Introducing Issy - our newest addition to the Intercalation team! Issy is a second-year PhD student focusing on sustainable battery materials. This is the first piece in a mini-series exploring critical minerals and their human implications and the opportunity for the industry to drive positive global change.
Our world is full of energy. It flows through the natural systems and sustains billions of lifeforms on our beautiful planetary home. The sun sends us trillions of watts a day, the waves rock boats, and the wind blows. Our human problem is getting this energy in a form that we can use for industrial civilisation. Current systems are designed around fossil fuels. Used for over 250 years, they release greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, which warm our planet beyond what our current agricultural, building, and natural systems are used to. The result is increasingly extreme weather all over the world, which disrupts crops, sweeps away houses and kills increasing numbers of people.
An obvious answer is to use the abundant wind and sun to generate power, and we have the tech developed over the last 50 years to do it. The final piece of the puzzle that will solve all of our problems is being able to store this power easily. The battery industry, with other energy storage methods, holds the keys to the electric revolution and is a keystone of the new green clean world that is emerging.
However, batteries need a lot of raw materials in order to store energy. How we get those raw materials is what will define our approach and success in tackling this crisis. Climate justice represents the idea that the world should benefit equitably from the development of industries such as batteries.
We need to mine better.
The problem is historical. For 500 years, colonising nations have accumulated wealth and resources by taking valuable natural assets from countries in the global south via violence and whatever means necessary. Extractivism continues to this day particularly in the fossil fuel and mining industries, and proliferates environmental racism. Countries that suffer extractivism experience high levels of poverty due to their financial reliance on raw materials rather than developing their own economies, polluting their environment, and generating political instability.
The wealth of the resource is often not returned, with no increase in job security or cheaper electricity. Communities that are exploited are often non-white and already marginalised and suffer higher rates of cancer and miscarriage. The Niger Delta is ‘one of the most polluted places on earth’ due to Shell’s oil extraction there, poisoning the water and people. There are similar stories all over the world, notably also in Iraq and also in the global north. This is particularly obvious in the USA with the practice of red lining where areas across the United States were shaded in red on the map from the 1930s due to the “infiltration of lower grade population,” which made it harder for home buyers of colour to get mortgages elsewhere. These areas were zoned as appropriate for polluting activities, and this has caused communities of colour to be systematically exposed to higher levels of air pollution. Children growing up in polluted and congested urban areas can have reduced lung capacity.
Nickel mines in Indonesia have left the communities around the Sulawesi coastline with poisoned water supplies and compromised marine ecosystems. The nickel industry in Norilsk, Russia, has poisoned the rivers and killed off the boreal forest for miles and the locals have 10 years less life expectancy than the rest of Russia. In Nevada, USA, Indigenous lands are being desecrated in the quest for lithium supplies. Cobalt mining in the Congo is riddled with stories of child labour and human rights abuses, as well as high rates of lung disease.
This history does not mean that all mining is bad, but rather that the increased demand for raw materials can be a transformation for the mining industry and the way we view our natural resources. Do we want to build the ‘clean energy’ version of the world we have already, mining without care for the environment and society at whatever cost, or do we take the biggest industrial revolution in our lifetimes as a chance for a transformative system and societal change?
How do we create change?
We have a choice. There is a danger that we could go from a system that oppressively takes fossil fuels to one that oppressively takes metals, with no regard for the environment or people. There continues to be all to play for in how the battery industry sources, regulates and markets its products.
If we truly want to create a new world, we have to put extractivism firmly away and reach for justice and equality. Our society has to value human lives and ecosystems as much as, if not more, than the metals needed to build an electric car. Committing to making truly sustainable batteries would put people and planet first in the very fabric of their being and use.
This translates to three key principles underpinning battery innovation. Firstly, environmental, social and governance (ESG) engagement between battery companies and mining companies to make sure all metals are mined with community consent and minimal environmental impact. ESG ensures that businesses adhere to a set of standards. It is significantly cheaper and faster to improve existing mines than open new ones, and in fact, some companies are already starting to actively engage here. This makes engagement to improve conditions possibly more important than investment in new sites. Several different sets of recommendations exist for responsible mining that emphasises transparency and human rights. Using this holistic approach will create better relationships between communities, miners and battery manufacturers, and lead to more stable supply relationships that benefit all parties.
Secondly, continued innovation, based on developing battery tech on more abundant materials such as sodium, as well as extending the lives of existing materials and pushing for increased recycling rates and recyclability. Choosing materials to include in batteries that we can source more sustainably will alleviate pressure on demand for lithium, and allow us to push the boundaries of our scientific knowledge, as discussed in a recent sodium ion article. Designing cells in a way that improves their recyclability will improve the rates at which they are recycled. Better labelling of batteries, standardised formats, and use of bolts and screws instead of welds and adhesives make them much easier to take apart for recycling but will make them slightly heavier and bulkier. Striving for a circular system where value in the battery is retained is good for the planet, and will eventually bring the materials costs of gigafactories down once enough is being recycled.
Finally, committing to justice in how we use batteries. This means prioritising meeting basic needs, such as public transport and community stationary storage, and changing our own relationship with demand as consumers. This 2023 study from the Community and Climate Project, UC Davis, modelled how lithium demand could be reduced in the US by 18 % up to 2050 by decreasing personal car ownership and improving public transport and city walkability. A reduction of 29 % to demand was also possible if current car ownership levels were retained and pack size limited from 77 kWh to 54 kWh. Good public transport and active travel infrastructure would allow urban populations to move more freely without requiring them to own and run an expensive car, representing more just access to transport. Connecting consumer demand and awareness to material supply and its implications would reform our demands on the battery industry and the planet. Asking ourselves what is ‘enough’ has never been more relevant.
Batteries are on track to be a valuable public utility, like water or energy distribution. Batteries will store energy, and the systems that built them will store either store centuries of injustice, or a new hope and beginnings through climate justice. Precisely because we occupy this exploitative space in the market is why we have the economic, moral and social responsibility to make better batteries. If we do not take the chance to transform the system, we will forever be governed by growing inequality to keep satisfying the unquenchable needs of the rich. Good business for the planet is good business for its inhabitants. The choice is ours.
The next article in this series will discuss in-depth about transport justice, and how to get better mobility per battery without costing the earth.
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We need to prioritize batteries for trucks, buses, etc., over private vehicles. The latter get used 5% of the day, while the former work all day long. That would not only reduce emissions, including particulate emissions from diesel engines, but also reduce noise levels and increase efficiency (no more idling).