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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (9388)	8/7/2009 12:37:11 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24232

Johnson Controls' high-tech battery plant in Holland is huge manufacturing boost _______________________________________________________________ By Julia Bauer The Grand Rapids Press Wednesday August 05, 2009 HOLLAND -- When an idled Johnson Controls Inc. warehouse is transformed into a world-class plant building lithium ion batteries, the power surge will be felt far beyond the factory walls at Meadowbrook and 48th Street. By the end of 2010, high-tech batteries could be rolling off the assembly line, produced by a workforce of up to 550 employed by a joint venture between JCI and Saft Advanced Power Solutions. JCI-Saft was the big winner Wednesday with $299 million in grants, when Vice President Joe Biden came to Dearborn to unveil more than a dozen Michigan awards for battery-related projects. The grants will create 19,000 high-paying jobs in Michigan, Biden said. With Asia manufacturing 98 percent of the lithium ion batteries today, the push is on to bring more of that market home. By 2020, Biden said, the advanced battery market is expected to hit $16 billion. "If we failed to invest, virtually none of that market will be in the United States of America," Biden said. The impact for West Michigan is huge, said Joe Timm, chief financial officer of the JCI-Saft joint venture. "We are looking to grow an industry, not just put up a factory," Timm said. "We're looking for domestic suppliers. "From a logistics and supply-chain standpoint, locating closer rather than farther is good." Once JCI-Saft gets the grant money, combined with $148.5 million in incentives already awarded by the state, the project will unfold quickly. "Almost immediately, there will be some construction jobs," Timm said. The brick warehouse will be retrofitted with a "plant within a plant," to provide the dry room needed for lithium-ion battery production. The $299 million U.S. Department of Energy grant, through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, was "absolutely significant," Timm said. "It really will enable us to take our next generation battery industry, and commercialize it," he said. "It gives it the jump start we've all been looking for." Two companies are the first customers lined up for the Holland battery output. Ford Motor Co. expects to use the JCI-Saft batteries in a future plug-in hybrid vehicle. Azure Dynamics, a company that retro-fits gas-powered commercial vehicles with hybrid engines, also plans to use batteries made here. For Lakeshore Advantage, the Ottawa County economic development group, the future for a new industry is a welcome prospect. "We've taken our lumps," said Randy Thelen, president of Lakeshore Advantage. Ottawa County's unemployment rate has been among the region's highest, hitting 14 percent in June. Downturns in both the auto supply industry and office furniture sector provided a double whammy for the county. The evolution of JCI's footprint has been dramatic, Thelen said. "Five years ago, they were strictly making interior components" for autos, he said. "Now, it's interiors, seating, batteries, and it's all supported by the tech center. "It has been a terrific transformation. In terms of cutting-edge automotive technology, this is it," he said of the battery plant. "This will be a big shot in the arm for the economy." Holland, Michigan could score another big win, if LG Chem Ltd. opts to build its lithium-ion battery-cell plant here. LG, through its subsidiary Compact Power Inc., won a $151.4 million grant Wednesday, but has a short list of Michigan sites still in the running: Holland, Pontiac, and St. Clair. Wherever it goes, the plant will supply the new Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid. Holland made a bid for the LG plant, proposing several sites around the region. "Those conversations are ongoing," Thelen said. "Believe me, we've coveted battery investment for some time. "The incentives that came forward, both at the state and national level, were the drivers that put Michigan and West Michigan on the map for this," Thelen said. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MICHIGAN'S BATTERY TECHNOLOGY TIMELINE November 2006 -- State targets development of advanced battery sector. 2007 -- Michigan works with battery experts, U.S. Department of Energy, and U.S. Department of Defense to push for U.S.-based battery industry and develop funding strategies. July 2008 -- Centers of Energy Excellence Program created between the university, public, and private sectors to speed commercialization of alternative energy technologies. September 2008 -- Sakti3, a start-up in Ann Arbor, is designated as a Center of Energy Excellence and wins $3 million grant for next-generation technology battery development. November 2008 -- A123Systems Inc., started at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), also approved as a Center of Energy Excellence and wins $10 million grant for pilot plant in Livonia for battery cell assembly. January -- Gov. Granholm signs law for advanced battery credits worth $335 million for battery pack manufacturing, research, and establishment of battery cell manufacturing facility. -- GM announces Chevy Volt battery pack plant and test facility for Warren; new lab with University of Michigan for the Advanced Battery Coalition for Drivetrains. February -- Congress passes the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. -- GM gets advanced battery credits of $160 million for pack manufacturing and vehicle engineering; Ford Motor Co. gets $30 million in advanced battery technology credits and $25 million in vehicle engineering credits. March -- U.S. Department of Energy seeks grant applications for $2 billion allocation for battery-related development and technologies. April -- Michigan approves $220 million in advanced battery credits for A123Systems, Johnson Controls-Saft Advanced Power Solutions (Holland), KD Advanced Battery Group, and LG Chem-Compact Power (one site in Holland). May -- Michigan expands advanced battery credits by $145 million, adding $100 million for cell manufacturing and $45 million for vehicle engineering. -- Ford gets additional $20 million credit for vehicle engineering. -- Sakti3 applies for U.S. Department of Energy funding for Livonia pilot plant. -- GM announces Chevy Volt pack manufacturing site in Brownstown Township. July -- Power Cell launches search for site to manufacture advanced battery cells in West Michigan. August 5 -- U.S. Department of Energy announces $2.4 billion for battery awards through American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Source: Michigan Gov. Jennifer Graholm's office

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (9388)	7/15/2013 8:50:33 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 24232

The punctuated collapse of the Roman Empire by Ugo Bardi, originally published by Cassandra's legacy \| TODAY see also Message 27601674 I defined as the " Seneca Cliff" the tendency of some systems to collapse after having peaked. Here I start from some considerations about whether the collapse could be smooth or an uneven process that we could define as "punctuated." I am taking the Roman Empire as an example and showing that it did decline much faster than it grew. But the decline was surely far from smooth. The idea of an impending collapse of our civilization is already bad enough in itself, but it has this little extra-twist that collapse may be given more speed by what I called the " Seneca Cliff," from the words of the Roman Philosopher who had noted first that, "Fortune is slow, but ruin is rapid". The concept of the Seneca Cliff seems to have gained some traction over the Web and many people have been discussing it. Recently, I found an interesting comment on this point by Jason Heppenstall on his blog "22 billion energy slaves". He summarizes the debate as: "In the fast-collapse camp are the likes of Dmitry Orlov (who bases his assessment on his experience of seeing the USSR implode) and Ugo Bardi, who expects a ‘Seneca’s Cliff’ dropoff. James Kunstler, Michael Ruppert and any number of others can probably also be added to the fast-collapse camp. By comparison, the likes of John Michael Greer reckon we are in for a drawn-out era of terminal decline punctuated by serious crises which, at the time, will seem rather severe to all involved but which will give way to plateaux of relative stability, albeit at a lower level of energy throughput." Actually, the two camps may not be in such a radical disagreement with each other as they are described. The idea of the fast (or Seneca-like) collapse does not necessarily mean that collapse will be continuous or smooth. The model that describes the Seneca effect does give that kind of output, but models are - as usual - just approximations. The real world may follow the curve in a series of "bumps" that will give an impression of recovery to the people who will experience the painful descent period. So, collapse may very well be "punctuated: a series of periods of temporary stability, separated by severe crashes. But it may still be much faster than the previous growth had been. I discussed this point already in my first post on the Seneca Effect, but let me return on this subject and let me consider one of the best known cases of societal collapse: that of the Roman Empire. First of all: some qualitative considerations. Rome's foundation goes back to 753 BC; the end of the Western Empire is usually taken as 476 AD, with the dethroning of the last Western Emperor, Romulus Augustus. Now, in between these two dates, a time span of more than 1200 years, the Empire peaked. When was that? The answer depends on which parameter we are considering but it seems clear that, whatever choice we make, the peak was not midway - it was much later. The Empire was still strong and powerful during the 2nd century AD and we might take the age of Emperor Trajan as the peak (he died in 117 AD) as "peak empire." We may also note that up to the time of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (who died in 180 AD), the empire didn't show evident signs of weakness, so we could take the peak as occurring in mid or late 2nd century AD. In the end, the exact date doesn't matter: the Empire took around 900 years to go from the foundation of Rome to the 2nd century peak. Then, it took just 400 years - probably less than that - for the Empire to wither and disappear. An asymmetric, Seneca-like collapse, indeed. We also have some quantitative data on the Empire's cycle. For instance, look at this image from Wikipedia. It shows the size of the Roman military over the Empire's span of existence. WIth all the uncertainties involved, also this image shows a typical "Seneca" shape for both the Western and the Eastern parts of the Empire. Decline is faster than growth, indeed. There are other indicators that we can consider about the collapse of the Roman Empire. In many cases, we don't have sufficient data to say much, but in some, we can say that collapse was, indeed, abrupt. For instance, you can give a look to a well known image taken from Joseph Tainter's book " The Collapse of Complex Societies" The figure shows the content of silver in the Roman "denarius" which by the 3rd century AD, had become pure copper. Note how the decline starts slow, but then goes on faster and faster. Seneca himself would have understood this phenomenon very well. So, the Roman Empire seems to have been hit by a "Seneca collapse" and that tells us that the occurrence of this kind of rapid decline may be commonplace for the entities we call "civilizations" or "empires". It is also true, however, that the Roman collapse was far from being smooth. It went through periods of apparent stability, interrupted by periods of extremely fast descent. The chroniclers of the time described these periods of crisis, but none of them seem to have connected the dots: they never saw that each crisis was linked to the preceding one and leading to the next one. Punctuated collapse seemed to be invisible to the ancient Romans, just as it is for us, today. resilience.org