhode Island Energy, the state’s main electric utility, recently rejected the second Revolution Wind Project because the contract price was too high.
And Ørsted, the Danish government-owned company that is developing the Southfork Wind and Sunrise Wind projects off Long Island — as well as the Ocean Wind project off the New Jersey coast — last week announced that, without additional subsidies and higher contract prices, it will have to write-off billions of dollars in potential losses.
The result: Even though Siemens Energy CEO Christian Bruch insists that “energy transition without wind energy does not work,” 2022 saw 16% less new wind-power capacity than in 2021, according to the American Clean Power Association.
In New Jersey, the legislature passed a law in July, which is likely unconstitutional, to bail out Ørsted.
The legislation will award the company with several billion dollars of investment tax credits that were supposed to go to consumers.
Back on dry land, opposition to siting land-gobbling wind and solar projects continues to grow.
Local governments in Iowa, Illinois, and Ohio have all rejected or restricted projects.
Rural communities, it seems, do not want to host massive turbine farms — nor the high-voltage transmission lines needed to deliver electricity to power-hungry cities.
Then there are electric vehicles.
Ford, which has bet heavily on its electric Lightning pickup and Mustang and received a $9.2 billion government-subsidized loan in January, revealed that it has lost $60,000 for every EV it sold in the first half of this year.
Rivian, another EV company, managed to reduce its losses per EV to around $33,000, a big improvement over the $67,000 loss per EV in the first quarter of the year.
Proterra, a Bay Area-based manufacturer of electric buses and batteries that had a $10 million loan forgiven by the Biden Administration, just filed for bankruptcy.
Like the wizard in The Wizard of Oz, alternative energy proponents claim these are just temporary little potholes on the road to economic and climate nirvana — all of which can be filled with more money through renegotiated power purchase contracts and more zero-emissions mandates.
Alternative energy madness – and that’s what it is – has had its biggest impact in California.
But New York and New Jersey have adopted most of that state’s mandates.
Sales of new internal combustion vehicles will be banned beginning in 2035 in the states. All of the electricity sold to retail consumers will have to be “zero-emissions.”
Homeowners and building owners will be forced to replace gas- and oil-burning space and water heaters with electric heat pumps.
And, gas stoves will be regulated out of existence.
New York also will soon implement another California import: a carbon “cap-and-invest” program, which will impose a tax on fossil fuels sold by wholesalers and utilities.
The billions of dollars collected each year will provide a green slush fund, allowing the governor and legislators to hand out money to their politically favored cronies, as has so often been the case in the past.
Washington State began its “cap-and-invest” program in January of this year.
Modeled after California’s, Governor Jay Inslee promised the program would have “minimal impact, if any. We are talking about pennies.”
Instead, the program has raised gasoline prices – almost 50 cents per gallon so far this year. Washington State now claims the honor of having the highest gasoline prices in the nation: In Seattle, for example, the average price of regular gasoline is over $5 per gallon.
Of course, the entire point of the program was to raise gasoline and fossil fuel prices to encourage consumers to switch to electric vehicles, mass transit, electric heat pumps, and so forth.
But politics being what it is, Governor Inslee, along with environmentalists and legislative proponents, now blames greedy oil companies for the price increases.
‘We won’t stand for’ corporate greed,” the Governor said at a July 20, 2023, press conference.
(If I was an oil company CEO my response would be - "Ok, fine, tell you what: I'm withdrawing all of my assets, sales, distribution, refining, processing and production from your state. I won't sell you another drop of oil or oil product. Go freeze, starve and FOAD, you communist maggots.)
Once New York’s cap-and-invest program starts, probably next year, you can expect a similar outcome: higher gasoline and diesel prices, higher prices for natural gas and fuel oil used to heat homes and apartment buildings, and endless political demagoguery denouncing it all.
As the push toward electric-everything powered by green energy barrels along, proponents also refuse to confront basic physical realities.
Electricity accounts for just one-sixth of all energy use.
The rest is fossil fuels consumed for transportation, space and water heating, and manufacturing.
Convert everything to electricity and electricity consumption will increase. A lot.
According to the New York Climate Action Committee’s Final Scoping Plan, New York will meet that increased demand by building almost 15,000 MW of offshore wind, like the Southfork Wind and Sunrise Wind projects, and over 40,000 MW of solar panels. (By comparison, the emissions-free Indian Point Nuclear Plant, which former Governor Cuomo forced to close, had a capacity of just over 1,000 MW.)
Because the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine, keeping the lights on will require far more backup resources.
This “reserve margin” – basically, the amount of generating capacity available to step in and meet electric demand – will need to increase from the current 20% to over 100%.
In other words, for every MW of generating capacity in 2040, there will have to be an equal amount or more in reserve.
That’s like having to buy a second car and keep it idling all the time in case the first one won’t start.
The Scoping Plan claims this will be accomplished by building over 20,000 MW of so-called “dispatchable emissions-free generating resources” (DEFRs) and installing over 12,000 MW of battery storage.
Those claims are fantasy.
Start with DEFRs, which are generators that burn pure hydrogen manufactured from surplus wind and solar power.
They have yet to be invented (we repeat – they do not yet exist). Nor do any large-scale commercial plants to manufacture green hydrogen exist either.
Hydrogen cannot be transported in existing natural gas pipelines.
An entirely new infrastructure will need to be built.
Assuming a new technology will be invented by whatever date politicians decree is foolish.
That’s not how technology works.
Just ask everyone working on commercial fusion power, which has been just 30 years off for the last 50 years.
As for battery storage, 12,000 MW will provide at most 48,000 megawatt-hours of actual electricity.
That may sound like a lot but based on the New York Independent System Operator’s (NYISO) most recent forecast, on a windless and cold winter evening in 2040, it would keep the lights on for only one hour.
The materials requirements for batteries also are staggering, which is one reason why replacing existing internal combustion cars and trucks will be impossible.
Batteries require large quantities of cobalt, much of which is now mined in the Congo using child and slave labor.
They also require lots of graphite, most of which comes from China – the same with the rare minerals needed for wind turbines and solar panels.
Ultimately, nothing New York does will have any measurable impact on world climate because the state’s carbon emissions are minuscule compared to the 35 billion metric tons of total global emissions.
As long as China, which accounts for almost one-third of world energy-related carbon emissions, India, and other developing nations focus policies on economic growth, rather than cutting emissions, New York’s efforts will have no environmental value.
Nevertheless, if politicians and environmentalists were serious about zero-emissions goals, they would abandon the electrification mandates, and abandon reliance on wind, solar, battery storage, DEFRs, green hydrogen, and other unrealistic and unreliable energy sources.
Instead, they would embrace the one existing technology that dare not speak its name: nuclear power.
Unlike wind and solar, nuclear plants run all the time.
New, small modular reactors will offer greater safety, lower costs, and easy scalability to meet increased electricity demand.
Storing spent fuel is a political issue, not a technological one, for which the best solution is to recycle and reuse it, as France has done for the last half-century without incident.
The country is also developing a permanent storage site for nuclear waste that can no longer be reprocessed.
The economist Herb Stein once quipped that anything that cannot go on forever, won’t.
That’s true of New York’s current alternative energy madness.
It won’t save the world, but it will grind down the state’s economy and its residents until the folly is too great to ignore.
“It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no ‘proposition nation’ can erase." -- Pat Buchanan
If America is only an idea, then there is no need for masses of immigrants to come here since they can just create the idea in their own countries. - Random Thought from the Interwebs.
EV can be a viable option for commuting especially if you have a way to charge at home. Obviously not for everyone.
“It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no ‘proposition nation’ can erase." -- Pat Buchanan
If America is only an idea, then there is no need for masses of immigrants to come here since they can just create the idea in their own countries. - Random Thought from the Interwebs.
Shall you or I tell them what will be needed to run the grid to charge these fool things?
Originally Posted by acptulsa
“It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no ‘proposition nation’ can erase." -- Pat Buchanan
If America is only an idea, then there is no need for masses of immigrants to come here since they can just create the idea in their own countries. - Random Thought from the Interwebs.
It's practically a word-for-word plot line from Atlas Shrugged.
People are just too used to the golf carts they see when golfing.
Patience, patience!
They'll get around to it - but the time is not yet ripe.
First, they have to ban non-EV vehicles [1].
Then it will be time to gear up the rhetoric for banning EV vehicles [1][2].
[1] Except theirs and those of their favored special interests and other cronies, of course.
[2] And the more discarded lithium batters that have accumulated by then, the easier it will be to gin up that rhetoric.
Last edited by Occam's Banana; 10-01-2023 at 08:36 PM.
“It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no ‘proposition nation’ can erase." -- Pat Buchanan
If America is only an idea, then there is no need for masses of immigrants to come here since they can just create the idea in their own countries. - Random Thought from the Interwebs.
"And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." - Bastiat
"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." - Voltaire
Every car on the road contains a lead acid battery. How on earth are we able to dispose of them? They contain LEAD and acid!!!
Hey, the troll is back. Yay.
You recover the acid/water and take off the plastic outer case, and all you have is the reusable metal lead. And you smelt it, maybe filter it, and recast it. That's it. No need going into something the size of a double-A with tweezers fishing for rare earth elements thousands of times per battery pack.
So, what's your point, Gomer?
Last edited by acptulsa; 10-17-2023 at 11:27 AM.
There are similar processes for EV batteries, none of them are going to a landfill.
And $#@! YOU for calling me a troll...narrow minded small penis motherfucker. You are too dumb to argue the facts so you start name calling....probably a democrat.
Who detailed the process so everyone could know how simple and cheap it is, and who said there are processes without even beginning to address the difficulty and expense?
Who admitted outright he was trolling last time he was here?
Who's dropping F-bombs?ya
Golly.
Last edited by acptulsa; 10-18-2023 at 12:18 PM.
Not to mention that in an average car, the starting battery is at least 1/100 the size and mass of an EV propulsion battery
“It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no ‘proposition nation’ can erase." -- Pat Buchanan
If America is only an idea, then there is no need for masses of immigrants to come here since they can just create the idea in their own countries. - Random Thought from the Interwebs.
FWIW, I've used the work of Mark Mills in many of my discussions and presentations on the subject.
"And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." - Bastiat
"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." - Voltaire
There are no commercially viable methods for recycling lithium batteries. Simple statement of fact. Whether that changes in the future is another question, but right now it's not happening.
Anyone consider if there is an overton play on this? I'm convinced that none of these fkers care about the planet, the agenda is being driven by control. Control ranging from transportation, to fabricated carbon markets, to manufacturing and consumption.
Gulag Chief: "Article 58-1a, twenty five years... What did you get it for?"
Gulag Prisoner: "For nothing at all."
Gulag Chief: "You're lying... The sentence for nothing at all is 10 years"
Oh, no doubt about it.
“It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no ‘proposition nation’ can erase." -- Pat Buchanan
If America is only an idea, then there is no need for masses of immigrants to come here since they can just create the idea in their own countries. - Random Thought from the Interwebs.
Welcome to 5 years ago, friend!
Hey, I'm not proclaiming some kind of epiphany... Its amazing to me - debates over the government involvement in gay marriage and vax mandates. Smart people are drawn into arguing the superfluous nuance, like bulls to a red cape. Why is it not more obvious to these people?Welcome to 5 years ago, friend!
Gulag Chief: "Article 58-1a, twenty five years... What did you get it for?"
Gulag Prisoner: "For nothing at all."
Gulag Chief: "You're lying... The sentence for nothing at all is 10 years"
I would rethink your facts:
https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/
https://insideevs.com/news/564366/jb...profitability/
I said viable
FYI my employer works with Redwood. If companies like my employer didn't pay them ridiculous recycling fees it they wouldn't have gotten off the ground. Still bleeding money like it's going out of style. Even with the manufacturers subsidizing them, they're nowhere near profitable and never will be.
That said, it's likely going to be a long time before Redwood is a profitable company.
Last edited by Matt4Liberty; 10-23-2023 at 04:25 PM.
Well, it's a mistake to think that ay of these companies need to be commercially viable on their own. They aren't.
Every inch of the supply chain is being subsidized and they are still losing money. Material extraction, mineral refining, battery and vehicle manufacturing, vehicle sales, infrastructure, electric generation, electric distribution, and even electric sales and recycling - all subsidized by governments around the world. Beyond the outright subsidies you can see, world central banks placed billions of dollars on the balance sheets of institutional investors who are flooding the market with unearned cash. They stole it from us through inflation to make these companies richer. But they are still losing money on the business side.
But why care about running a profitable business when you can get more money through your investors to keep running at a loss for decades??
This is something that I think many of us free marketers get wrong. We think the markets will resolve this. But we are not operating in anything close to a free market. With all the make-believe Fed money floating around the markets, corporations don't really need to be concerned about the profit motive side of their business - they need to be more concerned with the investor perception side of their business.
"And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." - Bastiat
"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." - Voltaire
Which is why they continue, in spite of staggering losses, to support climate Marxism and "wokeism" among other things.
Not to mention the fact that these companies are all, almost universally, infested with bloated, top-heavy, upper management pinheads that are true believers and disciples of those failed horse$#@! ideologies.
Last edited by Anti Federalist; 10-24-2023 at 08:36 AM.
“It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no ‘proposition nation’ can erase." -- Pat Buchanan
If America is only an idea, then there is no need for masses of immigrants to come here since they can just create the idea in their own countries. - Random Thought from the Interwebs.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Connect With Us