Interesting articles of the Week
Cool energy tech is cool energy tech, no matter what it is: Honda and Toyota (and a few others, but these in particular) have been soldiering on in the development of hydrogen-fuelled fuel-cell vehicles despite naysayers and governmental insistence that battery power is the way to go (for e.g., the government of Canada has dumped tens of billions into EV-battery facilities and almost none into fuel-cell production, despite the fact that China (and 20 other countries) will eat our lunch in the EV-battery manufacturing space). When it comes to auto tech, yeah I’ll bet on Honda/Toyota vs. the Canadian government with my very last dollar. Honda recently announced a next generation fuel-cell powerplant that reduces costs by half, doubles durability, and more than triples the power density. Now that’s impressive. Somewhat comically, while previous iterations of Honda’s fuel-cell tech were developed in conjunction with GM, Honda specifically notes that this new version was developed without the help of GM. Looks like it was a good idea to chase a certain chef out of the kitchen? Also this year, Toyota continued to throw it’s considerable weight behind fuel-cell tech, seeking to create a “hydrogen society”, recently announced a commercial-truck sized unit with increased performance, fuel efficiency and cost reduction compared to prior versions, and with the same durability as conventional diesel engines. Definitely refreshing to see these engineering powerhouses push for alternatives to the pure electric world that has so many challenges. Honda story here, Toyota story here.
A few years ago, there were a few interesting series on cable TV – CNN, History Channel – created by a guy named Mike Rowe. The shows were “Dirty Jobs” and “Somebody’s gotta do it”. I sincerely hope you don’t need ChatGPT to suss out what the shows were about, but do what you gotta do. Don’t eat batteries while you’re at it. Anyway Rowe recently spoke in an interview about the true magnitude of the shortage of skilled tradespeople is in the US (and no doubt Canada as well). Rowe told the interviewer, “I got a call from a company called BlueForge Alliance…in charge of something called the maritime industrial base…15,000 individual companies, all of whom are tasked with delivering thermonuclear-powered submarines to the US Navy” at a rate of three per year. BlueForge called Rowe since he is well connected to the trades industry and asked if he could help them source tradespeople. Rowe asked how many they need, there aren’t many around…and BlueForge said they needed 100,000 people. In one weird little sidebar industry (ok not necessarily weird and sidebar if there’s a war or something but short of that, not exactly central to the US economy). Rowe pointed out also that the auto industry is has 80,000 unfilled job openings. Bring manufacturing back to the US? (Or Canada?) That’s just one of the massive hurdles facing any such plans. The future belongs to those with a wrench in one hand and a toilet plunger in the other. And I don’t think AI is going to solve this equation. Interview here.
It would not surprise anyone to hear that China is taking full advantage of such labour imbalances (British Columbia just farmed out construction of several new ferries to a Chinese company, despite howls of protest from all over). We all know how China is dominating many sectors these days, and two opposing camps – both the pro- and anti- renewables cohorts – love to point out that China is adding, respectively, record amounts of solar power and building record numbers of coal fired power plants. What a country, it’s a posterchild for the entire spectrum. But anyway when we step back and look at the numbers as a whole, China’s power consumption is just staggering. Consider this comparison between the US and China’s total electricity generation. In 1985, The US produced 2,657 TWh of electricity, and China produced 411 – a ratio of 6 to 1. In 2024 however, the US produced 4,387 TWh, and China produced…10, 073 TWh. In other words, in that time span, China added more than twice as much electricity generation as the entire US’s current total. The next time you hear someone in the west crowing about the west’s “decarbonization”, shove their face in this chart here. (If that last sentence sounds a little rude…it is. You want people writing this crap or AI? Watch for such trademarks, Until AI trains off this stuff, then look out b/c it’s going to get a lot uglier.)
Explore the lighter side of energy, and think of it as you never have before in The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity – the energy story for those that don’t live in the energy world, but want to find out. And laugh. Available at Amazon.ca, Indigo.ca, or Amazon.com.
Email Terry here. (His personal energy site, Public Energy Number One, is on hiatus until there are more hours in the day.)