USAN öljyntuotanto ohittanut Saudi-Arabian ja Venäjän

USAsta suurin raakaöljyn tuottaja. Ja vientikin kasvaa. Ja hinnat ovat laskussa; Iranin poistuminen markkinoilta ei näytä nostavan hintoja.

Kaupunkibulevardit kaatuivat

Jan VAPAAVUORI etc luulevat voivansa tehdä mitä vain. Paha tyrmäys tuli kuitenkin eilen, kun KHOn teki mm seuraavat päätökset:
·        Lahden, Hämeenlinnan, Turun ja Länsiväylää ei saa kaavoittaa kaupunkibulevardeiksi. Perustelut selvät, kuten olen jo aikanaan kirjoittanutkin.
·        Vartiosaari ja keskuspuisto säilyvät ennallaan viher- ja virkistysalueina; ei asunto- tms rakentamista.
·        Malmin lentokentän saa ottaa asuinkäyttöön.

Kaksi ensimmäistä päätöstä ovat erinomaiset, mutta kolmas valitettava. Luulenpa, että Malmin kentän rakentamisessa käy kuten Sipoon ryöstössä; nyt yli 10 vuoden jälkeen ei alueelle ole rakennettu yhtään asuntoa, eikä ole kaavaakaan.

Hesarin mukaan kaupunkibulevardit eivät olleetkaan tärkeitä. Vapaavuoren mukaan "Kaupungin asuntorakentaminen jatkuu vielä vuosia nykyisillä kaavoilla". Ja Anni SINNEMÄKI taas sanoo "Voimme jatkaa tästä eteenpäin ilman, että tämä päätös aiheuttaisi meille haittaa". Ei tunnustuksia tyrimisestä, ei katumusta.

Jättimäinen peiliteleskooppi Hawaijille

After years of delay, including lengthy court battles and passionate protests from those willing to be arrested for blocking construction crews, builders of a giant telescope plan to move forward with constructing the $1.4 billion instrument on a Hawaii mountain Mauna Kea that is considered sacred.

A group of universities in California and Canada make up the telescope company, with partners from China , India and Japan . The instrument's primary mirror would measure 98 feet (30 meters) in diameter. Compared with the largest existing visible-light telescope in the world, it would be three times as wide, with nine times more area.

Tuulen puute iskenyt Euroopan tuulivoimaan

The current heatwave in Western Europe is also contributing to a ‘wind drought,’ negatively impacting wind farm operators across the region, which includes the U.K., France, Spain, Germany and much of Scandinavia. Meanwhile, solar power plant operators are seeing increased production of solar energy because irradiance is up in many of the same markets.

This is according to wind and solar performance maps of Europe by Vaisala, a company that collects and analyzes weather-related data globally. Vaisala has for a long time recommended that renewable energy power producers create a balanced portfolio of wind and solar assets in order to account for situations exactly like what is occurring in Europe right now.

The performance maps show that wind farm operators saw the available resource in July dip by as much as 20 percent from long-term averages, while solar irradiance in many of the same markets was up to 20 percent above average. The high-pressure system over Europe that caused these anomalous conditions is expected to persist until October.

These conditions follow another notable ‘wind drought’ across the U.S. in 2015, which had a widespread financial impact. “The 2015 conditions caused many wind energy investors in the U.S. to think very seriously about how they could diversify their portfolios, not just geographically, but also by technology,” said Dr. Pascal Storck, Director of Renewable Energy, Vaisala.

“This new data shows that large-scale anomalies are not a one-time occurrence, and it may be time for the European market to follow suit in thinking about how it can become ‘climate resilient’.”  [rew]

Suomi pääsemässä jaloilleen

Eurostatin mukaan Suomen julkisen talouden velka oli tammi-maaliskuussa 59.8% bruttokansantuotteesta; eli se putosi alle EUn tavoitekaton 60%.
Euroalueen 19 valtiosta 11 valtion velkasuhde oli yli 60% ja koko euroalueen velkasuhde peräti 86.8%.

Kalifornia 2045: 100% uusiutuvaa energiaa!

The Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee approved Senate Bill 100, historic legislation to transition California to 100 percent clean electricity by 2045, sending it to the full Assembly for a vote.  [rew]

Sähköauton akut jatkokäyttöön!

The first batches of batteries from electric and hybrid vehicles are hitting retirement age, yet they aren’t bound for landfills. Instead, they’ll spend their golden years chilling beer at 7-Elevens in Japan, powering car-charging stations in California and storing energy for homes and grids in Europe.

Lithium-ion car and bus batteries can collect and discharge electricity for another seven to 10 years after being taken off the roads and stripped from chassis—a shelf life with significant ramifications for global carmakers, electricity providers and raw-materials suppliers.

Finding ways to reuse the technology is becoming more urgent as the global stockpile of EV batteries is forecast to exceed the equivalent of about 3.4 million packs by 2025, compared with about 55,000 this year, according to calculations based on Bloomberg NEF data.

China, where about half the world’s EVs are sold, is implementing rules in August to make carmakers responsible for expired batteries and to keep them out of landfills. The European Union has regulations, and the industry expects the U.S. to follow.

General Motors Co., BMW AG, Toyota Motor Corp., BYD Co. and a clutch of renewable-energy storage suppliers are among those trying to create an aftermarket and extra profits for a device that only recently coalesced into its own market. Second lives generate second revenue streams for the same product, and those could help lower prices for EVs.

“The car manufacturers have an upcoming problem, and one that we are already starting to see: this massive volume of batteries,” said Johan Stjernberg, chief executive officer of Box of Energy AB, a Swedish company working with Porsche and Volvo Cars. “The market will be enormous for second-life applications with storage.”

The decade-by-decade forecast by BNEF is staggering. By 2030, there will be a 25-fold surge in battery demand for EVs. Automobiles have overtaken consumer electronics as the biggest users of lithium-ion batteries, according to Paris-based Avicenne Energy. By 2040, more than half of new-car sales and a third of the global fleet—equal to 559 million vehicles—will be electric. By 2050, companies will have invested about $550 billion in home, industrial and grid-scale battery storage, according to BNEF. “The logic behind this is the circular economy,” said Cecile Sobole, program manager for Renault SA’s EV business. “The battery coming from the electric vehicle will become more and more a part of the energy world.”

Yet as many companies dive in, the biggest U.S. electric-car maker — Tesla Inc. — stays on the sidelines. The Palo Alto, California-based company said its batteries probably won’t be suitable for a new task after 10 to 15 years of use, and it’s focusing on recovering the raw materials.Repurposing efforts may slow if it becomes more profitable to extract materials like cobalt and simply make new batteries.

Declining performance for an EV battery is evidenced by fewer miles of driving per charge and more frequent plug-ins by owners. The components typically will be swapped out after about a decade in family cars and four years in harder-working buses and taxis.

While those replaced batteries can’t run a passenger vehicle, they’re ideal for less-demanding tasks such as storing electricity from solar panels and wind turbines, and hoarding power from a regular grid connection when prices are low.

“A lithium-ion battery actually never dies,” said Hans Eric Melin, founder of London-based Circular Energy Storage Research and Consulting. “It’s just like you can take an alkaline battery out of your flashlight and put it into a remote control, and it’ll still be good enough.” By 2025, about three-quarters of spent EV batteries will be reused and then recycled to harvest raw materials, Melin said. That means automakers and battery producers such as China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd. can profit from the same pack several times.

Box of Energy, London-based Powervault Ltd. and Melbourne-based Relectrify Pty. are among those helping develop the second acts. And a slew of automakers are either partnering with them or doing it alone.

In the basements of a three-tower apartment complex in western Sweden, Box of Energy installed silver cabinets about the size of a large refrigerator, each using 20 battery modules recovered from Volvo hybrid cars. They store energy from rooftop solar panels to run the elevators and lights in common areas. “So far, it’s worked without a hitch,” said Lennart Nord, caretaker of the buildings in Gothenburg.

The technology can cut a household electricity bill by more than a third, said Powervault, which plans to break down Renault Zoe battery packs for use in homes and schools in England this summer. Powervault’s dishwasher-sized units can calculate when it’s most economical to recharge from the grid and when it’s best to tap into stored power. Jeff Hardy, 44, is putting a Powervault unit in his Victorian terrace house in southeast London, and he expects to save about 110 pounds a year. “It can basically supplement my solar and allow me to do more for free,” said Hardy, an academic and consultant on the energy sector. “The manufacturing of EV batteries does have an impact on the environment. The fact that this is a reused product means that it’s really reducing that footprint.”

Larger-scale systems also can cut costs for businesses. Batteries from Nissan’s Leaf will soon help illuminate streets in the Japanese coastal town of Namie, which is recovering from the 2011 disaster at the nearby Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. A new facility sifts through a mattress-sized battery in four hours to prepare its cells for several applications, including going back into an EV. Nissan envisions the site eventually churning through 10,000 batteries annually.

Toyota, maker of the Prius hybrid, will install retired batteries outside 7-Eleven stores in Japan next year. The hybrid batteries will store power from solar panels, and then use the juice when needed to help run the drink coolers, fried chicken warmers and sausage grills inside the stores.

A typical EV battery retains about 50 percent to 70 percent of its power capacity upon removal, said Tom Zhao, managing director of global sales for BYD’s battery group. The Warren Buffett-backed company uses secondhand packs to power wireless transmission towers and to help run one of China’s biggest energy-storage systems in Shenzhen. “If you don’t reuse, it’s a huge waste,” Zhao said. [rew]

Laki hiilenkäytön kieltämisestä lausunnolle

TEM pyytää lausuntoja kahdesta esitysluonnoksesta, joista toinen koskee biopolttoöljyn ja biopolttoaineiden käytön edistämistä ja toinen hiilen energiakäytön kieltämistä. Lyhyesti: 

• Hiilen käyttö sähkön tai lämmön tuotannon polttoaineena kielletty 1.5.2029 alkaen. 
• Lämmitykseen, työkoneisiin ja kiinteästi asennettuihin moottoreihin tarkoitetusta kevyestä polttoöljystä osa vuodesta 2021 alkaen korvattava biopolttoöljyllä.

Muissa maissa hilestä luopuminen osataan tehdä ilman pakottavaa lainsäädäntöä, ja jopa nopeammassa aikataulussa.

Tukea ydinvoimalle tulossa

Foratom, the European nuclear trade body, has called on the European Commission and other EU institutions to recognise and reward the long-term operation (LTO) of nuclear power reactors in their role to help Europe meet its climate targets.

There are 126 operational power reactors in 14 EU Member States, providing more than one-quarter of the bloc's total electricity production. In its Communication on the Nuclear Illustrative Program (PINC) published last year, the European Commission expects nuclear to maintain its significant role in Europe's energy mix up to 2050. This would require investment of some EUR40-50 billion (USD46-58 billion) in nuclear LTO by 2050. However, the Commission has warned that as many as 50 reactors in the EU are at risk of early closure over the next ten years, assuming their operators do not pursue LTO licences.

Warren BUFFETT: Suuri sijoitus aurinkovoimaan

Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary NV Energy is planning to invest $2 billion on solar power from six new utility-scale projects in Nevada representing 1 GW of capacity. NV Energy said that three of the six projects will include energy storage capacity. The company plans to execute 25-year power purchase agreements for the six projects. [rew]