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I felt like this article did not clarify the problem for me, because it bounced between several different aspects of lithium production without really quantifyi

by lacker 6y ago

I felt like this article did not clarify the problem for me, because it bounced between several different aspects of lithium production without really quantifying anything. So here's my summary. From googling around, So lithium costs about $13,000 a ton. Hard rock mining releases 15 tons of CO2 for every ton of lithium. Carbon offsets cost about $8 a ton, using the numbers for Stripe's cheapest carbon offset program. So even if the CO2 was fully offset, that would be adding $120 per ton or about 1% to the cost of lithium. This doesn't seem like a very big deal. For water consumption, that same ton of lithium takes 170 cubic meters, which is about 2 person-months of urban Chilean water consumption. I don't have a specific price or tradeoff to put on it, but it seems unlikely that the cost would amount to as much as the carbon dioxide. I think what's really going on here is that the current methods of producing lithium are really not very environmentally harmful. IMO this proposed lithium production facility in the UK would be nice, but supporting it by saying that the current methods of lithium production are environmentally unsound doesn't seem right to me. This seems like a case of two different groups of environmentalists shooting each other in the foot, when the best thing for the environment is focusing on getting off fossil fuels instead of preemptively minimizing the small impact of lithium mining.

joe_the_user 6y ago
Does hard rock mining release CO2 inherently or does it just require energy? If it's just energy, which seems like to me, energy might be supplied by hydrogen or other CO2-free sources. Water use compared to personal use isn't that important. Most water used by an industrial society is used in agriculture and that's probably true for Chile. I think what's really going on here is that the current methods of producing lithium are really not very environmentally harmful. Agreed. The negative impact of mining generally comes from companies incentivized to cut corners. Strong regulations requiring waste be contained, etc, are what needed. The worst problem is that large companies do cost arbitrage across the world, incentivizing countries to lower their standards - why all the "rare earth" mining went to China when they were willing cut corners and then the West screamed bloody murder when China stopped wanting to be the world's garbage dump.
- lacker 6y ago
  Water use compared to personal use isn't that important. Most water used by an industrial society is used in agriculture Oh that's a good point. So for comparison, a ton of wheat takes about 1300 cubic meters of water, so 8x the water per ton as lithium. That wheat sells for about $200, so lithium is using orders of magnitude less water per dollar of revenue. This comparison makes lithium mining look even more environmentally friendly than comparing it to urban use does. Of course these are all estimates based on brief internet research so the true numbers could be different. I couldn't figure out from Google where exactly the CO2 emissions from lithium mining comes from - that sort of thing would have been great for the actual professional article to provide.
  - throwaway201103 6y ago
    Doesn't the water for the wheat mostly fall naturally from the sky? I live in farm country and while some fields have irrigation systems, most do not.
    - fennecfoxen 6y ago
      It may fall from the sky, but if you use it to grow wheat you're reducing what's going to be available downstream. There's a lot of water-politics about this in the American west, and you might not even be entitled to use the rainwater that falls on your own land.
      - throwaway894345 6y ago
        Pretty sure the OP is talking about rain that falls directly on the fields. That’s how crops are grown in the midwest.
- bigger_cheese 6y ago
  Water used in Mining also has an environmental impact - wet processing of minerals creates "tailings", which is essentially contaminated waste water which then needs to be stored somewhere usually in a dam. A lot of the largest environmental disasters in recent history have been caused by tailings dams.
erentz 6y ago
How do you offset a ton of emitted CO2 for $8? Here Stripe is paying between $75 and $775 per ton: https://stripe.com/blog/first-negative-emissions-purchases https://stripe.com/blog/first-negative-emissions-purchases
- lacker 6y ago
  That's for "negative emissions" which are more expensive than offsets. I got my data from https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/19/20811981/stripe-carbon-capture-climate-change-pay-negative-emissions https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/19/20811981/stripe-carbon-ca... which cites the $8 figure.
  - erentz 6y ago
    Oh. But surely carbon offsets in the best scenario are an accounting gimmick, and inappropriate for a case like this where you want to compare truly CO2 free production of a resource. If a mine releases CO2, but doesn't actually remove it, then it's still released. It sounds to me like I should set up a giant CO2 production factory and then people can pay me not to run it. Great business. The people paying me are still pumping CO2 into the atmosphere but greenwashed with a carbon offset gimmick.
im3w1l 6y ago
> For water consumption, that same ton of lithium takes 170 cubic meters, which is about 2 person-months of urban Chilean water consumption. m3 of water is a nonsense metric. Water is abundant in some places, and in those places it might as well be free. In other places it is highly scarce. Furthermore water is not consumed it's just borrowed for a while. So really you need to look at it more qualitatively, tell a story of the consequences of the water use.

by lacker 6y ago

joe_the_user 6y ago

Does hard rock mining release CO2 inherently or does it just require energy? If it's just energy, which seems like to me, energy might be supplied by hydrogen or other CO2-free sources. Water use compared to personal use isn't that important. Most water used by an industrial society is used in agriculture and that's probably true for Chile. I think what's really going on here is that the current methods of producing lithium are really not very environmentally harmful. Agreed. The negative impact of mining generally comes from companies incentivized to cut corners. Strong regulations requiring waste be contained, etc, are what needed. The worst problem is that large companies do cost arbitrage across the world, incentivizing countries to lower their standards - why all the "rare earth" mining went to China when they were willing cut corners and then the West screamed bloody murder when China stopped wanting to be the world's garbage dump.

lacker 6y ago
Water use compared to personal use isn't that important. Most water used by an industrial society is used in agriculture Oh that's a good point. So for comparison, a ton of wheat takes about 1300 cubic meters of water, so 8x the water per ton as lithium. That wheat sells for about $200, so lithium is using orders of magnitude less water per dollar of revenue. This comparison makes lithium mining look even more environmentally friendly than comparing it to urban use does. Of course these are all estimates based on brief internet research so the true numbers could be different. I couldn't figure out from Google where exactly the CO2 emissions from lithium mining comes from - that sort of thing would have been great for the actual professional article to provide.
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  Doesn't the water for the wheat mostly fall naturally from the sky? I live in farm country and while some fields have irrigation systems, most do not.
  - fennecfoxen 6y ago
    It may fall from the sky, but if you use it to grow wheat you're reducing what's going to be available downstream. There's a lot of water-politics about this in the American west, and you might not even be entitled to use the rainwater that falls on your own land.
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      Pretty sure the OP is talking about rain that falls directly on the fields. That’s how crops are grown in the midwest.
bigger_cheese 6y ago
Water used in Mining also has an environmental impact - wet processing of minerals creates "tailings", which is essentially contaminated waste water which then needs to be stored somewhere usually in a dam. A lot of the largest environmental disasters in recent history have been caused by tailings dams.

erentz 6y ago

How do you offset a ton of emitted CO2 for $8? Here Stripe is paying between $75 and $775 per ton: https://stripe.com/blog/first-negative-emissions-purchases https://stripe.com/blog/first-negative-emissions-purchases

lacker 6y ago
That's for "negative emissions" which are more expensive than offsets. I got my data from https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/19/20811981/stripe-carbon-capture-climate-change-pay-negative-emissions https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/19/20811981/stripe-carbon-ca... which cites the $8 figure.
- erentz 6y ago
  Oh. But surely carbon offsets in the best scenario are an accounting gimmick, and inappropriate for a case like this where you want to compare truly CO2 free production of a resource. If a mine releases CO2, but doesn't actually remove it, then it's still released. It sounds to me like I should set up a giant CO2 production factory and then people can pay me not to run it. Great business. The people paying me are still pumping CO2 into the atmosphere but greenwashed with a carbon offset gimmick.

im3w1l 6y ago

> For water consumption, that same ton of lithium takes 170 cubic meters, which is about 2 person-months of urban Chilean water consumption. m3 of water is a nonsense metric. Water is abundant in some places, and in those places it might as well be free. In other places it is highly scarce. Furthermore water is not consumed it's just borrowed for a while. So really you need to look at it more qualitatively, tell a story of the consequences of the water use.