Ever since reusable batteries became a thing in the 70s, they have become more and more common in everything around you. With Tesla planning to put them on the walls of your house and electric vehicles becoming the norm, there are possibly a few things that are not seeing the shift to renewable energy. But have you ever wondered what goes into these batteries?
Lithium, cobalt and nickel are the three key elements and each of the three has an interesting story to go with it. Lithium is primarily found in southern South America (Yes, the far corner of the planet) and Australia and in China. In South America, this has been accompanied by droughts and in other places rapid industrialization. Cobalt comes almost entirely from Congo, a country plagued by war. And finally, Nickel comes almost entirely from Indonesia. All three have had a tremendous increase in production and exponential increases in their costs. Car manufacturers around the world in the rush to go electric are now waking up to the fact that the raw materials for this are only getting costlier.
Even if we forego the financial aspect of these metals, the carbon footprint associated with the mining and processing of these metals is massive. The unfortunate part is that there exists very little infrastructure to recycle these metals; most such processes are in the pilot stages.
So what’s the answer? With millions of electric cars set to hit the roads in the next decade, the costs of these metals are going to shift to the consumer. Or, electric vehicles have to re-think their designs are rework a lot of their inventions to date to be more sustainable and scalable. Shifting away from cobalt, or rebuilding the battery will set back the industry years in terms of costs and research. Existing alternatives don’t perform as well, last as long or are more unsafe to use.
The world needs to take a breath, double-check the big picture and be sure of the scalability of new tech before adopting it or we’d jump from one sinking ship to another.
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