Energy and Global Warming News for August 11th: Mass production expected to lower costs, size, weight of lithium-ion batteries

Mass production expected to lower battery costs, weight

Several automotive industry leaders said Friday they are convinced that the cost of lithium-ion batteries, as well as the size and weight of the battery, will decline substantially once automakers begin to produce them at higher volumes.

Further reducing the size and the cost of the batteries are crucial challenges facing manufacturers as they race to develop plug-in hybrid and all-electric vehicles aimed at consumers.

Already, GM has found a way to reduce the weight of the lithium-ion battery for the Chevrolet Volt, set to debut in 2010, to 400 pounds, down from 1,200 pounds for the lead-acid battery in the EV1, an unsuccessful electric vehicle that GM introduced in the 1990s, according to Bob Kruse, GM’s executive director of global vehicle engineering….

“If you think about lithium-ion” batteries, “most people don’t know that only 25% of the weight is actually storing energy,” said Ric Fulop, founder and president of A123 Systems Inc., a battery supplier. “I think there is significant room for improvement to take that from 25% to 50% over the next decade … and costs should come down by more than half.”

G.M. Says Volt Will Get Triple-Digit City Mileage

General Motors said Tuesday that its Chevrolet Volt with its rechargeable battery is expected to get at least 230 miles a gallon in city driving. The car is scheduled to be released in 2011.

G.M. said the number was based on developmental tests using a draft federal fuel economy methodology for plug-in electric vehicles.

The Volt uses a battery pack and is powered by an electric motor with a 40-mile range, and the calculation essentially assumes that most drivers using the car to commute will stay within that range and will not need the car’s gasoline-powered generator to produce electricity. The majority of time, drivers in the city will be in an electric mode, the company said during its presentation.

North American cooperation on climate change

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday the United States, Canada and Mexico had made progress on concrete goals that will be negotiated at international talks on climate change in Copenhagen in December.

The three countries said they would cooperate on a series of measures, including building infrastructure for emissions trading systems and making the North American aviation sector “carbon neutral.”

New figures show India emissions a fourth of China

India contributes around five percent to global carbon dioxide emissions, a new government report showed on Tuesday, but is still only about a quarter of the emissions of China and the United States.

The finding is based on the 2007 World Development Indicators figures of the World Bank.

The report, which said the energy sector contributed 61 percent of total emissions in India, pegged India’s per capita emissions at only one-twentieth of the United States and about one-tenth of western Europe and Japan.

New Study Sheds Light On The Growing U.S. Wind Power Market

For the fourth consecutive year, the U.S. was home to the fastest-growing wind power market in the world in 2008, according to a report released by the U.S. Department of Energy and prepared by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Specifically, U.S. wind power capacity additions increased by 60 percent in 2008, representing a $16 billion investment in new wind projects.

“At this pace, wind is on a path to becoming a significant contributor to the U.S. power mix,” notes report author Ryan Wiser, of Berkeley Lab. Wind projects accounted for 42% of all new electric generating capacity added in the U.S. in 2008, and wind now delivers nearly 2% of the nation’s electricity supply.

Companies rethinking the supply chain

The recession that seems to be winding its way down has taken a giant bite out of many a corporate bottom line over the past year or two. But it’s brought other changes, too. For one, how what we buy gets from the factory to the store shelves. As shipping costs and pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions rise, companies are looking for ways to make their supply chains shorter and save some money while they’re at it.

Raising Wind Turbine Output With Longer Blades

A basic problem for wind turbines is that the wind often dies down. As a result, they produce far less electricity than if the wind blew constantly, at full speed.

A good wind machine, therefore, may harvest just 30 percent of its maximum potential energy. By contrast, a nuclear reactor with a similar energy rating might reach 90 percent of its maximum potential, because it is running virtually nonstop.

One major turbine manufacturer, Siemens Energy, is trying to increase the proportion of potential energy that the wind harvests “” by making the blades longer. The new machines, by Siemens, all use the common three-blade design. But a new Siemens turbine has a rotor diameter of about 330 feet, rather than one with a 305-foot diameter.

In Cold Northeast, Officials Consider Limiting Furnace Emissions

Eleven Eastern governors are expected to approve a blueprint for slashing carbon dioxide emissions from cars — and perhaps home furnaces — before January, according to state officials, potentially sparking a widespread shift to residential heaters that burn wood pellets.

Officials in states from Maine to Maryland are preparing the outlines of a regional plan that would limit the amount of greenhouse gases a unit of fuel, like a gallon of gasoline, could emit. That’s meant to prompt oil companies, refiners and motorists to use cleaner fuels made from trash and plants and renewable electricity.

Prime Minister Rudd uses blackout to his advantage in climate change debate

Climate change continues to dominate debate in Parliament, with the Prime Minister even using a blackout to further his attack on the opposition.

The opposition came out firing with Liberal frontbenchers asking a barrage of questions of the Prime Minister demanding he explain why he wouldn’t consider a proposal to cut pollution emissions while saving money.

Climate change an Australian ‘security threat’

Australia faces more intense and frequent heatwaves, wildfires, cyclones and floods, with climate change becoming a threat to national security, a think-tank warned Tuesday.

The impacts of global warming were already making themselves felt, much faster and with greater ferocity than anticipated, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said.

A record-breaking heatwave killed 374 Australians in January, with another 173 perishing in the devastating February firestorm which flattened entire towns and razed more than 2,000 homes, ASPI said.

“As a result of climate change disasters are likely to become larger, more complex, occur simultaneously and in regions that have either not experienced the natural hazard previously or at the same intensity or frequency,” said report author Athol Yates.

Homes Go From ‘Superefficient’ to Zero Carbon Emissions in Europe

When Kay Helt moved into his superefficient home on the outskirts of Copenhagen two years ago, he felt as if he had just stepped into the lifestyle of the future. His high-tech house uses five times less energy for heating than his old one, and it recycles rainwater for the toilets and shower.

Yet in only a few years, Helt’s house will already be obsolete.

With various degrees of urgency, E.U. countries are moving toward requiring new homes to only use clean energy and have zero net carbon emissions, despite some real estate developers’ complaints that such homes cost more to build and will be harder to sell.

China’s green leap forward

Behind the notorious clouds of filth and greenhouse gases that China’s industrial behemoth spews into the atmosphere every day, a little-noticed revolution is under way. China is going green. And as the authorities here spur manufacturers of all kinds of alternative energy equipment to make more for less, “China price” and “China speed” are poised to snatch the lion’s share of the next multitrillion-dollar global industry – energy technology.

The latest on hydrofluorocarbons

In the 1970s, scientists hypothesized that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), chemicals commonly used in refrigerants and aerosol cans, might deplete the ozone layer in Earth’s stratosphere. Ozone filters out ultraviolet rays from the incoming sunlight, protecting life from the harmful rays.

After much resistance from industry interests, the US, Canada, and Norway banned CFC-containing aerosol cans in 1979. But when scientists discovered an ozone hole over Antarctica in the mid-1980s, countries around the world began phasing out the ozone-destroying chemicals. A new class of ozone-friendly molecules called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) replaced them.

Now, global warming is a concern. And a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that HFCs, some of which are thousands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a heat-trapping gas, could become a significant factor in future warming.

Humans ‘Damaging The Oceans’ In Profound Ways

There is mounting evidence that human activity is changing the world’s oceans in profound and damaging ways.

Man-made carbon emissions “are affecting marine biological processes from genes to ecosystems over scales from rock pools to ocean basins, impacting ecosystem services and threatening human food security,” the study by Professor Mike Kingsford of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University and colleague Dr Andrew Brierley of St Andrews University, Scotland, warns.