An already big company consolidates its power.
Microsoft’s recent announcement of plans to acquire Activision Blizzard could raise red flags for antitrust regulators amid renewed scrutiny of vertical mergers.
Over 70,000 jobs will be created through the rising battery manufacturing in Europe within the next years, new studies predict.
The energy supply in Germany and Europe has never been more in flux. As the success of renewable energies continues to mount, another technology is coming into focus. Energy storage technologies and battery storage systems in particular are becoming increasingly important with the advancement of the energy transition. This development also has significant implications for Germany as an economic center, since battery production is expected to create thousands of jobs here in the future.
Europe has not traditionally played a very significant role as a site for battery cell production, but technical advances, favorable political conditions and an especially promising sales market are making the continent increasingly attractive for battery production. A look at the key role that battery cell production plays in upstream value chains – throughout the renewable energy supply sector and especially in the manufacture of electric vehicles – makes its significance clear. Battery cells represent approximately 40 percent of the value added in the production of an electric vehicle. So it is no wonder that production capacities for lithium-ion batteries are growing faster in Europe than in any other region of the world. Current forecasts predict that the continent’s share in this global manufacturing business will increase from around 6 percent now to 16 to 25 percent by 2030.
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The energy systems that power our lives also produce wasted heat—like heat that radiates off hot water pipes in buildings and exhaust pipes on vehicles. A new flexible thermoelectric generator can wrap around pipes and other hot surfaces and convert wasted heat into electricity more efficiently than previously possible, according to scientists at Penn State and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
“A large amount of heat from the energy we consume is essentially being thrown away, often dispersed right into the atmosphere,” said Shashank Priya, associate vice president for research and professor of materials science and engineering at Penn State. “We haven’t had cost-effective ways with conformal shapes to trap and convert that heat to useable energy. This research opens that door.”
Penn State researchers have been working to improve the performance of thermoelectric generators—devices that can convert differences in temperature to electricity. When the devices are placed near a heat source, electrons moving from the hot side to the cold side produce an electric current, the scientists said.
Researchers from the Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnologies of the Cnr and the Politecnico di Milano have built a battery which, following the laws of quantum physics, has a recharge time that is inversely related to the amount of stored energy.
Quantum batteries are a new class of energy storage devices that operate according to the principles of quantum physics, the science that studies the infinitely small where the laws of classical physics do not always apply. Tersilla Virgili of the Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnologies of the National Research Council (Cnr-Ifn) and Giulio Cerullo of the Physics Department of the Politecnico di Milano have shown that it is possible to manufacture a type of quantum battery where the charging power increases faster by increasing the battery capacity. The work, carried out together with other international research groups, was published in Science Advances.
“Quantum batteries have a counter-intuitive property in which the recharge time is inversely related to the battery capacity, that is the amount of stored electrical charge,” explains Virgili. “This leads to the intriguing idea that the charging power of quantum batteries is super-extensive, meaning that it increases faster with battery size.”
In our latest Short-Term Energy Outlook, we forecast that U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will increase in both 2022 and 2023 but remain below 2019 levels. In 2020, U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions decreased by 11% as energy use declined during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the U.S. economy began to return to pre-COVID activity, CO2 emissions increased by an estimated 6% in 2021. We expect increasing economic activity, along with other factors, will result in those emissions increasing by another 2% in 2022 and remaining virtually flat in 2023.
We forecast that, by 2023, U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions will total 4,971 million metric tons (MMmt) — still 3% below the 5,144 MMmt of CO2 emissions generated in 2019 and 17% below the peak level of 6,016 MMmt in 2007.
U.S. petroleum-related CO2 emissions increased 8% in 2021, and we forecast that they will increase by another 5% in 2022 and an additional 1% in 2023 as travel activity continues to increase. We forecast that in 2022, the number of vehicle miles traveled in the United States, which affects motor gasoline and diesel consumption, will return to 2019 levels and that air travel will increase by 4% over 2019.
Ultra-yacht launches all-electric Duffy Bayshore 18 boat with solar charging at the St. Petersburg boat show.
Today Ultra-Yacht announced its first-ever All-Electric Duffy Boat featuring a solar charging option at the St. Petersburg Power and Sailboat Show in Florida. The Duffy Bayshore 18 is a zero-emission, low-maintenance boat that offers up to 12 hours of fun on the water.
The world’s most commonly used system of measurement, the International System of Units (SI), was redefined in 2019. Since then, units have needed to be defined in terms of the constants of nature—that is, nature’s rules that are fixed and of no uncertainty, such as the speed of light—and not in terms of arbitrary references.
This has meant that new research for relating the many units of the system to the constants through experimental realizations has been called for.
“The redefinition has caused a need for new realizations,” says Professor Jukka Pekola.
High-tech missiles, sensors, aircraft, ships, and artillery all rely on atomic clocks on GPS satellites for nanosecond timing accuracy. A timing error of just a few billionths of a second can translate to positioning being off by a meter or more. If GPS were jammed by an adversary, time synchronization would rapidly deteriorate and threaten military operations.
To address this scenario, DARPA has announced the Robust Optical Clock Network (ROCkN) program, which aims to create optical atomic clocks with low size, weight, and power (SWaP) that yield timing accuracy and holdover better than GPS atomic clocks and can be used outside a laboratory. ROCkN will leverage DARPA-funded research over the past couple decades that has led to lab demonstration of the world’s most precise optical atomic clocks. ROCkN clocks will not be as precise as the best lab optical clocks, but they will surpass current state-of-the-art atomic clocks in both precision and holdover while maintaining low SWaP in a robust package. https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2022-01-20
Agreement will finance sales of Class 8 battery-electric and hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles to customers
PHOENIX 0, Jan. 20, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Nikola Corporation (Nasdaq: NKLA), a global leader in zero-emissions transportation and energy infrastructure solutions, and Corcentric Fleet Funding Solutions, a leading provider of leasing and financing solutions, today announced a signed agreement to facilitate sales of Class 8 Nikola Tre battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) and Nikola Tre hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs). Pursuant to the agreement, Corcentric will purchase vehicles and related assets (e.g., charging assets) directly from Nikola to offer Nikola customers a bundled lease that provides Nikola trucks and related equipment, as well as fuel and maintenance, in a single agreement.
“We believe this partnership will allow Nikola to reach more customers by offering solutions to those who otherwise may not have access to financing options,” said Nikola Chief Financial Officer, Kim Brady. “The agreement will provide Corcentric a launching point to expand its offerings into the electric vehicle space. Together we expect to provide funding resources, multiple options to tailor leases to customer needs, and best-in-class customer care for fleet customers and owner/operators.”
General Motors Ultium batteries.
“When you need to put much more energy into the storage form, you get to a point where it’s no longer economical with the batteries, and that’s where the hydrogen comes in,” Freese explained to Green Car Reports. “So there will be a need for both.”
“Grid buffering is more than just the 24-hour cycle…it’s even more than what we talk about with wind, which might flow for a week and then not flow for two weeks,” he argued, noting that if the sources on the grid follow a seasonal nature and loads change quite a bit, it makes sense.
