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.
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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. The hardy cactus -- fond of heat and aridity, adapted to rough soils -- might not seem like the picture of a climate change victim. Yet even these prickly survivors may be reaching their limits as the planet grows hotter and drier over the coming decades, according to recently published research. The study estimates that, by mid-century, global warming could put 60% of cactus species at greater risk of extinction. That forecast does not take into account the poaching, habitat destruction and other human-caused threats that already make cactuses one of the world's most endangered groups of organisms.
Most cactus species "are in some way adapted to the climates and the environments that they live in", said Michiel Pillet, a doctoral student in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona who led the new study, which was published in the journal Nature Plants. "Even a slight change may be too much for them to adapt over shorter time scales."For those who think of cactuses either as stoic masters of all-weather endurance or as cute, low-maintenance houseplants, the enormous variety within the cactus family might come as a jolt. For starters, not all cactuses are desert dwellers. Some live in rainforests or in cool climes at high altitudes. Some store little water in their stalks, relying instead on rainwater and dew. Some occupy highly specific environments: limestone cliffs in Mexico, hills of pink granite in Brazil, a sandy patch of less than 1 square kilometre in Peru. In the Amazon, the moonflower cactus spirals around a tree trunk, high above the ground, so that it is above the waterline when the forest floods and the water can disperse its seeds. In part, it is this narrow taste for particular settings that makes certain cactuses vulnerable not only to climate change but to threats of all kinds. "If you only find it in a very small area, and someone comes and plows it out to grow whatever they want to grow, the whole population disappears," said Barbara Goettsch, another author of the new study and a chair of the Cactus and Succulent Plants Specialist Group at the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The study looks at 408 cactus species, or roughly one-quarter of all known cactus species, and how their geographic range could shift under three different trajectories for global warming in this century. To the researchers' surprise, their results did not vary much between different pathways for climate change, Mr Pillet said: Even if the planet heats up only modestly, many types of cactus could experience declines in the amount of territory where the climate is hospitable to them. Overall, 60% of cactus species are expected to suffer declines of any magnitude, the study found, and 14% could suffer steep declines. Only one species, the Xique-Xique in Brazil, is projected to experience a substantial increase in range. According to the study, the places where the largest numbers of species could become threatened are generally those with the richest diversity of species today, including Florida, central Mexico and large swathes of Brazil. Cactuses that live on trees seem to do especially poorly, perhaps because their lives are so intertwined with those of other plants. The outlook does not seem to be as bleak for the American Southwest, home to the iconic saguaro, Mr Pillet said. But scientists still do not know enough about certain rarer cactuses to predict how they might respond to more punishing climates, he said. That means the study's projections might not paint a complete picture for some parts of the world. Cactuses, by their nature, do not give up their secrets readily. Scientists examining other plants' sensitivity to environmental changes might look, for instance, at the size and thickness of their leaves. "Most cacti don't have leaves, so what would you be measuring?" Mr Pillet said. The study's predictions also do not account for extreme events such as droughts and wildfires, Mr Pillet said. In the Sonoran Desert, rapid infestations of buffelgrass, a drought-resistant plant native to Africa, Asia and the Middle East, have made the landscape highly flammable. Wildfires there have killed thousands of saguaros in recent years. "It's a popular image of cacti," said David Williams, a professor of botany at the University of Wyoming who was not involved in the new research. "'Ah, we don't have to worry about cacti. Look at them, they've got spines, they grow in this terrible environment.'" But cactuses, like most plants, exist in delicate balance with the ecosystems around them, he said. "There are a lot of these tipping points and thresholds that are very fragile and responsive to changes in the environment, land use and climate change." Around a decade ago, when Dr Goettsch was preparing a comprehensive global assessment of the threats to cactuses, there were only a few scientific studies looking at climate change's potential impacts specifically on cactuses, she said. But, she said, other cactus experts kept telling her during their field visits, "You know, we go back now, and a lot of plants are dead. There's no real reason, so we think it might be climate change." The evidence has only piled up further since then, she said. Brazil is a hot spot for cactus diversity. As the country's northeastern drylands experience hotter temperatures, more intense droughts and desertification, that plant wealth is in jeopardy, said Arnobio de Mendonça, a climate and biodiversity researcher at the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil. "Species either adapt or they will go extinct," he said. "As adaptation is a slow process and current climate change is occurring rapidly, it is likely that many species will be lost." A "No Fishing" sign on the edge of Iraq's western desert is one of the few clues that this was once Sawa Lake, a biodiverse wetland and recreational landmark. Human activity and climate change have combined to turn the site into a barren wasteland with piles of salt. Abandoned hotels and tourist facilities here hark back to the 1990s when the salt lake, circled by sandy banks, was in its heyday and popular with newly-weds and families who came to swim and picnic. But today, the lake near the city of Samawa, south of the capital Baghdad, is completely dry. Bottles litter its former banks and plastic bags dangle from sun-scorched shrubs, while two pontoons have been reduced to rust. "This year, for the first time, the lake has disappeared," environmental activist Husam Subhi said. "In previous years, the water area had decreased during the dry seasons." Today, on the sandy ground sprinkled with salt, only a pond remains where tiny fish swim, in a source that connects the lake to an underground water table. he five-square-kilometre (two-square-mile) lake has been drying up since 2014, says Youssef Jabbar, environmental department head of Muthana province. The causes have been "climate change and rising temperatures," he explained. "Muthana is a desert province, it suffers from drought and lack of rainfall." 1,000 illegal wells A government statement issued last week also pointed to "more than 1,000 wells illegally dug" for agriculture in the area. Additionally, nearby cement and salt factories have "drained significant amounts of water from the groundwater that feeds the lake", Jabbar said. It would take nothing short of a miracle to bring Sawa Lake back to life. Use of aquifers would have to be curbed and, following three years of drought, the area would now need several seasons of abundant rainfall, in a country hit by desertification and regarded as one of the five most vulnerable to climate change. The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, a global treaty, recognised Sawa as "unique... because it is a closed water body in an area of sabkha (salt flat) with no inlet or outlet. "The lake is formed over limestone rock and is isolated by gypsum barriers surrounding the lake; its water chemistry is unique," says the convention's website. A stopover for migratory birds, the lake was once "home to several globally vulnerable species" such as the eastern imperial eagle, houbara bustard and marbled duck.
Climate Lockdowns: New CO2 monitoring credit card enables tracking of ‘carbon footprint on every purchase’ – ‘Monitors & cuts off spending when we hit our carbon max’ – Mastercard & UN join forces. Get ready for a Chinese-style social credit system scoring when it comes to your personal spending habits and how they impact “climate change.” A new credit card called Doconomy, has launched that is “working in tight collaboration with Mastercard” and an alliance with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is now available so you can monitor your personal CO2 budget on every purchase you make. The new CO2 monitoring Mastercard called Doconomy debuted in order to enable “all users to track, measure and understand their impact by presenting their carbon footprint on every purchase.” The credit cards feature the slogan on them reading “DO. Everyday Climate Action” and have a personal pledge on the rear of the card boasting: “I am taking responsibility for every transaction I make to help protect the planet.” The Mastercards feature the UN “Global Climate Action” logo on them as well.
Mathias Wikström, the CEO of Doconomy, explained, “Reducing carbon emissions needs to be prioritized by all parties. At Doconomy we are proud to engage and educate around our lifestyle’s impact on the planet…The financial sector has developed a tremendous efficiency. Now that same force can address the planetary fragility.”
This new CO2 monitoring credit card follows on the heels of the new study in the Journal Nature in August 2021 calling for “personal carbon allowances” that would monitor individuals’ CO2 emissions through smart meters and tracking apps. Lora Smith BIARRITZ, August 26 -- World leaders at the G-7 summit have agreed to help the countries affected by the huge wildfires ravaging the Amazon rain forest as soon as possible, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday. "We are all agreed on helping those countries which have been hit by the fires as fast as possible," he told journalists at the summit in the south-western French resort of Biarritz. Ahead of the gathering, Macron called on world leaders to hold urgent talks on the wildfires ripping through the world's largest rain forest, pledging "concrete measures" to tackle it. Although about 60 per cent of the Amazon is in Brazil, the vast forest also takes in parts of eight other countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. "This morning, Colombia called on the international community (to help), so we must help out," he said. "Our teams are making contact with all the Amazon countries so we can finalise some very concrete commitments involving technical resources and funding." Macron's bid to put the Amazon crisis high on the agenda at the G-7 angered Brazil's far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, who lashed out over what he sees as outside interference, denouncing the French leader's "colonialist mentality". Under intense international pressure, Bolsonaro agreed to send in the military to fight the fires. The army on Sunday deployed two Hercules C-130 aircraft to douse fires, as hundreds of new blazes were ignited ahead of nationwide protests over the destruction. Heavy smoke covered the city of Porto Velho in the north-western state of Rondonia where the defense ministry said the planes have started dumping thousands of liters of water. Swathes of the remote region bordering Bolivia have been scorched by the blazes, sending thick smoke billowing into the sky and increasing air pollution across the world's largest rain forest. Experts say increased land clearing during the months-long dry season to make way for crops or grazing has aggravated the problem this year. "It gets worse every year - this year, the smoke has been really serious," Deliana Amorim, 46, told Agence France-Presse in Porto Velho where half a million people live. At least seven states, including Rondonia, have requested the army's help in the Amazon, where more than 43,000 troops are based and available to combat fires, officials said. Pope Francis on Sunday also voiced concern for the rain forest, which he described as a "vital" lung for the planet. The latest official figures show 79,513 forest fires have been recorded in Brazil this year, the highest number of any year since 2013. More than half of the fires are in the massive Amazon basin, where more than 20 million people live. Some 1,130 new fires were ignited between Friday and Saturday, according to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE). The new data come as protesters plan to take to the streets across Brazil on Sunday, after thousands held demonstrations in the country and in Europe on Friday. Lora Smith LONDON, August 24 -- The world’s first solar farm to power a railway line directly is due to plug into the track near Aldershot, paving the way for solar-powered trains. From Friday, about 100 solar panels at the trackside site will supply renewable electricity to power the signalling and lights on Network Rail’s Wessex route. The 30kW pilot scheme could pave the way for a larger project capable of directly powering the trains that use this route from next year. The solar breakthrough comes as Network Rail plans to spend billions of pounds electrifying rail lines to avoid running trains on diesel. This could help reduce air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and costs. Solar panels are already used to power the operations of train stations, including Blackfriars in central London. But the Aldershot project is the first time a solar array will bypass the electricity grid to plug directly into a railway’s “traction” system. Network Rail hopes to use the scheme, developed by the charity 10:10 Climate Action and Imperial College London, to solar-charge its rail lines across the country. Stuart Kistruck, a director for Network Rail’s Wessex route, said: “We have ambitions to roll this technology out further across the network should this demonstrator project prove successful, so we can deliver a greener, better railway for our passengers and the wider public.” The research team behind the project, called Riding Sunbeams, estimates that solar could power 20% of the Merseyrail network in Liverpool, as well as 15% of commuter routes in Kent, Sussex and Wessex. There is also scope for solar trams in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Nottingham, London and Manchester, according to the team. The researchers began work on the plans over two years ago to discover whether bypassing the electricity grid could make solar power a more efficient energy source for trains. Innovate UK awarded the project funding from the Department of Transport after it proved that connecting solar power directly to rail, tube and tram networks could help meet a significant share of their electricity needs. |
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