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The Dirty Truth About Green Batteries
The Dirty Truth About Green Batteries
Maddie Stone
Today 8:33am
Filed to: EVERYTHING HAS A COST
....
Much like our smartphones and computers, the high-tech energy infrastructure of tomorrow requires a host of metals and minerals from across the periodic table and the planet. The lithium-ion batteries used in EVs and energy storage require not just lithium, but often cobalt, manganese, and nickel. Electric vehicle engines rely on rare earths, as do the permanent magnet-based generators inside some wind turbines. Solar panels gobbles up a significant share of the world’s supply of tellurium, and gallium, along with a sizable fraction of mined silver and indium. Most renewable technologies demand heaps of copper and aluminum.
Our appetite for these metals will only grow as these technologies proliferate. While that basic fact has been known for years, the new report takes things a step further by working out the projected demand for 14 critical metals if humanity were to limit global warming to the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius, by shifting to 100 percent renewable energy by mid-century. In a scenario the authors describe “very ambitious”, the 2050 energy mix is mainly wind and solar PV-driven, with smaller fractions of our energy coming from geothermal power, hydropower, and other technologies. The transportation sector is also 100 percent renewable, with over half of all cars, buses, and commercial vehicles being battery-driven electric or plug-in hybrids.
That future sounds great from a climate perspective. But as the new analysis shows, it also creates some daunting materials challenges. ... In the authors’ scenarios, annual demand for lithium, as well as the rare earths neodymium and dysprosium, for batteries and EV engines, exceed current production rates by 2022. Batteries will also drive cobalt and nickel demand higher than current production around 2030, while tellurium demand for solar PV will peak well above current production rates in the late 2020s to mid 2030s.
It gets worse. By mid-century, even in the most optimistic scenarios, the battery sector’s cobalt appetite is projected to exceed known planetary reserves, while our lithium demand will have eaten up at least 86 percent of known reserves. This doesn’t mean we will “run out” of these metals—known reserves simply refers to the metals that are currently economical to mine, and that can change over time—but it does serve to highlight just how big of a player batteries will be in fueling our material appetite in the decades to come. Lead study author Elsa Dominish told Earther via email that for lithium and cobalt at least, new mining seems “inevitable.”
....
Maddie Stone
Today 8:33am
Filed to: EVERYTHING HAS A COST
....
Much like our smartphones and computers, the high-tech energy infrastructure of tomorrow requires a host of metals and minerals from across the periodic table and the planet. The lithium-ion batteries used in EVs and energy storage require not just lithium, but often cobalt, manganese, and nickel. Electric vehicle engines rely on rare earths, as do the permanent magnet-based generators inside some wind turbines. Solar panels gobbles up a significant share of the world’s supply of tellurium, and gallium, along with a sizable fraction of mined silver and indium. Most renewable technologies demand heaps of copper and aluminum.
Our appetite for these metals will only grow as these technologies proliferate. While that basic fact has been known for years, the new report takes things a step further by working out the projected demand for 14 critical metals if humanity were to limit global warming to the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius, by shifting to 100 percent renewable energy by mid-century. In a scenario the authors describe “very ambitious”, the 2050 energy mix is mainly wind and solar PV-driven, with smaller fractions of our energy coming from geothermal power, hydropower, and other technologies. The transportation sector is also 100 percent renewable, with over half of all cars, buses, and commercial vehicles being battery-driven electric or plug-in hybrids.
That future sounds great from a climate perspective. But as the new analysis shows, it also creates some daunting materials challenges. ... In the authors’ scenarios, annual demand for lithium, as well as the rare earths neodymium and dysprosium, for batteries and EV engines, exceed current production rates by 2022. Batteries will also drive cobalt and nickel demand higher than current production around 2030, while tellurium demand for solar PV will peak well above current production rates in the late 2020s to mid 2030s.
It gets worse. By mid-century, even in the most optimistic scenarios, the battery sector’s cobalt appetite is projected to exceed known planetary reserves, while our lithium demand will have eaten up at least 86 percent of known reserves. This doesn’t mean we will “run out” of these metals—known reserves simply refers to the metals that are currently economical to mine, and that can change over time—but it does serve to highlight just how big of a player batteries will be in fueling our material appetite in the decades to come. Lead study author Elsa Dominish told Earther via email that for lithium and cobalt at least, new mining seems “inevitable.”
....
9 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
parachute.
