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[Rods2]

Nickel-Cobalt are seen as the future for electric vehicles, renewable storage and backup etc. They have a similar energy density as Li-ion, have cheaper manufacturing costs, don't present a fire hazard and therefore don't need about 25% of their volume and weight taken up with charge-discharge temperature control electronics like Li-ion batteries, can be charged from 0 to 100% in 30 minutes, have no memory effect or deep discharge loss of capacity and when they do eventually wear out they can be reconditioned more cheaply just by remanufacturing the electrodes.

http://www.nickelcobaltbattery.com/

They are the next generation battery and the key to mass-market viable electric transport. Elon Musk has invested $1bn in a mass manufacturing plant for their mass production. So far, so good, the futures bright it is Nickel-Colbolt batteries.

Except for what has been termed the Cobalt-Cliff. About 150,000tons are mined and smelted every year with about 90,000tons in China and 60,000tons in the rest of the world. About 60,000tons are globally used in traditional industries which are not as cost critical as batteries and China is committed to using the majority of their Cobalt production for their own nickel-cobalt battery production. Current estimates are that by 2025 there will be a 25,000ton shortfall in cobalt production with this only getting worse as demand for nickel-cobalt batteries grows where governments are now committing to all-electric cars by 2040. The only two solutions are that unknown new global supplies of cobalt are found, which currently is not looking likely or a new different battery technology comes along in what is a very short timescale where battery development, testing and longterm reliability is not a quick development cycle.

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/11/25/the-cobalt-cliff/

Finally, what is the situation with Elon Musk's $1bn battery production facility? Well, it looks like he may not have secured supplies of cobalt to make them and several investors are now getting twitchy and are threatening to sue him if he can't prove he has secured a suitable supply chain for cobalt.

[Shackeng]

Hydrogen fuel cells are the long term solution.

[Nick W]

Hydrogen fuel cells are the long term solution.

to what? They're just another inefficient means of changing energy from one form to another.we have plenty of those already. Like all of the things touted as the future  they have serious drawbacks exacerbated by a total lack of expensive infrastructure.

[ronnyd]

Whats this black sticky stuff that comes out of the ground . Would that be any good?

[Kevin Wood]

Whats this black sticky stuff that comes out of the ground . Would that be any good?

No, but it's better than the brown sticky stuff that oozes from most of the proponents of alternative energy, it seems!

[Lizzie Zoom]

I am sure the wit, and especially, the commercial needs of mankind will find answers for all our requires, so don't panic

[zirk]

Whats this black sticky stuff that comes out of the ground . Would that be any good?

We'll need that Stuff and the Gas that goes with it for our future Generations, after weve screwed up the Atmosphere, contaminated the Water and there's no Wind or Tide anymore because the Moon has decided enough and goes walkabout. 

[Nick W]

Whats this black sticky stuff that comes out of the ground . Would that be any good?

It's far too useful to just burn. We've had better ways of generating electricity for ages, but no one has come up with a better way of powering vehicles.

[Lizzie Zoom]

Whats this black sticky stuff that comes out of the ground . Would that be any good?

It's far too useful to just burn. We've had better ways of generating electricity for ages, but no one has come up with a better way of powering vehicles.

But we will

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

Probably, but unlikely in our lifetime.

[Nick W]

Whats this black sticky stuff that comes out of the ground . Would that be any good?

It's far too useful to just burn. We've had better ways of generating electricity for ages, but no one has come up with a better way of powering vehicles.

But we will

Believing that requires more faith than I'm capable of. None of the touted 'alternatives' are much of an improvement. What's required is a totally new technology, but we can't rely on those appearing.

[ronnyd]

What happened to the technology that had an engine run on water, or was it all "dangle berries". Also was mooted that the oil companies bought all the patents etc. to save their stranglehold on the market. Anyone enlighten me please.

[Nick W]

What happened to the technology that had an engine run on water, or was it all "dangle berries". Also was mooted that the oil companies bought all the patents etc. to save their stranglehold on the market. Anyone enlighten me please.

If you insist:


it was 'dangle berries'.

[Lizzie Zoom]

Probably, but unlikely in our lifetime.

All depends on how long you (and I!!) live for.

[Lizzie Zoom]

Whats this black sticky stuff that comes out of the ground . Would that be any good?

It's far too useful to just burn. We've had better ways of generating electricity for ages, but no one has come up with a better way of powering vehicles.

But we will

Believing that requires more faith than I'm capable of. None of the touted 'alternatives' are much of an improvement. What's required is a totally new technology, but we can't rely on those appearing.

During my relatively short life I have seen mankind go from World War II aircraft to flying to the moon.  He has invented the microwave, solar panels, very fast and small computers, mobile telephones, and vehicles that drive themselves, GPS, and so much advanced medical machinery, with techniques, that was thought impossible when I was 5.  Those are just what I can think of typing quickly, but there is so much more of course that we do not even know about (top secret and all that!)

Scientific advancement is getting faster, not slower, and new technology / discoveries are being made.  The great need for an advanced fuel / energy generating and storage system I am sure will be at the top of the agenda of so many corporations, let alone countries. Economics and greed, along with the occasional war, has always driven invention. This will still be the case in this instance.

[TheBoy]

During my relatively short life I have seen mankind go from World War II aircraft to flying to the moon

So we need another extended period of world conflict....

[Sir Tigger KC]

During my relatively short life I have seen mankind go from World War II aircraft to flying to the moon

So we need another extended period of world conflict....

Fear not TB the aliens are coming! 

[Rods2]

During my relatively short life I have seen mankind go from World War II aircraft to flying to the moon

So we need another extended period of world conflict....

Fear not TB the aliens are coming! 

Put on your tin hats as they took over the White House in January 2017 & are chomping at the bit to try out the Earths nuclear toys.

[Rods2]

Whats this black sticky stuff that comes out of the ground . Would that be any good?

It's far too useful to just burn. We've had better ways of generating electricity for ages, but no one has come up with a better way of powering vehicles.

But we will

Believing that requires more faith than I'm capable of. None of the touted 'alternatives' are much of an improvement. What's required is a totally new technology, but we can't rely on those appearing.

During my relatively short life I have seen mankind go from World War II aircraft to flying to the moon.  He has invented the microwave, solar panels, very fast and small computers, mobile telephones, and vehicles that drive themselves, GPS, and so much advanced medical machinery, with techniques, that was thought impossible when I was 5.  Those are just what I can think of typing quickly, but there is so much more of course that we do not even know about (top secret and all that!)

Scientific advancement is getting faster, not slower, and new technology / discoveries are being made.  The great need for an advanced fuel / energy generating and storage system I am sure will be at the top of the agenda of so many corporations, let alone countries. Economics and greed, along with the occasional war, has always driven invention. This will still be the case in this instance.

The problem is that climate fraud/tree huggers have turned our use and change from 200-year oil/gas reserves from a marathon into renewables in a few years at any price sprint. I'm sensible enough to understand that we are using up past sunlight/sun energy faster than nature replaces it and we need to capture more current sunlight/sun energy. But I'm also aware that EROEI has changed from 1960's cheap energy 20:1 to the current 5:1. Food shows us that our current intermittent energy storage is very inefficient at 1:10 against, apply that to the energy that we use to provide our food and we go from an average £20-30 per week per person to £200-300 or more.

I follow what is happening in in battery technology and it is evolving rapidly, the problem is there are currently always caveats along the lines of hopefully they will be available in 5-10 years time IF they can solve the outstanding major issues and scale and commercialize the technology. This article is typical of where we are and where we might be going:

https://newatlas.com/solid-state-magnesium-battery/52386/

[Lizzie Zoom]

During my relatively short life I have seen mankind go from World War II aircraft to flying to the moon

So we need another extended period of world conflict....

Necessity is the mother of all invention, and major wars have brought on our technology in leeps and bounds...............no one wants wars as they are far too costly in all respects.......... however Trump and Kim Jon may have other ideas!!  Tin hats on folks!

[STEMO]

Kim Yong Un is much smarter than the blabbermouth Trump. By the time the cretin even thinks about military intervention, N Korea will have a deterrent large enough to make anyone think twice. It doesn’t really matter that they don’t have the capability to deliver a nuclear warhead to N America(yet), the fact that they are capable of wiping S Korea and, possibly, Japan off the map negates any serious military threat that America poses.
An added bonus, for N Korea, is that their leader does what he says he’s going to do, and doesn’t spend half the night ostracising his allies on twitter.

[STEMO]

Sorry, Rods, this started off about batteries. 

[Sir Tigger KC]

Seeing as Kim Jong Un probably runs on Chinese batteries, I think you're still on topic Uncle STEMO! 

[Lizzie Zoom]

Seeing as Kim Jong Un probably runs on Chinese batteries, I think you're still on topic Uncle STEMO! 

As long as they are not Duracell, as "they last longer", we'll all be ok !  

[Viral_Jim]

The problem is that climate fraud/tree huggers have turned our use and change from 200-year oil/gas reserves from a marathon into renewables in a few years at any price sprint. I'm sensible enough to understand that we are using up past sunlight/sun energy faster than nature replaces it and we need to capture more current sunlight/sun energy. But I'm also aware that EROEI has changed from 1960's cheap energy 20:1 to the current 5:1. Food shows us that our current intermittent energy storage is very inefficient at 1:10 against, apply that to the energy that we use to provide our food and we go from an average £20-30 per week per person to £200-300 or more.

Surely looking at a single metric (EROEI) is far to much of a one-dimensional viewpoint? By that logic, we should have 100% coal fired energy (highest EROEI I think?) without any limitations, or gas scrubbers, or attempts to clean up the resulting environmental fallout (all of which would detract from the EROEI), but never mind that pursuing such a course would kill or shorten the lives of millions, as long as the metric is right?!  . Whether or not you believe in man-made global warming, it is impossible to reasonably deny the huge environmental damage that is done by extracting, processing and burning fossil fuels. Which, to some has as much or more value than a fairly abstract economic concept which changes over time.

I also notice you don't much advocate Hydro electric power, or wind, despite them scoring pretty highly on your all important EROEI metric.

 

I follow what is happening in in battery technology and it is evolving rapidly, the problem is there are currently always caveats along the lines of hopefully they will be available in 5-10 years time IF they can solve the outstanding major issues and scale and commercialise the technology.

You already have electric vehicles which are doing hundreds of thousands of miles on their original battery packs, indeed, Nissan and Renault are scaling back their Home Battery programmes due to a lack of available batteries that have "failed" (ie suffered unacceptable levels of capacity drop) in cars. Also, talking about battery technology and renewable energy in the context of cars only tells part of the story. The energy requirement to refine 1 (US) gallon of petrol is somewhere around 4 KWh (exact figures are hard to come by and doubtless vary) (or about 12-14 miles in an EV), and that doesn't include the energy expended (mostly fossil fuel and electricity) to drill the oil and transport it half way around the world.

If you re-deployed all that energy and into generating electricity, you could drive the electric car just as far, or further and leave the oil exactly where you found it.

[Field Marshal Dr. Opti]

I am sure the wit, and especially, the commercial needs of mankind will find answers for all our requires, so don't panic

Gender specific......I like that.

[Lizzie Zoom]

I am sure the wit, and especially, the commercial needs of mankind will find answers for all our requires, so don't panic

Gender specific......I like that.

No Opti, I used that word deliberately as this means:

mankind
noun
1.
human beings considered collectively; the human race.
"research for the benefit of all mankind"
synonyms:   the human race, man, humanity, human beings, humans, Homo sapiens, humankind, the human species, people, men and women

   

[Lizzie Zoom]

The problem is that climate fraud/tree huggers have turned our use and change from 200-year oil/gas reserves from a marathon into renewables in a few years at any price sprint. I'm sensible enough to understand that we are using up past sunlight/sun energy faster than nature replaces it and we need to capture more current sunlight/sun energy. But I'm also aware that EROEI has changed from 1960's cheap energy 20:1 to the current 5:1. Food shows us that our current intermittent energy storage is very inefficient at 1:10 against, apply that to the energy that we use to provide our food and we go from an average £20-30 per week per person to £200-300 or more.

Surely looking at a single metric (EROEI) is far to much of a one-dimensional viewpoint? By that logic, we should have 100% coal fired energy (highest EROEI I think?) without any limitations, or gas scrubbers, or attempts to clean up the resulting environmental fallout (all of which would detract from the EROEI), but never mind that pursuing such a course would kill or shorten the lives of millions, as long as the metric is right?!  . Whether or not you believe in man-made global warming, it is impossible to reasonably deny the huge environmental damage that is done by extracting, processing and burning fossil fuels. Which, to some has as much or more value than a fairly abstract economic concept which changes over time.

I also notice you don't much advocate Hydro electric power, or wind, despite them scoring pretty highly on your all important EROEI metric.

 

I follow what is happening in in battery technology and it is evolving rapidly, the problem is there are currently always caveats along the lines of hopefully they will be available in 5-10 years time IF they can solve the outstanding major issues and scale and commercialise the technology.

You already have electric vehicles which are doing hundreds of thousands of miles on their original battery packs, indeed, Nissan and Renault are scaling back their Home Battery programmes due to a lack of available batteries that have "failed" (ie suffered unacceptable levels of capacity drop) in cars. Also, talking about battery technology and renewable energy in the context of cars only tells part of the story. The energy requirement to refine 1 (US) gallon of petrol is somewhere around 4 KWh (exact figures are hard to come by and doubtless vary) (or about 12-14 miles in an EV), and that doesn't include the energy expended (mostly fossil fuel and electricity) to drill the oil and transport it half way around the world.

If you re-deployed all that energy and into generating electricity, you could drive the electric car just as far, or further and leave the oil exactly where you found it.

A well presented argument Jimmy944

As for Rod2 using, yet again, "climate fraud/tree huggers", only degrades his point of view. So people who care about the environment and trying to do something about what man has been proved (just look around at all the evidence online and in real life) to have done, and slow it down, if not reverse it, are somehow lesser people than the likes of Rod.

I am far from a "tree hugger" as I have loved driving big engined, gas guzzling, cars for a great percentage of my driving life and even now,  for goodness sake, I have a 3.2 Omega!  But I have always respected and loved trees not only for their appearance but for what they do; sucking in C02 and trying to overcome the extra C02 that man has produced over the last 250 years that is beyond what nature can produce and absorb. I now understand, along with billions of others, that it is time to change if we want this planet to be livable on in decades to come.  We cannot carry on doing immense damage to it.  To claim that we are somehow tree huggers, sucked into some kind of fraud, is, frankly, only fit for The Sun or Daily Fail, not coming from the hand of someone who claims to be an academic and actually produces some very interesting pieces of work.

[Doctor Gollum]

Sorry Lizzie, but that last paragraph stands you as a hypocrite...

If you genuinely cared, you (or any one of us for that matter, tree hugging sandalists included), would ensure that our entire lives were devoted to negating our impact... by living off grid without processed products, ie only using materials that were locally available such as rock timber and mud and consuming only that which we could catch or grow.

The reality however is that there are far too many of us, and we've enough to concern ourselves with in regard to eeking the most out of food and energy to worry about the effects of the industrial revolution.

And I would wager that you put the heating on rather than a second jumper this last week

[Lizzie Zoom]

Sorry Lizzie, but that last paragraph stands you as a hypocrite...

If you genuinely cared, you (or any one of us for that matter, tree hugging sandalists included), would ensure that our entire lives were devoted to negating our impact... by living off grid without processed products, ie only using materials that were locally available such as rock timber and mud and consuming only that which we could catch or grow.

The reality however is that there are far too many of us, and we've enough to concern ourselves with in regard to eeking the most out of food and energy to worry about the effects of the industrial revolution.

And I would wager that you put the heating on rather than a second jumper this last week

Not a hypocrite DG, no more than most people in the western world.

I did put on an extra layer of clothes last week, but also turned the heating on just enough to give my well insulated, latest economically gas fired central heated, flat a chance to be comfortable.  I also made my roughly fortnightly trip to the recycling centre, then eat nothing but home cooked meals, with fresh veg and fruit snacks that produced little in the way of packaging. In addition I used my car on only two days. My electrical equipment is all rated "A"or better than that.  But yes, I breathed air and breathed out carbon dioxide, and had to go to the toilet.  But no plastics were flushed away, and I do not use beauty or washing products that contain that substance.  My whole flat is equipped with Eco bulbs, with only lights on when necessary and in limited quantity. I never tip any fats down the sink or toilet, or fly tip in any form.

Now, I believe that there is little more that I can do to save the planet other than kill myself. That applies to many environmentally friendly people today who still have to live and work in the context of 2017, and not in 1017.

What nationally can and is being done, like wind powered turbines, hydro plants (up North), gas fired, along with nuclear, power stations, low emission zones, electric car development, decline of the internal combustion engine, etc., will help us all to go further, together, and hopefully by 2050 give our grandchildren a far better world to look forward to, barring wars or natural disasters.

[Doctor Gollum]

Now, I believe that there is little more that I can do to save the planet other than kill myself. That applies to many environmentally friendly people today who still have to live and work in the context of 2017, and not in 1017.

Which is precisely why any environmental quest to reverse the effects of mankind will never work... we're all far too entitled to actually commit to the necessary.

As for the rest of your third paragraph,  there's far more to consuming than plastic... gas, electricity and produce that you haven't made or grown being just three...

Having no appliances would be far more responsible than even so called 'A' rated... which incidentally only applies to the energy consumed in use and not of the energy or materials consumed in manufacture.

Short of becoming Trappist monks living in caves/cabins/treehouses, we're simply pretending.

[Sir Tigger KC]

We're all doomed! Doomed I tell you!   

[TheBoy]

I drive an Omega (when I can prise it out of Mrs TB's mitts), do you think I care about the environment.


In fact, my solution when I'm the UK President, is to cull all the lentil munching tree huggers, as that in itself will reduce human impact on the planet.

[Lizzie Zoom]

Now, I believe that there is little more that I can do to save the planet other than kill myself. That applies to many environmentally friendly people today who still have to live and work in the context of 2017, and not in 1017.

Which is precisely why any environmental quest to reverse the effects of mankind will never work... we're all far too entitled to actually commit to the necessary.

As for the rest of your third paragraph,  there's far more to consuming than plastic... gas, electricity and produce that you haven't made or grown being just three...

Having no appliances would be far more responsible than even so called 'A' rated... which incidentally only applies to the energy consumed in use and not of the energy or materials consumed in manufacture.

Short of becoming Trappist monks living in caves/cabins/treehouses, we're simply pretending.

Yes, none of us, well most of us, are not perfect but, all I am saying, we can only do better although I will not live as though we are in the 11th century. But, we don't have to as, to repeat what I have stated before, the wit of mankind will produce the answers so we can live a great life style without wrecking the planet. Mankind has already come a long way since the Industrial Revolution in Britain

[Doctor Gollum]

Have we? Really? And at what cost?

[STEMO]

Have we? Really? And at what cost?

£35.99

[Doctor Gollum]

Have we? Really? And at what cost?

£35.99

And I bet that took four weeks to get here from China. By boat

[aaronjb]

Have we? Really? And at what cost?

£35.99

And I bet that took four weeks to get here from China. By boat

Most of the stuff I order from China turns up in about three days, and postage is usually free..

..very environmentally friendly, too, I'm sure

[Doctor Gollum]

Air freight is certainly more time efficient