The growth in electric car sales is great news for the fight against climate change, but the extraction of the minerals used in their batteries poses serious risks to the environment.
According to the International Energy Agency, global consumers are gearing up for electric cars, with sales expected to jump from 3 million vehicles in 2017 to 23 million in 2030.
Similar growth is expected for rechargeable batteries, with the cathode market forecast to grow by 2.5% in 2018. the positive electrode of the lithium ion batteryor, will reach $58 billion in 2024, up from an estimated $7 billion in 2018.
While this is great news for efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a report UNCTAD says the expected boom in the mining of raw materials used to make rechargeable batteries raises environmental and social concerns that need to be urgently addressed.
«Most consumers only know the “clean” aspects of electric vehicles"says Pamela Coke-Hamilton, director of international trade at UNCTAD. "The dirty aspects of the production process are out of sight."
This is because, although most consumers live in industrialized countries, Most raw materials are concentrated in a few developing countries.
One of the driest regions in the world.
More than half of the world's lithium resources are found beneath salt flats in the Andean regions of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, where quinoa farmers and indigenous llama herders must now compete with miners for water in one of the driest regions in the world.
Lithium extraction requires large amounts of groundwater to pump brines from drilled wells, with some estimates showing that nearly 2 million liters of water are needed to produce one tonne of lithium.
On Chile's Salar de Atacama, lithium and other mining activities consumed 65% of the water, causing groundwater depletion, soil contamination and other forms of environmental degradation, forcing local communities to abandon ancestral settlements.
"As lithium demand increases and production is tapped from deeper rock mines and brines, the challenges of mitigating environmental risk will increase," the report says.
Artisanal mining in the Congo
Nearly 50% of the world's cobalt reserves are located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which accounts for more than two-thirds of global cobalt production.
About 20% of cobalt from the Central African nation comes from artisanal mines, where some 40,000 children work in extremely dangerous conditions, according to UNICEF, the UN children's agency.
Excavation dust can contain toxic metals, including uranium, which are linked to health problems such as respiratory diseases and birth defects.
Environmental risks are equally worrying. Cobalt mine sites can contain sulfur minerals that can generate sulfuric acid when exposed to air and water. This process, known as acid mine drainage, can devastate rivers, streams and aquatic life for hundreds of years.
The environmental impacts of graphite mining are similar. The use of explosives can expel dust and fine particles into the atmosphere, causing health problems in nearby communities and contaminating the soils at the site.
Around 80% of natural graphite reserves are located in Brazil, China and Türkiye..
Invest more in green technologies
The report says adverse environmental impacts could be reduced by investing more in sustainable mining techniques and technologies that can more effectively recycle the raw materials found in used lithium-ion batteries.
UNCTAD also recommends that the industry finds ways to reduce the need for mining in the first place. For example, scientists are testing the possibility of replacing graphite in batteries with widely available silicon.
According to the report, reducing the use of the minerals found in just a few countries could lead to lower prices for batteries, which could lead to even more electric cars on the road.
Source: UNCTAD
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