#YANKEEVIRUS  #TRUMPVIRUS

U.S. the biggest source of COVID-19 brought into Canada, study finds

It has been controversially labeled the “China virus,” but new research suggests Canada’s COVID-19 epidemic might be better nicknamed the America virus.

Tom Blackwell 

POSTMEDIA

4/21/2021

© Provided by National Post US Customs officers speak with occupants of a vehicle at the US/Canada border in Lansdowne, Ont., on March 2020.

More than half the imported variants of the pathogen that led to outbreaks in this country likely came from the United States, with Russia, India, Italy and the U.K. following well back as sources of imported virus, scientists from B.C., Ontario and Arizona concluded.

Virus arriving directly from China — where the pandemic is believed to have originated — accounts for relatively little transmission of COVID-19 here, they suggested.

The newly posted study was made possible by a remarkable international database of DNA sequences of SARS-CoV-2, a resource that’s letting scientists track at the genetic level how and where the pandemic is spreading.

The Canadian researchers say importation of virus slowed somewhat after international travel restrictions were imposed in March 2020, but outbreak-causing arrivals continued throughout the year.

“We are so interlinked with other countries and between provinces,” said Angela McLaughlin, the University of British Columbia doctoral student who co-authored the paper with supervisor Dr. Jeff Joy and others.

“People have family to visit, other reasons to travel,” she said. “This just highlights that each one of those actions is a probabilistic event where the virus could be transmitted. It’s incredible the extent to which it has done that.”

She and colleagues advocate more stringent actions to keep the pathogen out, such as the 14-day hotel quarantines on international travellers imposed by Australia and New Zealand.

“Every single importation was an opportunity that the government had to intervene,” said McLaughlin.

“Early and strict interventions are the way to go,” she added. “If you do early and strict, you don’t have to have this stretched-out, low-level lockdown going on for so long, which I think has generated so much public apathy around the issue.”

The study, posted on a “preprint” site and not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal, looked at activity up until this February. It documented the likely first arrival in Canada — in the last week of December — of the B.1.1.7 “U.K.” variant of concern that’s now spreading far and wide. But the researchers lacked access to data allowing them to analyze the current wave of infection linked to such variants.

Until recently, genetic changes in the virus in Canada appear to have been mostly benign, not making it more transmissible or virulent.

To do the work, scientists from UBC, Western University and University of Arizona tapped into an international, public repository of virus sequences, a collection McLaughlin calls “unprecedented in the history of humankind.”

The huge database includes sequences submitted by labs in Canada and around the world. Differences between the genetic blueprints were used to build “family trees” of SARS-CoV-2 mutations, which helped the team identify “sublineages” – groups of viruses that resulted from a common import into Canada.

They were able to trace 402 outbreak-causing sublineages back to other countries. That number is undoubtedly an underestimate, the paper said, as genetic sequencing is carried out for only about one per cent of positive tests in Canada, and many COVID infections are asymptomatic and never even diagnosed.

The researchers also found 1,380 “singletons” — virus that came into Canada but did not appear to cause more cases after arriving. Some of the people bringing in those versions of the bug may have never given it to anyone else. It’s also possible many did trigger virus spread here, but that the genetic sequencing documenting such transmission didn’t happen, said McLaughlin.

Of the 402 outbreak-causing sublineages, 218 likely originated from the U.S., about 54 per cent of the total, the study concluded. Another 29 introduced variants came from Russia, 25 each from Italy and India, 22 from the U.K. and 15 each from Spain and France, the paper indicates.

Only two sublineages originated from China itself, they concluded. (However, China has been widely criticized for initial attempts to obscure the emergence of the virus in Wuhan and downplay its seriousness, allowing it to spread within and beyond the city.)

The importance of the U.S. as a source of imported virus raises difficult questions about how to make the world’s longest undefended border more virus-tight. The massive trade between the two countries means constant comings and goings, with largely no public-health restrictions.

But if data indicates that truck drivers are a significant source of virus importation, it might make sense to have handovers of freight at the border so the drivers themselves don’t cross over, said McLaughlin.

Quebec and Ontario were the destinations for about 80 per cent of the imported viruses identified by the researchers.

Meanwhile, spread between provinces also seemed key to the ongoing epidemic, the study indicated.

McLaughlin said restrictions on travel between provinces, as the Atlantic region imposed, would have helped greatly.

UCP VS UCP

Council in Alberta environment minister's town wants better coal consultation

ROCKY MOUNTAIN HOUSE, Alta. — A town council in Alberta Environment Minister Jason Nixon's backyard wants broader consultation over the government's plans for open-pit coal mining in the Rocky Mountains.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

On Tuesday, the community of Rocky Mountain House voted to send a letter to the United Conservative government asking for a more extensive evaluation of its proposal to dramatically expand the industry. Talks would go far beyond what has so far been offered.

"I would like to see us have extensive consultations with the public, First Nations and industry," Mayor Tammy Burke told council in the largest municipality of Nixon's constituency.

The letter asks that there be input on land disruption, water quality, air quality and health effects on humans and wildlife. It asks for a cost-benefit analysis that would consider employment in the industry, economic revenue, effect on tourism and potential recreational development.

The province has begun a public consultation on coal mines, which would export steelmaking coal to largely Asian markets. The panel leading the dialogue is only allowed to consider concerns that fall under the Department of Energy, which automatically rules out most of the issues Rocky Mountain House is concerned about.

"I believe in responsible resource development," said Coun. Merrin Fraser. "The steps that have been taken to prevent consultation on land and water use are not responsible.

"Risking the health and future of our land for a volatile Chinese market ... I'm just not sure that that is a responsible financial decision.

Nixon's office did not respond to a request for comment on Rocky Mountain House's concerns.

Last spring, the government revoked a policy that had protected the summits and eastern slopes of the Rockies since 1976. Public pressure eventually forced Energy Minister Sonya Savage to reinstate the policy, but she did not take back coal leases on thousands of hectares sold in the meantime.

More than two dozen municipalities and six First Nations have expressed some level of concern about expanded mining in the region, which is renowned for its beauty and is the source of most of Alberta's drinking water.

Those communities include Clearwater County, the district that comprises the bulk of Nixon's constituency.

Nixon has suggested no further consultations will be required. Asked at a meeting of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association last week about the possibility of a second, environmentally focused set of talks, Nixon pointed to the province's current regulations and implied they are adequate to deal with new coal mines.

In an interview, Burke said council has received more than 50 letters on the issue.

"We just want to make sure that everybody that wants a say in this, has a say in this," she said. "It doesn't sound like people are happy with the consultations that are taking place."

Town council does acknowledge the economic benefits a coal mine could bring.

"This is a large economic item for us, so we can't just dismiss those economic benefits," said Coun. Len Phillips. "I think there's a way of having both."

Fraser questioned whether the province can ensure mining on the landscape would be environmentally benign.

"I feel like we're being (told) by the UCP, 'Trust us. We've got it under control,'" she said.

"But we have evidence time and time again where the government has failed to intervene, failed to apply their own regulations, failed to step in where that is their responsibility."

Government data shows Alberta Environment knew for years about high levels of contaminants from coal mines in at least three rivers and failed to act. Monitoring stations on those rivers were cut instead.

More recently, satellite imagery has shown that permitted road density from coal exploration is already higher than legal limits.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 21, 2021.

— By Bob Weber in Edmonton. Follow @row1960 on Twitter

The Canadian Press

Italian man accused of skipping work for 15 years straight

Find a job that will forget you’re on the payroll, and you’ll never work a day in your life.

© Alfonso Di Vincenzo/KONTROLAB/LightRocket via Getty Images A view of the Arnaldo Pugliese Ciaccio Hospital in Catanzaro.

Italian prosecutors say they've busted a man who raked in roughly 538,000 euros (US$647,000) over 15 years without ever showing up to his hospital job, in one of the most egregious cases of absentee abuse they've ever seen.

Police have dubbed Salvatore Scumace, 67, the "king of absentees" for his allegedly rampant abuse of public-sector funds in the city of Catanzaro, ANSA News reports. Authorities say the man used threats to ensure that he would not be docked for missing work at the local hospital, and that he later fell off his employer's radar altogether while still collecting paycheques.

Scumace's job — at least on paper — was as a safety officer at the Pugliese Ciaccio hospital, Italy's Unione Sarda newspaper reports.

The suspect faces charges of abuse of office, forgery and aggravated extortion in connection with the scheme, The Guardian reports. Six other managers at the hospital are also under investigation for their alleged involvement, officials said.

Authorities say the suspect's absentee abuse started in 2005, when a "distinguished person" allegedly threatened the hospital director and warned her not to file a disciplinary report against Scumace. Police say the director complied and turned a blind eye to his absences, and that the suspect simply never showed up for work again — while still being paid.

The director eventually retired and her successor took over with no knowledge that there was a ghost on the payroll. Human resources also did not notice, police said.

It's unclear when the scheme came to light, but the hospital launched disciplinary action against the man last year and also alerted the authorities. He was fired in October and later arrested as part of an investigation dubbed Operation Part Time.

Investigators say the arrest came after they conducted extensive witness interviews and reviewed attendance logs at the hospital.

 

Bjorn’s Corner: The challenges of Hydrogen. Part 11. Emissions

DOWNLOAD

October 2, 2020, ©. Leeham News: In our series on Hydrogen as an energy store for airliners we look deeper at the emissions from a hydrogen airliner and compare it to the emissions from today’s carbon fueled aircraft.

Figure 1. The three Hydrogen concepts from Airbus. Source: Airbus.

Emissions of a Hydrogen aircraft

In Part 9 of the series, we wrote the emission from a hydrogen-fueled Turbofan or Turboprop take care of the CO2 problem (no CO2 emissions), it lowers NOx emissions and increases the emission of water, H2O, into the atmosphere.

Figure 2 gives a more detailed view of the emissions from a carbon fueled and hydrogen-fueled airliner.

Figure 2. Emissions from a kerosene-fueled turbofan and hydrogen turbofan. Source: Airbus Cryoplane study.

Today’s airliner that burns 1 kg of jet fuel emits 3.16kg of CO2, 1.24kg H20, Carbon Monoxide, Soot, Sulphuric Acid, 11.2kg of Nitrogen and air. This compares with no CO2, 2.6 times more water, one fifth the amount of NOx, and 9.4kg Nitrogen and air from a hydrogen-fueled engine (both burn the same amount of energy, producing the same thrust). A hydrogen-based airliner is a clear improvement in terms of emissions.

The only caveat is the increased amount of water vapor in the exhaust. Water vapor has a greenhouse effect in the atmosphere but it disappears 200 times faster than CO2, and studies show that water vapor in the atmosphere is not the key problem from the increase in water emissions.

It’s rather contrails (ice crystals that form from water vapor condensation on nuclei in the turbofan exhaust) that are contributing to an increase in the greenhouse effect. Though hydrogen-fueled engines put out more water vapor, the ice crystals formed when the conditions create contrails are larger. This changes the effects of the contrails so they are thinner and contribute less to the greenhouse effect than the same amount of water vapor from a carbon fueled engine.

The combined effect of the increase in water vapor and the formation of contrails, considering the different types of ice crystals formed, is a reduction in the greenhouse effect from hydrogen-fueled airliners by around 20%.

I have taken these results from both the Airbus Cryoplane study (from 2000) and the EU’s study, released in May 2020. Both documents say these results are according to the best knowledge but this subject needs more research.

Summary

To summarize these and other studies, hydrogen-fueled airliners, as Airbus’ ZEROe concepts in Figure 2, would:

• Reduce CO2 emissions by 100%
• Reduce NOx emission by 80%
• Reduce the greenhouse effects from emitted water vapor by 20%

The above assumes the same efficiency aircraft and engines, transporting the same amount of passengers the same distance, fueled by Jet A1 kerosene alternatively hydrogen.

This assumes both aircraft fly the same trajectory, meaning the hydrogen airliner is not adapting it’s mission profile to avoid contrail creation (for instance, change flight level to one that does not produce contrails in areas where conditions predict contrail creation).

Bjorn’s Corner: The challenges of Hydrogen. Part 11. Emissions - Leeham News and Analysis

Hydrogen: The Future Fuel | Penn State University (psu.edu) 

David Pacchioli, Dana Bauer, Emily Wiley

June 08, 2005

Beyond petroleum

Is hydrogen the answer?

"I will get right to the point," declared Nobel laureate Richard Smalley, speaking before Congress. "Energy is the single most important problem facing humanity today. We must find an alternative to oil. We need to somehow provide clean, abundant, low-cost energy to the six billion people that live on the planet today, and the 10-plus billion that are expected by the middle of this century."

Smalley has a philosophical ally in Bruce Logan, Kappe professor of environmental engineering and director of Penn State's Hydrogen Energy Center. "When U.S. oil production peaked 30 years ago, demand exceeded output and the result was an oil crisis," Logan reminds us. "But when global oil production peaks, in the next ten to twenty years, we'll have another, more serious, crisis."

The race for solutions is on, and while ideas may diverge, the parameters are clear: The new energy source must be cheap, renewable, and environmentally clean. Non-polluting hydrogen—energy-dense and the most abundant element in nature—meets two of these requirements in spades. But whether it can be produced and used inexpensively is the crux of a large and growing effort in research, in the U.S. and abroad.

"It can't happen without breakthroughs," Logan acknowledges. "We need cheaper and better materials" in every facet of development—for the catalysts and membranes that make up fuel cells; for the safe, efficient storage of hydrogen aboard vehicles; for the solar cells that will be key to hydrogen production. Another significant challenge is to develop the necessary infrastructure for hydrogen delivery.

Under the umbrella of the Hydrogen Energy Center, Penn State researchers are working on all these problems, ranging from fundamental materials chemistry to collaborations with Pennsylvania's growing fuel-cell industry.

Though their goal may be thirty years away, Logan and his colleagues are clear about one thing: "The time to lay the groundwork is now."

We're pleased to offer our readers a glimpse at their future-building activities.

California’s ‘hydrogen highway’ never happened. Could 2020 change that?

BY JULIE CART

JANUARY 9, 2020

Despite a $300 million state investment, hydrogen transportation has lagged. Image by wildpixel, istockphoto.com


IN SUMMARY

Climate-friendly hydrogen-powered cars haven’t taken off. But proponents say this may be the year when the “fuel of the future” finally arrives.

California has been dreaming of a clean, modern hydrogen highway since 2004, when former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered preparations for a traffic jam of zero-emission, hydrogen-fueled cars, buses and trucks.

That revolution, part of the battle against climate change, never materialized. The technology remains expensive and hasn’t gained wide traction, ceding the green-transportation crown to battery-powered electric vehicles, which are more widely available and support an ever-growing recharging network.

But with successful pilot projects using hydrogen buses and freight trucks, and car manufacturers preparing to expand model options in the tiny consumer car market, proponents say this may be the year when the “fuel of the future” finally arrives.

Price is an issue. A regular city bus may cost $450,000. A comparable hydrogen bus is more like $1 million.

“Its moment is due. You are starting to see a sea change, as we get more aggressive about meeting our zero-carbon goals,” said Tyson Eckerle, deputy director of zero-emission infrastructure in the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development.

The state has continued to foster the promise of hydrogen fuel to pry carbon from transportation, California’s biggest source of planet-warming emissions. It has spent more than $300 million in the past 10 years funding rebates for those who buy or lease hydrogen cars, construction of refueling stations and the purchase of transit buses, as well as subsidizing development of hydrogen-driven freight trucks.

And, at the moment, California is the hydrogen market: All but a handful of the 7,800 hydrogen-powered cars in the U.S. are here. For car-centric Californians, there’s much to like: Hydrogen vehicles fuel up in a few minutes — as opposed to hours of charging for most electric vehicles — and their efficiency affords a long driving range.

Hydrogen as a transportation fuel has many applications. More than 26,000 hydrogen-powered forklifts are whirring around warehouses today, for example. The U.S. space program has long used hydrogen as rocket fuel. And more than a decade of testing hydrogen engines in transit bus fleets has produced results that surpassed projections, exceeding time without major repairs or replacement needed as compared to diesel engines. Hydrogen-fueled trucks are lighter, which translates into efficiency for long-haul drivers.

Eckerle said the dozen or so state programs encourage hydrogen technology to increase consumer choice — “seed-planting.” This investment will soon be eclipsed by that of private companies, he added.
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The challenge for the automotive industry is overcoming basic market forces. There may be nearly 8,000 hydrogen cars on California roads, but that’s a microscopic number amid the state’s 35 million registered vehicles.

The cars are not easy to find, nor are the fueling stations: California has only 44 such stations, mainly in populous cities. It’s nearly impossible to fuel up a hydrogen car at home, so a broad network of stations is critical to wider adoption, experts say.

One reason motorists may not notice the hydrogen cars in their midst is that hydrogen-fueled Toyotas, Hondas and Hyundais don’t look much different from other sedans. That obscurity could end this summer, though, when hydrogen cars and shuttle buses built in Japan will be showcased at the Tokyo Olympics. Even the Olympic Torch will be lit with a hydrogen flame.

The international exposure, coupled with increased consumer education from manufacturers, could catapult hydrogen to front-of-mind for car buyers.

“We are at a really interesting point right now,” said Keith Malone, spokesman for the California Fuel Cell Partnership, which brings together state agencies, vehicle manufacturers and natural gas companies that make hydrogen fuel. “It’s no longer about proving the technology. It’s about bringing the technology to scale to drive down costs.”

Hydrogen fuel is much more efficient than gasoline, but it’s also four times more expensive, roughly equivalent to about $16 a gallon. Even though hydrogen cars, which run electric engines, have cruising ranges of more than 350 miles — longer than any battery-electric and some gas-fueled vehicles — the cost of a fillup is significant.

Aaron Slavin fuels his hydrogen-powered Toyota Mrai. Photo by Julie Cart, CalMatters

Incentives have eased that financial hit somewhat. Manufacturers offer refueling cards loaded with three years’ worth of credit, and the state offers a $4,500 clean-car rebate. That rebate mostly offsets the first year of leasing a hydrogen vehicle, which most drivers choose over purchasing. New hydrogen cars are in the $60,000 range, and lack the variety of model options available for battery-powered electric cars.

Aaron Slavin and his wife, who live in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena, made a spreadsheet to weigh the pros and cons of driving a hydrogen-fueled car and concluded that continuing to own a gas-electric hybrid “didn’t pencil out.”

“I’m a big fan of this car; I preach about them,” Aaron Slavin said, while refueling his 2017 Toyota Mirai at a one-bay hydrogen pump tucked into a conventional gas station in South Pasadena.

Slavin, a performing-arts producer, said he is a perfect candidate for the car — self employed, with no regular commute, and with a hybrid SUV as backup.

The second car became critical last year when an explosion at fuel-production facility choked supplies for months, leaving some hydrogen stations with empty tanks, stranding some drivers or necessitating long trips to alternative stations. The crisis, which some drivers dubbed the “hydropocalypse,” sent Slavin to a smartphone app that provided a real-time inventory of fuel at each station.

That fuel hiccup has been resolved, but it raised a red flag. “Our lease is up in April, and I really have to give some thought to what we’ll do,” Slavin said. “I like the car, but I’m concerned about the fuel situation.”

Most hydrogen fuel is made using methane, the worst of the planet-warming gases, and some environmental groups object to it.

Producing energy from hydrogen has long been an enticing goal. After all, hydrogen is the world’s most abundant element, it’s energy-dense yet lightweight and, when used in transportation, emits not greenhouse gases but tiny pools of water.

But there’s a carbon backstory to this clean-burning fuel. Even though after it is formulated it powers zero-emission electric motors, about 95% of hydrogen fuel is made with an energy-intensive process that relies on methane, the worst of the planet-warming gases. That makes it difficult for some environmental groups to support hydrogen vehicles.

“We need to get methane out of the system, not establish a dependence on producing more,” said Kathryn Phillips, Director of the Sierra Club in California. “If you look at hydrogen fuel cells through an environmental lens, right now it’s not the best use of state funds.”

Proponents respond in two ways: While the state transitions to a zero-carbon economy, why not capture and use methane that today is spewing, unchecked, into the atmosphere from oil and gas facilities and landfills? Why not switch to a process that doesn’t require methane and instead uses the state’s surplus of solar power to do it, rendering the manufacturing clean and green?

Even with the advantages of faster refueling, lighter weight and longer range than battery electrics or gasoline cars, hydrogen vehicles can’t compete in a critical category: price. A conventional city bus may carry a price tag of $450,000. A hydrogen bus with the same specifications runs closer to $1 million.

To Lewis Fulton, a transportation researcher at UC Davis, hydrogen presents “several different chicken-egg problems at the same time.”

Until more cars are produced and purchased, he said, there won’t be more hydrogen fueling stations. And until there are enough fueling stations, consumers may worry they’ll be stranded and won’t feel comfortable driving the cars.

“The only way to solve it is a really massive policy push,” Fulton said. “There’s already a fairly big one going on in the state, but I don’t know if it’s big enough.”

California’s efforts to encourage the hydrogen car market could be thwarted as part of its ongoing battle with the Trump administration, which last year withdrew the state’s authority to set its own tailpipe emissions standards. Car makers who sided with the feds in favor of lower emissions rules will pay a price by being excluded from the state’s vehicle fleet.

Toyota, which took Washington’s side, would be left out at a time when the company is ramping up its hydrogen program and, by dint of its status as a major international car maker, is expected to significantly raise consumer awareness about hydrogen vehicles.

Proponents downplayed the issue. Eckerle admitted, “It is an elephant in the room.” But he added that the state has no indication from car makers that they intend to back away from their commitment to making hydrogen vehicles.

“It’s a bump in the road,” he said.



Julie Cart
julie@calmatters.org
Julie Cart joined CalMatters as a projects and environment reporter in 2016 after a long career at the Los Angeles Times, where she held many positions: sportswriter, national correspondent and environment... More by Julie Cart

THE PAST AND FUTURE OF STEEL

Analysis
20 September 2020

We build everything from railroads to lunchboxes with steel, and for good reason: it’s strong, flexible and easily mass produced. But the iron production necessary to create steel is majorly polluting the planet. And it’s almost impossible to replace the material because we need it to keep building. So how do we move forward?
We can’t stop using steel. Here’s how we can make it the foundation of a new, sustainable iron age

Henry Bessemer was never cut out for school. He had better things to do, so he never finished. Instead, by the age of 17, he had gone into business for himself – as an inventor. By the time he was 30, he had invented the sugar cane extruder, a process for making gold paint from bronze powder and a method for manufacturing pencils from graphite. Before he was 40, he had 110 patents and a small fortune to his name.

But all that was merely prelude. In 1856, at age 43, Bessemer set off a revolution with a material that was to completely change and eventually dominate our cities, our buildings, our engineering, our tools – in a word, the whole of human society.

“The magnitude and importance of Mr Bessemer’s invention can hardly be overstated,” The Times wrote on 23 August 1856.

He nearly blew up his workshop in London’s St. Pancras before he achieved what he was trying to do: create steel simply, and cheaply, by blowing air through a vat of molten pig iron. It made a tremendous amount of noise and sent more than a few sparks flying (imagine blowing air on hot barbecue coals, but on steroids), but it got the job done; he’d invented a manageable, economical way to manufacture quality steel.

Before Bessemer, steel production was reserved to a very small circle of ironmasters with the skills and the tools to regulate the amount of carbon in iron. Steel is, in essence, iron with a very low carbon content. It’s a very valuable material because it combines the best of two worlds: it’s harder than simple wrought iron, but still flexible – unlike the brittle cast iron made in factories.

So Bessemer’s steel could not only be made more efficiently than earlier iron production methods, but the process was a lot easier. And it didn’t even take any extra fuel to produce in larger quantities – all you needed was air. It was thanks to Bessemer’s invention that steel could be mass produced for the first time. In 1867, a tonne of steel would have cost approximately €2,500 in today’s terms, but by 1884, that price had fallen to just €750.

That’s how we came to live in a world of steel. The Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building – steel makes it all possible. Steel went into the Titanic and still goes into the hulls of every modern container ship – plus the millions of containers they carry. Look at any concrete building, and the chances are that there’s steel reinforcement inside that concrete holding it up. Steel makes up the 1,051,767 km of rail lines in the world, not to mention the trains driving on them. Almost everything we use to get around has steel in it, from cars (900 kg on average) to bicycles. We store our food in steel containers, and we heat it up in steel pans. If you typically eat with a fork, you put a piece of steel in your mouth every day.

We build our whole world with steel. We’re also destroying our world with steel, because the history of iron and steel is one long, sordid story of sabre-rattling, megalomaniacs and business tycoons – and pollution, a whole lot of pollution.

Three times that iron changed the world

Strictly speaking, we can’t just talk about “steel” as if it’s all the same material. There are actually over 3,500 different types of steel, and the vast majority of them didn’t exist 20 years ago. One thing we can say, though, is that all of them start with iron. Any conversation about steel starts with iron.

Humans have been using iron and steel for thousands of years. To the Egyptians, iron was a divine metal. In ancient Egypt, iron was referred to as bia en pet (metal from the sky). That sounds like the stuff of legends, but it’s actually fairly accurate. The earliest iron was collected from meteorites; Tutankhamen was buried with a dagger made from meteoric iron. It was only hundreds of years later that people started digging into the earth for iron ore, from which they learned to extract the iron using heat.

Iron changed the world three times in three different forms: first, wrought iron; then, cast iron; and finally, Bessemer steel. Three names, roughly in chronological order, that refer to the production process. Few materials have had as much of an impact on the course of human history.
Few materials have had as much of an impact on the course of human history as iron

The first time that iron transformed human society was during the long transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. Archaeologists see the Bronze Age as a period of trading and connections, thanks mainly to copper and tin, the two relatively rare metals that are combined to make bronze. That’s the metal that went into the tools, weapons and jewellery of that time. To the people of 3,000 years ago, these materials were what oil and gas are to us today, and they were what tied prehistoric Europe together.

The demand for copper and tin drove an ever-increasing concentration of power and wealth in a few key places in Europe that controlled the trade of these rare metals. These power centres stood out – literally and figuratively. Known as “hillforts”, remnants of them are scattered across Europe and studied by archaeologists today. One example is Mont Lassois near Vix in France, where, in 1953, archaeologists found the burial mound of a young woman who had been interred around 500BC. Among the treasures her grave revealed were a torc (neck ring) made of nearly half a kilogram of solid gold, as well as a 209 kg bronze vessel for mixing wine and water known as a krater. The grave at Mont Lassois is a snapshot of the twilight of an elite that, for a while, controlled the trade in bronze – a monument to transitory greatness, the prehistoric equivalent of a golden hotel rising up from the Las Vegas sands.

When iron came along, it broke this world apart.

Iron is in abundant supply, making up a full 5% of the Earth’s crust. In a matter of a few decades, all the Bronze Age power centres fell. By around 500BC, they were gone. In many cases, their demise was a violent affair, because iron makes better weapons than bronze (and more importantly, more of them).

The old ties of Europe frayed, and the old order fragmented. Europe’s peoples began producing their own iron, making their own weapons and controlling their own regions. The Belgae, Boii, Frisii, Helvetii: these are the people who gave their names to the lands we know today as Belgium, Bohemia, Frisia, Switzerland.

A second Iron Age ...

Through the centuries that followed, all iron production was small scale. Iron is made by heating iron ore in clay or stone smelters. This releases the raw, molten iron within. Smelters like these are fuelled by charcoal.

In 1720, there were 60 smelters operating in England that together burned a total of 830,000 tonnes of wood to produce the charcoal used for their furnaces. At the start of the Industrial Revolution, the limiting factor was not a lack of iron ore; there simply weren’t enough trees to burn.

A crucial technological advancement was the coke-fired furnace. With this new fuel, pioneered by British entrepreneur Abraham Darby in 1709, iron production skyrocketed. In 1700, total British iron production was 12,000 tonnes per year. By 1850, it had soared to 2 million.

An additional benefit is that the furnace gets hot enough to heat the iron to its melting point, which means you can cast it. So, suddenly, you can make a lot more things, from ploughshares to bridge spans. In 1851, as part of the first Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London, there was a special presentation showing off all the great things you could make with cast iron, including the Crystal Palace itself, a spectacular building of cast iron and plate glass that was a London landmark until 1936.

You need cast iron to build steam engines and ships. And once the first cast-iron bridge appeared, everybody wanted one. Most of all, the Industrial Revolution needed rails – lots and lots of rails. The first intercity railway line went down in 1830, with 56 km stretching from Liverpool to Manchester. Just 30 years later, there were over 100,000 km of railway lines around the world. At about 25 kg of iron per metre, that’s about 2.5 billion kgs of iron.


In short, the Industrial Revolution was really just a second Iron Age.

And that was still before Bessemer almost blew up his laboratory inventing a better and cheaper form of iron: steel.

When Bessemer presented his invention to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the crème de la crème of British science and industry, he told them: “The manufacture of iron in this country has attained such an important position that any improvement in this branch of our national industry cannot fail to be a source of general interest.” He wasn’t wrong.
… and a third

Until well into the 19th century, it was only highly skilled craftsmen who had the ability to produce quality iron and steel.

Bessemer’s invention didn’t just kick off the third Iron Age; he also started the ball rolling on a revolution in overall knowledge about the processes at work within iron and steel. The invention of X-ray imaging in 1905 made it possible to look inside the metal and observe its crystalline structures. From then on, craftsmanship went hand-in-hand with science – and the partnership proved extremely fruitful.

At that point, advancements really started to move fast. Only a few years after Bessemer’s invention, the Siemens-Martin process came along, making another method of producing steel on an industrial scale. Later, another man found a way to improve Bessemer’s method to allow it to handle even the previously problematic phosphorus-rich iron ore. Soon, cheap steel was pouring into the market at a mind-boggling pace. Fortuitously, the demand was there.

Once again, most of that demand was for rails, but steel was also vital to the shipbuilding industry, and later, the automotive industry. Steel ploughs were soon digging into the Great Plains of America, even as they kicked off a revolution in the construction industry. In 1885, steel made construction of the first 10-storey building in New York City possible, and the skyscraper was born.

Check out A Nation of Steel: The Making of Modern America for a good survey of the dramatic impact of steel in the development of modern America

This is where the steel magnates began to arise – families like Thyssen, Krupp, Carnegie and Tata, but also names like Gillette, who came up with the idea of using cheap plate steel to manufacture disposable razors.

Any self-respecting industrialised country had to produce steel. Steel is manly. Steel is national pride.


Perhaps the most exquisite ode to this material can be seen today in the heart of Europe: the Atomium, one of Brussels’ icons, built in 1958 for the World’s Fair. It’s a giant model of an iron crystal, a hundred metres tall, made from stainless steel. It’s apt because in a very real way, the European Union started with the European Coal and Steel Community, established by the Treaty of Paris in 1951.

Europe’s bones are steel. It holds the continent together – literally, in the form of thousands of kilometres of railway lines, and figuratively, in the economic sense. It’s hard but mouldable, and with a little energy, it can even be made fluid, democratic, modern. The society in ancient Europe that was broken with iron is now being rebuilt from steel: a united Europe.

But what has that cost us?

Steel, the great polluter

There’s one big problem that all these Iron Ages have in common: the mountains of pollution that iron and steel leave behind.

The rolling hills of Tuscany are both rich in mineral wealth and heavily contaminated, and they have been since before recorded history began. On Elba, soil samples still contain measurable levels of pollution from third century BC iron production. Meanwhile, on the mainland, a woman who lived in 350BC was found to have heavy metals contamination in her hair, one of the medical indications of heavy metal poisoning.

Iron production was responsible for widespread deforestation in 16th century England. It’s the reason why the inhabitants of Sussex requested the king ban furnaces in 1548. They had seen that when you build a furnace, all the trees in a four km radius around it simply go up in smoke. This was one of the original climate protests.

Now, in the 21st century, we have taken that pollution to the next level. China, the world’s leading steel producer, is choking on its own steel – literally. The air in Beijing has a content of fine particulates that is far above the WHO’s standards for human health, and it’s not just coal power stations: the coal-driven steel industry is the primary culprit.

In case you were wondering, steel also accounts for 7% of total global CO2 emissions.





So why do we keep using it? The answer is simple: steel is ridiculously cheap. To produce a ton of steel in a modern steel mill, you need 1370 kg of iron ore, 600 kg of cokes, 270 kg of limestone and 125 kg of scrap. That makes the cost of a tonne of steel €500 – in other words, 50 eurocents per kilogram. A kilo of potatoes will actually cost you more.

And there’s no end in sight. As urbanisation spreads across Asia and Africa, demand for steel is only going to go up. Even in the EU, we haven’t managed to temper our love affair with steel. Although European steel production has declined by 50% since 1950, we’re not actually using any less of it. In fact, per capita steel consumption in the EU increased from 278 kg in 2012 to 310 kg in 2019. And the EU is the world’s biggest steel importer, bringing in 40 million tonnes in 2019.

In that same year, worldwide production was 1.8 billion tonnes. A steel industry forecast predicts that this number will double by 2050.

But when you buy your tonne of steel for €500, be sure to read the fine print: it also comes with 1.85 tonnes of CO2 emissions. And that’s despite the fact that production of iron and steel has become much cleaner and more efficient over the years. It’s the paradox of efficiency. What do we gain if we just use that much more?
The good news is: there’s a sustainable way

We’re simply too dependent on steel. Whether we could meet our climate targets without steel is a very real question. For example, have you ever thought about what wind turbines are made out of?

In his hard-hitting piece "What I see when I see a wind turbine", Vaclav Smil does the math on what goes into building one. The large 5 mw model contains no less than 900 tonnes of steel – and that took a little under 700 tonnes of coal to make. “The machines themselves are pure embodiments of fossil fuels,” he explains dryly.

But could we move away from steel?

“Would we want to?” is Erik Offerman’s answer. He’s a materials expert at Delft University of Technology and something of a 21st-century blacksmith.

“Steel is strong, cheap and an amazingly versatile material,” he says. “And because it is completely recyclable, it fits into any story about a circular economy.”

He’s right: steel is not only the most used metal in the world, but the most re-used as well. The big advantage of steel (and of metals in general) is that they can be recycled again and again. Even ancient peoples were well aware and did so extensively. I wrote an article about this, which you can read hereMaybe steel and sustainability can go together after all.

But there’s a “but”.

To keep steel recyclable, it needs to be kept as pure as possible. Other elements are often added to iron, like silicon and manganese. Chromium, vanadium, niobium, nickel and molybdenum are added to give steel various properties, making it rust-resistant, stronger or more ductile. These kinds of specialised steel alloys are harder to recycle, and it’s easy to see why: if you melt down a pile of random steel alloys, you end up with a hodgepodge of different kinds of steel with no way to know what properties it will have. That makes low-grade steel, which can then only be used in low-grade applications like concrete reinforcement.

There’s a lot of innovative research being done to find ways of keeping steel as recyclable as possible. Offerman Hear Offerman talk about his work in a podcastis one of the people working on this. He is finding ways to control the microstructure of steel using milling and temperature to produce high-quality steel types with a limited palette of alloying elements. The aim is to not only make the steel easier to recycle, but to use less of it.

And there are other paths to a more sustainable steel.

Just like in the 18th century, what is required is a critical change in fuel consumption and the process of reducing iron ore. The iron and steel industry sucks up a lot of energy, and too much of it comes from fossil fuels.

One promising emerging technology is hydrogen-based steel production. The Hydrogen Breakthrough Ironmaking Technology (HYBRIT) has shown that sustainably produced hydrogen can be used to produce steel. HYBRIT is a joint venture of three relatively small Swedish firms with big plans to liberate the Swedish iron and steel industry from dependence on fossil fuels.

The pilot project was launched in 2018, but for the time being, “green steel” still remains 20-30% more expensive than ordinary steel. HYBRIT says that its goal is to be producing this steel at competitive prices by 2040.

Then there’s all the electric arc furnaces all over the world, which are relatively small-scale production facilities using electricity instead of cokes. The electric arc furnaces in Europe take up about 40% of the produced steel.

Their operation depends on melting down scrap: in essence, recycling. Expanding this production would help but would mean bringing steel production back to Europe (what economists like to call “reshoring”).
We have to move into a fourth – sustainable – Iron Age

Green steel and implementing reuse on a massive scale – as far as the technology goes, we can do this. But this transition also demands a new way of thinking: circular instead of linear, long-term instead of short-term.


For green steel, we have to choose sustainable over efficient; less and better has to win out over cheap and more. These are choices we can make. We can even make it the defining characteristic of “Made in Europe” steel.

But it will require a mentality that doesn’t really resonate with the man of steel, so it means rethinking everything about our whole concept of iron and steel. That image as the material of weapons of war, of heavy industry, of the symbol of national pride and economic progress for many nations – all that has to go.

That’s how we can turn steel from the problem child in terms of pollution into the foundation of a strong, sustainable world – a world built on a clean material that can be recycled endlessly.

That’s what a sustainable fourth Iron Age looks like. But unfortunately, that’s still a long way off.

Translated from the Dutch by  Kyle Wohlmut.

ARCHAEOLOGIST 

Maikel Kuijpers

LONDON RECONNECTION
THE SECOND COMING OF HYDROGEN? LONDON’S HYDROGEN BUSES

By Long Branch Mike
JAN 2021

Despite impressive advances, bus battery technology is still not optimal – poor range, and reduced energy storage in cold weather. So to avoid putting all their clean energy buses in one basket, TfL has consistently been evaluating hydrogen fuel cell buses.

Long before the first official determination of pollution as the cause of death of a 9 year old London girl shone the spotlight on the impact of pollution on respiratory systems, London had been at the vanguard of advancing clean transport technologies.

Additionally, a recent series of troubling London air pollution reports, such as the levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and other toxic volatile organic chemicals (VOC), are shedding new light on the extent of inhaled toxins and carcinogens on the Capital’s streets. Diesel bus exhaust results in buildup of NOx (NO + NO2) inside bus terminals.

Modelled 2020 annual NO2 pollution levels in Marylebone. MappingLondon

The sudden reduction of cars, trucks, and buses in March 2020 due to the onset of the pandemic just as quickly resulted in clear skies over major cities worldwide. Unfortunately, traffic quickly returned, and the startling view of crystal clear air that shouldn’t be easily forgotten, has been forgotten. We note the recent realisation of the impact of brake and tyre particulates on air quality and breathing, but address only zero emission buses in this article.

TFL‘S ZERO EMISSION BUSES

To tackle the capital’s air quality crisis believed to be largely caused by diesel engines, recent Mayors and TfL had initiated a number of new clean air transport initiatives. We recently covered battery buses and ULEZ’s in On The Buses: Fares, Fumes and Finances, and now look at the role that hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) buses are starting to play.

We had first looked at London’s hydrogen buses in 2014 in Asphalt and Battery: The future of the London Bus (Part 2):

When you are responsible for a fleet of over eight thousand diesel buses it is only right and proper that you investigate alternative options and this TfL has done. At one stage hydrogen looked very promising. In the past few years TfL have experimented off and on with hydrogen buses on route RV1 but, whilst the latest buses are still in service, there does not seem to have been any effort made to extend them beyond this one route. This is probably because they are very expensive indeed. It is also the case that, although hydrogen can be seen as a solution for getting rid of tailpipe emission at the point of use, it does not solve any energy issues because more energy in the form of electricity is required to extract the hydrogen from water than can be obtained from burning it as a fuel (and creating water). As such, hydrogen is merely an alternative to the battery.

There are of course various other gases apart from hydrogen that can be burned. The problem with these are that they are still hydrocarbons but in gaseous rather than liquid form. The main attraction of these fuels for taxis and other vehicles is that they don’t attract fuel duty – something that bus operators don’t pay anyway.

Transport in London has had a long history of innovation, from the pioneering Metropolitan Line in 1863, the first electrically powered Underground line in 1890, to the world’s first automated underground line in 1968. Buses have not been exempt from technological advancement, with London at the forefront of bus technologies and designs such as the original Routemaster.

LONDON’S FIRST HYDROGEN BUS ROUTE – RV1

TfL’s first foray into hydrogen power started on Riverside bus route RV1 in 2002. The route connected Central London with South Bank attractions, including the Royal Festival Hall, National Theatre, London Eye, and Tate Modern, and operated between Covent Garden via Tower Gateway station, Waterloo, London Bridge station and Tower Bridge, serving many streets that previously had not been served by buses. The short 6 mile route length, dense central London routing and high visibility to tourists meant that RV1 was an ideal route to trial and fly the environmentally friendly bus flag – the only emissions of hydrogen vehicles being oxygen and water.

A hydrogen fuel cell bus on RV1

The hydrogen buses serving on this route were initially three hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) powered Mercedes-Benz Citaros operated between 2004 and 2010. Some of these buses were also trialled on route 25 in 2009. This small fleet allowed TfL to compare their efficiency directly against diesel powered Citaros. However, due to a lack of hydrogen capacity in those buses, their limited range only allowed operation in the mornings and early afternoon. Whilst the RV route prefix was part of Riverside branding, there was cynical speculation that it also meant Research Vehicle.

Mercedes-Benz Citaro in 2004. Walthamstow Writer


The Citaros were removed from RV1 service in 2010, replaced by eight new Wrightbus Pulsar 2 hydrogen-powered VDL SB200 bodied single-decker buses purchased by First London, which were operated on the route until 2013. Two Van Hool single decker hydrogen fuel cell A330FCs replaced the Alexander Dennis Enviro 200 Darts on route RV1 in January 2018, allowing a full hydrogen fleet to operate for the first time.

Hydrogen tanks atop RV1 bus at Tower Gateway

Some of the RV1 hydrogen buses have apparently had poor ride quality and high interior noise levels, equivalent to a diesel bus. As a comparison, battery electric buses are considered far superior in these respects.

MASSIVE CUTBACK IN RV1 BUS FREQUENCY AFTER LONDON BRIDGE REBUILD

Part of route RV1’s continued raison d’être was the Thameslink Programme London Bridge rebuild. The biggest capacity gap it was helping to fill started to fall off post May 2016 (when the bus route ridership halved), then in August 2017 with the station works phasing changes. With the Blackfriars Southern entrance opening, combined with renewed peak Thameslink service from London Bridge, the 2019 RV1 ridership dropped to about 10% of what it once was.

It was thus no surprise that route RV1 was discontinued on 15 June 2019. Diesel bus route 343 was then extended from Aldgate to Tower Gateway to replace the service between London Bridge and Tower Gateway. The Wrightbus hydrogen single deckers were moved to route 444 and the Van Hools to storage.

To develop a dedicated hydrogen source, TfL are coordinating with Project Cavendish, a collaborative feasibility project between Southern Gas Networks (SGN), National Grid, and Cadent. This project is evaluating the potential of using the Isle of Grain’s existing infrastructure to supply hydrogen to London & the South East, including hydrogen generation by steam methane reforming (SMR), storage, and transport. Sixty kilometres east of London, the Isle of Grain hosts the National Grid’s Grain liquid natural gas (LNG) terminal, as well as a number of gas shipping terminals, gas blending facilities, and considerable natural gas storage.

SMR is the traditional hydrogen generation technology, also called ‘gray hydrogen’ for its dirty fossil fuel production method, which releases carbon into the atmosphere during processing. However, this process can be rectified with CO₂ capture, to a low-carbon standard to make ‘blue hydrogen’. This is the hydrogen that TfL is hoping to use.

NEXT GENERATION HYDROGEN BUSES

In 2018 London once again took a technological jump on transport innovation – TfL commissioned two hydrogen fuel cell double deckers – a world first. One is a conversion of a former hybrid bus demonstration vehicle, and the second is a brand new double decker Streetdeck FCEV (fuel cell electric vehicle), again from Wrightbus, powered by Ballard hydrogen fuel cells. They are due to be trialled by Tower Transit from Lea Interchange garage.

THE MAYOR’S IMPERATIVE

Mayor Sadiq Khan has made tackling the public health issues caused by air pollution one of his major initiatives. Toxic air is a threat to all Londoners’ health, especially children, the elderly, and those with lung and heart problems. Scientific studies are starting to show that high values of air pollutants correlate with more severe COVID symptoms.

Under his initiative, the 2019 Mayoral Plan set the goal of 2,000 zero-emission London buses by 2025, and a full zero-emission bus fleet by 2037 at the latest. When TfL introduced the ten Low Emission Bus Zones and the world’s first Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) in April 2019, harmful nitrous oxides (NOx) emissions were reduced by 90% on some of the capital’s busiest roads in only a few months.

TfL then announced in May 2019 that it will introduce 20 of the new Wrightbus hydrogen buses into service in 2020 on London bus routes 245, 7 and N7. All of the buses in the ULEZ, and 75% of the entire bus fleet, already meet these standards. The plan was to have the entire TfL bus fleet meet the standards by October 2020, making the entire city a Low Emission Bus Zone. Unfortunately, one of responses to the coronavirus pandemic was to temporarily remove the ULEZ restrictions.

London ULEZ in 2014

TfL’s currently operates over 200 zero emission buses, Europe’s largest electric fleet, mostly battery powered. However, hydrogen buses can store more energy on board than equivalent battery buses, meaning they can be deployed on longer routes. Hydrogen buses now only need be refuelled for five minutes once a day, making them much quicker to refuel than to recharge battery buses.

In June 2020 Ryse, a hydrogen generation company, and Wrightbus, the manufacturer of London’s New Routemasters, won the 10-year contract to deliver these buses in 2020. Once the new Wrightbus hydrogen bus squadron is in service, London will have the largest zero-emission bus fleet in Europe. We know what you’re thinking – so hold that thought.

Hyundai vs Tesla: Hyundai races to produce electric cars as Tesla takes off

No traditional automaker has been successful yet in catching up with Tesla, which retains an edge in battery and software technology

REUTERS
Published Jul 28, 2021

Hydrogen champion Hyundai races to electric as Tesla takes off. (AFP Photo)


SEOUL: Hyundai Motor Co, an early backer of hydrogen cars, has watched the electric rise of Tesla, including on its home turf. Now’s it’s going on the offensive in the battery-powered market led by its U.S. rival.

The South Korean company plans to introduce two production lines dedicated to electrics vehicles (EVs), one next year and another in 2024, according to an internal union newsletter seen by Reuters.

Euisun Chung, leader of the Hyundai Motor Group conglomerate that also includes Kia Motors, has also held a series of meetings since May with his counterparts at Samsung, LG and SK Group, which make batteries and electronic parts.

The purpose of the talks, which were publicly announced, was for Hyundai to try to secure batteries at a time of tight supply as the race for EVs intensifies, according to several industry sources. Those manufacturers also supply the likes of Tesla, Volkswagen and GM.

Hyundai told Reuters it was collaborating with Korean battery suppliers “to scale up” its electric car production efficiently. It declined to comment on any plans to introduce dedicated production lines.

Samsung, LG and SK declined to comment.

The moves indicate the carmaker is moving aggressively to expand its electric capacity, days after Chung announced on July 14 that Hyundai Motor Group aimed to sell 1 million battery EVs a year and grab a global market share of over 10% by 2025.

There’s some way to go; Hyundai Motor Group sold 86,434 battery EVs last year, according to data from industry consultant LMC Automotive. That was above the 73,278 sold by Volkswagen Group but behind the 367,500 delivered by Tesla.

Hyundai, the world’s No.5 automaker together with Kia Motors, said its agility allowed it to lead the charge into EVs. “We are certain Hyundai is never going to fall behind,” it added.

NO KODAK MOMENT

A senior Hyundai insider, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the company had not been concerned about Tesla when the Silicon Valley company was producing high-end cars.

But it became more worried when Tesla brought out a cheaper Model 3 in 2017, according to the insider who described it as a “strategic victory”.

No traditional automaker has been successful yet in catching up with Tesla, which retains an edge in battery and software technology.

Hyundai could also face a roadblock from its powerful union, which is worried about job security as EVs require fewer components and workers than gasoline vehicles; at Hyundai, this is partly because the automaker makes a number of key components for conventional cars in-house, while many EV parts are outsourced at present.

The union is pushing for the company to assemble key EV components, like battery packs and motors, in-house to offset any reduction in workforce.

“We are not opposed to EV business. Kodak went bankrupt because it stuck to film even as the industry was shifting to digital photography,” union spokesman Kwon Oh-kook told Reuters.

“We just want to protect the jobs of our members,” he said.

Hyundai said automakers and unions needed to accelerate change to remain viable in the long term.

HYDROGEN V ELECTRIC

Back in 2010, Hyundai Motor Co made 230 electric cars for the government, but they ended up being mothballed at a research center outside Seoul due to a lack of charging infrastructure, according to Lee Hyun-soon, R&D chief at the time.

In a 2014 book Lee, who developed South Korea’s first gasoline engines, said such electric vehicles were “not realistic”, also citing high battery costs, and that hydrogen cars - a rival clean technology - offered a “bright” future.

Along with Toyota and Nikola, Hyundai was one of a few automakers to have backed hydrogen cars. It launched the industry’s first mass-produced hydrogen car, Tucson Fuel Cell, in 2013 and the NEXO in 2018.

However the technology has not taken off; 7,707 hydrogen fuel cell cars were sold globally last year, compared with 1.68 million battery EVs, according to LMC Automotive.

In Hyundai’s home market, Tesla had its best month in June, with its Model 3 beating Hyundai’s Kona EV, as well as premium models from BMW and Audi.

“Hyundai did not expect Tesla to dominate the EV market so quickly,” another person familiar with the company’s thinking told Reuters.

Hyundai Motor Co has a market capitalization of about 25.3 trillion won ($21.2 billion) - less than a tenth of that of Tesla, now the world’s most valuable automaker.

While Hyundai promotes its hydrogen cars with K-pop boyband BTS, it only plans to introduce up to two hydrogen models by 2025, and 23 battery-powered models.

Peter Hasenkamp, vice president at electric startup Lucid, who previously worked at Tesla and Ford, said established carmakers faced historical “inertia” to make the EV transition.

“Part of the reason we’re based in Silicon Valley is to leverage both software and electrical engineering expertise,” Hasenkamp told Reuters.

“You’ve got a couple of generations for the big car companies to learn really how to do this well. It is a lot harder than they thought it was.”

Linde and Hyosung Partner to Develop Hydrogen Infrastructure in South Korea

GUILFORD, UK / ACCESSWIRE / February 4, 2021 / Linde (NYSE: LIN; FWB: LIN) announced today that it has partnered with Hyosung Corporation (Hyosung), one of South Korea's largest industrial conglomerates, to build, own and operate extensive new liquid hydrogen infrastructure in South Korea. This robust hydrogen network will support the country's ambitious decarbonization agenda to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

On behalf of the joint venture, Linde will build and operate Asia's largest liquid hydrogen facility. With a capacity of over 30 tons per day, this facility will process enough hydrogen to fuel 100,000 cars and save up to 130,000 tons of carbon dioxide tailpipe emissions each year. Based in Ulsan, the plants will use Linde's proprietary hydrogen liquefaction technology which is currently used to produce approximately half of the world's liquid hydrogen. The first phase of the project is expected to start operations in 2023.

Under the partnership, Linde will sell and distribute the liquid hydrogen produced at Ulsan to the growing mobility market in South Korea. To enable this, the joint venture will build, own and operate a nationwide network of hydrogen refueling stations.


"Hydrogen has emerged as a key enabler of the global energy transition to meet the decarbonization goals set out in the Paris Agreement," said B.S. Sung, President of Linde Korea. "The South Korean government has set ambitious targets for hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles and the widespread, reliable availability of liquid hydrogen will be instrumental to achieving these targets. We are excited to partner with Hyosung to develop the hydrogen supply chain in South Korea."

"Our partnership with Linde is a cornerstone of the development of South Korea's national hydrogen economy and will advance the entire liquid hydrogen value chain across the country, from production and distribution to sales and services," said Cho Hyun-Joon, Chairman of Hyosung Group. "We look forward to working with Linde to further reinforce and strengthen Hyosung as a leader in the global hydrogen energy transition."

Linde is a global leader in the production, processing, storage and distribution of hydrogen. It has the largest liquid hydrogen capacity and distribution system in the world. The company also operates the world's first high-purity hydrogen storage cavern, coupled with an unrivaled pipeline network of approximately 1,000 kilometers to reliably supply its customers. Linde is at the forefront in the transition to clean hydrogen and has installed close to 200 hydrogen fueling stations and 80 hydrogen electrolysis plants worldwide. The company offers the latest electrolysis technology through its joint venture ITM Linde Electrolysis GmbH.

About Linde

Linde is a leading global industrial gases and engineering company with 2019 sales of $28 billion (€25 billion). We live our mission of making our world more productive every day by providing high-quality solutions, technologies and services which are making our customers more successful and helping to sustain and protect our planet.

The company serves a variety of end markets including chemicals & refining, food & beverage, electronics, healthcare, manufacturing and primary metals. Linde's industrial gases are used in countless applications, from life-saving oxygen for hospitals to high-purity & specialty gases for electronics manufacturing, hydrogen for clean fuels and much more. Linde also delivers state-of-the-art gas processing solutions to support customer expansion, efficiency improvements and emissions reductions.

For more information about the company and its products and services, please visit www.linde.com.

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