Siting Pumped Hydro (Water) Storage was always assumed to be dependent on rivers, thus the assumption that the cost and environmental impacts are too great compared to battery storage. But fundamentally, the siting of PWS is dependent on two grade levels with an altitude difference only. You can site them anywhere, build a sea water pipeline (or desal the water first) and you have closed system which can be replenished with new sea water, thus eliminating the need for a river and eliminating the worry of multiyear drought. So California, for example, could get busy with siting new double reservoir PWS systems anywhere we have open land and the appropriate height differential. They could also serve as part of our water challenge solutions, making desal a necessity, rather than painting it as a high cost freshwater alternative to two main water sources. We just need to make the long term investments in PWS, which show honest parity of efficiency with the EIA's survey with batteries(79% vs. 82% respectively). PWS is still the global norm for good reason. If you build it, your great grandchildren will benefit from the same project, whereas batteries will have needed replacement every 12 years. BTW, there is no 1, 2, or 4 hour short duration lithium battery challenge. Any chemical battery can be managed to discharge more slowly and that system amended with more volume to meet your needed storage demand. Alternatively, you discharge in a sequence. The industry needs to stop speaking about batteries as if they don't understand this, because it makes them sound uneducated when they repeat this untruth. That said, lithium batteries are most suitable for transportation because of their unequalled energy density. Given the bottlenecks and ultimately limited resources we have to build lithium batteries, of all chemistries, they should never have been squandered on the grid. I believe we should recognize that in a sustainable system, chemical battery systems are for micromobility, electric pantograph steel rail mass transit is for mid to long distance, and the full sized EV car/SUV/pickup is a thing we cannot sustain. I say this because we are deficit spending emissions today, though we artificially created 2030 and 2050 targets for tracking to zero emissions. The embodied carbon on EVs today ranges from 17-39 tons CO2e per vehicle using BMW's i5 and Rivian's R1T repectively. No fully disclosed LCA shows a smaller number than that, and the full decarbonization pathway for mining and industry to build cars is dacades away from fruition. This is a timing issue and ultimately an earth impact problem. We cannot possibly perpetually build cars and a circular economy for cars, still leaves them as the #1 energy inefficient way to move ourselves, in what will be an impossibly austere future. Full decarbonization is the hardest thing we've ever faced, so we need to get real about a California household tripling its power demands if it goes from gas water and space heating plus two ICE vehicles, to heat pumps an a 3 row EV SUV, and an EV pickup truck. Our EVs are bloating with no efficiency standard, and we're undoing the whole effort by ignoring the LCA of motor vehicles in general. They're unsustainable. Lazard and the battery industry lied to us about the superior efficiency of battery storage. Here is the EIA's reported data: www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46756
I know that the auto industry has this glorious dream of a circular economy, lithium battery powered mining and renewably powered long distance transportation solutions to build their very complex, very energy intensive products. But it's their job to sell us that dream, as if it is our destiny. We can see, by understanding Japan and Europe and even Bogota, that the bike and the train (in tram, metro, light, regional, HSR forms) are far more sustainable than perpetuating car dependency. Bogota is moving from BRT to trains, so watch that space. Understanding that international conflict over battery resources is not something anyone can afford as we battle to solve our global societal transition away from fossil fuels, and that responsible solution seeking should never look towards a 5 year or 25 year zenith but rather a many generational sustainability, I find our EV solution to be nothing but a regrettable bridge solution, like natural gas. We are straining, expending political will to coerce people into EVs, knowing full well, they aren't sustainable, and we'll then have to build out these rail solutions in a world where emissions are truly regulated and carefully accounted. We need the students in the UC Davis space to fast forward beyond 2050, to really challenge this notion of a global circular economy based on chemical battery powered full sized cars, for perpetuity. Our best hydrometallurgical processes only recapture 96% of the "critical minerals" and require extensive chemical processing to get us there, so clearly it's only partially circular, limited in recyclability. Can we, should we, count on a consumable resource solution again that is so dependent on massive overuse of energy and resources to produce, grind and repeat full sized personal vehicles? That's 19th and 20th century short term thinking.
Ms. Monahan, Elon Musk is painting himself as a principle champion in the effort to get China to adopt California EV credit trading policy. That seems ridiculous, and I wondered if you remembered history that way, given you were in the heart of that work? No need to refute him outright, but a measured response would be helpful.
Siting Pumped Hydro (Water) Storage was always assumed to be dependent on rivers, thus the assumption that the cost and environmental impacts are too great compared to battery storage. But fundamentally, the siting of PWS is dependent on two grade levels with an altitude difference only. You can site them anywhere, build a sea water pipeline (or desal the water first) and you have closed system which can be replenished with new sea water, thus eliminating the need for a river and eliminating the worry of multiyear drought. So California, for example, could get busy with siting new double reservoir PWS systems anywhere we have open land and the appropriate height differential. They could also serve as part of our water challenge solutions, making desal a necessity, rather than painting it as a high cost freshwater alternative to two main water sources.
We just need to make the long term investments in PWS, which show honest parity of efficiency with the EIA's survey with batteries(79% vs. 82% respectively). PWS is still the global norm for good reason. If you build it, your great grandchildren will benefit from the same project, whereas batteries will have needed replacement every 12 years. BTW, there is no 1, 2, or 4 hour short duration lithium battery challenge. Any chemical battery can be managed to discharge more slowly and that system amended with more volume to meet your needed storage demand. Alternatively, you discharge in a sequence. The industry needs to stop speaking about batteries as if they don't understand this, because it makes them sound uneducated when they repeat this untruth. That said, lithium batteries are most suitable for transportation because of their unequalled energy density. Given the bottlenecks and ultimately limited resources we have to build lithium batteries, of all chemistries, they should never have been squandered on the grid.
I believe we should recognize that in a sustainable system, chemical battery systems are for micromobility, electric pantograph steel rail mass transit is for mid to long distance, and the full sized EV car/SUV/pickup is a thing we cannot sustain. I say this because we are deficit spending emissions today, though we artificially created 2030 and 2050 targets for tracking to zero emissions. The embodied carbon on EVs today ranges from 17-39 tons CO2e per vehicle using BMW's i5 and Rivian's R1T repectively. No fully disclosed LCA shows a smaller number than that, and the full decarbonization pathway for mining and industry to build cars is dacades away from fruition. This is a timing issue and ultimately an earth impact problem. We cannot possibly perpetually build cars and a circular economy for cars, still leaves them as the #1 energy inefficient way to move ourselves, in what will be an impossibly austere future. Full decarbonization is the hardest thing we've ever faced, so we need to get real about a California household tripling its power demands if it goes from gas water and space heating plus two ICE vehicles, to heat pumps an a 3 row EV SUV, and an EV pickup truck. Our EVs are bloating with no efficiency standard, and we're undoing the whole effort by ignoring the LCA of motor vehicles in general. They're unsustainable.
Lazard and the battery industry lied to us about the superior efficiency of battery storage. Here is the EIA's reported data: www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46756
I know that the auto industry has this glorious dream of a circular economy, lithium battery powered mining and renewably powered long distance transportation solutions to build their very complex, very energy intensive products. But it's their job to sell us that dream, as if it is our destiny. We can see, by understanding Japan and Europe and even Bogota, that the bike and the train (in tram, metro, light, regional, HSR forms) are far more sustainable than perpetuating car dependency. Bogota is moving from BRT to trains, so watch that space. Understanding that international conflict over battery resources is not something anyone can afford as we battle to solve our global societal transition away from fossil fuels, and that responsible solution seeking should never look towards a 5 year or 25 year zenith but rather a many generational sustainability, I find our EV solution to be nothing but a regrettable bridge solution, like natural gas. We are straining, expending political will to coerce people into EVs, knowing full well, they aren't sustainable, and we'll then have to build out these rail solutions in a world where emissions are truly regulated and carefully accounted. We need the students in the UC Davis space to fast forward beyond 2050, to really challenge this notion of a global circular economy based on chemical battery powered full sized cars, for perpetuity. Our best hydrometallurgical processes only recapture 96% of the "critical minerals" and require extensive chemical processing to get us there, so clearly it's only partially circular, limited in recyclability. Can we, should we, count on a consumable resource solution again that is so dependent on massive overuse of energy and resources to produce, grind and repeat full sized personal vehicles? That's 19th and 20th century short term thinking.
Ms. Monahan, Elon Musk is painting himself as a principle champion in the effort to get China to adopt California EV credit trading policy. That seems ridiculous, and I wondered if you remembered history that way, given you were in the heart of that work? No need to refute him outright, but a measured response would be helpful.