welcome

Better Place announced this afternoon that it is heading Down Under to deploy its electric car infrastructure in Australia. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup is working with Australian utility AGL Energy to build an electric car charging grid powered by renewable energy. Macquarie Capital Group will finance the AUD$1 billion ($671 million) undertaking. Starting in the heavily populated areas around Melbourne and Sydney, Better Place plans to have the infrastructure up and running by 2012, when its automotive partner Renault-Nissan will start selling electric cars all over the world.

So why has Better Place decided to set up shop in one of the world’s Top 20 most polluting nations? Better Place knows that size matters, and while critics say the model can only work in diminutive markets like Israel and Denmark, the company needs to show it can scale. If founder Shai Agassi can make it work in Australia, the world’s largest transportation island, he should be be able to make it work anywhere.

Update: During the press call announcing the deal, Agassi blamed the world’s “appetite for oil” for the global economic crisis. The entrepreneur wasted no time comparing the east coast of Australia, where Better Place will build “electric highways” connecting Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, to the West Coast of the U.S. where Agassi would like to do the same between L.A., San Francisco and Seattle. The greater Melbourne-Sydney metro area will require 200,000 to 250,000 charging stations, Agassi said. Better Place plans on deploying some 500,000 charging points for the whole of Israel.

Better Place’s Australian debut follows a year-long shift in Australian politics toward a greener government. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd signed the Kyoto Protocol his first day on the job and has made energy and climate change top priorities. Rudd wants to set up a carbon trading scheme by 2010 and has set the target of generating 20 percent of the country’s power from renewables by 2020.

It won’t be easy. Australia is the world’s third-largest producer of coal and generates 80 percent of its power from the sooty stuff, according to the World Coal Institute. But the country also has vast wind, solar and geothermal resources. The government recently invested AUD$50 million to tap more geothermal power and estimates that the country could produce 22,000 megawatts of solar power by 2020. AGL says it will accelerate its renewable energy plans, specifically wind energy, which can work very well with a fleet of charging EVs at night.

The government is also working to clean up its auto industry and created the Green Car Innovation Fund, which will make AUD$500 million available for automakers to build greener cars. Car ownership rates in Australia have been climbing steadily and Better Place estimates the country — which boasts a population of 21 million — bought 1 million cars just last year.

Agassi said in a statement that all these factors create “a compelling case for automobile manufacturers to jump in and build clean, safe, affordable electric cars for Australasia and Southeast Asia.” Already Better Place is using its newest partnership to encourage more countries to go electric. There are plenty of smaller transportation islands through Southeast Asia that could prove fertile for Better Place’s model.

This is the first big announcement from the year-old startup since March, when it said it would be working in Denmark. Renault-Nissan and Better Place seem to be approaching the country-by-country electrification of vehicles like a formal dance. “Sometimes we lead and sometimes Renault-Nissan leads,” Better Place told us today. “In this today case, we’re taking the lead.”

Copyright 2008 GigaOm. All Rights Reserved.

The headlong rush to create electric cars for green-minded consumers may come with a significant economic and environmental cost.

Lithium ion batteries--the same used in electronic gadgets and laptops--have become the preferred battery type for plug-in hybrids and electric cars now starting to come to market.

That swelling demand has some industry observers concerned that there will be a shortage of the metal lithium, the material used to make the batteries.

"You can solve the transportation problem but end up creating an equally vexing commodity problem," said Matthew Nordan, president of emerging technology consulting firm Lux Research. "It's a big concern."

In the short term, auto companies will be able to bring plug-in hybrid cars to market as planned in the next few years. Production of lithium has increased since the 1990s to meet the demand for batteries in power tools and consumer electronics, said Brian Jaskula, the lithium mineral commodity specialist at the U.S. Geological Survey. Prices over the past few years have increased steadily as well, he said.

The white patch on the bottom of this NASA satellite image shows the Salar of Uyuni in Bolivia, considered a significant but unexploited deposit of lithium. Lake Titicaca is the large body of water to the north. (Credit: NASA)

Longer term, though, the picture is less clear. Batteries for cars are expensive, which is the biggest reason that plug-in electric cars cost more.

"Prices in the last couple of years have slowly gone up," Jaskula said. "But if the Chevy Volt and other cars like that become a big raging success and the demand really increases but supply doesn't keep up, then the price will go up obviously."

Whether or not a global run on lithium pans out as projected by the worriers, the situation highlights an underappreciated risk when it comes to alternative energy, namely securing supplies of natural resources. In other words, if some green technologies are successful in displacing fossil fuels, there could be shortages of materials that most people never heard of before.

"In all these newfangled clean technology applications, quite often the ones that appear to have strong growth potential face a challenge in that they are reliant on some material that has been in short use to date," said clean-tech venture capitalist Rob Day, a partner at @Ventures. "Possibly, they don't have enough supply to fulfill (growth) requirements."

Other examples include indium, a material used in a new generation of low-cost CIGS solar cells, and coatings on solar panels, Day said. And for several years, researchers have sought to come up with an alternative material for expensive platinum, which is used as a catalyst in fuel cells, noted Barbara Heydorn, who is director at the center of excellence in energy at science research nonprofit SRI International.

Eye on South America
Today, Toyota's Prius hybrid electric cars have nickel-metal hydride batteries. Because of improvements in weight and storage in lithium ion batteries, though, a number of auto manufacturers will be using them in plug-in hybrids expected to come to market in the next two years.

General Motors, for example, plans to use lithium ion batteries for the Volt and the Saturn Vue plug-in hybrid, both of which are expected in late 2010. Toyota, too, is planning cars with lithium ion batteries, but it is said to be researching zinc air batteries for vehicles as well.

Today, lithium is extracted from dried salt ponds or "salt flats." A briny liquid underneath the surface is pumped out and dried in the sun. The dried material can be made into lithium carbonate, which is later processed to make lithium.

There are widely divergent views on whether the existing producers of lithium--most located in South America and China--can keep pace with an onrush of hundreds of thousands or millions of new plug-in hybrid cars in the next few years.

Energy and transportation consultant William Tahil of Meridian International Research last year rekindled the supply debate in a paper, which was followed by another paper (PDF) issued in May.

He concluded that lithium supply will be absorbed largely by the fast-growing consumer electronics industry and that increased demand for lithium production will worsen relations between the U.S. and Latin America.

With continued 25 percent yearly growth in portable electronics, there would only be enough lithium carbonate for 1.5 million Chevy Volt-type vehicles by 2015 with "optimum production increases," according to Tahil.

The results of Tahil's studies are disputed. Geologist R. Keith Evan, for one, calculated worldwide reserves and concluded there is an abundance of lithium to meet electric-car demand.

Tahil counters that the total inventory of lithium does not reflect the increased mining cost of getting lithium from sources other than lithium carbonate.

In addition, further exploitation of the world's largest salt flat, the Salar de Atacama in Chile, and the development of new sites, such the large reserves in Bolivia, would cause substantial damage to those ecosystems, Tahil and the USGS's Jaskula said.

"The point is that electric cars are supposed to be environmentally friendly cars and there are many other materials such as zinc and iron...which don't require any more environmental degradation than has already been done," Tahil said in an interview.

Financial analyst Craig Irwin, who is vice president of energy storage and energy efficiency at Merriman Curhan Ford, indicated that projected lithium supply has not dampened enthusiasm for the technology. He noted that lithium can also be extracted from different materials, including the mineral spodumene.

"There are two highly polarized camps," Irwin said. "The processing technology (for spodumene) is not entirely mature yet, but I don't think it's an insurmountable challenge."

Representatives from lithium ion battery maker EnerDel did not respond to a request for comment before publication. Another well-regarded lithium ion battery company, A123 Systems, declined to comment because it is in a quiet period before its planned public offering.

Commodity rules apply
For economic reasons alone, some businesses are taking a strategic approach to effectively sourcing materials, like lithium, for alternative energy technologies.

General Electric recently assigned a research scientist the full-time job of studying sources of materials that are critical to GE, which is investing heavily in battery technologies for transportation and grid storage.

GE was caught "behind the curve" when one material used in its aircraft engines shot up in price, so it's now looking for other "pinch points," said Mark Little, director of GE's research labs.

"The ability to supply batteries, including the raw materials, from a national security standpoint is a valid question which we should be posing. I don't know the answer," said Glen Merfeld, manager of the Chemical Energy Systems Laboratory at GE Research.

Because lithium is a commodity like oil, the same economics apply, said Ripu Malhotra, associate director at the chemical science and technology laboratory at SRI International.

Limits of mineral supplies lead to higher prices and an incentive to accumulate bigger reserves, he said. And the higher prices will spur investment in new extraction technologies from unconventional sources. For example, the price of corn shot up to meet a surge in ethanol demand. Now, producers are developing methods to use alternative feedstocks, like wood chips and grasses.

"These are brand new markets. If it truly becomes a limiting factor, prices go up and we find new sources of material or ways to recycle the material," SRI International's Heydorn said.

Better Place, for example, plans to install battery-charging stations in Israel, Denmark, and Australia to jump-start a rapid transition to electric cars. But a lithium shortage will mean its ambitious plans would need to be scaled back, according to Nordan.

Speaking at recent conference, Project Better Place co-founder and adviser Andrey Zarur acknowledged that the company is "betting big time" that recycling technologies and alternative to lithium ion batteries will emerge in the coming years.

Lithium ion car battery-pack suppliers themselves will have plenty of business in the years to come if sales come close to projections. But that growth will affect commodity prices, Nordan predicts. It's also leading to stepped-up research into alternative battery chemistries, such as nickel-metal hydride variants, zinc air, and magnesium.

"There's a flowering of interest in battery technologies with abundant materials," Nordan said. "Abundant materials are the words of the day."

Together with six global partners including the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and UNESCO, the University of Twente in The Netherlands will found the Water Footprint Network on October 16, 2008. The ‘water footprint’, developed by UT Professor Arjen Hoekstra, gives a detailed insight into the water consumption of individuals, companies and countries.

The new network will promote sustainable, fair and efficient use of water on a global scale.

The ‘water footprint’ measures the amount of water that a country, company or individual uses each year. This includes the water needed to produce goods: the water withdrawn from surface as well as ground water and soil water.

For a simple cup of coffee, for example, an average of 140 litres of water is needed, 2,700 litres for a cotton shirt, 16,000 for a kilo of beef. Taking all this into account on a global scale, we get a water footprint of 7,500 billion cubic metres a year. Per individual this is an average of 1,250 cubic meters a year.

An American citizen uses twice that amount, a Chinese or Indian citizen far less. In The Netherlands, just 20 percent of the water footprint is Dutch water, the rest of it is foreign. Thus, the water footprint also indicates the geographic spread: where on the planet do we use most of the water for our goods?

The concept has been developed by Professor Arjen Hoekstra, who heads the Twente Water Centre at his university and is the scientific director of the new Water Footprint Network: “Many countries do not produce the typical water-intensive products themselves. This puts a huge pressure on the water resources of exporting countries, where too often wise water governance is lacking. The water footprint doesn’t just help governments in better management of water resources; companies and public organisations can take their responsibility as well.”

The Water Footprint Network helps increasing awareness by developing new standards and tools. “A unique opportunity for governments and businesses to apply the water footprint methodology and reduce the water risks to economy, society and nature,” says executive director Derk Kuiper. The Water Footprint Network will soon be open to all relevant stakeholders including academic institutions, government and non-government organisations, companies and UN organisations.

The Water Footprint Network is a joint initiative of the University of Twente, the World Wide Fund for Nature, UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, the Water Neutral Foundation, the World Business Council on Sustainable Development, the International Finance Corporation (part of the World Bank group) and the Netherlands Water Partnership. The public launch of the network will be in December 2008.

More info: website of the Water Footprint Network: http://www.waterfootprint.org

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A farmer surveys dead livestock in drought-stricken Leigh Creek, Australia. Photograph: Ian Waldie/Getty Images

Parts of the world may have to be abandoned because severe water shortages will leave them uninhabitable, the United Nations environment chief has warned.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, said water shortages caused by over-use of rivers and aquifers were already leading to serious problems, even in rich nations. With climate change expected to reduce rainfall in some places and cause droughts in others, some regions could become 'economic deserts', unviable for people or agriculture, he said.

Steiner argued that only urgent action to combat global warming and poverty could prevent the creation of thousands of 'environmental refugees'. Previous UN agreements to reduce global warming emissions and the Millennium Development Goals on poverty had not been met. His warning echoes those of other environment leaders, who have said that water shortages could be the greatest threat posed by climate change.

'In many ways [water] is the most dramatic expression of mismanagement of natural or nature-based assets,' Steiner said. 'The day a person or a community is bereft of water is the day that your chance of even the most basic life or livelihood is gone and economic activity seeps away.

'Unchecked climate change will mean that some parts of the world will simply not have enough water to sustain settlements both small and large, because agriculture becomes untenable and industries relying on water can no longer compete or function effectively. This will trigger structural changes in economies right through to the displacement of people as environmental refugees.'

Steiner said it was not possible to identify specific places at risk, but said vulnerable areas were those which were already considered to be 'water scarce' because of dry weather and a lack of infrastructure to store and transport water. Last week a study of the water footprints of 200 nations led by conservation group WWF warned that 50 countries were already experiencing 'moderate to severe water stress on a year-round basis'.

This week experts from the UN Convention to Combat Desertification meeting in Turkey will warn that high food prices and endemic droughts are jeopardising the lives of hundreds of millions of people, particularly in Africa.

Some of the most dramatic examples of water shortages this year include conflict-stricken Sudan, the dramatic drying of Lake Faguibine in Mali on which 200,000 mostly nomadic people depend, fatal clashes over drying boreholes in northern Kenya, and economic and social crisis on the sparsely populated border between Bolivia and Argentina, according to Unep. Oxfam has estimated that 25 million people have been affected by the most recent drought in Ethiopia.

Rich nations are not immune. California has declared a state of emergency over water shortages, Australia has committed billions of dollars to cope with drought, and governments in Europe have been forced to ship in water to stop communities running dry.

'A plant, never mind a human being, simply cannot live without water,' said Steiner. 'It's not a matter of how we can live for three years without some water; these are not the kind of things we can do for a while and recover.

'In rich countries, there's always the potential of channelling water from one river basin to another. But even there people are hitting the limits of what we can do with money and infrastructure because there simply isn't enough water any more.'

Suggested solutions include better enforcement of restrictions on over-use of rivers, lakes and aquifers, more efficient use of water and increases in technologies to recycle and desalinate water.

Experts at the International Water Association congress in September called for investment in water infrastructure to at least double from the current level of $80bn (£49bn) a year to avoid widespread flooding, drought and disease.

Unep has calculated that enough rain falls on Africa to theoretically supply the needs of 13 billion people, and has called for a continent-wide rainwater harvesting programme.

Wadi Faynan, Jordan: This Palestinian Beduin Family of 11 live in the desert. They collect their water from the waterpipes and manage to get 15 litres of water each per day. Photograph: Matilde Gattoni/ArabianEye

It's hard to imagine why humans would have chosen the achingly arid stone desert of Wadi Faynan for their first settlement. But water would have been one important reason, says archaeologist Steven Mithen. When Neolithic men and women arrived 11,500 years ago, things were very different: the climate was cooler and wetter; the landscape was covered in vegetation including wild figs, legumes and cereals, and there would have been wild goats and ibex for meat.

Initially WF16, as it's now called, would have been a seasonal camp. But Mithen, professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading, and his fellow archaeologist Bill Finlayson believe that, gradually, people stayed longer. Sifting evidence from so long ago, the archaeologists can't be sure, but remains of food from different seasons and the scale of 'rubbish' piles suggest that about 10,000 years ago the inhabitants stopped moving altogether. If they are right, it would make this one of the oldest sites ever found where humans made a permanent settlement, learned to farm, and changed the course of human civilisation. But the tiny community drawn to water, which attracted successive waves of settlements, would eventually all but destroy the resource which made life possible. It is a pattern that's been repeated for millennia, around the world, and it now threatens us on a global scale.

First people cut trees for shelter and fuel, until rains swept away the soil instead of seeping into shallow aquifers, and the springs dried up. At least as long ago as the Bronze Age, farmers began mankind's obsession with diverting water for crops to feed the growing population. Meanwhile, the moist, cool climate which encouraged the first settlement was naturally becoming drier and hotter.

At least twice, historians believe, Wadi Faynan was abandoned. The first time possibly because of a sharp change in the climate, and later because it became too polluted. Today, Bedouin who survive in the valley have laid pipes down the dry stream bed to suck what is left of the spring in order to irrigate fields of tomatoes they have scratched out of the dry soil. But it's getting harder. According to local water lore, good rains now come in less than every other year.

The farmers in Wadi Faynan are not alone. Like communities around the world, they are paying the price for thousands of years of exploitation of our environment. Already, 1bn people do not have enough clean water to drink, and at least 2bn cannot rely on adequate water to drink, clean and eat - let alone have enough left for nature. Lack of water is blamed for many of the world's most distressing crises: millions of deaths each year from disease and malnutrition, chronic hunger, keeping children away from schools which offer hope of a better life. Mostly it is the poor who suffer, but increasingly rich nations are struggling, too. Australia has endured so many dry years that a leading climatologist has said it's time to stop saying 'gripped by drought' and accept that the lack of rain is permanent.

In parts of the US supplies are so vulnerable that last autumn the Red Cross delivered water parcels to the town of Orme in Tennessee. 'I thought, "That can't be the Red Cross. We're Americans!"' resident Susan Anderson told a reporter. In California, some farmers abandoned their crops this year as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared the first state-wide drought for 17 years. Meanwhile Barcelona was so desperate that it began importing tankers of water from cities along the coast. Even in the notoriously wet UK, water has become such a problem in the crowded southeast that one company plans to build a desalination plant, the sort of desperate measure associated with oil-rich desert states.

The Stockholm International Water Institute talks about 'an acute and devastating humanitarian crisis'; the founder of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, warns of a 'perfect storm'; Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations Secretary General, has raised the spectre of 'water wars'. And, as the population keeps growing and getting richer, and global warming changes the climate, experts are warning that unless something is done, billions more will suffer lack of water - precipitating hunger, disease, migration and ultimately conflict.

In a bid to avert this catastrophe, politicians, economists and engineers are pressing for dramatic changes to the way water is managed, from tree planting and simple storage wells, to multibillion dollar schemes to replumb the planet with dams and pipes, or manufacture freshwater from sewers and the sea.

The water crisis is an expression of the environmental catastrophe of human over-exploitation. This is the age the Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen has called 'the Anthropocene', because the natural system has been so fundamentally altered by human activity. And it all began when people settled down and began to chop wood and farm.

'The start of sedentary communities is the start of the need to manage fresh water supplies,' says Steven Mithen. 'This is a starting point for our whole modern dilemma. It's gone from the concerns of individual settlements, to cities, to nations, and it's now a global issue.'

There is, in theory, plenty of water on the earth to sustain its 6.5bn people. More than 97 per cent of all the water on the planet is salt water, and most of the freshwater is locked up in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. But that still leaves 10m cubic kilometres (km3) of usable water, circulating in cycles of evaporation and precipitation between the atmosphere and earth, where it appears in underground aquifers, lakes and rivers, glaciers, snowpacks, wetlands, permafrost and soil. Each km3 is equivalent to 1,000bn litres, or 1bn tonnes, of water - about the remaining annual flow of the River Nile.

On the other side of the equation, the UN says individuals need five litres of water a day simply to survive in a moderate climate, and at least 50 litres a day for drinking and cooking, bathing and sanitation. Industry accounts for about double the average domestic use. But agriculture needs much, much more - in fact, 90 per cent of all water used by humans. The water is not 'lost' from earth, but over-abstraction by irrigators means it is often moved from where it is needed. Tony Allan, of King's College London, estimates that, together, 6.5bn people need 8,000km3 of water each year - a fraction of what is theoretically available. 'There's certainly enough water for every person on the planet, but too often it's in the wrong places at the wrong times in the wrong amounts,' says Marq de Villiers, author of the 2001 book Water Wars

Three hours north of Wadi Faynan is the much greener Wadi Esseir, where Salah Al-Mherat and his family are one of millions of households in Jordan who feel the daily effects of inhabiting one of the driest countries on earth. Once a week, Al-Mherat gets water from the local irrigation co-operative for his fig, lemon, olive and grenadine trees and vegetables. For the rest he relies on rain. But since the Nineties the springs have been drying, sapped by demand from the nearby capital, Amman, and rain has been declining.

On a hot morning in April, Al-Mherat comes in from picking petits-pois, hitches up his smock and settles on to a pile of cushions. Fidgeting with a pot of scented tea he explains that the crops now barely cover their costs; he has to work as a security guard to supplement his income. 'When I started it was very good compared to now,' he says. 'The first impact was that the size of the irrigated area became reduced. People also changed what they irrigated, so the water now goes mainly to the trees - some farmers stopped completely from doing vegetables.' Al-Mherat says he keeps hoping things will improve, because he will pass the land to his sons. 'It's my life,' he says. 'But even if I'm positive, the reality is it's like the wish of the devil to go to paradise.'

Global population, economic development and a growing appetite for meat, dairy and fish protein have raised human water demand sixfold in 50 years. Meanwhile, supplies have been diminished in several ways: an estimated 845,000 dams block most of the world's rivers, depriving downstream communities of water and sediment, and increasing evaporation; up to half of water is lost in leakage; another 1bn people simply have no proper infrastructure; and the water left is often polluted by chemicals and heavy metals from farms and industry, blamed by the UN for poisoning more than 100m people. And still the rains are getting less reliable in many areas.

Underlying these problems is a paradox. Because water, and the movement of water, is essential for life, and central to many religions, it is traditionally regarded as a 'common' good. But no individuals are responsible for it. From Wadi Esseir to the arid American Midwest, farmers either do not pay for water or pay a fraction of what homeowners pay, so they have less incentive to conserve it and might deprive suppliers of funds to improve infrastructure.

The UN defines 'water scarcity' as fewer than 1,000m3 of renewable clean water for each person every year to drink, clean, grow food and run industry. By this measure half the world's population lives in countries suffering water scarcity. Jordan is one of the most water-scarce countries on earth, averaging just 160m3 of renewable water per person per year.

The result is that it is not just farmers who are rationed. The Al-Mherat family, like the rest of greater Amman, only get water to their house one day a week. A city of more than 2m people runs to the rhythm of 'water day', says Dr Khadija Darmame, who is part of a £1.25m project organised by Mithen and sponsored by Britain's Leverhulme Trust to study links between 'water, life and civilisation' in Jordan, from the earliest settlements to modern day.

Poor supplies and stagnant tanks occasionally lead to infections. But for most, the problem is drudgery. 'The first thing is to do the maximum laundry and then clean the house,' says Darmame. Children and men take a shower, 'and the last thing is for the women to take a shower, and then you need a few hours to fill the tanks,' stacked on every roof.

For millions of others, bad supplies are a question of life and death. Lack of clean drinking water and sanitation are largely blamed for the death of 11m children under five each year from disease and malnutrition; for nearly 1bn people who are chronically hungry; for 2bn who suffer what the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization calls 'food insecurity', because they do not have adequate food and nutrition for an 'active and healthy life'; and for keeping more than 60m girls out of school. These people then get caught in a water and poverty trap: two-thirds of the people who lack enough water for even the most basic needs live on less than $2 a day. 'Variability of water availability is strongly and negatively related to per capita income,' says Professor Jeffrey Sachs, author of Common Wealth: Economics For a Crowded Planet, and a special adviser to the UN Secretary General. Poor health, lack of education and hunger make it hard to escape.

Ultimately, lack of water is seen as a threat to peace. From genocide in Darfur to rows between states in India and the US, Ban Ki-Moon is one of several global leaders who have warned of further legal and armed disputes over water. Intuitively it is obvious people will fight over their most precious resource, but so far few conflicts have broken out. The idea of 'water wars' seized the public imagination in 2001 when Marq de Villiers's book of that name was published in the UK, but the author disagreed with the publisher's choice of title. De Villiers agrees that water is often an underlying cause of tension, but has only identified one water 'war', between Egypt and Sudan. 'You cannot do without water, so when shortages pinch, states do co-operate and compromise,' he says.

But if half the world's population lives in water-stressed countries, how do so many, from the breadbaskets of Asia to the sprawling cities in the arid American west, keep watering fields and running taps?

One reason is that water flows uphill to money, as the saying goes. Thus people in oil-rich Kuwait enjoy expensive desalination, while Palestinians suffer daily hardship; tourists in Amman can turn on the tap at any time, while those in the poorest areas of the city have access to water for a few hours each week. As Tony Allan says: 'Water shortages don't pose serious problems to gardeners in Hampshire or California homeowners with pools to fill.'

Another answer to the conundrum was identified by Allan, who in the Sixties became curious about why Middle Eastern countries without abundant water supplies were not suffering from a more obvious water crisis. The answer, he realised, was trade: by buying food, water-poor societies were 'buying' what he dubbed 'virtual water'. They were helped by farmers dumping grain into the world market once subsidies created massive over-supply. 'This potential tragedy was motoring on and hit the calm waters of the Americans and Europeans providing food [for the world market] at half cost, and the water contained in that food [was water] they didn't have to find.'

The other answer is that communities around the world have been forced to tap rivers and lakes and aquifers, sometimes millions of years old, far beyond the limit at which they can replenish themselves. Above ground, lakes are shrinking and rivers are being reduced to pathetic flows, or drying up altogether. Below ground, a largely invisible crisis is unfolding as millions of wells have been sunk into aquifers - 4m in Bangladesh alone. Many aquifers are replenishable, but not all, and many that can be recharged don't get enough rain to match demand. Sometimes the empty cavities simply collapse, putting them beyond use forever. In his recent book, Plan B 3.0, Lester Brown catalogues the results. In the breadbaskets of China, India, the US, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Israel and Mexico, water tables are falling, sometimes by many metres a year. Pumps are being drilled a kilometre or more to find water, thousands more wells have dried up altogether and agricultural yields are shrinking. These countries contain more than half the world's people and produce most of its grain, warns Brown. Meanwhile, almost forgotten amid the human suffering are the terrible consequences for the natural world: freshwater fish populations fell by half between 1970 and 2000, says the UN.

All these dams and irrigation channels and pumps and pipes allow billions of people to run up a gigantic global water overdraft. What worries experts is that there is no sign of humans withdrawing less water.

Two years ago, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) published a report by 700 experts warning that one in three people were 'enduring one form or another of water scarcity'. 'Scarcity for me is when women work hard to get water, [or] you want to allocate more but can't,' says David Molden, deputy director of the Sri Lanka-based organisation.

Molden warns that the situation is becoming 'a little bit more critical', because of continuing rising demand for food, the recent boom in biofuels and climate change. To that can also be added another, poignant 'demand': the long-overdue realisation that nature also needs water, which in Europe and other countries has led to laws to ensure 'minimum environmental flows' remain in place.

For food alone, the World Bank estimates that demand for water will rise 50 per cent by 2030, and the IWMI fears it could nearly double by 2050. Whether these crops require rain or irrigation depends on where they are grown, and how much rain there is.

Like a great river fed by many tributaries, water is a conduit for the various effects of global warming: more variable rainfall, more floods, more droughts, the melting of glaciers on which 1bn people depend for summer river flows, and rising sea levels, threatening to inundate not just coastal communities but also their freshwater aquifers, river deltas and wetlands.

From the headline figures, climate change should be good news. Crudely, scientists estimate for every 1C rise in the average global temperature, precipitation will increase one per cent, as warmer air absorbs more moisture. The world's total volume would not change, but it would be recycled more quickly, affecting the majority of the world's agriculture which depends on the volume and timing of rainfall.

Balancing all these impacts, Nigel Arnell, director of Reading University's Walker Institute for Climate Change, calculates that the number of people living in water basins exposed to water stress will rise from 1.4bn to 2.9-3.3bn by 2025 and to 3.4-5.6bn by 2055. In fact, the greatest impact in Arnell's modelling is from rising populations, particularly in China and India, and, globally, climate change is actually reducing exposure to shortages. This may be good news for some, but masks huge disruption, as some regions fear too much water, while hundreds of millions of people start to run out.

It is impossible to attribute one farm's difficulties or one year's rainfall to climate change. But if climate is the statistics of weather, then the rain gauge this year on the farm of Sameeh Al-Nuimat, northwest of Amman, is typical of what the experts forecast. Al-Nuimat had noticed a gradual decline in rainfall for years, but this year it dropped off steeply and there was no rain at all in March, a critical time for summer crops. 'My father told me he'd never seen such a year,' he says.

Such dramatic events have injected urgency into discussions about Jordan's precarious water supplies, says Al-Nuimat, who is also an irrigation engineer at the Ministry of Agriculture. 'Before, when water was available, no one worried about it. But now there's interest - every night people speaking, every night debating, at every level, from the farmer to the planner to the politician. As a farmer I'd like to see drought-resistant crops; from a civil engineering point of view we should look for mega projects; and, if you're thinking about global planning, there should be acceptance of people moving from water-scarce regions to where water is available.'

Around the world the same debates are under way. Rich countries can make significant gains from domestic efficiency, but most of the world's population does not have power showers and swimming pools, or waste great quantities of food. Instead the main focus is on reducing water in agriculture, through more efficient irrigation, by engineering seeds to grow in more arid and salty conditions, and even shifting crops. 'If the world were my farm, I'd grow things in different places,' says David Molden. But even benign-sounding conservation is often unpopular. There is widespread resistance to raising prices for water (or energy for pumping) to increase efficiency, suspicion of genetic modification, and a reluctance among farmers to abandon water-hungry but lucrative crops when they are struggling to feed their family. 'It's a socioeconomic dilemma,' says Al-Nuimat. 'You can't stop now: it's the source of their life.'

Faced with public apathy and even resistance, responses have tended to focus on increasing supply. For decades the scale of ambition has been like a game of global engineering one-upmanship: rivers have been diverted across countries, pumps sunk kilometres into fossil aquifers, and bigger plants commissioned to recycle or desalinate water. And there is no sign of a let-up. As shortages become more desperate and costs and energy use fall, Global Water Intelligence forecasts that desalination capacity will more than double by 2015, and the potential to increase wastewater recycling is enormous, being only 2 per cent of volume.

But huge costs, environmental concerns and public distaste for drinking their 'waste' has forced many communities to reconsider simpler, traditional methods, too. Some of the ideas the earliest farmers would have recognised: tree replanting, ripping out thirsty non-native plants, stone walls to hold back erosion, and rain harvesting with simple ponds and tanks. Some have even urged a return to more vegetarian diets, which at their extreme demand only half the water of a typical American meat-eater's. This is, according to Lord Haskins, the former chairman of Britain's Northern Foods group and a government adviser, 'the most virtuous and responsible step of all'.

And when all options are exhausted at home, countries have another option: to import water in food and even industrial goods. Political meddling with subsidies makes trade a controversial 'solution', but by favouring regions with a 'competitive advantage' in water it can work. Globally the IWMI estimates irrigation demand would be 11 per cent higher without trade, and quotes a projection that imports can cut future irrigation by another 19-38 per cent by 2025. Saudi Arabia has gone further than most, announcing in February that it would stop all wheat production in a few years, though other countries might now be deterred by higher food prices.

Ultimately governments are being forced down several paths at once: to raise prices to reflect the true value of water to humans and the environment, invest in technology to improve efficiency and supplies, engage in more trade, and make peace with neighbours that can hold up incoming water or food. These will only be possible, though, if people can be lifted out of poverty, to afford higher prices, capital spending and imports. 'When you diversify your economy you solve your problems,' says Allan.

Looking back at the history of mankind's struggle for enough water, experience suggests the initiative which enabled humans to settle, farm and dominate the planet will provide many solutions. But sometimes we might have to accept defeat. 'On the one hand you can see this amazing technological ingenuity of humans, which throughout prehistory and history continually invented new ways to manage water supply,' says Mithen. 'On the other, the story of the past tells us that sometimes, however brilliant your technological inventions, they are just not good enough, and you get periods of abandonment of landscapes. We have got to be prepared to invest in technology, but also to recognise in some parts of the world there are going to be areas where we're going to have to say "enough's enough".'

A person uses about 50 litres of water a day; industry accounts for double that. But agriculture needs much more - in fact, 90 per cent of all water used by humans.

The Mediterranean area will become drier as a result of increased salinity in the water. Photograph: Corbis

Global warming is making the sea more salty, according to new research that demonstrates the massive shifts in natural systems triggered by climate change.

Experts at the UK Met Office and Reading University say warmer temperatures over the Atlantic Ocean have significantly increased evaporation and reduced rainfall across a giant stretch of water from Africa to the Carribean in recent years. The change concentrates salt in the water left behind, and is predicted to make southern Europe and the Mediterranean much drier in future.

Peter Stott of the Met Office, who led the study, said: "With global warming we're talking about very big changes in the overall water cycle. This moisture is being evaporated and transported to higher latitudes."

The team wanted to see whether manmade climate change could be blamed for changes in salinity measured in the Atlantic. In 2003, experts reported that the north Atlantic waters were freshening, with salt levels decreasing – a mild version of the scenario depicted in the Hollywood film The Day After Tomorrow where massive amounts of fresh water shut down warm ocean currents and cause temperatures to plunge.

Meanwhile, further south towards the tropics, Atlantic waters have been getting saltier – about 0.5% more since the 1960s.

Using state-of-the-art climate models, the scientists simulated events over both parts of the ocean with and without increased levels of greenhouse gases. They found that the freshening of the north Atlantic could be explained by natural variations, a conclusion supported by a recent recovery of the salt levels there.

But for the mid Atlantic, the models showed that only human-driven global warming could explain the increase in saltiness – the first time such an explicit link has been made between climate change and salinity. The results will appear in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rich countries are partly responsible for pollution from poor ones, including poisonous mining discharge, because they buy many of the raw materials and goods that produce the waste, environmental groups said.

"In our part of the world, these problems have been fixed for the most part," said Richard Fuller, founder of the New York-based Blacksmith Institute, which has compiled a database of 600 of the world's worst polluted places.

"We have exported our industry overseas and yet there's no pollution controls in these places or the pollution controls are terribly inadequate."

Blacksmith and Green Cross Switzerland, which works to clean up contamination from industrial and military disasters, released a report on Tuesday called "The World's Worst Polluted Places" -- available at www.worstpolluted.org.

It found that artisanal gold mining, contaminated surface water, radioactive waste processing and uranium mining and the recycling of used lead acid batteries, most of which occur in poor countries from Africa to Asia, are some of the world's top 10 sources of pollution dangerous to human health.

Millions of people are poisoned or killed each year by industrial pollution and emissions, it said.

To be sure, the developing world is also rife with problems that are not caused by the processing or manufacture of goods used in rich countries.

Indoor air pollution from cooking fires, which occurs mostly in Africa, is one key example, the report said. And many of the products made or processed in rapidly developing countries, such as China and India, are used domestically.

Still, children in developing countries are hit by pollution from many of the industries that make or process things used mostly by rich countries, including metals smelting and processing, lead battery recycling and the industrial mining of both common and precious materials, it said.

Children are more vulnerable to disease from toxic pollution than adults.

Rich countries should help mop up pollution sources not only because they are the world's largest consumers but because some pollution can travel over oceans through the atmosphere, eventually reaching consumers throughout the world.

"Mercury from artisanal gold mining can end up in tuna that we end up eating, poisoning our own children," Fuller said.

Blacksmith and Green Cross Switzerland helped launch the Health and Pollution Fund last year with representatives from the United States, Germany, China, Russia and other countries.

The planned $400 million fund will be dedicated to cleaning up toxic hotspots in developing countries. Fuller said. Blacksmith is trying to work with the U.S. Department of Treasury to help with clean-ups.

BEIJING, China (AP) -- China's reliance on cheap coal to fuel its economy cost a hidden $248 billion last year through damage to the environment, strain on the health care system and manipulation of the commodity's price, according to a report released Monday by Greenpeace.

Coal-fired power plants and smelters have contributed to endemic respiratory problems from particulates.

Coal accounts for more than 70 percent of China's energy use, helping to buttress the country's double-digit economic growth. But as demand for electricity has soared, supplies of coal have been strained -- and the government's role in keeping prices low has become more expensive.

Coal-fired power plants and smelters have also polluted China's water and air, resulted in massive loss of life in accidents, and contributed to endemic respiratory problems from coal dust and other particulates.

"Nobody has calculated the costs," said Han Xiaoping, senior vice president of Beijing Falcon Pioneer Technology Co., an energy consultancy. "We are shouldering the costs and the whole world is shouldering the costs."

The damages associated with use of coal cost the country 1.7 trillion yuan ($248 billion) last year, or the equivalent of 7.1 percent of China's gross domestic product, according to the report, conducted in collaboration with the Energy Foundation and the conservation group WWF.

Economists and other experts arrived at their figures by calculating, for example, the lost income from those sickened by coal pollution and the cost of their care.

The report did not take into account the economic costs of climate change caused by coal, however, which authors said was hard to quantify. China is the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, produced from coal combustion among other pollutants

"Recognizing the true cost of coal would create incentives to developing cleaner, sustainable energy sources," said Yang Ailun, climate and energy campaign manager at Greenpeace.

"The government should introduce an effective price signal [price set by the market] for coal, which would ensure a massive improvement in energy efficiency," she said.

Phones at the National Development and Reform Commission, which handles economic policy, rang unanswered after hours on Monday. This summer, the government raised prices for coal from 840 to 860 yuan ($123 to $125) per ton at China's three main markets to ensure supply.

If all the costs associated with coal use were reflected in its price, the commodity would cost 23 percent more, the study said. China's GDP would likely fall by less than a percent if coal's price rose to that level, it concluded.

Chinese miners already pay a heavy price for the use of coal, the report noted. China's coal mines are the world's deadliest, with numerous fires, floods and other disasters killing an average of 13 miners a day.

The death rate of Chinese miners per million tons of coal extracted is 70 times higher than for their American counterparts. Many accidents occur in small mines with low safety standards or in mines operated illegally.

The report urged China to phase in taxes on energy use and emissions, ease price controls on coal and create insurance funds for those harmed by mining accidents.

A fair price for coal would make sure it is being used more efficiently and increase the competitiveness of China's companies, but also spur development in renewable energy sources, the 63-page report said.

"The government of China has the opportunity to make a real improvement to the environment by reforming the current coal pricing system," it said.

Han said the report might help to bring such issues to public attention.

If they knew how damaging coal was, "the Chinese people will be shocked, and if they are shocked, they will take some action," he said.

SACRAMENTO -- California embarked Tuesday on a sweeping effort to curb suburban sprawl by rewarding communities that build homes and workplaces closer together to reduce pollution that contributes to global warming.

However, a multibillion-dollar proposal to curb air pollution near the state's ports was rejected by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who concluded that the related cargo fees would harm an already suffering economy.

The state's water crisis also attracted his attention Tuesday as he approved $842 million to boost the water supply and bolster endangered levees.

The three environment-related measures were in the spotlight as Schwarzenegger finished work on this year's legislation before a midnight deadline. In 2008, Schwarzenegger has signed 771 bills and vetoed 415.

He won some praise for signing landmark legislation to control the state's global-warming emissions by discouraging sprawl with the nation's first law using government incentives to link transportation funding with climate policy.

"What this will mean is more environmentally friendly communities, more sustainable developments, less time people spend in their cars, more alternative transportation options and neighborhoods we can safely and proudly pass on to future generations," Schwarzenegger said in a statement after signing SB 375.

The number of miles Californians drive has been growing at twice the rate of the state's population increase, as suburbs have spread farther into the countryside. Slashing the amount of driving is critical for California to meet its goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 30% in 12 years.

"Land use is . . . the hardest part of the climate equation," said Thomas Adams, president of the California League of Conservation Voters. "This signature sends a crucial message from Arnold to sprawl: 'Suck it up.' "

Under the new law, projects built in denser communities will get priority in the distribution of $12 billion to nearly $20 billion a year in transportation funds -- a hefty incentive for communities to create more environmentally friendly development plans.

But the 17,000-word law involved a delicate compromise with powerful building interests. To woo their support, its sponsor, incoming state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) exempted them in many cases from strict environmental reviews. That sweetener in the bill caused some environmentalists to oppose it.

The port fee legislation the governor vetoed was the top priority of some environmental groups. It would have imposed a fee on cargo containers to pay for programs to reduce air pollution and traffic congestion.

"Given the current economic downturn," Schwarzenegger said, "it is vitally important that the state does not worsen the situation by mandating added costs on business that do not provide any public benefit."

"The governor killing this year's most important piece of environmental legislation doesn't help anyone," said Martin Schlageter, a spokesman for the Coalition for Clean Air. "It's disgusting."

The measure, SB 974 by Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), would have allowed the collection of $60 for each 40-foot container that moved through the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach or Oakland, which handle more than 40% of the nation's goods.

The $400 million raised annually would have gone into reducing traffic congestion and putting cleaner-burning engines in trucks and trains.

Backers said 3,700 die each year because of health effects of air pollution caused by moving goods. "This is a sad day for California," Lowenthal said. "There is a dark cloud over our heads, and that dark cloud is cancer. The governor could have shrunken or eliminated that cloud but chose to side with out-of-state corporate executives instead."

More than 100 top businesses in California opposed the bill, including Anheuser-Busch Cos. and Coca-Cola, as did the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Grocers Assn. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the GOP vice presidential candidate, also weighed in against it, worrying that it would drive up the price of goods in her state.

Mike Jacob, vice president of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Assn., said: "Now is a phenomenally bad time for the state to be imposing an additional fee on top of the fees we already pay."

The governor was more receptive to the water solution proposed by Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland). Nearly $900 million will soon flow from state coffers to water projects all over California under a measure Schwarzenegger signed to distribute some of the water and flood control bonds passed by voters two years ago. In signing SB 1XX, Schwarzenegger said the $845-million appropriation will not solve long-term water supply problems.

It does not include money for dam construction.

Among other bills approved Tuesday:

* Fruity beverages known as "alcopops" must be prominently labeled as containing alcohol. AB 346 by Assemblyman Jim Beall (D-San Jose).

* Doctors treating terminally ill patients must give them comprehensive information about end-of-life options, such as hospice care at home and the right to refuse treatment. AB 2747 by Assemblywoman Patty Berg (D-Eureka).

* A ban on electronic bingo machines, cited as unfair competition by Indian tribes that own casinos. SB 1369 by Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles).

Tuesday's vetoes included:

* A bill that would have provided driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, and one that would have required state-run colleges and universities to provide financial aid to students not in the country legally. SB 60 and SB 1301 by Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles).

* A bill to revamp the way farmworkers vote to unionize. AB 2386 by Assemblyman Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles), who made a documentary about the workers.

* A measure requiring retailers and the government to protect consumer information from costly security breaches. AB 1656 by Assemblyman Dave Jones (D-Sacramento)

patrick.mcgreevy @latimes.com

margot. roosevelt @latimes.com

Times staff writer Nancy Vogel contributed to this report.

With problems of food and energy security on the rise, the transition towns movement is rapidly spreading beyond its grassroots

The “transition town” movement has been growing in popularity around the UK since the first one was set up in Totnes, South Devon, in September 2006. The founder of the movement, Rob Hopkins, sought to empower people to find positive community solutions to prepare themselves for a “post-oil” society.

A jet landing at London’s Heathrow airport. Any airline operating in Europe must join an emissions system starting Jan. 1, 2012.

BRUSSELS — European Union governments gave formal approval Friday to a potentially costly system of capping greenhouse gases from any airline flying into or out of the trade bloc — just as the airline industry reported new evidence of the impact of a worsening economy.

Airline chiefs immediately criticized the decision, saying it would cost the industry at least 3.5 billion euros ($4.4 billion) each year to comply. The Europeans are “acting in a bubble — even in the middle of a global economic crisis,” said Giovanni Bisignani, the director general of the International Air Transport Association.

European justice ministers meeting in Luxembourg approved the greenhouse gas measures, which oblige airlines, regardless of nationality, that land or take off from an airport in the European Union to join the emissions trading system starting on Jan. 1, 2012.

The system, created in 2005, already includes heavy industries like cement makers and electricity generators in Europe.

Industries have complained bitterly about the costs of complying with the system, especially as the global economic situation has worsened. Many airlines also have fought hard to avoid inclusion in the system, saying they can ill afford the extra costs after a period of record high fuel costs.

The United States has also harshly criticized efforts to apply the rules to American-based carriers, maintaining the rules may violate international aviation agreements.

Friday’s decision was expected, however, after European governments reached a political agreement with the European Parliament in June.

The International Air Transport Association has reported that global airline passenger traffic fell 2.9 percent in September, compared with a year earlier. It was the first monthly drop since the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003.

A drop in air freight of 7.7 percent was the first since the market for technology stocks crashed in 2001, the transport association said.

In another sign of gloom in the industry, Europe’s largest airline, Air France-KLM, warned that its earnings would suffer as a result of the financial crisis, sending its shares down sharply.

The airline said it was struggling to reach a full-year goal of 1 billion euros in operating profit for the 12 months through March 2009. Air France-KLM vowed to curb capacity and freeze costs, but said that it would “remain comfortably in profit as long as market conditions do not deteriorate any further.”

The inclusion of aviation in the carbon trading system will raise costs for airlines, which pay for a portion of their emissions permits to comply. The system also will raise costs for passengers if airlines, as expected, pass on the costs by raising ticket prices.

European Union climate officials say it is vital to regulate greenhouse gases from aviation because the sector is growing so quickly.

Low-cost carriers like Ryanair, based in Ireland, have made short hops by air accessible for many more Europeans. Even so, the measures approved on Friday include special provisions that could ease the rules on start-up airlines in faster-growing economies within the union, like those in Eastern Europe.

New airlines or airlines growing at more than 18 percent annually would be eligible for a one-time limited supply of additional free permits. That measure would ensure that countries “with initially very low but increasing mobility rates are not penalized by the scheme,” European Union governments said in a statement.

The airline industry says its gases represent a small fraction of greenhouse gas emissions and that the European measures will be ineffective without a global agreement. Environmentalists say the effect of vapor and emissions from jet engines at altitude could magnify their effect on the climate.

Introduction to How Lithium-ion Batteries Work

Lithium-ion batteries are incredibly popular these days. You can find them in laptops, PDAs, cell phones and iPods. They're so common because, pound for pound, they're some of the most energetic rechargeable batteries available.

­ Lithium-ion batteries have also been in the news lately. That’s because these batteries have the ability to burst into flames occasionally. It's not very common -- just two or three battery packs per million have a problem -- but when it happens, it's extreme. In some situations, the failure rate can rise, and when that happens you end up with a worldwide battery recall that can cost manufacturers millions of dollars.

­ So the question is, what makes these batteries so energetic and so popular? How do they burst into flame? And is there anything you can do to prevent the problem or help your batteries last longer? In this article, we'll answer these questions and more.

Lithium-ion batteries are popular because they have a number of important advantages over competing technologies:

• They're generally much lighter than other types of rechargeable batteries of the same size. The electrodes of a lithium-ion battery are made of lightweight lithium and carbon. Lithium is also a highly reactive element, meaning that a lot of energy can be stored in its atomic bonds. This translates into a very high energy density for lithium-ion batteries.

  Here is a way to get a perspective on the energy density. A typical lithium-ion battery can store 150 watt-hours of electricity in 1 kilogram of battery. A NiMH (nickel-metal hydride) battery pack can store perhaps 100 watt-hours per kilogram, although 60 to 70 watt-hours might be more typical. A lead-acid battery can store only 25 watt-hours per kilogram. Using lead-acid technology, it takes 6 kilograms to store the same amount of energy that a 1 kilogram lithium-ion battery can handle. That's a huge difference [Source: Everything2.com].

• They hold their charge. A lithium-ion battery pack loses only about 5 percent of its charge per month, compared to a 20 percent loss per month for NiMH batteries.

• They have no memory effect, which means that you do not have to completely discharge them before recharging, as with some other battery chemistries.

• Lithium-ion batteries can handle hundreds of charge/discharge cycles.

That is not to say that lithium-ion batteries are flawless. They have a few disadvantages as well:

• They start degrading as soon as they leave the factory. They will only last two or three years from the date of manufacture whether you use them or not.
• They are extremely sensitive to high temperatures. Heat causes lithium-ion battery packs to degrade much faster than they normally would.
• If you completely discharge a lithium-ion battery, it is ruined.
• A lithium-ion battery pack must have an on-board computer to manage the battery. This makes them even more expensive than they already are.
• There is a small chance that, if a lithium-ion battery pack fails, it will burst into flame.

Many of these characteristics can be understood by looking at the chemistry inside a lithium-ion cell. We'll look at this next.

Inside a Lithium-ion Battery Pack and Cell

Lithium-ion battery packs come in all shapes and sizes, but they all look about the same on the inside. If you were to take apart a laptop battery pack (something that we DO NOT recommend because of the possibility of shorting out a battery and starting a fire) you would find the following:

Photo courtesy ZD Net UK

• The lithium-ion cells can be either cylindrical batteries that look almost identical to AA cells, or they can be prismatic, which means they are square or rectangular

  The computer, which comprises:

• One or more temperature sensors to monitor the battery temperature
• A voltage converter and regulator circuit to maintain safe levels of voltage and current
• A shielded notebook connector that lets power and information flow in and out of the battery pack
• A voltage tap, which monitors the energy capacity of individual cells in the battery pack
• A battery charge state monitor, which is a small computer that handles the whole charging process to make sure the batteries charge as quickly and fully as possible.

If the battery pack gets too hot during charging or use, the computer will shut down the flow of power to try to cool things down. If you leave your laptop in an extremely hot car and try to use the laptop, this computer may prevent you from powering up until things cool off. If the cells ever become completely discharged, the battery pack will shut down because the cells are ruined. It may also keep track of the number of charge/discharge cycles and send out information so the laptop's battery meter can tell you how much charge is left in the battery.

It's a pretty sophisticated little computer, and it draws power from the batteries. This power draw is one reason why lithium-ion batteries lose 5 percent of their power every month when sitting idle.

Lithium-ion Cells
As with most batteries you have an outer case made of metal. The use of metal is particularly important here because the battery is pressurized. This metal case has some kind of pressure-sensitive vent hole. If the battery ever gets so hot that it risks exploding from over-pressure, this vent will release the extra pressure. The battery will probably be useless afterwards, so this is something to avoid. The vent is strictly there as a safety measure. So is the Positive Temperature Coefficient (PTC) switch, a device that is supposed to keep the battery from overheating.

This metal case holds a long spiral comprising three thin sheets pressed together:

• A Positive electrode
• A Negative electrode
• A separator

Inside the case these sheets are submerged in an organic solvent that acts as the electrolyte. Ether is one common solvent.

The separator is a very thin sheet of microperforated plastic. As the name implies, it separates the positive and negative electrodes while allowing ions to pass through.

The positive electrode is made of Lithium cobalt oxide, or LiCoO₂. The negative electrode is made of carbon. When the battery charges, ions of lithium move through the electrolyte from the positive electrode to the negative electrode and attach to the carbon. During discharge, the lithium ions move back to the LiCoO₂ from the carbon.

The movement of these lithium ions happens at a fairly high voltage, so each cell produces 3.7 volts. This is much higher than the 1.5 volts typical of a normal AA alkaline cell that you buy at the supermarket and helps make lithium-ion batteries more compact in small devices like cell phones. See How Batteries Work for details on different battery chemistries.

We'll look at how to prolong the life of a lithium-ion battery and explore why they can explode next.

Lithium-ion Battery Life and Death

Lithium-ion battery packs are expensive, so if you want to make yours to last longer, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Lithium ion chemistry prefers partial discharge to deep discharge, so it's best to avoid taking the battery all the way down to zero. Since lithium-ion chemistry does not have a "memory", you do not harm the battery pack with a partial discharge. If the voltage of a lithium-ion cell drops below a certain level, it's ruined.

• Lithium-ion batteries age. They only last two to three years, even if they are sitting on a shelf unused. So do not "avoid using" the battery with the thought that the battery pack will last five years. It won't. Also, if you are buying a new battery pack, you want to make sure it really is new. If it has been sitting on a shelf in the store for a year, it won't last very long. Manufacturing dates are important.

• Avoid heat, which degrades the batteries.

Exploding Batteries
Now that we know how to keep lithium-ion batteries working longer, let's look at why they can explode.

Several news reports in the past six months describe laptops with lithium-ion batteries that caught on fire.

If the battery gets hot enough to ignite the electrolyte, you are going to get a fire. There are video clips and photos on the Web that show just how serious these fires can be. The CBC article,"Summer of the Exploding Laptop," rounds up several of these incidents.

When a fire like this happens, it is usually caused by an internal short in the battery. Recall from the previous section that lithium-ion cells contain a separator sheet that keeps the positive and negative electrodes apart. If that sheet gets punctured and the electrodes touch, the battery heats up very quickly. You may have experienced the kind of heat a battery can produce if you have ever put a normal 9-volt battery in your pocket. It a coin shorts across the two terminals, the battery gets quite hot.

In a separator failure, that same kind of short happens inside the lithium-ion battery. Since lithium-ion batteries are so energetic, they get very hot. The heat causes the battery to vent the organic solvent used as an electrolyte, and the heat (or a nearby spark) can light it. Once that happens inside one of the cells, the heat of the fire cascades to the other cells and the whole pack goes up in flames.

It is important to note that fires are very rare. Still, it only takes a couple of fires and a little media coverage to prompt a recall.