Crab and lobster shells could be used to make renewable batteries!!! - 'chitin' plus zinc.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/sep/01/crab-lobster-shells-could-used-make-renewable-batteries
Makes it sound very significant, altho early days yet.

Chitin common not only in crustacean shells, but in v large quantites of present food waste.

Apparently not the only possibility under development for hi-performance batteries which don't require those naughty rare earths, also biodegradeable to compost, and the zinc readily recoverable.

What this means
- the world no longer beholden to China, which has cornered most of the rare earth sources
- no shortage of battery materials
- no more asset-stripping of poor countries
- no more slave labour in the mines, quarries and open-casts
- no more Renewable intermittency problem, therefore
- no need for nukes or other 'base load'.

That's just the eye-catcher.

Posted By: fostertomChitin common not only in crustacean shells, but in v large quantites of present food waste

So these batteries would bio-degrade to compost, the zinc easily recovered

At this moment I would put my money on sodium.ion ( = salt) batteries as the eco replacement for lithium

'So far, according to Newton, the chitosan-zinc battery results are promising. “There are some examples of batteries like this that have been commercialised and are being trialled as stationary energy storage systems,” said Newton. “There are still quite a few challenges to be met in the development of zinc ion batteries, but fundamental studies such as this are hugely important.”'

Are battery farms going to be the biggest users of batteries, seeing that a high proportion of all other uses of electricity, that may be stored, first has to be stored (for load balancing) on a battery farm, once those replace nukes and gas for base load? If not, any estimate, in an electric future, of battery farm capacity vs sum total of all other batteries' capacity?

Printed PV, batteries etc etc - the ground shifts continually, obsoletes those from-fundamentals limits-to-resource calcs, pollution warnings etc, such as I listed above - it gradually actually seems possible technically, just awaiting an end to monopoly-profit-gouging as the means to that end.

Posted By: WillInAberdeenintercontinental interconnectors

This. There's wind or sun somewhere. Or maybe power beamed from space will actually work at some point?

Think the Germans might have been put off from importing too much energy from far-away regimes?

Guess the best idea is to have lots of eggs, in many baskets.

I'm interested in sending renewable hydrogen derivatives by ship. That's a kind of intercontinental intertemporal interconnection.

A renewables-rich territory like Australia or Algeria or Scotland could load renewable ammonia or methanol fuel onto a tanker and sell it to the other side of the world. If en route the customer fell out with the supplier, the ship could sail on to somewhere else. If there were a long winter anticyclone over Europe, energy ships from around the world would converge here, just like how energy is presently moved around in oil tankers. We already know how to do that, so could get on with it while we're waiting for the space-based fusion power stations.
Like this
https://www.businessgreen.com/news-analysis/4055531/air-products-associated-british-ports-unveil-plans-uks-largest-green-hydrogen-facility-net-zero-commodities-hub



As an added bonus, perhaps the empty energy ships could return laden with liquified CO2, to be recycled or sequestered?
https://www.businessgreen.com/news/4055478/crossing-borders-international-deal-agreed-northern-lights-subsea-carbon-storage-facility-net-zero-commodities-hub
"from 2025... 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide captured at Dutch fertiliser plant .. transported [by tanker ship] to carbon storage facility off the coast of Norway"

I am just dumbfounded that we aren't entirely hydro in the UK and exporting to boot.