But a Quebec green-tech investor thinks he can break the mould and go mainstream.

This winter, François Boutin-Dufresne, a serial entrepreneur based in Montreal, is launching ShareCharge, an app that connects drivers with private EV chargers. In doing so, he hopes to solve the most pernicious challenge limiting EV adoption: range anxiety.

A 2024 J.D. Power study found that nearly three-quarters of Canadians described themselves as unlikely to buy an EV, with most citing limited range as the main obstacle. Surveys in Quebec, the leader in Canada when it comes to EV adoption, show that two-thirds of respondents also felt the charging network needs expansion, especially in rural areas, although data suggest range anxiety decreases over time for EV owners. In Quebec, some 80% of charging is done at home, making the jurisdiction a prime spot for ShareCharge’s proposition.

Boutin-Dufresne, a former economist for the Government of Canada and the International Monetary Fund, draws inspiration from Uber. ShareCharge would allow users to adjust prices according to supply and demand, with rates fluctuating up or down. For example, more expensive and efficient charging equipment would cost more to rent. He predicts that increased demand during holidays or major events will create hot spots where people can earn more from their chargers. Remote locations will also enable rural owners to charge a premium.

Boutin-Dufresne believes that civil society cannot sit by and wait for the government to build out the necessary EV infrastructure. “People need to take matters into their own hands,” he says.

Filling the infrastructure gap

Quebec launched Canada’s first public charging network for electric vehicles in 2011, before the technology really took off, and now has around 6,500 public stations in Montreal and nearly 30,000 across the province.

But its reach has remained too limited, Boutin-Dufresne argues. The impetus for ShareCharge came from his own struggles as an EV owner. He was tired of what he calls EV charging deserts where he has to travel three kilometres or more to replenish his car.

Boutin-Dufresne’s brash, fast-talking demeanour is reflected in his company. Prior to its planned official rollout in December, ShareCharge already purports to be “the world’s largest EV charging network” on its website, even though it had only 150 registered providers. But Boutin-Dufresne believes the network can quickly attract 10% of Quebec EV drivers and owners of home-charging stations, representing 40,000 new places to power up an EV.

New supply-chain ‘passports’ pave the way for more recycling of EV batteries

“Chargers on the side of the road cost the city of Montreal $50,000 each; ours cost the government nothing to improve access,” Boutin-Dufresne says.

ShareCharge is planning to expand across North America, though Quebec’s abundant, low-cost hydroelectricity will make the service more affordable there than in most other regions. Boutin-Dufresne is betting that Quebec’s fierce winters increase the appeal for drivers to have access to a large private network of EV chargers.

He aims to develop partnerships with Communauto, Quebec’s popular car-sharing service, and other vehicle rental companies. He believes the charging stations will attract Uber drivers, as well as more people who are not property owners, do not have private charging stations, and park their EVs on the street.

Lack of charging stations in high-rise buildings is cutting off access to EVs

But users who want to earn passive income from their EV chargers also have to shoulder the risk of things going wrong. ShareCharge takes care of quality control and validation for those who wish to rent out their charging stations, and individuals rely on the five-star rating system to avoid renting to users with undesirable behaviour, as is done on Uber or Airbnb. The company does not, however, cover risks that may arise from its use. If someone’s charging station is located in their garage and a customer’s car catches fire, it is up to the owner of the charging station to assume the risk.

Public versus private

The company’s plans also raise questions about government subsidies for private chargers. “It’s a public policy failure that the government, which invested massively in this infrastructure, did not think ahead and come up with this idea themselves,” says Thomas Hundal, an automotive journalist in Toronto.

Critics argue that the public sector should retain control of the charging economy to make it more accessible. “Across the world, governments are following the same modus operandi: they invest public funds to build a basic charging infrastructure so that, in a second phase, it becomes attractive for the private sector,” says Colin Pratte, a transport researcher at the Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques, a Quebec-based non-profit. He argues that instead of ceding the race for better charging infrastructure to private companies that “parasitize the sharing economy under the guise of enabling it,” it would be better to optimize public networks and keep prices low. Pratte believes EV charging is headed toward a repeat of the mistakes that led to the oil shock, where gas prices became unaffordable.

The Quebec government is preparing to invest nearly a billion dollars in its EV transition by 2028. According to its 2023 projections, there will be two million EV drivers in the province by 2030, though EV sales have been losing momentum since late 2024.

Ophélie Dénommée-Marchand is a Quebec-based independent journalist with a focus on fact-checking and investigation. She’s also an encyclopedist for the Canadian Encyclopedia.

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A system increasingly loaded with wind and solar will require customers to send power back into the system. If the traditional grid centralized generation at power plants, experts believe the system of tomorrow will be more distributed, with power coming from what they call the “grid edge” – household batteries, electric cars and other gadgets whose relationship with the grid has been one-way. More people, for example, are installing solar panels on their roofs backed up with home batteries. When electricity demand increases, a utility can draw power from those homes as a vast network of backup energy.

The big question is how to choreograph that electrical ballet – millions of different devices at the grid edge, owned by millions of different customers, that all need to talk to the utility’s systems. To address that problem, a team of researchers from several universities and national labs developed an algorithm for running a “local electricity market,” in which ratepayers would be compensated for allowing their devices to provide backup power to a utility. Their paper, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, described how the algorithm could coordinate so many sources of power – and then put the system to the test. “When you have numbers of that magnitude, then it becomes very difficult for one centralized entity to keep tabs on everything that’s going on,” said Anu Annaswamy, a senior research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the paper’s co-author. “Things need to become more distributed, and that is something the local electricity market can facilitate.”

At the moment, utilities respond to a surge in demand for electricity by spinning up more generation at power plants running on fossil fuels. But they can’t necessarily do that with renewables, since the sun might not be shining, or the wind blowing. So as grids increasingly depend on clean energy, they’re getting more flexible: giant banks of lithium-ion batteries, for instance, can store that juice for later use.

Yet grids will need even more flexibility in the event of a cyberattack or outage. If a hacker compromises a brand of smart thermostat to increase the load on a bunch of air-conditioning units at once, that could crash the grid by driving demand above available supply. With this sort of local electricity market imagined in the paper, a utility would call on other batteries in the network to boost supply,  stabilizing the grid. At the same time, electric water heaters and heat pumps for climate control could wind down, reducing demand. “In that sense, there’s not necessarily a fundamental difference between a battery and a smart device like a water heater, in terms of being able to provide the support to the grid,” said Jan Kleissl, director of the Center for Energy Research at the University of California, San Diego, who wasn’t involved in the new research.

Along with this demand reduction, drawing power from devices along the grid edge would provide additional support. In testing out cyberattack scenarios and sustained inclement weather that reduces solar energy, the researchers found that the algorithm was able to restabilize the grid every time. The algorithm also provides a way to set the rates paid to households for their participation. That would depend on a number of factors, such as time of day, location of the household and the overall demand. “Consumers who provide flexibility are explicitly being compensated for that, rather than just people doing it voluntarily,” said Vineet J. Nair, a PhD student at MIT and lead author of the paper. “That kind of compensation is a way to incentivize customers.”

Utilities are already experimenting with these sorts of compensation programs, though on a much smaller scale. Electric buses in Oakland, California, for instance, are sending energy back to the grid when they’re not ferrying kids around. Utilities are also contracting with households to use their large home batteries, like Tesla’s Powerwall, as virtual power plants.

Building such systems is relatively easy, because homes with all their heat pumps and batteries are already hooked into the system, said Anna Lafoyiannis, senior team lead for transmission operations and planning at the Electric Power Research Institute, a non-profit in Palo Alto, California. By contrast, connecting a solar and battery farm to the grid takes years of planning, permitting and construction. “Distributed resources can be deployed really quickly on the grid,” she said. “When I look at flexibility, the time scale matters.”

All these energy sources at the grid edge, combined with large battery farms operated by the utility, are dismantling the myth that renewables aren’t reliable enough to provide power on their own. One day, you might even get paid to help bury that myth for good.

This article originally appeared in Grist. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Grist is a non-profit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. 

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Yet after billions of taxpayer dollars have been invested, the EV industry in Canada is facing headwinds. Chief among these are U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to impose 25% tariffs on Canadian goods, followed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s equivalent retaliatory tariffs on $30 billion worth of American goods starting on February 4, escalating to include another $125 billion worth of imports in three weeks.

For a country with an automotive sector that exports 91% of its parts to the U.S., the threats feel existential. They may also be seen as a betrayal of the centuries-long economic and cultural partnership between two neighbours sharing one of the world’s longest and most porous borders.

Adding to these international headwinds are three other obstacles within the EV industry: 1) high costs, 2) limited battery range and 3) sparse battery charging infrastructure. These concerns continue to affect firms here in Canada, with big automakers like Stellantis juggling high inventory, slow sales and falling revenue.

These challenges have sparked skepticism about the future of EVs in Canada and whether the federal and provincial governments’ multi-billion-dollar investments in the industry are wise.

Canada needs to consolidate its EV innovation ecosystem by integrating the upstream of its domestic supply chain assets with the downstream of its technology commercialization and adoption.

– Charles Conteh and Tia Henstra

As researchers who study Canada and other countries’ innovation policy initiatives amid breakneck changes in technologies and markets, we argue that Canada has every reason to ratchet up its commitments in the months and years ahead.

Along with artificial intelligence, EVs represent the emergent frontier of advanced manufacturing in the digital age. Winners of this innovation race will stand to dominate the global market for the foreseeable future.

Canada has every reason to be optimistic about EVs

Despite current challenges, EVs remain the future of the automotive sector. Even conservative estimates suggest that by 2040, around three-quarters of new car sales will be fully electric globally.

Canada’s position in the EV industry is stronger than recent news coverage indicates. The country ranked first among 30 countries in a 2024 EV battery supply chain report, outperforming even China. This ranking reflects Canada’s vast reserves of critical minerals essential for EV battery production and its burgeoning battery manufacturing sector. Over the past few years, Canada has attracted significant investments from manufacturers like Umicore, Northvolt and Volkswagen-owned PowerCo.

Canada has reasons to be optimistic about EV and energy storage demand. While concerns about U.S. protectionism loom, Canada’s commitment to zero-emission vehicles ensures fiscal incentives and policies that will likely boost short-term demand.

On the environmental, social and governance front, Canada outperforms many of its global competitors in battery manufacturing. Though by no means perfect, the country’s climate change policy ambitions, clean electricity grid and commitment to sustainable mining position it as a global leader in the EV space.

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Canada’s robust innovation ecosystem for advanced manufacturing is another key strength. A prime example is the Ontario Vehicle Innovation Network (OVIN), which commercializes advanced automotive technologies and manages the development, testing, piloting and uptake of transportation and infrastructure technologies. The network operates seven regional technology development sites across Ontario, including in Waterloo, Hamilton, Windsor-Essex, Durham and Toronto.

By serving as a bridge between government, industry and researchers, OVIN has become a model for multi-level governance, with projects jointly funded by the federal and provincial governments and close working relationships with municipalities. As the EV industry navigates economic and policy challenges, initiatives like OVIN are crucial for driving long-term growth and competitiveness.

Canada must calibrate and consolidate its EV ecosystem

While Canada’s automotive innovation ecosystem is generally robust, it requires some calibration to overcome current challenges and claim the next frontier of the global EV race.

In particular, Canada needs to consolidate its EV innovation ecosystem by integrating the upstream of its domestic supply chain assets with the downstream of its technology commercialization and adoption.

In other words, this means getting more critical minerals to market and making sure a substantial portion of the materials mined in Canada are processed and used domestically to build batteries and vehicles, so the entire EV production cycle benefits Canada’s economy.

Such an endeavour will require Canada to establish the right policies, regulations and financial support to tap into its vast reserves of critical minerals to supply the country’s battery plants.

It is the presence of these reserves that made Canada attractive to the automakers in the first place. Leveraging them wisely will be critical for the country’s long-term success in the EV industry.

Charles Conteh is a professor of public policy and administration at Brock University.

Tia Henstra is a research assistant for the Niagara Community Observatory at Brock University.

This story first appeared in The Conversation; it has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original article here. 

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At least, that is what leaders in Quebec are banking on, as the province gears up to assume an axis position in the world’s electrified transition. Quebec’s riches have long been on display. One of the mining capitals of the country, accounting for one-fifth of Canada’s mineral production, it has baked into its bedrock the precious elements coveted in the electric vehicle boom – graphite, nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum and the showstopper: lithium. And increasingly, the provincial and federal governments have been pouring money into the rest of the supply chain, with investments like the one slated for the green fields in Saint-Basile-le-Grand and McMasterville, a short drive from Montreal.  

Here, Swedish climate-tech giant Northvolt has plans to build a “gigafactory” the size of 318 football fields that the federal government calls the cornerstone of a unique integrated battery production line in Canada. With more than $7 billion in investments and incentives, the first phase of the project at “Northvolt Six” will have an annual cell production capacity of 30 gigawatt hours and create up to 3,000 jobs in the region. They will be making what Ottawa has called “the world’s cleanest batteries,” at a rate of one million per year once the plant is fully operational.

But big questions loom over Quebec’s battery bet, amid an energy landscape that appears to be shifting by the day. A recalibration of the explosive growth projected for electric vehicles is forcing companies such as Northvolt to shrink their global operations, even as competition from neighbouring Ontario to attract EV business grows. While protectionist tariffs against more affordable Chinese-made EVs will affect how quickly Canadians make new mobility choices, the energy transition is nonetheless moving full steam ahead in Quebec, where EV adoption is among the highest in the country.  

“Getting a car manufacturer in Quebec was not my objective,” says Pierre Fitzgibbon, Quebec’s former minister of economy and energy, in an August interview, expressing a divergent path from that of Ontario, which includes EV assembly. 

Fitzgibbon, who resigned his post in September, travelled to Japan, South Korea and China in 2019 – when “the word ‘battery’ was not in Quebec’s vocabulary” – with a goal of understanding how the Asian powerhouses had secured a head start in the EV race. He came back focused on leaning into Quebec’s competitive advantage. “My objective was: how can we transform here in Quebec our critical minerals, as opposed to what had been happening before, which was to export it on a raw basis,” he says. “We’re setting up a kind of ecosystem.”  

The provincial government touts itself as the first in the country to develop a critical minerals strategy, which it first released in 2020. At the moment, there are 25 mines in varying stages of economic evaluation or exploration to produce the minerals needed for energy transition. That’s on top of the one graphite mine, one lithium mine and two mines already extracting combinations of nickel, copper and cobalt. Quebec’s strategy is buttressed by circularity, mining the “urban mine” of used, recalled or damaged batteries that are piling up around us. In June, doors opened on the province’s first critical minerals extraction plant, by Lithion Technologies, located on the outskirts of Montreal and one of the first in North America. Once fully operational, the facility will have the capacity to shred 45,000 EV batteries per year. 

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Beyond the precious elements in its soil, Quebec’s ample hydro power – at what the minister calls a “very reasonable” price – offers companies the chance to build sustainability into their business models.  

Of course, it’s not just about access to cheap green energy. In the race to secure a place in the EV transition, governments around the world have been pushed to provide hefty incentives to lure investment (or block competition, like the 100% tariffs on Chinese-made EVs by Canada and the U.S., and lower ones in Europe). Canada and Quebec have been matching the kind of production support available under the U.S.’s Inflation Reduction Act for the Northvolt battery line, topping out at $4.6 billion. In addition, Quebec has earmarked $3.46 billion in loans, subsidies and equity investment for 15 battery projects so far. Among the recipients of the funding is a cathode factory by General Motors and South Korea’s POSCO Chemical, in Bécancour, slated to be another battery hub, or “battery valley,” near Trois-Rivières. Construction on a third joint cathode venture, also in the Bécancour area but this time between Ford, Korea’s EcoPro BM and SK On, was recently put on hold.   

Strategy speedbumps

For all its green transition promise, the efforts are not without controversy. Fitzgibbon’s resignation unleashed a wave of criticism over how the Coalition Avenir Québec government was handling energy policy, with Conservative Party of Quebec leader Éric Duhaime calling its strategy of focusing on electrification and battery production “a very risky bet, potentially even already a failure.”  

The Northvolt project, due to its scope and degree of public investment, has garnered the most scrutiny thus far, especially from environmental groups and Indigenous communities that say the government has circumvented the rules and failed to properly consult and evaluate the project. Local residents have raised concerns about the potential environmental impacts, in particular on the Richelieu River, which is a source of drinking water for some 300,000 households and a biodiverse habitat with protected fish stocks. In more extreme examples of opposition, vandals have driven nails and metal bars into trees to prevent forests from being cut down and planted incendiary devices made of bottles filled with flammable liquid on the site. No one has been injured, but it’s put the community on edge and caught company and government officials off guard.  

“It’s really a case about how the government and minister of the environment take decisions about big industrial projects,” says Marc Bishai, a lawyer with the Quebec Environmental Law Centre (Centre québécois du droit de l’environnement, or CQDE). The group has filed a lawsuit challenging the provincial government’s decision to make a change to its environmental assessment rules, thus exempting the first phase of the plant from a comprehensive impact assessment, known in Quebec as a BAPE. A court denied CQDE’s bid to halt the felling of thousands of trees on the 170-hectare site. “The government is denying the public the ability to participate in the decision, which normally happens in Quebec,” Bishai says.  

The Mohawk Council of Kahnawake has also taken Quebec and Canada to court for allegedly breaching their duties to consult, both in terms of approval of the Northvolt project and, in the case of Quebec, over destruction of wetlands.  

Fitzgibbon denies that the rules were changed for the Northvolt project, although in March, Environment Minister Benoit Charette told the media that an environmental assessment at that juncture would have delayed approval and jeopardized Quebec’s chances to secure the gigafactory. He insisted the company will nonetheless have to satisfy the province’s stringent environmental standards.  

Navigating headwinds

On the streets of the picturesque village of Saint-Basile-le-Grand, community members raise concerns about potential environmental risks from the factory, while also expressing interest in the employment opportunities the complex would generate. Long-time residents such as Annie Chabot, a 57-year-old educator, say the issue has been divisive. Chabot wishes the government had undergone a more extensive environmental assessment. “But I’m not against the project,” she says.  

Northvolt is facing other headwinds. With the projected growth of EVs slowing in the near term, driving companies such as Ford to reevaluate their plans, the company announced in July that it was undergoing a “strategic review,” prompting a flurry of media coverage speculating that Northvolt Six was in peril. The Swedish company has repeatedly stressed that it remains committed to Quebec, most recently in September, when it announced a slate of closures and mergers for several sites around the world, Northvolt Six not among them. Potential revisions to the timelines of the Quebec facility and others “will be confirmed during the fall, along with any further necessary cost-saving actions,” the company said in a statement.  

As long as we still want to decarbonize the planet, this is a very sound strategy.

 

—Pierre Fitzgibbon, Quebec’s former minister of economy and energy

Fitzgibbon says delays are to be expected. The evolving technology may affect how quickly EVs are adopted but not if they are, he maintains. “As long as we still want to decarbonize the planet, this is a very sound strategy,” he says.

Quebec, which has a track record of leading environmental policy in Canada, has shown its commitment to the electric transition through consumer policy, too.  Since 2012, Quebec has offered a healthy rebate for the purchase or lease of an EV. And it has paid off. Quebecers are buying far more EVs than the rest of the country. Electric vehicles had a 21.5% chunk of the vehicle market in the province in the second quarter of this year (compared to 9.9% in Canada overall and 8% in the U.S.). In announcing its decision to phase out the financial incentive for EVs by 2027, the Quebec government said the industry no longer needs that extra help.  

For Normand Mousseau, director of the Trottier Energy Institute at Polytechnique Montréal and a co-chair of the Quebec Commission on Energy Issues in 2013, the success of Quebec’s battery bet is far from clear. He says that there is no obligation for manufacturers such as Northvolt to source their critical minerals from Quebec, so the fully integrated supply chain may not be realized. And he thinks the province missed a critical opportunity to link the energy transition to intellectual property.

 “There was no demand from these industries to invest in any research and development in Quebec. And it’s the same in Ontario,” he says, referring to large government subsidies for EV and battery plants. “We’ve seen it with Hyundai and GM. They set up shop here, and after a few years they leave, because there is nothing that ties them in terms of higher value.” 

 Still, he acknowledges that time is of the essence as the world races to decarbonize, and “you can sit on the side and wait until you have a perfect investment, or you take bets.” 

While some supply chain investments may look shaky, others, such as the Lithion Technologies battery recycling facility, are powering ahead. It’s already processing recalled or end-of-life car batteries. “We want to be able to create the circular economy so that the batteries we produce are the greenest possible batteries,” says CEO Benoit Couture, echoing the provincial government’s larger goal.  

It’s an important cog in Quebec’s aspirations, however they materialize. Regardless, the EV economy will keep driving forward.

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires–based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights.

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The founders of Gravitricity, an Edinburgh start-up, hope their energy-balancing system will become standard in decommissioned coal mine shafts in Europe, South Africa and the U.S., turning depleted assets into productive ones while accelerating the transition to 100% renewable energy. Around the world, innovators are developing new energy-storage solutions that shore up growth in renewables against criticism that the sector can’t deliver power 24/7 (see Zero). According to BloombergNEF, total energy-storage capacity hit 46 gigawatts at the end of 2023. By the end of 2030, Bloomberg expects total cumulative energy-storage capacity will reach 650 gigawatts. And that total is 58% higher than Bloomberg’s year-earlier forecast.

The range of solutions being explored today is mind-bending. Beyond more efficient battery technologies such as sodium ion, aluminum air and solid-state batteries, researchers are working on mechanical systems such as pumped hydroelectric storage, compressed-air energy storage, and falling weights/flywheel storage (such as Gravitricity’s model) and chemical systems such as hydrogen storage and superconducting magnetic energy storage. Also promising: thermal systems that store heat energy, such as latent heat storage, which converts heat into reversible chemical bonds.

The revolution has already begun, led by storage projects that use conventional lithium-ion battery packs. By the end of 2023, Enfinite Corp., a privately owned Calgary energy-storage firm, was scheduled to switch on its 60-megawatt-hour (MWh) battery plant near Grande Prairie, Alberta. Powered by Tesla-made batteries, the plant will boost the firm’s energy-storage capacity by 50%, to 180 MWh. Meanwhile, Toronto-based energy independent Northland Power has just begun building “Jurassic Solar,” a 220-MW solar generating plant in eastern Alberta that will include 160 MWh of battery storage. Also on Northland’s plate is the Oneida Energy Storage Project in Ontario, a utility-scale project being built with the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation that will be the largest energy-storage project in Canada to date.

South of the border, the world’s biggest lithium-ion energy-storage system got even bigger in 2023, with Vistra Corp.’s Moss Landing facility in California now delivering three gigawatts of capacity. “As we navigate this energy transition to cleaner fuel sources,” Vistra president and CEO Jim Burke said in a press release, “the ability to balance that shift with both reliability and affordability is paramount.”

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While there are many ways human activity has brought about climate change, global electricity generation sources are among the leading culprits. Despite small upticks in the supply of wind and solar power, we have not yet reached a point where we are able to dislodge the fossil fuels that are entrenched in the power mix of many countries.

But why is this still the case?

Since renewable sources deliver an intermittent supply of power, we also need a way to store this energy to meet the demand of the grid when the sun is not shining, or the wind is not blowing. This is a major challenge, as the switch to renewable power also requires establishing long lasting, safe and affordable energy storage systems. As such, finding a cheap, safe and alternative battery to lithium is the key to moving the needle to a completely renewable power sector.

Beyond lithium-ion batteries

As with electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries have become a popular option for the grid, as they offer a high energy density, modular solution for energy storage. But the use of lithium-ion batteries has also brought along its own challenges with high cost of materials, risk of fire and explosion and lack of recycling practices limiting the widespread adoption of lithium-ion batteries for the grid.

One incredibly promising option to replace lithium for grid scale energy storage is the rechargeable zinc-ion battery. Emerging only within the last 10 years, zinc-ion batteries offer many advantages over lithium. These include cheaper material costs, increased safety and easier recycling options.

With grid-scale energy storage potential at a considerably cheaper cost — and higher levels of safety — widespread commercialization of zinc-ion batteries could be exactly what is needed to integrate renewables into energy infrastructure in Canada and other countries.

The cost of a battery

For Canada to reach the decarbonization targets set in the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, including a grid powered by 90 per cent renewable electricity, the deployment of zinc-ion batteries will be crucial.

Studies have shown that for renewables to become the source of 90 to 95 per cent of all electricity, the cost of energy storage must be below US$150/kWh. Modern lithium-ion systems are still sitting around US$350/kWh. In part, this is due to high manufacturing costs and their reliance on expensive raw materials to achieve the high energy density needed for modern electric vehicles.

Zinc-ion batteries on the other hand, could solve the cost and abundance issues. Using inexpensive, abundant materials such as zinc and manganese not only makes them cheaper to produce, but lowers risk from supply chain disruptions or material shortages that affect lithium-ion materials such as lithium and cobalt.

The annual production of zinc globally is over 100 times that of lithium. Not to mention that demand for lithium and cobalt is anticipated to outweigh the supply within the next decade.

Zinc is a safer option

With rigorous safety standards being created for batteries used in homes, factories or within the electrical grid, safety is key to getting the public to embrace them. In this way, zinc-ion batteries offer further advantage.

The flammable and toxic solvent based electrolyte of lithium-ion batteries is replaced with a water-based alternative, removing the risk of fire and explosion.

Conversely, the safe disposal of lithium-ion batteries can also be a difficult task, as they contain toxic compounds. Recycling these batteries is currently economically infeasible due to high costs leading to large numbers of spent cells ending up in landfills.

Fortunately, zinc-ion batteries simplify end of life treatment. The nontoxic, aqueous electrolyte used in zinc-ion batteries means that well established methods like those for lead-acid battery disposal can be used. Also, the metallic zinc anode could be easily reused in new batteries.

The future of energy storage

To reach its goal of 90 per cent renewable energy by 2030, Canada must look for alternatives to lithium-ion batteries to enable decarbonization of its power sector. Leveraging the cost, abundance and safety benefits of zinc-ion batteries, Canada can accelerate the integration of wind and solar power across the nation.

Zinc-ion batteries support Canada’s decarbonization goals and prove an opportunity to capitalize on a rapidly expanding battery market. While zinc-ion batteries are a relatively new technology, their potential to support grid scale energy storage within Canada and worldwide cannot be understated.

With the help of Canadian research and manufacturing, including efforts from McMaster University and Dartmouth, N.S.-based Salient Energy Inc., the integration of zinc-ion batteries could become a reality within the next several years, establishing Canada as an industry leader.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Storm William D. Gourley is a PhD candidate in chemical engineering, and Drew Higgins is assistant professor in the department of chemical engineering, both at McMaster University.

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As the IESO moves ahead with plans to add 1,500 megawatts of new natural gas-fired generating capacity at four existing generating stations, independent analysts are also looking into how long the province will actually be using the gas plants, how much they’ll drive up climate pollution – and whether the procurement was needed in the first place.

The discussion about provincial power planning became that much more complex and fraught over the last week, when Energy Minister Todd Smith announced a procurement for utility-scale renewables in 2025-26 that he said would be the biggest the country has ever seen. The province is moving immediately to add 4,800 MW of new nuclear capacity at the massive Bruce complex on Lake Huron and three more small modular nuclear reactors at the Darlington nuclear generating site on Lake Ontario.

But the other big uncertainty is the extent to which the IESO’s battery procurement will end up depending on natural gas, a fuel whose primary component is methane, a climate super-pollutant with 85 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 20-year span.

‘Clean’ Battery Storage from a Fossil Fuel

In its May 16 media release on the gas plant procurement, the IESO put most of the emphasis on the seven new battery projects totalling 739 megawatts, yet another Canadian first for the biggest storage buy ever. The concurrent decision to push ahead with new gas capacity means a large share of the electricity flowing into those batteries may be generated from a high-emitting fossil fuel. But a review of the IESO’s in-house analysis over the last two years suggests the grid operator might not be entirely sure how much or how often that will happen:

• A data table [xlsx] accompanying the IESO’s December, 2022 Annual Planning Outlook shows the percentage of the time that gas is the “marginal resource” increasing from 24% in 2023 to 54% in 2024, 81% in 2027, 89% in 2033, and 99% in 2037, then holding at 99 or 100% through 2043.

• But the equivalent table [xlsx] from the December, 2021 outlook indicated much heavier reliance on emissions-heavy gas—70% in 2023, 74% in 2024, 91% in 2027, and 100% in 2043.

Both sets of numbers bear out the note in the 2022 outlook that “the escalating trend continues quickly prior to 2028 as demand grows and other [power generating stations] come out of service, as natural gas facilities will increasingly be the marginal resource.” But the higher numbers mean more gas being burned sooner, more emissions going into the atmosphere as a result, and the IESO’s numbers shifting in the course of a single year to indicate a smaller climate impact.

An IESO spokesperson did not respond to questions about how much of the electricity destined for battery storage will be generated from gas, or how the IESO calculated that percentage prior to this week’s announcements. The IESO and the Ministry of Energy both said it’s too soon to say how the new renewable energy procurement will shift that picture. “As the 2025-26 procurement is still being designed, target quantities and commercial operation dates are yet to be determined through consultation with the IESO and other stakeholders,” said Ministry spokesperson Michael Dodsworth.

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“Five disposable vapes are being thrown away every second by young people in the United States despite the devices containing reusable lithium-ion batteries,” reports the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. “Over a year, this amounts to 150 million devices—which together contain enough lithium for about 6,000 Teslas.”

Lithium is an “in-demand metal” because of its use in rechargeable batteries for mobile phones, electric vehicles, and more—and the need is expected to increase fivefold by 2030, the Bureau says. Lithium-ion batteries are also used in e-cigarettes or vapes to heat the “e-juice” liquid nicotine solution they contain.

“Even though most disposable vapes contain a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, they are designed to be discarded once the liquid runs out.”

Since vapes have become incredibly popular, the impact of this waste can be substantial. More than 14 million single-use vapes are purchased in the United Kingdom each month, with more than 50% of them “needlessly being thrown away” after their 3,500 or so puffs are exhausted, said Scott Butler, executive director of Material Focus.

“This means that every week one million vapes are not recycled,” he added.

On top of the wastage, discarding batteries combined with other mixed garbage pose a real danger of fires at waste processing sites. One U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report identified 245 fires between 2013 and 2020 that were definitely or likely caused by lithium-ion batteries in waste facilities like garbage trucks and warehouses.

“One incident resulted in four firefighters being taken to hospital to be treated for chemical burns,” writes the Bureau.

The batteries are meant to be recycled, but the process can be a difficult and confusing, with some vapes needing to be taken apart to properly do so. Regulatory oversight has so far proved insufficient to ensure disposal guidelines are being followed and that manufacturers are complying with collection requirements.

As a result, more and more vapes find their way into landfills, where critical minerals accumulate instead of being used for the energy transition. One calculation described the critical minerals from vapes discarded in the UK over one year as “equivalent to 6,200 Tesla Model 3 batteries being driven once and then thrown away,” or 617,000 e-bike batteries.

“Every one of the batteries that are in a vape like this holds about one-third of the battery that’s in your phone,” Alex Fairclough, an engineer who teaches at Newcastle University, told VICE. “The fact that we’ve got hundreds of millions of these things just getting put into a $20 vape that gets thrown in the bin, it’s tragic.”

This article is republished from The Energy Mix. Read the original article.

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At the peak of the summer, my nation, the Nlaka’pamux, one of the Indigenous Peoples of south-central British Columbia, used to know when the salmon had returned to local rivers by the annual blooming of the waxz’ethlap, or wild mock-orange shrub. This flower’s annual bloom along the shores of the Thompson River used to tell us when to prepare our salmon nets and fish-drying racks to harvest what is one of our most important protein sources.

However, because of the impacts of climate change on the lands and waters in our territories, this annual bloom is no longer synchronized with the salmon’s journey up the rivers to spawn. The waxz’ethlap flowers that once welcomed the salmon home now miss the yearly migration by several weeks. In late June, an extreme heat wave formed over the Pacific Northwest, fuelling a catastrophic fire season. As the temperature soared, Lytton, B.C. – a town only 36 kilometres away from my home community, the Cook’s Ferry Indian Band at Spences Bridge, B.C. – reached an unprecedented 49.6°C and the next day burned to the ground. That was the hottest temperature ever recorded anywhere in Canada. My community, and many other adjacent Indigenous communities, were under wildfire evacuation alerts from June to mid-September.

Scientists have been telling us for decades that we must dramatically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. One important way to reduce those emissions is to convert our cars to electric vehicles (EVs), particularly since the Canadian and U.S. transportation sectors combined make up the continent’s largest source of carbon emissions. And yet, this need presents Indigenous people with a new challenge, as the minerals used to make EV batteries, in large part, will come from Indigenous lands.

Prior to the 1970s, many mines in North America were built and operated by companies that had little regard for Indigenous rights or aspirations. In the more egregious cases, mines were abandoned by their owners once the mineral deposits had been spent, then continued to leach toxic chemicals and minerals into waterways for decades. There are an estimated 10,000 abandoned mines in Canada, with cleanup costs expected to be in the billions, paid mainly by taxpayers.

Many of these mines are near Indigenous communities, whose residents live with the environmental legacy of these past mining practices. For example, as a result of the toxic legacy of the Giant Mine gold mine in the Northwest Territories, which closed in 2004, the Yellowknives Dene First Nation has formally called on Canada for an “apology and compensation for the damage and long-lasting impact to their lands and people.” In Squamish Nation territory, the Britannia Mine, which was Canada’s largest copper mine before it closed in 1974, produced acid runoff for decades. It’s considered and has been “one of the largest metal pollution sources in North America,” according to the government of B.C., impacting sea life in Howe Sound.

Mining for trust

While the mining industry in Canada has made strides in consulting with Indigenous Peoples, and in complying with environmental legislation, the sheer volume and rapid timeline of EV battery mineral demand will challenge miners and governments to respect and protect Indigenous Peoples’ rights and interests while meeting projected mineral demand.

The mining sector will need to reimagine the role of Indigenous people and their lands as part of a new paradigm: one in which our transportation energy systems have transformed to emissions-free sources, and one where Indigenous people are at the helm of decision-making about their lands and waters.

Given that Section 35 of Canada’s Constitution Act recognizes and affirms Indigenous rights, and the recent passing of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into Canadian law, governments and miners now must gain the “free, prior and informed consent” of Indigenous people, governments and communities for all new mining projects.

What happens to our planet’s atmosphere if Indigenous people say no to new battery mineral mining?

One need only read the daily news to see what happens when governments and companies do not honour Indigenous rights. Increasingly, Indigenous people and non-Indigenous allies, via consumer activism and ethical investing criteria, are having a significant impact on the economic bottom line of companies that do not source their raw materials in a manner that is environmentally and socially sustainable.

Unless there are true and equitable partnerships between industry, governments, investors and Indigenous people, 2030 net-zero mineral deadlines will not be met.

For example, shares in the Canadian mining company Tahoe Resources fell from $27 to $5 as the company failed to disclose the extent of local and Indigenous opposition to its Escobal silver mine in Guatemala and was beleaguered by a string of lawsuits, violent conflicts and the suspension of the mine by a Guatemalan court. And in the U.S., the headline-making Dakota Access Pipeline ultimately cost Energy Transfer and its investment partners in the pipeline an additional US$3.7 billion as a result of Indigenous-led social pressure, delays and opposition to the pipeline.

Indigenous people are diverse, however, and many are not necessarily against development in their territories. The First Nations Major Projects Coalition is a collective of 80 First Nations across Canada that are among those interested in participating in projects that are supportive of their environmental, social and economic self-determination priorities. Projects with this support stand a much better chance of being built. While rudiments of successful partnerships with Indigenous communities exist, mining is still heavily tilted against Indigenous nations, who bear nearly all the environmental and social risk while capturing comparatively few of the benefits. An equal sharing of benefits would see Indigenous environmental oversight, the growth of Indigenous-owned support businesses, revenue sharing and equity ownership, and employment at all levels of the ventures, from entry level through to senior management and boards of directors.

Driving the race to net-zero

It currently takes 10 to 15 years on average to bring a new mine into production. Unless there are true and equitable partnerships between industry, governments, investors and Indigenous people, 2030 net-zero mineral deadlines will not be met. Governments and industry need to vastly ramp up their partnership game to bring new minerals to market in time to be part of a net-zero solution.

Today, only 0.7% of vehicles on Canadian and U.S. roads are electric-powered. To reach global emission targets by 2030, nearly 60% of new vehicles worldwide will need to be powered by electricity, with 100% by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency. To manufacture the millions of new batteries needed to power these millions of new EVs on North American roads, the car industry will require up to 14 times more nickel, nine times more lithium and 10 times more copper by 2030 than it did in 2019.

The day before wildfires burned the town of Lytton to the ground, the Government of Canada set a mandatory target for all new light-duty cars and passenger trucks to be zero-emission by 2035.

One month later, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order mandating that half of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. by 2030 be zero-emission vehicles. The automotive market is already moving to fulfill market demand for cleaner transportation options. Every major car manufacturer worldwide has announced that they will be shifting their car production to more, and in some cases only, emission-free options.

Saving the planet’s atmosphere by sacrificing Indigenous lands, cultures and societies is a non-starter for Indigenous nations. Car manufacturers, mining companies, governments and Indigenous leaders will need to come together to forge successful partnerships that can work for a fair and sustainable energy transition.

The question is this: will the benefits that come from a $1-trillion market be equitably shared among all affected parties? And can we be environmentally smart, culturally aware, respectful of Indigenous sovereignty, and economically prosperous without trading one problem for another?

Mark Podlasly is a member of the Nlaka’pamux Nation and the director of economic policy at the First Nations Major Projects Coalition.

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