An assistant professor at UCSD just announced a new method for recycling cobalt in lithium-ion batteries.
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-lithium-ion...
Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
141–150 of 261 posts
Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
#142Oh god, another Erlich/Simons bet is needed: what's low is the level of rare earth exploration and exploitation not absolute supply. Is there a supply chain problem? Yes. Are we approaching a mad-max hell war for the last vestiges of humanities wonder mineral? Alas.. no. The ten years meme is based in a false premise. The article even says Australian known sources are only utilised at 14% and yet predicts a long term…
Exactly right. But it makes for a catchy title doesn't it? And if you're research lab is working on anodes for batteries you need to pitch urgency to get the big funding, who wants to fund research for problems that are 50 years out?
But cynicism aside, the key to making renewables a practical base load replacement for fossil fueled plants is a solid battery infrastructure. And those batteries aren't 'car batteries' they are 'city batteries'. We really do want to get to the point where energy independence is possible so continuing to improve batteries is a good thing.
It is just hard for some people to prioritize without an imminent threat of disaster.
Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the political employing the market to solve the actual. The market is the policy maker's tool. Take carbon taxes, if implemented incorrectly they may change incentives so harshly on CO2 that industries start creating more methane (a much worse GHG). This isn't "the market solving it" it's policy makers solving it because the tax base is used to fund the studies used to create the regulations necessary to harne…
By that definition the market can never solve anything because there is some overlying system of property rights, government or not. But any economist worth their salt would never discussed these issues in the simple market government paradigm because it simply breaks down. There is lots of research on property rights and institutions, whole sub-fields of economics are devoted to it you are vastly oversimplifying and…
I was responding to a simplification. It is of course more complex that I'd expressed, but I tailored my criticism in the least convoluted way I could to make the point. If you want to talk about political economy, international IP law, and Hobbesian traps we can, but it's fruitless when someone is saying that the market can "easily" solve environmental concerns.
Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is your comment to say that cobalt should simply be more expensive to compensate for the negative externalities of obtaining it?
I think he's saying that eventually we will run out of economically viable to extract resources and we should start planning for that now. I'm not quite so sure because there are still tons of people living in awful conditions and they need a lot of this resource extraction to raise their standard of living.
Many people need this resources, including our children. That’s why we need to slow down our crave for things and enjoy what we have. We don’t need to change cars every 4 year, we don’t need to commute as we do, we don’t need all the clothes, we don’t need to eat meat at every meal. Also we don’t need to work in useless jobs only to have money to buy useless things. We need to reconnect with nature and with each other.
Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
#145The problem with Rare Earth is that the West collectively acts like 3 year old who are to dumb to solve incredibly simple problems. Rare earth contained lots of Thorium and that has to be handled as nuclear waste and that means you have 1000s of tons of nuclear waste on your hands. This is of course completely idiotic because Thorium not really a big problem as it is not radioactive. The few Rare Earth mines that do…
Seems possible to me the US may want to deplete others’ mines while saving their mines to become the last ones remaining.
There are roughly 85,000 mines in the U.S. Of those, 62,000 are outright abandoned. Rest are either nonproducing, temporarily idled, sealed, or intermittently active. Only about 6,300 are currently active.
It's not a limited resource problem but a profitability problem. Think the main article's point is that you probably want to research diversifying now before a resource squeeze forces you to catch-up.
Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
#146I haven't studied this problem, but I suspect reserves of metals (and anything else that gets mined) is technically defined the same way oil reserves are defined, which renders this kind of headline nonsense.
Even in the pessimistic case, we run out of money before we run out of reserves. In other words, price elasticity always brings more reserves online. Reserves are defined as what can be provably economically extracted given proven technology and current economics. And the proven technology is only what has been proven in a particular field (or mine, or battery recycling facility), not proven anywhere in the world.
Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
#147The problem with Rare Earth is that the West collectively acts like 3 year old who are to dumb to solve incredibly simple problems. Rare earth contained lots of Thorium and that has to be handled as nuclear waste and that means you have 1000s of tons of nuclear waste on your hands. This is of course completely idiotic because Thorium not really a big problem as it is not radioactive. The few Rare Earth mines that do…
As someone currently dealing the consequences of being far too cavalier with long term environmental pollutants like PCBs and lead, I would argue that behavior you're describing as being that of a "3 year old" is actually a good example of government sanity, not stupidity. It's reasonable long term caution to avoid creating a bigger problem in the future. The true 3 year old behavior on display here is the market beh…
>Land is one of the single most limited resources we have.
It sounds romantic but is it really ? Even agricultural land is relatively cheap and there are more scarce resources that are needed for development.
Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think he's saying that eventually we will run out of economically viable to extract resources and we should start planning for that now. I'm not quite so sure because there are still tons of people living in awful conditions and they need a lot of this resource extraction to raise their standard of living.
Many people need this resources, including our children. That’s why we need to slow down our crave for things and enjoy what we have. We don’t need to change cars every 4 year, we don’t need to commute as we do, we don’t need all the clothes, we don’t need to eat meat at every meal. Also we don’t need to work in useless jobs only to have money to buy useless things. We need to reconnect with nature and with each othe…
I agree that the consumption isn't sustainable long term. At the same time, consumption of clothes, food, household goods, etc. in rich countries helped China to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty by giving them better paying manufacturing jobs.
Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember trying to explain basic Econ 101 to a classmate while in third year engineering. Peak Oil was a religion back then. The same isn't true for the environment. Unlike Peak Oil where economic incentives simultaneously would encourage smaller cars with more efficient engines while also directing research into more advanced oil retrieval (or at the very worst biofuels) the environment is not something the market…
Why is biofuels the very worst? Are you an oil shrill? (I'll admit to having an interest in biofules)
Some biofuels, particularly corn ethanol, are bad for the environment. Given the low return on energy invested for corn ethanol, it's functionally a way to launder fossil fuels (e.g. diesel for tractors, natural gas for fertilizer production, coal or gas for distillation) into "green" fuel. With a nice side effect of further degrading valuable farmland.
Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
#150Despite the sentiment to this article here, has anyone invested in cobalt/copper/nickel futures or mining companies?