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To the editor:
The world needs two billion electric vehicles to get to a CO2 net zero level by 2050. But is there enough lithium to make all the batteries?
World Economic Forum, July 20, addresses many EV battery problems.
The world could face lithium shortages by 2025, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says. Sales of EVs stood at just 6.6 million last year. At that rate it will be 2300 before the goal is met. Lithium supply faces challenges not only from surging demand, but because resources are concentrated in a few places and over half of today's production is in areas with high water stress.
Lithium extraction requires very high volumes of water, and this is leading to problems around water stress -- a situation where a region's water resources are not enough to meet its needs. Bolivia's mine reportedly uses 50,000 liters of water a day. Lithium mining companies in Chile have been accused of depleting vital water supplies. Serbia withdrew licenses for its lithium mine because demonstrators said the site would contaminate water supplies and damage the landscape irreversibly.
The world potentially has nowhere near enough of lithium to power all the EV batteries it wants -- and needs. Yet 30 governments said they would stop sales of new gas/diesel models by 2040.
"Only a handful of companies can produce high-quality, high-purity lithium chemical products," the IEA says. Lithium mines that started operations between 2010 and 2019 took an average of 16.5 years to develop, according to the IEA report.
The World Economic Forum's Global Battery Alliance notes two major challenges: "First, raw materials needed for batteries are extracted at a high human and environmental toll. This includes child labor, health and safety hazards in work, poverty, and pollution. Second, a recycling challenge looms over the 11 million tons of spent lithium-ion batteries forecast to be discarded by 2030, with few systems in place to enable reuse and recycling."
With the pollution, child labor, health, recycle, and lithium availability problems, are they selling us "a pig in a poke"?
In a side note, The ECOnetic Fiesta that Ford sells in Europe is a sporty little five-passenger hatchback that gets 65 mpg and emits less CO2 than a Toyota Prius. But Ford has no plans to bring it to America for one simple reason -- it's a diesel. Another car, the Mazda sold in Japan in 2011 with "Skyactiv-G 1.3" engine, got 70 mpg.
Imagine how a decade of improvements to the internal combustion engine would have reduced greenhouse gas emissions!
Arthur Keller
Beavertown