Henry Harrell"s Blog: December 19 Green Energy News

Headline News:

One of the top mining firms in the world, Rio Tinto, has been operating a fleet of autonomous trucks in various parts of Australia. Building on these earlier and current deployments, the company is now planning a large increase of the size of the autonomous truck fleet in Australia’s Pilbara iron-ore region, as part of a cost-cutting program. [CleanTechnica]

Rio Tinto autonomous trucks

Solid Power, a developer of solid-state rechargeable batteries, announced that the BMW Group is partnering with it to develop its solid-state batteries for use in BMW’s future electric vehicle models. BMW will assist Solid Power to advance its technology to achieve performance levels demanded by its customers. [CleanTechnica]
Researchers at the University of York in the UK are putting forward an idea they say could capture almost a billion tons of carbon dioxide a year at relatively low cost and turn it into the mineral Dawsonite, which is chemically sodium aluminium carbonate hydroxide. Unfortunately, Dawsonite has no known practical uses. [CleanTechnica]
Seemingly in anticipation of surging demand for electric light-duty commercial vehicles as stricter regulations go into effect, Renault has formed a new joint venture in China with the firm Brilliance China Automotive Holdings Ltd. The plan is for the new joint venture to sell 150,000 vehicles a year by 2022, according to reports. [CleanTechnica]
The Wisconsin Conservative Energy Forum was unveiled last week. Its director said its sole purpose is to educate Republicans that “renewable” and “clean” are not dirty words that should make right-thinking people recoil in horror. The chairman of the group is Tommy Thompson, Wisconsin’s longest serving governor. [CleanTechnica]

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