19/02/2018

Disturbing Before-And-After Images Show What Major US Cities Could Look Like In The Year 2100

Business Insider - Melia Robinson

Washington, DC.
Google Earth/Climate Central LARGE IMAGE
The world’s oceans levels are rising at faster and faster rates as waters warm and ice sheets melt.
Researchers, led by University of Colorado-Boulder professor Steve Nerem, looked at satellite data dating back to 1993 to track the rise of sea levels.
Their findings, published in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that sea levels aren’t just rising – that rise has been accelerating over the last 25 years.
Even small increases can have devastating consequences, according to climate experts. If the worst climate-change predictions come true, coastal cities in the US will be devastated by flooding and greater exposure to storm surges by the year 2100.
Research group Climate Central has created a plug-in for Google Earth that illustrates how catastrophic an “extreme” sea-level rise scenario would be if the flooding happened today, based on projections in a 2017 report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency.
You can install the plug-in (directions here) and see what might become of major US cities.
In a worst case scenario, flooding caused by polar melting and ice-sheet collapses could cause a sea level rise of 10 to 12 feet by 2100, NOAA reported in January 2017.
The Glacial Ice Sheet, Greenland. Photo: Joe Raedle/ Getty Images  LARGE IMAGE
Here’s Washington, DC today. The famed Potomac River runs through it.
Google Earth/Climate Central LARGE IMAGE
And here’s what Washington, DC, might look like in the year 2100 — as seen on Climate Central’s plug-in for Google Earth. Ocean water causes the river to overflow.
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The National Mall drew “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration,” at Trump’s swearing-in, according to Press Secretary Sean Spicer. It sits at the foot of the US Capitol.
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Future inaugurations wouldn’t quite be the same.
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In 2017, President Trump stood in the Rose Garden at the White House and announced his intentions to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, a deal between 195 countries intended to mitigate global warming.
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In 2100, the Rose Garden could have an oceanfront view.
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New York City is situated on one of the world’s largest natural harbours.
Google Earth/Climate Central LARGE IMAGE
The Hudson River could flood the city’s perimeters and low-lying areas like the West Village.
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The Financial District encompasses the offices of many major financial institutions, including the New York Stock Exchange and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
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Extreme sea level rise could devastate Wall Street. Battery Park would be a water park.
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San Francisco has a huge concentration of wealth and power in the technology world.
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It’s also a peninsula that’s prone to flooding.
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San Francisco International Airport serves over 53 million travellers every year.
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In 2100, flyers might have better luck flying into Las Vegas.
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Charleston, South Carolina, already has a flooding problem. The Southern city is flat and at low elevation, which makes it vulnerable to extreme flooding and storm surges.
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In 2100, you might need a boat to reach the city’s center.
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Shopping at the Charleston City Market is a must-do for tourists visiting the area.
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But the long row of red-roofed buildings could be submerged under water by 2100.
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Los Angeles, which has the third highest elevation of all major US cities, might fare better.
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The projections show the Pacific Ocean climbing up the boardwalk, but that’s about it.
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New Orleans is no stranger to the problems that come along with sea level rise.
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By 2100, The Big Easy could disappear under water. An estimated 500,000 people will have to leave the area in the next century in order to stay above ground.
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After flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina destroyed 80% of homes in the New Orleans area, tens of thousands of people sought refuge at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
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But the arena used as a “shelter of last resort” might not survive extreme sea level rise.
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Boston is the only state capital in the continental US that borders an ocean. Extreme sea level rise could cause the Charles River to overflow and spill onto city streets.
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Here’s what Boston might look like in the year 2100. Massachusetts General Hospital would have to be abandoned, while Boston Public Garden would be soaked through.
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Many of the country’s top universities sit along Boston’s Charles River.
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The education world could say goodbye to the Harvard Business School, Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Northeastern University, among others.
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President Trump has spent a decent part of his presidency in Palm Beach, Florida.
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He owns the Mar-a-Lago luxury resort and club, better known as the “Winter White House.”
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If sea levels rose by as much as 12 feet, the Mar-a-Lago estate would not fare well.
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But Trump will be out of office by the time anything like that happens.
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How Colour Changing Animals Are Rebelling Against Climate Change

National Geographic -  Liz Langley

A new study finds hot spots where animals that turn white for the winter could thrive in a less snowy world.
An Arctic fox stalks the coast of Churchill, Manitoba. PHOTOGRAPH BY MATTHIAS BREITER, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE
It's a fashion fact that the colder your environment the more winter accessories you need.
Even some animals have two coats: one for summer to match the bare ground and a winter white to match the snow.
But what if there is no snow and you can’t take off your coat?
In a new study in Science, scientists examined 21 species in 60 countries that shed brown coats and turn white to match the snow. As global climate change leads to less snowfall, many of these animals are turning white when there is no snow—making them more vulnerable.
But the study found some possible refuges for these creatures: Geographic regions that are home to colour-changing species with both winter colour types (picture a forest full of snowshoe hares, some brown, some white).
By protecting such areas, humans could give the species to spread their darker-coat genes and outsmart climate change.

Winter Coats
Some species sporting seasonal camouflage are the snowshoe hare, Arctic fox, and ptarmigan.
Their colour-changing ability is "a trait that evolution has shaped to carry these animals through climate change over deep time," says study leader L. Scott Mills, a wildlife biologist at the University of Montana.
Snowshoe hares, for instance, once ranged as far south as North Carolina, but now only extend to West Virginia due to lessening snow—a pattern researchers have found in other colour-changing species, says co-author Jennifer Feltner, a Ph.D candidate at the University of Montana.
The amount of sunlight in a day triggers the hares to change their coat, regardless of whether there is snow or not. Conspicuous without their white camo, these hares are easily killed off by predators.
"Mismatch kills," Mills says—and hares have a lot of predators. Indeed, Feltner says her lab mates have dubbed them “the cheeseburgers of the forest,” because they’re on everyone’s menu, from owls to mountain lions.
A snowshoe hare leaps through the snowy landscape in its winter coat. PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBBIE GEORGE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE
The hares also don't know they don’t blend in and don’t alter their behaviour even after losing their camouflage, Mills says, likely a trait of most of these colour-morphing species.
Ptarmigans are another story. Because the birds rely on colour to attract mates, Mills says, male ptarmigans that turn white will stay that way, snow or not, until they mate.
After that “they find a mud hole or even feces and roll around and turn themselves brown,” regaining their camouflage after using their conspicuous colour to attract females, Mills says.

Fostering Evolution
Mills proposes that, because climate change is happening so quickly, "the same selective forces that led to winter brown and white morphs could be a tool for conservation."
For instance, the hot spots the team identified—including many parts of northern North America and Eurasia, such as the Pacific Northwest—are prime candidates for protection, and thus a chance for colour-changing species a chance to recover.
Rock ptarmigans sport their winter plumage in Sweden's Sarek National Park. PHOTOGRAPH BY ERLEND HAARBERG, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE
"Evolution happens fastest when populations are large and when they are connected," Mills says.
Keeping populations of winter-white and winter-brown animals connected would allow them "to disperse the more protective, darker coat genes to the nearby winter white populations to aid their adaptation as snow cover becomes less frequent."
Fostering large population sizes and natural connectivity across these landscapes “should be our first and biggest effort," Mills adds.

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To Stop Climate Change, Educate Girls And Give Them Birth Control

Wired - 

When women are empowered to make their own family planning decisions, the effects can lead to lower carbon emissions. Getty Images/Wired
Climate change is a ubiquitous hydra, a many-headed beast that affects everyone and everything in some form. Solutions to climate change range from the effective and the practical to the potentially catastrophically dangerous—but, in this somewhat heated debate, a potent weapon in our arsenal is falling by the wayside: the empowerment of women.
Last year a coalition of scientists, economists, policymakers, researchers, and business people published Project Drawdown, a compendium of ways to prevent carbon dioxide from escaping skywards. Drawing from a plethora of peer-reviewed research, the document ranks 80 practical, mitigating measures—along with 20 near-future concepts—that could push back the oncoming storm.
Ranked in order of carbon emissions locked down by 2050, the usual suspects made the list. A moderate expansion of solar farms (number 8), onshore wind turbines (number 2), and nuclear power (number 20) would all save tens of billions of tons of equivalent carbon dioxide emissions. Increasing the number of people on plant-rich diets (number 4) and using electric vehicles (number 26) are effective carbon-cutting measures often proposed by climate hawks, and rightly so. The top spot went to managing refrigerants like HFCs, which are incredibly effective at trapping heat within our atmosphere.
But two lesser-known solutions also made this most practical of lists: the education of girls (number 6) and family planning (number 7). This is a stunning revelation, one that couldn’t be more pertinent, and yet, for the most part, discussions of mitigation and de-carbonization focus heavily on other matters, from the perceived perils and bona fide benefits of nuclear power, to just how quickly solar power is proliferating.
The link between the education of girls and a smaller carbon footprint isn’t as intuitively obvious as, say, phasing out fossil fuels. But dig a little deeper, and the evidence is overwhelming. It’s clear that getting more girls into school, and giving them a quality education, has a series of profound, cascading effects: reduced incidence of disease, higher life expectancies, more economic prosperity, fewer forced marriages, and fewer children. Better educational access and attainment not only equips women with the skills to deal with the antagonizing effects of climate change, but it gives them influence over how their communities militate against it.
Although the education of girls in a small number of countries is at, or approaching, parity with boys, for most of the planet, this remains distressingly elusive. Poverty, along with community traditions, tends to hold back girls as boys are prioritized.
Then there's family planning, something that’s indivisible from the education of girls. The planet is overpopulated, and the demands of its citizens greatly exceed the natural resources provided by our environment.
Contraception and prenatal care is denied to women across the world, from those in the United States, to communities in low-income nations. It’s either not available, not affordable, or social and/or religious motives ensure that it’s banned or heavily restricted. As a consequence, the world’s population will rise rapidly, consume ever more resources, and power its ambitions using fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide will continue to accumulate in the atmosphere.
The education of girls and family planning can be considered as a single issue involving the empowerment of women in communities across the world. Drawdown calculated that, by taking steps toward universal education and investing in family planning in developing nations, the world could nix 120 billion tons of emissions by 2050. That’s roughly 10 years’ worth of China’s annual emissions as of 2014, and it’s all because the world's population won't rise quite so rapidly.
It's farcical that this isn’t forming a major part of the debate over climate change mitigation. It’s not entirely clear why this is the case, but I’d suspect that regressive societal attitudes, along with the tendency of commentators to focus on the battle between different energy sectors, play suppressive roles in this regard.
Project Drawdown isn't the only group that has recently tied population growth to climate change. A study published last summer also found that having just one fewer child is a far more effective way for individuals in the developed world to shrink their carbon footprint than, say, recycling or eating less meat. For women in wealthy countries, these decisions are often freely made, and fertility rates in those countries are already fairly low. In low-income countries, such individual agency—not to mention contraception—is frequently absent, and fertility rates remain high.
Just as policymakers, climate advocates, and science communicators should pay attention to Drawdown’s findings, individuals should also do what they can to make sure such a solution comes to pass. Non-government organizations, like Hand In Hand International, Girls Not Brides, and the Malala Fund aren’t just uplifting women, but they’re helping to save the planet too, and they deserve support.
It's a grim assessment of civilization that, in 2018, humans are still grappling with gender equality. The world would clearly benefit if women were on par with men in every sector of society. We shouldn’t need any more convincing, but the fact that the social ascension of women would deal a severe blow to anthropogenic warming should be shouted from the rooftops.
Incidentally, the solutions in Drawdown also had associated economic benefits or costs associated with them. If 10 percent of the world's electricity was generated using solar farms, then it’d save $5 trillion by 2050, for example. No such value could be put to educating girls and family planning—two human rights with incalculable benefits.

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18/02/2018

Newest Youth Climate Lawsuit Targets Washington State

Climate Liability News - Karen Savage

Despite Washington State's recent history of climate action, advocates say it isn't enough, leading to the latest youth lawsuit. Photo credit: David Ryder/Getty Images
Thirteen young people are suing the state of Washington for violating their constitutional rights by failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect them from the impacts of climate change.
The plaintiffs say the state is preventing them from enjoying the same rights, benefits and privileges of past generations and is violating the state’s public trust doctrine.
In the lawsuit, filed Friday in Kings County Superior Court, the plaintiffs allege that the state of Washington, Gov. Jay Inslee and several state agencies have known for a long time that younger generations are living in “dangerous climate conditions” but have acted with “shocking deliberate indifference and abdication of duty” by exacerbating the climate crisis and delaying meaningful action to reduce greenhouse gases.
Several of the plaintiffs in the suit were also plaintiffs in Foster v. Ecology, which asked the court in 2014 to force the Washington Department of Ecology to consider a petition to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The court acknowledged the youth had the constitutional right to live in a healthful environment with the benefit of public trust resources and ruled that the state was not adequately reducing its greenhouse gas emissions.
The case resulted in the adoption of Washington’s Clean Air Rule in 2016, however plaintiffs say the rule took too long and did not go far enough. It  exempts the state’s only coal-fired generating station and other big polluters and the plaintiffs say it is not aggressive enough to protect future generations from the dire consequences of climate change.
The rule’s compliance requirements were also suspended in December as the result of a ruling by the Thurston County Superior Court.
“Defendants have a systemic policy, custom and practice of authorizing projects, activities, and policies that cause emissions of dangerous and substantial levels of GHG pollution into the atmosphere,” wrote Andrea Rogers, an attorney with Our Children’s Trust, who is representing the young plaintiffs in the new case.
A spokesperson for Inslee’s office said officials  are still reviewing the complaint.
“It is worth noting that Gov. Inslee has spent a considerable part of his life and career dedicated to fighting climate change, fighting for renewable energy, clean air and clean water,” she said, adding that several bills currently before the state legislature would strengthen these efforts.
Representatives from the other defendant agencies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This lawsuit that we’re filing should open the Washington government’s eyes to the fact that they have to do more than tell the public that we need to use cleaner energy. They need to stop causing climate change and use clean energy,” said 16-year-old plaintiff India B., who recently had to evacuate her home due to wildfires made worse by climate change.
The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction that would force Washington to develop an enforceable and science-based state climate recovery plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the climate. Plaintiffs are also asking the court to monitor the state’s progress toward meeting the plan’s goals similar to court monitoring in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education civil rights decision and the Brown v. Plata prison overcrowding case.
“This lawsuit gives the Washington state government a chance to take the lead and commit to the citizens it serves and the lives it must protect,” said 17-year-old Aji Piper, who is also one of 21 young plaintiffs who are suing the federal government in Juliana v. United States.
After filing the suit, Rogers sent a letter to Inslee on behalf of the plaintiffs, expressing their willingness to work with him, but stressing that time is of the essence.
“These youth have no more time to barter and plead with those whose metric is political feasibility instead of constitutional duty and scientific necessity,” said Rogers in the letter.
Climate change is already taking its toll on Washington State. Last summer wildfires raged across the state, burning more than 300,000 acres, filling the air with a smoky haze and making breathing difficult, particularly for those with asthma or other respiratory conditions. Sea levels and temperatures are rising, leading to acidification of Pugent Sound, threatening the state’s shellfish industry.
“Climate change is impacting my ability to continue participating in my family’s traditions – things like salmon fishing, digging camas roots and picking berries for food,” said 13-year-old plaintiff Kailani S., a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.
“Our land is being destroyed by climate change. I’m simply calling on the state of Washington to do its job to protect my future, my culture’s future, and generations to come,” she said.

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Alaska's Bering Sea Lost A Third Of Its Ice In Just 8 Days

InsideClimate News - Sabrina Shankman

Globally, sea ice is at record lows as the polar regions warm faster than the rest of the planet. Along the Alaska coast, it's affecting people's lives. 
The Bering Sea is a volatile place, with powerful storms and changing sea ice. Here, a ship plows through the ice toward Nome, Alaska, in January 2012. Credit: U.S. Coast Guard/Getty Images
In just eight days in mid-February, nearly a third of the sea ice covering the Bering Sea off Alaska's west coast disappeared. That kind of ice loss and the changing climate as the planet warms is affecting the lives of the people who live along the coast.
At a time when the sea ice should be growing toward its maximum extent for the year, it's shrinking instead—the area of the Bering Sea covered by ice is now 60 percent below its average from 1981-2010.
"[Bering sea ice] is in a league by itself at this point," said Richard Thoman, the climate science and services manager for the National Weather Service Alaska region. "And looking at the weather over the next week, this value isn't going to go up significantly. It's going to go down."


In places like Saint Lawrence Island, where subsistence hunting is a way of life and where there are no land mammals to hunt, thin ice can mean the difference between feeding a family and having to worry about where the next meal will come from.
Villagers on Saint Lawrence Island who participate in an autumn whale hunt—and who rely on whale meat for survival—just got their first whale of the season in early February, Thoman said. The whaling season is usually finished by Thanksgiving, but this year, as the ice formed later than ever before, the whales did not migrate past the island like they usually do.
"They were starting to get into panic mode," Thoman said of the island residents. "Some of these communities are reeling."
The satellites that scientists use to monitor the sea ice look at the extent of the ice, but they don't read the thickness of it. "The satellite says there's ice there, but it might not be ice that people can work with," Thoman said. "In some cases it's not even stable enough for marine mammals to haul out on."

The Arctic Loses Its Cool
The Arctic is often referred to as the world's refrigerator—cool temperatures there help moderate the globe's weather patterns. This winter, which has seen deep freezes at lower latitudes while temperatures have soared in the North, it seems like the refrigerator may have come unplugged.
The last two years were the Arctic's warmest on record as the region continued to warm at about twice the global average. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration noted in its annual Arctic Report Card in December that Arctic sea ice has been declining this century at rates not seen in at least 1,500 years.

"It used to be just the summer when the ice was breaking low records, but we're starting to see winter really get into the act now," said Mark Serreze, the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
"Both the atmosphere and the ocean are really conspiring to keep sea ice levels down," he said.

Another Record-Low Year?
As Arctic sea ice limps along toward its maximum extent, which it usually hits in mid-March, it appears to be on course for the fourth consecutive year of record lows.
"There's actually now open water in the southernmost Chukchi Sea, just north of the Bering Strait," Thoman said. The only other time on record that the Chukchi Sea has had open water this time of year was in 1989, he said.
On the Atlantic side, sea ice is also low in the Barents and Greenland seas. And in January, a tanker ship carrying liquefied natural gas from Russia became the first commercial ship to cross the Arctic's northern sea route in winter.

With sea ice levels also low in the Antarctic, the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported this month that global sea ice extent was at a record low.
"As a scientist, it's really shocking to see some of this and try to wrap your mind around what's happening and the pace that it's happening," Thoman said.

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NSW Climate Change Fund Underspent More Than $250m In Past Three Years

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

The Berejiklian government's Climate Change Fund has collected in excess of a quarter of a billion dollars more than it has spent in the past three years, delaying investment the Greens say should have gone on bolstering communities against the effects of global warming.
Details of the underspend of $252.9 million from 2014-17 are contained in the fund's latest annual report that was released without fanfare late last year.
Climate change impacts are likely to get worse, with storms expected to intensify, and sea levels to keep rising. Photo: Peter Rae
Revenue for the fund last year alone reached $289.6 million, collected from electricity providers - Ausgrid, Endeavour and Essential Energy.
Outlays for the year totaled $160.6 million, with about $94.3 million going towards the Solar Bonus Scheme Reimbursement. The next largest item was $12.1 million spent on enhanced bushfire management.
Justin Field, the Greens Treasury spokesman, said the government continued to "short-change" the state by not using money expresses earmarked to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and helping the community adjust to the inevitable impacts from a warming climate.
“We’re living with climate disruption now," Mr Field said. "Every day the NSW Government delays or under invests in action causes risk to people, communities and our environment."
“The money is there and has been allocated, they just aren’t spending it and there has never been a more critical time to take action to reduce emissions," he said, adding that the past three years had been the warmest since records began.
A spokeswoman for Environment Minister Gabrielle Upton highlighted the cost of the Solar Bonus Scheme but did not detail what the government was planning to do with surplus money accumulating in the Climate Change Fund.
The Solar Bonus Scheme "was an ineffective Labor policy", the spokeswoman said.
The program cost taxpayers $1.24 billion on 148,194 new solar rooftop systems between its start in 2010 and its closure at the end of 2016, the spokeswoman said.
Since the closure of the Scheme almost 235,000 solar systems have been installed by households across NSW – far exceeding the 148,000 installed when the Scheme was running.
As at December 2017, 400,000 households and small businesses, the equivalent of one in six houses, have solar PV in NSW.
This massive boost in uptake reflects price falls as solar technology develops, showing that households don’t need costly Government subsidies to invest in solar.
In addition to households NSW leads Australia in large-scale solar, with three of the country’s largest operating solar farms based here and a further seven under construction.

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17/02/2018

Charging Ahead: How Australia Is Innovating Battery Technology

The Conversation - 

Since sodium is abundant, battery technology that uses it side-steps many of the issues associated with lithium batteries. Paul Jones/UOW, Author provided
Lithium-ion remains the most widespread battery technology in use today, thanks to the fact that products that use it are both portable and rechargeable. It powers everything from your smartphone to the “world’s biggest battery” in South Australia.
Demand for batteries is expected to accelerate in coming decades with the increase in deployment of electric vehicles and the need to store energy generated from renewable sources, such as solar photovoltaic panels. But rising concerns about mining practices and shortages in raw materials for lithium-ion batteries – as well as safety issues – have led to a search for alternative technologies.
Many of these technologies aren’t being developed to replace lithium-ion batteries in portable devices, rather they’re looking to take the pressure off by providing alternatives for large-scale, stationary energy storage.
Australian companies and universities are leading the way in developing innovative solutions, but the path to commercial success has its challenges.

 Australian alternatives

 Flow batteries
In flow batteries the cathode and anode are liquids, rather than solid as in other batteries. The advantage of this is that the stored energy is directly related to the amount of liquid. That means if more energy is needed, bigger tanks can be easily fitted to the system. Also, flow batteries can be completely discharged without damage – a major advantage over other technologies.
ASX-listed battery technology company Redflow has been developing zinc-bromine flow batteries for residential and commercial energy storage. Meanwhile, VSUN Energy is developing a vanadium-based flow battery for large-scale energy storage systems.
Flow batteries have been receiving considerable attention and investment due to their inherent technical and safety advantages. A recent survey of 500 energy professionals saw 46% of respondents predict flow battery technology will soon become the dominant utility-scale battery energy storage method.
Redflow ZBM2 zinc-bromine flow battery cell. From Redflow

Ultrabatteries
Lead-acid batteries were invented in 1859 and have been the backbone of energy storage applications ever since. One major disadvantage of traditional lead-acid batteries is the faster they are discharged, the less energy they can supply. Additionally, the lifetime of lead-acid batteries significantly decreases the lower they are discharged.
Energy storage company Ecoult has been formed around CSIRO-developed Ultrabattery technology – the combination of a lead-acid battery and a carbon ultracapacitor. One key advantage of this technology is that it is highly sustainable – essentially all components in the battery are recyclable. Ultrabatteries also address the issue of rate-dependent energy capacity, taking advantage of the ultracapacitor characteristics to allow high discharge (and charge) rates.
These batteries are showing excellent performance in grid-scale applications. Ecoult has also recently received funding to expand to South Asia and beyond.
Ecoult Ultrabatteries photographed during installation on site. From www.ecoult.com
Repurposed storage solutions
Rechargeable batteries are considered to have reached their “end of life” when they can only be charged to 80% of their initial capacity. This makes sense for portable applications – a Tesla Model S would have a range of 341 km compared to the original 426 km. However, these batteries can still be used where reduced capacity is acceptable.
Startup Relectrify has developed a battery management system that allows end of life electric vehicle batteries to be used in residential energy storage. This provides a solution to mounting concerns about the disposal of lithium-ion batteries, and reports that less than 5% of lithium-ion batteries in Europe are being recycled. Relectrify has recently secured a A$1.5m investment in the company.
Relectrify’s smart battery management system. From Relectrify
Thermal energy storage
Energy can be stored in many forms – including as electrochemical, gravitational, and thermal energy. Thermal energy storage can be a highly efficient process, particularly when the sun is the energy source.
Renewable energy technology company Vast Solar has developed a thermal energy storage solution based on concentrated solar power (CSP). This technology gained attention in Australia with the announcement of the world’s largest CSP facility to be built in Port Augusta. CSP combines both energy generation and storage technologies to provide a complete and efficient solution.
1414 degrees is developing a technology for large-scale applications that stores energy as heat in molten silicon. This technology has the potential to demonstrate very high energy densities and efficiencies in applications where both heat and electricity are required. For example, in manufacturing facilities and shopping centres.

Research and development

 Sodium-ion batteries
At the University of Wollongong I’m part of the team heading the Smart Sodium Storage Solution (S4) Project. It’s a A$10.5 million project to develop sodium-ion batteries for renewable energy storage. This ARENA-funded project builds upon previous research undertaken at the University of Wollongong and involves three key battery manufacturing companies in China.


Researchers at the University of Wollongong believe they have found revolutionary a way to store renewable energy using sodium. Jonathan Knott explains.

We’ve selected the sodium-ion chemistry for the S4 project because it sidesteps many of the raw materials issues associated with lithium-ion batteries. One of the main materials we use to manufacture our batteries is sodium chloride – better known as “table salt” – which is not only abundant, but also cheap.
We’ll be demonstrating the sodium-ion batteries in a residential application at University of Wollongong’s Illawarra Flame House and in an industrial application at Sydney Water’s Bondi Sewage Pumping Station.
Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach – the location for the demonstration of sodium-ion batteries. Paul Jones/UOW
Gel-based zinc-bromine batteries
Gelion, a spin-off company from the University of Sydney, is developing gel-based zinc-bromine batteries – similar to the Redflow battery technology. They are designed for use in residential and commercial applications.
The Gelion technology is claimed to have performance comparable with lithium-ion batteries, and the company has attracted significant funding to develop its product. Gelion is still in the early stages of commercialisation, however plans are in place for large-scale manufacturing by 2019.

Challenges facing alternatives
While this paints a picture of a vibrant landscape of exciting new technologies, the path to commercialisation is challenging.
Not only does the product have to be designed and developed, but so does the manufacturing process, production facility and entire supply chain – which can cause issues bringing a product to market. Lithium-ion batteries have a 25 year headstart in these areas. Combine that with the consumer familiarity with lithium-ion, and it’s difficult for alternative technologies to gain traction.
One way of mitigating these issues is to piggyback on established manufacturing and supply chain processes. That’s what we’re doing with the S4 Project: leveraging the manufacturing processes and production techniques developed for lithium-ion batteries to produce sodium-ion batteries. Similarly, Ecoult is drawing upon decades of lead-acid battery manufacturing expertise to produce its Ultrabattery product.
Some challenges, however, are intrinsic to the particular technology.
For example, Relectrify does not have control over the quality or history of the cells it uses for their energy storage – making it difficult to produce a consistent product. Likewise, 1414 degrees have engineering challenges working with very high temperatures.
Forecasts by academics, government officials, investors and tech billionaires all point to an explosion in the future demand for energy storage. While lithium-ion batteries will continue to play a large part, it is likely these innovative Australian technologies will become critical in ensuring energy demands are met.

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Lethal Heating is a citizens' initiative