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How Australia became the world’s greatest lithium supplier

126 points by hhs 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Synaesthesia 4y ago
The flipside of electrification of vehicles is all the extra metal they need to mine, which is highly environmentally destructive. We don't even have the metal supplies to fully electrify car production, not even close, although I see South America is going to ramp up production substantially soon.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
  Afghanistan has something like $1T worth of lithium reserves. Who gets access and how it ends up being exploited remains to be seen but that country is not going to become some forgotten backwater anytime soon.
  - Victerius 4y ago
    Afghanistan is landlocked. To its north is Russia. To its east is China. To its south are Pakistan and India. And to its west is Iran. Fun neighborhood. Nothing could go wrong with the above countries fighting for their share of Afghanistan's mineral resources.
    - newyankee 4y ago
      India does not share land border with Afghanistan , although Afg and Indian people apparently share warm relations (not Taliban)
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        > India does not share land border with Afghanistan I'm guessing India would claim that it does. Pakistan would argue otherwise.
        devoutsalsa 4y ago
        Reading about the line of control that splits Kashmir is pretty interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karachi_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karachi_Agreement
    - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
      >Afghanistan is landlocked Which is not that great if you intend to export raw bulk goods (e.g. ore). You really want to have ports for that. The extra few percent efficiency of ship vs rail makes a huge difference because margin is so thin.
      - asdff 4y ago
        One of its neighbors will build out rail lines to their borders so they can take the position of lucrative refiner and exporter of a massive lithium reserve that only their infrastructure has good access to.
- Workaccount2 4y ago
  Localised environmental destruction is such a pittance compared to global environmental catastrophe that its comical people even bring it up.
  - Synaesthesia 4y ago
    But it's not an either/or. The mining and transport of metals also releases carbon dioxide. To give an example every day I see convoys of trucks coming from Zambia to South African ports. These should be transported by train! The solution is smaller, more efficient cars, electric bikes, public transport and things like that, not expensive 3 ton Tesla cars.
  - lob_it 4y ago
    Abandonded mines (with the environmental carelessness) and the coming revelation of abandoned oil/gas operations leaking greenhouse gases is just a slice of history on repeat. https://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/abandoned-mine.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/aba... It looks like insufficient bonds and bankruptcy just shifted cost burdens for cleanup to government. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/cleaning-abandoned-coal-mines-important-difficult https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/cleaning-abandoned-coal-mi... https://apnews.com/article/business-mountains-environment-and-nature-bills-bef72619fbd977e22c887df63143b17e https://apnews.com/article/business-mountains-environment-an... Most of the issues with abandonded mines can be confirmed in several countries, but the profits from pump and dump do afford positive GDP (superfund cleanups, etc). The ROI while in operation keeps it going and keeps the "we need renewables now" crowd focused on (someone elses) goal(s) :) The oil and gas industries have already started transfering ownership to smaller companies to bypass obligations, so the cycle continues, with new lithium mining just coming on the heels of two other unresolved climate catastrophes.
    - iso1631 4y ago
      > It looks like insufficient bonds and bankruptcy just shifted cost burdens for cleanup to government. That's the goal of capitalism, privitise the profits, socialise the losses.
- andrewmutz 4y ago
  > The flipside of electrification of vehicles is all the extra metal they need to mine, which is highly environmentally destructive. The environmental destruction of climate change is almost certainly worse
- jeffbee 4y ago
  If you think 10kg of lithium in a Tesla is a lot of extraction, you're never going to believe how much steel and aluminum is in a car.
  - Synaesthesia 4y ago
    Yes that's why we need to move to small, efficient, reliable cars and public transport.
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      100% true. But objections to resource extraction for lithium should just be ignored. There are literally 1000x larger extraction sites for other purposes, especially iron and aluminum, but also table salt, laundry soap, etc. There are nation-sized areas of America that have been scraped flat for oil and gas production. The land sacrificed for lithium extraction is so far down the list of important environmental issues that it can't even be ranked more precisely than "tied for last place".
    - gadflyinyoureye 4y ago
      Keep in mind that you have to move your population to higher density housing. Essentially to really prompt public transit in the US you will have to introduce draconian laws that prevent the creation of single family houses and their future sales. This is if you work from the idea that we only have 9 years left until we can’t prevent the climate damage.
      - surfaceofthesun 4y ago
        Is that necessarily true? I'm a more optimistic about gradual densification. Across the US, we've seen an increase in offices moving to the periphery of cities [1]. I think we keep reinventing mini-cities in the suburbs and will eventually end up with an American-style polycentricity, especially in the South and West [2]. Remote work will increase these pressures. Let's look at the sprawling suburbs of Houston, Texas. These suburbs have necessities covered within 10-15 minutes by car. If you look at this map [3] and this one [4] of a newer neighborhood in Katy, TX (about 30 miles) from downtown Houston, you'll notice a few points: * The schools and stores are already close to the neighborhoods. Biking to the store takes ~12 minutes vs 8 mins driving * It's ~4.5 mi (7km) to the park & ride. Biking takes ~22 mins vs 12 mins by car. * There's several food places, dentist offices, and doctors offices along the way. This neighborhood is following the same developmental pattern as the earlier neighborhoods, which some iterative refinements. Of course there is still some low handing fruit that could be addressed: * This area could add bike lanes whenever they did planned road expansions (which is often) * Add safe bike and pedestrian over/underpasses for the freeways & busy intersections * Connect existing paths that connect neighborhood amenities (i.e. parks, schools) to inter-neighborhood paths * Prevent commercial and industrial site boundaries from harming neighborhood inter-connectivity These fixes would allow an extremely car-dependent area more "transit options" at very little cost. These would not require rezoning, rule changes (i.e. parking minimums), or forced increases in density. The market repeatedly identifies that people want the same things basic things nearby. But the chosen zoning and local car-centric ordinances perpetuate this car centrality. Parking minimums set a floor on store size, which limits store density, which undermines convenient access by any means other than cars. Builders don't know how the commercial sites are going to be used and exactly what-for. Within the neighborhoods, access to locals schools and parks are considered in the planning stages. That's why it's common to see schoolchildren riding their bike or walking home from school in groups -- sometimes with chaperones / crossing guards. It's designed to be convenient, for example adding shortcuts between streets to the school [5]. Making these slightly larger to explicitly accommodate bikes, especially for accessing nearby essentials is not a tough sell. This is largely a consequence of builders' presumptions about homeowners' expectations/preferences. It has taken a while, but these same builders are finally starting to run fiber alongside or instead of coax to these newer neighborhoods -- a convenient selling point post-covid. Regarding densification, there are already apartments [6] built nearby the highway, adjacent to these new neighborhoods. Changes that would require more effort than the points mentioned above include: * Allow duplexes and small apartments to be built within the neighborhoods * Apartments and duplexes [7] are currently like standalone "communities," isolated from the surrounding neighborhoods * Let small shops and offices be built within the neighborhoods, not just immediately adjacent Note that a lot of these zoning changes only require changing builder presumptions. Often they're building in unincorporated areas. You can see an increasing mix of home-types and nearby shopping in very new communities like Bridgeland [9]. There's even a "desired path" emerging behind this Lifetime Fitness [8]. This path isn't even possible in the older neighborhoods. Basically, builders are rezoning large areas (often displacing cows), so better inter-mixing of stores and community centers (for transit stops) can be done ahead of time. That's why I don't think the changes required for more transit are so significant. Transit agencies are already using existing parking (e.g. stores and theaters) for park & rides. To be clear, I personally know people taking park-and-rides to work at Oil & Gas companies because it's more convenient. Expanding access to these facilities, adding some transit interconnections between suburbs, and expanding to important non-office destinations (malls, community colleges, and airports) are low-risk expansion opportunities. Adding compelling optionality can be a means to build support for more expansive projects later on. I think if builders thought adding autonomous trams through their master planned communities would help make them more money, they'd do it in a heartbeat. If you look at a older part of the suburbs (south of I-10), you see the same sidewalks and shortcuts for access to the school. But somehow they haven't extended the walking/biking infrastructure to the shopping center across the street from the high school [10]. Even further south, you see the same thing [11]. Sidewalks will connect you to the park, but it's impossible to that Target from the neighborhood directly adjacent! These shortsighted mistakes are (slowly) being remediated with each new neighborhood built. We can achieve substantial emissions reductions by enabling families to get by owning only 1 vehicle instead of 2, especially if those vehicles are EVs or Plug-in hybrids. Hopefully we'll even see more innovations like shared heating / cooling for whole neighborhoods, like this one in Austin [12], while we aim for ever-lower emissions. --- [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/10/06/moving-offices-from-big-cities-to-the-suburbs-may-be-the-future-of-work/?sh=122120d0312e https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/10/06/moving-off... [2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2399808320951205 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23998083209512... [3] https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Stockdick+Junior+High+School,+Peek+Road,+Katy,+TX/Walmart+Supercenter,+22850+Morton+Ranch+Rd,+Katy,+TX+77449/@29.8261979,-95.7801838,2546m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x8641262b07748d5b:0x1732b23ca79d85fb!2m2!1d-95.7748469!2d29.8434914!1m5!1m1!1s0x864127ba62d02079:0xcb46ae77c9d78b88!2m2!1d-95.767742!2d29.8186406!3e1 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Stockdick+Junior+High+School... [4] https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Stockdick+Junior+High+School,+Peek+Road,+Katy,+TX/Grand+Parkway+Park+%26+Ride,+North+Grand+Parkway,+Katy,+TX/@29.7993773,-95.8201033,11771m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x8641262b07748d5b:0x1732b23ca79d85fb!2m2!1d-95.7748469!2d29.8434914!1m5!1m1!1s0x864126e252e8eee7:0x3b2945e7ec1d46e5!2m2!1d-95.7758785!2d29.7876231!3e1 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Stockdick+Junior+High+School... [5] https://www.google.com/maps/@29.8434568,-95.7820818,121m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@29.8434568,-95.7820818,121m/dat... [6] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Brea+Luxury+Apartments/@29.8281147,-95.7754337,665m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x864127300243d081:0x945a2066f33dc33!8m2!3d29.8217976!4d-95.7698902 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Brea+Luxury+Apartments/@29... [7] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Greenbrae+Ln,+Cinco+Ranch+West,+TX+77494/@29.724099,-95.7861763,242m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x86412111048b5b61:0xd52c0b540f2b8be5!8m2!3d29.7240978!4d-95.7856291 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Greenbrae+Ln,+Cinco+Ranch+... [8] https://www.google.com/maps/@29.9310744,-95.7259749,113m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@29.9310744,-95.7259749,113m/dat... [9] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bridgeland,+Cypress,+TX+77433/@29.94201,-95.7260215,693m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x86412a06400268f9:0x2cdbdea23e7194c!8m2!3d29.9565313!4d-95.7326149 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bridgeland,+Cypress,+TX+77... [10] https://www.google.com/maps/place/LaCenterra+at+Cinco+Ranch/@29.7428751,-95.7762681,642m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x86412127c9426ef9:0xf2df94aa67538eb5!8m2!3d29.7427085!4d-95.7755397 https://www.google.com/maps/place/LaCenterra+at+Cinco+Ranch/... [11] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Meadow+Lake+Park/@29.5962922,-95.6321041,485m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x8640e72cc5bc8293:0xcd5cfcc7b7a3b6aa!8m2!3d29.5958146!4d-95.6306722 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Meadow+Lake+Park/@29.59629... [12] https://www.whispervalleyaustin.com/why-youll-want-to-live-in-a-geothermal-community/ https://www.whispervalleyaustin.com/why-youll-want-to-live-i...
- elsonrodriguez 4y ago
  Lung cancer rates are higher near major roads due to air pollution from cars. Fossil fuel cars basically means every highway is a superfund site. We just don't talk about it. Given the choice between toxic waste at a mine and toxic waste in millions of homes, I'll take the mine.
  - patall 4y ago
    I am optimistic as well but let's not forget the asphalt (major pollutant during construction and repair), breaking and tire degradation that each contribute to this.
  - 0xffff2 4y ago
    How much of that pollution is coming out of the tail pipe vs. off of the brake pads and tires?
    - kibwen 4y ago
      Keep in mind that EVs with their regenerative braking use their brake pads effectively never. Modern EV brake systems actually have to deliberately not use their regenerative braking once in a while in order to exercise the brake pads and make sure that they don't rust into uselessness from utter disuse.
      - aldonius 4y ago
        And on the flip side, EVs tend to be heavier and therefore work their tyres even harder.
      - iancmceachern 4y ago
        That tire dust though
    - elsonrodriguez 4y ago
      It’s also important to wonder how much of the pollution is leaked fluids and burnt motor oil. A while back I saw a video on youtube of someone mining road dust for platinum of all things. Evs will be a likely improvement for the health of those near roads.
- it_citizen 4y ago
  Do you have a reliable source for the lack of supply? Ideally with a detailed breakdown for each potentially problematic material. I keep seeing claims that go both way on that matter. But none were backed by serious research.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    Ultimately, scarcity is determined by cost. Here's the cost history: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium The cathode accounts for just over half a battery's cost: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-of-an-ev-battery-cell/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-of-a...
  - throwanapple 4y ago
    I came across this before: - The Mining of Minerals and the Limits to Growth (https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/16_2021.pdf https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/16_2021.pdf)
    - beefield 4y ago
      Just to note, that is making pretty questionable assumptions to get to the conclusion that there are not enough metals. For example, they assume that there is a set need of cobalt/nickel per kWh of lithium batteries, which obviously is completely false (see LFP chemistry). They also use 2018 reserves as the yardstick, completely oblivious to the fact that already by 2021 the lithium reserves had increased compared to 2018 by more than what their own numbers say a generation of EVs need.
  - cscharenberg 4y ago
    In 8th grade I read a book on Zinc and it projected the world's supply would run out by ~1985. The book was published in like 1970 and I was reading it in 1994. Since then I've had a big of skepticism of "it's running out" when it comes to raw industrial materials.
- keewee7 4y ago
  >highly environmentally destructive Is there any reliable information on this?
- beefield 4y ago
  > We don't even have the metal supplies to fully electrify car production, Okay, I need to say that you are not even wrong. Yep, I am slightly irritated on this blatantly false claim that has started popping up. If you think your claim has any merit, could you please provid the metal that you think we are lacking, estimat the amount needed and compare that amoun to the amount in earth's crust. If you get anything but infinitesmally small needs compared to what here is, please explain why that metal can't be replaced.
savoytruffle 4y ago
Australia sure has a lot of empty land. Must be something down in there.
- adaml_623 4y ago
  Terra Nullius right cobber
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  I always think of it as the land of snakes, spiders and salt-water crocodiles. However, this reputation may be slightly exaggerated: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/why-does-australia-have-some-of-the-deadliest-creatures-on-earth https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/why-does-austr...
olivermarks 4y ago
Rare earth mineral and lithium extraction is going to be the greatest disaster the world has ever seen because ocean floors will be plundered - the damage to the planet whether at sea or on land will be unprecedented. It is surreal how naive people are about both this plus the huge lithium batteries high temperature fire risks and associated high voltage electrocution. There is a reason we went from high pressure steam power to a lower pressure oil and gas based economy after the Victorian era.
- AnotherGoodName 4y ago
  The alternative is gas. 100x more energy dense than lithium and it hasn't been great for the environment to say the least.
  - olivermarks 4y ago
    Chile is already being ruined. Pay close attention to the lithium triangle as it expands and the state the planet is left in after being mined https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/01/south-america-s-lithium-fields-reveal-the-dark-side-of-our-electric-future https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/01/south-america-s-li... Why is lithium extraction bad for the environment? Any type of resource extraction is harmful to the planet. This is because removing these raw materials can result in soil degradation, water shortages, biodiversity loss, damage to ecosystem functions and an increase in global warming. But when we think of extraction, we think of fossil fuels like coal and gas. Unfortunately, lithium also falls under the same umbrella, despite paving the way for an electric future.. Lithium can be described as the non-renewable mineral that makes renewable energy possible - often touted as the next oil.
    - VBprogrammer 4y ago
      But it isn't lost or scattered into the atmosphere. It's kept well contained in a nice container which can be moved around easily with a forklift. The metals can be reprocessed and turned back into more batteries. Even first generation Leaf batteries are still being sold for reasonable sums of money so we haven't even reached the stage were we are recycling them in ernest yet.
rr808 4y ago
Australia is like the Saudi Arabia of mining. Such a big continent with very few people. Politically stable and smart enough to exploit itself and keep most of the profits. The lucky country indeed.
- dalyons 4y ago
  Mmm idk about keeping most of the profits - we could have done so much more in that regard over the last two decades. Missed opportunity to create something like Norway’s national oil wealth fund. Instead of offshoring most of the gains.
  - spoonalious 4y ago
    There is one: https://www.futurefund.gov.au/ https://www.futurefund.gov.au/
    - hyperionplays 4y ago
      it got raided by successive governments and the royalties we charge are tiny relative to other nations. For example: Australian Gas consumers pay more to use natural gas in Australia, than people in Japan, using Australian LNG.
      - consumer451 4y ago
        > For example: Australian Gas consumers pay more to use natural gas in Australia, than people in Japan, using Australian LNG. Would it be fair to call that blatant corruption, or could some argument be made that it is not?
        fjdiccf 4y ago
        https://www.thejuicemedia.com/derp/ https://www.thejuicemedia.com/derp/ Yes.
        0xy 4y ago
photochemsyn 4y ago
This is a surprisingly comprehensive and well-written article, worth reading. For example, the authors note that the majority of Australia's lithium ore is refined to metal in China, although there's a push for local Australian refining. For more details on the current state of lithium battery production globally, this is good: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31850-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31850-y (Jul 2022) "Tracing the origin of lithium in Li-ion batteries using lithium isotopes", Desaulty et al. This in particular is interesting, using a blockchain to track sourcing: > "Major car manufacturers like BMW group, Tesla, and Volvo recently announced that they will increase the transparency of their supply chains for EV batteries, and ensure responsible and sustainable sourcing of raw materials. Some companies (BASF, Volkswagen, Fairphone) have started a partnership for sustainable lithium mining in Chile. Carmakers also explore the usefulness of blockchains for improving the scrutiny of supply chains. A blockchain is the control of chain-of-custody systems, based on the shipping documentation that is included in online databases, to allow real-time raw materials tracking and electronic tagging. However, document-based traceability systems can be falsified, and must be independently controlled and audited to provide credibility."
- SnowHill9902 4y ago
  How does “blockchain” prevent a document from being falsified?
  - YeBanKo 4y ago
    Blockchain allows you to to trace every transaction to its source and prevent double spend, if it is public. It does not have to be decentralized though, can be a closed system where every node has to go through a certification. I assume that a certified mining facility would be closely watched to ensure that the amount of lithium they mine matches what the sign for in transactions. And on the output, battery manufacturers are required only buy lithium they can trace to a certified mine and sign every device the make, including how much lithium it contains. If the ledger is public, anyone can verify that input=output + balance. It is not going to be decentralized, but it can be publicly verifiable.
samatman 4y ago
I wish Australia the best of luck in escaping the resource curse, by moving up the value chain. Relative to China. I'd like this post to be more sarcastic than it is, really, I would.
- 8ytecoder 4y ago
  It’s not a uniquely Australian issue. India also exports a lot of iron ore to China to be made into steel and sold back. This was also how imperialism was funded - take raw materials (cotton) and sell back finished goods (clothes).
- acchow 4y ago
  > resource curse The service sector makes up 62% of the Australian economy.
  - robocat 4y ago
    Australia’s service sector makes up ~20% of exports - the resource curse is related to import/export, not internal measures. Total exports 2019-20: 383G$ goods, 92.3G$ services https://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/trade-and-investment/trade-and-investment-glance-2021 https://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/trade-and-investment/tr...
    - acchow 4y ago
      Wikipedia has an articel on the Resource Curse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse It is about having "less economic growth, less democracy, or worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources". Australia is an advanced services based economy. No one would consider them as an example of a country under a "resource curse" By your measure, Japan also has a resource curse because services makes up 22% of exports?
      - samatman 4y ago
        No, Japan makes stuff.
hyperionplays 4y ago
Shame Australian's see little to no benefit, all of the profits are off shored and there are little royalties paid back to the Australian people.
- gizajob 4y ago
  But all Australians are free to go and earn $200,000pa working in the mines in WA...
  - llamaLord 4y ago
    Except nobody actually works in those mines, there’ they’re effectively entirely automated. There were jobs around in the 2010’s during a mining “construction” boom, but once the mines were built 90% of the jobs went too.
    - ehnto 4y ago
      Even the trains have been automated, which I assume has been historically difficult only because of unions and safety regulations. A bit easier to pull off in the remote outback I suspect.
- doorman2 4y ago
  It's not like they're giving the lithium away for free?
  - asdff 4y ago
    After you account for the environmental costs, they are probably paying people to remove it from their country
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - doorman2 4y ago
      Isn't that true of almost everything humans do? When I get a tank of gas, I'm basically paying to have a bigger problem in the future. I do so because it solves a problem I have in the present.
varispeed 4y ago
Why lithium is not considered in the same category as fossil fuels? I mean, it is technically used as a fuel that you need to keep "energising" and it becomes "spent" after nth "energising'. Whereas e.g. diesel comes "pre-charged" and is "spent" after first use? I read conflicting articles which one is more environment friendly.
- dalyons 4y ago
  Because it doesn’t become “spent”, you can just recycle it back into new batteries at nearly 100% recovery.
  - varispeed 4y ago
    How the process of recycling looks like in terms of energy needed to perform it, use of chemicals like solvents in the process - can these be recovered too? I see I am being downvoted. It's like walking on eggshells asking these questions these days.
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
      Alright, I’ll foolishly take a stab. It feels that you are arguing in bad faith. Because transitioning to lithium/electrification is not perfect, we should just shutter the idea entirely? Will it take more energy/metal/resource extraction to transition away from fossil fuels? Yes. Will the be some amount of novel environmental damage (different from what happens for the petroleum economy)? Yes. Long term does it seem the best possible option available to humanity? Yes.
- advisedwang 4y ago
  Lithium car batteries can be cycled 1500-2000 times. Fossil fuels get 1 cycle. 3 orders of magnitude is a categorical difference. [1] https://www.midtronics.com/blog/do-electric-car-ev-batteries-degrade-over-time/ https://www.midtronics.com/blog/do-electric-car-ev-batteries...
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roenxi 4y ago
The issue with lithium is it is effectively illegal to process in most of the world that knows how to do it. The subtext in this article is that Australia is a major lithium producer ... because it has easy access to the Chinese refining pipeline which refines the cheap and dirty way. If it were practical to refine lithium in the cheap way we know how, then countries with large lithium reserves (US & Europe) would be large lithium suppliers. > The issues with lithium mining in Australia are no different to those experienced in the industry more broadly: open-cut mining carves deep scars in the landscape, often within ecosystems that are already under pressure This is one of those "we just don't like living in an industrial society" complaints that NIMBYs come up with. It doesn't say anything and it is wilfully ignorant of the practicalities of maintaining the complex and raw-material-hungry world we live in. If you want products made using materials, you have to extract those materials. The environmental damage of open pit mining operations is nothing compared to the environmental damage and visual pollution of a large city. And you know what? Almost everyone chooses to live in a city. The costs are well worth it. There are no alternatives. If you restrict open pit mining, you will not have products made of metal. We need industrial processes to maintain 21st century living standards.
- llamaLord 4y ago
  As an Australian, you’re forgetting one really key part of the puzzle. Australia is a FUCKING ENORMOUS lump of mineral rich dust. The country is literally tinted red when viewed from space because of all the iron in our dry, desolate, empty-ass country. There is one, and I do mean ONE, advantage to being a developed western country that is also fucking empty and inhospitable. All the NIMBY’s are atleast 1000km away from your mine… You could put hundreds of open cut mines all over WA, SA, NT, and nobody would even notice because there’s fuckin-nuthin out there.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    We could, but that is a lot less economic. Open pit mines are for bulk commodities and if you put them in the middle of nowhere then the transport costs get extreme. It makes more sense to put them distant but proximate to an existing train line or city. Somewhere like the Pilbara is a bit of an exception because there are 300m high blocks of iron, so sure, we can afford to build a few new tracks. And Europe/the US/Africa/Asia aren't exactly small places. All the continents are big and an open cut mine is actually pretty small compared to the amount of land we put aside for, say, farming. The Earth isn't short of spare earth.

126 points by hhs 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

The flipside of electrification of vehicles is all the extra metal they need to mine, which is highly environmentally destructive. We don't even have the metal supplies to fully electrify car production, not even close, although I see South America is going to ramp up production substantially soon.

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
Afghanistan has something like $1T worth of lithium reserves. Who gets access and how it ends up being exploited remains to be seen but that country is not going to become some forgotten backwater anytime soon.
- Victerius 4y ago
  Afghanistan is landlocked. To its north is Russia. To its east is China. To its south are Pakistan and India. And to its west is Iran. Fun neighborhood. Nothing could go wrong with the above countries fighting for their share of Afghanistan's mineral resources.
  - newyankee 4y ago
    India does not share land border with Afghanistan , although Afg and Indian people apparently share warm relations (not Taliban)
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      > India does not share land border with Afghanistan I'm guessing India would claim that it does. Pakistan would argue otherwise.
      - devoutsalsa 4y ago
        Reading about the line of control that splits Kashmir is pretty interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karachi_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karachi_Agreement
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    >Afghanistan is landlocked Which is not that great if you intend to export raw bulk goods (e.g. ore). You really want to have ports for that. The extra few percent efficiency of ship vs rail makes a huge difference because margin is so thin.
    - asdff 4y ago
      One of its neighbors will build out rail lines to their borders so they can take the position of lucrative refiner and exporter of a massive lithium reserve that only their infrastructure has good access to.
Workaccount2 4y ago
Localised environmental destruction is such a pittance compared to global environmental catastrophe that its comical people even bring it up.
- Synaesthesia 4y ago
  But it's not an either/or. The mining and transport of metals also releases carbon dioxide. To give an example every day I see convoys of trucks coming from Zambia to South African ports. These should be transported by train! The solution is smaller, more efficient cars, electric bikes, public transport and things like that, not expensive 3 ton Tesla cars.
- lob_it 4y ago
  Abandonded mines (with the environmental carelessness) and the coming revelation of abandoned oil/gas operations leaking greenhouse gases is just a slice of history on repeat. https://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/abandoned-mine.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/aba... It looks like insufficient bonds and bankruptcy just shifted cost burdens for cleanup to government. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/cleaning-abandoned-coal-mines-important-difficult https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/cleaning-abandoned-coal-mi... https://apnews.com/article/business-mountains-environment-and-nature-bills-bef72619fbd977e22c887df63143b17e https://apnews.com/article/business-mountains-environment-an... Most of the issues with abandonded mines can be confirmed in several countries, but the profits from pump and dump do afford positive GDP (superfund cleanups, etc). The ROI while in operation keeps it going and keeps the "we need renewables now" crowd focused on (someone elses) goal(s) :) The oil and gas industries have already started transfering ownership to smaller companies to bypass obligations, so the cycle continues, with new lithium mining just coming on the heels of two other unresolved climate catastrophes.
  - iso1631 4y ago
    > It looks like insufficient bonds and bankruptcy just shifted cost burdens for cleanup to government. That's the goal of capitalism, privitise the profits, socialise the losses.
andrewmutz 4y ago
> The flipside of electrification of vehicles is all the extra metal they need to mine, which is highly environmentally destructive. The environmental destruction of climate change is almost certainly worse
jeffbee 4y ago
If you think 10kg of lithium in a Tesla is a lot of extraction, you're never going to believe how much steel and aluminum is in a car.
- Synaesthesia 4y ago
  Yes that's why we need to move to small, efficient, reliable cars and public transport.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    100% true. But objections to resource extraction for lithium should just be ignored. There are literally 1000x larger extraction sites for other purposes, especially iron and aluminum, but also table salt, laundry soap, etc. There are nation-sized areas of America that have been scraped flat for oil and gas production. The land sacrificed for lithium extraction is so far down the list of important environmental issues that it can't even be ranked more precisely than "tied for last place".
  - gadflyinyoureye 4y ago
    Keep in mind that you have to move your population to higher density housing. Essentially to really prompt public transit in the US you will have to introduce draconian laws that prevent the creation of single family houses and their future sales. This is if you work from the idea that we only have 9 years left until we can’t prevent the climate damage.
    - surfaceofthesun 4y ago
      Is that necessarily true? I'm a more optimistic about gradual densification. Across the US, we've seen an increase in offices moving to the periphery of cities [1]. I think we keep reinventing mini-cities in the suburbs and will eventually end up with an American-style polycentricity, especially in the South and West [2]. Remote work will increase these pressures. Let's look at the sprawling suburbs of Houston, Texas. These suburbs have necessities covered within 10-15 minutes by car. If you look at this map [3] and this one [4] of a newer neighborhood in Katy, TX (about 30 miles) from downtown Houston, you'll notice a few points: * The schools and stores are already close to the neighborhoods. Biking to the store takes ~12 minutes vs 8 mins driving * It's ~4.5 mi (7km) to the park & ride. Biking takes ~22 mins vs 12 mins by car. * There's several food places, dentist offices, and doctors offices along the way. This neighborhood is following the same developmental pattern as the earlier neighborhoods, which some iterative refinements. Of course there is still some low handing fruit that could be addressed: * This area could add bike lanes whenever they did planned road expansions (which is often) * Add safe bike and pedestrian over/underpasses for the freeways & busy intersections * Connect existing paths that connect neighborhood amenities (i.e. parks, schools) to inter-neighborhood paths * Prevent commercial and industrial site boundaries from harming neighborhood inter-connectivity These fixes would allow an extremely car-dependent area more "transit options" at very little cost. These would not require rezoning, rule changes (i.e. parking minimums), or forced increases in density. The market repeatedly identifies that people want the same things basic things nearby. But the chosen zoning and local car-centric ordinances perpetuate this car centrality. Parking minimums set a floor on store size, which limits store density, which undermines convenient access by any means other than cars. Builders don't know how the commercial sites are going to be used and exactly what-for. Within the neighborhoods, access to locals schools and parks are considered in the planning stages. That's why it's common to see schoolchildren riding their bike or walking home from school in groups -- sometimes with chaperones / crossing guards. It's designed to be convenient, for example adding shortcuts between streets to the school [5]. Making these slightly larger to explicitly accommodate bikes, especially for accessing nearby essentials is not a tough sell. This is largely a consequence of builders' presumptions about homeowners' expectations/preferences. It has taken a while, but these same builders are finally starting to run fiber alongside or instead of coax to these newer neighborhoods -- a convenient selling point post-covid. Regarding densification, there are already apartments [6] built nearby the highway, adjacent to these new neighborhoods. Changes that would require more effort than the points mentioned above include: * Allow duplexes and small apartments to be built within the neighborhoods * Apartments and duplexes [7] are currently like standalone "communities," isolated from the surrounding neighborhoods * Let small shops and offices be built within the neighborhoods, not just immediately adjacent Note that a lot of these zoning changes only require changing builder presumptions. Often they're building in unincorporated areas. You can see an increasing mix of home-types and nearby shopping in very new communities like Bridgeland [9]. There's even a "desired path" emerging behind this Lifetime Fitness [8]. This path isn't even possible in the older neighborhoods. Basically, builders are rezoning large areas (often displacing cows), so better inter-mixing of stores and community centers (for transit stops) can be done ahead of time. That's why I don't think the changes required for more transit are so significant. Transit agencies are already using existing parking (e.g. stores and theaters) for park & rides. To be clear, I personally know people taking park-and-rides to work at Oil & Gas companies because it's more convenient. Expanding access to these facilities, adding some transit interconnections between suburbs, and expanding to important non-office destinations (malls, community colleges, and airports) are low-risk expansion opportunities. Adding compelling optionality can be a means to build support for more expansive projects later on. I think if builders thought adding autonomous trams through their master planned communities would help make them more money, they'd do it in a heartbeat. If you look at a older part of the suburbs (south of I-10), you see the same sidewalks and shortcuts for access to the school. But somehow they haven't extended the walking/biking infrastructure to the shopping center across the street from the high school [10]. Even further south, you see the same thing [11]. Sidewalks will connect you to the park, but it's impossible to that Target from the neighborhood directly adjacent! These shortsighted mistakes are (slowly) being remediated with each new neighborhood built. We can achieve substantial emissions reductions by enabling families to get by owning only 1 vehicle instead of 2, especially if those vehicles are EVs or Plug-in hybrids. Hopefully we'll even see more innovations like shared heating / cooling for whole neighborhoods, like this one in Austin [12], while we aim for ever-lower emissions. --- [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/10/06/moving-offices-from-big-cities-to-the-suburbs-may-be-the-future-of-work/?sh=122120d0312e https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/10/06/moving-off... [2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2399808320951205 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23998083209512... [3] https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Stockdick+Junior+High+School,+Peek+Road,+Katy,+TX/Walmart+Supercenter,+22850+Morton+Ranch+Rd,+Katy,+TX+77449/@29.8261979,-95.7801838,2546m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x8641262b07748d5b:0x1732b23ca79d85fb!2m2!1d-95.7748469!2d29.8434914!1m5!1m1!1s0x864127ba62d02079:0xcb46ae77c9d78b88!2m2!1d-95.767742!2d29.8186406!3e1 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Stockdick+Junior+High+School... [4] https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Stockdick+Junior+High+School,+Peek+Road,+Katy,+TX/Grand+Parkway+Park+%26+Ride,+North+Grand+Parkway,+Katy,+TX/@29.7993773,-95.8201033,11771m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x8641262b07748d5b:0x1732b23ca79d85fb!2m2!1d-95.7748469!2d29.8434914!1m5!1m1!1s0x864126e252e8eee7:0x3b2945e7ec1d46e5!2m2!1d-95.7758785!2d29.7876231!3e1 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Stockdick+Junior+High+School... [5] https://www.google.com/maps/@29.8434568,-95.7820818,121m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@29.8434568,-95.7820818,121m/dat... [6] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Brea+Luxury+Apartments/@29.8281147,-95.7754337,665m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x864127300243d081:0x945a2066f33dc33!8m2!3d29.8217976!4d-95.7698902 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Brea+Luxury+Apartments/@29... [7] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Greenbrae+Ln,+Cinco+Ranch+West,+TX+77494/@29.724099,-95.7861763,242m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x86412111048b5b61:0xd52c0b540f2b8be5!8m2!3d29.7240978!4d-95.7856291 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Greenbrae+Ln,+Cinco+Ranch+... [8] https://www.google.com/maps/@29.9310744,-95.7259749,113m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@29.9310744,-95.7259749,113m/dat... [9] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bridgeland,+Cypress,+TX+77433/@29.94201,-95.7260215,693m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x86412a06400268f9:0x2cdbdea23e7194c!8m2!3d29.9565313!4d-95.7326149 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bridgeland,+Cypress,+TX+77... [10] https://www.google.com/maps/place/LaCenterra+at+Cinco+Ranch/@29.7428751,-95.7762681,642m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x86412127c9426ef9:0xf2df94aa67538eb5!8m2!3d29.7427085!4d-95.7755397 https://www.google.com/maps/place/LaCenterra+at+Cinco+Ranch/... [11] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Meadow+Lake+Park/@29.5962922,-95.6321041,485m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x8640e72cc5bc8293:0xcd5cfcc7b7a3b6aa!8m2!3d29.5958146!4d-95.6306722 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Meadow+Lake+Park/@29.59629... [12] https://www.whispervalleyaustin.com/why-youll-want-to-live-in-a-geothermal-community/ https://www.whispervalleyaustin.com/why-youll-want-to-live-i...
elsonrodriguez 4y ago
Lung cancer rates are higher near major roads due to air pollution from cars. Fossil fuel cars basically means every highway is a superfund site. We just don't talk about it. Given the choice between toxic waste at a mine and toxic waste in millions of homes, I'll take the mine.
- patall 4y ago
  I am optimistic as well but let's not forget the asphalt (major pollutant during construction and repair), breaking and tire degradation that each contribute to this.
- 0xffff2 4y ago
  How much of that pollution is coming out of the tail pipe vs. off of the brake pads and tires?
  - kibwen 4y ago
    Keep in mind that EVs with their regenerative braking use their brake pads effectively never. Modern EV brake systems actually have to deliberately not use their regenerative braking once in a while in order to exercise the brake pads and make sure that they don't rust into uselessness from utter disuse.
    - aldonius 4y ago
      And on the flip side, EVs tend to be heavier and therefore work their tyres even harder.
    - iancmceachern 4y ago
      That tire dust though
  - elsonrodriguez 4y ago
    It’s also important to wonder how much of the pollution is leaked fluids and burnt motor oil. A while back I saw a video on youtube of someone mining road dust for platinum of all things. Evs will be a likely improvement for the health of those near roads.
it_citizen 4y ago
Do you have a reliable source for the lack of supply? Ideally with a detailed breakdown for each potentially problematic material. I keep seeing claims that go both way on that matter. But none were backed by serious research.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  Ultimately, scarcity is determined by cost. Here's the cost history: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium The cathode accounts for just over half a battery's cost: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-of-an-ev-battery-cell/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-of-a...
- throwanapple 4y ago
  I came across this before: - The Mining of Minerals and the Limits to Growth (https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/16_2021.pdf https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/16_2021.pdf)
  - beefield 4y ago
    Just to note, that is making pretty questionable assumptions to get to the conclusion that there are not enough metals. For example, they assume that there is a set need of cobalt/nickel per kWh of lithium batteries, which obviously is completely false (see LFP chemistry). They also use 2018 reserves as the yardstick, completely oblivious to the fact that already by 2021 the lithium reserves had increased compared to 2018 by more than what their own numbers say a generation of EVs need.
- cscharenberg 4y ago
  In 8th grade I read a book on Zinc and it projected the world's supply would run out by ~1985. The book was published in like 1970 and I was reading it in 1994. Since then I've had a big of skepticism of "it's running out" when it comes to raw industrial materials.
keewee7 4y ago
>highly environmentally destructive Is there any reliable information on this?
beefield 4y ago
> We don't even have the metal supplies to fully electrify car production, Okay, I need to say that you are not even wrong. Yep, I am slightly irritated on this blatantly false claim that has started popping up. If you think your claim has any merit, could you please provid the metal that you think we are lacking, estimat the amount needed and compare that amoun to the amount in earth's crust. If you get anything but infinitesmally small needs compared to what here is, please explain why that metal can't be replaced.

savoytruffle 4y ago

Australia sure has a lot of empty land. Must be something down in there.

adaml_623 4y ago
Terra Nullius right cobber
photochemsyn 4y ago
I always think of it as the land of snakes, spiders and salt-water crocodiles. However, this reputation may be slightly exaggerated: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/why-does-australia-have-some-of-the-deadliest-creatures-on-earth https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/why-does-austr...

olivermarks 4y ago

Rare earth mineral and lithium extraction is going to be the greatest disaster the world has ever seen because ocean floors will be plundered - the damage to the planet whether at sea or on land will be unprecedented. It is surreal how naive people are about both this plus the huge lithium batteries high temperature fire risks and associated high voltage electrocution. There is a reason we went from high pressure steam power to a lower pressure oil and gas based economy after the Victorian era.

AnotherGoodName 4y ago
The alternative is gas. 100x more energy dense than lithium and it hasn't been great for the environment to say the least.
- olivermarks 4y ago
  Chile is already being ruined. Pay close attention to the lithium triangle as it expands and the state the planet is left in after being mined https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/01/south-america-s-lithium-fields-reveal-the-dark-side-of-our-electric-future https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/01/south-america-s-li... Why is lithium extraction bad for the environment? Any type of resource extraction is harmful to the planet. This is because removing these raw materials can result in soil degradation, water shortages, biodiversity loss, damage to ecosystem functions and an increase in global warming. But when we think of extraction, we think of fossil fuels like coal and gas. Unfortunately, lithium also falls under the same umbrella, despite paving the way for an electric future.. Lithium can be described as the non-renewable mineral that makes renewable energy possible - often touted as the next oil.
  - VBprogrammer 4y ago
    But it isn't lost or scattered into the atmosphere. It's kept well contained in a nice container which can be moved around easily with a forklift. The metals can be reprocessed and turned back into more batteries. Even first generation Leaf batteries are still being sold for reasonable sums of money so we haven't even reached the stage were we are recycling them in ernest yet.

rr808 4y ago

Australia is like the Saudi Arabia of mining. Such a big continent with very few people. Politically stable and smart enough to exploit itself and keep most of the profits. The lucky country indeed.

dalyons 4y ago
Mmm idk about keeping most of the profits - we could have done so much more in that regard over the last two decades. Missed opportunity to create something like Norway’s national oil wealth fund. Instead of offshoring most of the gains.
- spoonalious 4y ago
  There is one: https://www.futurefund.gov.au/ https://www.futurefund.gov.au/
  - hyperionplays 4y ago
    it got raided by successive governments and the royalties we charge are tiny relative to other nations. For example: Australian Gas consumers pay more to use natural gas in Australia, than people in Japan, using Australian LNG.
    - consumer451 4y ago
      > For example: Australian Gas consumers pay more to use natural gas in Australia, than people in Japan, using Australian LNG. Would it be fair to call that blatant corruption, or could some argument be made that it is not?
      - fjdiccf 4y ago
        https://www.thejuicemedia.com/derp/ https://www.thejuicemedia.com/derp/ Yes.
      - 0xy 4y ago

photochemsyn 4y ago

This is a surprisingly comprehensive and well-written article, worth reading. For example, the authors note that the majority of Australia's lithium ore is refined to metal in China, although there's a push for local Australian refining. For more details on the current state of lithium battery production globally, this is good: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31850-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31850-y (Jul 2022) "Tracing the origin of lithium in Li-ion batteries using lithium isotopes", Desaulty et al. This in particular is interesting, using a blockchain to track sourcing: > "Major car manufacturers like BMW group, Tesla, and Volvo recently announced that they will increase the transparency of their supply chains for EV batteries, and ensure responsible and sustainable sourcing of raw materials. Some companies (BASF, Volkswagen, Fairphone) have started a partnership for sustainable lithium mining in Chile. Carmakers also explore the usefulness of blockchains for improving the scrutiny of supply chains. A blockchain is the control of chain-of-custody systems, based on the shipping documentation that is included in online databases, to allow real-time raw materials tracking and electronic tagging. However, document-based traceability systems can be falsified, and must be independently controlled and audited to provide credibility."

SnowHill9902 4y ago
How does “blockchain” prevent a document from being falsified?
- YeBanKo 4y ago
  Blockchain allows you to to trace every transaction to its source and prevent double spend, if it is public. It does not have to be decentralized though, can be a closed system where every node has to go through a certification. I assume that a certified mining facility would be closely watched to ensure that the amount of lithium they mine matches what the sign for in transactions. And on the output, battery manufacturers are required only buy lithium they can trace to a certified mine and sign every device the make, including how much lithium it contains. If the ledger is public, anyone can verify that input=output + balance. It is not going to be decentralized, but it can be publicly verifiable.

samatman 4y ago

I wish Australia the best of luck in escaping the resource curse, by moving up the value chain. Relative to China. I'd like this post to be more sarcastic than it is, really, I would.

8ytecoder 4y ago
It’s not a uniquely Australian issue. India also exports a lot of iron ore to China to be made into steel and sold back. This was also how imperialism was funded - take raw materials (cotton) and sell back finished goods (clothes).
acchow 4y ago
> resource curse The service sector makes up 62% of the Australian economy.
- robocat 4y ago
  Australia’s service sector makes up ~20% of exports - the resource curse is related to import/export, not internal measures. Total exports 2019-20: 383G$ goods, 92.3G$ services https://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/trade-and-investment/trade-and-investment-glance-2021 https://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/trade-and-investment/tr...
  - acchow 4y ago
    Wikipedia has an articel on the Resource Curse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse It is about having "less economic growth, less democracy, or worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources". Australia is an advanced services based economy. No one would consider them as an example of a country under a "resource curse" By your measure, Japan also has a resource curse because services makes up 22% of exports?
    - samatman 4y ago
      No, Japan makes stuff.

hyperionplays 4y ago

Shame Australian's see little to no benefit, all of the profits are off shored and there are little royalties paid back to the Australian people.

gizajob 4y ago
But all Australians are free to go and earn $200,000pa working in the mines in WA...
- llamaLord 4y ago
  Except nobody actually works in those mines, there’ they’re effectively entirely automated. There were jobs around in the 2010’s during a mining “construction” boom, but once the mines were built 90% of the jobs went too.
  - ehnto 4y ago
    Even the trains have been automated, which I assume has been historically difficult only because of unions and safety regulations. A bit easier to pull off in the remote outback I suspect.
doorman2 4y ago
It's not like they're giving the lithium away for free?
- asdff 4y ago
  After you account for the environmental costs, they are probably paying people to remove it from their country
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - doorman2 4y ago
    Isn't that true of almost everything humans do? When I get a tank of gas, I'm basically paying to have a bigger problem in the future. I do so because it solves a problem I have in the present.

varispeed 4y ago

Why lithium is not considered in the same category as fossil fuels? I mean, it is technically used as a fuel that you need to keep "energising" and it becomes "spent" after nth "energising'. Whereas e.g. diesel comes "pre-charged" and is "spent" after first use? I read conflicting articles which one is more environment friendly.

dalyons 4y ago
Because it doesn’t become “spent”, you can just recycle it back into new batteries at nearly 100% recovery.
- varispeed 4y ago
  How the process of recycling looks like in terms of energy needed to perform it, use of chemicals like solvents in the process - can these be recovered too? I see I am being downvoted. It's like walking on eggshells asking these questions these days.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
    Alright, I’ll foolishly take a stab. It feels that you are arguing in bad faith. Because transitioning to lithium/electrification is not perfect, we should just shutter the idea entirely? Will it take more energy/metal/resource extraction to transition away from fossil fuels? Yes. Will the be some amount of novel environmental damage (different from what happens for the petroleum economy)? Yes. Long term does it seem the best possible option available to humanity? Yes.
advisedwang 4y ago
Lithium car batteries can be cycled 1500-2000 times. Fossil fuels get 1 cycle. 3 orders of magnitude is a categorical difference. [1] https://www.midtronics.com/blog/do-electric-car-ev-batteries-degrade-over-time/ https://www.midtronics.com/blog/do-electric-car-ev-batteries...
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roenxi 4y ago

The issue with lithium is it is effectively illegal to process in most of the world that knows how to do it. The subtext in this article is that Australia is a major lithium producer ... because it has easy access to the Chinese refining pipeline which refines the cheap and dirty way. If it were practical to refine lithium in the cheap way we know how, then countries with large lithium reserves (US & Europe) would be large lithium suppliers. > The issues with lithium mining in Australia are no different to those experienced in the industry more broadly: open-cut mining carves deep scars in the landscape, often within ecosystems that are already under pressure This is one of those "we just don't like living in an industrial society" complaints that NIMBYs come up with. It doesn't say anything and it is wilfully ignorant of the practicalities of maintaining the complex and raw-material-hungry world we live in. If you want products made using materials, you have to extract those materials. The environmental damage of open pit mining operations is nothing compared to the environmental damage and visual pollution of a large city. And you know what? Almost everyone chooses to live in a city. The costs are well worth it. There are no alternatives. If you restrict open pit mining, you will not have products made of metal. We need industrial processes to maintain 21st century living standards.

llamaLord 4y ago
As an Australian, you’re forgetting one really key part of the puzzle. Australia is a FUCKING ENORMOUS lump of mineral rich dust. The country is literally tinted red when viewed from space because of all the iron in our dry, desolate, empty-ass country. There is one, and I do mean ONE, advantage to being a developed western country that is also fucking empty and inhospitable. All the NIMBY’s are atleast 1000km away from your mine… You could put hundreds of open cut mines all over WA, SA, NT, and nobody would even notice because there’s fuckin-nuthin out there.
- roenxi 4y ago
  We could, but that is a lot less economic. Open pit mines are for bulk commodities and if you put them in the middle of nowhere then the transport costs get extreme. It makes more sense to put them distant but proximate to an existing train line or city. Somewhere like the Pilbara is a bit of an exception because there are 300m high blocks of iron, so sure, we can afford to build a few new tracks. And Europe/the US/Africa/Asia aren't exactly small places. All the continents are big and an open cut mine is actually pretty small compared to the amount of land we put aside for, say, farming. The Earth isn't short of spare earth.