Exxon just bought 120,000 acres in southern Arkansas, in a lithium formation. In Dec. 2021, EPA added lithium to its Unregulated Contaminated Monitoring Rule (UCMR 5) as required under the 5 year review process under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The former and latter aren't by accident.
Mandating EVs before you figure out whether it's even possible is a classic move of modern Charlaticians.
And as industry insiders, we have anecdotal evidence Musk is has lobbied his way to capturing most of the eRINs (credits) created by the Inflation Reduction Act for EVs, down to small scale alt energy generators most wouldn't even think to consider.
Much appreciated, Mr Bryce. The emporer at 1600 Pennsylvania and his cadre of intellectually polluted minions and Congressional nutjobs have not a stitch to wear. One wonders how long they can keep up the charade that green energy is free, low emission and not enormously wasteful. When does the spigot of minerals and metals needed for every facet of green stuff thin to a trickle? How many EVs will be produced before the subsidies needed to foist them off on Americans who don't actually want them bankrupts us; and what will these same citizens do when they can no longer count on stable electricity supply to power their necessary transportation...and air conditioning, heat, etc?
Our news media asshats for now ignore the swaths of the country that lose power on any given hot summer or cold winter day because they're mostly idiot lefties and it interferes with their middle school level knowledge of the problem. The Post, Times, CNN, MSNBC and the rest have become expert at blaming our grid and EV supply problems on Republicans not being willing to spend just a little extra to live in utopia. But a calamity is coming because of the control economy that the White House has forced through executive fiat, and the idiot squad of Haaland and Granholm have shown no interest in heading it off. As ever, in a sea of stupid, they rise to the challenge of being irrational and dumb...if women ran the world everyone would win! And our brain-free President, having for decades been a toothy, carnival showman shuffle ups to the mic and once the cord in his back is pulled, no longer has what it takes to fool anybody... except the press, which is paid to do so.
Auto repair shops will be excellent business opportunities for the foreseeable future. Keeping the old clunkers running will be essential as new ICE vehicles become unavailable and electric cars become more expensive and hard to get. The US vehicle fleet will come to resemble Cuba’s. The vehicle of the future is the 1960’s VW bug. Easy to fix, junkyards full of spare parts, reliable, no complicated electronics. Until they actually ban gasoline we backyard mechanics will make things work. If they do ban gasoline the world becomes something like the movie Road Warrior.
Battery production will be severely constrained due to resource/mining constraints. With it taking upwards of 10yrs to build a new mine. Similarly for the magnets used in EV motors & generators for Wind Turbines.
Here is the problem. Listen to B.F. Randall:
"Crude oil is like raw milk, and diesel is the cream, gasoline is like skim milk", "Diesel and jet engines combined with hydraulic fluid perform form perhaps 85 percent of all civilizations work"
" diesel fuel is between 40 and 60 percent of their direct costs of farming"
" the limiting factor ultimately is is diesel fuel because diesel fuel is such a small fraction of crude oil, And is needed in farming, agriculture, mining, Transportation/Trucking logistics. It's all based on diesel fuel so if you start mining for renewables. That will double or triple the world's mining, you're going to double and triple the demand of diesel fuel and that's going to necessarily result in doubling or tripling the amount of crude oil necessary to support that. It will also make diesel fuel go up and gasoline go down because for every gallon of diesel fuel we make, we make two or three gallons of gasoline. It's automatic so it you can't scale it without starving today.." So if you replace gasoline with ethanol and batteries, where are you going to get the diesel from? What are you going to do, throw the lighter distillates out? That's real energy efficiency. You could get more heavy oil from Canada. Keystone pipeline anyone? Oh, that was banned. Government idiots.
The conclusion is inescapable, for civilization to survive we need to replace diesel fuel and related heavy distillates. That means batteries, battery materials need to be conserved for replacing diesel engines. Diesel trucking, diesel ferries & short distance diesel shipping, diesel generation, diesel mining equipment, diesel train locomotives, diesel heavy equipment. Diesel trucks being 1% of vehicles but use 20% of the transportation fuel. And that is the cream of fuels that keeps our civilization running.
Note that the motor driving the Tesla semi-truck you can pick up and carry away, it's the size of a football. With 3 motors having more power than a big Kenworth diesel. And Tesla's semi has 3X the torque of a big diesel truck. Leaves them in the dust climbing a hill or accelerating. And hardly uses its brakes, including going downhill. With 500mile battery pack weighs the same as the Diesel truck. Can actually pull a couple thousand lbs more in the trailer. With 30m to 70% recharge. You will make up the recharge time easily with increased acceleration and faster downhill travel.
These big battery packs are quite capable of replacing most of the diesel loads I mentioned. That's urgent. That should be the priority for battery usage. That puts batteries to real use. Light vehicles only drive an avg of 30 miles/day, that is a piss poor application for precious batteries. i.e for a Tesla with a 300mile range, that's using 10% of capacity per day. A heavy truck will use 200% of capacity in one day.
The only place batteries for utility storage make any sense is for spinning reserve or storage on a diesel grid, especially if augmented by wind & solar. Wasting 4X the batteries of EV's to store a minimum daily amount of wind & solar on a normal gas/coal/hydro/nuclear grid is just plain stupid. An expensive idiotic waste of batteries. Gas/coal/hydro/nuclear store energy far cheaper and far more effectively than batteries. Use that storage, not waste batteries on it.
To be honest, I prefer driving electric cars- but of course I live in a European city and probably drive once per month... so I am not under any illusion that my situation is the same as folks outside major cities in the US.
The EPA is the same agency that makes disposal of Thorium based “wastes” from rare earth ore processing essentially impossible.
All of this is going to fall apart eventually, but how to limit the damage in the short term? Part of me wants to let the EPA continue to dig its heels in, and then maybe there will be momentum to destroy the agency and put in place something more practical. Or maybe society will collapse and we will live in mud huts like the NGOs want...
First I appreciate the level of detail and effort put into your work. "In God we trust" all other bring data!. When this type of work is coupled with demographical analysis the geopolitical aspects become quite clear. The other element that comes through your writing is "follow the money", who funds what and for what purpose. Greed and power continue to be driving forces. "Cheap" labor so the consumer can buy and ignore the real cost. Even if Battery swapping for eVs would be acceptable, that only doubles or triples the need per car for batteries. Are we the frog in the water waiting to be boiled alive?
At a recent industry conference a representative of Rystad talked about reaching net zero by 2050. Privately, groups are asking the wrong question. They are asking what will it take technically to meet the goal, which he answered. He stated its the wrong question. The question is it technically feasible which it is not. In fact his answer it may be possible to be net zero by 2065! I don't have to worry I will be long gone by then
In the old days, patent pools or monopolies inspired new inventions to end-run the monopoly. This process was happening in batteries and motors for more than 100 years. There are many alternate ways to build a motor or a battery, but nobody seems interested in trying them. We MUST surrender everything to China, even if it means ignoring existing materials and patents.
An interesting fact in the IEA report states EVs outpaced the sale of ICEs in 2021, which they claim indicated a shift in buying preference. I remember waiting 7 months for my SUV because of a lack of chips to sell ICEs. Auto dealers across the U.S. were left with empty lots and only used cars. If the chip shortage had not occurred, I question whether EVs would have claimed the top spot in auto sales. How did those EVs get all the computer chips?
Thank you for your open and honest assessment of this intrusion on the free market and political finger on the scale of consumer preference. Most people don’t want electric vehicles but the green new deal leftists won’t stop with their tyrannical agenda.
Zero carbon objectives by 2050 cannot be met worldwide for the reasons you have cited repeatedly. While citizens of LDC’s just want a light bulb in their home and a water well pump in their village, and don’t care if coal or gas fuels power plants to provide the electricity, we citizens in the G7+ get costly subsidized power gen and electric vehicles stuffed down our throats… and siphoned out of our wallets.
Great article
Check out:
China's Quest for World Domination via "Clean Energy" Manufacturing
https://tucoschild.substack.com/p/chinas-quest-for-world-domination
Great piece, Robert.
Exxon just bought 120,000 acres in southern Arkansas, in a lithium formation. In Dec. 2021, EPA added lithium to its Unregulated Contaminated Monitoring Rule (UCMR 5) as required under the 5 year review process under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The former and latter aren't by accident.
Mandating EVs before you figure out whether it's even possible is a classic move of modern Charlaticians.
And as industry insiders, we have anecdotal evidence Musk is has lobbied his way to capturing most of the eRINs (credits) created by the Inflation Reduction Act for EVs, down to small scale alt energy generators most wouldn't even think to consider.
Much appreciated, Mr Bryce. The emporer at 1600 Pennsylvania and his cadre of intellectually polluted minions and Congressional nutjobs have not a stitch to wear. One wonders how long they can keep up the charade that green energy is free, low emission and not enormously wasteful. When does the spigot of minerals and metals needed for every facet of green stuff thin to a trickle? How many EVs will be produced before the subsidies needed to foist them off on Americans who don't actually want them bankrupts us; and what will these same citizens do when they can no longer count on stable electricity supply to power their necessary transportation...and air conditioning, heat, etc?
Our news media asshats for now ignore the swaths of the country that lose power on any given hot summer or cold winter day because they're mostly idiot lefties and it interferes with their middle school level knowledge of the problem. The Post, Times, CNN, MSNBC and the rest have become expert at blaming our grid and EV supply problems on Republicans not being willing to spend just a little extra to live in utopia. But a calamity is coming because of the control economy that the White House has forced through executive fiat, and the idiot squad of Haaland and Granholm have shown no interest in heading it off. As ever, in a sea of stupid, they rise to the challenge of being irrational and dumb...if women ran the world everyone would win! And our brain-free President, having for decades been a toothy, carnival showman shuffle ups to the mic and once the cord in his back is pulled, no longer has what it takes to fool anybody... except the press, which is paid to do so.
Bryce’s usual penetrating analysis, with perspective.
You are doing such great work Mr. Bryce - you and Doom should do a podcast together
Move aside "Opium Wars." Make way for the "Magnet Wars."
Article summary: Environmentalists are going to ruin us and Biden sits by and claps like a seal.
@Robert Bryce Is there a place where I can see your speaking schedule? I live in Austin and it would probably be fun to hear you speak.
Auto repair shops will be excellent business opportunities for the foreseeable future. Keeping the old clunkers running will be essential as new ICE vehicles become unavailable and electric cars become more expensive and hard to get. The US vehicle fleet will come to resemble Cuba’s. The vehicle of the future is the 1960’s VW bug. Easy to fix, junkyards full of spare parts, reliable, no complicated electronics. Until they actually ban gasoline we backyard mechanics will make things work. If they do ban gasoline the world becomes something like the movie Road Warrior.
Battery production will be severely constrained due to resource/mining constraints. With it taking upwards of 10yrs to build a new mine. Similarly for the magnets used in EV motors & generators for Wind Turbines.
Here is the problem. Listen to B.F. Randall:
"Crude oil is like raw milk, and diesel is the cream, gasoline is like skim milk", "Diesel and jet engines combined with hydraulic fluid perform form perhaps 85 percent of all civilizations work"
" diesel fuel is between 40 and 60 percent of their direct costs of farming"
" the limiting factor ultimately is is diesel fuel because diesel fuel is such a small fraction of crude oil, And is needed in farming, agriculture, mining, Transportation/Trucking logistics. It's all based on diesel fuel so if you start mining for renewables. That will double or triple the world's mining, you're going to double and triple the demand of diesel fuel and that's going to necessarily result in doubling or tripling the amount of crude oil necessary to support that. It will also make diesel fuel go up and gasoline go down because for every gallon of diesel fuel we make, we make two or three gallons of gasoline. It's automatic so it you can't scale it without starving today.." So if you replace gasoline with ethanol and batteries, where are you going to get the diesel from? What are you going to do, throw the lighter distillates out? That's real energy efficiency. You could get more heavy oil from Canada. Keystone pipeline anyone? Oh, that was banned. Government idiots.
https://bfrandall.substack.com/p/crude-oil-is-like-raw-milk-and-diesel
The conclusion is inescapable, for civilization to survive we need to replace diesel fuel and related heavy distillates. That means batteries, battery materials need to be conserved for replacing diesel engines. Diesel trucking, diesel ferries & short distance diesel shipping, diesel generation, diesel mining equipment, diesel train locomotives, diesel heavy equipment. Diesel trucks being 1% of vehicles but use 20% of the transportation fuel. And that is the cream of fuels that keeps our civilization running.
Note that the motor driving the Tesla semi-truck you can pick up and carry away, it's the size of a football. With 3 motors having more power than a big Kenworth diesel. And Tesla's semi has 3X the torque of a big diesel truck. Leaves them in the dust climbing a hill or accelerating. And hardly uses its brakes, including going downhill. With 500mile battery pack weighs the same as the Diesel truck. Can actually pull a couple thousand lbs more in the trailer. With 30m to 70% recharge. You will make up the recharge time easily with increased acceleration and faster downhill travel.
These big battery packs are quite capable of replacing most of the diesel loads I mentioned. That's urgent. That should be the priority for battery usage. That puts batteries to real use. Light vehicles only drive an avg of 30 miles/day, that is a piss poor application for precious batteries. i.e for a Tesla with a 300mile range, that's using 10% of capacity per day. A heavy truck will use 200% of capacity in one day.
The only place batteries for utility storage make any sense is for spinning reserve or storage on a diesel grid, especially if augmented by wind & solar. Wasting 4X the batteries of EV's to store a minimum daily amount of wind & solar on a normal gas/coal/hydro/nuclear grid is just plain stupid. An expensive idiotic waste of batteries. Gas/coal/hydro/nuclear store energy far cheaper and far more effectively than batteries. Use that storage, not waste batteries on it.
To be honest, I prefer driving electric cars- but of course I live in a European city and probably drive once per month... so I am not under any illusion that my situation is the same as folks outside major cities in the US.
The EPA is the same agency that makes disposal of Thorium based “wastes” from rare earth ore processing essentially impossible.
All of this is going to fall apart eventually, but how to limit the damage in the short term? Part of me wants to let the EPA continue to dig its heels in, and then maybe there will be momentum to destroy the agency and put in place something more practical. Or maybe society will collapse and we will live in mud huts like the NGOs want...
First I appreciate the level of detail and effort put into your work. "In God we trust" all other bring data!. When this type of work is coupled with demographical analysis the geopolitical aspects become quite clear. The other element that comes through your writing is "follow the money", who funds what and for what purpose. Greed and power continue to be driving forces. "Cheap" labor so the consumer can buy and ignore the real cost. Even if Battery swapping for eVs would be acceptable, that only doubles or triples the need per car for batteries. Are we the frog in the water waiting to be boiled alive?
At a recent industry conference a representative of Rystad talked about reaching net zero by 2050. Privately, groups are asking the wrong question. They are asking what will it take technically to meet the goal, which he answered. He stated its the wrong question. The question is it technically feasible which it is not. In fact his answer it may be possible to be net zero by 2065! I don't have to worry I will be long gone by then
EVs are impractical for long-distance travel and in rural areas with cold climates.
Charging your EV will always be a potential problem. Where is the nearest charging station? When I get there, will it work?
In the old days, patent pools or monopolies inspired new inventions to end-run the monopoly. This process was happening in batteries and motors for more than 100 years. There are many alternate ways to build a motor or a battery, but nobody seems interested in trying them. We MUST surrender everything to China, even if it means ignoring existing materials and patents.
An interesting fact in the IEA report states EVs outpaced the sale of ICEs in 2021, which they claim indicated a shift in buying preference. I remember waiting 7 months for my SUV because of a lack of chips to sell ICEs. Auto dealers across the U.S. were left with empty lots and only used cars. If the chip shortage had not occurred, I question whether EVs would have claimed the top spot in auto sales. How did those EVs get all the computer chips?
Thank you for your open and honest assessment of this intrusion on the free market and political finger on the scale of consumer preference. Most people don’t want electric vehicles but the green new deal leftists won’t stop with their tyrannical agenda.
Zero carbon objectives by 2050 cannot be met worldwide for the reasons you have cited repeatedly. While citizens of LDC’s just want a light bulb in their home and a water well pump in their village, and don’t care if coal or gas fuels power plants to provide the electricity, we citizens in the G7+ get costly subsidized power gen and electric vehicles stuffed down our throats… and siphoned out of our wallets.