I came here to say "obviously American, anything but metrics...", but you bet me to it.

Except the two biggest exporters of electricity, not to mention Norway and Denmark (Finland?) Being well over 90% electric in their respective new sales car fleets, Spain going all out on solar, several off shore power plants and a number of long term batteries (non-electric). Oh and the number of hydrogen installations throughout germany. Except all those steps?

I agree, more needs to be done and fast!

I absolutely agree, but that wasn't what you brought up in regards to electric cars. As for the stuff you bring up besides the lithium, EVs eat more tires, but for the rest of it, the rest can be said about fossil cars as well.

Yes, you are right, cars are bad, but if you need a car, electric is better. And unfortunately, not all places are planned to be livable without a car. And that part isn't the fault of the car driver.

I'm not saying it is nothing, but the environmental cost of 1 car battery has to be compared to the environmental damage of 1 tonne of gasoline/year it is replacing. So 500 kg of batteries or 10-15 tonnes of gasoline for a typical car...

I'd rather that than landfill, though. Today the tree tops, tomorrow the stars, as they say:)

Not laughing. Crying

Came here to post this

The specs yes, but obviously not the skills. And that is the problem atm, The second best droneoperators are not of the western hemisphere...

Conscription is the Nordic way. Train before it is needed, so that everyone knows what to do when shit hits the fan. And when it does a large part of the population knows how to enact a specific role in the army, would it be needed. From crewing submarines to driving tanks or how to use the communications equipment.

I honestly thought it would be bigger. Having said that, we (as in the municipality i work for) currently have 40-60 MWh sand batteries in production. The first, small and hot, one is currently charging to go into production when it gets colder. The bigger and colder battery is slated to start charging the next season.

“And you can store it for long periods, not just two hours or four hours like lithium-ion batteries, but potentially for days and maybe even weeks.”

I'm guessing here, but "for days and maybe even weeks" must be because the battery is above ground? With good insulation seasonal storage is very much in the cards.

A day care in another Swedish municipality use about 1/5 of the "normal" energy for heating thanks to a sand battery. As in 15-18 kwh/m2/year as opposed to 70 kwh/m2/year as is the current upper limit for new buildings in Sweden.

It is basically an isolated heat trap for excess electricity/heat during the summer to be used during winter. It is rather like ground heat except for a few notable differences:

The cons are obvious:

• Higher investment,
• More complicated

The pros:

• Doesn't need as much power (higher heat output during winter),
• The community has a goal of using 100% of produced electricity on site (as that is most economical), but this allow us to utilize the entire roof for solar energy, which will be more economical in autumn/spring.

Cost wise, for the tenants, it's no difference, as the lower running costs of the battery is predicted to out weight the extra cost of capital, but in an emergency the house will be much easier to keep light and warm. The plan is to fit the house with batterier and V2G EV-chargers.

So far I've mostly changed how I do stuff, rather than what i do. Electric car instead of ICE, Bike and train for commuting, Solarpanels and 20kWh batteries for most of my summer time energy needs.

At work I have more possibility to make a difference, though. So far I've had batteries introduced (solar was already norm) as an accessory to "our" buildings, I've gotten 2 thermal batteries (sand) built and are currently investigating building mounted small scale wind power. Among other things.