Technology

Huge, accessible Lithium source found in South Coast area

Huge, accessible Lithium source found in South Coast area

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Editor’s Note:  See “Primer” on Lithium mining in Nevada.

A paper recently published in Science confirmed that that entrepreneur is on the right track. The researchers identified a substantial lithium resource in southern Arkansas. Using an AI model trained on geological, geochemical, and temperature data, the team predicted lithium concentrations across the region and estimated the formation contains between 5.1 and 19 million tons of lithium, or about 35% to 136% of the current U.S. lithium resource estimate. Lithium boom baby!

Airloom Wind Energy: Across the Valley of Death
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Airloom Wind Energy: Across the Valley of Death

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EcoTech Note:  Here is a new wind energy system that has raised early money (two rounds: $4m in 2020 and $13m recently) and created “proof of concept” pilot plant.  The $13m will create a full-size 1.0 megawatt demonstration.

Below are two important charts showing how much lower the upfront capital and installation costs are compared to conventional wind turbines.  Below that are links to a positive press story and a skeptical YouTube evaluation. 

It also looks like DOD funding will help get this promising CleanTech across the Valley of Death with 2.5 megawatt reactors built in 2026.

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What Will We Do With Our Free Power?
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What Will We Do With Our Free Power?

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EcoTech Note:  Here is another great example of how humans cannot easily grok how prices declining owing to the “learning curve” create astonishing, geometric growth. “In 2023, the world installed 444 gigawatts of new solar photovoltaic capacity, an 80 percent year-on-year jump and more than was cumulatively installed between the invention of the solar cell in 1954 and 2017. Although solar power still provides just under 6 percent of global electricity, its share has nearly quadrupled since 2018, an exponential curve that is expected to continue for some time.”

The Economist magazine observes ‘The next tenfold increase [in solar capacity] will be equivalent to multiplying the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors by eight in less than the time it typically takes to build just a single one of them.’ By the 2030s — not very long from now — solar power will most likely be the largest source of electricity on the planet.”

The knock-on implications of cheap solar are staggering — from high-volumne desalination, to making green cement, to electrolyzing hydrogen from water,  and even to powering Casey Handmer’s dream of making synthetic fuels solely from the air!

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10 Mind-blowing Climate Technologies You’ve Never Heard About

10 Mind-blowing Climate Technologies You’ve Never Heard About

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EcoTech Note:  Carbon Equity is a private equity fund that invests in new CleanTech projects.  Some of these technologies are early in the R&D process, but viable enough to attract investment.  Others (like Form Energy) are deploying commercially.  Notice the range of exciting CleanTech that is coming.

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From transforming air into jet fuel to using microorganisms to make concrete, let’s look at some of the most surprising climate technologies you have never heard of.

We actually know a lot about the steps we need to take and the technologies we need to develop to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050. To get there, we need to change the way we work, eat, live, make things, generate power, and travel, meaning we will have to transform and decarbonize our entire economy. Thankfully, new competitive solutions are being developed every day.

Carbon-negative biogas Startup lands $62m Series A

Carbon-negative biogas Startup lands $62m Series A

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EcoTech Note:  Agriculture waste (manure and unsellable food) decomposes into methane and CO2.  This startup, Reverion, has created new CleanTech that is up to 80% more efficient than existing biogas power plants.   They have a $100 million backlog of orders and a fresh $62 million in a Series A funding round, to be used to begin industrial-scale production of its power plants.  Reverion’s orders come mainly from farmers and industrial plants; no subsidies seem to be involved.

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Server Racks on Data Center
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Hungry for Clean Energy, Facebook Looks to a New Type of Geothermal

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EcoTech Note:   Here’s a good example of a “power purchasing agreement,” probably at above-market rates, whereby Facebook (Meta, Inc.) will buy power from Sage Power in Texas.  Sage uses the same “enhanced geothermal” technology, borrowed from the fracking used in oil-and-gas drilling, that is used by Fervo, which is doing something similar in Nevada.  These new projects are bringing down the Green Premium, with a “levelized cost of energy” (LCOE) of about $0.06/kwh.  See also the promise of even better geothermal in the Quaise project in California.

Big tech companies across the United States are struggling to find enough clean energy to power all the data centers they plan to build.

Now, some firms are betting on ….

Electrified roads could be the tipping point for EV adoption
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Electrified roads could be the tipping point for EV adoption

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Detroit’s new roadway is a big step toward a fully electric future. Last week, Detroit became the first American city to install an electrified roadway. While that might sound like something you would definitely not want to drive on, it’s actually a big step toward widespread EV adoption:

In a U.S. First, a Commercial Plant Starts Pulling Carbon From the Air
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In a U.S. First, a Commercial Plant Starts Pulling Carbon From the Air

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In an open-air warehouse in California’s Central Valley, 40-foot-tall racks hold hundreds of trays filled with a white powder that turns crusty as it absorbs carbon dioxide from the sky. The start-up uses direct air capture, which involves vacuuming greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Hopeful Note from IEA: “Mass Manufactured Tech” shows us a path

Hopeful Note from IEA: “Mass Manufactured Tech” shows us a path

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The IEA says “mass manufactured technologies” (solar PV, electric cars, residential heat pumps and stationary battery storage) have “standardization and short lead times,” meaning they can be produced by the millions or hundreds of millions. For instance, between 2015 (when the Paris Agreement was signed) and 2022, solar PV added as much capacity as all of Europe’s installed power generation, and heat pump sales increased to  a level “approximately equivalent to the entire residential heating capacity in Russia.”