Technology

TAX WHAT YOU DON’T WANT:

Clean Energy Subsidies vs. A Carbon Tax (Jeffrey Miron, 1/22/24, Cato)

The existing scientific consensus implies that carbon and other GHC emissions (henceforth, “emissions”) constitute an externality, meaning an effect of one person’s actions on other economic actors, in ways not mediated through prices. Air pollution from cars and factories, fertilizer runoff from farms, and loud noises from highways and airports are standard examples.

In the presence of externalities, free markets produce too much of the externality‐​generating good, and government can in principle improve economic efficiency.

The standard approach is a tax that raises the good’s price, which lowers its production and thus the externality. Measured economic output goes down, but true economic output—measured output minus the externality—goes up.

FUDDIE DUDDIES:

You’ve Formed Your Opinion on EVs. Now Let Me Change It.: Frozen Teslas, unsold inventory piling up at dealerships, production woes—yet sales of electric vehicles still continue to rise. Dan Neil is here to address all your EV fears and doubts. (Dan Neil, 1/19/24, WSJ)

If you think EVs are too expensive, just wait. The mother of price wars is coming consumers’ way, as Tesla continues to leverage its low production costs to undercut the competition. Tesla watchers also expect the company to unveil its long-awaited Model 2 later this year, with a similarly long-awaited $25,000 price tag.

Charging: After a decade of self-sabotage, most automakers decided last year to adopt Tesla’s NACS charging standard in the U.S., which will allow their customers to use Tesla’s robust Supercharging network, like civilized people. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is targeting a half-million public fast chargers in the field by 2030. Pretty soon range anxiety will be returned to neurotics.

Some FUD is simply out of date. For example, the prohibitively high cost of batteries. In 2023 alone, lithium battery pack prices fell 14%, according to BloombergNEF’s Zero Emissions Vehicle Factbook—a tenth of where it stood a decade ago. The race to the bottom on cost will also eliminate the use of battery tech’s most problematic material: cobalt. Advanced lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) batteries use no cobalt and have a lot of other agreeable properties, too, including being more durable, less flammable and cheaper.

The most pernicious FUD may be the idea that EVs can’t move the needle on carbon emissions. They already are. EV adoption cut demand for oil by 1.8 million barrels in 2023, according to BloombergNEF, thereby avoiding 122 megatons of carbon-dioxide emissions.

SIMPLE ECONOMICS:

The Clean Energy Transition May Be Cheaper Than We Thought: Cost estimates leave out some of the savings of using less fossil fuels, new analysis says. (DAN GEARINO, 1/19/24, MoJo)

The global transition to clean energy has a cost, but it may be a lot lower than the figures that sometimes get thrown around. The differences are large, amounting to trillions and even tens of trillions of dollars.

A new analysis from RMI, the clean energy research and advocacy group, identifies what its authors say is a basic flaw in many of those estimates: They don’t fully take into account the decrease in fossil fuel spending.

“This kind of narrative that there’s a massive surge in capital that’s required is simply incorrect,” said Kingsmill Bond, a co-author of the report and an analyst for RMI whose work covers the financial side of the energy transition.

The report finds that global capital spending (money used for equipment and property, among other things) on energy supply is on track to be about $2.5 trillion in 2030, up from $2.2 trillion in 2023.

“It’s 2 percent per annum growth,” Bond said. “On a net basis, it’s not much.”

And then starts paying for itself.

EARTH ABIDES:

“Dirt-powered fuel cell” draws near-limitless energy from soil (Loz Blain, January 16, 2024, New Atlas)

Microbial fuel cells, as they’re called, have been around for more than 100 years. They work a little like a battery, with an anode, cathode and electrolyte – but rather than drawing electricity from chemical sources, they work with bacteria that naturally donate electrons to nearby conductors as they chow down on soil.

The issue thus far has been keeping them supplied with water and oxygen, while being buried in the dirt. “Although MFCs have existed as a concept for more than a century, their unreliable performance and low output power have stymied efforts to make practical use of them, especially in low-moisture conditions,” said UNW alumnus and project lead Bill Yen.

So, the team set about creating several new designs targeted at giving the cells continual access to oxygen and water – and found success with a design shaped like a cartridge sitting vertically on a horizontal disc. The disc-shaped carbon felt anode lies horizontally at the bottom of the device, buried deep in the soil where it can capture electrons as microbes digest dirt.

The conductive metal cathode, meanwhile, sits vertically on top of the anode. The bottom part thus sits deep enough to have access to moisture from the deep soil, while the top sits flush with the surface. A fresh air gap runs down the whole length of the electrode, and a protective cap on top stops dirt and debris from falling in and cutting off the cathode’s access to oxygen. Part of the cathode is also coated with a waterproofing material, so that when it floods, there’s still a hydrophobic section of the cathode in touch with oxygen to keep the fuel cell running.

In testing, this design performed consistently across different soil moisture levels, from completely underwater to “somewhat dry,” with just 41% water by volume in the soil. On average, it generated some 68 times more power than was required to operate its onboard moisture and touch detection systems, and transmit data via a tiny antenna to a nearby base station.

THE FUTURE ALWAYS HAPPENS FASTER THAN YOU EXPECT IT TO:

Can the dream of fusion power be realized? (M. Mitchell Waldrop, 15 January 2024, Canary Media)

“There is a coming of age of technological capability that now matches up with the challenge of this quest,” says Michl Binderbauer, CEO of the fusion firm TAE Technologies in Southern California.

Indeed, more than 40 commercial fusion firms have been launched since TAE became the first in 1998 — most of them in the past five years, and many with a power-reactor design that they hope to have operating in the next decade or so. ​“I keep thinking, oh sure, we’ve reached our peak,” says Andrew Holland, who maintains a running count as CEO of the Fusion Industry Association, an advocacy group he founded in 2018 in Washington, D.C. ​“But no, we keep seeing more and more companies come in with different ideas.”

None of this has gone unnoticed by private investment firms, which have backed the fusion startups with some $6 billion and counting. This combination of new technology and private money creates a happy synergy, says Jonathan Menard, head of research at the Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in New Jersey, and not a participant in any of the fusion firms.

Compared with the public sector, companies generally have more resources for trying new things, says Menard. ​“Some will work, some won’t. Some might be somewhere in between,” he says. ​“But we’re going to find out, and that’s good.”

Granted, there’s ample reason for caution — starting with the fact that none of these firms has so far shown that it can generate net fusion energy even briefly, much less ramp up to a commercial-scale machine within a decade. ​“Many of the companies are promising things on timescales that generally we view as unlikely,” Menard says.

But then, he adds, ​“we’d be happy to be proven wrong.”

With more than 40 companies trying to do just that, we’ll know soon enough if one or more of them succeeds. In the meantime, to give a sense of the possibilities, here is an overview of the challenges that every fusion reactor has to overcome, and a look at some of the best-funded and best-developed designs for meeting those challenges.

ALL COMMODITIES ARE FUNGIBLE:

China’s Solar Dominance Faces New Rival: An Ultrathin Film: As renewable energy becomes a geopolitical tool, Japan looks to recover its technological edge (George Nishiyama, Jan. 11, 2024, WSJ)

In the U.S., the Biden administration is seeking to build a domestic supply chain for solar panels. Japan, also looking for a homegrown solar solution, is focusing on what are called perovskite solar cells that don’t use any silicon.

Invented by Japanese scientist Tsutomu Miyasaka, the cells use minerals forming a crystal structure called perovskite, which can be used in a device to turn the sun’s rays into electricity.

A key element in manufacturing perovskite is iodine. While hardly a resources powerhouse, Japan happens to be the world’s second-largest producer of iodine after Chile, accounting for around a third of global production.

“Look at what China is doing with semiconductors. That’s bullying,” said Miyasaka, referring to Beijing’s export restrictions on the rare elements gallium and germanium used in chips. “With perovskite cells, the components can be made domestically.”

IT’LL NEVER FLY, ORVILLE:

90-seat Elysian airliner: 800-1,000-km range on batteries alone (Loz Blain, January 11, 2024, New Atlas)

A Dutch startup says everyone’s hugely underestimating the potential of battery-electric aircraft – that it’s possible to build large battery-electric airliners covering distances most assume we’ll need hydrogen for. Elysian plans to prove it.

The company doesn’t believe it’ll need some giant leap in batteries to do it, either; it says it can take 90 passengers some 800 km (497 miles) using a pack with 360 Wh/kg. Amprius, meanwhile, was shipping 450-Wh/kg cells back in 2022, and Chinese giant CATL launched a 500-Wh/kg “condensed” battery last year. Assuming some improvements, Elysian says it’ll hit 1,000-km (621-mile) range figures, at which point the E9X aircraft could feasibly cover around 50% of all scheduled commercial flights.