Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has padded her arrest record at a protest in the Netherlands, reportedly being detained twice by police after she helped block roads near the Dutch parliament.
The incidents occurred on Saturday, when a large crowd of Extinction Rebellion demonstrators tried to block the A12 highway in The Hague. A heavy police presence, including officers on horseback, prevented the activists from tying up the highway, but a small group broke away and sat down on a main road. The 21-year-old Thunberg was among the protesters, and a clip posted on social media shows two police picking her up by the arms and carrying her to a bus filled with other detained people. Reuters reported that Thunberg was held for a short time before being released, and she then was detained again after joining a group blocking a road leading to the railway station. Extinction Rebellion claims to have blocked the A12 highway dozens of times since 2022 in protests against fossil-fuel subsidies. Saturday’s demonstration called for lawmakers to halt subsidies and tax breaks for companies with ties to fossil fuels, such as oil major Shell and airline KLM. “We are here because we’re facing an existential crisis,” Thunberg told Dutch broadcaster RTL Nieuws. “We are in a planetary emergency, and we are not going to stand by and let people lose their lives and livelihood and, of course, become climate refugees when we can do something.” Thunberg was arrested for a public order offense last October, when she was among dozens of protesters who tried to block the entrance to an energy conference in London. She has repeatedly been arrested and fined for disobeying police orders during protests in Sweden, and she was detained last year at a demonstration against a coal mine in Germany. The activist, then a teenager, began attracting media attention in 2018, when she staged weekly protests outside the Swedish parliament to demand stronger government efforts to fight climate change.
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It's not every day that an arcane European Union initiative goes viral online. But last Friday turned out to be that day thanks to French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire exporting his frustration with the slow progress of the bloc's capital markets union (CMU) project straight to social media with an online clip that has since amassed more than 8.5 million views.
Now, a whole host of online channels are circulating the French-language clip, in some cases in AI-enhanced dubbed English, as proof that the EU is bankrupt and that Brussels is on the verge of raiding Europeans' savings, sparking critiques and memes. At issue is Le Maire's contention that a capital markets union would give authorities the “ability to mobilize all of Europeans' savings, some €35,000 billion worth, to finance the climate transition, fund our defense efforts, and invest in artificial intelligence.” Some, such as Arnaud Bertrand — a tech entrepreneur whose posts frequently fetch over 1 million views on X (formerly known as Twitter) — alleged Le Maire was “straight out declaring that Europe has run out of money” and signaling EU leaders’ intent to use Europeans' bank deposits to fund public spending, including on aid to Ukraine. But that's not quite what's happening here. The real point of the CMU is to create a single market for investment in the EU — one where people can invest across borders easily, much as they do across states in the U.S., while also benefitting from scaled-up services. So, rather than having 27 national pension schemes, under the vision consumers could pay into a pan-EU one. And, rather than navigating different tax regimes across EU countries, people could invest abroad in the EU as easily as they can in their home country. European companies, meanwhile, would be able to access financing from the whole of the EU, rather than being forced to list in the U.S., as German company Birkenstock did last year to Brussels' embarrassment. The key confusion with the online reaction to Le Maire's rant is that requisitioning savings is not on anyone's agenda. The CMU, as it stands, is intended to be entirely voluntary. What's more, even those in EU policy circles believe Le Maire's bark is worse than his bite in pushing for the project. Le Maire expressed equally bombastic language to reporters. “I’m fed up with discussions. I’m fed up with empty statements. Do you really think that China and the U.S. will be impressed by our statements? We need decisions,” he told reporters as he entered Friday's meeting of European finance ministers in Ghent, Belgium. However, given the glacial progress on the initiative to date, some of the French frustration might be justified. The EU has wanted a single market for capital since close to its inception, while the European Commission has been trying to regulate a CMU into existence since revealing a dedicated action plan nearly a decade ago. Today's reinvigorated push for action is a function of the EU struggling to keep up in an increasingly competitive landscape. Unlike the U.S., the bloc can't easily throw huge sums of money at green industrial policy via an Inflation Reduction Act-style act. Nor can it match China's aggressive state support for key industries like solar panels and chip manufacturers. Meanwhile, the importance of meeting green and digital transition goals has upped the urgency of unlocking private investment alongside public funds. This is especially the case now that governments, in the wake of unprecedented levels of EU public spending to prop up the economy during the Covid-19 pandemic and during the energy crisis that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, are having to tighten their belts. For now, the EU is working on moving the CMU along at different levels. Finance ministers plan to sign off on a political statement with their priorities for the project next month, and former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi is working on a report about the EU’s competitiveness. The Commission, on its part, has put forward legislation on listing and retail investment with the aim of making capital flows across the bloc more simple. But Le Maire’s argument is that none of this is enough, and if the EU tries to move forward with 27 countries on board, the CMU will never get done due to the complexity. Instead, he wants a smaller group of countries to move forward with cross-border projects to speed up investment. Nonetheless, at the Ghent summit, officials involved in the drafting of the Eurogroup statement and deputies from national ministries gave a resounding eye-roll to Le Maire’s latest outburst, knowing that behind closed doors he is far more cooperative. France’s finance ministry, meanwhile, isn’t too worried about the naysayers. Speaking to POLITICO, one spokesperson said the CMU project is “clear and credible” and France will keep working on it. “For those who have questions, we are open to discussion to make it understandable,” they added. Did you bought an 'environmental diesel' ten years ago, you bought a car that met the wishes of politicians. The powerful car industry had gone along with politics and allowed itself to be gagged by them, so diesels neatly rolled off the production line that emit a maximum of 110 grams of CO2 per kilometer. If they emitted 111 grams, unfortunately, then a completely unsellable model... unless of course the software was tampered with. The latter was an emergency measure by the car industry to avoid being financially lynched by consumers who only wanted additional tax-friendly 'environmental diesels'. These 'environmental diesels' have now largely left the country, after all, a private individual cannot afford diesel because the road tax on these extremely climate-friendly cars is unaffordable. And so they disappeared to the Eastern Europe or Africa, after all, everyone wants an environmental diesel there, right? When hybrid cars were introduced, office clerks flocked to the tax-friendly hybrid. The fact that the much too heavy Mitsubishi Outlander only gurgled away gasoline to propel this colossus did not bother any official at the Tax Authorities
Policy officials in Brussels and at town halls in the Netherlands continue to fantasize about it. Zero-emission cities, for example. Can someone explain to such an uneducated civil servant that it is not zero-emission, such a 100 percent electric car? The citizens do understand it. Or what about a total ban on the sale of combustion engines in 2035? That is complete madness because the electricity grid is already completely overloaded in the Netherlands with 5 percent electric cars. The citizen understands it, but the policy official still does not. They continue to shoot down everything that moves from the town halls.
Those who have now woken up are the car manufacturers themselves and the consumers. Because a car that depreciates 70 to 80 percent in 5 years is also unsellable when new, despite all the tax benefits for the office clerk. And the banks have their fingers fist deep in the leasing companies, who now run the risk. And so major car manufacturers are now turning against politics and giving them a big middle finger, they no longer believe in it. Volkswagen sees the mood, Mercedes now understands it, Ford understands it and Fiat also understands it. When will the (policy) officials understand it? German farmers have begun a week of nationwide demonstrations, blocking roads with tractors in protest against government plans to phase out agricultural subsidies.
As Joachim Rukwied, president of the German Farmers’ Association (DBV), put it last month, ‘We will be present everywhere in a way the country has never seen before’. And the farmers are not alone. Lorry drivers, hauliers and tradespeople have also joined in the protests. The current wave of unrest was prompted back in December. The German government announced plans to abolish tax breaks on agricultural diesel and introduce new taxes on farm vehicles – a move which would cost farmers on average €4,000 per year. The swift and organised response of the farmers has already frightened the government. On 4 January, it tried to backtrack by announcing that subsidies for new farm vehicles would remain, and that the tax breaks on diesel would be phased out gradually over the course of the next few years, rather than suddenly this year. But these moves have not assuaged farmers’ anger. They insist that the ‘future viability of our industry’ is at stake. And so, as Rukwied put it last week, farmers ‘remain committed’ to the ‘week of action’. It was naïve of the government to believe that its half-hearted compromise would ever appease the farmers. This conflict goes much deeper than a fight over taxes and subsidies. It is about farmers’ long-standing resentment of the green agenda that has been pursued by successive governments. This agenda now threatens the very future of German agriculture. Indeed, the farmers first engaged in mass protest back in 2019, after Angela Merkel’s government demanded a 20 per cent reduction in the use of fertilisers and pesticides as part of its ‘agriculture reform package’. Merkel’s successors have only increased the pressure on farmers. Plans to further reduce fertiliser and pesticide use were announced last summer, with the government keen to meet the EU’s strict directives on nitrates. At the same time, the government announced it planned to tighten animal-husbandry regulations, entangling farmers in even more red tape and paperwork. It is no exaggeration to say that the future of farming is at stake. In the space of just two decades, countless farms have already had to close. The number of farms in Germany during this period has almost halved – from nearly 450,000 in 2001 to 256,000 in 2022. Environmental restrictions and soaring energy costs haven’t just affected smaller farms, either. Bigger farms have also felt the squeeze. To make matters worse, the prices of fertilisers and pesticides have risen sharply, as the German chemical industry has cut back production due to high energy prices. Thanks to the government’s embrace of the green agenda, it is incapable of addressing farmers’ concerns. Over and over again, it pursues Net Zero objectives that are directly at odds with the interests of farmers. And just to rub salt into farmers’ wounds, Germany’s agriculture minister, Cem Özdemir, is a militant vegetarian. ‘If we all eat less meat together, we can all do our bit for the planet’, he told a TV talkshow last year. No wonder farmers have lost all trust in the government. Instead of addressing problems afflicting the agricultural sector, the government, backed by the green-leaning media, has tried to discredit the protesting farmers. It is regularly claimed that the strikes are being exploited by populists and the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD). But is it? There are almost 2,500 fossil fuel lobbyists at this year's Cop28 climate change summit in Dubai, more than four times as many as last year, according to an environmental analysis. The analysis from the Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition examined the presence of delegates from the fossil fuel industry at the UN's flagship climate summit, which has come in for sustained criticism for its host's ties to oil and gas. KBPO found 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists have been granted access to Cop28, despite reducing or phasing out oil and gas altogether being one of the main aims of climate scientists and leaders from around the world. If the fossil fuel lobby was a country, its numbers of delegates would only be beaten by Brazil, with more than 3,000 in attendance and the host United Arab Emirates with 4,400, KBPO said. Its analysis calculated the fossil fuel industry was given more passes to Cop28 than the combined passes of 10 of the countries across the world that are most vulnerable to climate change, and seven times the number given to delegates from indigenous people. 'Poisonous presence' Alexia Leclercq of the environmental non-profit Start:Empowerment said: "Big polluters’ poisonous presence has bogged us down for years, keeping us from advancing the pathways needed to keep fossil fuels in the ground. They are the reason Cop28 is clouded in a fog of climate denial, not climate reality.”
Cop28 has been dogged by criticism it is greenwashing the climate change summit. President of Cop28 Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber has allegedly been planning secret deals to vastly expand oil and gas production at the event, a direct contradiction of the aim of the event, which is for world leaders and scientists to agree a path to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Mr al-Jaber, who is head of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), the 12th largest oil-producing firm in the world, told chair of the Elders Mary Robinson in a contentious online exchange there is "no science" behind the aim of reducing fossil fuels if global warming is to be kept to 1.5C compared to the 1850-1900 age, in direct contradiction to the almost unanimous consensus of global scientists. The once-glorified clean-energy stocks are now facing their darkest days, plunging the industry into a financial abyss that threatens America’s ambitious environmental aspirations. The much-touted green revolution is looking more like a red alert as the sector hemorrhages tens of billions in market value. Sure, we’re told that hundreds of billions is still pouring into renewable energy projects, despite the fact that the stock market seems to have declared a resounding “no thanks” to these ventures. The iShares Global Clean Energy ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund), the poster child for the industry, has nosedived by over 30% this year and a whopping 50% since the dawn of 2021. Not to be outdone, specific sectors are getting their fair share of punishment. The Invesco Solar ETF is down over 40% in 2023, while the First Trust Global Wind Energy ETF is witnessing losses of about 20% this year and a grim 40% since January 2021. It seems the wind has been knocked out of their sails. Blame it on rising interest rates, the industry’s newfound nemesis. These higher rates have not only increased costs but also put a damper on consumer enthusiasm, leading to a nosedive in stock valuations for companies that once promised a green utopia but are now struggling to turn a profit. Solar companies such as SolarEdge and Enphase Energy are feeling the burn as demand for their products dwindles. Meanwhile, wind energy giant Orsted is singing the blues, with shares plummeting after revealing potential multibillion-dollar write-downs on its offshore wind projects in the US. In Germany, after the Nord Stream sabotage, because, you know, energy geopolitics and straightforward plans always go hand in hand, a whopping 77% of skeptics are shaking their heads, expressing disbelief that the nation will magically conjure up 80% of electricity from renewables by 2030. I guess turning skepticism into solar power hasn’t quite hit the mainstream yet. Switzerland, the poster child for phasing out nuclear power, is now flexing its green muscles by entertaining the idea of keeping nuclear plants running longer, because who needs a clear exit strategy when you can just extend the atomic party until 2040? Biden’s green dreams are melting faster than his favorite ice cream in the sun In the US, the demise of two New Jersey wind projects is just the tip of the iceberg, with inflation, sky-high interest rates, and a supply chain in shambles throwing a wrench into the gears of Joe’s climate ambitions. Despite a whopping $369 billion in federal aid from his climate law, clean energy projects are dropping like flies. Even the postponement of a Kentucky EV battery plant by Ford and General Motors trimming their EV plans couldn’t escape the economic tempest. It seems the only thing rising faster than hopes for a clean energy revolution is the cost. But hey, who needs affordable, reliable energy when we’ve got grand climate goals, right? Biden’s green plans are becoming a chilling reality check, and it’s not just the polar ice caps feeling the heat. It’s ironic, isn’t it? Not too long ago, clean energy was hailed as the savior of our planet, but now it seems the green agenda is drowning in a sea of red ink. The S&P Global Energy index, once a shining star, has seen its value halved since 2020 – a spectacular fall from grace. Fast forward to the present, and we witness the mighty green stocks taking a severe beating. Despite the EU and US governments offering billions in tax credits and subsidies to support the so-called green transition from Russian oil and gas, investors are losing confidence faster than you can say “renewable.”
The S&P Global Clean Energy Index has experienced a gut-wrenching 30% freefall in 2023, with the biggest quarterly outflow of $1.4 billion. The once-booming sector now holds a 23% decline in total assets under management, a far cry from its heyday just a few months ago. Blame it on the current economic climate, they say – high interest rates, soaring costs, and supply chain woes are the villains of this melodrama. And let’s not forget China, the puppet master of the solar supply chain, flooding the market with cheap alternatives, undermining the EU’s dreams of a local green market. As utility stocks struggle to convert to green energy, the sector’s operating margins are squeezed. The final nail in the coffin? NextEra Energy Partners cutting its growth target by half, sending shockwaves through the renewable industry. I dismiss the sell-off as overblown, but the damage is done, and confidence in renewables has hit rock bottom. So, what’s the moral of this green tale? It turns out, going green is not just about saving the planet; it’s an expensive affair. As the renewable energy stocks hit rock bottom, analysts are left wondering: is it time to buy, or is the green dream truly over? In a deliciously ironic plot twist, Greta Thunberg is currently sizzling in the crucible of criticism for daring to support Gaza. It seems our climate crusader is now facing a cancel-culture bonanza, much like the tweet she swiftly deleted – you know, the one prophesying Armageddon and cautioning that climate change might just “wipe out humanity” unless we magically halt fossil fuel usage by the grandiose deadline of 2023. The irony is thicker than Beijing’s smog, folks. Seems like even the green warriors can’t escape the unforgiving reality of the market. Germany’s flagship airline Lufthansa has warned that it would need to consume half of the country’s entire electricity output if it were to shift to green fuels such as e-kerosene, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr reportedly stated that synthetic fuels manufactured using renewable energy represented the best approach to decarbonize aviation. However, it is unlikely that there is sufficient green electricity in Germany to generate them, the executive warned. “We would need around half of Germany’s electricity to create enough of the fuels,” Spohr was quoted as saying at an aviation conference in Hamburg. “I don’t think Mr. Habeck is going to give me that,” he added, referring to Economy and Energy Minister Robert Habeck. According to the report, synthetic fuels such as green kerosene, which is derived from water, are seen by aviation industry executives as the only technically viable way to decarbonize air travel. The industry has been working to set up a market for a carbon-neutral version of the kerosene that powers most modern aircraft. However, the process requires huge amounts of electricity generated from renewable resources in order to ensure carbon neutrality. The attempts to decarbonize air travel come at a time when Germany has to rely on imported electricity because it can no longer meet its demand with domestically generated power. The EU’s largest economy has had to ramp up electricity imports this year after the government decided to shut down the country’s last remaining nuclear power plants in favor of renewable energy sources. Germany has also been struggling due to the reduction in Russian energy deliveries, which were almost entirely halted after the EU imposed sanctions on Moscow last year in response to the Ukraine conflict. Prior to 2022, Germany relied on Russia for roughly 40% of its natural gas. German industry executives have sounded the alarm over looming electricity shortages that could endanger the competitiveness of Germany as an industrial hub. Klaus Schwab’s Daughter: ‘Permanent Climate Lockdowns Coming – Whether You Like It or Not’31/7/2023 According to Nicole Schwab, the COVID pandemic was a “tremendous opportunity” to test how the public would comply with the WEF’s plans to usher in their Great Reset agenda. The WEF’s promotion of the “climate emergency” narrative seeks to “create a change that is not incremental…to position nature at the core of the economy,” according to Schwab’s offspring.
Nicole Schwab made the admission in a newly unearthed video that was recorded during a WEF panel discussion back in 2020. The WEF lists Nicole Schwab as a “Member of the Executive Committee” of the WEF who is also the co-director of Platform to Accelerate Nature-Based Solutions & 1t.org. The group of WEF attendees were discussing how the fake threat of an “immediate emergency” can be used to further advance the WEF’s “Great Reset” plan for humanity. “This [COVID] crisis has shown us that first of all, things can shift very rapidly when we put our minds to it and when we feel the immediate emergency to our livelihoods,” Nicole Schwab declares. “And second, that clearly the system, I mean, you mentioned it earlier, that we had before is not sustainable.” “So I see it as a tremendous opportunity to really have this Great Reset and to use this huge flows of money — to use the increased levers that policymakers have today — in a way that was not possible before to create a change that is not incremental but that we can look back and we can say this is the moment where we really started to position nature at the core of the economy.” “Taking the point of view of business and economy and looking at where are there opportunities to create jobs and regenerate nature?” “And there are plenty of opportunities and this is again a mindset of actually innovation technology and a business growth can happen with a positive impact of nature and kind of laying out some of these examples.” “Regenerative agriculture is, of course, a huge part of that as well,” Schwab continued. “And one of the key reflection points here is also around engaging youth, and for me, it’s again, I come back to this shift in the mindset of the restoration generation can we conceive of ourselves as humans?” “I mean, you talked about a new humanity, I think you mentioned it right?” “Can we conceive of ourselves as a restoration generation?” “I think that’s where we need to go.” “I’m also hopeful that it’s possible, but I think it will take a lot of will, both political will but also in terms of the business actors, to break with business as usual but in a very serious way and to say we need to make very difficult choices.” “There are trade-offs but this is our chance and other, and this is about risk, and it’s about resilience because the shocks are coming are going to be even worse if we don’t do it now.” The WEF has been pushing the idea of “climate lockdowns” since Covid first emerged.In an article published by the WEF, the organization lauds how “billions” of people complied with Covid “restrictions.” The unelected organization continues by arguing that the public would do the same under the guise of reducing “carbon emissions.” Titled “My Carbon: An approach for inclusive and sustainable cities,” the article suggests that the same fear tactics could be used to impose further “restrictions” on the general public. The subject of the piece is how to convince people to adopt “personal carbon allowance programs.” Schwab’s group notes that improvements in tracking and surveillance technology are helping to overcome “political resistance” against such programs. “COVID-19 was the test of social responsibility,” the article notes. It continues by commending how “a huge number of unimaginable restrictions for public health were adopted by billions of citizens across the world.” “There were numerous examples globally of maintaining social distancing, wearing masks, mass vaccinations, and acceptance of contact-tracing applications for public health, which demonstrated the core of individual social responsibility,” the WEF adds. The organization goes on to cite how so many people complied with lockdown mandates, despite overwhelming evidence of the harmful consequences such restrictions had on society. The WEF then implies that the public would behave in a similarly obsequious manner in other areas of life. Going green and adopting environmentally friendly practices are important steps towards sustainability and mitigating climate change. However, it is true that some aspects of going green can have potential toxic costs. Here are a few examples:
It is crucial to acknowledge these toxic costs and strive for sustainable solutions that minimize or eliminate such risks. Constant research and development are essential to improve the environmental performance of green technologies and ensure that they are produced and disposed of responsibly. Russia is a major global commodity producer and exporter. The country’s invasion of Ukraine has already pushed commodity prices to historically high levels and could also lead to commodity shortages. This situation may cause considerable economic damage, with far-reaching consequences for EU industry. Why is there a Russian-Ukraine war? What's the connection with Europe's Green Deal? And what's the role of the USA? Geologists call it the Ukrainian shield. That land in the middle which starts from the northern border with Belarus up to the shores of the Azov Sea, in the south of Donbass. According to the studies of the Ukrainian geological service, in the ancient rocks of this shield are hidden lithium deposits with great potential. Findings that have been identified mainly around the area of Mariupol, the port city of Donbass torn apart by Russian bombing. Lithium deposits in Ukraine “This may not be the main reason for the invasion, but undoubtedly Ukraine's mineral wealth is one of the reasons why this country is so important to Russia,” said Rod Schoonover, former director of the Environment and Natural Resources Section of the U.S. National Intelligence Council. A wealth confirmed by the fact that Ukrainian lithium had begun to attract global attention as early as last year, before the Russian invasion halted exploration. Last November, in fact, the Australian company European Lithium said it was close to securing the rights to two promising deposits of lithium in the region of Donetsk (eastern Ukraine) and Kirovograd, in the center of the country. In the same month, the Chinese company Chengxin Lithium has also asked for the rights on some deposits, a move that would allow China to win the first deposit in Europe. “Since there are no developed deposits, I highly doubt that lithium resources are the motivation for attacks in the Southeast,” Schoonover tells Renewable Matter. “But if this region falls under Russian control, lithium reserves would certainly be a co-benefit for the Kremlin. Certainly, the rest of the world would have a say. It would not import lithium from a pariah state (a nation that is not recognized by the governments of other countries due to human rights violations), especially when there are better alternatives in geopolitically more favourable countries.”
Dini tells Renewable Matter, “ and are problematic for the metallurgical processes of extracting the metal. Since 1991, Ukrainians here have been extracting mostly precious stones.”
The other mineral resources in Ukraine Ukraine has 10% of the world's iron reserves, 6% of titanium and 20% of graphite. “In geology, this extremely flat region is called peneplain,” Andrea Dini points out, “because it is so ancient that it has been flattened by erosion. Many of the rocks are billions of years old and you don't see them on the surface because they are covered by layers of sediment.” There are more than just minerals in Ukraine, however. In the northeast, near the Russian border, there is a 400-million-year-old sedimentary basin filled with organic material and black shale rocks. “These are black slates with large amounts of coal and methane. For example, part of US energy independence is due to the extraction of methane (Shale Gas) from these rocks on US soil.” There is also another sector that has a close link with Ukraine's resources: Italian ceramics. The ceramic industrial district of Sassuolo is one of the most important in the world and the quality of its tiles also depended on the importation from Ukraine of clay and kaolin, a mineral that is extracted from the quarries of Donbass. In the Italian ceramics industry, 25% of raw materials – including clay considered prized – came from Ukraine. After the Russian invasion, companies in the district will have to find compatible and competitive alternatives. According to insiders, first of all they need to find another recipe, that is, a new mixture of clays, kaolins and feldspars with material imported from other countries. The political fiction that humans cause most or all climate change and the claim that the science behind this notion is ‘settled’, has been dealt a savage blow by the publication of a ‘World Climate Declaration (WCD)’ signed by over 1,100 scientists and professionals. There is no climate emergency, say the authors, who are drawn from across the world and led by the Norwegian physics Nobel Prize laureate Professor Ivar Giaever. Climate science is said to have degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. The scale of the opposition to modern day ‘settled’ climate science is remarkable, given how difficult it is in academia to raise grants for any climate research that departs from the political orthodoxy. (A full list of the signatories is available here.) Another lead author of the declaration, Professor Richard Lindzen, has called the current climate narrative “absurd”, but acknowledged that trillions of dollars and the relentless propaganda from grant-dependent academics and agenda-driven journalists currently says it is not absurd.
Rimac, the Croatian electric hypercar manufacturer, has delivered its first production Nevera to a customer – none other than German-Finnish former Formula 1 driver Nico Rosberg. In a video uploaded to Mr Rosberg’s YouTube channel, we can see this Nevera is blacked-out apart from the shiny aluminium wheels, and is referred to as ‘#001’. Technically there is an earlier Nevera production model referred to a ‘#000’ that’s finished in a Callisto Green exterior paint and will remain in the possession of Bugatti Rimac as demonstrator and marketing car. As previously detailed, Rimac only intends to produce 150 examples of the Nevera in total and they’re already sold out. Each example will be tested and signed off by company founder Mate Rimac before final delivery. When there were still examples of the Rimac Nevera available to purchase, prices started from €2 million ($A2.94 million). At this stage, Rimac has indicated it will ramp up production of the hand-built Nevera to up to 50 units per year. Powered by a quad-electric motor setup, the Rimac Nevera produces an other-worldly 1427kW of power and 2360Nm of torque. This is mated to a 120kWh lithium-manganese-nickel battery, designed in-house by Rimac, that’s positioned along the car’s centre tunnel. The Croatian hypercar manufacturer claims the Nevera can do the 0-100km/h sprint in an insane 1.85 seconds and has a top speed of 412km/h. It also claims the Nevera has a range of 547km according to WLTP testing. During the YouTube video, Mr Rimac said that there are 14 cameras around the Nevera so it can record footage itself without the need for mounting GoPros. The footage can apparently be viewed and downloaded from a companion phone app. In addition, Mr Rimac said the company is still working on an autonomous track driving feature that will come in a future software update. Mr Rimac said the feature is currently still in development, but is now just as fast around as the company’s test drivers. The Bugatti Rimac CEO also repeated some previously-reported statements about the next Bugatti hypercar, saying it will have a “very interesting internal-combustion engine” and be “heavily electrified”. Mr Rimac also said the Chiron successor is going to be the “opposite of what you expect”, and Mr Rosberg alluded to it being similar to the Mercedes-AMG One in a short, off-the-cuff remark. In addition to developing and now producing the Nevera, Rimac Group, which encompasses the Bugatti Rimac joint venture and the Rimac Technology electric vehicle (EV) division, is currently in the process of constructing its new €200 million ($A293.95 million) headquarters in Zagreb, Croatia.
Dubbed the Rimac Campus, it’ll serve as the company’s international research and development (R&D) and production base for all future Rimac products, including the current Nevera and its key components. The company has broken ground and the headquarters should be completed in 2023. Renewables are projected to increase from its current 12% of the global energy supply to 90% in 2050. Yet the widespread use of renewables is challenged by the intermittency of solar and wind, and we’re not yet at a place where we can store enough energy to avoid these problems. As renewable energy supply increases around the world, so to is the demand for grid-scale energy storage. It has been projected that the combined global stationary and transportation annual energy storage market will increase from today’s baseline of around 600 GWh by a factor of four by 2030 to more than 2,500 GWh. Today, global energy storage capacity is dominated by gravity-based pumped hydro (90%), followed by lithium, lead and zinc batteries (5%), with the remaining capacity alloted to thermal and flow batteries, compressed air, flywheels, and other gravity-based mechanical systems.
Gravity energy storage Two ASN articles in 2019 about some exciting new developments in storing renewable energy as gravitational potential energy by lifting and lowering heavy objects (Gigawatt Electricity Storage Using Water and Rocks and Climate Change Will Require Heavy Lifting). At the time, a Swiss private company founded in 2017 that caught my attention was Energy Vault. In a demonstration project built and showcased in Switzerland, they showed the first use of cranes to lift and lower heavy composite blocks into massive architectures to respectively store and release significant amounts of renewable electricity. Importantly, the composite blocks enable the use of alternative materials to replace environmentally-unfriendly substances like concrete, which accounts for 7-8% of greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, the technology can accommodate the recycling of various pre-existing waste materials, which in return helps large utility and industrial companies transform financial and environmental liabilities into infrastructure assets to support their transition to a fully circular economic approach.
During lifting, electricity is stored as gravitational potential energy in the blocks, and on lowering, the stored potential energy drives a motor generator to regenerate electricity with as little loss as possible to maximize the efficiency of the process. The technological performance and commercial potential of this gravity-based system relative to other new entrants into the energy storage space was not apparent at the time, especially the levelized cost of electricity in $/MWh compared to lithium-ion batteries. Somehow, extremely tall cranes that lift and lower massive blocks in huge construction sites did not seem to be a practical global solution to grid-scale renewable energy storage. Fast forward to today and I have changed my mind. As of April 2022, Energy Vault became listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and with the breathtaking news of its latest gravitational energy storage system, it is one of the most exciting companies to watch. In just three years it has established an impressive global reach with its advanced gravity storage system on five continents, with more than US$32B earmarked projects over the next five years.
What has changed to elevate Energy Vault to such great heights? It’s simple: They have simplified their gravity storage system by integrating the lifting-and-lowering of heavy weights into a familiar “elevator” style building design that is compatible with all international building codes. Plus, they have perfected the manufacturing process of their eco-friendly and fully recyclable composite materials. The Energy Vault system literally can be built anywhere a building can be built. It is scalable on demand with no topological and geographical constraints, having flexible modular construction with the capacity to deliver GWs of power over short and long enough durations to handle solar and wind intermittency shortfalls. The energy storage system can also withstand harsh and changeable weather conditions, it is resilient to storage capacity degradation over time, not reliant on carbon intensive mining and refining of rare and toxic metals, and is devoid of chemical and fire safety risks. The round-trip efficiency or the proportion of stored to retrieved electricity is currently 83-85%, rather close to that of comparable power rating lithium-ion batteries, which hold 87-89%. Most importantly, it is purported to offer a lower levelized cost of electricity than any competing technology, particularly 60% of of today’s lithium-ion batteries — by 2025 this is projected to drop to 51%. This is one of the most promising sustainable solutions to global grid-scale renewable energy storage. It almost certainly will prove to be an indispensable piece of the circular economy puzzle, having a positive ripple effect on creating new clean technology industries and jobs, avoiding environmental liability, ameliorating climate change, and mitigating global warming. Now that’s what I call heavy lifting! Scientists at Japan’s RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS) say they have developed a way to create artificial neural networks that learn to recognize objects faster and more accurately. Andrea Benucci, team leader at RIKEN CBS’s Laboratory for Neural Circuits and Behavior, has published a study in the scientific journal PLOS Computational Biology, which focuses on all the unnoticed eye movements that we make, and shows that they serve a vital purpose in allowing us to stably recognize objects. These findings can be applied to machine vision, for example, making it easier for self-driving cars to learn how to recognize important features on the road.
Despite making constant head and eye movements throughout the day, objects in the world do not blur or become unrecognizable, even though the physical information hitting our retinas changes constantly. What likely makes this perceptual stability possible are neural copies of the movement commands. These copies are sent throughout the brain each time we move and are thought to allow the brain to account for our own movements and keep our perception stable. In addition to stable perception, evidence suggests that eye movements, and their motor copies, might also help us to stably recognize objects in the world, but how this happens remains a mystery. Benucci developed a convolutional neural network (CNN) that offers a solution to this problem. The CNN was designed to optimize the classification of objects in a visual scene while the eyes are moving. First, the network was trained to classify 60,000 black-and-white images into 10 categories. Although it performed well on these images, when tested with shifted images that mimicked naturally altered visual input that would occur when the eyes move, performance dropped drastically to chance level. However, classification improved significantly after training the network with shifted images, as long as the direction and size of the eye movements that resulted in the shift were also included. In particular, adding the eye movements and their motor copies to the network model allowed the system to better cope with visual noise in the images. “This advancement will help avoid dangerous mistakes in machine vision,” says Benucci. “With more efficient and robust machine vision, it is less likely that pixel alterations—also known as ‘adversarial attacks’—will cause, for example, self-driving cars to label a stop sign as a light pole, or military drones to misclassify a hospital building as an enemy target.” Bringing these results to real world machine vision is not as difficult as it seems. Benucci explains, “The benefits of mimicking eye movements and their efferent copies implies that ‘forcing’ a machine-vision sensor to have controlled types of movements, while informing the vision network in charge of processing the associated images about the self-generated movements, would make machine vision more robust, and akin to what is experienced in human vision.” The next step in this research will involve collaboration with colleagues working with neuromorphic technologies. The idea is to implement actual silicon-based circuits based on the principles highlighted in this study and test whether they improve machine-vision capabilities in real-world applications. Scientists in the United Arab Emirates have looked at how off-grid rooftop PV could be combined with batteries, fuel cells or reversible solid oxide cells for energy storage. The modeling assumed a typical commercial building in Los Angeles. Researchers from Khalifa University in the United Arab Emirates have conducted a techno-economic analysis of a building energy system based on standalone rooftop PV linked to either lithium-ion batteries, proton-exchange membranes reversible fuel cells (PEM RFC), or reversible solid oxide cells (RSOC). They have found that each of the proposed configurations could result in low capital costs and high efficiency.
The scientists quantified the impact of the PEM RFC and RSOC on overall system degradation. Their modeling considered a typical medium-sized commercial building in Los Angeles, California. Its minimum value of electricity demand was 18.79 kW during the night, with a maximum demand of 178.30 kW in August. The rooftop solar array was assumed to have a capacity of 400 kW, with 310.15 W SPR-E19-310-COM solar modules with 19% efficiency from US manufacturer SunPower. The 250 kW RSOC system – equipped with an air preheater, water boiler, and high-performance heat exchangers – was assumed to have a power density of 0.312 W and an overall system efficiency of 43.99. The fuel cell has a capacity of 251.4 kW, a power density of 0.284 W, with a total system efficiency of 31.18%. The cost of the RFC was estimated at around $667/kW and that of the RSOC at $500/kW. The costs were based on a modeled 250 kW PEM stack cost and 250 kW RSOC stack cost, at 10,000 units per year. The battery is based on a nickel-manganese-cobalt cathode and graphite anode, and has a storage capacity of 400 kWh. It has a round-trip efficiency of 92.5% and a cost of $339/kW. Its lifetime is more than 5,000 cycles. The academics found that the PV system can achieve a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of $0.0237/kWh. The levelized cost of storage (LCOS) of the RFC, RSOC and the battery was $0.04173/kWh, $0.02818/kWh, and 0.02585/kWh, respectively. “The breakdown of the LCOS shows that capital cost accounts for more than 65% of the total LCOS, making it the most important component that needs more R&D to bring the capital cost down for these energy storage technologies,” they explained. They found that the LCOS increases and the discharge decrease depended on the lifetime of each of the three storage technologies they used. “The LCOS is sensitive to changes in capital costs, round-trip efficiency, lifetime, and discount rate; therefore, changes in these parameters should be carefully considered,” they warned, noting that lithium-ion batteries offer the most economical solution along with maximum efficiency, while also noting that RFCs and RSOCs can improve a standalone building's reliability and resiliency. The scientists presented their findings in “Techno-economic analysis of energy storage systems using reversible fuel cells and rechargeable batteries in green buildings,” which was recently published in Energy. |
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