The electric vehicle is scheduled to take an increasing share of the vehicle market with 125 million expected globally by 2030, a sharp increase from today’s 5.1 million.
Vehicles — cars and trucks — account for about one-quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. A significant reduction in these emissions would make a difference in cutting GHGs.
Power for electric vehicles (EVs) requires batteries that use minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite.
The more exotic minerals — lithium and cobalt — had not seen much exploration until the battery needs were foreseen.
The pressure to supply enough of these minerals for the burgeoning market has opened investment opportunities in exploration.
The need for these specific battery constituents exposes an ethical quandary for the EV battery industry. Mining most of them has ethical implications.
Lithium is mined mostly from brine salt lakes and dried salt lake flats in desert regions. Peruvian residents are already complaining about the ecological damage caused by mining lithium salts from brine salt beds.
Mining lithium uses large quantities of scarce water in these desert-like regions.
Cobalt, another vital element in EV batteries, is supplied mostly from the politically unstable Congo in Africa. That country produces 60 per cent of global supply with reports of child labour used in mines clouding the ethical supply.
The Congo cobalt domination has seen the term “blood cobalt” applied to minerals from the region.
Most of the minerals and new supplies needed for EV batteries will come from countries with less stable political regimes and uncertain human rights laws.
The ethics of mining essential minerals for EV batteries casts a pall on the industry.
Battery manufacturers are trying to cut down on the cobalt needed to avoid Congolese mineral supplies but can only go so far.
Tesla is among battery manufacturers using renewable energy in the giga-battery factory to keep life cycle emissions down.
Finding new mineral sources to replace conflict supplies and the lock China has on many of the minerals opens economic opportunity for lesser developed regions but opens up charges of destroying the environment.
A second little known concern about electric vehicles involves a wide range of emissions from these cars.
European studies show carbon emissions from EVs vary depending on source of generation for the electricity used.
EVs in Norway and Sweden emit far less carbon than in England and Germany, simply because those countries generate most of their power from hydro plants and nuclear plants.
In Saskatchewan about half of electricity generation comes from coal-fired plants, making EV driving less eco-friendly than in Ontario where almost three-quarters of power comes from nuclear and hydro with none from coal.
Ron Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
