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Cake day: June 28th, 2023

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  • It’s more about the how and why.

    How: CCS pumps liquefied or pressurized gas into an exhausted oil or saline reservoir. These reservoirs didn’t hold pressurized gas before, so it’s difficult (if not impossible) to prove they won’t leak. In the Decatur case, about 8 kilotons of CO2 and saltwater either found or created a crack in the reservoir, exactly as critics predicted. Locals are worried about groundwater contamination.

    Why: CCS is largely unregulated in the US, and the companies interested in it are ones with awful environmental track records – ADM is no exception there. To claim the 45Q tax credit, they only need to store the CO2 for 3 years. Why would they care about preventing leaks if they already got their payout? Doing shoddy work is in their best interest.

    Does this event prove that underground CCS is literally impossible? Of course not. But feasibility isn’t a pass/fail test, it’s judged by factors like cost and risk. This event proves the approach isn’t foolproof and the companies aren’t trustworthy. So it’s high time we stop acting like they are.





  • I’m gonna post this link to a former comment of mine, since this subject comes up a lot. Neither EVs nor public transit is a magic bullet.

    The efficiency of public transit depends on ridership; nowhere in the world does it actually achieve 100% occupancy for more than a few minutes at a time, and nothing is more wasteful than a train running a circuit with only one passenger. At least by my calculations, it would take an average occupancy rate increase of 1.6x (for electric light rail) to 2.4x (for electric busses) over pre-pandemic levels for US public transit to reach parity with EVs, both in terms of electricity per passenger mile and tons of raw material per capita (such as steel, aluminum, copper, glass, and plastic). We’d need higher occupancy than the trains in Europe and the busses in Taiwan. Whether or not that’s geographically possible in North America is an open question.

    Ebikes are great, no question there, but thanks to parasitic drain in cheap chargers, they use 1/3rd the energy a typical EV does (kWh per passenger-mile, adjusted for occupancy but not speed), when they should use only 1/10th. That’s a problem I expect to see solved in the next year or so, but it’s a great reminder that nothing runs on magic.

    As I say in the linked comment, public transit has critical advantages in the fields of urbanism and human-centric city design. I like trains and busses, and I vote for them every chance I get, it just bothers me when people conflate these advantages with environmental impact.





  • Toyota’s been claiming solid state batteries are just around the corner for 13 years.

    • 2010: Toyota unveils prototype LiCO2 solid state cell. Predicts use in hybrids.
    • 2012: Toyota unveils prototype Li10GeP2S12 solid state cell. Predicts mass production of 1000-km EVs in 2015-2020.
    • 2014: Toyota claims to have achieved 400Wh/L in solid state prototype cells. They adjust range estimates to 500 km.
    • 2017: Toyota predicts commercialization 2020-2025.
    • 2019: Toyota predicts it will have functioning solid state EV prototypes by the Olympics.
    • 2020: Toyota claims it already has a mostly-functioning prototype.
    • 2021: Toyota’s solid state EV is a no-show for the Olympics.
    • 2022: Toyota claims solid state hybrids will be commercialized by 2025.
    • 2023: Toyota claims it will have solid state batteries commercialized by 2027-2028. They still claim 1000-km range, but with the qualifier that the BZ4X is understood to have 500 km range today instead of the 300 km measured by 3rd parties. So they are effectively sticking to their 2014 range prediction.

    Toyota may well produce a solid state battery, but they’ve moved the goalposts enough times that it would be foolish to take them at face value now.