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    Electric vehicle battery recycling: Competing with mined materials

    By
    Will Dubitsky
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    electric vehicle battery recycling facility

    The environmental footprint of an electric vehicle represents a sectorial industrial revolution, including the first lifecycle end of an EV battery.  With existing technologies, 95% of an EV battery can be recycled for inclusion in a new EV battery and/or energy storage.  The remaining 5% can be handled by third party recyclers.  Because the price of mined lithium is rising exponentially, recycled EV battery materials are set to compete with mined content.  With high recycled content, the emissions of a new battery can be reduced by 64%. The result is massive battery recycling investments and recycling agreements with EV manufacturers are underway and planned, especially in China, Europe and the U.S.  In the U.S., the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) offers tax credits that can be stacked on top of each other for the EV battery supply chain.  An IRA proviso is that the raw materials, including materials derived from battery recycling, be sourced in the U.S.  In addition, the U.S. Bipartisan Infrastructure Act allots US$7 billion for all battery supply chain stages, including battery recycling.  To counterbalance the IRA, the Canadian 2022 Fall Economic Update includes a 30% Investment Tax Credit covering clean technologies.  But the Canadian tax credits may fall short compared to the cumulative eligibility criteria impacts of the two U.S legislative initiatives. The U.S. initiatives, alongside the monumental head start in China and Europe, auger for a colossal challenge for the Canadian national and provincial governments to assure Canada is a major battery recycling player, despite two prominent existing Canadian recycling firms.

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    Carbon capture and storage: Greenwashing, subsidies and carbon pricing

    By
    Will Dubitsky
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    1
    Carbon capture and storage site

    Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies are the darling of the fossil fuel industry since CCS offers the opportunity to continue increasing production, with the support of gargantuan government subsidies, while appearing to be green and gaining carbon price credits. But all CCS projects to-date have failed to live up to emissions reduction expectations and CCS is energy intensive.  As such, CCS is a greenwashing narrative.

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    Canada sheepish on electric vehicles: Stringent legislation required

    By
    Will Dubitsky
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    0
    Electric vehicle charging

    If present trends continue, transportation will be the Canadian largest source of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.  Canada’s objective for a legislated 2035 zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) target for all new light duty models is too little, too late.  Canada can adopt incremental legislative objectives between now and 2035, much like what the European Union and China have done.  The latter jurisdictions may reach 50% ZEVs, mostly electric vehicles, by 2025.  Just as automakers can adjust to safety regulations while offering vast lineups of trendy vehicles, they can do the same with Canadian ZEV regulatory mandates.

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    Green economy: Financial sector zigzags

    By
    Will Dubitsky
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    0
    Green financing improves but has a long way to go

    BlackRock, the world’s largest investment firm, has indicated that those that don’t tackle climate change will lose money in 5 years. Some financial institutions have made multi-trillion commitments from now to 2030 to invest in the green economy while still focusing the majority of investments in fossil fuels. Canadian banks are among the global top fossil fuel investors.

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    Fossil fuel sector contrasts: Green transition engaged, but not enough

    By
    Will Dubitsky
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    2
    Not all fossil fuel companies the same

    Not all Big Oil firms are alike. Some are engaged in a rapid green migration, many are sitting on the fence and others are still in climate denial. Meanwhile, the value of fossil fuel assets are declining but the industry is camouflaging this by selling assets and debt financing to keep shareholders happy.

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    Trudeau’s climate greenwashing mayhem

    By
    Will Dubitsky
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    0

    Justin Trudeau announced another of his Liberal government’s green plans in December. I have lost track of how many green plans we have had, but not a single one has met its targets. With the prime minister set to officially meet with the new U.S. president Tuesday, the Liberals’ environmental agenda looks embarrassingly unambitious by comparison.

    Raising the price of carbon is one of the pillars of the government’s latest plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But there are no magic bullets and piecemeal measures don’t work.

    The new U.S. administration has announced plans for an international climate conference led by President Biden on April 22, which is Earth Day.

    In other regions that have carbon pricing mechanisms, such as the European Union and China (with its pilot schemes), climate change abatement plans consist of many complementary measures, including stringent legislation.

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    Oil was doomed before the pandemic

    By
    Will Dubitsky
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    0

    Oil’s brief dip into negative values this month was the result of fear that storage space would run out and buyers would have nowhere to put their oil amid the current pandemic. While widely reported, this sudden plunge is a distraction. Prices are now back above zero, but futures contracts (the price of oil delivery in the coming months) are expected to linger at unprecedented levels.

    What’s important to take away from this sensational plunge in value is that the COVID-19 crisis has placed the fossil fuel sector in such a precarious state that it may accelerate the arrival of peak demand for all fossil fuels. This provides an opportunity to plan a Canadian transition to a green economy within upcoming recovery initiatives.

    The plight of coal has shown us that once demand drops, clean tech alternatives fill the vacuum.
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    As electric vehicles proliferate globally, the U.S. Big 3 are idle

    By
    Will Dubitsky
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    0

    Electric vehicles have been around for some time, but global automakers have been reluctant to migrate because doing so represents the biggest technological revolution since the Ford Model T.

    This revolution entails scrapping a century of incremental investments in the internal combustion engine and replacing it with a 100 per cent different set of propulsion technologies, along with all the requirements to design their vehicles differently. This means it would take many years for automakers to recover their investments in electric vehicles (EVs), all while there are big profits to be made on conventional pick-ups and SUVs.

    While North America’s automakers have been sluggish to respond, manufacturers elsewhere are prepared to comply with Chinese and European Union requirements for a migration to zero- and low-emission vehicles.

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    Canada lags far behind China and the EU in energy and transportation transition

    By
    Will Dubitsky
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    The next federal government mandate will determine whether Canada complies with the Paris Agreement and makes the transition to a green economy. We must move quickly. As a former federal government “green” employee, I know government staff can deliver an effective climate change action plan within three months.

    A green economy is one in which economic and sustainable development are fused together. A plethora of measures are required by way of annual budgets, legislative initiatives, policies and other agendas. The Liberals and Conservatives want us to believe that a price on carbon is a ballot question, but a carbon price is not a climate change action plan any more than buying a child winter clothing is a strategy for raising the child.

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    Stalled: why North America lags as China and Europe lead the way on electric vehicles

    By
    Will Dubitsky
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    0

    There’s not much urgency about tackling climate change and driving the switch to electric vehicles in Canada’s new federal budget. There are some incentives and voluntary targets for EVs but, on balance, the budget is an example of the mediocre policies holding North America back from catalysing the migration to electric vehicles (EVs). We now have proof from around the world that strong policies are what drives change.

    China has disruptive legislation accompanied by a plethora of complementary measures. Canadian/North American initiatives are mild while the European Union is somewhere in between. The results are that China already offers a wide selection of EVs and sales are already booming, the European migration to EVs is imminent while North American governments and automakers are lagging behind, with modest exceptions in some progressive U.S. states and Québec and B.C..

    These differences are important because the transportation sector accounts for approximately 60 per cent of oil consumption. Three studies confirm that even a moderate penetration of EVs will have devasting impacts on the petroleum sector. Even Shell believes peak oil is imminent and is engaged in major strides to migrate to clean tech and become the world’s largest power company.

    The North American lack of urgency makes it harder for us to stop runaway climate change and even threatens the future of the North American auto industry.

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    DUBITSKY: LOST OPPORTUNITIES SHOW COST OF CANADA’S MORIBUND CLEANTECH MANUFACTURING STRATEGY

    By
    Will Dubitsky
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    0

    While General Motors is tying its decision to close its Oshawa, Ontario manufacturing facility to the rise of electric and autonomous vehicles, GM is not the only casualty of Canada’s inaction on clean transportation policy.

    Other companies in the space are shifting their activities outside of Canada, opportunities within Canada are being missed, and Canadian cleantech leaders are losing their global competitive advantage, all for lack of a coherent national cleantech manufacturing strategy.

    TM4 is one of several examples. The company is a world leader in electric vehicle motor powertrains. But its main manufacturing facility is in China, the world’s largest electric vehicle market, where TM4 products are produced under licence by Prestolite e-Propulsion Systems.

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    EXCLUSIVE: STALLED U.S. TAILPIPE STANDARDS COULD TRIGGER THE NEXT AUTO INDUSTRY BAILOUT

    By
    Will Dubitsky
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    0

    The green transition in China, the world’s largest energy consumer and vehicle market, is unfolding at a faster rate, and with greater intensity, than the Industrial Revolution. And China’s shift to clean transportation is the piece of the puzzle that could have the most dramatic implications for North American automakers, and for the global fossil industry.

    Transportation accounts for 60% of the world’s petroleum consumption. So you would think the industries and governments that are banking on that business would have taken notice last year, when China’s plug-in vehicle sales exceeded 600,000. Or again, over the last few months, when the country’s year-over-year plug-in hybrid electric vehicle volumes were up 127% in May and 130% in June.

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