POWER November 2020 - 7

GLOBAL MONITOR
vada development project is overseen
by ioneer Ltd. LAC has said it can extract
lithium from clay through a process that
involves acid leaching. Tesla said its process
won't involve acid.
" Tesla endorsed the lithium claystones, "
Bowering said. " Tesla engineers
have been all over the planet for years
looking at lithium sources. They are now
making a bet on Nevada ... [which] has
several sedimentary lithium deposits
that are the future of lithium mining and
in a mining-friendly environment. Nevada
sits on top of a major caldera of super
volcanoes that populated the sediments
with minable concentrations of lithium
like nowhere else in the country. "
Tesla said its plan in Nevada involves
mixing clay with table salt and then adding
water. The company said the process
causes a reaction where the salt would
leach out with lithium, and the lithium
then would be extracted. The leftover
clay would be put back in the ground to
mitigate environmental damage, much
like the current mining industry practice
of returning rock to the earth after minerals
are extracted.
" It's a very sustainable way of obtaining
lithium, " said Musk, who did not say where
in Nevada the company had obtained the
lithium rights or whether development has
started. Bowering said continued strained
relations between the U.S. and China,
which dominates the global supply of
lithium and battery manufacturing, means
the U.S. must develop its own lithium reserves
and ramp up its battery production
in order to meet demand.
" Chinese-U.S. relations are going to
drive further investment and development
in domestic U.S. lithium production,
cathode manufacturing, and battery
production, " Bowering said. " The U.S.
currently produces 2% of its required
lithium. As the demand increases, a
domestic source is required. " Bowering
said, " The U.S. needs to have domestic
production of Li-ion batteries, or it will
become as dependent on this new energy
source as it once was on foreign oil. "
-Darrell Proctor is associate editor
for POWER.
JERA Planning to Shift Coal
Power Fleet to 100% Ammonia
Japanese firm JERA, a joint venture between
TEPCO and Chubu Electric, on
Oct. 13 issued a roadmap to achieve
zero carbon emissions by 2050. The
move is notable for the company whose
business includes a sizable global liquefied
natural gas (LNG) portfolio of five
upstream projects, 20 fleet carriers, an
LNG tank capacity that is equivalent to
30% of Japan's tank capacity, and 11
LNG terminals in Japan. It also owns 27
thermal power stations in Japan, which
have a total capacity of 70 GW, and another
30 power projects, including renewables,
in more than 10 countries,
which amount to about 9 GW.
Under its roadmap, JERA plans to shutter
its entire 2.2 GW supercritical coal power
generation fleet in Japan by 2030, and
then gradually increase the ratio of mixed
combustion of fossil fuels to ammonia and
hydrogen at ultrasupercritical plants.
That effort will begin within the next
decade with projects to demonstrate ammonia
co-firing at the 4.1-GW Hekinan
Thermal Power Station in Aichi Prefecture
(Figure 2), and a hydrogen co-firing
demonstration at another power plant.
Over the next decade, JERA also plans
to promote offshore wind power projects
and further improve the efficiency of LNG
thermal power generation. In the first
half of the 2030s, the company wants to
achieve a 20% ammonia co-firing rate at
all its coal plants, and it is seeking to shift
to 100% ammonia by the 2040s. It notes,
however, that its zero-carbon business
strategy will depend heavily on " advances
in decarbonization technology, economic
rationality, and consistency with
government policy. "
To that end, JERA is developing the
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November 2020 | POWER
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POWER November 2020

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