China’s emissions targets not robust enough, U.S. energy chief says
China’s current emissions reduction targets are not as strong as they need to be, U.S. Deputy Secretary for Energy David Turk said Monday.
“I think every country needs to take a look at what it’s doing, especially in its implementation phase,” Turk told CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick at the COP28 summit.
“I’ve looked at the numbers for many, many years now. I don’t think their NDC is as robust and ambitious as it needs to be. They’re doing an awful lot in EVs and solar and wind, but if you’re also building out coal at the scale they’re doing, that’s not going to be good enough.”
“NDC” refers to “nationally determined contributions,” targets on emissions reductions that are submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change by countries every five years under a plan agreed at the landmark COP21 summit in Paris in 2015.
Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific review project, currently rates China’s climate targets as “highly insufficient,” and the U.S.’s as “insufficient.”
Turk said that at the recent Sunnylands meeting on climate change between the U.S. and China, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry had “put out his hand for the Chinese to embrace and to try to work together in areas where it makes sense to work.”
The U.S. and China need to “raise both of our levels of ambition, because we’re the two biggest economies and the two biggest emitters right now,” Turk added.
Companies must ‘step up’
On the attendance of companies like Exxon at COP, Turk told CNBC: “I think it is significant. And I think everybody needs to be at the table, we all need to be part of the conversation. But we also need to ask each other tough questions as well.”
Turk pointed to an agreement announced on Saturday which will crack down on methane emissions in the U.S. oil and gas industry, building on a 150-country pledge on the issue.
Turk said cutting methane emissions from oil and gas was the “biggest no brainer out there,” but it had taken too long to make progress.
Another example of a tough question that needed addressing, Turk said, was on Scope 3 emissions — a measurement of direct and indirection emissions.
“Many oil and gas companies, their Scope 3 emissions are 10 times Scope 1 and Scope 2 combined. So we need to have a real conversation on Scope 3, what is the plan to reduce those Scope 3 emissions? And that’s, I think, what’s missing at a national and COP and at a corporate level as well,” he said.
“I think companies really need to step up… They can’t just say, Oh, we’re just providing a product. What people do with the product — they’re going to burn that product, it’s going to release CO2 into the atmosphere, 63% of our emissions right now are from oil and gas. That’s an awful lot of emissions.”
Oil and gas companies are currently “making an awful lot of profit,” but only 1% of spending globally for clean energy is coming from oil and gas companies, he said.
“So follow the money, where are they investing? And some companies are investing, some companies aren’t investing as much.”
The U.S. government hopes that incentives, including the Inflation Reduction Act and the large subsidies included in it, will encourage more investment across carbon capture, hydrogen, geothermal, offshore wind and “other areas that oil and gas companies could be hugely, hugely helpful on,” he said. It is also important to “follow the money” to see where companies and influential corporate leaders are creating an uneven playing field through lobbying, he added.
Science is science
Turk finally addressed recent controversial comments made by COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber, who recently claimed there was “no science” behind targets for a phase out of fossil fuels.
“Science is science and numbers are numbers, right? And we’re seeing the worst impacts already that we’ve seen of climate change, but it’s only going to get worse. Even if we get our act together, we’ve got a limited amount of carbon budget. Right now we’ve got to make the numbers add up to get to net zero by mid century.”
“If people are not acknowledging that, appreciating that and have credible plans, including Scope 3 emissions from the oil and gas sector, then that’s not really taking these issues head on.”
Yadea, which has claimed the title of the world’s largest electric vehicle maker for seven years running, has just announced a new electric motorbike powered by the company’s innovative HuaYu sodium-ion battery technology.
Yadea has long dominated the electric two-wheeler and three-wheeler market globally, but has generally relied on both lithium-ion and lead acid batteries to power its vehicles in different markets.
The newly unveiled electric scooter uses Yadea’s recently introduced sodium battery technology, offering what the company says is outstanding performance in range, charging speed, and safety. Using the HuaYu Sodium Superfast Charging Ecosystem presented by Yadea, the battery can reach 80% charge in just 15 minutes, providing greater convenience for riders.
Yadea’s sodium battery has successfully passed more than 20 safety tests, many focusing on its resistance to fire and explosions under extreme conditions like punctures and compression.
Yadea’s new sodium battery offers an energy density of 145 Wh/kg and a lifespan of up to 1,500 cycles at room temperature, with the company rating it for a five-year useful lifespan. It also includes a three-year warranty for added assurance.
With excellent low-temperature capabilities, the battery retains over 92% of its discharge capacity at -20°C, making it well-suited for colder climates.
Sodium batteries present major advantages
Most electric vehicles used in the West, especially electric two-wheelers, rely on lithium-ion batteries for their high energy density. But sodium-ion batteries offer many benefits over traditional lithium-ion batteries.
Sodium is an abundant element on the planet and is easily accessible, unlike lithium, which is concentrated in specific regions and often expensive to extract. This abundance can make sodium-ion batteries cheaper to produce, reducing costs for EV manufacturers and potentially making electric vehicles more affordable.
Lithium mining also has environmental challenges, such as water depletion and habitat destruction. Sodium, on the other hand, can be sourced from seawater or common salts, offering a more sustainable and environmentally friendly option.
Sodium-ion batteries are less prone to overheating and thermal runaway compared to lithium-ion batteries. This makes them inherently safer for electric vehicles, reducing the risk of fires and improving consumer confidence in EV technology.
Sodium-ion batteries perform better than lithium-ion in cold climates. Lithium-ion batteries struggle with capacity retention in freezing conditions, but sodium batteries maintain efficiency, making them ideal for EVs in colder regions.
Sodium batteries still have challenges to overcome
While sodium-ion batteries are promising, they currently have a lower energy density than lithium-ion batteries, meaning they store less energy per unit of weight.
For EVs, this translates to shorter driving ranges for the same-sized battery. That’s especially important in electric two-wheelers like motorbikes and electric bicycles, which don’t have much extra space for storing bulky batteries.
However, advancements in cathode materials and battery architecture are quickly closing this gap, which Yadea has demonstrated. These sodium-ion batteries still can’t match the energy density of lithium-ion batteries, but as they continue to improve their energy density, the technology’s other major advantages provide encouraging signs for larger adoption in the industry.
Yadea’s status as a major electric motorbike maker also means that its adoption of sodium-ion battery technology could help lead the entire industry towards this battery chemistry, bringing safety and performance benefits along with it.
Last year I had the unique opportunity to visit one of Yadea’s global manufacturing sites.
To see inside the company’s massive and highly-automated manufacturing processes, check out the video below!
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At CES2025, the impressively built-out John Deere exhibit was all about automation. Autonomous job sites, autonomous farms … but it was this new, battery electric, autonomous lawn mowing robot that stole the show.
The self-driving Deere mower robot was positively dwarfed by the giant farm machinery surrounding it, but it continues to prove that humans will pack bond with anything as more than one burly-looking and grizzled man asked what its name was. (It’s Howard. I’ll fight you.)
For his part, Howard packs a 21.4 kWh battery pack that runs a suite of electric motors that includes a drive motor and three cutting blade motors spread across a 60 inch cutting deck – but it’s not the electric motors that make John Deere’s little robot mower cool, it’s the way it works.
See, instead of using “just” GPS data or “just” repeating a pre-recorded run, Howard can do something in between. The way it was explained to me, you would ride the stand-up mower around the perimeter of the area you wanted to mow, select a pattern, then hop off, fold up the platform, and let it loose. Howard mows just the way you would, leaving you to focus on edging, planting, or (let’s face it) schmoozing with the clients.
It’s exactly the sort of help landscapers are looking for.
But that should come as no surprise, of course. John Deere, perhaps more than most companies, knows its customer. “We’ve been in the turf business for 60 years — it’s a core part of Deere,” says Jahmy Hindman, chief technology officer at John Deere, explaining things beautifully. “The work that’s being done in this industry is incredibly labor intensive … they’re not just doing the mowing work. They’re doing the tree trimming, maintaining flowerbeds and all these other jobs. The mowing is table stakes, though, for them to get the business. It’s the thing they have to do in order to get the higher value work.”
Tim Lewis, lead engineer with the commercial automatous mower, told Lawn & Landscape that the industry in general has a high turnover rate as well, making it difficult to hang to people who know where one job ends and another begins. “There’s a lot of nuances it takes to do these jobs effectively,” he explains, “so “Autonomy can help with that.”
The John Deere autonomous commercial mower (there’s no snazzy alphanumeric, yet) leverages the same camera technology as other Deere autonomous machines, but on a smaller scale (since the machine has a smaller footprint). With two cameras each on the front, left, right, and rear sides of the little guy, he has a 360-degree view of the world and enough AI to lay down a pattern, avoid an obstacle, and shut off if it thinks it’s about to mow down something (read: someone) it shouldn’t.
John Deere will have Howard on display through tomorrow at CES in the LVCC’s West Hall. If you’re in town, be sure to go say hi.
John Deere CES2025
SUOURCE | IMAGES: John Deere; Electrek.
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