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Unless there’s a massive breakthrough in battery tech, the manufacturing of sufficient batteries would be a guaranteed environmental disaster.
by sjwright 6y ago
Unless there’s a massive breakthrough in battery tech, the manufacturing of sufficient batteries would be a guaranteed environmental disaster.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoLithium mining has an impact similar to oil extraction. (On average -- oil sands and fracking are worse, conventional oil production is better). But since batteries can be used a few thousand times and then can be recycled efficiently, the volume required is a tiny fraction of the petroleum requirements. Other materials are used in even smaller quantities. Cobalt is a disaster, but grid batteries don't use cobalt, they generally use nickel & iron. It is a large environmental impact. But compared to the alternative, it's very green.
- sjwright 6y agoI was speaking in absolute terms. When speaking in relative terms to a newly built fossil fuel plant you are most likely correct. You'd be hard pressed to find a plausible source of energy that's worse for the environment (immediate AND long term) than burning dirty sequestered carbon sources like coal and oil. When speaking in relative terms to a newly built nuclear plant—the context of my response—batteries would be significantly worse per KWh of baseload energy supplied.