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How batteries can help power homes, buildings, and the grid.

It seems as though everyone is talking about electric vehicle batteries lately. Automakers are racing to make these batteries more powerful so they can convince more people to buy EVs, and the Biden administration is spending billions to make the United States a manufacturing hub for next-generation battery technology. But even as EV batteries soak up the spotlight, another kind of battery is gaining momentum: home batteries.

The concept of a home battery is simple. In the same way that a laptop battery powers a laptop when it’s not plugged into an outlet, a home battery powers a home when it’s not receiving power from the grid or a renewable energy source. Hundreds of thousands of people have already installed Tesla Powerwalls, solar-powered home battery packs that provide a few hours of backup power. And as extreme weather events, like last year’s devastating winter storm in Texas, have stretched the power grid to its limits, even more consumers have started buying these and other types of home batteries.

The government is throwing its support behind similar kinds of upgrades to the power grid. On Tuesday, the Energy Department said that it would spend more than $3 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law on EV batteries as well as batteries meant for long- term energy storage, including batteries that could one day power people’s homes and businesses. This money will fund projects focused on boosting the US’s supply of key battery components, as well as developing the country’s overall battery manufacturing capacity. The hope is that these investments will help the US build more batteries that could then be installed not only in people’s homes but also in neighborhoods and throughout the grid, playing a critical role in easing the growing pressure on the country’s aging energy infrastructure — and making it more resilient.

“We have to build clean homes and start with clean homes that are fully electrified, which use batteries to stabilize their load and be part of a clean grid,” Ryan Brown, the CEO of the small battery startup Salient, told Recode. “Otherwise, there’s just not a really good prospect for solving climate change.”

This week, Salient announced a partnership with a Texas-based sustainable homebuilder, Horton World Solutions, to demonstrate its new zinc-ion battery technology. If all goes according to plan, the companies will install these batteries in more than 200,000 homes over the next decade.

Home batteries vary in size and energy storage capacity, and while many are based on familiar lithium-ion technology, some take advantage of being stationary to use more abundant materials, like zinc. Each battery — some people install multiple for more storage — is usually about as big as a television and typically costs at least a few thousand dollars. Beyond Tesla, there are a few large electronics companies like LG Chem and Panasonic — both of which are in the EV battery business — that sell home battery packs, as well as lesser-known battery makers like Salient, Generac, and Enphase.

Bigger batteries or large battery banks could power many homes simultaneously. While these giant battery systems wouldn’t fit into a single residential building, they could be connected directly to the power grid or to microgrids that power an entire apartment building or neighborhood. Compared to a home battery in a single-family home, this sort of setup would allow entire communities of people to access electricity when power is unavailable or extra-expensive — this is why some experts say they’re a much more equitable approach to the future of energy.

Regardless of their scale, home batteries and other types of stationary batteries have become a critical part of the effort to increase the world’s supply of renewable energy in the fight against climate change. The reason is straightforward: Because the sun isn’t always around to power solar panels and there isn’t always wind to power turbines, utility companies and individuals alike need batteries to store their renewable energy to ensure that it’s available when people actually need it. Stationary batteries ultimately expand the overall capacity of the grid, which is especially important as we move to electrify things that are currently powered by fossil fuels.

“We also see potential increased adoption of electric vehicles and even heat pumps for replacing gas furnaces,” Dharik Mallapragada, a research scientist at MIT’s Energy Initiative, told Recode. “Batteries can come in handy there because they can basically shift consumption … in terms of how much you’re drawing from the grid.”

In addition to his administration’s latest investment in battery technology, President Joe Biden in March used the Defense Production Act to order production of critical materials needed for stationary storage, which he called “essential to the national defense.” Some state governments, along with utilities, have also started offering financial incentives for people to buy home batteries as well as commercial battery banks. California has even updated its state energy code to require that all new commercial and high-rise multifamily buildings install batteries, as well as solar panels.

“Within the next few years, everybody will realize that they will need a battery,” Jehu Garcia, a battery reseller who runs a DIY YouTube channel about batteries, told Recode. “Right now it’s kind of up for grabs: Who’s gonna make the move first? Is it going to be the homeowners, or is it going to be the utilities? But it’s going to happen either way.”

Even the EV industry is investing in the stationary battery business. In addition to offering its Powerwall batteries to individuals, Tesla recently finished building one of the world’s largest batteries for PG&E in Northern California, and has also started work on another utility- scale battery outside Houston that could power 20,000 homes. CATL, a Chinese company that’s arguably the world’s largest EV battery manufacturer, last month announced plans to produce 900 battery systems for a Texas-based renewable energy company that will support the state’s beleaguered power grid. Meanwhile, GM is designing its Ultium batteries so that they could eventually be repurposed to provide long-term energy storage, and Nissan announced earlier this year that it would test a similar idea using its EV batteries at a power plant in Spain.

All this represents progress, but it also serves as a reminder that we may need all the batteries we can get. The International Energy Association estimates that in order to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, the world will need to boost the world’s battery storage capacity from the 17 gigawatts we had in 2020 to 585 gigawatts by the end of the decade. That means that batteries may need to be ubiquitous — inside people’s cars, in the basement of apartment buildings, and on site at power plants. As intimidating as this task seems, it’s just one piece of the very complicated puzzle of figuring out how to combat climate change.

This story was first published in the Recode newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss the next one!

Bird flu outbreaks have been recorded in commercial poultry flocks since at least the 19th century, but the frequency accelerated — and became a bigger issue in the poultry industry — starting in 1997, when an outbreak of H5N1 in Hong Kong chicken farms led to 18 infections in people, six of whom died. Officials responded by culling all 1.3 million chickens in Hong Kong in the winter of 1997-98. Since then, outbreaks have occurred around the world every few years.

And not much beyond mass culling can be done to slow the spread once it starts. Adel Talaat, a professor of microbiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says we should improve disease surveillance and farm biosecurity to help prevent new outbreaks and slow the spread, but a vaccine that could reliably reduce transmission would go a long way.

At the moment, there aren’t any highly effective vaccines on the market, but Talaat is working to develop one using a database of thousands of avian influenza antigens to create a “composite” vaccine that he hopes will protect against current and future virus strains. “Our job is to try to stop this cycle of transmission,” Talaat says. “Because if you stop the cycle of transmission you will be able to basically stop the mutation and stop the replication of the virus.”

A scientist with gloved hands hold a flask toward the camera. Jeff Miller/UW-Madison

Adel Talaat, a professor of microbiology at University of Wisconsin-Madison, is developing a bird flu vaccine he hopes can be used to slow the spread of future bird flu outbreaks.

He estimates it could take up to five years until he completes his work and hopefully receives USDA approval, and says a mass vaccination program in the early phase of a bird flu outbreak could be effective at slowing the spread of the virus.

“In a big country [like the US], once we start seeing any one case, we know it’s going to go throughout the states — state by state — so we really should start an aggressive campaign for vaccination right away,” Talaat says.

Aside from the ineffectiveness of currently available bird flu vaccines, they’re also made in such a way that it’s impossible to distinguish vaccinated, non-infected birds from infected birds. And because no country wants to import meat from potentially infected birds, the vaccines have been a non-starter. Talaat hopes his vaccine will solve this long-standing problem.

A spokesperson with the National Turkey Federation told Vox over email that the trade group “supports vaccine development and believes it can be done relatively quickly. However, World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) rules impose severe trade penalties for vaccine use, and we are encouraging USDA to work aggressively for a change in those rules.”

“Decisions on vaccinations require many data and we’re investigating an avian influenza vaccine that could distinguish from the wild-type virus,” Rick Coker, a USDA spokesperson, said over email. “We do not have a time frame on any potential vaccine or how it would be used.”

There are also efforts underway to create a gene-edited chicken breed immune to bird flu. But for now, the primary way to prevent the flu from killing poultry is by killing poultry.

Toward less cruel culling methods

During the 2014-2015 bird flu outbreak, the most common culling method in the US entailed spraying turkeys with suffocating water-based foam; with this method, it takes seven to 15 minutes for the birds to die, and it causes significant pain. The second-most common method was gassing hens with carbon dioxide in small enclosures, which can render birds unconscious within 30 seconds.

But according to the USDA, deploying these methods was sometimes too slow to meet the need of depopulating infected flocks within 24 hours. So, at the end of 2015, fearing another wave of outbreaks, the USDA approved ventilation shutdown — closing off air vents so the temperature rises, which can take hours for the birds to die by heat stroke. The USDA now says ventilation shutdown alone, without added heat or CO2, should only be used as a last- resort measure.

Over email, Coker with the USDA told Vox that ventilation shutdown plus should only be used under “constrained circumstances,” like when depopulation by water-based foam or CO2 gassing is not possible. Various factors, like epidemiological information and housing and environmental conditions are weighed by USDA personnel, farm operators, and state officials when deciding whether or not to use VSD+. “Should VSD+ be authorized on- site, responders will carry it out quickly and as humanely as possible,” he said.

Despite the policy to only use it under constrained circumstances, VSD+ has already been employed in at least six states and on millions of birds during this current outbreak.

Will Lowrey, an attorney with the animal rights group Animal Outlook who has submitted public records requests on VSD+, found that in addition to being used on the 5.3 million Rembrandt hens, it has also been used on commercial poultry farms in Kentucky, Delaware, Minnesota (Jennie-O/Hormel), Missouri (Tyson Foods), and Wisconsin.

Producers do have some incentive to use VSD+ over other culling options. To receive reimbursement for costs incurred during depopulation and disposal, they have to use a culling method permitted by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), a nongovernmental trade group, and VSD+ generally requires less labor and supplies than most other methods. But it’s an inhumane practice.

In the AVMA’s culling guidelines for VSD+, the organization cites research conducted at North Carolina State University in 2016 meant to replicate and study ventilation shutdown. Researchers placed one chicken at a time in a small enclosure and pumped in heat, carbon dioxide, or both. Animal Outlook obtained footage from that experiment via a Freedom of Information Act request and shared it with Marina Bolotnikova for the Intercept. You can view the experiment below (warning: it’s graphic).

In the video, a bird appears to be gasping for air, unable to stand, and according to a veterinarian interviewed by the Intercept, showing signs of attempting to vocalize (the video has no audio). It took around 91 minutes for the birds to die of just ventilation shutdown, 53 minutes when heat was added, 11.5 minutes when carbon dioxide was added, and nine minutes when both heat and carbon dioxide were added. Other research has found that times are much longer for hens in stacked cage systems, as opposed to turkeys and chickens raised for meat who live on barn floors.

A coalition of more than 1,500 veterinarians, appropriately called Veterinarians Against Ventilation Shutdown, say the process is inhumane and are calling on the American Veterinary Medical Association to classify it as “not recommended” for culling. An investigator with Direct Action Everywhere — the group that’s been disrupting Minnesota Timberwolves games — says they entered a Rembrandt facility after depopulation and allegedly found some birds who had survived ventilation shutdown plus.

“On the floor and in the cages we found … upwards of 100 chickens [still alive],” the investigator, who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity, said. “If you [extrapolate that for] the parts of the facility we didn’t go into, maybe several hundred chickens were still stuck in cages or running around loose.”

Jones says more humane methods need to be prioritized, like nitrogen-filled foam and small-enclosure gassing, which knock animals unconscious before they die.

Despite the challenges that come with these methods — increased costs and labor, among others — Watts, the ex-chicken farmer, says change would be a matter of the industry prioritizing animal welfare.

“I hear the industry argument about everything costing too much,” he said. If they’re serious about animal welfare, you and I [wouldn’t be] having this discussion on what could be done better — they would already be doing it.” He wants to see the industrialized model that dominates US agriculture today — the model he once raised birds in — replaced by farms with smaller flock sizes, and where birds are given outdoor access and more space.

Factory-farming animals is an inherently risky business. And when a system that crams tens of thousands of birds together is faced with a highly-transmissible, lethal virus, that system is largely defenseless. At best, industry can work to minimize harm, but only if it’s willing to pay increased costs. But the conditions on today’s meat and egg farms — and the approval and adoption of ventilation shutdown — demonstrate a drive toward efficiency, not welfare.

“In the short term, it would be my preference to see something more painless and quick” used to cull the birds,” says Watts. “In the long term, what we’re looking at is a very flawed system — it’s time to just basically push it off a ledge and reboot and start over.”

“Automatic returns” could vastly simplify tax season for millions of people.

For many Americans, doing your taxes isn’t all that complicated. It’s just data entry.

The actual work of doing your taxes mostly involves rifling through various Internal Revenue Service forms you get in the mail. There are W-2s listing your wages, 1099s showing miscellaneous income like from one-off gigs, 1098s showing mortgage interest or tuition payments, etc.

But here’s the thing about those forms: The IRS has them, too. For many people, the IRS has all the information it needs to calculate their taxes, send taxpayers a filled-out return, and have them sign it and send it right back to the IRS if everything looks in order.

This isn’t a purely hypothetical proposal. Countries like Denmark, Belgium, Estonia, Chile, and Spain already offer such ”pre-populated returns” to their citizens. And a new paper estimates that at least 41 percent of American households — some 62 million tax filing units — could have their entire tax returns handled this way with no further intervention necessary.

Tens of millions of unnecessary returns

The paper is by four economists: Lucas Goodman and Andrew Whitten at the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Tax Analysis, Bruce Sacerdote of Dartmouth, and Katherine Lim of the Minneapolis Fed. Half the authors working at the Treasury helps explain the dataset the paper uses: a randomized, representative sample of actual tax returns filed in 2019. The IRS strictly regulates who gets to use this kind of granular tax data (it must be for tax policy work), but it’s a goldmine for those researchers.

In this case, the IRS data let the authors actually generate “pre-populated returns” for taxpayers, based on information the IRS already knew, and then compare those returns to the ones actually filed by taxpayers. If they match, that means a pre-populated return policy could work for that person.

“A pre-populated return is deemed successful if its calculated tax liability is approximately equal to the tax liability actually reported on the 2019 tax return,” the authors explain. This was one of two methods they used; the second sorted through the IRS returns looking for complications that would prevent a pre-populated return from being correctly compiled. That approach tended to produce higher estimates of how many returns could be put together automatically.

The former, more conservative approach found that 41 percent of returns, representing 62 million tax units, could have accurate returns pre-prepared by the IRS in this fashion. (A tax unit could be a single person, a single parent-headed family, a married couple and their offspring, etc. — whoever’s represented by the tax return.) The less conservative approach, counting everyone without complications that might prevent an automatic return, puts the number at 73 million returns, or 48 percent.

Pre-populated returns could also help people who aren’t currently filing taxes. In the US, many people are not required to file an income tax return, usually because they earn too little money to trigger that requirement or because the money they do get is from a partially exempt source like Social Security. But those people often would benefit from filing a return because of benefits like the earned income and child tax credits. Those credits are refundable, meaning that you don’t have to have a positive income tax burden to receive them; the earned income tax credit (EITC) in particular is designed to mostly go to low-income people who don’t earn enough to owe income taxes.

Despite those benefits, some 22 percent of eligible taxpayers don’t claim the EITC in a typical year; by one estimate, two-thirds of those not receiving the benefit didn’t get it because they didn’t file a tax return. The bundling of social assistance programs with a complex tax code places significant burdens on less-wealthy Americans trying to access those programs.

So the authors of the automatic filing paper estimated how many non-filers could get tax benefits under an automatic filing system. They estimate that 7.2 million tax units who aren’t required to file are owed refunds, averaging some $411 each. Those units would be likelier to get their refunds under a pre-populated filing system.

Ending tax returns … for everybody?

For the tens of millions of households for whom pre-populated filing works, it could be a huge leap forward. But 41-47 percent of households is not a majority, and in an ideal world, the other 53-59 percent of tax units would be able to benefit from a system like this too. So what are the barriers preventing them?

The paper’s appendix table A2 estimates the share of returns with different attributes that prevent a pre- populated return from working. The most common, affecting 16.2 percent of returns, is Schedule C or self-employment income: People have a different estimate for their earnings from self-employment or odd jobs than the 1099 forms sent to the IRS indicate. They might have significant business expenses or jobs that didn’t trigger a 1099 form that alter their actual taxes due.

The next most common, affecting 10.9 percent of returns, is itemized deductions. These have become much less frequently done since the standard deduction was increased by the Trump tax bill in 2017, but almost everyone who itemizes claims the charitable deduction or the state property tax deduction. Both of those rely on information that isn’t consistently reported to the IRS, so they can’t be included on pre-populated returns.

Both of those are tricky issues to get around. Especially with the rise of “gig economy” employers like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash that issue 1099s and treat employees as contractors, more and more low-income people are relying on self-employment income where discrepancies can arise that make auto-filing impossible. You could resolve the itemized deduction issue by eliminating itemized deductions, but I somehow doubt the people whose taxes you’d simplify in the process would thank you for it.

Other problems, though, might be easier to fix. A significant share of taxpayers had wage income that was different from what their W-2 forms indicated; better wage reporting requirements for businesses might get around that. Difficulties determining what share of pension income is taxable also came up a fair amount, which a simpler pension taxation system might address. As a volunteer tax preparer, I’ve had pension issues come up a lot and our current system is mindbogglingly complex. I love thinking about taxes and, nonetheless, learning the “simplified method” for pension taxation made me want to die.

But even if “only” two out of every five returns can be done by the IRS automatically, it’s worth asking: why aren’t they? Even if “only” 62 million households would benefit, that would still save a huge amount of time and angst every year, and make tax season run much more smoothly.

The IRS estimates that the average non-business filer spends nine hours a year filing their 1040. Even if we assume returns capable of being auto-filled are less complex and only take half as long, that adds up to 279 million hours of life, or nearly 32,000 years of life, not wasted if 62 million filers were able to auto-file their taxes. Sounds nice!

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