Technological adaptations

Solar now ‘cheaper than grid electricity’ in every Chinese city, study finds

CarbonBrief 8/12/2019

Solar power has become cheaper than grid electricity across China, a development that could boost the prospects of industrial and commercial solar, according to a new study.
Projects in every city analysed by the researchers could be built today without subsidy, at lower prices than those supplied by the grid, and around a fifth could also compete with the nation’s coal electricity prices.
They say grid parity – the “tipping point” at which solar generation costs the same as electricity from the grid – represents a key stage in the expansion of renewable energy sources.

Scotland Is Now Generating So Much Wind Energy, It Could Power Two Scotlands

ScienceAlert 7/17/2019

Specifically, turbines generated 9.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity between January and June, enough to supply power to 4.47 million homes – not bad for a country that has around 2.6 million homes to its name.

It's a record high for wind energy in Scotland, and it means the turbines could have provided enough electricity for every dwelling in Scotland, plus much of northern England as well, for the first six months of the year.

Stanford researchers want to reduce climate change by converting methane to CO2 into the atmosphere

Business Insider 06/06/2019

In Nature Sustainability, Jackson explained that, in theory, a sort of large, complex fan could be used to filter out methane from the air in the atmosphere.This methane would then be converted into carbon dioxide in a chemical process involving heat and microporous zeolites.

Methane removal and atmospheric restoration

Nature.Com 05/20/2019

Zeolites and other technologies should be evaluated and pursued for reducing methane concentrations in the atmosphere from 1,860 ppb to preindustrial levels of ~750 ppb. Such a goal of atmospheric restoration provides a positive framework for change at a time when climate action is desperately needed.

China claims to have 'cracked' low cost production of lithium, political implications could be huge

DailyKos 06/01/2019

In an article from May 14, the SCMP reports on an effort by the Chinese government to more easily separate lithium from other metals that are found in the same brines where it is produced. Currently, sorting lithium salts away from salts formed by magnesium requires multiple steps as the compounds are both physically similar and hard to separate with common chemical processes.

China cracks cheap lithium production in electric car breakthrough

South China Morning Post 05/14/2019

The cost of extracting the mineral has been slashed to a “record low” of 15,000 yuan (US$2,180) per tonne by the new process, a Chinese government report said.
That compares to an international price for lithium ranging from US$12,000 to US$20,000 per tonne – and a long-term contract price of about US$17,000 – over the past year, according to some industrial estimates.