The widespread view that
fossil fuels are “dirty” and renewables such as wind and solar energy and
electric vehicles are “clean” has become a fixture of mainstream media and
policy assumptions across the political spectrum in developed countries,
perhaps with the exception of the Trump-led US administration. Indeed the
ultimate question we are led to believe is how quickly can enlightened Western
governments, led by an alleged scientific consensus, “decarbonize” with clean
energy in a race to save the world from impending climate catastrophe. The ‘net
zero by 2050’ mantra, calling for carbon emissions to be completely mitigated
within three decades, is now the clarion call by governments and
intergovernmental agencies around the developed world, ranging from several EU member states and the UK, to the International Energy Agency and the International Monetary Fund.
Mining
out of sight, out of mind
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Let’s start with Elon Musk’s
Tesla. In an astonishing achievement for a company that has now posted four
consecutive quarters of profits, Tesla is now the world’s most valuable automotive company.
Demand for EVs is set to soar, as government policies subsidize the purchase of
EVs to replace the internal combustion engine of gasoline and diesel-driven
cars and as owning a “clean” and “green” car becomes a moral testament to many
a virtue-signaling customer.
Yet, if one looks under the hood of “clean energy” battery-driven EVs,
the dirt found would surprise most. The most important component in the EV is
the lithium-ion rechargeable battery which relies on critical mineral
commodities such as cobalt, graphite, lithium, and manganese. Tracing the
source of these minerals, in what is called “full-cycle economics”, it becomes
apparent that EVs create a trail of dirt from the mining and processing of
minerals upstream.
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A recent United Nations report warns that the raw
materials used in electric car batteries are highly concentrated in a small
number of countries where environmental and labour regulations are weak or
non-existent. Thus, battery production for EVs is driving a boom in small-scale
or “artisanal” cobalt production in the Democratic Republic of Congo which
supplies two thirds of global output of the mineral. These artisanal mines,
which account for up to a quarter of the country’s production, have been found to be dangerous and
employ child labour.
Mindful
of what the image of children scrabbling for hand-dug minerals in Africa can do
to high tech’s clean and green image, most tech and auto companies using cobalt
and other toxic heavy metals avoid direct sourcing from mines. Tesla Inc. TSLA struck a deal last month with Swiss-based
Glencore Plc to buy as much as 6,000 tons of cobalt annually from the latter’s
Congolese mines. While Tesla has said it aims to remove reputational risks
associated with sourcing minerals from countries such as the DRC where
corruption is rampant, Glencore assures buyers that no hand-dug cobalt is
treated at its mechanized mines.
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https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/08/no_author/the-dirty-secrets-of-clean-electric-vehicles/