Game-Changer for EVs & Energy Policy!
1.) The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC), has chosen companies firms to support a vehicle-to-everything (V2X) demonstration program. The pilot will provide a free bidirectional EV charger to 100 participants in the residential, commercial and school-district sectors.
2.) Sticking with electric transportation, it appears Mercedes Benz is making real progress in the race to commercialize solid state battery tech in vehicles. The company reports it has installed a solid-state battery pack, with cells from U.S. company Factorial Energy, into a modified EQS Sedan, starting road trials last month. This battery offers up to 620 miles of range in this configuration.
3.) Implementation of tariffs from Canada and Mexico starts today, March 4th. Canadian electricity imports will see a 10% levy. New England and New York grid operators are not quite sure what this means for them, but in order to be ready, each filed tariffs with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week. ISO-NE and NYISO said they don’t think it’s their job to collect the duties, but they need to understand their responsibilities.
4.) ISO-NE estimated that a 10 percent tariff on Canadian electricity imports could cost $66 million annually.
5.) Cutting basic government-funded energy research, whether in health, energy, or the other sciences, risks impoverishing this country in the future.
6.) Fracking is one such example. U.S. - sponsored research included multiple shale gas projects, including everything from three -dimensional micro-seismic imaging to advanced drill bit technology development, as well as close collaboration with the Gas research Institute. In 15 years, shale gas production went from nothing to about two-thirds of total U.S. gas production.
7.) Today, our money funds materials science development in our national labs, as well as critically important cybersecurity initiatives.
8.) Federal research fosters improvements in advanced geothermal technologies at the FORGE project in Utah, modular nuclear technology research including reactor physics, modeling, simulation, and safety analysis. The list goes on.
Does the federal budget need to be managed? Yes. Does our national debt threaten our future well-being? Yes. And it needs to be addressed. But the chainsaw approach is short-sighted and counterproductive in a world made up of interconnected systems of systems.