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https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-07/china-launches-worlds-first-all-electric-cargo-ship
The battery system contains 1,000 lithium-ion packs, which can be supported with additional units if the cargo is heavier or needs to travel a longer distance.
China just launched its first all-electric cargo ship, which will travel 50 miles at a top speed of 8 miles per hour on a single charge. Though it will be able to carry 2,200 tons of cargo with every haul, that battery capacity is barely enough to fulfill any transatlantic shipments. It will take just two hours to recharge, which is about as much time the vessel needs to unload at a destination.
China is the leading producer of solar panels and wind turbines. The development of this major innovation in China means that the ship will have ample exposure to innovators in green space who could help the electric ship become a global product.
One city in China, Shenzhen, has more electric buses than all of America’s biggest cities have buses
If 16,359 buses sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. As shared by our friend and contributor Tim Dixon on EV Obsession, that’s approximately 3 times as many buses as New York City has in its fleet (all buses), and nearly 8 times the total Los Angeles has.
While the exact cause of these die-offs is not entirely understood, a recent report has linked Monsanto's Glyphosates to the global decline in honey bees.
Monarchs and honey bees are critical components of the food chain, and if massive die-offs continue, well, it could disrupt the food supply for humans.
A brand new survey of 73 scientific reports that was just released has come to the conclusion that the total number of insects on the globe is falling by 2.5 percent per year. If we stay on this current pace, the survey warns that there might not be “any insects at all” by the year 2119. And since insects are absolutely critical to the worldwide food chain, that has extremely ominous implications for all of us.
The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.
More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.
The researchers set out their conclusions in unusually forceful terms for a peer-reviewed scientific paper: “The [insect] trends confirm that the sixth major extinction event is profoundly impacting [on] life forms on our planet.
“Unless we change our ways of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades,” they write. “The repercussions this will have for the planet’s ecosystems are catastrophic to say the least.”
One of the biggest impacts of insect loss is on the many birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish that eat insects. “If this food source is taken away, all these animals starve to death,” he said. Such cascading effects have already been seen in Puerto Rico, where a recent study revealed a 98% fall in ground insects over 35 years.
And without bees and other pollinators, humans would be in a world of hurt. You may have heard that Albert Einstein once said the following…
“If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.”
In the US, the number of honey-bee colonies dropped from 6 million in 1947 to 2.5 million just six decades later.
Fewer phytoplankton means less thiamine being produced. That means less thiamine is available to pass up the food chain. Next thing you know, there’s a 70% decline in seabird populations.
This is something I’ve noticed directly and commented on during my annual pilgrimages to the northern Maine coast over the past 30 years, where seagulls used to be extremely common and are now practically gone. Seagulls!
Next thing you know, some other major food chain will be wiped out and we’ll get oceans full of jellyfish instead of actual fish.
Beginning in Feb 2017, as part of China’s broader “National Sword” campaign, the largest buyer of recyclables from the US, banned 24 types of solid waste from being imported and placed tougher restrictions on the ones it continues to accept.
Ewall noted that burning trash releases “28 times more dioxin pollution” than burning coal, emitting “the most toxic chemicals known to science,” like mercury and lead.
“It destroyed the sense of community, because people that were here moved. You cannot sell the house. It has destroyed the foundations,” local activist Zulene Mayfield told Ruptly.
Tesla’s main factory in Nevada will soon have capacity to produce 35 GWh worth of batteries, enough to take up 60,000 to 85,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (“LCE”) all by itself.
The Chinese government is determined to get more EVs on the road to help alleviate the country’s severe air pollution problems. That has translated into a goal of having EVs make up 20% of sales (7 million cars) by 2025.
China is also building gigafactories to get there. Indeed, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence’s Simon Moores, China accounts for almost 60 percent of the 40 lithium-ion battery metals megafactories his firm is currently tracking.
Tianqi and Gangfeng Lithium, its two biggest players in the space, have been busy creating vertically integrated lithium operations that include interests in lithium operations, chemical processing of that lithium and battery manufacture.
Brines Versus Hard Rock: Two Key Sources Of Supply
South America, Australia and China dominate the world’s lithium production, with Chile, Argentina, Australia and China accounting for 85% of the world’s lithium production, or 216,000 tonnes of LCE in 2017.
The “Lithium Triangle,” formed where the borders of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia meet, provides the largest proportion of that production.
Lithium there is produced by evaporating the salty brines (“salars”) that populate this high-desert part of the Andes.
Lithium carbonate is generated by pumping the briny water in these areas to surface and then moving it through evaporation ponds to bring the LCE to a salable concentration level. This process takes about 12-18 months.
The other primary source of lithium is from hard rock mining, primarily in Western Australia. The Greenbushes mine south of Perth contains the world’s largest spodumene deposit, which is the primary lithium-containing hard rock mineral.
There are two primary intermediate products from lithium mining, lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide. As mentioned, lithium prices are usually quoted in terms of lithium carbonate equivalent (“LCE”).
Lithium hydroxide is gaining greater prominence in the industry, however, as EV OEMs like Tesla have developed a preference for batteries that use the lithium derived from lithium hydroxide.
A desire to reduce the expensive cobalt content and increase the more power-dense nickel content of the batteries has led to this preference.
And while the lithium carbonate produced by lithium brines can be converted into lithium hydroxide with an extra step, it is generally less expensive to generate lithium hydroxide directly from spodumene.
Lithium Market Dominated By Handful Of Players
Just as a few regions account for a vast amount of the world’s lithium production, a few companies generate the vast majority of this global supply.
The key players are:
• Albemarle — North Carolina-based Albemarle is a specialty chemical company that derives roughly a third of its revenues from lithium production.
• SQM — Short for Socieded Quimica y Minera de Chile, SQM is a state-run, diversified chemical company that controls key lithium production facilities in Chile’s Atacama Desert.
• Livent — Spun off from specialty chemical producer FMC in 2018, Livent is another key player in the lithium space. The company’s October IPO raised $390 million in a turbulent market for global stocks.
• Tianqi Lithium — The Chinese company added to its 51% ownership stake in the Greenbushes Mine in Australia recently by taking a 24% stake in SQM. The controlling stake in Greenbushes is through its control of Talison Mining, a joint venture with Albemarle. It has filed for a Hong Kong listing.
• Gangfeng Lithium — Gangfeng is China’s largest lithium compounds producer and the second largest overall. It is one of the most vertically integrated of the major lithium companies. Like Livent, the company recently listed (on the Hong Kong exchange) and had a rocky debut due to global market volatility.
source:Gold Newsletter
(note the newletter goes on to promote a couple of stocks - I posted those in the stocks section.
This post is just to have some info on lithium - re battery industry, EV and electrical storage)
Roughly 70% of all produce sold in the U.S. has pesticide residue in it, even after it is washed, according to a new report from the Guardian. According to data from the US Department of Agriculture and analyzed by the Environmental Working Group, strawberries, spinach and kale have the heaviest pesticide presence, while sweetcorn, avocados and pineapples had the lowest presence.
more than 92% of kale that was tested had two or more pesticide residues in it. A sample of any conventionally farmed kale could contain "up to 18 different pesticides", according to the report.
Dacthal was the most common pesticide found. It was detected in about 60% of kale samples and is banned in Europe and classified as a possible carcinogen in the U.S.
Other foods that the group warns about include grapes, cherries, apples, tomatoes and potatoes. Foods like avocados, onions and cauliflower were found to be {less poisoned}