Energetica India - June 2020

ELECTRIC VEHICLE Ensuring Clean Energy During COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond Due to COVID-19, there are growing concerns about the supply chain for lithium. A Benchmark report reports that some major lithium exporters, from Australia to Chile, are having trouble getting shipments out. The result will be less lithium for manufacturers, and therein, problems manufacturing enough lithium batteries. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, greenhouse gas emissions are down and outdoor air quality has gone up. Shut-downs of economic activity have caused transportation-related pollution to momentarily decrease. However, as we appreciate this silver lining during an otherwise dismal pandemic, the reality is that the only way for us to leave our children, grandchildren and gener- ations beyond, a healthy planet with clean air is to ensure that we don’t take our collective feet off the alternative energy pedal. The COVID-19 pandemic, which drastically reduced traffic, industrial and commercial activity, led to a significant decline in air-polluting emissions. We’ve been given an unprecedented glimpse into what happens to the air we breathe when emissions are eliminated. Someday in the hopefully near future, COVID-19 will be a mem- ory and when we look at how best to ensure the world’s clean energy revolution, an examination of the transportation sector is vital. “Given the role that transport plays in causing greenhouse gas emissions, any serious action on climate change will zoom in on the transport sector,” said Yvo de Boer, Executive Security of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change back in 2009. Flash forward eleven years to today, with the transport sector responsible for about a quarter of global energy-related carbon emissions, accompanied by a growing chorus of health officials who want to implement policies that reduce carbon emissions from the transportation sector. It is clear that a paradigm shift is happening now. The way we humans use energy, store it, and think about it is being transformed by new technology and applications. Hy- drocarbons are a store of energy, and they have powered the world for over a century. However, to release energy from hy- drocarbons it needs to be burned. The burning process causes pollution, energy loss and still requires a mechanism to get that released energy to do a job. The lithium-ion battery has a tremendous energy storage ca- pacity relative to size/weight. By having that energy available when we need it, we can capture energy when we don’t. The simplest example is solar panels working during the day to power your lights at night. By storing energy efficiently and in a usable format, the possibilities for renewable energy generation open up dramatically. Wind, tidal, geothermal – all are sources of energy which become mainstream viable now that the issue of storing that energy for as-needed use is solved. Even in cases where we still use hydrocarbons, we can use them more efficiently and generate less pollution by using lithium-ion batteries. One major hydrocarbon-fired power plant transmitting electricity to households that charge multiple electric vehicles is much more efficient and generates less pollution than each of those vehicles running their own individual hydrocarbon-fired power plant. The promise of electric vehicles (EV) is the most visible aspect of the profound changes happening in the world today due to the energy paradigm shift being led by lithium-ion battery technology. A clean energy revolution has begun with automakers world- wide. Volvo Cars committed to putting one million electrified cars Henk Van Alphen CEO, Wealth Minerals energetica INDIA- June_2020 41