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It’s also why the Department of Energy department EERE (Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy) was just renamed to CMEI (Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation)
At the same time the DoE lab NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) was renamed to NLR (National Lab of the Rockies)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Energy_Efficiency_and_Renewable_Energy
National Lab of the Rockets…? An acronym that sounds like it was made by a grade schooler. Which checks out, if we’re being honest.
Edit: lol I misread it, but the actual name is still very dumb
Rockies. As in the Rocky Mountains.
Still stupid.
Oh cool so more lithium than they k ow what do do with. What’s next laws stating everyone has to own at least 100 phones and 50 laptops?
And lithium batteries are already obsolete sodium ion battery can last thousands of charge cycles
Um, so can lithium. And lithium has a much higher energy density.
Not really there’s a reason lithium is still used. Other battery chemistries have other drawbacks beyond longevity.
As far as I’m aware, lithium still isn’t beat on energy density.
Yeah and sodium ion batteries aren’t solid state yet either I don’t think.
They actually are.
https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/bluetti-sodium-ion-portable-power-station/
Not yet at price parity with Lithium Ion, if you go by total charge capacity, and they are heavier and larger per watt hout charge capacity…
… but they can cycle a considerablely greater number of times, they have longer expected lifespans, work better in cold weather, can charge and discharge faster.
EDIT
Derp, ok, the above isn’t solid state… but it is a viable product, without being solid state.
Given the rate of adoption and research going into sodium ion related tech, solid state sodium ion may be a thing in under two years… a hell of a lot of people are actively working on solving basically assembly line and industrial use specific problems right now.
If they can scale I could imagine them making good battery arrays. The largest batteries in the world are not a chemical batteries currently however. Think 20-40 GWh vs 400 MWh (at a cursory search) being the largest current chemical battery arrays. Pumped storage plants can’t be built everywhere, and are massively huge infrastructure projects, but as we switch more and more to solar energy we are going to need to make it through the nights somehow. They currently are often used to provide grid stability by discharging during peak hours, and buying cheap power to pump water back up during peak production/lowest demand when electricity is cheapest. This works especially well already with many renewables, including wind farms when you don’t have control over production. If they can build sodium ion battery arrays cheaply enough though, pumped storage plants could maybe just be obsoleted.
I would think sodium ion would particularly make sense in an EV, or a hybrid.
Even if they aren’t as energy dense, per weight and volume… the longevity, the rechargability, the cold weather effectiveness.
That addresses… so many of the problems that EVs as depreciating assets face, and it makes EVs make sense in areas that are currently too cold too often for them to make sense.
A sensible world could make this work so well with a decent charging network.
What’s next? Hopefully domestic-component grid storage batteries and EV batteries for greatly reduced cost and less reliance on China.
Any serious effort towards a “green” future is going to require better home and vehicular energy generation and storage. We need gridscale batteries and EV batteries, cheaply, now.
Cheaply
Ha ha, its made in the US, selling cheaply means less profits.
Greatly reduced cost
We’re lucky if energy costs stay the same
Just like always USA fighting yesterday war. Lithium is already on the way out.
I would be extremely disappointed in the species if we’re still using lithium batteries in 328 years time. Not that I actually believe that estimate.
Most of those states are reliably blue, too, so for the current administration it’s an added bonus
I was referring to the picture used in the op
for anyone who doesn’t know what this is. the dark red is the Appalachian Bio-Region. the light red is the Appalachian Regional Commission’s mandated jurisdictional scope. the ARC is a federal-state joint partnership established in 1960 with the mandate to develop the appalachian region economically as part of America’s War on Poverty. HOWEVER, from the outset there were flaws with the commission’s outlook and approach to the region. namely, they sought to address poverty by setting up even more extractive economies in the region rather than de-esclating the institutional violence enacted against an internal colony. in the time since the foundation of the ARC, the disparity of economic incomes within and without the region has only increased.
there’s a littany of reasons for this, but core to all of them is that politicians look at a map and see economic wealth instead of people. no respect is given our needs or experiences by the oligarchs who control these so called united states of america. they think they can decide for us our futuoe, and because they have an economic and militaristic monopoly on violence, they roughly can. lumber has grven way to bituminous coal has given way to anthracite coal has given way to natural gas has given way to uranium and is now currently giving way to AI data centers and soon apparently lithium mines.
these are sad and frustrating times
Well, they could always rely on their good friend and partner China to never gate keep the minerals they possess 🤔…oh wait.
Original information source, not the tweet: https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/lithium-eastern-states-could-replace-imports-a-century-or-more
There is a very important sentence all the way at the end:
The USGS did not assess what amount would be economically recoverable.
And China is moving from lithium to sodium
More options for batteries is always good. Doesn’t negate the demand for more storage in general.
It’s better than that even, switching to sodium for grid scale storage means more available lithium and cobalt for instances where battery size and weight actually matter. And could even lower prices on lithium
I have a feeling they’ll have a much harder time pushing through mining operations in Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire than they did in West VA. This will be received like proposals of mining the great lakes would in MI or WI, and many of the residents (Boston area professors) have the resources and energy to resist it.
Pennsylvania which has a lot of lithium that can be extracted without mining. Brine from fracking can be a major source. Lithium extraction from fracking brine can be relatively sustainable considering fracking is already being done.
Didn’t they just remove the mining protection from the BWCA?
Yep and they’re working on removing protections for other federal land which I have little doubt they’re accomplish given it was the fed previously protecting it. I’m just saying I think it will be difficult to actually implement projects in some places due to local opposition combined with the energy and resources to sustain that opposition.
Not a good thing overall btw, by my figuring it just means under-resourced regions will continue to shoulder the bulk of industrial waste and pollution because they’ll be the least equipped to resist. Tale as old as time.
For now.
Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont all have different groups that individually disagree with mining once protected wilderness. The only selection of people pushing for this would be the rich who want the money.
I would not fuck with rights of New Hampshire. They will come after you. Never met one who wasn’t a bit off.
When the Civil War was breaking out and the governor of Vermont called for the state to raise $500k to support the war effort, the legislature passed a bill to raise a full million.
When they were called upon to send one regiment of men to fight, they organized seven.
Vermont, also, would not be a good state with which to openly fuck.
I love Vermont because of her hills and valleys, her scenery and invigorating climate, but most of all, because of her indomitable people. They are a race of pioneers who almost beggared themselves to serve others. If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.
–Calvin Coolidge
They may be a bunch of hippie hillbillies, but they’re the most chaotic good state. They fought in the revolutionary war and then didn’t join the union for a while
It’s like the push to deforest the western states. You’ll be surprised by the weird alliances that pop up when billionaires show up in the backyard. Wish we could find common ground broadly, but I guess I’ll take what I can get.
Aren’t Appalachians poisoned enough?
Does Trump own a golf course in the Appalachians?
Probably. Maybe more than one. It’s a massive mountain range stretching most of the East Coast, from Georgia to Maine.
By the time any of these mines or refineries come online, lithium ion batteries will be being replaced by sodium ion for the larger EV and storage batteries. Besides that, America hardly manufactures phones or laptops.
Where will it get refined?
Well uh, China.
Untill they figure out that you can’t just cram raw ore into a battery or computer.
ETA on them figuring that out … 2-3 years?
Oh right, and then you actually have to build the refineries.
I’m goin with ‘within the next 2 years’, being said for approximately 8 years.
In America rich people must profit and everyone else must suffer. Everything is for sale.
I have a running joke I tell my friends that one day, the rich will flatten mountains, so the only way to see their natural wonder will be in VR. That’s when they will become mainstream. Not because they offer some new technological advancement, but because they’ve managed to capture the spaces we use to get away.
There’s a video clip of a song in French with a similar concept from 2003. A child is frolicking and playing in nature until we discover that it’s all synthetic, her time is up, and other children are lining up for their time in “nature” too. Mickey 3D - Respire on YouTube.
From a description of the song on Wikipedia:
The text of the song addresses a “kid” to alert him about the state of the world that adults will leave to him. The first part of the song deals with the story of humans’ arrival on Earth and their disturbance of the whole balance of nature. The second part imagines the future of people if they continue to do so (referring to the disappearance of natural resources, animals and even genetic modification because of pollution) and how the “kid” will try to explain to his grandchildren why he did nothing to prevent it. The third part speaks about the state of slavery, misery, and shame of the human species as well as the unpredictability of its future.
Well here in america we already have flattened mountains. And also maybe bombed our own citizens who felt some sorta way about it.
Wild, but this is already happening - Tuvalu is being “preserved” in vr as it’s going to be one of the first island nations wiped out by climate change.
They already take the tops off mountains in Appalachia because it’s more efficient to just straight up delete a mountain to get coal than to dig into it for it
this style of mining also requires fewer operators than a deep mine. it has had deeply devestating consequences to me and my neighbors
Visit national parks while you can.
