Nathaniel Horadam’s Post

Buying an #electricvehicle and supporting policies that accelerate adoption don't just reduce your own carbon footprint, they support America's EV and #battery #supplychain objectives through consumer demand signals that ultimately drive major capital investments. Our DOE funding programs and the IRA tax credits (30D/45X) are providing tremendous support to #criticalminerals producers and downstream #manufacturers, but they alone cannot provide the commercial security needed to incentivize investment decisions. This is why, if you care about America's competitiveness against China in the energy technologies that will define the 21st Century, it's not enough to just maintain our current incentives. You need political leadership that continues to push consumers toward EV purchases, and that doesn't indulge in EV FUD to serve oil and gas interests. America's future depends on it. Robinson Meyer sums it up perfectly here: "When you switch to an electric vehicle, you are doing several things. First, you are cutting off a source of demand for the oil industry. Second, you are creating a new source of demand for the EV industry. Third, you are generating new demand for the companies and infrastructure — such as charging stations — that will be needed for the entire transition." https://lnkd.in/e8mBhB3E

America has sufficient #lithium resources to meet its entire domestic #battery demand for decades, and needs only to achieve commercialization breakthroughs over the next several years to unlock it. The past several years of boom (and bust) have illustrated which regions and resources are likely to lead our production growth, and catalyzed meaningful investment into direct lithium extraction (#DLE) technology development. It increasingly feels like we're on the cusp of those critical breakthroughs. The Smackover Formation will almost certainly figure prominently in that story. "He likes that DLE doesn’t require tearing up the earth as the lignite coal mines in nearby Harrison County once did. And he’s proud that it could facilitate domestic production of an element vital to the U.S. economy, at a time when congressional leaders have expressed concerns about China's potential dominance in global lithium supplies. Extracting the metal, he figures, could make Cass County relevant in the twenty-first century. “The future is batteries and bandwidth.”" #criticalminerals #supplychain #manufacturing #shale #EVs #cleanenergy https://lnkd.in/emcaMf_d

Another reminder your state DOT is grossly exaggerating the benefits of that fiscally irresponsible multibillion-dollar highway project they're forcing on your city. And certainly not being honest about the costs...including increased road deaths, noxious emissions, flooding, and land value destruction. ------------ “The US urban roadway system is overbuilt,” the authors write in the Journal of the American Planning Association. “As a result, expanding roadway systems is unlikely to have anything close to the economic benefits that state and federal policymakers hope for.” "Highway expansion advocates argue that adding more lanes can improve mobility by relieving traffic jams and reducing travel times. But the researchers found that, even assuming a generous estimate of how much time might be saved by new roads for both cars and freight trucks, the monetary value of that savings did not exceed its cost in urban areas." https://lnkd.in/eN878Z2T

What if we converted every school bus depot into a zero-emission peaker plant? 🔋 ⚡ 🚌 "California’s roughly 25,000 school buses could provide more than a gigawatt of electricity if converted to battery power, according to the California Energy Commission." #schoolbus #virtualpowerplants #electricvehicles #transportation #mobility #sustainability #cleanenergy https://lnkd.in/gqNT77Mk