UN highlights urgent need to tackle impact of likely electric car battery production boom
Excerpt: “Anticipating a world dominated by electric vehicles, materials scientists are working on two big challenges. One is how to cut down on the metals in batteries that are scarce, expensive, or problematic because their mining carries harsh environmental and social costs. Another is to improve battery recycling, so that the valuable metals in spent car batteries can be efficiently reused. “Recycling will play a key role in the mix,” says Kwasi Ampofo, a mining engineer who is the lead analyst on metals and mining at BNEF.”
Citation: Castelvecchi, D. (2021). Electric cars and batteries: how will the world produce enough? Nature, 596(7872), 336–339. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02222-1
This is week 2 in our discussion of green energy, particularly electric vehicles. Here are some questions to ask yourself and others. Next week, we will add another reading to this month’s deep dive.
Should we continue the shift to these kinds of electric batteries?
Are you comfortable with the known and potential environmental and human-rights cost from the shift to these kinds of electric vehicle batteries?
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