Emission Control: Toyota scores dead-last among world’s top 10 carmakers for climate credentials

For the first time in the past five years, sales of zero emission vehicles as a share of the overall market have more than doubled
Japan’s three largest automakers – Toyota, Nissan and Honda scored the lowest
Deductions were made against Toyota for pushing the Japanese government to ensure allowances were made for hybrids

Emission Control is Stockhead’s fortnightly take on all the big news surrounding developments in renewable energy.

For the second year in a row a Greenpeace East Asia report has ranked Australia’s top selling car maker, Toyota, at the back of the pack when it comes to lobbying against measures to reduce climate pollution from vehicles, greenwashing, and advocacy for fossil-fuelled hybrid vehicle technology.

While the sale of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) as a share of the overall auto market has more than doubled for the first time in five years, Japan’s three largest automakers – Toyota, Nissan and Honda – have been the slowest to respond.

The report found Nissan and Toyota as being the only two companies whose five years compound annual growth rate of the percentage of ZEV sales and 2021 percentage of ZEV sales are considerably lower than the global average.

“This means they are the only two companies in the top 10 that are transitioning to ZEVs more slowly than the overall global transition rate,” the report highlighted.

For industry laggard Toyota, sales of ZEVs made up a meagre 0.2% of total sales.

Globally, the stock of electric cars has surpassed the 10 million mark – but 99% of the total global fleet continues to burn fossil fuels.

For the main markets, the percentage of ZEV sales was well under 10% in the first half of 2022, with the exception of China.

The market share of BEVs in Europe has increased from 4% in 2020 to 6% in 2021, while in China numbers rose from 6% in 2020 to 11.3% in 2021 with 2.9 million BEVs sold, 170% of last year’s figure.

“The top car manufacturers should take robust actions on the climate emergency, at a level of ambition that matches their advantage of scale and global market penetration,” the report says.

“We demand that leading global automakers end the sale of ICE vehicles in their main markets (US, China, Korea, and Japan) before 2030.

“For Europe, this needs to happen by 2028.”

Track record of lobbying against measures to reduce climate pollution

Deductions were made against Toyota due to reports released in June revealing the Japanese government had, at the carmaker’s request, specifically pushed to support hybrids.

LobbyMap, a leading database of corporate and industry lobbying of climate policy around the globe, also ranks Toyota as having a ‘performance band of D’, with 31% engagement in climate policy.

In March 2022, Toyota subsidiary Hino revealed it had been knowingly falsifying emissions data for nearly 20 years with a seperate report claiming evidence shows one of the emission-related frauds dated back to October 2003.

Here’s how renewable energy companies are tracking:

CODE	COMPANY	PRICE	% TODAY	% WEEK	% MONTH	MARKET CAP
PRM	Prominence Energy	0.0025	25%	0%	25%	$4,849,218
KPO	Kalina Power Limited	0.02	11%	11%	-5%	$27,273,524
LPE	Locality Planning	0.06	5%	-13%	-8%	$9,756,618
PH2	Pure Hydrogen Corp	0.305	5%	-6%	13%	$99,823,448
EGR	Ecograf Limited	0.41	5%	8%	1%	$175,630,049
CXL	Calix Limited	6.8	5%	2%	-2%	$1,047,179,664
RNE	Renu Energy Ltd	0.046	5%	-2%	-15%	$16,040,905
FHE	Frontier Energy Ltd	0.37	4%	-5%	30%	$81,430,843
LNR	Lanthanein Resources	0.053	4%	15%	152%	$49,104,104
NRZ	Neurizer Ltd	0.14	4%	4%	-3%	$142,015,433
NMT	Neometals Ltd	1.5	3%	8%	16%	$800,902,437
PRL	Province Resources	0.097	3%	-8%	-33%	$111,060,355
HZR	Hazer Group Limited	0.67	3%	-4%	-4%	$109,418,433
FMG	Fortescue Metals Grp	16.48	3%	-11%	-9%	$49,263,438,688
PGY	Pilot Energy Ltd	0.0175	3%	-3%	3%	$10,394,443
PV1	Provaris Energy Ltd	0.072	3%	-4%	4%	$38,379,633
BSX	Blackstone Ltd	0.2	3%	0%	-9%	$92,278,919
AVL	Aust Vanadium Ltd	0.044	2%	-2%	0%	$170,588,803
RFX	Redflow Limited	0.044	2%	5%	-15%	$70,801,404
VUL	Vulcan Energy	8.18	2%	-1%	3%	$1,148,115,761
CWY	Cleanaway Waste Ltd	2.85	1%	2%	6%	$6,193,154,424
NEW	NEW Energy Solar	0.93	1%	1%	18%	$296,543,887
IFT	Infratil Limited	8.42	0%	4%	2%	$6,084,213,006
ECT	Env Clean Tech Ltd.	0.018	0%	-14%	-10%	$30,892,530
HXG	Hexagon Energy	0.0165	0%	3%	-3%	$8,463,112
IRD	Iron Road Ltd	0.14	0%	-3%	0%	$111,980,583
LIO	Lion Energy Limited	0.038	0%	-5%	3%	$16,192,188
MEZ	Meridian Energy	4.45	0%	0%	-5%	$5,615,376,636
MPR	Mpower Group Limited	0.022	0%	-4%	-8%	$6,113,139
QEM	QEM Limited	0.23	0%	0%	10%	$28,771,523
LIT	Lithium Australia	0.061	0%	-21%	-22%	$63,159,969
SRJ	SRJ Technologies	0.43	0%	0%	0%	$33,756,303
MR1	Montem Resources	0.04	0%	0%	0%	$11,213,077
FGR	First Graphene Ltd	0.125	0%	0%	-7%	$71,958,123
EDE	Eden Inv Ltd	0.009	0%	0%	0%	$23,276,052
M8S	M8 Sustainable	0.007	0%	0%	-13%	$2,936,360
EOL	Energy One Limited	5.11	0%	-1%	-5%	$140,704,218
DEL	Delorean Corporation	0.091	-1%	1%	-27%	$19,846,324
TNG	TNG Limited	0.11	-4%	5%	15%	$159,668,096
GNX	Genex Power Ltd	0.215	-4%	-7%	-2%	$311,664,857
CPV	Clearvue Technologie	0.235	-6%	-4%	-20%	$53,010,086
CNQ	Clean Teq Water	0.54	-6%	-2%	-13%	$25,683,050

Who’s got news out?

5E ADVANCED MATERIALS (ASX:5EA)

5EA, an exploration stage boron and lithium company has revealed a research collaboration agreement with Boston College for the advancement of boron-based materials research in solar energy systems.

Under the agreement, the company will provide funds to and collaborate with Boston College in exploring and developing novel boron-based materials that have the potential to integrate solar energy capture, conversion, and storage into a single closed system.

Solar energy is expected to play an important role in serving the increasing demand for a carbon-neutral global economy.

The IEA expects solar energy to account for 60% of the increase in global renewable capacity in 2022 and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) forecasts that solar energy could provide up to 45% of the electricity in the US by 2050.

“Boron is an extremely versatile element with fascinating elemental and chemical properties,” Boston College professor Shih-Yuan Liu says.

“We have been developing boron-based compounds for applications across biomedical research and catalysis to optoelectronic materials and are excited to focus on solar energy applications given decarbonisation implications.

“This research has the potential to create boron advanced materials that capture the energy of sunlight and directly convert it into a storable high-energy fuel.”

5EA chief commercial officer Dr Dinakar Gnanamgar says to achieve success, the company will require enhanced scalable technologies for solar energy capture, conversion, and storage.

“We believe our research agreement with world renowned university, Boston College, has the potential to create such an efficient solar energy platform using boron advanced materials,” he says.

FRONTIER ENERGY (ASX:FHE)

Frontier Energy has appointed engineering firm GHD to conduct the pre-front end engineering design relating to the proposed hydrogen facility that will be built at the company’s Bristol Springs Renewable Energy Project in WA.

This phase of the project has now officially kicked off, focusing on the 36.6MW alkaline electrolyser.

In simple terms, electrolysis is the process of using electricity (solar energy) to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

According to FHE executive chairman Grant Davey, GHD was selected due to its excellent reputation, specifically its vast experience in the Australian hydrogen industry.

“We continue to see significant interest in the sector, and we are moving at an accelerated rate to ensure we have the ability to be one of the first significant green hydrogen projects into production in Western Australia.”

RENU ENERGY (ASX:RNE)

ReNu Energy has signed an agreement between its wholly owned subsidiary, Countrywide Hydrogen, and WIRSOL Energy to assess co-development of behind-the-meter solar power and battery energy storage systems (BESS) at Countrywide’s hydrogen projects in Tasmania.

Countrywide is progressing two hydrogen projects in Tasmania, in the north and south of the State, with a view to establishing Tasmania as a showcase hydrogen state.

Under the agreement WIRSOL will evaluate the potential project locations to scope solar and possible battery installations to provide Countrywide with energy for hydrogen production.

REDFLOW (ASX:RFX)

Redflow and Empower Energies have signed a Letter of Intent to develop integrated solar and flow battery solutions for the North American commercial and industrial, remote community micro grid, and utility markets.

The integrated solar and Redflow energy storage solution architecture was developed through the company’s joint engagement with a Fortune 500 company who is interested in deploying solar and flow battery storage projects at one of its the commercial campuses.

Redflow’s president of North America and chief commercial officer Mark Higgins believes that this codeveloped solution will serve the Fortune 500 customer well, while also meeting the needs of a variety of customer segments across North America.

“Our integrated offering provides a safer, rugged, more sustainable and cost competitive alternative to lithium-ion batteries and solar, and our batteries don’t materially degrade over their useful life, unlike lithium ion,” he said.

“The uniquely safe zinc bromine chemistry has no risk of thermal runaway, making our solution better to deploy in urban and suburban environments where safety is a paramount consideration.

“Also, our hibernation mode enables our batteries to be used for backup power and resilience deployments in a very cost-effective manner versus lithium.”

AVENIRA (ASX:AEV)

AEV has a portfolio of gold assets in Western Australia and a phosphate project – Wonorah in the Northern Territory – where the company is developing a scoping study and bankable feasibility study.

On Thursday, it entered into a mandate with Peak Asset Mangement, under which Peak agreed to act as lead manager to raise roughly $2.1m in two tranches, fast tracking DSO (stage 1) studies for phosphorous acid and LFP manufacturing (stage 2).

“We believe that the Wonarah Phosphate Project has the potential to be rapidly brought into production to meet this supply shortage via a DSO operation,” AEV executive chairman Brett Clark says.

“Global demand for phosphate continues to strengthen, driving prices higher in recent months.

“The rise of prominence of Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) batteries in electric vehicles and energy storage and the increasing demand for phosphate as an agricultural fertiliser are simultaneously squeezing current world supply.”