The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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In what can be considered the single largest purchase of electric vehicles in the world, Hertz Corp. has put in an initial order for 100,000 Tesla EVs by the end of 2022, along with investing in new charging infrastructure across the car rental company's global operations. In addition, Hertz has teamed up with seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady to showcase how it is making EV rentals fast, seamless, and more accessible as the company accelerates its commitment to leading...
With its sights set on putting around 10 million fully electric vehicles on global highways over the next decade, the BMW Group is investing in an innovative process to sustainably and efficiently produce the lithium that will go into the batteries powering the BMWs, Mini Coopers, and Rolls-Royces rolling off its assembly lines in the coming years. To help support environmentally sound and resource-efficient extraction of lithium, BMW Group's venture capital fund, BMW i...
A team of researchers at the University of Exeter, Minviro, the British Geological Survey, and the Circular Economy Solutions Unit has recently determined the benefits of utilizing a life cycle assessment (LCA) or "cradle to grave" evaluation in the ongoing endeavor to facilitate and improve green mining techniques. Generally used to assess the environmental impacts associated with the life cycle of commercial products, from extraction to the use and disposal of said...
The Biden administration sees domestic mining as an important segment at the front end of the critical supply chains it endeavors to strengthen, as long as the mining is carried out at the highest environmental, labor, and sustainability standards. The "Executive order on America's Supply Chains" signed by President Joe Biden in February tasked federal agencies to carry out a 100-day assessment of the vulnerabilities to United States supply chains and to find solutions to...
From $15 billion to bolster clean energy research to incentives aimed at encouraging Americans to buy electric vehicles, the Biden administration's proposed $174 billion investment in the United States EV industry is a once-in-a-generation strategy that is missing a key piece – a plan to secure the minerals needed to manufacture these vehicles and the batteries that go in them. In a new fact sheet that outlines its plan to supercharge U.S. transportation and manufacturing, t...
Policymakers must take swift and decisive action to ensure that the minerals critical to the global transition to renewable energy and electric vehicles are not the bottleneck that prevents governments from meeting their climate goals, according to a new report by the International Energy Agency. "Today, the data shows a looming mismatch between the world's strengthened climate ambitions and the availability of critical minerals that are essential to realizing those...
House Republicans have introduced legislation aimed at breaking the United States' dependence on foreign countries such as China for the minerals and metals critical to high-tech, renewable energy and other sectors of America's economy. Introduced by U.S. Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) and U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), the American Critical Mineral Exploration and Innovation Act of 2020 includes mine permitting reform, advanced critical minerals development strategies and...
Global interest has begun for recent development in the renewable energy race with an unlikely contender – miniaturized nuclear reactors. This relatively new nuclear reactor design, known as a small modular reactor, or SMR, is based off already well-established nuclear technology principles, providing a new direction for companies seeking to create smaller, more strategically located mini-reactors in an increasingly competitive market. The appeal of these small and medium s...
The world has never been more aware of the importance of conserving resources and reducing carbon emissions. Nowhere is this growing consciousness more keenly felt than in the energy sector. Companies need to navigate increasingly demanding taxation regimes and government policies as well as the negative perception connected to fossil fuel taking root among the general population and brought to the fore by the likes of Greta Thunberg and the Extinction Rebellion. Besides the...
While the history of human innovation is a series of discoveries, each building on the last, there are certain "eureka moments" that mark a shift in the trajectory of mankind – taming fire, stone toolmaking, Bronze Age metalworking, the printing press, and harnessing electricity to name a few. The history books may one day reflect on these opening decades of the 21st century as one of those rare occasions that human innovation makes a leap that necessitates a new chapter be w...
Global governments and industries are setting increasingly ambitious targets for the phasing out of fossil fuel-burning automobiles in favor of electric vehicles charged with green energy. Achieving these grand climate objectives, however, is going to require an equally bold strategy to ensure there are plentiful supplies of the new generation of energy minerals and metals critical to building this revolution in the way the world generates and uses energy. The World Bank...
The global transition to electric vehicles plugged into renewable energy sources is powering enormous demand for graphite, the single largest ingredient in lithium-ion batteries. "Graphite demand increases in both absolute and percentage terms since graphite is needed to build the anodes found in the most commonly deployed automotive, grid, and decentralized batteries," the World Bank penned in a 2020 report, "The Mineral Intensity of the Clean Energy Transition." According...
Considering the almost unfathomable quantities that will be needed to power the global shift to low-carbon energy and electric mobility, copper is the most critical of the minerals and metals that have not been deemed critical by the United States or the European Union. How much demand will it take to push an abundant and widely produced metal like copper to the level of criticality? A doubling of current demand would likely be sufficient, and many analysts are forecasting...
"Please mine more nickel," these four words from Tesla CEO Elon Musk reverberated across the global mining sector and raised awareness of how fundamental nickel is to the lithium-ion batteries powering hundreds of millions of electric vehicles to come off Tesla and traditional automaker assembly lines over the next two decades. "Tesla will give you a giant contract for a long period of time if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way," Musk implored...
Reminiscent of America's gilded age, the world is priming itself for a new era of technology and energy centered on the electricity that sparked the imaginations of visionaries such as Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. This new era, however, sets aside more than a century of burning fossil fuels in favor of new clean sources of the electricity that will power human innovation into the 21st century and beyond. Solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal are but a few of the methods...
A heavy reliance on imports for a long list of minerals and metals critical to American supply chains could be a stumbling block for the Biden administration's ambitious "Build Back Better" agenda. "From the largest infrastructure plan since the Eisenhower interstate highway system, to an aggressive plan for a national energy transition, the Biden administration's agenda will require an immense amount of minerals," National Mining Association President and CEO Rich Nolan...
