EuroWire September 2019

Transatlantic cable

Pollinator-friendly sites are officiated by vegetation consultants and include a wide variety of native plant species to attract pollinators and maintain the health and ecology of the land under the solar panels. “After California, Michigan has the second most diversified agricultural economy in the US”, said Mr Davis, so preserving agricultural viability is critical to the state’s economy. Crops such as blueberries greatly depend on pollinators to maximise the cultivation of the state’s 22,000 acres of the fruit. “Those pollinators have to make 460 billion visits every year, within a five week period, to maximise the yields of those blueberries,” said Mr Davis. “If you don’t keep the pollinators alive, then it’s human labour that is going to be going around with little paint brushes to try to pollinate all of those individual little blueberry flowers. In Michigan, they really understand pollination ecology.”

Privately held MP Materials, which owns the Mountain Pass mine in California, aims to open a processing facility by next year. The US Commerce Department has called for urgent steps to boost domestic rare earth production. The DLA report includes 61 specific recommendations – including low-interest loans and a “buy American” provision for defence companies – to increase US rare earth supplies. It also called for closer cooperation with US allies, which dovetails with DLA’s outreach to miners in Africa and elsewhere.

Solar energy

Protecting bees, developing solar, securing Michigan’s economy

Catherine Morehouse’s 4 th June article on the Utility Dive website celebrated an eco-friendly development in Michigan [“Michigan opens 3.3m farmland acres to bee-friendly solar projects”] Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, has announced an executive decision that frees up 3.3 million acres of farmland, protected under the state’s Farmland and Open Space Program, to solar development. Tom Zimnicki, agriculture policy director at the Michigan Environmental Council, told Utility Dive that the land was previously allowed to host wind turbines and oil and gas exploration, but that solar had been historically restricted because it was considered to have a larger footprint. Innovations in solar siting are now making those installations more compatible with agricultural land and, under Whitmer’s decision, solar projects on protected farmland will be required to meet Michigan’s “pollinator-friendly” guidelines. More than a dozen states currently have policy checklists certifying a solar site as pollinator-friendly and the trend is growing in regions with large rural populations that have to consider land use constraints due to limited farming land. Solar energy in the US is expected to require three million acres of land by 2030 and six million by 2050, according to the National Renewable Laboratory (NREL). And as the cost of installations drop, the resource is becoming more attractive to regions that haven’t traditionally invested in solar. “Solar for a long time...has just been thought of as one thing and it’s really the design that came out of the California and Arizona desert,” said Rob Davis, who directs the Center for Pollinators in Energy and also leads the Media and Innovation Lab at Fresh Energy in Minnesota. “What’s exciting about this is that we’re seeing innovation in solar farm designs to reflect the high value agricultural soils of the Midwest and eastern markets.” Ms Whitmer’s decision allows farmland owners to earn tax breaks by entering into a lease agreement with solar developers for up to 90 years. The land has to meet a score of at least 76 on Michigan’s pollinator-friendly checklist, developed by the Michigan State Department of Entomology. The solar siting is intended to be temporary under the state’s law and, when the project lease expires, the land needs to be in good enough shape to revert back to agricultural purposes.

Automotive high-tech

Volvo and Varjo launch a world-first in mixed-reality applications

Volvo Cars and Varjo have developed the Varjo XR-1 mixed-reality headset, making it possible to drive a real car while adding virtual elements and complete features that seem real to the driver, and to the car’s sensors. Eye-tracking technology embedded inside the XR-1 also assesses how drivers use a new functionality, and whether the technology causes its own distractions. “With this mixed-reality approach, we can start evaluating designs and technologies while they are, literally, still on the drawing board,” said Henrik Green, chief technology officer at Volvo Cars. “Instead of the usual static way of evaluating new products and ideas, we can test concepts on the road immediately. This approach offers considerable potential cost savings by identifying priorities…much earlier in the design and development process.” Daimler’s self-driving truck development Daimler Trucks is creating a new Autonomous Technology Group to accelerate the development of self-driving trucks. Self-driving trucks could allow for more trucks to be on the road, tackling two of the current challenges facing the industry – driver shortages and an increase in delivery demand. Most current developments involve Level 2 or Level 3 “partial autonomous” technology. Daimler Trucks’ new unit will work on establishing operations infrastructure and network toward series production of Level 4 (high driving automation) autonomous trucks. Daimler said Level 4 is the next logical step after Level 2 to increase the safety, efficiency and productivity of trucks. Daimler will invest over $570 million in self-driving trucks and plans to include the newly acquired Torc Robotics into the Autonomous Technology Group, pending approval of the acquisition. Torc is developing its own Asimov self-driving software.

Gill Watson USA Editor

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September 2019