As governments focus on developing their renewable energy capacity, many are overlooking a vital element to boosting clean energy security –energy waste management. Countries worldwide must fix their existing systems to ensure that energy is not lost in transit and use and that electricity grids are prepared for the influx of new clean energy projects expected over the coming decades. The founder and chairman of the environmental non-profit organization Solar Impulse Foundation, Bertrand Piccard, is calling for greater focus on reducing energy waste instead of merely ramping up renewable ener ..read more

Stock Markets All major indexes are up this week. The Dow Jones Industrial Index (DJIA) inched up by 0.67% while the Dow Jones Total Stock Market Index climbed by 2.70% over last week, The S&P 500 Index also gained by 2.67% which mirrored the Total Stock Market Index; likewise, the S&P’ Small Cap 600, Mid Cap 400, and Super Composite 1500 components all recorded gains above 2%, indicating that the rally was across the board. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Stock Market Composite Index outperformed the broad indexes by registering a leap of 4.23%. The NYSE Composite rose by 1.74%, and the R ..read more

Reliably monitoring the amount of lithium (Li) present in rechargeable batteries, specifically in the so-called cathode active material (CAM), is key to understanding the condition of batteries from the time when it is fabricated to the end of its operation. However, a reliable methodology to directly track the active Li in batteries without damaging them does not exist yet. Existing methods to estimate the amount of Li in batteries rely on capacity measurements, describing how much charge a battery can hold, and coulombic efficiency values, which indicate how much charge a battery retains du ..read more

The Cadillac Lyriq is one of the first vehicles to use GM’s Ultium platform. This drivetrain system now underpins all of its current and upcoming electric vehicles, other than the outgoing Chevy Bolt EV. After driving the Lyriq and liking it very much, I was interested in the precise details of the car’s pack and the larger Ultium system. So I interviewed Jerry Beemer, who leads GM’s EV Propulsion team. If you want to know everything about this system down to the individual cells, he’s your guy. 2024 Cadillac Lyriq AWD Battery Chemistry NMC (3.6V – 3.7V nominal ..read more

Copper hit $10,000 a ton for the first time in two years as speculation builds that the world’s mines will struggle to meet a coming wave of demand from green industries. The metal reclaimed that threshold as a historic squeeze on the supply of mined ores risks tilting the market into a major deficit and as investors turn increasingly optimistic about demand. One headwind to the rally is that Chinese demand is looking alarmingly soft. The disconnect is evident in futures positioning on the London Metal Exchange, where investors have boosted bullish bets to a record while sales by commercial e ..read more

A green industrial future for Europe may depend on an element that is part of a household staple: table salt. Dr. John Abou-Rjeily, a researcher at Tiamat Energy in France, is using sodium to develop rechargeable batteries. Sodium is a part of sodium chloride, an ionic compound that is the technical name for ordinary salt. The idea behind sodium-ion batteries is to reduce Europe’s reliance on the lithium-ion ones that power everything from toothbrushes and mobile phones to mopeds and cars. Today’s batteries include materials such as lithium, nickel and cobalt that are both scarce and toxic, w ..read more

CATL has unveiled a new lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cell that offers 620 miles of range on a single charge and ultra-fast charging that can bring 370 additional miles of traveling in ten minutes, according to internal tests. This morning, CATL held an event to unveil its Shenxing Plus LFP battery, which was unveiled during the Beijing Auto Show in China. The company flexed its current technology, the Shenxing battery, which packs 434 miles of range and is currently equipped in four car models across Chinese manufacturers. By the end of the year, 50 additional vehicles in the country will uti ..read more

Against the arid, red dirt of the Australian Outback, the Mount Holland lithium mine emerges to approaching visitors as a colossal grey-tinged crater, with trucks the size of houses edging along its steep inclines. An expanding site at the heart of the world’s top lithium-producing region, the A$2.6 billion ($1.7 billion) operation is emblematic of the plentiful additional supply of the battery material currently weighing on global prices, much of it from this neighborhood. Despite bullish long term forecasts, the metal has been languishing near two-year lows as demand fails to keep pace. But ..read more

As summer approaches, electricity demand surges in the U.S., as homes and businesses crank up the air conditioning. To meet the rising need, many East Coast cities are banking on offshore wind projects the country is building in the Atlantic Ocean. For electric grid operators, knowing how much wind power these offshore turbines can harvest is critical, but making accurate predictions can be difficult. A team of CU Boulder scientists and their collaborators are working to tackle the challenge. In a paper published March 14 in Wind Energy Science, a team led by Dave Rosencrans, a ..read more

There’s been a lot of interest in Tesla’s 4680 batteries since before they were even announced, but their development and ramp-up have been a bit below par in terms of most people’s expectations. I’ve seen various claims about these, and those claims have diverged quite a bit as time has gone on, so it was nice to get a little bit of an update on these batteries from Tesla yesterday on the company’s quarterly shareholder conference call (and briefly in its shareholder letter). First of all, here’s the statement on them in the shareholder letter: “4680 ramp continued successfully in Q1 and con ..read more