Tesla co-founder has a plan to become king of EV battery materials in the U.S.In the decades to come, Straubel is confident that recycled materials will be used for “close to 100%” of the world’s battery production. Recycling is already profitable, he said, and eventually companies that don’t integrate recycling with refining and production won’t be able to compete on cost.
Redwood moving into cathode production is a major development for the EV industry, according to BNEF analyst James Frith. Not only is the cathode the biggest driver of costs, but it’s the most polluting part of battery production. Consolidating the supply chain in the U.S. — and the technological improvements that will come with it — will dramatically reduce emissions from battery production. “It would be one of the biggest cathode facilities in the world,” Frith said. “If you’re getting rid of that long supply chain, and you’re not having to do as much virgin refining, you’re cutting a huge chunk out of those emissions.”
While companies wait for the first big wave of electric vehicles to reach retirement, consumer electronics provide a surprisingly effective substitute. For example, batteries from consumer electronics contain considerably higher levels of cobalt, one of the most expensive and controversial inputs for batteries. Straubel says there's so much cobalt in old electronics, Redwood will always produce more from recycling than it needs for manufacturing.
Urban Mining
When anyone drops off an old mobile phone or laptop at a Best Buy recycling center, it goes to Redwood. So does any scrap when Panasonic makes battery cells for Tesla at the Nevada Gigafactory. Since Straubel left Tesla, Redwood has taken over more than half of the U.S. market for lithium-ion battery recycling.
After collection, Redwood disassembles, shreds, burns, and mixes materials in a slurry to separate out the valuable nickel, lithium, cobalt and copper. More than 95% of the core battery materials are recycled, according to Redwood. The resulting powders then wind their way back through the supply chain.
Survival strategies have been discussed but not tested in real world collapse.
Doly wrote:Survival strategies have been discussed but not tested in real world collapse.
Not sure about that. There are a lot of people in the Middle East (and now in Ukraine) that have tested a bunch of survival strategies in some pretty serious collapse situations.
vtsnowedin wrote: Do you think you could do as well under similar distress?
Doly wrote:Survival strategies have been discussed but not tested in real world collapse.
Not sure about that. There are a lot of people in the Middle East (and now in Ukraine) that have tested a bunch of survival strategies in some pretty serious collapse situations.
Doly has made it through 6 actual and claimed peak oils this century, like the rest of us!
Doly wrote:Doly has made it through 6 actual and claimed peak oils this century, like the rest of us!
It's only the final global peak oil that counts.
Doly wrote:That said, certainly some people have had experience with local or temporary oil shortages that should count as useful experience.
Indeed. Which begs the question, why isn't that one claimed, rather than all the others?
Doly wrote:Indeed. Which begs the question, why isn't that one claimed, rather than all the others?
Well, I think the peak of 2018 looks like it could be the final global peak oil.
Doly wrote: And yes, I genuinely wonder why people haven't been talking about it, this site is pretty much deserted and apparently visited mainly by bots, cyborgs and people who don't particularly care about peak oil, and Ugo Bardi (to pick one example) is saying all sorts of weird things in his blog.
Doly wrote: Which is why I keep coming here. Maybe somebody will say something that makes it clear to me.
theluckycountry wrote:There is really nothing to add to the limits to growth, it was thrashed out perfectly in the 1970's and that work is right on track. Anyone still looking for a solution to the collapse of industrial civilization needs to go start a veggie garden in their back yard, or otherwise find something useful to do with their spare time.
AdamB wrote:vtsnowedin wrote: Do you think you could do as well under similar distress?
Doly has made it through 6 actual and claimed peak oils this century, like the rest of us! I'd say we are all doing pretty good based on the claimed horrors of the event!
Despite the need to be prepared for imminent, final energy shortage – which could happen now or in several years at the latest – people persist in focusing too much on the likely date of the passing of the peak. It is already clear that the oil industry and OPEC numbers on oil reserves are suspect. So we can simply offer a range of oft-quoted peak-oil arrival times: 2005-2012. Some more distant figures such as 2020 are based on infinite technological improvements on extraction and removing the problematic sulfur, for example. Factoring in the “irregular” petroleum sources, the peak year of world oil extraction is to be 2007, according to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas...
...The trucks will no longer pull into Wal-Mart. Or Safeway or other food stores. The freighters bringing packaged techno-toys and whatnot from China will have no fuel. There will be fuel in many places, but hoarding and uncertainty will trigger outages, violence and chaos. For only a short time will the police and military be able to maintain order, if at all. The damage that several days’ oil shortage and outage will do will soon wreak permanent damage that starts with companies and consumers not paying their bills and not going to work.
eclipse wrote:We've been through a bit, including watching oil demand just drop off a cliff during the pandemic.
And it wouldn't take long for them to build back up! I give it 2 generations.
If a disaster wipes out the majority of your population...
..surviving cops or authority figures need to get in charge and encourage belief in the system
Petroleum’s pre-eminence as a land, air, and marine transport fuel is seeing oil consumption drop the most of all primary energy sources amid the global economic downturn that started this year. The unprecedented collapse in worldwide mobility as a result of lockdowns and travel restrictions in March and April 2020 slashed oil demand by over 20 million b/d, or 20% of total demand. We expect global oil demand for 2020 as a whole to decline by 8.1 million b/d, wiping out six years of growth. We expect about 75% or 6.3 million b/d of demand to come back in 2021.
While S&P Global Platts Analytics projects that 2021 global oil demand will regain approximately 75% of the 2020 demand loss, we do not project overall consumption to return to pre-COVID-19 levels until late 2022 and believe long-term demand for oil has been permanently altered. Some sectors, most notably aviation, will take even longer to recover to pre-COVID-19 levels. The reduction in demand was driven by both our revised weaker macroeconomic outlook, and the assumption of a modest change in behaviors listed above. The weaker oil demand forecast averages out to a drop of 2.5 million b/d over 2020-2050. However, while the outlook for global oil demand has shifted lower, the trajectory of year-to-year growth and the projected peak in oil demand near 2040 remains similar to the pre-COVID-19 outlook.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 14 guests