Author Archives: Joe Wein

About Joe Wein

Software developer and anti-spam activist

Reiwa Shinsengumi and the Environment

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Three years ago I wrote about how Reiwa Shinsengumi, often described as a “left-wing populist” party, and its leader Yamamoto Tarō refused to condemn Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, instead spreading Russian propaganda narratives that perversely blamed the war on NATO, which Ukraine was not even member of.

Left wing parties tend to be more pro-environmental than conservative or right wing parties that tend to be less motivated to take aggressive action to minimize climate change. How does Reiwa Shinsengumi rank in this regard? Well, it’s not exactly a Japanese Green Party, let’s put it like that!

Yes, Reiwa Shinsengumi is strongly anti-nuclear, opposing a restart of nuclear power stations idled after the 2011 tsunami and nuclear meltdown. Instead it wants to phase out all restarted nuclear power stations. That by itself is no pro-environmental position: While it may minimize risks of future nuclear disasters, it does nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, if anything it makes it more challenging. While nuclear accidents may be a possibility, the climate disaster is a certainty if we continue on the present course.

In a 2022 questionnaire for the House of Councillors (Upper House) elections the party responds to a question:

Q: Will you reduce domestic coal power to zero by 2030?
A: [Yes]
[Supplementary Explanation:] In order to achieve “100% renewable energy,” we will utilize high-efficiency natural gas-fired thermal power as an interim energy source. We will not restart nuclear power plants. In earthquake-prone Japan, we will go for both coal-free and nuclear power-free. We will utilize abundant natural energy sources.

Note how they answer this with a direct promotion of LNG, much of which Japan has been importing from Sakhalin in Russia. The answer does not specifically mention wind and solar, the two “abundant natural energy sources” that Japan has been badly neglecting. The actual environmental benefits of LNG over coal are quite questionable. A 2024 Cornell University study found the climate footprint of LNG 33% worse than that of coal, once liquefaction and shipping are taken into account:

Over 20 years, the carbon footprint for LNG is one-third larger than coal, when analyzed using the measurement of global warming potential, which compares the atmospheric impact for different greenhouse gases. Even on a 100-year time scale – a more-forgiving scale than 20 years – the liquefied natural gas carbon footprint equals or still exceeds coal, Howarth said.
(“Liquefied natural gas carbon footprint is worse than coal“, 2024-10-03)

This commitment to phasing out coal by a specific year is already progress however from the 2019 stance of the party. Philip Brasor wrote about Yamamoto Tarō in Japan Times:

In fact, he has advocated for coal as the transition energy source toward renewables in Japan, a position that dismays environmentalists.
(“Taro Yamamoto blurs the popular line on climate change”, Japan Times, 2019-11-30)

I am highly skeptical of Reiwa Shinsengumi’s commitment to the environment. Yes, it is against nuclear power, but without a robust policy for switching electricity generation to wind, solar and geothermal, phasing out existing nuclear power stations will only make it more difficult to decarbonize power generation and could even promote fossil-fuel burning thermal power stations. As far as I can tell, the party has no detailed plan for promoting green power. It seems like an afterthought next to its more sexy anti-nuclear policies that promise to catch votes for it.

Advocating for a big push for onshore and offshore wind and a massive expansion of long distance transmission lines needed to bring power from windy coasts in Hokkaido, the Northeast and the Japan sea coast to the urban centers in the Kanto and Kansai is essential but nowhere near as effective at adding seats in parliament because you would have to do a lot of leg work explaining the policy. Populists don’t want to do that because they are more interested in gaining influence than in putting in place policies that actually benefit people.

Reiwa Shinsengumi’s policies are selected by its unchallenged leader. In that it resembles the German BSW (Sarah Wagenknecht Alliance), another supposed left wing party that is spreading narratives of Vladimir Putin’s fascist government. BSW is not run by its members but exclusively according to the whims of its leader. Unsurprisingly, BSW also sees Germany’s economic salvation in the resumption of supplies of Russian gas and not in an accelerated switch to wind and solar.

Both parties claim to champion low income members of the population and social policies, but in reality they are pied pipers with sympathies for Putin that must not be trusted.

A Dark day for America

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Yesterday Donald Trump swore an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America.

On the same day he issued an executive order to deny citizenship rights to children born in America if their parents weren’t legally resident in the US. This is a direct violation of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, which has been part of the Constitution for more than 156 years. That man could not even go for one day without breaking the law and his oath of office!

America voted for a felon, so that’s what they got. He was never held responsible for any of the crimes he committed before, during and after his first term.

Having supported an insurrection against the United States by sending a violent mob to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, after having sworn on January 20, 2017 to uphold the Constitution, Trump should have been held ineligible to run for office again under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, but this was never enforced. He should never even have been on the ballot.

Now Trump is allied with a billionaire oligarchy who control social media and own hundreds of billions of dollars that they can freely use to change the outcome of elections. Their representatives sat in the front row at his inauguration, before the cabinet. They run Twitter/X, Threads, Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. Do not trust them. Do not depend on them. They are not your friends!

Americans may yet reclaim their constitutional republic some day. It won’t be easy. My advice is to look at the examples of Hungary, Poland and Turkey, where people have been struggling against autocrats that had been elected into office but then changed all the rules to try and stay on forever. Trump will try the same illiberal playbook. In the case of Poland, the people managed to win back liberal democracy while the struggle in Hungary and Turkey still continues.

Recommended reading:

Japan’s new renewable energy plan falls far short

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The Japanese government is preparing a new energy plan that seeks to grow renewable energy, but its goals fall far short of what other major industrial countries are doing. By the year 2040, fifteen years from now, some 40-50% of electricity are to come from renewable sources (roughly a doubling from today), another 20% from nuclear power and the remaining 30-40% from fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.

Meanwhile in Germany, renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, hydro and biomass already accounted for 52% of electricity generated in 2023. By 2030, this share is supposed to grow to 75%. Put another way, Japan is aiming for a lower share for renewable power fifteen years from now than Germany already achieved a year ago!

This is not because somehow Germany’s climate or geography was much more favourable for renewable energy than Japan’s, to the contrary.

Japan lies much closer to the equator than Germany, which means solar panels will be much more productive in the Land of the Rising Sun than in Central Europe. The northernmost point of Hokkaido lies 45° north of the equator while even the southernmost point of Germany lies 47° north. Tokyo is closer to the equator than Southern Spain.

Germany has a lot of wind turbines along its wind swept North Sea and Baltic Sea coasts, both on-shore and off-shore, but its coast line is much shorter than that of Japan: Germany has a total of roughly 21,000 km2 of territorial waters (i.e. within 12 nautical miles of the coast) while the equivalent number for Japan is 440,000 km2.

As factors that hold back renewables, Japan is citing “instability due to being dependent on the weather and its high cost”, when actually solar and wind are already cheaper to install and run than fossil fuel thermal power plants. They are the cheapest sources of newly installed power capacity virtually anywhere on the globe.

For sure, the variability of output must be addressed to be able to provide the majority of power from these sources, but that can be done. For one, the cost of battery storage has dropped dramatically over the past 10-15 years, which has allowed huge amounts of capacity to be added to electricity grids. For example, California grew its battery storage capacity by a factor of over 15 from 2019 to 2024 and now has over 13,000 MW of battery power supporting its grid. This has allowed it to consume renewable energy at different times of the day and not just when there is the most sunlight.

Wind and solar in some ways are complementary sources of power, as wind tends to be stronger after sunset and in the winter, whereas the sun provides the most energy around midday and in summer. Combining the two will minimize the need for storage or for peaker plants that burn gas.

Another way to even out production is by integrating long distance grids so that a surplus in one region can cover the shortfall in another region. Within Europe, Germany exchanges electricity with Scandinavia but also with France, which in turn connects to Italy and Spain. Japan is very weak in this regard. Its electricity grid consists of 8 regional grids with limited interconnect capacity. It is split down the middle by mains frequency, with western Japan using 60 Hz like in North America while eastern Japan uses 50 Hz like in Europe. High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) lines can take care of this, but they need to be built. Regional grid operators have little incentive to do this because they also own existing power stations whose output they want to sell.

Japan needs to rethink its renewable energy strategy if it wants to achieve its climate goals and end its dependency on costly energy imports. Its first priority should not be the profits of its existing electricity sellers, the importers of fossil fuels, the shipyards that build the ships that carry petroleum and coal, etc. Japan needs to upgrade its grid with long distance transmission capacity, grid level power storage and ease connection of wind and solar power capacity to cut its dangerous and harmful dependency on fossil fuels.

Solid State Sodium Ion Batteries for Grid Storage

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Today I came across an article about Altech Batteries Limited’s Sodium Chloride Solid State (SCSS) Battery. So I also went to their website and it sounded very interesting until I got to this statement:

The battery plant will produce 1,666 battery packs per annum, rated at 60 KWh each. These CERENERGY® modules are expected to sell for between EUR 700-900 per KWh.

First of all, I think sodium ion batteries are a great match for grid storage: The models available in China right now have slightly lower energy density (in kWh/kg or kWh/l) than LFP or NMC lithium ion batteries, but that is largely irrelevant for stationary applications such as renewable energy storage or grid stabilisation, where specific cost ($/kWh) is more important.

Like LFP batteries, sodium ion batteries do not us Cobalt, a mineral mostly mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo. About 1/5 of production there is from artisanal miners, where child labour and other abuses are common.
Unlike LFP, sodium ion doesn’t use graphite or lithium. By doing without these ingredients and instead using cheaper equivalents such as sodium instead of lithium, iron instead of cobalt and nickel, etc. costs can be lower. As Auke Hoekstra wrote on Twitter on 2024-05-24:

Cheap batteries are a GAME CHANGER for
GRID CONGESTION and for SOLAR and WIND

We are now moving towards $60 on the cell level for LFP and $40/kWh for sodium ion.

Admittedly, there is a bit of a gap between prices at the cell level and the pack level (built from interconnected cells in a case), but almost a year ago, BloombergNEF already reported that:

The price of lithium-ion battery packs has dropped 14% to a record low of $139/kWh (…)
(“BloombergNEF’s annual battery price survey finds a 14% drop from 2022 to 2023”, 2023-11-27)

Read that again and then look at Cerenergy’s promise of offering similar technology at $770-990/kWh. The lower end of that range is the average pack level price that BloombergNEF listed for the year 2013, eleven years ago.

Yes, Cerenergy is solid state instead of liquid electrolyte, but that’s the only significant difference other than a price that’s an order of a magnitude higher, probably due to the high cost of the solid state electrolyte, but also the use of nickel instead of iron-based cathodes that current sodium ion batteries tend to use.

When others tout solid state technology for batteries (i.e. batteries without liquid electrolyte), the main selling point tends to be higher energy density per kg, which is still important for EVs, especially in locations with a not very dense charging network. However, when targeting the grid storage market, this benefit becomes irrelevant: Nobody really cares if some shipping containers full of batteries installed next to an electricity substation weigh 6t each or 10t each. However, it makes a huge difference if they cost $80,000 each or $800,000 each because it means you can install 10 MWh of storage with cheaper technology for the price of 1 MWh with the more expensive option. That’s a game changer!

Perhaps I am missing something in this picture, but I am yet to be convinced of the clear benefit of more expensive solid state batteries over low cost conventional chemistry batteries for the bulk of the market, both for lithium and for sodium chemistries, and I don’t see how that will change any time soon.

There may be a market for solid state lithium batteries for niche markets such as electric airplanes, but it’s simply going to be too expensive for grid storage or for most of the EV market for the foreseeable future.

The LDP race and the clean energy transition in Japan

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The outcome of the leadership race of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Japan will determine the next prime minister. Failing an electoral defeat of the LDP, which has been in power for most of post-war history, this will also determine the direction of Japan’s future energy policy. Japan is currently trailing far behind most of Europe, the US and China in replacing fossil fuels for electricity production.

According to the Japan Times they face these two choices:

The first is to continue with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s plan to increase the use of nuclear power alongside that of renewable energy.

The second is to reduce nuclear power’s share while moving more toward renewable and ammonia- and hydrogen-generated electricity.

This is a uniquely Japanese framing of the options because if you look around, no other major country is even talking about ammonia-generated electricity. Hydrogen plays mostly a peripheral role in their discussions. That is because these two substances are not really energy sources but energy carriers (just like a charged battery). To produce them you have to use some other form of energy, such as by steam-reforming fossil gas or coal or by hydrolysis of water using wind or solar electricity.

If you use fossil fuel to make hydrogen (or ammonia, its more easily shippable cousin), that does not solve the problem you are trying to address in the first place, CO2 emissions from fossil fuel. If you use renewable electricity to make hydrogen, ship it for thousands of km and then turn it back into electricity, a large part of the green energy will be lost in conversion inefficiencies.

Where do the candidates stand on the issues? Japan Times explains:

Of the nine LDP leadership candidates, three — Takayuki Kobayashi, Taro Kono, and Shigeru Ishiba — have been particularly vocal with their views.

Kobayashi, a former economic security minister, is strongly advocating a new strategy that emphasizes nuclear’s role in meeting future demand.

“The current energy plan is too biased toward renewable energy. We should work toward restarting, replacing and building new nuclear power plants that have been confirmed as safe,” he said during a Sept. 14 debate at the Japan National Press Club.

Former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba, however, favors a future that brings the share of nuclear power close to zero. But he also has a preference for two forms of renewable energy in particular because they are ideal for Japan given its geography.

“Japan has the world’s third-largest potential for geothermal energy. We should also maximize the potential for small-scale hydroelectric power generation,” Ishiba, a former LDP secretary-general, said during the same Sept. 14 debate.

They do not explain where Kono stands, but it was previously reported that he had softened his anti-nuclear stance and now wants to restart more of the reactors shuttered after the Fukushima disaster.

None of the above candidates seem to really have a realistic solution.

Restarting nuclear power stations that have been upgraded to higher safety standards post-Fukushima, may be the low hanging fruit of carbon-free energy generation, but we are only talking about at best adding maybe 10% of total power demand through restarted reactors.

Construction of new reactors could take over a decade, even if sites without seismic risks and with local support could be found quickly, which is far from certain. Recent reactor projects in Europe and the US have been a sobering experience. Olkiluoto 3 in Finland took 17 years from start of construction to electricity production, with costs ballooning from 3 billion € to 11 billion €. Construction of Flamanville 3 in France started in 2007. It went into commercial operation this month, 17 years later. Cost estimates increased from an initial 3.3 billion € to 13.2 billion € two years ago. Hinkley Point C construction started in 2017, with an operational date estimate of 2029-2031 and cost overruns almost killed the project.

If we want to cut out a significant amount of CO2 by 2030, as would be required to have any chance of meeting the Paris climate goals to avoid the worst of the climate disaster, new nuclear reactors aren’t going to cut it, simply because they’re unlikely to have much of an impact before about 2040 and even then they will be very expensive.

So what should the LDP candidates propose, what should Japan do? Japan has a long coastline that can be harnessed for onshore and offshore wind. Solar is one of the cheapest forms of electricity generation available now, cheaper than coal, if the variability of output can be addressed through storage or over-building of supply. The costs of wind and solar power have been falling dramatically for several decades. The cost of battery storage has decreased significantly over the past decade. It’s not rocket science and other countries have already been doing it at a large scale.

Germany, with a much shorter coast line and a more northerly latitude (the latitude of Tokyo is comparable to Gibraltar and Germany’s southern border is further north than Hokkaido) produces the majority of its electricity from renewables, as does Denmark.

Ishiba is not wrong in encouraging geothermal power, which can steadily produce electricity 24 hours a day all year round, or small scale hydro, but it’s neither the cheapest nor the easiest to build energy source.

In terms of cost effectiveness, solar and wind are really without competition. What holds back their use in Japan is a grid that is under-dimensioned for moving large amounts of power around the country because it was designed for a system where generation and consumption are relatively close by, under control of the same regional power company.

This will be different with renewables, where generation could take place more than 1000 km away from consumption and output could shift around the country depending on seasons and weather conditions. Thus what Japan needs is many more high voltage direct current (HVDC) lines that can move a large amount of power over long distances, something that China has invested in heavily in the last two decades. On top of that the permit process has to be streamlined.

All this talk about hydrogen and ammonia has been a huge distraction, perhaps by design. Currently these energy carriers are connected to existing fossil fuel companies. Importing hydrogen (or ammonia made from hydrogen), though quite expensive, would benefit shipbuilding giants and trading companies now handling coal, oil and LNG imports. It’s not really about stopping the climate disaster but about keeping some very large corporates in business.

When will Japan get a prime minister who understands these issues and is bold enough to address them?

Did Hitler sue papers for calling him an “anti-semite”?

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Dara Horn writes in The Atlantic that Hitler “brought libel lawsuits against newspapers that accused him of anti-Semitism, and won them”, listing historian David Nirenberg as a source who had said in a Cornell University lecture:

So during his rise to power, Hitler brought libel lawsuits against newspapers that accused him of antisemitism. And he won.

I found this very surprising, not only because this was the first time ever I had came across this claim.

The only report of any libel lawsuit against a newspaper won by Hitler that I could locate were English language reports in September 1923 that are referenced in a Wikipedia article.

It would be totally out of character for Hitler to defend against a charge of anti-semitism as libel because that was his brand. Hatred of Jews was at the very core of his ideology, as was clearly stated in the party program of the NSDAP and in Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”, which he wrote in prison in 1923/24 after a failed coup that he staged in Bavaria in November 1923. Hitler suing someone for calling him anti-semitic is like the pope suing someone for calling him a Catholic.

So what’s the evidence?

According to a brief note published in the New York Times of September 5, 1923, Hitler won an award of 6 million mark against “Vorwärts”, the German Social-democratic daily, for having claimed that he had been financed by “American Semitic and Bolshevistic funds.”

Furthermore, the Canadian Jewish Review, September 14, 1923 stated the libelous claim had been that he received money from “American Jews and Henry Ford”. Neither of those reports explicitly mentions “anti-semitism”.

While Henry Ford was indeed infamous for spreading anti-semitism, he certainly was no communist, so these two media reports clearly don’t align. It also makes no sense to claim that Hitler was supported both by Jews and by anti-semites like Ford, whose views were diametrically opposed.

I find it interesting that while these reports are referenced in the English Wikipedia article on Vorwärts, the other language versions (including the German one) make no mention of this. I have also never heard any German historian bring up this rather interesting anecdote. Searching the German language web for any references to libel suits against German publishers won by Hitler, I came up empty handed. There does not appear to be any record of any such thing ever having happened. Also, while 6 million mark sounds like a large amount of money, this was during Germany’s infamous period of hyper-inflation. Who would sue a paper for the equivalent of three loaves of bread (the reported equivalent at the time)?

My guess is, the brief media reports that made it over the Atlantic were based on a single and less than credible source and that this “Vorwärts” libel suit (or any other libel suits by Hitler against the charge of anti-semitism) never happened. If you come across any evidence to the contrary, please let me know!

Toyota’s solid state battery plans

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Under Toyota Motor Corp’s new CEO the company finally seems to put more emphasis on battery electric vehicles (BEVs). However, this does not translate into short term product availability: The bZ4X is the only battery electric car Toyota is selling outside of China right now (in the Chinese market Toyota is also offering the bZ3 which is based on a battery electric platform by BYD, the leading Chinese BEV maker).

The wrong platform
Toyota is working on a new dedicated battery electric platform. The e-TNGA platform that the bZ4X is based on is a derivative of Toyota’s ICE-based TNGA platform. A platform that must cover both ICE and BEV is not ideal for either: In a BEV drivetrain, the heaviest part is the battery built into the floor of the car and there is no need for a classic engine compartment while in an ICE car the heaviest part are the engine+gearbox at the front. Build something that can cope with either and you end up with wasted space and extra weight that isn’t needed for one of the variants, plus it costs more to build.

Other manufacturers have already made the switch to BEV-only platforms. For example, VW initially offered the e-Golf based on the platform of the regular ICE Golf. In 2020 it discontinued the e-Golf and replaced it with the ID.3 which was based on a BEV-only platform (MEB). Toyota models based on the future BEV-only platform will be released in 2025 or 2026, meaning Toyota will make this architectural switch 5-6 years after VW!

Under its previous CEO Toyota was in no hurry to go battery electric. Instead it tried to maximize sales of its hybrid models which after all still offered the best fuel economy amongst ICE cars. The longer buyers stayed away from BEVs and stuck with ICEs the more Toyota could benefit from its ICE hybrid technology against less sophisticated non-hybrid ICE cars. Toyota was gambling on the absence of progress while we are heading full steam into climate disaster.

While Toyota was selling gasoline-powered cars it kept talking about future technology, including hydrogen fuel cells (HFC) and solid-state batteries. In 2014 it had launched the Toyota Mirai to showcase HFC but the technology was too expensive to build to be able to make a profit. HFC cars will need a completely new fuel infrastructure to be built from scratch.

Besides HFC Toyota is also working on hydrogen ICE cars and is researching e-fuels (synthetic hydrocarbons made using green hydrogen and CO2) for ICE cars. It’s like the company wants to try every possible alternative to BEVs instead of focussing on the most promising approach as Tesla, BYD, VW and other manufacturers do.

Solid-state batteries (SSB) hold the promise of higher energy density compared to current types of lithium ion batteries by using a solid electrolyte instead of a liquid but SSBs are still far from market-ready. Toyota only expects to be able to commercialize them by 2027 or 2028. A lot could happen until then.

When Toyota was expecting market penetration of BEVs to remain slow until 2030, waiting for solid state batteries to reach maturity and not custom-designing a platform specifically for BEVs before then seemed to make sense for them, but they completely underestimated the speed at which consumers in international markets are now making the switch. Only one fifth of one percent of Toyotas sold in the first half of 2023 were BEVs, even though one in 4 cars sold in China and one in 5 cars sold in major European markets are already BEVs. The biggest car manufacturer in the world is not even in the top 10 of BEV makers. It could be Nokia and smartphones all over. By next year BEVs will already reach higher market share in major export markets than Toyota had expected by 2030. To keep up next year Toyota would have had to make different decisions 5 years ago and because of this, it will fall further behind. Can it still catch up?

The cure for range anxiety
Recently Toyota has been talking about SSBs and technical breakthroughs:

Kaita said the company had developed ways to make batteries more durable and believed it could now make a solid-state battery with a range of 1,200km (745 miles) that could charge in 10 minutes or less.
(Guardian, 2023-07-04)

Even if we assume that they can make SSB work by 2028, a battery with a range of 1,200 km that can be charged in 10 minutes makes no sense: If it can be really charged that quickly a much smaller battery would be a better fit. That way you could get 400 km or 600 km of range at 1/3 or half the cost and weight penalty. Nobody needs that much range if charging takes no longer than a toilet stop or how long it takes to buy a cup of coffee unless you’re trying to cross the Gobi desert.

Range anxiety has been an obstacle to the spread of BEVs but the cure is not super sized batteries, it’s a denser charging network equipped with high speed chargers. Japan still has a lot of work to do here, both in terms of the number of chargers and their maximum power output. Highway service areas and also most Nissan dealers tend to have fast DC chargers installed but Toyota dealers by and large only offer 200 V AC charging which barely covers plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) but not BEVS. Most public car parks do not include charging spots.

This must change and will change. A BEV with 1,200 km of range would have made perfect sense 3 years ago when the charging situation was even worse. Five years from now there will be far more DC fast chargers and they will be everywhere. Consequently the price of BEVs will be a much bigger factor in buying decisions than ultimate range. Chinese manufacturers have been using lower cost LFP batteries instead of the more costly NCM batteries that the bZ4X uses and even cheaper sodium ion batteries (NIB) are now being commercialized.

Are solid-state batteries the game changer?
Talking about super long range BEVs is supposed to send two messages:
1) Toyota will be a future technology leader again, so please don’t sell your shares yet and
2) Current BEVs don’t have enough range for peace of mind, so your next car should still be a hybrid ICE car.

It remains to be seen if SSBs will work out for Toyota and Honda. It can be a long way from lab results to mass market deployment. I am not saying that there won’t be a market for SSBs (once somebody can make them work): There will be, especially at the high end. But for the volume market, the game will be decided via the density of the charging network (especially using high output chargers) in combination with lower cost battery technologies that will eventually make BEVs cheaper than ICEs.

Give me a BEV with 400 km of range that can add 300 km of charge in 20 minutes and costs no more to buy and far less to run than an ICE car: When that happens then it will be “Game Over” for gasoline and diesel cars.

Zero-carbon heating and concrete production

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Today the New York Times discusses a project in New York City in which carbon dioxide is captured from a gas boiler used for heating a building, then liquified and shipped to a concrete factory where it is injected into a concrete mix to bind it into concrete blocks as solid calcium carbonate instead of going into the atmosphere.

“It creates this circular economy,” said Jeff Hansen, vice president of architectural sales and marketing at Glenwood Mason. “We’re taking carbon dioxide from a building in Manhattan, turning it into a block in Brooklyn and then sending that block out to build more structures in the city.”

While the technology described has some use, it doesn’t scale for the purposes described.

First of all, there is no place for fossil gas boilers for heating and hot water in a zero carbon economy. For one, carbon capture does not capture 100 percent of the carbon dioxide in the flue gas. Typically, only about as much as 70-80 percent are separated out while the remainder still escapes into the atmosphere. Carbon capture is costly and consumes significant amounts of energy. It works best at large sites such as cement kilns where the retrieved CO2 can be processed in a central location rather than at millions of dispersed locations where it would have to be fed into a pipeline network or transported by vehicle to take it to a central processing site.

As many of the reader comments below the article point out, electric heat pumps run on green electricity are the most viable way of heating buildings without carbon emissions. Heat pumps are like running a refrigerator in reverse, making heat flow from the cold side to the warm side. It’s mature technology, already manufactured at scale and it goes hand in hand with the decarbonization of the power sector. Regardless of how green or brown your grid is now, you can start installing heat pumps today and gradually switch the power generation from fossil fuels to wind and solar. It’s actually very efficient: 100 kWh used in a heat pump will draw about 300 kWh of heat from the environment to heat the building.

Heat pumps can be combined with geothermal, for example to draw heat from the cool ground instead of using icy winter air as a heat source (the smaller the temperature difference between the cold side and the warm side, the more efficient the process). The ground several meters below the surface stays close to the average annual temperature at that particular location, which for example in New York City is about 13 deg C. One benefit is that this also works in reverse: The same equipment can be used for energy efficient cooling in the summer. It takes a lot less electricity to cool your home using 15 deg C ground instead of 35 deg C outdoor air as a heat sink.

Many cities are exploring deep geothermal wells for district heating. Away from volcanic sites or tectonic plate boundaries the ground temperature rises by about 25 deg C for every 1000 m of additional depth so by drilling wells deep enough and pushing water through them, hot water can be brought to the surface. This works best where there are deep aquifers that can be tapped.

Back to the carbon footprint of concrete: The reason that concrete slurry can absorb and bind large amounts of CO2 when it hardens is that it is highly alkaline because of its high calcium oxide contents. When cement is produced in a cement kiln, limestone (calcium carbonate) is heated with other minerals to very high temperatures and it releases CO2, turning into alkaline calcium oxide. Fixating CO2 during the curing of concrete only reverses this process. This begs the question: Why do they want to truck CO2 from buildings all over the city instead of reusing the CO2 released when the cement for the concrete is made in the first place? That would be truly a “circular economy”. However, it would also highlight the carbon footprint of cement production. I can see why someone in the cement or concrete business would rather prefer you to think about the CO2 output of some other part of the economy for which they supposedly can then provide a solution when actually their industry is part of the problem. Worldwide cement production released 1.7 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2021.

There are some relatively easy to decarbonize sectors of the economy. For example, trains can run on green electricity. EVs are only a little more difficult, requiring battery production at scale and a dense charging network. Next in line, steelmaking and fertilizer production can use green hydrogen, made from water and green electricity. Some of the most difficult to tackle carbon sources are cement production, airplanes and ocean shipping.

Cement is difficult because CO2 is released not only from fuel burnt as a heat source (which could be replaced by electricity) but also chemically from the carbonate minerals. Airplanes and ships are difficult because of the vast distances covered that make batteries non-viable. There are some solutions for planes and ships, such as “e-fuels” (e.g. ammonia or methanol made with green electricity) but these will be expensive. For cement we will need to capture and store CO2 underground, such as in depleted gas wells. But first of all, we will need to price CO2 releases so that price mechanisms in the market lead to an efficient reduction in the consumption of cement and of ocean shipping and air travel. The smaller the volume left in these areas, the easier it can be tackled technologically. It won’t be easy.

While we develop the technology to take care of the final, most difficult 10 percent of CO2 output, let us first take care of the easiest 50 percent, then the next 40 percent. For power generation this means wind farms onshore and off-shore, utility scale photovoltaic, long distance power interconnect between regional grids via HVDC lines, battery storage for daily power fluctuations, etc. For power usage it means electrical vehicles, domestic heat pumps, etc. All of these we can already do now. We need to use technology that already works and deploy it at scale. Recycling CO2 in concrete plants will not clean up domestic heating and it can at best ameliorate but solve the CO2 problem of cement.

We must not let ourselves be distracted by greenwashing scenarios designed to protect old industries and their vested interests.

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Putinism, the anti-imperialism of fools

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German socialist Agust Bebel is supposed to have called antisemitism the “socialism of fools” (“der Sozialismus des dummen Kerls”). By that he meant people who recognize capitalist exploitation only if the exploiter happened to be Jewish but who would otherwise turn a blind eye to the economic realities. The German Nazi party did call itself “national socialist” but the only businesses it expropriated were those of Jewish owners while other big industrialists benefited from government contracts for rearmament and from cheap slave labour during World War II.

A similar phenomenon is at play in the response to Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine. Russia is receiving support from people around the world, both on the far left and the far right. These Putin apologists spread Russian talking points and other propaganda. They often paint Ukraine as a mere pawn of an imperialist West dominated by the USA, which according to them is using the war to marginalize Russia and push it aside in the post-cold war order. These people will accuse the US of past crimes and other immoral actions in Iraq, Serbia, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere while ignoring torture, rape and killing perpetrated right now by Russia. According to them, your right to criticise Russian crimes in Ukraine depends on you first joining their condemnations of past actions of the west.

Let’s be real: These apologists of the Russian war of aggression are not anti-imperialists, far from it: These people are not guided by a moral compass or by concern for the victims of imperialism but by suspicion and hatred of specific countries. They are merely anti-western. Russia is an imperialist power of its own that over several centuries grew from the small Muscovite principality to the largest country in the world by intimidation and military conquest and even genocide. From the Holodomor genocidal famine in Ukraine in the 1930s to the deportation of Crimean tartars to deportations of Poles and Balts in the 1940, it has used utmost brutality. To this day Russia treats its neighbours not as a sovereign countries but as the “near abroad”, a sphere of influence in which governments can make independent decisions only at their own peril. Should their choices run counter to Moscow’s wishes, anything can happen!

Any “anti-imperialism” that is blind to Russian or Chinese acts of imperialism is anti-imperialism in name only. It must therefore be called anti-imperialism of the fools. Anyone who can condemn acts of imperialism only if they are committed by western countries but not if the perpetrator happens to be Russia or China is not really anti-imperialist but merely anti-western. Claiming the mantle of “anti-imperialism” for supporters of a post-fascist aggressor such as Vladimir Putin’s Russia is laughable.

Ukraine is a sovereign democratic country. On multiple occasions Russia committed to respecting its existing borders from the 1991 breakup of the USSR, which include Crimea and the Donbas. By first threatening and then invading Ukraine, Russia has violated the UN Charta, the Budapest memorandum and other obligations under international law. Wars of aggression are a war crime, separate from any crimes against humanity committed in their course. The Russian government should remember that leading Nazis and Japanese militarists were charged, convicted and executed after the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials for preparing a war of aggression.

Past US governments have made many bad and sometimes criminal choices, such as supporting anti-democratic coups in Iran, Guatemala and Chile, the bombing of Cambodia or the invasion of Iraq under flimsy and made-up evidence. However, no country gets a free ticket entitling it to commit war crimes every time some other country violates international law. That’s not how it works in domestic criminal law and that’s not how it works in international law either. Ukraine needs our solidarity to defend its borders and citizens against an imperialist aggressor.

I am thankful the US is stepping up to help Ukraine as much as they have, regardless of their own checkered past.

Anti-battery propaganda on Facebook

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Perhaps one of your Facebook friends posted this piece of propaganda on their feed:

This machine is required to move 500 tons of earth/ore which will be refined into ONE lithium car battery.
It burns 900-1000 gallons of fuel in a 12 hour shift.
Lithium is refined from Ore using sulfuric acid.
A battery in an electric car, lets say an average Tesla, is made of …
25 pounds of lithium,
60 pounds of nickel,
44 pounds of manganese,
30 pounds of cobalt,
200 pounds of copper,
400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic etc.
That averages 750-1,000 pounds of minerals, that had to be mined and processed into a battery that merely stores electricity …
Electricity which is generated by oil, gas, coal, nuclear, or water (and a tiny fraction of wind and solar)….
That is the truth, about the lie, of “green” energy.
There’s nothing green about the green new deal… Just a lot of pockets being lined and our environment being destroyed by greed, wilful ignorance and selfishness.

Fossil fuel companies have a lot to lose when the energy transition to renewable carbon-free energy sources takes place. Their whole business model of extracting, refining and selling fossil fuels will collapse. The longer they can delay that transition, they more money they can still make. That’s why they have an interest in spreading propaganda like that post above.

No verifiable source is given for any of the numbers in that text but here are some facts: Typical lithium ores (spodumene) in Australia contain about 1-2% Li, meaning for the 12 kg of Li in a car battery listed above you’d have to mine 0.6 to 1.2 t of ore, a far cry from the 500 t claimed. Since they gave no source it’s hard to know how they came up with such distorted figures.

Another major source of lithium are brines which don’t involve any hard rock mining at all though the quantities available are more limited and there are some issues with water consumption. Some companies are working on extracting lithium from geothermal brines as a side product of geothermal energy production.

The majority of Li-ion batteries produced in China these days are based on Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistry, which unlike earlier Li-ion chemistries (NMC, NCA) do not require either cobalt or nickel (the C and N respectively in those acronyms).

In April 2022, LFP batteries in electric vehicles sold in China already outsold other types of Li-ion car batteries by about 2:1 (8.9 GWh vs 4.4 GWh). Tesla’s entry level models made at the Shanghai Gigafactory have switched to LFP too.

By the time most of us will switch to battery electric vehicles, i.e. within the next decade, LFP is likely to be largely superseded by sodium ion batteries. This new chemistry is technically very similar to Li-ion batteries. German battery expert Frank Wunderlich-Pfeiffer (@FrankWunderli13) estimates that by 2026-2028 sodium ion production will exceed lithium ion on a GWh basis. Why is sodium ion cheaper? Unlike lithium which only occurs in special ores that require processing, sodium makes up 39 percent of common table salt. A cubic meter of sea water contains about 14 kg of it. So any time someone says we don’t have enough lithium needed for replacing internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, they are not really looking at where the industry is heading over the next decade.

Talking about the CO2 output from electricity production is a distraction: Even in places like Poland or West Virginia where much of the power is produced from dirty coal, an electric car is responsible for less CO2 output than an ICE car because power plants are far more efficient than car engines. But the main point to remember is that the mix of energy sources will dramatically shift over the next 15-20 years, the lifetime of a car produced today. This will make BEVs cleaner every year. 20 years from now a gasoline powered car will still depend 100% on gasoline and emit as much CO2 in 2042 as it did in 2022. Meanwhile a BEV will run on a zero-carbon mix of solar, wind, nuclear and geothermal once the grid has been fully upgraded.

For those promoting hydrogen as an alternative to BEVs: That’s not going to happen. Hydrogen is not a viable alternative to BEVs, except maybe for trucks, ships and airplanes. There are several reasons for that. For a start, fuel cells are much more expensive than batteries. Battery prices have been falling faster than fuel cell prices which depend on platinum, a rare metal much more costly than any of the metals mentioned when people talk about batteries. Not coincidentally it is also the most widely used material for electrodes of electrolysers. Its second largest producer is Russia, a country now widely sanctioned because of a war that its government started.

BEVs have greatly benefited from demand for batteries by phones, laptops and other mobile devices that have paid for R&D, scaling up production and thus bringing down prices. In fact the first Tesla was based on the same battery cell type that laptops were using at the time. There has been no such synergy for hydrogen. It lacks economy of scale for fuel cells and its distribution system lags far behind while BEVs harness the existing electric grid.

The biggest problem with hydrogen however is the inefficiency of green hydrogen production: It takes roughly three times more electricity for making and consuming hydrogen than to charge and discharge a battery for a given driving distance. That’s because there are more energy losses turning electricity into hydrogen and back into electricity than there are in charging and discharging a battery. Because of this we’d have to build three times more wind turbines and solar panels to replace the same number of ICE cars with hydrogen cars than we would with BEVs. And it’s even worse with ICEs running on hydrogen, a concept promoted by some car manufacturers. On top of that ICEs burning hydrogen have higher smog-forming NOX emissions than ICE cars running on fossil fuels. BEVs don’t release any NOX. If you want clean air, BEVs beat hydrogen hands down.

In a world facing disastrous climate change that urgently needs to get down to zero carbon emissions, ICE cars have no future. Sticking with ICE cars isn’t an option. The choice is not between ICE cars or BEVs, it’s between either BEVs or walking, riding a bicycle or using public transport.