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China Has Launched the World's First All-Electric Cargo Ship (futurism.com)
slash.jit writes:
China has launched the world's first all-electric cargo ship. It can travel 80 kilometers (approximately 50 miles) after being charged for 2 hours. As noted by Clean Technica, 2 hours is roughly the amount of time it would take to unload the ship's cargo while docked. Oh...and Ironically, the world's first all-electric cargo ship is being used to move coal.
China Daily reports that the 230 foot long vessel is equipped with a 2,400 kWh lithium-ion battery, a cheaper and cleaner power supply. And Clean Technica notes that that battery is comprised of 1,000 individual lithium-ion packs, while "Adding enough power to carry more cargo is simply a matter of adding more battery packs."
China Daily reports that the 230 foot long vessel is equipped with a 2,400 kWh lithium-ion battery, a cheaper and cleaner power supply. And Clean Technica notes that that battery is comprised of 1,000 individual lithium-ion packs, while "Adding enough power to carry more cargo is simply a matter of adding more battery packs."
Because at least check China produces about 80% of it's power generation from burning coal.
http://www.chinafaqs.org/issue/coal-electricity
Remember: never trust some bullshit click bail green washing headline when you can easily check the facts for yourself.
As of 2016, it was down to 2/3rds. Like everywhere else, China's grid is changing fast.
"This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has got to go." -- Oscar Wilde on his deathbed
Yes, because internal combustion engines are made from fairy dust, and petroleum appears out of thin air.
People who complain about the horrors of lithium mining simply demonstrate that they have no clue how lithium is actually produced. The majority of the world's lithium supply is produced from salar brine. Look at it. The horror. The horror, right? They pump brine up to the surface into ponds, let it dry out to deposit unwanted salts (leaving a lithium-rich concentrate), then send that for refining. On many salars, the entire salar floods annually, wiping out the evaporation ponds, which they have to rebuild. Nature literally reclaims the "mine" annually. Its hard to picture a less environmentally impacting resource production process.
The remainder of lithium is produced from spodumene. Spodumene mines are listed as having no particular environmental impacts associated with them apart from the general impacts of hard-rock mining; the largest impact risk is listed as suspended solids in waterways - aka, silt from the rock crushers. Which is a risk from anything that crushes rock.
Do I even need to mention that there's not actually that much lithium in lithium-ion batteries, or that - as large boxes full of useful minerals - recycling rates will be nearly 100%?
And coal is in the progress of being replaced with solar and wind, whether you like that or not. In China, in the EU, and in the US. Some places have some other types of power that are also on the rise - for example, in the US it's "wind, solar, and natural gas" - but coal is in a death spiral everywhere.
"This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has got to go." -- Oscar Wilde on his deathbed
That's because A) they've been undergoing an exponential scaleup, meaning the quantities didn't become meaningful until recently, and B) it takes time to replace an entire electrical generation system. In 2016 alone China installed 35GW of solar capacity, for example, nearly doubling their total (coal is 943GW currently installed). It's clear that it's only a matter of time.
"This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has got to go." -- Oscar Wilde on his deathbed