Kevin’s Daily Digest for 8/10/16

Truckers face a robotic future, Estonian supercapacitors, LNG to change the world, an end to coal leases?, and more.

The Daily Digest, published Monday-Thursday plus a deep take weekend edition, focuses on the latest news and perspectives in climate, renewables, storage and electric vehicles. For more follow me on Twitter @kkchristy. The Digest archive and the rest of my Medium content is here.

One of the (many) thematic elements of Downton Abbey was the impact of technology on the lives of the family and staff as visited upon them by the automobile, the telephone, the radio, even hair dryers. But perhaps the most poignant changes thrust upon the characters came via the decline of the landed class, coincident with the rise of the common man, as reflected in how the ambitions of several of their servants took them beyond Downton evan as those who remained faced lives of declining fortune, their lords and ladies no longer able to afford the luxury of their personal services.

Fast forward to today, and almost daily the headlines point to tough times ahead for taxi drivers at the hands of Uber and Lyft. Coal miners pin their waning hopes on Donald Trump, but natural gas and renewables are already writing the epitaph of King Coal.

Not too far off the horizon, our nation’s almost two million truck drivers face a similar fate at the hands of autonomous driving technology. Not tomorrow or next year. Perhaps not during the next presidential administration. But I would not bet we’d get though two presidential administrations without this issue hitting the headlines.

I try not to get too worked up over very pre-commercial technology, partly because I can’t count how many times I’ve heard new solar technologies hyped up over the last 15 years, literally none of which every came to anything remarkable. And partly because until it’s commercialized, there’s not much I can do with it in my day job as a solar PV project developer, where I have to deal with risk-averse investors and thus have little patience for unproven companies with fragile balance sheets.

But… somebody’s always working on something interesting that could — but yeah, probably won’t — change an industry.

But a supercapacitor startup in Estonia? Who can resist.

If we’re to meet our climate goals, here’s two things we have to do:

1. Stop leasing any new federal lands for coal mining.
2. Reduce the amount of coal being mined from existing mines.

The market is already having its way with coal, but I’d like to see that accelerated. Carbon tax, now.

Stephen Lacey just posted an interview with Dick Swanson, the founder of SunPower, which is full of great perspective on what he’s seen across his storied career in both semiconductors and solar.

Regulated electric monopolies are a blessing and a curse. Without them, we would not have near-universal electrification at affordable costs.

But with them, our progress beyond what we have today to a renewable energy future of electrified transportation is just going to be a painful grind.

Look no further for an example than utilities’ struggles to cope with EV infrastructure. Common sense might suggest that they would enthusiastically embrace the electrification of transportation and the tremendous load growth and infrastructure improvements that would accompany it, but…

VW, fresh off of its diesel scandals, has been doubling down on EV development with recent announcements that they are to release 30 new EV models by 2025 based on three different platforms.

Me, I’m just lusting for the electric bus: