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Minor damage to an electric vehicle battery pack can lead to the entire car being totaled, leaving the expensive battery packs piling up in the scrapyard and causing higher insurance premiums. With no way to repair or assess slightly damaged battery packs after accidents, electric vehicles can lose up to 50 percent of their price, rendering it uneconomical to replace them, as batteries are the most expensive component of electric vehicles costing many tens of thousands of dollars.

In...

China’s efforts to ramp up lithium extraction could see it accounting for nearly a third of the world’s supply by the middle of the decade. Chinese-controlled lithium mines, including those in Africa, are expected to increase output to 705,000 tons by 2025, from 194,000 tons in 2022—almost quadrupling  the amount of its global supply and lifting China’s share of the critical mineral to 32 percent of the world’s supply, up from 24 percent last year. Further, over the next two years,...

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “The Energy Industry Prepares for Upheaval at the Gas Station,” points toward a big problem ahead regarding electric vehicle (EV) recharging. 

“Electric vehicles are a small but growing share of cars on the road,” Carol Ryan begins her article. “Energy companies already need to prepare for how they will change the gas station.” Why the upheaval?

"A customer refueling a conventional car spends five to six minutes on average near...

The U.S. House of Representatives released its energy bill, H.R. 1, the Lower Energy Costs Act  which will increase the production and export of American energy and reduce the regulatory burdens that make it harder to build major infrastructure in the United States through comprehensive permitting reform. The Lower Energy Costs Act will also expedite critical mineral mining, streamline manufacturing, and make it easier to transport and export American natural gas by repealing the natural gas...

President Biden is planning to harm the domestic oil and gas industry and make them less globally competitive despite asking them to produce more energy. Biden’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2024 is for the astounding amount of $6.9 trillion  and includes withdrawing tax deductions from oil and gas businesses that other manufacturing entities receive and would harm the small mom-and-pop companies whose production is critical for meeting demand. Biden’s proposal claims that eliminating...

The Biden administration announced major restrictions on offshore oil leasing in the Arctic Ocean and across Alaska’s North Slope supposedly to temper criticism from environmentalists over a pending decision on an oil drilling project in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve known as Willow and to form a “firewall” to limit future oil leases in the region. The Interior Department said it would issue new rules to block oil and gas leases on more than 55 percent of the 23 million acres...

President Biden’s oil and gas offshore lease plan is late and will be even later as the Interior Department argues it needs until December to finalize the plan. It told a court it needs the rest of the year to complete an analysis on the delayed five-year program, which will replace the expired 2017-2022 program. There is currently no active offshore leasing program providing for new lease sales despite the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act mandating  that the Secretary of the Interior...

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that interstate natural gas pipeline capacity additions reached a record low in 2022 based on data collected since 1995. In 2022, 897 million cubic feet per day of interstate natural gas pipeline capacity was added from five projects, according to EIA’s latest State-to-State Capacity Tracker , which contains information on the capacity of natural gas pipelines that cross state and international borders. The five projects that increased...

In late February 2023, the price of carbon permits on the European Union’s carbon market hit 100 euros ($106.57) per metric ton  – the amount of increased costs that factories and power plants must pay when they emit carbon dioxide. The benchmark EU Allowance (EUA) contract had hit a high of 101.25 euros per metric ton. EUAs are the main currency in the European Union’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) which forces manufacturers, power companies and airlines to pay for each metric ton of...

Ford Motor Co. recently announced plans to invest $3.5 billion  to build an electric vehicle battery plant in Michigan with Chinese partner Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL)—the world’s number 1 maker of electric-car batteries with 13 factories in Europe and Asia. CATL would license technology to Ford to produce lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries and would provide the U.S. automaker with technical assistance. Building LFP batteries in Michigan enables Ford to obtain...