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Globe and Mail
17-04-2025
- Automotive
- Globe and Mail
LiTime Launches Earth Day 2025 Campaign: Innovation-Driven Batteries Powering the Clean Energy Future
In honor of the 55th Earth Day, global lithium iron phosphate battery innovator LiTime is launching a special campaign themed 'Powering a Greener Future', running from April 21 to April 30 (EST). Amid ongoing structural adjustments to battery storage import tariffs, LiTime solemnly pledges that all product prices will remain unaffected by tariff fluctuations during the Earth Day campaign—demonstrating a stable and sincere commitment to supporting users in the transition to clean energy. This initiative not only addresses customer concerns about pricing stability but also echoes the deeper meaning of Earth Day. First sparked by the environmental awakening following Silent Spring in 1962 and catalyzed by landmark policies like the Clean Air Act of 1980, Earth Day has evolved into a global symbol of environmental action. Its relevance is stronger than ever. According to data from U.S. wind and solar power generation surpassed coal for the first time in 2024, and solar capacity is expected to double by 2026. At the same time, the battery storage market is projected to grow by 70% in 2025, positioning storage technology as a cornerstone of the low-carbon energy transition. Amid this clean energy revolution, LiTime is helping make sustainable energy truly accessible through innovative solutions across three core application scenarios. LiTime Mini Battery Redefines RV Power with Lightweight, High-Density Innovation Designed for outdoor users with extreme demands on space and weight, the LiTime 100Ah Mini sets a new industry benchmark with four core advantages: Record-Breaking Energy Density: Tested at 164.5Wh/L (142.2Wh/kg), it's the industry's first mini-sized LiFePO4 battery with this level of energy density. Ultra-Lightweight at 19 lbs: Just one-third the weight of a comparable lead-acid battery, making it easy to carry with one hand. 10-Year Safety Commitment: Equipped with LiTime's first-generation in-house BMS, it passes five critical protection tests: overvoltage, undervoltage, overheating, overcurrent and short circuits. Flexible Scalability: Supports 4P4S expansion up to 20.48kWh, ideal for teardrop trailers, camper vans, and other compact RV setups. To help more users experience this power innovation firsthand, LiTime has launched its #PowerWithLiTime Earth Month campaign: From now until April 30, post a photo or video of your clean energy setup with the hashtag #PowerWithLiTime on social media for a chance to win a new Xtra-Mini battery (1st prize) or a $100 gift card (3rd prize, 3 winners). Full details are available at LiTime Share Your Story. LiTime 12V 140Ah Bluetooth Battery Delivers Marine-Grade Power for Anglers on the Move Engineered to meet the demanding needs of 30–120 lb trolling motors, the LiTime 12V 140Ah Lithium Battery delivers hardcore performance for serious anglers: 150A Continuous Current + 700A Instant Surge: Delivers peak power in 1 second to start high-draw trolling motors, helping anglers stay in control during critical feeding windows. Verified Endurance: User @Reelinfloridachannel reported that after powering a 70lb Minn Kota trolling motor continuously for 4 hours, the battery still had 84% charge remaining. IP65 Protection System: The battery meets IP65 standards for water and dust resistance, while the BMS passed a 72-hour neutral salt spray test to ensure protection against saltwater corrosion. LiTime's 48V 100Ah Metal Battery Reinvents Golf Cart Performance with Unmatched Power and Efficiency The 48V Lithium Battery with metal casing, specially designed by LiTime for golf carts, delivers engineering-grade performance that breaks through traditional limits: 2C Discharge Rate: Provides 200A of continuous output for 120 seconds, ensuring safe and reliable operation even under heavy loads. 45-Mile Range: With 5.12kW continuous power, it can support up to 36 holes of back-to-back tournament play. 200% Weight Reduction: Weighs only one-third as much as equivalent lead-acid battery systems, reducing turf damage from cart weight. About LiTime LiTime is a company with 15 years of experience in the new energy storage sector. Focused on user needs and powered by technological innovation, LiTime continually pushes forward in its mission to deliver the best value in lithium iron phosphate batteries. To date, LiTime's battery technology has earned more than 380 product certifications. Guided by the brand philosophy of "Life & Discovery," LiTime stands as an industry leader, dedicated to providing green, sustainable, and efficient energy solutions, while making a significant contribution to reducing the global carbon footprint and reshaping the power grid landscape. Media Contact Company Name: Shenzhen LiTime Technology Co., Ltd Contact Person: Shafee Chang Email: Send Email Country: China Website:
The Independent
13-04-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Coal is not clean, it's not beautiful, and we don't need it for AI
This week, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order aiming to revive 'America's beautiful, clean coal industry' such that it can power the rise in electricity demand from, among other things, artificial intelligence. However, this nostalgic push ignores the reality that has been commonly understood since Dickens: nothing about coal is clean. What it also ignores are reasons behind the industry's twenty-year decline in the US, the incredible uncertainty surrounding what is or might be the future energy demand of AI, and the data centres that give it life. Coal is a dirty business. From the moment you dig it up, often with the help of some of the world's biggest explosive rigs, you release methane gas, which warms the planet over 82 times faster than carbon dioxide over 20 years. Across the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia and Kentucky, the most popular type of coal mining literally involves blowing the tops of mountains off, covering streams in rock and dirt and filling the nearby valleys in pollutants and heavy metals. When you then try to burn coal to create electricity, you immediately release carbon dioxide, the main driver of climate change. Burning coal currently releases approximately one-fifth of America's total carbon dioxide emissions, along with a host of other air pollutants known to cause asthma and respiratory diseases. Thanks to the Clean Air Act of 1970, originally signed into law by one of Trump's Republican icons, Richard Nixon, the amount of sulphur emissions from coal-fired power plants has significantly reduced from what it once was. This decrease was due to fall even further following the passing of Obama's Clean Air and Water Acts. But these two have already been on Trump's chopping block, as were important updates to protect coal miners from dust inhalation. But the other reality of the coal sector is that it has been in decline since 2008, and coal plants now generate only 15 per cent of America's electricity. Back in 2008, the US produced over a billion short tons of coal each year. By 2023, production had halved, and even with support from President Trump during his term, over 10,000 coal mining jobs were lost during his first term. Today, just over 45,000 people work in US coal mining, a number dwarfed by industries like McDonald's, which employs nearly 150,000 people. But times have changed. Those mines are ageing, productivity is falling, and America's energy landscape has shifted dramatically. Thanks to the shale gas boom, ' natural gas ' (which is just methane) has become the dominant source of US electricity. Meanwhile, the cost of renewables has plummeted, and wind and solar have already overtaken coal in the US power mix — just as they have in Canada, Germany, and the UK. Up until this week, this terminal decline was expected to continue. Ironically, on the same day as President Trump's Executive Order, the US Energy Information Administration released its Short-Term Energy Outlook, projecting that coal production will fall another 9 per cent by 2026. This, they noted, was due to 'coal's continued competition with natural gas and renewables in the electric power sector.' However, while coal has faded from the American energy landscape, a whole new set of power demands seems to be waiting on the very near horizon. Artificial intelligence (AI) and Bitcoin mining are already driving an explosion in data centre electricity consumption in the US, and many analysts are predicting that this could be a critical challenge for America's electricity grid in the near future. One of the biggest challenges is that AI technologies like ChatGPT are estimated to require enormous amounts of computing power to run and train. Early estimates suggested that each AI query might use up to ten times more energy than an average Google search – that's before Gemini took over, at least. If you follow this trend, it makes sense to assume that AI electricity demand could be almost impossible to curtail. In January, President Donald Trump announced his plan for AI dominance, backed by the hopes of more than $US500 billion in investments for an artificial intelligence super-project known as Stargate. While it's incredibly uncertain if this project ever comes to fruition, according to a report from the International Energy Agency this week, electricity consumption for data centres globally could double in the next 5 years alone. In the US, electricity demand for data centres could surpass that of steel, cement, chemicals, and all other energy-intensive industries by 2030. In fact, on a per capita basis, data centres in the US could consume as much electricity per person as it would take to drive an electric car from Los Angeles to New York and back. But these early estimates are riddled with incredible amounts of uncertainty, partly because no one really knows how this industry will play out, and especially, what kind of innovation is lurking just around the corner. And innovation is the norm in this space. As Conal Campbell, Senior Policy Lead at Ireland's EirGrid, noted this week, 'between 2015 and 2022, global internet traffic increased by 600 per cent, but energy used by data centres grew by less than 70 per cent thanks to technological improvements.' While America's tech giants aim to pour billions into maximising the AI industry as quickly as possible, competitors from China and India have already highlighted potential step-change improvements in efficiency. Initial testing from China's DeepSeek indicated that simple queries could be solved with between 50 to 75 per cent less energy than those needed for ChatGPT's solutions, using more advanced and energy-intensive GPUs. To meet this growing energy demand, many tech companies are sounding the electricity demand alarm, crying out for the need to develop new nuclear reactors and now, it seems, even coal-fired power. Microsoft has already teamed up with Constellation Energy to restart a Nuclear reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, and certainly, other companies will make significant investments to secure their own data centre futures. But the line between truth and investor speculation is incredibly hard to see here. Understanding just how world-shifting the AI industry can and will be is one of the most critical questions of our age, and the power sector demands of its growth will play a critical role in shaping the next decade of the world's energy transformation. In some coal-dependent states, coal power may help sure up short-term energy demand growth driven by new data centres, but I can't see how the incredible cost efficiencies of solar and wind can be ignored long-term. Perhaps that's why Trump needed an executive order to bring back the coal sector this week, because the free market and the country's leading energy agency had already signaled its decline. This week's executive order may act as a double espresso for the industry's short-term future, but I can't see that energy high lasting much longer.
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
America's clean air rules have boosted health and the economy − here's what EPA's deregulation spree ignores
The Trump administration announced on March 12, 2025, that it is 'reconsidering' more than 30 air pollution regulations in a series of moves that could impact air quality across the United States. 'Reconsideration' is a term used to review or modify a government regulation. While Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin provided few details, the breadth of the regulations being reconsidered affects all Americans. They include rules that set limits for pollutants that can harm human health such as ozone, particulate matter and volatile organic carbon. Zeldin wrote that his deregulation moves would 'roll back trillions in regulatory costs and hidden 'taxes' on U.S. families.' But that's only part of the story. What Zeldin didn't say is that the economic and health benefits from decades of federal clean air regulations have far outweighed their costs. Some estimates suggest every $1 spent meeting clean air rules has returned $10 in health and economic benefits. In the early 1970s, thick smog blanketed American cities and acid rain stripped forests bare from the Northeast to the Midwest. Air pollution wasn't just a nuisance – it was a public health emergency. But in the decades since, the United States has engineered one of the most successful environmental turnarounds in history. Thanks to stronger air quality regulations, pollution levels have plummeted, preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths annually. And despite early predictions that these regulations would cripple the economy, the opposite has proven true: The U.S. economy more than doubled in size while pollution fell, showing that clean air and economic growth can – and do – go hand in hand. The numbers are eye-popping. An Environmental Protection Agency analysis of the first 20 years of the Clean Air Act, from 1970 to 1990, found the economic benefits of the regulations were about 42 times greater than the costs. The EPA later estimated that the cost of air quality regulations in the U.S. would be about US$65 billion in 2020, and the benefits, primarily in improved health and increased worker productivity, would be around $2 trillion. Other studies have found similar benefits. That's a return of more than 30 to 1, making clean air one of the best investments the country has ever made. The turning point came with the passage of the Clean Air Act of 1970, which put in place strict rules on pollutants from industry, vehicles and power plants. These rules targeted key culprits: lead, ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter – substances that contribute to asthma, heart disease and premature deaths. An example was the removal of lead, which can harm the brain and other organs, from gasoline. That single change resulted in far lower levels of lead in people's blood, including a 70% drop in U.S. children's blood-lead levels. The results have been extraordinary. Since 1980, emissions of six major air pollutants have dropped by 78%, even as the U.S. economy has more than doubled in size. Cities that were once notorious for their thick, choking smog – such as Los Angeles, Houston and Pittsburgh – now see far cleaner air, while lakes and forests devastated by acid rain in the Northeast have rebounded. And most importantly, lives have been saved. The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to periodically estimate the costs and benefits of air quality regulations. In the most recent estimate, released in 2011, the EPA projected that air quality improvements would prevent over 230,000 premature deaths in 2020. That means fewer heart attacks, fewer emergency room visits for asthma, and more years of healthy life for millions of Americans. Critics of air quality regulations have long argued that the regulations are too expensive for businesses and consumers. But the data tells a very different story. EPA studies have confirmed that clean air regulations improve air quality over time. Other studies have shown that the health benefits greatly outweigh the costs. That pays off for the economy. Fewer illnesses mean lower health care costs, and healthier workers mean higher productivity and fewer missed workdays. The EPA estimated that for every $1 spent on meeting air quality regulations, the United States received $9 in benefits. A separate study by the non-partisan National Bureau of Economic Research in 2024 estimated that each $1 spent on air pollution regulation brought the U.S. economy at least $10 in benefits. And when considering the long-term impact on human health and climate stability, the return is even greater. The air Americans breathe today is cleaner, much healthier and safer than it was just a few decades ago. Yet, despite this remarkable progress, air pollution remains a challenge in some parts of the country. Some urban neighborhoods remain stubbornly polluted because of vehicle emissions and industrial pollution. While urban pollution has declined, wildfire smoke has become a larger influence on poor air quality across the nation. That means the EPA still has work to do. If the agency works with environmental scientists, public health experts and industry, and fosters honest scientific consensus, it can continue to protect public health while supporting economic growth. At the same time, it can ensure that future generations enjoy the same clean air and prosperity that regulations have made possible. By instead considering retracting clean air rules, the EPA is calling into question the expertise of countless scientists who have provided their objective advice over decades to set standards designed to protect human lives. In many cases, industries won't want to go back to past polluting ways, but lifting clean air protections means future investment might not be as protective. And it increases future regulatory uncertainty for industries. The past offers a clear lesson: Investing in clean air is not just good for public health – it's good for the economy. With a track record of saving lives and delivering trillion-dollar benefits, air quality regulations remain one of the greatest policy success stories in American history. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Richard E. Peltier, UMass Amherst Read more: Luxury hiking developments look picture-perfect, but could stop everyday Australians from accessing national parks We tracked the mental health of trans and gender-diverse Australians for over 20 years. And we're worried How AI is making affordable air pollution sensors more accurate Richard E. Peltier receives funding from the US Department of Agriculture and the Rio Grande International Science Center.
