For much of the climate-policy era, national self-interest and climate action could plausibly point in different directions. A country could let others spend more on emissions reductions while continuing to use familiar coal, oil and gas infrastructure at home. When the low-carbon alternatives were expensive, limited or immature, that could … [continued]
China has reached a stage of vehicle electrification that is easy to miss if the only number being watched is national EV market share. New urban buses are now essentially all electric, and in many cities the procurement question is no longer whether to replace a diesel bus with a … [continued]
Electric ships attract attention because the vessel is the visible technology. Put a large battery into an inland cargo vessel, replace the diesel propulsion system with electric motors, and the decarbonization story appears straightforward. Inland shipping looks particularly promising because many vessels travel repeatable routes between known terminals, where large … [continued]
Across hundreds of procurement records and very different transit markets, battery-electric has become the reference technology for zero-emission bus fleets.
Zero-emission bus procurement has moved beyond the stage where battery-electric and hydrogen fuel-cell buses should be treated as two parallel technologies waiting for the market to decide between them. Transit agencies have now spent years operating both, rebuilding depots, installing charging and refuelling infrastructure, training technicians and discovering which assumptions … [continued]
Heart’s ES-36 keeps electric motors at the propellers while turbogenerators extend missions beyond practical battery range.
On August 12, Heart Aerospace flew its X1 demonstrator for 27 minutes from Plattsburgh International Airport in New York. The aircraft weighed more than 25,000 pounds, had a 106-foot wingspan and put more than a megawatt through its electric propulsion system while taxiing, taking off, climbing, maneuvering and landing. There … [continued]
Reach stackers look like difficult battery applications, but their short-distance, high-power duty cycle and natural charging opportunities increasingly favour electrification.
A reach stacker looks like exactly the sort of machine batteries should struggle with. Large models can weigh more than 70 tonnes before picking anything up, then lift loaded shipping containers weighing another 40 tonnes or more several rows deep and several containers high. They work in busy freight terminals … [continued]
Peak oil, low EROI and peak cheap oil gave way to minerals and other constraints, while Nate Hagens’ broader expectation of approaching contraction remained remarkably durable.
Nate Hagens has spent most of his intellectual career inside a forecasting tradition that expected physical resource constraints to force industrial societies into contraction. He was a major contributor to The Oil Drum and eventually its managing editor, while the nonprofit that now produces The Great Simplification grew directly from … [continued]
Ports need more investment for bigger ships, resilience and decarbonization just as some of the bulk cargoes that funded them begin to decline.
Ports are being asked to make infrastructure decisions that will last thirty, forty or fifty years while several of the assumptions that paid for their existing infrastructure are changing at the same time. Ships are getting larger, requiring deeper channels, larger cranes and more capable tug fleets. Climate disruption is … [continued]
DNV says shore power, plug-in hybrids and fully electric ships could materially reduce future shipping fuel demand, but those pathways sit outside the simulation producing its headline 2050 fuel requirement.
DNV’s new Maritime Forecast to 2050 puts a very large number on shipping’s future demand for low-carbon molecules. In its strongest global-regulation scenario, internationally operating ships above 400 gross tonnes require about 185 million tonnes of oil equivalent of low-GHG fuel in 2050, roughly 7.7 to 7.8 exajoules. That implies … [continued]
China’s high-speed rail removes dense short-haul corridors from aviation while helping define the regional routes where electric aircraft can make more sense.
The electric-aviation contest is often presented as a race between aircraft startups. That is probably the wrong unit of analysis. An airplane that flies once, wins a certification milestone or accumulates a large order book has demonstrated something useful, but it has not demonstrated an industry. What matters is whether … [continued]
