The True Cost of Mining for the $500 Billion Electric Car Industry | True Cost | Insider News

The

electric

car

industry

is scouring the Earth for battery metals, from lithium in the salt flats of Chile to nickel in the rainforests of Indonesia and valuable metals at the bottom of the sea. China. The United States and Europe are engaged in a resource arms race that spans the globe to try. to meet growing demand, but extracting those raw materials comes at a

cost

that can include damaged land. Toxic pollution leaks and dangerous working conditions. There is no doubt that combustion engines are a problem. They emit dangerous fumes and a fifth of annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Electric cars are promising. To change all that, experts say the benefits of

electric

vehicles outweigh the

cost

s, but where do battery metals come from and what effect does their extraction have on the planet? The average consumer electric vehicle has more than six times more mineral content than a gasoline vehicle, most of which goes into the enormous battery pack, each of which is made up of thousands of cells. This is where lithium ions move back and forth between an anode and a cathode as the battery charges and then powers the vehicle. This is where you will find many of the minerals in The center of the current

mining

boom changes the mix of metals here and changes the performance of the car, including its range and charging speed, and each metal has its own story.

What I discovered was that the hidden supply chains behind all of this were dominated by China, but it also involved a lot of trade-offs, environmental impacts, and a huge need for minerals. This is Henry Sanderson, his book Vault Rush looks at how the race to go green has disrupted global supply chains and transformed landscapes like Chile's Atakama Desert. What caught my attention when I went there. It was just the size of these pools in the middle of the desert encased in these vast salt flats. It is a lightweight metal that is used in almost all electric vehicle batteries.

Lithium, the silvery-white mineral, is the lightest metal in the world and can be found in rocks, clay and salt water. More than half of the world's lithium resources are located in the solar lithium triangle of Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. Lithium here is stored in salty underground water called brine. Billions of gallons are pumped to the surface each year, where the lithium is allowed to evaporate. Chile has a low carbon footprint because it uses energy from the sun, the yellower the pond, the higher the concentration. It may take more than 1,000 gallons of brine to produce enough lithium for a single electric car battery.

Two companies control the right of operation. Here the American albal and the Chilean square meter exported more than 890 million dollars in 2021 and satellite images show how their

mining

operations have transformed the landscape. It can take about 18 months for the brine to move under gravity through the series of ponds where the lithium-rich salts are found. They are then loaded onto trucks and then taken to a processing plant near the coast where they are purified to become lithium batteries. Pumps extract enough brine to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool every 20 minutes, and factories that process the salts draw fresh water from underground aquifers.

Water use is of course a sensitive issue here in the desert, in some areas of Atakama, rainfall has never been recorded. Horor Munos Koka is a member of the local Atek Meno indigenous community. The Chilean mining company SQM has had problems with environmental regulators for extraction. too much brine and fresh water in an email to Business Insider sqm said it aims to be water neutral by 2030 as it shifts to desalination plants and more efficient lithium extraction technology in neighboring Bolivia. Chinese and Russian companies are investing nearly $3

billion

in a series of new lithium plants, but they are betting on a set of relatively unproven technologies called DL l e, or direct lithium extraction, rather than waiting for the water to clear. evaporate from the brine, this approach extracts the lithium through a variety of chemical or heat-based processes it can take.

It's only a few hours, but it's unclear how water or energy intensive these processes will be, as foreign mining companies move into locals like Abdón Morales, they're worried about the precious water supply, that well was good, is disillusioned after years of high hopes for Bolivia's lithium

industry

. The plant opened 60 miles from his home in 2013 and promised jobs and prosperity, but Bolivia lacked the technical means to expand it and the jobs never came. Abdon is not against lithium mining, he just wants any company that comes to extract the metal to be open and honest. In 2021 there were 21 lithium mining operations worldwide.

Industry experts estimate hundreds more could be needed to meet demand. Lithium is not the only thirsty industry in the Atakama Desert. Chile is also the world's largest producer of copper, a highly conductive metal and another key ingredient. In electric vehicle batteries, an electric car can contain more than 80 kg of metal, more than double the amount used in internal combustion engine cars. In each battery cell, a copper foil placed over the negative end or the anode acts as a bridge to the external circuit, allowing electricity to flow through the car, of course, it is also used in the wiring and the electric motor of a car.

Existing mines in places like Chile have been in operation for decades, so they are reaching the end of their useful life, which is why we need new copper mines. Finding and developing a new copper mine can take years and

billion

s of dollars. Most copper mines look like these vast open shafts where rock is blasted out of the Earth with explosives, leaving behind stepped walls that can sink half a mile into the Earth in many cases. In some cases, these wells remain long after the mine closed, but Montana closed in the 1980s and the pumps that would normally keep the water out were shut down.

The liquid you see is in fact a bath of acids and heavy metals extracted from the Around Rock in 2016, more than 3,000 geese died shortly after landing in the lake. Now workers have to maintain a 24-hour vigil, scaring away migratory birds with gunshots, lasers and even drones. If birds land here and start drinking the toxic drink, it can cause organ failure. It is Mark Mariano's mission. to make sure that doesn't happen, yes, Mark Mariano, water fouling protection specialist, we made up that title, but it fits, these are propane cannons and they shoot all day, they imitate gunshots that many birds are scared of for reasons obvious on special occasions.

The birds could have their own private fireworks show. This is a last resort. We know you know something big was coming. We have used them twice. This acidic lake is an extreme result, but there is evidence that toxic rock waste has contaminated the soil near the copper. mines around the world As the electric vehicle market continues to grow, so does demand for copper, although improvements in design mean less will be needed per vehicle in the coming years, meanwhile, the US is still It has considerable reserves of copper like Chile and countries like Australia and Peru, other battery metals are not as well distributed as cobalt.

Metal is a popular choice for battery manufacturers because it resists high temperatures and does not corrode easily. It goes on the cathode of the most common type of battery, nmc, and only one African nation is responsible. to produce over 70% of the world's cobalt, the DRC is Kobo's Saudi Arabia or much more than that, in fact they really have a unique dominant position, mining here has skyrocketed since 2000 boosted in largely due to Chinese investment between 15 and 30% of cobalt or comes from artisanal mines, which means low-tech informal mining operations. Miners use whatever tools they have available, often without protective equipment.

Miners here dig holes into the earth and rock to reach veins of cobalt. The tunnels are cut by hand and known. collapse and kill w jier has been working in these mines for 22 years wow wow wow wow wow wow team of three others work here they cut chunks of the walls and then transport their load back to the surface the miners take the rocks to a local deposit where manure is evaluated and weighed he can earn between $2 and $300 per week the price can change daily depending on the value of cobalt in the global market he says he earns enough money to support his family hundreds of thousands of people work in the mining sector artisanal cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, men tend to work as miners and traders, while women find work in processing.

The Ore Clarice says this site follows strict rules, but over the years, human rights groups have also raised the alarm about child labor at unregulated mining sites. A 2016 Amnesty International national report found that thousands of children worked as artisanal miners. The amnesty report really opened many people's eyes to what was really happening in the DRC and the extent of the abuses. Most companies had little idea where they were getting their cobalt or what was going on, some manufacturers look to source their cobalt from large industrial operations. Instead, these mines are large, secure, fenced operations, large processing plants, large open pit mines, but these mines have not been without problems either.

Satellite images show how massive the mining is. Wells have consumed much of the kisi in the south of the country. Another amnesty report, this time focusing on large Chinese and European-run mining operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, details how residents have been forced to abandon their homes to make way for pits. They were physically attacked and their houses were even set on fire. Locals say hundreds of houses have disappeared while artisanal mining has not disappeared and many do not want it. Human rights groups say improving working conditions at these mines is a better approach than We are trying to ban them all together and it is difficult for battery or car manufacturers to know what type of mine the cobalt comes from, since the minerals mixed in refining plants almost all of the cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo ends up in China, where it has helped generate about 14 million.

EVS circulate on their roads much more than Europe and the United States; In fact, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has a long history of foreign countries benefiting from its riches. More than 100 years ago, Belgian colonizers scoured the vast country in search of mineral wealth; Later, other Western powers depended on the country for minerals. used in military aircraft without strategic materials and by strategic materials I mean materials like cobalt, we couldn't really make a jet engine today, the metallic element is used in things like paints, alloys and batteries, conventional combustion engines, vehicles use none, the mining boom driven largely by the EVS has also transformed the DRC economy, but most Congolese do not feel the benefit of the country's mineral riches.

Economists call it the resource curse. We have seen countries that have been blessed with natural resources that are often elite. That benefit you get these booms that are actually more destructive than beneficial, that's partly because minerals like cobalt gain value as they move through the supply chain from ore to refined metals to batteries. It is difficult for many countries with resources to have the necessary energy infrastructure. chemicals, etc., that are needed to produce processed products, but whether they are processed domestically or abroad, the amount of cobalt used in the most common electric vehicle battery, nmc, is decreasing by 1/ 3 of the cathode to just 10%, the trade-off means using more nickel and 6.5 billion kilometers away, one country is poised to benefit greatly from that change.

Indonesia is the world's largest producer of nickel and is set to widen that lead this decade, unlike the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which will see Indonesia receive much more investment from foreign mining companies and automakers, including China, the US and China. US and Korea for things like refineries and battery plants that help it retain more of the supply chain. The country's leaders banned almost allnickel exports after decades of shipping it to foreign stainless steel plants with little economic gain to show now. They say, well, we have all the nickel processing here, why don't you come build your battery factory in Indonesia? and then they say why don't you build your electric vehicle.

Nickel mining in Indonesia factory is concentrated on Sui resource island where mineral extraction increasingly conflicts with nearby agriculture, these are clove farms and some locals say mining companies have cleared their lands by force and now they themselves patrol the land armed and ready to defend their crops while the pollution from the mines has been washed away. in the sea visible here on the left and is having a direct impact on fishing. Until now, the vast majority of the nickel that leaves Indonesia has been used to make stainless steel, not batteries, that is because most of the ore in The country is low in nickel, but Indonesia wants a bigger piece of the electric vehicle pie and plans to expand a process called high-pressure acid leaching.

This technique can transform low-quality nickel into the type of nickel useful for the electric vehicle battery industry, but it uses hot sulfuric acid and can leave behind hazardous waste that can cause environmental destruction if not stored properly on the eastern side of the Indonesian archipelago. It lies within what is known as the coral triangle, an area with more diverse marine life than anywhere else on the planet and the nation as a whole is home to more than a tenth of the world's population. Mammal species and nearly a fifth of all bird species have raised environmental concerns among some investors.

PA in 2022. Indonesian officials said Tesla would soon invest $5 billion in local nickel processing, but an open letter from environmental groups to CEO Elon Musk called for an end to all nickel. investments in the country where it is located water and air pollution land grabs and large-scale systemic environmental damage the deal fell through and Tesla switched its standard-range vehicles to a nickel-free variety Indonesian government says it will improve monitoring environment at mining sites but operations are not likely to be reduced in the short term. Indonesia is the nickel producer to watch this decade and, in many cases, we won't have electric vehicles without Indonesia, 72,000 miles away on the west coast of Africa.

Gabon is busy mining another key ingredient in manganese. the cathodes of electric vehicle batteries. A company called kog, owned by French mining interests, has operated here since 1951, leading to massive population growth and development. The company says it has invested millions of dollars in social projects that improve access to education and water, but some locals say they have fallen behind the EC, while the government is counting on mining manganese, iron and gold as it tries move away from an oil-based economy. Right now, most of Gabon's manganese is used to make steel, not electric vehicles. batteries, but demand for this metal for electric vehicles could increase eight-fold by 2030.

There is one place where manganese, nickel and cobalt can be found together and it is not in the ground, but inside potato rocks that are found more than 2 miles below the ocean surface. They are called cops. metallic nodules and there could be billions of tons of them in the ocean. A Canadian startup called the metals company wants to be the first to profit from a test in 2022. It won what its founder says is the largest Hall in the world. story I've never been in this no one has no one Gerard Baron is on a decade-long quest to mine the depths his last company ran out of money He wanted to do something that was almost impossible, you know, I was pretty sure that if I didn't do this then it may not advance and that would be a farce the technology is available to collect these rocks on a commercial scale this is how it works the boat lowers a collection vehicle into the water the prototype weighs 90 tons and is approximately the size of a minibus until the operators of copy.

Drive the collector remotely from inside the control rooms. Each vehicle has four nozzles and sensors that adjust their positions, they float just above the seabed and the garbage found there is sucked up. The nozzle works like a vacuum cleaner. The machine also collects the first few centimeters of mud. Internal pumps separate it from the rocks and expel some of the sediment. The following air bubbles push the rocks, mud and seawater through an extendable tube. at 2 and 1/2 mils after about 12 minutes the grout reaches the surface here. A Whirlpool uses gravity to separate nodules from water and sediment.

Nodules are found in flat, soft parts of the deep ocean floor throughout the world. One of the most promising nodules. Fields is located in the Claran Clipon area, a stretch of the Pacific Ocean floor almost as wide as the continental United States. A promotional video from the metals company calls this mining area a vast underwater desert, but even deserts have life and this stretch of the Flor Sea does. Too recent expeditions have found a never-before-seen octopus, a swarm of eels eating bait and sea cucumbers, fish and species not found anywhere else, no matter how careful the miners are, it is impossible to avoid some environmental impact, not really. we can predict the scale of species extinctions. that would come from so much mining, but there are reasons to think it could be significant;

In reality, we still do not know enough to understand the impact of B and therefore the costs of deep sea mining in international waters are regulated by the International Seabed Authority by the end of 2023. had awarded contracts of exploration to 31 companies and governments, a different type of contract is needed to exploit the seabed on a commercial scale and no one has one of those yet, if all goes according to plan, the metals company intends to build processing centers in ports that we will melt and refine the rocks the nodules would not leave tons of waste rock like other minerals we generate zero waste and zero tailings we do not run the risk of child labor we can collect these rocks commercially and help stop some of the terrible deforestation of our most biodiverse terrestrial habitats However, it is still unclear whether companies like this can scale and experts say there is no evidence that land-based mining will disappear or even decline if Flor offshore mining takes off, it will simply end up with a situation where there will be greater damage. ecological on land and then in the sea as well.

One mineral that cannot be found in nodules but makes up the majority of any EV battery is graphite, which is used in the anode or negative end of each. Most CVS battery cells use synthetic graphite derived from carbon, but there is still demand for natural graphite, which is cheaper and China is the world's largest producer of both. The country produces 70% of the world's mined graphite, but in 2023 announced that it was restricting exports. The move spooked foreign EV makers wary of their over-reliance on Chinese supply as the world races to find a more diverse supply. Countries like Sri Lanka hope to cash in.

The country is home to what is called vain graphite, the purest natural form of the element, but at the same time, Sri Lankan graphite is used primarily for steelmaking and as an industrial lubricant, and working in the mines is difficult and dangerous. Neil sish abisara has worked at kataha, Sri Lanka's largest graphite mine, for 11 years. It ends at 2,000 feet, the deepest in the country. They extract the graphite Neil and his colleagues use drills and explosives. Working so underground can make breathing difficult. The job exposes miners to toxic particles in the air, putting them at risk for lung diseases like pneumoconiosis, but if the elevator breaks or the power goes out, the only solution is this ladder.

About 60 workers make a living at the mine here in Kaha, but it's not much. In January 2020, mine workers went on hunger strike to demand a wage increase for the first time since 2012. The government gave the workers a raise of only Rs 50. a day that costs 3 cents and promises to meet other demands in the future, but those needs have not yet been met with more. Modern Machinery Sri Lanka could be well positioned to take advantage of the electric vehicle industry's huge demand for graphite. The miners here only hope to win. Don't be left behind, whether on land or at sea, all forms of mining come with trade-offs after battery extraction and refining.

Metals head to gigafactories like this the moment they come off the assembly line. EVS have a carbon footprint approximately 30% larger than the internal one. Combustion engine cars on average, however, that starts to change as soon as you start the engine, because driving an Eevee has no direct emissions, they still have a lower climate impact over their lifetime, even if they are charged with electricity. which comes from fossil fuels, which reduces the greenhouse effect. Gases are the number one tool humans have to fight the climate crisis that is displacing people and threatening many species as electric and electronic vehicles enter the mainstream.

Consumer power Sanderson says it will likely force automakers and mining companies to clean up their acts. Consumers I think are in a powerful position because electric vehicles are still relatively new to many people, they are supposed to be a better product, people care more about the origin of all the materials, so that helps drive the change, while one of the best ways to clean up the EV supply chain is to minimize the need for mining in the first place, which means reusing and recycling as much as possible. A handful of startups are using end-of-life electric vehicle batteries for large-scale energy storage fields of lithium-ion batteries, which will be an essential part of the rise of wind and solar power. and battery metal recycling rates are trending upward.

The United States, Europe and Asia have seen massive public and private investments in recycling infrastructure. Getting the minerals out of complex battery cells is its own puzzle. Crushing or shredding batteries is risky because they can catch fire. under pressure, a company called Lys Cycle says its process addresses that problem. The team built a machine that cuts batteries into pieces like confetti while keeping them submerged in oxygen-free liquid. There are no fires. That liquid also helps separate the plastic that many recyclers simply burn. What's left is sheet metal, so behind me we are bagging that sheet metal and selling it for the copper content as well as the precious metals and the black mass.

Black Mass contains nickel, cobalt, manganese, graphite, lithium, etc., as recycling operations like this increase in scale. The recovered metals could eventually account for about half the amount of cobalt and nickel the world uses, but that may not happen until 2050, by which time investments in public transportation and greater awareness of the climate crisis may even have led to a less car-centric economy. world, but as long as the car remains king Sanderson says Transit electrification is essential, we must not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good and is comparable to the destruction caused to the planet by our addiction to fossil fuels and that We need to make this change oh