Energy Anxiety

After more than half a century of dependence on Russian oil and gas, the war in Ukraine has forced German officials to reconsider their reliance on fossil fuels entirely.

Elon Musk lays out his vision for Tesla's future at the company's Investor Day 2023

Tesla's production capacities are in store for a significant growth spurt, CEO Elon Musk told the crowd assembled at the company's Austin, Texas Gigafactory for Investor Day 2023 — and AI will apparently be the magic bullet that gets them there. It's all part of what Musk is calling Master Plan part 3.

This is indeed Musk's third such Master Plan, the first two coming in 2006 and 2016, respectively. These have served as a roadmap for the company's growth and development over the past 17 years as Tesla has grown from neophyte startup to the world's leading EV automaker. "There is a clear path to a sustainable energy Earth by 2050 and it does not require destroying natural habitats," Musk said during the keynote address. 

"You could support a civilization much bigger than Earth [currently does]. Much more than the 8 billion humans could actually be supported sustainably on Earth and I'm just often shocked and surprised by how few people realize this," he continued. He promised that the company would release a "detailed whitepaper with calculations & assumptions," via Twitter during the event.

The Master Plan aims to establish a sustainable energy economy by developing 240 terraWatt hours (TWH) of energy storage and 30 TWH of renewable power generation, which would require an estimated $10 trillion investment, roughly 10 percent of the global GDP. Musk notes, however, that figure is less than half of what we spend currently on internal combustion economy. In all, he anticipates we'd need less than 0.2 percent of the world's land area to create the necessary solar and wind generation capacity. 

"All cars will go to fully electric and autonomous," Musk declared, arguing once again that ICE vehicles will soon be viewed in the same disdain as the horse and buggy. He also teased potential plans to electrify aircraft and ships. "As we improve the energy density of batteries, you’ll see all transportation go fully electric, with the exception of rockets,” he said. No further details as to when or how that might be accomplished were shared.

“A sustainable energy economy is within reach and we should accelerate it,” Drew Baglino, Tesla's SVP of Powertrain and Energy Engineering, added.

Following Musk's opening statement, Tesla executives Lars Moravy and Franz von Holzhausen took the stage to discuss the company's "production hell" and the challenges of building the Cybertruck out of stainless steel. However, the lessons learned from that, Moravy argued will help Tesla build its Gen 3 vehicles more efficiently, and do so within a far smaller factory footprint. von Holzhausen announced to a rousing round of applause that the Cybertruck will arrive later this year, a significantly closer date than Musk's previous public estimate that production wouldn't begin until next year. 

Unfortunately, there will be no new vehicle reveal at this event, von Holzhausen said. That announce will happen "at a later date."  

The company did tease a new video featuring the Tesla Robot walking independently and without the aide of a support frame though there was no live demonstration of the same. Despite difficulties finding suitable off-the-shelf actuators and motors for the humanoid robot platform, "we should bring and actual produce to market at scale that is useful far faster than anyone else," Musk said. 

He further expects the company's robots to become so successful that we may soon see a day where they outnumber humans. "I think we might exceed a one-to-one ratio of robots to humans," he added. "It's not even clear what an economy means at that point."

BEIJING, CHINA - AUGUST 29: A Tesla logo is displayed at Tesla booth ahead of the 2022 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) at China National Convention Center on August 29, 2022 in Beijing, China. The 2022 CIFTIS is slated to be held in Beijing from August 31 to September 5 to provide platforms for exchanges in service trade. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

Hitting the Books: Why America once leaded its gasoline

Engine knock, wherein fuel ignites unevenly along the cylinder wall resulting in damaging percussive shockwaves, is an issue that automakers have struggled to mitigate since the days of the Model T. The industry's initial attempts to solve the problem — namely tetraethyl lead — were, in hindsight, a huge mistake, having endumbened and stupefied an entire generation of Americans with their neurotoxic byproducts.

Dr. Vaclav Smil, Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, examines the short-sighted economic reasoning that lead to leaded gas rather than a nationwide network of ethanol stations in his new book Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure. Lead gas is far from the only presumed advance to go over like a lead balloon. Invention and Innovation is packed with tales of humanity's best-intentioned, most ill-conceived and generally half-cocked ideas — from airships and hyperloops to DDT and CFCs. 

MIT Press

Excerpted from Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure by Professor Vaclav Smil. Reprinted with permission from The MIT Press. Copyright 2023.

Just seven years later Henry Ford began to sell his Model T, the first mass-produced affordable and durable passenger car, and in 1911 Charles Kettering, who later played a key role in developing leaded gasoline, designed the first practical electric starter, which obviated dangerous hand cranking. And although hard-topped roads were still in short supply even in the eastern part of the US, their construction began to accelerate, with the country’s paved highway length more than doubling between 1905 and 1920. No less important, decades of crude oil discoveries accompanied by advances in refining provided the liquid fuels needed for the expansion of the new transportation, and in 1913 Standard Oil of Indiana introduced William Burton’s thermal cracking of crude oil, the process that increased gasoline yield while reducing the share of volatile compounds that make up the bulk of natural gasolines.

But having more affordable and more reliable cars, more paved roads, and a dependable supply of appropriate fuel still left a problem inherent in the combustion cycle used by car engines: the propensity to violent knocking (pinging). In a perfectly operating gasoline engine, gas combustion is initiated solely by a timed spark at the top of the combustion chamber and the resulting flame front moves uniformly across the cylinder volume. Knocking is caused by spontaneous ignitions (small explosions, mini-detonations) taking place in the remaining gases before they are reached by the flame front initiated by sparking. Knocking creates high pressures (up to 18 MPa, or nearly up to 180 times the normal atmospheric level), and the resulting shock waves, traveling at speeds greater than sound, vibrate the combustion chamber walls and produce the telling sounds of a knocking, malfunctioning engine.

Knocking sounds alarming at any speed, but when an engine operates at a high load it can be very destructive. Severe knocking can cause brutal irreparable engine damage, including cylinder head erosion, broken piston rings, and melted pistons; and any knocking reduces an engine’s efficiency and releases more pollutants; in particular, it results in higher nitrogen oxide emissions. The capacity to resist knocking— that is, fuel’s stability— is based on the pressure at which fuel will spontaneously ignite and has been universally measured in octane numbers, which are usually displayed by filling stations in bold black numbers on a yellow background.

Octane (C8H18) is one of the alkanes (hydrocarbons with the general formula CnH2n + 2) that form anywhere between 10 to 40 percent of light crude oils, and one of its isomers (compounds with the same number of carbon and hydrogen atoms but with a different molecular structure), 2,2,4-trimethypentane (iso-octane), was taken as the maximum (100 percent) on the octane rating scale because the compound completely prevents any knocking. The higher the octane rating of gasoline, the more resistant the fuel is to knocking, and engines can operate more efficiently with higher compression ratios. North American refiners now offer three octane grades, regular gasoline (87), midgrade fuel (89), and premium fuel mixes (91– 93).

During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the earliest phase of automotive expansion, there were three options to minimize or eliminate destructive knocking. The first one was to keep the compression ratios of internal combustion engines relatively low, below 4.3:1: Ford’s best-selling Model T, rolled out in 1908, had a compression ratio of 3.98:1. The second one was to develop smaller but more efficient engines running on better fuel, and the third one was to use additives that would prevent the uncontrolled ignition. Keeping compression ratios low meant wasting fuel, and the reduced engine efficiency was of a particular concern during the years of rapid post–World War I economic expansion as rising car ownership of more powerful and more spacious cars led to concerns about the long-term adequacy of domestic crude oil supplies and the growing dependence on imports. Consequently, additives offered the easiest way out: they would allow using lower-quality fuel in more powerful engines operating more efficiently with higher compression ratios.

During the first two decades of the twentieth century there was considerable interest in ethanol (ethyl alcohol, C2H6O or CH3CH2OH), both as a car fuel and as a gasoline additive. Numerous tests proved that engines using pure ethanol would never knock, and ethanol blends with kerosene and gasoline were tried in Europe and in the US. Ethanol’s well-known proponents included Alexander Graham Bell, Elihu Thomson, and Henry Ford (although Ford did not, as many sources erroneously claim, design the Model T to run on ethanol or to be a dual-fuel vehicle; it was to be fueled by gasoline); Charles Kettering considered it to be the fuel of the future.

But three disadvantages complicated ethanol’s large-scale adoption: it was more expensive than gasoline, it was not available in volumes sufficient to meet the rising demand for automotive fuel, and increasing its supply, even only if it were used as the dominant additive, would have claimed significant shares of crop production. At that time there were no affordable, direct ways to produce the fuel on a large scale from abundant cellulosic waste such as wood or straw: cellulose had first to be hydrolyzed by sulfuric acid and the resulting sugars were then fermented. That is why the fuel ethanol was made mostly from the same food crops that were used to make (in much smaller volumes) alcohol for drinking and medicinal and industrial uses.

The search for a new, effective additive began in 1916 in Charles Kettering’s Dayton Research Laboratories with Thomas Midgley, a young (born in 1889) mechanical engineer, in charge of this effort. In July 1918 a report prepared in collaboration with the US Army and the US Bureau of Mines listed ethyl alcohol, benzene, and a cyclohexane as the compounds that did not produce any knocking in high-compression engines. In 1919, when Kettering was hired by GM to head its new research division, he defined the challenge as one of averting a looming fuel shortage: the US domestic crude oil supply was expected to be gone in fifteen years, and “if we could successfully raise the compression of our motors . . . we could double the mileage and thereby lengthen this period to 30 years.” Kettering saw two routes toward that goal, by using a high-volume additive (ethanol or, as tests showed, fuel with 40 percent benzene that eliminated any knocking) or a low-percentage alternative, akin to but better than the 1 percent iodine solution that was accidentally discovered in 1919 to have the same effect.

In early 1921 Kettering learned about Victor Lehner’s synthesis of selenium oxychloride at the University of Wisconsin. Tests showed it to be a highly effective but, as expected, also a highly corrosive anti-knocking compound, but they led directly to considering compounds of other elements in group 16 of the periodic table: both diethyl selenide and diethyl telluride showed even better anti-knocking properties, but the latter compound was poisonous when inhaled or absorbed through skin and had a powerful garlicky smell. Tetraethyl tin was the next compound found to be modestly effective, and on December 9, 1921, a solution of 1 percent tetraethyl lead (TEL) — (C2H5)4 Pb — produced no knock in the test engine, and soon was found to be effective even when added in concentrations as low as 0.04 percent by volume.

TEL was originally synthesized in Germany by Karl Jacob Löwig in 1853 and had no previous commercial use. In January 1922, DuPont and Standard Oil of New Jersey were contracted to produce TEL, and by February 1923 the new fuel (with the additive mixed into the gasoline at pumps by means of simple devices called ethylizers) became available to the public in a small number of filling stations. Even as the commitment to TEL was going ahead, Midgley and Kettering conceded that “unquestionably alcohol is the fuel of the future,” and estimates showed that a 20 percent blend of ethanol and gasoline needed in 1920 could be supplied by using only about 9 percent of the country’s grain and sugar crops while providing an additional market for US farmers. And during the interwar period many European and some tropical countries used blends of 10– 25 percent ethanol (made from surplus food crops and paper mill wastes) and gasoline, admittedly for relatively small markets as the pre–World War II ownership of family cars in Europe was only a fraction of the US mean.

Other known alternatives included vapor-phase cracked refinery liquids, benzene blends, and gasoline from naphthenic crudes (containing little or no wax). Why did GM, well aware of these realities, decide not only to pursue just the TEL route but also to claim (despite its own correct understanding) that there were no available alternatives: “So far as we know at the present time, tetraethyl lead is the only material available which can bring about these results”? Several factors help to explain the choice. The ethanol route would have required a mass-scale development of a new industry dedicated to an automotive fuel additive that could not be controlled by GM. Moreover, as already noted, the preferable option, producing ethanol from cellulosic waste (crop residues, wood), rather than from food crops, was too expensive to be practical. In fact, the large-scale production of cellulosic ethanol by new enzymatic conversions, promised to be of epoch-making importance in the twenty-first century, has failed its expectations, and by 2020 high-volume US production of ethanol (used as an anti-knocking additive) continued to be based on fermenting corn: in 2020 it claimed almost exactly one-third of the country’s corn harvest.

Gasoline prices are displayed at a gas station in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, U.S. October 19, 2022.  REUTERS/Aimee Dilger

Mining law has barely changed since 1872. Can Congress agree on a fix?

US will see more new battery capacity than natural gas generation in 2023

Enlarge / In Texas, solar facilities compete for space with a whole lot of nothing.

Earlier this week, the US' Energy Information Agency (EIA) gave a preview of the changes the nation's electrical grid is likely to see over the coming year. The data is based on information submitted to the Department of Energy by utilities and power plant owners, who are asked to estimate when generating facilities that are planned or under construction will come online. Using that information, the EIA estimates the total new capacity expected to be activated over the coming year.

Obviously, not everything will go as planned, and the capacity estimates represent the production that would result if a plant ran non-stop at full power—something no form of power is able to do. Still, the data tends to indicate what utilities are spending their money on and helps highlight trends in energy economics. And this year, those trends are looking very sunny.

Big changes

Last year, the equivalent report highlighted that solar power would provide nearly half of the 46 gigawatts of new capacity added to the US grid. This year, the grid will add more power (just under 55 GW), and solar will be over half of it, at 54 percent. In most areas of the country, solar is now the cheapest way to generate power, and the grid additions reflect that. The EIA also indicates that at least some of these are projects that were delayed due to pandemic-induced supply chain disruptions.

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EU wind and solar energy production overtook gas last year

Energy generated from solar and wind power reportedly overtook natural gas in the European Union (EU) for the first time last year. The data comes from UK clean-energy think tank Ember (via Bloomberg), which projects the gap to grow.

Solar and wind energy rose to an all-time high of 22 percent of the EU’s 2022 electricity use. Meanwhile, Ember projects fossil-fuel generation to drop by 20 percent this year — with gas falling the fastest.

The shifts stem largely from reducing reliance on gas and coal after Russia invaded Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin ordered the cutoff of natural gas exports to the EU as retaliation for Western sanctions. Ember says the resulting high costs helped lower energy demand by around eight percent in Q4 2022 compared to the same quarter the previous year.

“There is now a focus on rapidly cutting gas demand — at the same time as phasing out coal,’’ the report said. “This means a massive scale-up in clean energy is on its way.” It expects nuclear power to remain flat in 2023, with a planned phase-out of German nuclear reactors canceling out a ramp-up from France. However, it projects hydropower to rise by around 40 terawatt-hours this year following a severe drought in 2022.

A solar energy panel is pictured on the roof of a house with a wind turbine seen in the background, in Burton Latimer, Britain, March 30, 2022.

Energy transition investments hit $1.1 trillion — with a T — last year

Here comes the hockey stick.

After years of bumbling along, investment in the energy transition appears to be taking off. Businesses, financial institutions, governments and end users around the world sunk $1.11 trillion into low-carbon technologies, according to a new report from BloombergNEF. It was just over 30% more than 2021 and the second year in a row in which the growth rate exceeded that figure.

Perhaps more notable is the fact that for the first time ever, money put into the energy transition matched funds spent on fossil fuel investments. If you count the $274 billion spent on improving the electrical grid, then energy transition investments shot well past the fossil fuel fossils, hitting $1.38 trillion.

Over the last two decades, most low-carbon investments were targeted at renewables, including wind, solar and biofuels. They hit another record last year with $495 billion invested, up 17% from 2021. But in recent years, money has also been flowing into more diversified sectors, including energy storage, space heating, sustainable materials and electrified transport.

Last year was no exception. Investments into electrified transport — think EVs and charging networks — grew a whopping 54% in 2022 to $466 billion. Hydrogen, which is often uttered in the same breath as battery-electric vehicles, contributed $1.1 billion toward the trillion-dollar total. While that figure may seem small, it’s triple the amount the sector received in 2021. Overall, investment was balanced between supply (energy production and storage) and demand (energy users like transportation, heat and sustainable materials).

Most of the money has come from China. The country accounted for about half the total, $546 billion. The U.S. was second with $141 billion, and Germany was third with $55 billion. If the entire EU is lumped together, the bloc would have taken second place with $180 billion.

In particular, China dominates in areas like manufacturing capacity and supply chain development. Last year it spent heavily on electrified transportation and renewables like solar and wind. Given that combination, it’s possible that we’ll see Chinese solar panels flood the market once more, though this time they’ll be accompanied by cheap batteries. Inexpensive solar paired with cheap batteries is what’ll be needed to kick significant amounts of fossil energy from the grid.

If there was a dim spot, it was global equity and private investment in climate tech. Those numbers were down 29% to $119 billion. That should come as no surprise; 2021 was a crazy year for venture capital and private equity.

Energy transition investments hit $1.1 trillion — with a T — last year by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch

Wanted (by scientists): Dead birds and bats, felled by renewables

Enlarge / A Red-Tailed Hawk takes off from an idle turbine blade in 2013. (credit: San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images)

"This is one of the least smelly carcasses,” said Todd Katzner, peering over his lab manager’s shoulder as she sliced a bit of flesh from a dead pigeon lying on a steel lab table. The specimens that arrive at this facility in Boise, Idaho, are often long dead, and the bodies smell, he said, like “nothing that you can easily describe, other than yuck.”

A wildlife biologist with the US Geological Survey, a government agency dedicated to environmental science, Katzner watched as his lab manager rooted around for the pigeon’s liver and then placed a glossy maroon piece of it in a small plastic bag labeled with a biohazard symbol. The pigeon is a demonstration specimen, but samples, including flesh and liver, are ordinarily frozen, catalogued, and stored in freezers. The feathers get tucked in paper envelopes and organized in filing boxes; the rest of the carcass is discarded. When needed for research, the stored samples can be processed and sent to other labs that test for toxicants or conduct genetic analysis.

Most of the bird carcasses that arrive at the Boise lab have been shipped from renewable energy facilities, where hundreds of thousands of winged creatures die each year in collisions with turbine blades and other equipment. Clean energy projects are essential for confronting climate change, said Mark Davis, a conservation biologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. But he also emphasized the importance of mitigating their effects on wildlife. “I’m supportive of renewable energy developments. I’m also supportive of doing our best to conserve biodiversity,” Davis said. “And I think the two things can very much coexist.”

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