News round-up, July 18, 2023
Quote of the days…
Pioneers in Green Aviation: Norwegian Electric Planes
The aviation industry, widely acknowledged for its significant environmental impact, has become a focal point in the battle against climate change. In this regard, Norway has emerged as a potential pioneer, as it aims to transition all short-haul flights to electric planes by 2040.
Spiegel Most read…
Modi and India’s Diaspora: A Complex Love Affair Making Global Waves
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has tried to fuse his image to the economic and political power of Indians abroad. They voice both pride and worry in return.
NYT By Damien Cave, reporting from Washington, Silicon Valley and Sydney, Australia, July 18, 2023Russia Stops Ukraine Grain Deal, Shaking World Food Markets
Moscow, which has repeatedly complained that the U.N.-brokered agreement is one-sided in Ukraine’s favor, said it could return to the deal if its demands were met.
NYT By Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Ivan Nechepurenko, Liz Alderman and Farnaz Fassihi, July 17, 2023Gem Hunters Found the Lithium America Needs… Maine Won’t Let Them Dig It Up
The world’s richest known lithium deposit lies deep in the woods of western Maine, in a yawning, sparkling mouth of white and brown rocks that looks like a landslide carved into the side of Plumbago Mountain.
TIME BY ALANA SEMUELS AND KATE COUGH / MAINE MONITOR, JULY 17, 2023 Germany adds 60% more onshore wind power in H1 but pace seen too slow
The drop in Russian fossil fuel exports to Germany last year highlighted the hazards of relying on imports and emphasized the urgency of implementing a local energy plan.
Reuters by Vera Eckert, July 18, 2023Britain opens small nuclear reactor competition, launches new nuclear body
Ambitious Plan: Boosting Nuclear Power to Meet Climate Targets
Reuters by Susanna Twidale, July 18, 2023Pioneers in Green Aviation: Could Norwegian Electric Planes Be a Model for the Rest of the World?
The global aviation industry has a massive climate problem, and many are looking to Norway for a possible solution. The country wants all short-haul flights to be conducted with electric planes as early as 2040. But doubts persist about whether the technology will be ready.
Spiegel by Marcus Efler, 18.07.2023
At the COA Spring Gala 2023, Andrés Gluski, the CEO & President of AES and Chairman of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, presented President Lacalle Pou with the prestigious Gold Insigne. This award was given in recognition of President Lacalle Pou's outstanding leadership in successfully transforming Uruguay into a prominent technology and innovation hub, all while upholding a thriving democracy and robust economy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India at a rally in an arena in Sydney, in May.Credit...Matthew Abbott for The New York TimesModi and India’s Diaspora: A Complex Love Affair Making Global Waves
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has tried to fuse his image to the economic and political power of Indians abroad. They voice both pride and worry in return.
NYT By Damien Cave, reporting from Washington, Silicon Valley and Sydney, Australia, July 18, 2023On the final night of his visit to Washington in late June, after 15 standing ovations in Congress and an opulent White House dinner tailored to his vegetarian tastes, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India set time aside to court and be cheered by another important constituency: the Indian diaspora.
Backstage at the Kennedy Center, as business leaders in bespoke suits and fine silk saris filtered into a 1,200-seat theater, Mr. Modi met with a handful of entrepreneurs. Most were young, educated in India, made rich in America, and eager to connect with the man who presents himself as a guru to the world, preaching how this is “the century of India.”
“Thank you for lifting the image and spirits of Indian Americans,” Umesh Sachdev, 37, told the prime minister, explaining that he was the founder of Uniphore, an artificial intelligence business valued at $2.5 billion, with offices in India and California. Mr. Modi tapped Mr. Sachdev’s shoulder and exclaimed “waah,” or wow in Hindi.
With an emphasis on national pride, Mr. Modi and his conservative Hindu-first Bharatiya Janata Party have cultivated a surprisingly strong relationship with India’s successful diaspora. The bond has been strengthened by a global political machine, supercharged under Mr. Modi with party offices in dozens of countries and thousands of volunteers. And it has allowed Mr. Modi to fuse his own image — and his rubric of elevating India — with superstar executives and powerful, often more liberal constituencies in the United States, Britain, Australia and many other nations.
No other world leader seems to draw such a steady flow of diaspora welcome parties, most recently in Paris, New York and Cairo, or giant audiences, including 20,000 fans at a rally in Australia in May. Mr. Modi was in France on Friday as the guest of honor at the annual Bastille Day parade, and with elections next year in India, the pattern has been set.
“The B.J.P. leadership wants to show its strength abroad, to create strength at home,” said Sameer Lalwani, a senior expert on South Asia at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
But in some corners of the diaspora, strains are emerging. Many Indian professionals who cheer when Mr. Modi boasts that India has become the world’s fifth-largest economy — who gush about new infrastructure and more modern cities — also fear that his government’s Hindu-supremacist policies and growing intolerance of scrutiny will keep India from truly standing as a superpower and democratic alternative to China.
Vinod Khosla, a prominent Silicon Valley investor, who has often pushed for closer U.S.-India relations, said in an interview that India’s greatest risk is a disruption to economic growth from the instability and inequality inflamed by Hindu nationalism. Others worry that Mr. Modi, in a bubble of political celebrity and religious certitude, is ignoring the fragility of positive momentum in a complex, diverse and volatile nation of 1.4 billion people.
“The demographics only work for India if there is progressivism and inclusion,” said Arun Subramony, a private equity banker in Washington with digital, health and other investments in India. “The party has to make an extra effort to make clear that India is for everyone.”
Techno-Utopian Dreams
The bond between the diaspora and the B.J.P. began with pragmatism — and with the first B.J.P. prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who promoted information technology as the solution to India’s development problems in the late 1990s.
Kanwal Rekhi, the first Indian American to take a company public on the Nasdaq, heard Mr. Vajpayee’s speeches and thought: This guy gets it. He asked for a meeting and arrived in New Delhi in April 2000, leading a group called The IndUS Entrepreneurs, or TiE.
At the prime minister’s residence, there were paratroopers on the roof and tanks nearby, vestiges of a recent conflict with Pakistan. Mr. Rekhi was there promising that entrepreneurship could bridge divides — India and Pakistan, Muslims and Hindus. Mr. Vajpayee welcomed their techno-utopianism.
“He asked: ‘What is your sense of India and Indians?’ Then he said, ‘Our future is very bright, and you need to show us the way,’” Mr. Rekhi said in an interview.
So began a relationship with the diaspora that reversed decades of rancor, when those who left with university degrees were seen as traitors to India’s needs. Once Mr. Vajpayee made clear that he saw Indians overseas as guides and consultants, that is what they became.
TiE made several recommendations, bolstered by Stanford professors, and Mr. Vajpayee followed their suggestions. In 2001, for example, his government loosened its monopoly on internet infrastructure, allowing more private competition.
Naren Bakshi, another tech executive in the meetings, recalled that Mr. Vajpayee insisted that the diaspora also play a direct role.
“If you care for India,” he told them, “come to India.”
Mr. Bakshi bought a home near where he had grown up in the state of Rajasthan, and he has spent four months a year in India ever since.
In the early 2000s, he also helped found the India Community Center in Milpitas, Calif., a sprawling complex in a South Asian suburb of San Jose that has become a hub for yoga, Muslim and Hindu holidays, weddings — and, increasingly, meetings with visiting Indian officials.
“People here are very much involved,” Raj Desai, the center’s president, said over tea one recent morning.
In Silicon Valley and elsewhere, Overseas Friends of the B.J.P., the party’s international arm, has become an established presence. Helping with immigration issues and other challenges, its members supplement and compete with India’s understaffed corps of around 950 foreign service officers — a fraction of the roughly 16,000 who work for the United States.
Hindus from the diaspora celebrating the Ganesh Festival in 2015 in Jersey City, N.J. Mr. Vajpayee made clear that he saw Indians overseas as guides and consultants for their country.Credit...Kirsten Luce for The New York Times
Last year — even though voting in India’s elections must be done in person — the B.J.P. sponsored events with party officials in Texas, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and North Carolina, as well as several events at the India Community Center in California, according to its mandatory registration filings as a foreign agent.
Visiting officials also bring together smaller groups for dinners and discussion. Mr. Sachdev, the Uniphore chief executive, said he had gone to several such gatherings, adding that the conversations focused on business policy more than politics.
He and other attendees said they had never been asked to contribute to B.J.P. campaigns.
But political scientists believe that the B.J.P. and Hindu organizations draw a significant flow of money from the diaspora. In 2018, Mr. Modi’s government rushed through Parliament a law allowing Indians living abroad and foreign companies with subsidiaries in India to make undisclosed political donations. Spending on India’s 2019 campaign topped $8 billion, making it the most expensive election in the world.
“There’s an absence of transparency, and it’s by design,” said Gilles Verniers, a senior fellow at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.
In the United States, the B.J.P. registered its presence — a requirement for any foreign political party — only after questions were raised about the financing of a giant “Howdy Modi” celebration in 2019 in Houston with President Donald J. Trump.
In Australia, the organization still does not appear in the foreign transparency register, despite the costs associated with Mr. Modi’s rally in May at Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena, where hundreds of people lined up outside for selfies with twin Modi cardboard cutouts framing a giant sign with “We ❤️ Modi” in bright white lights.
Visitors lining up to take photos with a cardboard cut out of Mr. Modi during a rally in Sydney. Groups had reached the event by bus and flights chartered by a local B.J.P. chapter.Credit...Matthew Abbott for The New York Times
“He’s the leader of the century,” said Meera Rawat, after snapping a photo with one of the cardboard Modis.
Her group had reached Sydney on a bus chartered by a local B.J.P. chapter. Several flights were also chartered by the party.
Asked about the process, B.J.P. officials in Australia said everything was “fully funded by the local Indian community and businesses.”
Albel Singh Kang, secretary of the Australian Sikh Association, said his group had initially been recruited for the event. When organizers declined to identify its funders, he passed. Indian Muslim leaders also stayed away, noting that members of Mr. Modi’s party have called for Muslims to be murdered — without strong condemnation from the prime minister.
Pushing for Change
Many Indians overseas fret about bloodshed in India, where religious minorities make up 20 percent of the population, and where Hindu mobs are regularly accused of lynching people, mostly Muslims, for their food, style of dress, or interfaith marriages. But India’s emigrant families also worry about violence leeching into the countries where they have moved.
In 2021, men armed with bats and hammers attacked four Sikh students in a car in Sydney. After one of the men served a six-month sentence, he returned to India, where he received a hero’s welcome. Tensions among Indian immigrants in Britain, Canada and the United States have also been rising in recent years, along with vandalism and threats.
“The fact is, there are divisions within India, and they are bound to express themselves because politics doesn’t stop at the national shores,” said C. Raja Mohan, a senior fellow with the Asia Society Policy Institute in Delhi.
Rising concerns about polarization are often overlooked amid the Modi pageantry. At the diaspora event in Sydney, Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, compared Mr. Modi to Bruce Springsteen, calling India’s leader “The Boss,” to huge cheers.
Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc., and his wife, Anjali Pichai, at the White House in June. Mr. Modi relies on an exceptionally successful diaspora to spread the message of a strong India.Credit...Samuel Corum for The New York Times
In Washington, where 7,000 Indian Americans joined him in an exuberant celebration on the White House lawn, Mr. Modi said at a news conference that discrimination against minorities did not exist under his government. A few hours later, human rights activists gathered outside the gate, including Muslims who had fled to the United States after facing persecution in India. The TV crews had already moved on.
Behind the scenes, American officials say there has been more nudging of Mr. Modi.
Ro Khanna, co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, who represents the district that includes the India Community Center, said that he had spoken to Mr. Modi about the importance of pluralism.
“I want us to be very much focused on strengthening the U.S.-India relationship under the principle of India’s founding and our founding,” Mr. Khanna said, “and not a celebration of any particular individual.”
Some business leaders say that Mr. Modi deserves their unflagging support. “What’s important to me is, has he been able to put India on a trajectory of growth and global leadership?” said Mr. Sachdev of Uniphore. The United Nations recently reported that India’s economy had lifted 415 million people out of poverty in the past 15 years.
Others have started mixing praise with pragmatic concern. Mr. Khosla, the prominent investor, said it was time to recognize that the government’s favoring of Hindus “can take attention off the principal path of economic progress, and set it back, and set back global relationships.”
Mr. Modi with President Joe Biden last month. Behind the scenes, American officials say there has been more nudging of Mr. Modi about the importance of pluralism, along with other topics.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Even in Washington’s supportive diaspora crowds, there was a blend of pride and appeals for moderation, for equal opportunity and constructive critique.
Mr. Subramony, the private equity banker, said he grew up in southern India without regular water or electricity, in a compound of 10 families practicing four different religions. He called Mr. Modi “a very quick learner” who would hopefully defend India’s more tolerant values.
“It’s also our responsibility, the people who are feeding Modi, who are being inspired by what is going on in India,” he said. “It is our duty to make him change.”
…”I had the privilege of attending the AmChamChile meeting with former President Lagos and gaining valuable insights into his experience in the negotiations of the Chile-US Trade and Development Agreement. It is truly remarkable to think that two decades have already passed since those negotiations concluded. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to AmChamChile for generously sharing their invaluable insights and knowledge with us. Thank once again.
Javier Dib
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of AES Andes
Image: Ukraine is a major exporter of foodstuffs, and Africa, in particular, relies on grain stored in silos like these, in Marianske, in the southern Dnipro region, in June.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York TimesRussia Stops Ukraine Grain Deal, Shaking World Food Markets
Moscow, which has repeatedly complained that the U.N.-brokered agreement is one-sided in Ukraine’s favor, said it could return to the deal if its demands were met.
NYT By Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Ivan Nechepurenko, Liz Alderman and Farnaz Fassihi, July 17, 2023Russia said on Monday it was withdrawing from a wartime agreement to allow grain exports from Ukraine through the Black Sea until its demands to loosen sanctions on its own agricultural exports were met, upending a deal that has helped stabilize global food prices and alleviate shortages in parts of Africa and the Middle East.
The agreement, known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative, was struck a year ago, brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, to alleviate a global food crisis after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia had blockaded Ukrainian ports, blocking ships from carrying its grain and sending global prices soaring to record highs. The deal has been extended three times, most recently in May. The latest extension expired on Monday.
The United Nations’ secretary general, António Guterres, said he was “deeply disappointed” by Moscow’s decision, and that millions of people facing hunger, as well as consumers confronting a cost-of-living crisis, would “pay a price.” He also said he had sent proposals last week to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to facilitate Moscow’s demands. Mr. Putin never responded directly, a U.N. spokesman said.
Russia has repeatedly complained about the agreement, which it calls one-sided in Ukraine’s favor. Moscow has said that Western sanctions, imposed because of Moscow’s devastating war, have restricted the sale of Russia’s agricultural products, and Moscow has sought guarantees that free up those exports.
In April, Russia’s Foreign Ministry also listed other demands to renew the grain deal: reconnect the state-owned Russian Agricultural Bank to the international SWIFT messaging service that is critical for cross-border payments; lift restrictions on maritime insurance and on the supply of spare parts used in agricultural machinery; end sanctions against fertilizer companies and the people linked to them; and restore an ammonia pipeline that crosses Ukraine.
The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, who announced on Monday that the Black Sea grain agreement was “halted,” said, “As soon as the Russian part is fulfilled, the Russian side will immediately return to the implementation of that deal.”
Russia’s announcement came hours after a deadly attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge linking the occupied Crimea Peninsula to mainland Russia. Mr. Peskov said the decision to suspend the grain deal was not connected to the attack.
Ukraine is one of the world’s major exporters of wheat, corn, sunflower seeds and vegetable oil. It has exported 32.9 million tons of grain and other food under the initiative, according to U.N. data. Under the agreement, ships are permitted to pass by Russian naval vessels that kept other vessels from using Ukraine’s ports since the start of Russia’s war. The ships are inspected off the coast of Istanbul, in part to ensure they are not carrying weapons.
The effects of the suspended grain deal were quickly apparent. It rattled wheat markets, seesawing prices and exposing vulnerable countries in Africa and the global south to the prospect of a new round of food insecurity.
Chicago wheat futures, a barometer for global prices, briefly jumped more than 4 percent as the Kremlin’s move jeopardized a key trade route to global markets for grain from Ukraine. Later, prices swung to more than 1 percent lower for the day.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told reporters at the State Department on Monday: “I hope that every country is watching this very closely. They will see that Russia is responsible for denying food to people who are desperately needy around the world.”
John Kirby, a spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, called Russia’s move a “military act of aggression” and said that the United States was already seeing a rise in global wheat, corn and soybean prices.
“We urge the government of Russia to immediately reverse its decision,” he added.
Russia’s decision appears to be part of a broader effort by Mr. Putin to reassert an aura of unassailable authority after a failed mutiny by the Wagner mercenary group, said Timothy Ash, a senior strategist at BlueBay Asset Management in London and an expert on Russia and Ukraine.
“It will hurt specific countries dependent on these exports,” Mr. Ash said. But beyond that, “it shows how weak Putin is after the Wagner coup: He is now desperate to take any bit of leverage he can.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that Moscow had broken its agreement with the United Nations and with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, rather than with his country, given that Ukraine had made a separate deal with the two mediators over grain. In remarks conveyed by his press office, Mr. Zelensky added that Ukraine was ready to restart shipments if the United Nations and Turkey agreed.
With Black Sea ports closed again, Ukraine may have to redouble its use of alternative routes, exporting grain by truck, train and river barge — journeys that take a longer time than shipping by sea, and cannot handle the same volume.
Mr. Blinken said that the United States would help Ukraine find other means of export, but that “it’s really hard to replace what’s now being lost as a result of Russia weaponizing food.”
Mr. Erdogan said he would speak to Mr. Putin about the agreement and signaled hope that it could be revived. “Despite the statement today, I believe the president of the Russian Federation, my friend Putin, wants the continuation of this humanitarian bridge,” Mr. Erdogan said in Istanbul.
The deal between Ukraine and Russia — which is also a major global supplier of grain, oil and other affordable food products — is particularly important in 14 African nations that depend on the two nations for half of their wheat imports, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. Eritrea is fully dependent on them.
When the grain deal began in July 2022, Célestin Tawamba, the chief executive officer of La Pasta, the largest flour and pasta producer in Cameroon, said, “The noose was tightening, so the deal should help us breathe.”
The initial agreement allowed Ukraine to restart the export of millions of tons of grain that had languished for months. Food prices have dropped over 23 percent from their peak in March 2022, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Price Index. The accord has allowed vital food products to be exported from Ukrainian ports to 45 countries on three continents, the United Nations said.
But again and again, before each negotiated extension has run out, Russia has signaled it might withdraw from the agreement. Last year, after accusing Ukraine of attacking its warships in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol with a swarm of drones, Russia pulled out, halting participation in inspections that were part of the agreement. Then it rejoined in a matter of days.
The collapse of the grain deal dominated the U.N. Security Council’s session on Ukraine on Monday. China, an ally of Russia’s, stopped short of directly condemning Russia for withdrawing from the deal but called on both sides to resume negotiations to restore the pact.
Mr. Guterres said earlier that to help meet Russia’s demands, he had sent Mr. Putin proposals to “remove hurdles” affecting its financial transactions. He said the United Nations had proposed enabling a subsidiary of the Russian Agricultural Bank — one of several institutions barred by Western sanctions from SWIFT because of Russia’s aggression — to regain access with the European Commission, and that the agency had built a bespoke payment mechanism outside of SWIFT for the bank through JP Morgan.
The U.N. spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, said that Russia’s response to the letter apparently came in the form of Monday’s announcement. Mr. Guterres said, however, that the United Nations intended to start negotiating a new grain proposal with Mr. Putin.
Despite Russia’s move, analysts say, some factors may prevent food prices from surging to the staggering levels seen just after Russia invaded Ukraine.
For one thing, the global commodity price outlook is weaker than a year ago because of a faltering economic recovery in China. A global cost-of-living crisis has been eroding demand more generally, Mr. Ash, the strategist, said. Supply chain stresses are also easing, and manufacturing and production costs have cooled, according to an analysis by Oxford Economics, a research institute.
Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist at the financial services firm StoneX, said that Russia was still dumping cheap wheat on the global market, “so we are not running out of wheat right now.”
“This particular development today may not do a lot to risk world hunger,” he said, “but the continual escalation with no resolution in sight means the risks are still growing.”
Image: Germán & CoCooperate with objective and ethical thinking…
Mary and Gary Freeman stand in a pit in Newry, Maine, where they have excavated 700 tons of the lithium-bearing mineral spodumene under an exploratory permit, on June 6. The site, also known as Plumbago North, contains some of the largest specimens of spodumene ever uncovered, with some measuring up to 36 feet in length. The state of Maine currently bars them from further extracting the rock. /Garrick Hoffman—The Maine Monitor/Editing by Germán & CoGem Hunters Found the Lithium America Needs. Maine Won’t Let Them Dig It Up
The world’s richest known lithium deposit lies deep in the woods of western Maine, in a yawning, sparkling mouth of white and brown rocks that looks like a landslide carved into the side of Plumbago Mountain.
TIME BY ALANA SEMUELS AND KATE COUGH / MAINE MONITOR, JULY 17, 2023 Mary Freeman and her husband Gary found the deposit five years ago while hunting for tourmaline, a striking, multi-colored gemstone found in the region.
The Freemans make their living selling lab supplies through the Florida-based company they founded 40 years ago, Awareness Technology. But their true love is digging for gemstones, which has brought them for years to Mary’s home state of Maine, the site of some of the best tourmaline hunting in the world.
Since 2003, they’ve been buying up property parcels, studying core samples and old geological maps to determine where to try digging next, then spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on blasting and equipment. The couple has dug more than a mile of tunnels in pursuit of beautiful stones, and many of their finds—like blue elbaite and rich watermelon tourmaline—have wound up on display at the Maine Mineral & Gem Museum in nearby Bethel.
Now, the Freemans want to expand this pit, near the town of Newry, Maine, so they can mine spodumene, crystals that contain the lithium the U.S. needs for the clean energy transition. The timing of their discovery, in what has been named Plumbago North, is remarkable; the Freemans have stumbled across one of the only hard-rock sources of lithium in the U.S. at a time when the material is desperately needed for the clean energy transition. By 2040, the world will need at least 1.1 million metric tons of lithium annually, more than ten times what it currently produces, according to projections by the International Energy Agency. Should the Maine deposit be mined, it could be worth as much as $1.5 billion, a huge windfall for the Freemans and a boon to the Biden Administration’s efforts to jumpstart more domestic mining, processing, and recycling of critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements to reduce the U.S.’ dependence on China. This is one of the few lithium deposits in the U.S. currently found in hard rock, which means it is higher-quality and faster to process than lithium mined from brine.
“I consider myself an environmentalist,” says Mary, who on a recent rainy visit to the test quarry, was wearing jeans, a sweater, and hiking boots, her white hair pulled into a low ponytail. Most of the country’s critical minerals are mined elsewhere and processed in China, she adds. “I think [the U.S.] should try to be a little bit more self-sufficient.”
But like just about everywhere in the U.S. where new mines have been proposed, there is strong opposition here. Maine has some of the strictest mining and water quality standards in the country, and prohibits digging for metals in open pits larger than three acres. There have not been any active metal mines in the state for decades, and no company has applied for a permit since a particularly strict law passed in 2017. As more companies begin prospecting in Maine and searching for sizable nickel, copper, and silver deposits, towns are beginning to pass their own bans on industrial mining.
“This is a story that has been played out in Maine for generations,” says Bill Pluecker, a member of the state’s House of Representatives, whose hometown of Warren—a 45-minute drive from the capital city of Augusta—recently voted overwhelmingly in favor of a temporary ban on industrial metal mining after a Canadian company came looking for minerals near a beloved local pond. “We build industries based on the needs of populations not living here and then the bottom drops out, leaving us struggling again to pick up the pieces.”
Mainers often invoke the Callahan Mine in the coastal town of Brooksville as a warning. Tailings from the mine, which operated for several years in the late 1960s, were disposed of in a pile next to a salt marsh and creek. The former mine is now a Superfund site, and a 2013 study by researchers at Dartmouth College found widespread evidence of toxic metals in nearby sediment, water and fish. Cleanup costs, borne by taxpayers, are estimated between $23 million and $45 million.
“Our gold rush mentality regarding oil has fueled the climate crisis,” says State Rep. Margaret O’Neil, who presented a bill last session that would have halted lithium mining for five years while the state worked out rules (the legislation ultimately failed). “As we facilitate our transition away from fossil fuels, we must examine the risks of lithium mining and consider whether the benefits of mining here in Maine justify the harms.”
The Freemans’ point out that they plan to dig for the spodumene, then ship it out of state for processing, so there would be no chemical ponds or tailings piles. They liken the excavation of the minerals to quarrying for granite or limestone, which enjoys a long, rich history in Maine.
Advocates for mining in the U.S. argue that, since the country outsources most of its mining to places with less strict environmental and labor regulations, those harms are currently being born by foreign residents, while putting U.S. manufacturers in the precarious position of depending on faraway sources for the minerals they need. Though there are more than 12,000 active mines in the U.S., the bulk of them are for stone, coal, sand, and gravel.
There is only one operational lithium mine in the U.S., in Nevada, and one operational rare earth element mine, in Mountain Pass, Calif., meaning that the U.S. is dependent on other countries for the materials essential for clean energy technologies like batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels. Even after they’re mined, those materials currently have to be shipped to China for processing since the U.S. does not have any processing facilities.
“If we’re talking about critical metals and materials, we’re so far behind that it’s crazy,” says Corby Anderson, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines. “It’s the dichotomy of the current administration—they have incentives for electric vehicles and all these things, but they need materials like graphite, manganese, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and copper. The only one we mine and refine in this country is copper.”
The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the problems of faraway supply chains; as U.S. consumers shopped online in their homes, the goods they bought, mostly from Asia, experienced lengthy delays at clogged ports. What’s more, diplomatic tensions with China motivated the U.S. government to seek other potential sources for mining, material processing, and recycling.
That’s why, in the pandemic’s aftermath, the Biden Administration launched an initiative to secure a Made in America supply chain for critical minerals. It included billions in funding for companies trying to mine and process critical minerals domestically.
The rocks in Plumbago North would seem to help provide a domestic supply chain for critical minerals; they are thought to be among the largest specimens of spodumene ever found, with crystals of such high quality that in addition to batteries, they could be used to make scientific glassware or computer screens, where the lithium metal would help lower the melting temperature.
The Freemans are just two of the hundreds of people prospecting for critical materials across the country as the U.S. tries to strengthen the domestic supply chain. According to an analysis by Patrick Donnelly, the Great Basin Director for the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit environmental organization, more than 100 companies have staked claims for lithium deposits in the American West. Companies also have applied for permits to mine cobalt in Idaho, nickel and copper in Minnesota, and lithium in North Carolina.
Geologists say there’s also likely a lot more lithium in spodumene deposits across New England. Communities that haven’t had working mines in years may soon find themselves a key source for lithium and other minerals needed for car batteries, solar panels, and many of the objects people will need more of to transition themselves off polluting fossil fuels.
There are good reasons for U.S. communities to have healthy skepticism about mining projects; there is no shortage of examples of a company coming into a community, mining until doing so becomes too expensive, then leaving a polluted site for someone else to clean up. There are more than 50,000 abandoned mines in the western United States alone, 80% of which still need to be remediated. Passage of landmark environmental laws like the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 1972 hasn’t made mining safe enough, environmentalists say.
“All mines pollute in one way or another, and mines are really bad at predicting how much they’re going to pollute,” says Jan Morrill, who studies mining at the environmental group Earthworks, which recently found that 76% of mining companies in the U.S. polluted groundwater after saying they wouldn’t.
One of the most problematic parts of mines is the tailings, or waste, Morrill says: Companies extract the minerals they need, then are left with a giant pile of rock, liquid, and chemicals that they store in ponds or behind dams that sometimes prove unstable. These tailings have caused landslides, excessive dust, and water pollution; more than 300 mine tailing dams have failed worldwide over the last century, according to Christopher Sergeant, a research scientist at the University of Montana.
It is not uncommon for tailings to leak into water, in fact, there is a permit that mine owners can get in case they find their projections were wrong and they need to discharge into U.S. waters.
Even “modern mines” that adhere to the latest U.S. standards—which are among the strictest in the world—still pollute, Earthworks has found. Though there are, theoretically, non-polluting ways to store mine tailings, doing so is much more expensive and mine operators have largely not paid to do so, Morrill says. That’s because, says Aimee Boulanger, executive director of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, “laws and markets have not fully incentivized companies to do that.”
Indeed, the Biden initiative to increase domestic mining includes, for example, a $700 million loan for Ioneer, a company planning a lithium mine on Rhyolite Ridge in Nevada, where environmental groups say the mine, as proposed, would cause the extinction of an endangered species called Tiehm’s buckwheat. The Administration is also spending $115 million to help Talon Nickel build a battery minerals processing facility in North Dakota, but the potential mine they would source from, in Minnesota, is opposed by Indigenous groups and environmentalists who fear it could contaminate wells in the area.
Still, the U.S. has a more rigorous regulatory environment than many other countries, she says, and there are domestic mines that even some environmentalists support, like the Stillwater Mine in Montana. Community organizations there signed a Good Neighbor Agreement in 2000 with the Sibanye-Stillwater Mining Company allowing the firm to extract platinum and palladium—while also establishing clear and enforceable water standards, restrictions to minimize local traffic, and third-party auditors to ensure the mine adheres to the standards it set out. The mine is now one of the top employers and private-sector income generators in Montana.
But advocates had to force the Agreement; three grassroots organizations sued to stop the construction of the mine, and after a year of negotiations, the mining company and grassroots groups agreed to the contract instead of going to court. With support from elected officials trying to find ways to mine more critical minerals in the U.S., companies may not feel the need to make similar promises to the local community.
Environmental concerns aren’t the only problem with mining, Morrill says. The history of mining in the U.S. is linked to colonialism; Christopher Columbus was looking for gold when he stumbled across North America, and as Europeans expanded into the continent, they took land from Indigenous people to mine for gold, silver, and other metals.
Today, mining in the U.S. often encroaches on Indigenous land. Under mining laws in the U.S. that date to 1872, anyone can stake a claim on federal public lands and apply for permits to start mining if they find “valuable” mineral deposits there. Most lithium, cobalt, and nickel mines are within 35 miles of a Native American reservation, Morrill says, largely because in the aftermath of the 1849 gold rush, the U.S. military removed tribes to reservations not far from mineral deposits in the West. In one particularly controversial project, the mining company Rio Tinto wants to build a copper mine on Oak Flat, Ariz., a desert area adjacent to an Apache reservation that Indigenous groups have used for centuries to conduct cultural ceremonies.
Yet fears about the effects of climate change are escalating the pressure on local communities to get out of the way of mines, says Thea Riofrancos, an associate professor of political science at Providence College who studies mining and the green energy transition. She and other scholars have questioned whether projections that the world will face lithium shortages by 2025 are accurate; recycling more batteries and transitioning away from private vehicles to more public transportation, for example, could reduce our long-term need for lithium-ion energy storage.
“We should think about what is driving this demand, why does this rush feel so intensive, why is there not a version where we are going to try and do this transition with the least amount of mining possible?” Riofrancos says.
Most environmentalists agree that the 1872 mining law needs to be updated and there are several bills in Congress that would do so. The Clean Energy Minerals Reform Act of 2023, for example, introduced by Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) in May, would require more tribal consultation and change how mining is approved on federal lands.
Finding a way to mine in the U.S. could help address a moral quandary, that we consume these materials but ask other countries to bear the brunt of their extraction, says Boulanger, with IRMA.
“There’s an argument to be made that if we’re going to use these materials, and we live in the most consumptive country in the world, we shouldn’t be making other countries be the bank account of our natural resources,” she says.
If lawmakers and regulators can’t agree on how to mine on U.S. soil, it could leave the U.S. susceptible to essentially outsourcing its mining problems to less-regulated countries. For example, last October, the Department of Energy used the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to give a $141.7 million grant to Piedmont Lithium, which is building a plant in Tennessee to expand U.S. supply of lithium hydroxide, used in long-range batteries for electric vehicles. In March, Blue Orca Capital, a hedge fund, said it was “shorting,” or betting against the stock of Piedmont Lithium, alleging that the spodumene the firm plans to refine into lithium at its Tennessee facility was guaranteed by bribes to the son of a high-level politician in Ghana—“because of corruption,” those raw materials are likely to never come to fruition, the hedge fund says. Piedmont denies the allegations and says in a statement provided to TIME that the Minerals Income Investment Fund of Ghana told the company that it has valid licenses and permits for all its current activities.
Most of the proposed critical materials mines in the U.S. are not near a big population center—or economic activity, and some communities are in favor of a mine for the jobs it would create. But the proposed locations could instead lead to situations where sparsely populated communities don’t learn about a planned mine until it’s too late to stop it. “It can feel really fast—all of a sudden an enormous project is being proposed next door to you, it took years for the company to prospect but you didn’t hear about it ‘til now,” says Riofrancos.
The Freemans’ mine is not one of these projects. Though it is five miles from the nearest town, Maine is going through an extensive review process to decide whether to let the couple keep digging. Earlier in 2023, there were seven bills in the legislature regarding the potential of mining lithium in Maine. Lawmakers ultimately settled on legislation that may open the door to extracting the Freemans’ lithium by allowing larger open pit metal mines, so long as developers can prove they won’t pollute groundwater and the local environment. But the new law will require changing the state’s mining regulations, which may mean it could be years before the couple is able to start digging in earnest.
The Freemans say their mine would not pollute the surrounding land and water, as the chemical composition of the crystals and the rocks around them is such that they would not dissolve into dangerous acid when exposed to air and water. Geologists that TIME/Maine Monitor spoke with agree with that assessment. Further, the crystals, says Mary, would be shipped out of state in large chunks for processing, so there would be no chemical ponds or tailings.
Many geologists agree that the Freemans’ proposal would not be as disruptive as other proposed mines across the country. Other metals (like nickel, silver, and zinc) typically occur in bands of rock deep below the surface that contain iron sulfides, which create sulfuric acid when exposed to air and water, polluting waterways for decades, a phenomenon known as acid mine drainage. Some spodumene crystals at Plumbago North, by contrast, have been naturally exposed to air and water for hundreds of millions of years and not broken down.
On a visit to the test quarry this spring, Gary Freeman pointed out one large piece of spodumene lying at the bottom of a nearby brook, the water over it rushing fast and clear, not the rusty orange of an acid-contaminated stream. (The waterway is known, fittingly, as Spodumene Brook.) “The water is so good Poland Spring wants to bottle it and sell it,” says Mary.
Still, Morrill, of Earthworks, says there’s just not enough research about the effects of hard rock spodumene mining to say for sure that the mine wouldn’t harm the environment. Since so many people in Maine depend on recreation and tourism for their livelihoods, she says, it makes the most sense to keep protective regulations in place.
Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection has rejected the Freemans’ request to consider the land a quarry, and is instead classifying spodumene as a metallic mineral. As the law stands, the Freemans will have to apply for permits under Maine’s 2017 Metallic Mineral Mining Act, a costly process (the application processing fee alone is $500,000) that would take years.
Meanwhile, the local community is divided. After all, in Maine it’s not difficult to find people still living with the long-term damage of older mines. On the other hand, many Mainers are pragmatic and understand the state has long, dark winters, and will need battery storage for any renewable energy it generates on sunny or windy days. The alternative is to continue relying on fossil fuels, which would exacerbate climate change.
Myles Felch, curator at the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum, is one of these practical Mainers. He was raised in Union, where a groundswell of opposition has formed to resist a proposal by Canada-based Exiro Minerals to look for nickel near a beloved local pond. Felch isn’t thrilled with the prospect, but also knows we can’t continue to be so detached from the minerals we use in our daily life.
“I love the place where I grew up and I wouldn’t want anything to ever happen to it,” says Felch. But “you need mineral resources. Most people were probably texting ‘stop the mine’ with a nickel cobalt battery in their phones.”
Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country…
…“More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.
Wind power stations of German utility RWE, one of Europe's biggest electricity companies are pictured in front of RWE's brown coal fired power plants of Neurath near Jackerath, north-west of Cologne, Germany, March 18, 2022. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File PhotoGermany adds 60% more onshore wind power in H1 but pace seen too slow
The drop in Russian fossil fuel exports to Germany last year highlighted the hazards of relying on imports and emphasized the urgency of implementing a local energy plan.
Reuters by Vera Eckert, July 18, 2023FRANKFURT, July 18 (Reuters) - Germany added 60% more onshore wind capacity in the first half of 2023 than a year earlier at a total of 1,565 megawatts (MW), but needs far more to reach its 2030 target, wind industry lobbies said on Tuesday.
Wind power is central to Germany's transition to renewable energy as Berlin aims to generate at least 80% of electricity output by 2030 from green sources such as solar and wind, to lower carbon emissions.
The roll-out has become more pressing with the drop of Russian fossil fuel exports to Germany last year, demonstrating the risks of reliance on imports and the need for local energy.
Associations BWE and the VDMA Power Systems engineering group, which represent turbine makers including Nordex (NDXG.DE), Vestas Deutschland (VWS.CO) and GE Deutschland (GE.N), issued statistics showing that the 1,565 MW total compared with 977 MW added in the first half of 2022.
The organisations credited the government's interventions in favour of building activity and the speeding of permits for the increase.
Assuming these developments will continue, they expect that at least the upper end of a full-year projection made in January for additions totalling 2,700-3,200 MW will be reached this year, said Baerbel Heidebroek, BWE's president, at a virtual news conference.
However, even the significantly increased permit numbers are not enough to achieve growth rates of 10,000 MW per year from 2025, which would be necessary to achieve the government's green energy targets for 115,000 MW of onshore wind in 2030, she said.
"We must streamline and tighten the approval procedures and set strict deadlines," she added.
Dennis Rendschmidt, VDMA Power Systems' managing director, said approvals for heavy road transports of parts are taking an average of 12 weeks in Germany compared with four to five days in the Netherlands.
Ministries outside the economy ministry run by the Greens' Robert Habeck and state and local authorities should cooperate better, the two organisations said.
Germany's total installed onshore wind capacity had reached 59,343 MW at the end of June 2023, the data from the two organisations showed.
This represented a net increase of 4.4% from a year earlier, after accounting for dismantling and revamps of existing turbines.
Image: An artist’s rendering shows Westinghouse’s planned AP300 small modular nuclear power reactor, which the company officially unveiled on May 4, 2023, and hopes will be built in the United States and around the world. Westinghouse/Handout via REUTERSBritain opens small nuclear reactor competition, launches new nuclear body
Ambitious Plan: Boosting Nuclear Power to Meet Climate Targets
Reuters by Susanna Twidale, July 18, 2023LONDON, July 18 (Reuters) - Britain on Tuesday opened a competition to develop small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), such as those being developed by Rolls-Royce (RR.L), as it launched its new Great British Nuclear body designed to help drive the expansion of projects in the country.
Britain is aiming to increase its nuclear power capacity to 24 gigawatts (GW) by 2050 as part of efforts to meet climate targets and boost energy security. That would meet around a quarter of projected electricity demand, up sharply from about 14% today.
Large new nuclear projects, with high upfront costs, have struggled to attract financing and the government hopes some older plants could be replaced by a fleet of SMRs which can be made in factories, with lower costs and faster construction.
Companies can, from Tuesday, register their interest in the government’s SMR competition. The Great British Nuclear body, also launched on Tuesday, will select technologies that have met the criteria in the Autumn.
The competition "could result in billions of pounds of public and private sector investment," Secretary of State for Energy Security, Grant Shapps said.
Companies selected will then start discussions as part of an Invitation to Negotiate phase, the government said.
The SMR competition was first announced alongside the budget in March this year.
In 2021 the government committed 210 million pounds to Rolls-Royce for its 500-million pound SMR programme which could see the company open factories to build the reactors in Britain.
Britain previously announced a competition for SMRs in the 2015 Autumn Statement which ultimately closed in 2017 without moving beyond the initial, information-gathering first stage.
Along with SMRs the government said it is committed to large-scale new projects, such as EDF’s (EDF.PA) Hinkley Point C, the first new plant in more than 20 years, and EDF’s Sizewell C in which the government has invested around 700 million pounds, becoming a 50% shareholder in the development phase.
An illustration of Widerøe's electric aircraft Foto: Rolls-RoycePioneers in Green Aviation: Could Norwegian Electric Planes Be a Model for the Rest of the World?
The global aviation industry has a massive climate problem, and many are looking to Norway for a possible solution. The country wants all short-haul flights to be conducted with electric planes as early as 2040. But doubts persist about whether the technology will be ready.
Spiegel by Marcus Efler, 18.07.2023The days when airliners took off from Säve airfield near the Swedish city of Gothenburg are long gone. What's left now is an access road with a rusty gate, wooden barracks in an advanced state of decay and a container village that is used as a hostel. Anyone wishing to visit Heart Aerospace has to seek out the only new building on the forested site.
That's where the startup is tinkering with the future of passenger aviation, which is currently plagued by concerns about the climate, at least for short-haul flights. English is spoken on the company's premises, and 200 employees from more than 30 nations work in plain, open-plan offices in the main building and adjacent containers, as well as in two large hangars.
In one, components are made by hand; in the other, a metallic skeleton in the shape of an airplane reaches up to the ceiling. Soon, what currently looks almost like a dinosaur skeleton will hopefully become an aircraft of the future: the Heart ES-30, a high-wing aircraft with 30 seats, four electric motors on the wings and a five-ton battery in the fuselage.
If, as planned, three prototypes of the Heart ES-30 actually take off for their first test flight in 2026 and serially-manufactured planes are then delivered to airlines, the Swedish aircraft would be the first electric aircraft to meet international Part 25 certification standards. It is the highest standard class -- applying, for instance, to the Airbus A380 superjumbo.
The impetus for the electric aircraft came from neighboring Norway. "From 2040, short-haul flights in Norway will have to be 100 percent electric," says Markus Kochs-Kämper, Heart's chief engineer, who hails from Germany. "We think battery-powered electric motors are the best solution."
Following the country's radical switch to electric cars, Norway is also set to become a pioneer in zero-emissions aviation with its strict requirements. The regulation is to apply to all flights lasting up to one and a half hours, including cross-border services. Scandinavia is becoming a pioneering region for green aviation, moving ahead at a speed much faster than the rest of the European Union. The new rules, which were quickly implemented, could also have an effect on airlines like Germany's Lufthansa.
A Laboratory for Electric Aviation
But how realistic is such a rushed transition? The certification of new aircraft by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and its U.S. counterpart, the FAA, alone, can take years.
What is clear is that something has to change. Airplanes are responsible for around 2 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. And Norway is particularly well suited as a real-world laboratory for an experiment like electric aviation. Because of its exceptionally beautiful but difficult-to-access landscape, airplanes are often the only way for people to stay connected there besides smartphones and the internet. "It takes hours to drive a car around a fjord," says Kochs-Kämper, "a plane only takes a few minutes."
Fewer than 5.5 million inhabitants live in an area roughly the size of Germany, and its population density is far lower.
"It takes hours to drive a car around a fjord. A plane only take a few minutes." Markus Kochs-Kämper, chief engineer
Remote regions are barely served by roads and even less by rail. The widespread expansion of roads and railways are impeded by nearly 40,000 lakes larger than four hectares and up to 300 mountains whose peaks rise at least 2,000 meters above sea level.
It's no wonder, then, that Norway maintains a disproportionately large number of airports, with at least 50 served by regular flights. "Given the population distribution, short-haul flights undoubtedly make sense," says Markus Fischer, a divisional group leader for aeronautics at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), who is following developments in Norway with interest.
Cautious Optimism
Another argument in favor of the electrification of the Scandinavian skies is that almost all the electricity in Norway – close to 90 percent – is generated in a climate-neutral way using hydropower. Natural gas and other fossil fuels are hardly to be found in the Norwegian electricity mix.
As such, conditions are perfect for electrically powered seaplanes like the ones currently being developed by the Norwegian startup Elfly. They are building a high-wing aircraft with nine seats and two propellers engines powered by batteries, in partnership with the Norwegian Research Council. Called the Noemi ("no emissions"), the high-wing plane is expected to land in fjords on the west coast to drop off passengers and cargo starting in 2030.
The country's largest regional airline, Widerøe, is also seeking to push forward green aviation. Three-quarters of Widerøe flights are over distances shorter than 300 kilometers, with many of them less than half that distance. However, classic propeller-driven aircraft burn a disproportionate amount of fuel, especially during takeoff. Switching to electric aircraft would be worthwhile not only for the climate, but also economically.
There is also "massive political pressure to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in aviation, as well," says Widerøe CEO Andreas Kollbye Aks. He is optimistic that he will be able to achieve the required electrification, but he is also quick to qualify that claim. "We're starting with flights on the west coast in the south, avoiding weather fronts or even landing in strong winds – energy-consuming tasks that electric aviation isn't yet ready to handle." Does that mean that the idea of electric aviation is still a utopian one?
Enthusiasm about the opportunities offered by the new technology has always been accompanied by persistent doubts about whether it can become reality. There have been reasons for skepticism. The aircraft manufacturer Tecnam, for example, has already halted construction of its own electric plane due to doubts about its suitability for everyday use. The Italian company had originally planned to introduce an 11-seat aircraft to the market and deliver it to Widerøe, but development of the P-Volt model has been put on hold.
How Long Do the Batteries Really Last?
The company mainly sees problems with its forecasted efficiency and sustainability. The company, based in Capua near Naples, recently announced that its assumptions had been based on "extremely aggressive" scenarios for technological development. In other words: Their hope rests on a leap in battery technology -- though no one knows when or if it will even come.
The aging of the power storage units after only a few weeks of operation and the associated decrease in range also frightened the developers. According to Tecnam's calculations, even with extremely gentle handling, the capacity falls below a critical value after just a few hundred hours of operation. Airlines would then be forced to buy new batteries – and the operating costs for the planes would be horrendous. Tecnam thus came to a clear assessment in its statement: The all-electric passenger aircraft is the "Green Transition flagship" rather than a real player in the decarbonization of aviation, it says.
So, is electric flight just a fanciful dream that might be good for a little airline greenwashing? Jet engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce isn't on board. "We are very proud to be able to contribute to sustainable aviation," says Matheu Parr, who is responsible for the British company's nascent business for customers of electric aircraft.
In the past, the company specialized in gigantic jet engines that hang under the wings of the Airbus A380, for instance, and burn tons of jet fuel. Now they are also working on cleaner planes: Its electric engine, a duo of four-blade propellers driven by electric motors each rated at 350 kilowatts, was supposed to be used on Tecnam's P-Volt.
Rolls-Royce is disappointed by the end of the project, because the manufacturer had hoped to gain important insights for the development of further e-engines. But the company is still sticking to its plan. "The market is demanding sustainable solutions, which is why we will continue to push electric and hybrid engines," the company says.
Parr sees electric propulsion as the optimal solution for aircraft with nine to 19 seats that have to cover distances "of 40 to 50 nautical miles," around 90 kilometers, which is practically nothing in aviation. For longer distances, developers of the technology have so far been faced with a dilemma that is almost impossible to resolve. The more non-stop flight time an aircraft is expected to achieve, the larger and heavier the battery becomes, which in turn consumes energy. Electric cars have the same problem, but it is much greater for aircraft, which are particularly sensitive to weight. And it is reinforced by the fact that, for safety reasons, the power storage units have to supply energy for twice as long as would actually be needed for the route in question, so that the aircraft could still reach another airport or can circle in the air in case of emergency.
Finding the Right Partners
Batteries with a large capacity also have correspondingly long charging times. What is a significant annoyance for drivers of electric cars on long trips could pose a challenge for airlines' business model. An aircraft that has to be charged for hours at the destination airport before it can take off again is no good for fast-turnaround short-haul traffic. Even the Megawatt Charging System (MDC), which pumps batteries full of up to 3.75 megawatts of charging power, can't eliminate the problem – even though that's more than 10 times what fast chargers for electric cars currently offer as a maximum.
Widerøe wants to ensure that its aircraft can take off again 15 minutes after landing. That's why the airline and Rolls-Royce are relying on battery swaps. "It takes about five minutes to change batteries," promises Qinyin Zhang, the man responsible for Rolls-Royce's short-haul electric aircraft business, "whereas charging can take up to three hours."
Widerøe is continuing to pursue its electric aspirations and hasn't been deterred by the demise of P-Volt. "Our plans are not affected by this," says Aks, the Widerøe CEO. He adds that they will test with other partners whether new, sustainable aircraft can be operated economically. "Although the concept has not yet proven to be viable, that could change as the technology continues to mature," Aks says, referring to Tecnam.
Just an Interim Solution?
At the airfield in Säve, however, the people at Heart Aerospace are not convinced by the concept of swapping batteries. Kochs-Kämper, the chief engineer, says that specialists are needed to replace the batteries without making mistakes. He says it is also uncertain whether they will always be ready on time.
The Swedes are instead relying on a different solution: Two turbo motors are to be mounted at the rear of their aircraft that can run on sustainably produced fuel. When needed, they can kick in and increase the range to 400 kilometers. That would also solve the safety problems. Drivers are familiar with the principle through the range extenders that manufacturers included in early electric cars like the first-generation BMW i3. Heart calls it a "reserve hybrid system."
This crutch has since disappeared in modern battery-powered vehicles, and the era of plug-in hybrids is drawing to a close. In the air, too, the electricity-fuel mix is only considered to be a temporary solution.
"As battery technology develops, there will no longer be a need for such interim solutions," says DLR expert Fischer. He points to new storage technologies such as condensed matter batteries, which at 500 watt-hours per kilogram of net weight are said to have about twice the energy density of lithium-ion batteries.
Heart Aerospace has designed its electric plane in a way that will allow airlines to incorporate more efficient energy storage once it becomes available. That would also be a battery swap of sorts, but it would only happen rarely and during major maintenance.
"We Want To Keep the Aircraft as Conventional as Possible"
The first airlines have already placed orders for the Heart airplane. So far, North American companies have been the main buyers of the aircraft, which is actually tailor-made for Norway. Mesa, a regional carrier based in Phoenix, as well as United Airlines and Air Canada have already ordered a total of 25 ES.30s, with options on a further 100. Heart says it is in talks with Northern European airlines, including SAS and Icelandair.
Meanwhile, as hobby pilots' single-engine Cessnas rattle above Säve's run-down airfield, the Heart ES-30 is taking off in a simulator inside the "Integrated Test Facility" as the corresponding Heart hanger is called.
When the simulator's four thrust levels are pushed forward, an electric buzz sounds from behind – future passengers and residents near the airport will probably not hear much more than that and the whirl of the propeller.
The plane reaches 90 knots, or just under 170 kilometers per hour, after a relatively short distance. With a light tug of the control stick, the high-wing aircraft takes off.
Sitting in the left-hand seat, Peter, the Heart test pilot, retracts the flaps and landing gear. At an altitude of 2,500 feet, he moves the joystick to the right: The ES-30 tilts into the curve. Then it turns to the left as it prepares to land again. There is little distinguishing the handling of the ES-30 from that of regional aircraft with turboprops. At least in the flight simulator.
The design of the passenger cabin, which is shown as a one-to-one model, also doesn't look any different. "Apart from the propulsion system, we want to keep the aircraft as conventional as possible," explains Kochs-Kämper. For example, the fuselage isn't made of carbon, but of the usual light metals. The interior is kept classic and functional. Too much innovation at once would overload the development just as it would later overwhelm the passengers.
Opportunities for Small Airports
The biggest difference for planners and pilots is the relatively short takeoff distance of 750 meters for an aircraft of this size. People are also familiar with this effect from electric cars. Through their disproportionately higher torque, e-motors generate enormous thrust.
Airlines like Widerøe would thus be able to fly even to the smallest airfields in the future, ones whose runways are currently too short for conventional aircraft. The higher purchase price of the planes would be offset by low operating and maintenance costs. According to Rolls-Royce expert Parr, electric aircraft have an operating cost of just 65 cents per passenger per nautical mile, compared to at least 85 cents for a comparable propeller plane. "The operational cost of a 50-seat electric aircraft will be the same as a 30-seat conventional aircraft," predicts Simon Newitt, Heart's customer service manager.
Given this, the promise of clean mobility by air is is accompanied by hope for a new, small boom in flying, thanks to lower ticket prices. In Germany, too, where short-haul flights are currently viewed critically, enthusiasm for the new technology in the industry is also growing. "With low-emission engines, short-haul services that have been discontinued in Germany could also be resumed," says DLR expert Fischer. "And smaller airports could also be added to the route network."