Canada plans to enforce an ambitious zero-emission vehicle sales quota by 2026

The Canadian government has announced enforceable quotas for zero-emission vehicle sales. By 2026, a fifth of all new passenger cars, trucks and SUVs sold in the country will need to be zero-emission models, such as electric or hydrogen fuel cell vehic…

Almost 200 nations promise to protect 30 percent of the planet’s land and oceans

Nearly 200 countries have agreed to protect 30 percent of Earth’s lands and oceans by 2030. The deal was reached early this morning at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal following two weeks of negotiations. The only holdouts to the deal were the US and the Vatican, though the Biden administration has a domestic plan to conserve 30 percent of US land and water by 2030. 

With the agreement, each participating country agrees to hitting over 20 environmental targets by the end of the decade. A key condition is the so-called 30×30 plan to protect at least 30 percent of land, inland water and coastal areas by 2030. That forms the basis of an international agreement similar to the 2015 Paris climate accord. 

Along with the protection of habitats, nations have pledged to reduce pesticide risks by 50 percent, reduce nutrient runoff from farms and the rate at which invasive species are introduced to ecosystems.

Nations now have eight years to stop the loss of biodiversity being driven by humans due rainforest destruction, species exploitation, pollution and more. Previous agreements, like the biodiversity targets set at Aichi, Japan in 2010, saw nations fail to achieve the goals set. This time, though, there’s a monitoring framework to keep track of progress. 

In addition to protecting species, the draft COP15 agreement urges nations to recognize and respect “the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, including over their traditional territories.” However, Amnesty International wrote that the deal was a “missed opportunity to protect indigenous peoples’ rights,” as it didn’t explicitly recognize their lands and territories as a separate category of conserved area.

Another point of disagreement was between wealthy and poor countries over funds. Nations in South America and Africa that house the world’s largest rainforests wanted assurances from rich countries that they’ll receive money to battle poaching, illegal deforestation and other issues, according to The Washington Post. 

At one point in negotiations, delegates from developing countries walked out of on talks over funding issues. The agreement must “align the resources and the ambitions,” said Columbia’s environmental minister Susana Muhamad. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s environment minister, Ève Bazaiba, added that “when it comes to fauna, we need to have the means to achieve this objective.” 

The COP15 agreement follows a breakthrough deal at the COP27 climate conference, approving a climate damage fund for developing nations. How well the plan will be implemented remains to be seen, though. “While agreements are great, if we’re going to save life on Earth, now we have to roll up our sleeves and do it,” the Center for Biological Diversity’s Tanya Sanerib wrote. “The planet faces an extinction crisis like none ever before witnessed by humankind, with 28 percent of species across the global facing extinction.”

California invests $2.6 billion to build 90,000 EV chargers

The California Energy Commission (CEC) will spend $2.9 billion to accelerate the state’s zero-emission transportation strategy. In an announcement spotted by Reuters, the agency detailed an investment plan it estimated would result in California buildi…

South Carolina EV battery recycling plant could salvage parts for a million cars a year

The push to recycle electric vehicle batteries just gained some momentum. Redwood Materials has unveiled plans to build an EV battery recycling plant on the outskirts of Charleston, South Carolina. The roughly 600-acre facility (previewed in a render above) will break “end-of-life” batteries down to their raw metals and rebuild them as the anodes and cathodes that are crucial to EVs. The parts should support up to 1 million EVs per year. That could not only reduce waste, but reduce the costs and risks associated with importing those components from overseas.

The plant will reportedly amount to a $3.5 billion investment that includes 1,500 jobs. Like Redwood’s Nevada campus, the Charleston hub will rely solely on clean energy and all-electric operations. The company claims its approach lowers CO2 emissions for producing the battery components by about 80 percent compared to the output from the usual Asian supply chain.

Construction should start for the South Carolina plant in the first quarter of 2023. The first recycling process should be ready by the end of that year, Redwood says. The company plans to scale afterward.

The locale choice is strategic. Redwood says South Carolina is part of a growing “Battery Belt” where EV cell manufacturing will ramp up to “hundreds” of gigawatt-hours of production capacity by 2030. Its seaside port helps, too. The state further hosts factories for car manufacturers that include BMW and Redwood partner Volvo, so a brand could quickly repurpose spent batteries for vehicles rolling off the line.

More importantly, Redwood appears to have broader support from the auto industry. On top of Volvo, it has partners like Ford, Toyota and battery makers that include Panasonic and Envision AESC. Large-scale battery recycling facilities are still relatively rare in the US — Li-Cycle’s new Alabama plant can process batteries for about 20,000 EVs per year. This expansion could make recycling far more commonplace, and make a better case for electric cars as the environmentally conscious options.

Scientists achieve fusion ignition, a major milestone in clean energy production

Scientists have just crossed one of the most important thresholds in the quest for fusion energy. A team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has created the first known fusion reaction with a net energy gain — that is, it produced more energy than it consumed and resulted in ignition. The researchers achieved the feat on December 5th, when they used 192 lasers at the National Ignition Facility to blast a cylinder containing frozen hydrogen surrounded by diamond.

The reaction, which generated a flurry of X-rays, struck a fuel pellet of deuterium and tritium with 2.05 megajoules of energy. That, in turn, led to a wave of neutron particles and 3.15 megajoules of output. That gain was ‘only’ equivalent to about 1.5lbs of TNT, but that was enough to meet the criteria for fusion ignition.

The development has been a long time coming. The National Ignition Facility started work in 2009, but it wasn’t until 2014 that the installation’s laser-based fusion technology produced a meaningful volume of energy. Progress accelerated in the past year, however. Lawrence Livermore generated a much larger amount of energy in a test last August, producing an output equivalent to 70 percent of the energy needed to perform the reaction. An attempt in September generated 1.2 megajoules using the 2.05-megajoule blast.

The lab and the Energy Department are quick to caution that “many” advancements are still necessary before fusion reactors are practical enough to power homes. During a presentation, scientists said they needed to improve the number of reactions per minute, simplify the process and otherwise make it easily repeatable. The net energy gain also doesn’t include the entire system required to run the laser systems. And of course, the developers need to improve scaling — a reactor would have to power enough households to justify its existence.

The National Ignition Facility also isn’t intended as a generator research program. It’s using fusion to test and maintain the US nuclear arsenal. Other organizations and companies will need to cooperate on civilian uses.

The Energy Department is in the midst of rebooting a coordinated fusion power effort, however. During the event, officials also noted that a functional plant wasn’t as far off as you might think. While they didn’t commit to a timeframe, they said it was less than the 50 or 60 years they might have predicted in the past. You might see the first commercial fusion reactor in your lifetime, to put it another way.

The technology could be vital to limiting global warming and otherwise fighting climate change. While renewable energy sources like solar and wind power are more eco-friendly than coal, they don’t always meet demand and can require large amounts of land. Solar also isn’t as effective in regions where sunlight can be limited. Sufficiently powerful fusion reactors could achieve the dream of clean powerplants that have enough capacity to serve large populations without the radioactive waste of nuclear facilities.