"Giant lithium-ion batteries are said to be the panacea for the hopeless intermittency of wind and solar;
they’re also said to be the backbone for an all-Electric Vehicle future.
Neither proposition stands a moment’s scrutiny.
The true cost of energy storage using lithium-ion batteries is phenomenal, such that it will never match the scale needed to compensate for the erratic and occasional delivery of wind and solar.
The hefty cost of the latest EVs equipped with sufficient battery capacity to drive further than the local shops, puts them out of reach for all but hotshot lawyers and merchant bankers.
The fact that the materials required for lithium-ion batteries involves stripmining the poorest parts of the Third World doesn’t appear trouble the EV aficionado.
... Bruce Haedrich outlines the range of hidden and embedded costs that herald a looming environmental disaster, across the globe.
... "So, I’d like you to think about your day for a moment; how many batteries do you rely on?”
He paused for a full minute which gave us time to count our batteries.
Then he went on, “Now, it is not elementary to ask, ‘what is a battery?’
I think Tesla said it best when they called us Energy Storage Systems.
That’s important.
We do not make electricity – we store electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, or diesel-fuelled generators.
So to say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid.
Also, since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. is from coal-fired plants, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered, do you see?”
... “Einstein’s formula, E=MC2, tells us it takes the same amount of energy to move a five-thousand-pound gasoline-driven automobile a mile as it does an electric one.
The only question again is what produces the power?
To reiterate, it does not come from the battery; the battery is only the storage device, like a gas tank in a car.”
... There are two orders of batteries, rechargeable, and single use.
The most common single-use batteries are A, AA, AAA, C, D. 9V, and lantern types.
Those dry-cell species use zinc, manganese, lithium, silver oxide, or zinc and carbon to store electricity chemically.
Please note they all contain toxic, heavy metals.
Rechargeable batteries only differ in their internal materials, usually lithium-ion, nickel-metal oxide, and nickel-cadmium.
The United States uses three billion of these two battery types a year, and most are not recycled; they end up in landfills.
California is the only state which requires all batteries be recycled. If you throw your small, used batteries in the trash, here is what happens to them.
All batteries are self-discharging.
That means even when not in use, they leak tiny amounts of energy.
You have likely ruined a flashlight or two from an old ruptured battery.
When a battery runs down and can no longer power a toy or light, you think of it as dead; well, it is not.
It continues to leak small amounts of electricity.
As the chemicals inside it run out, pressure builds inside the battery’s metal casing, and eventually, it cracks.
The metals left inside then ooze out.
The ooze in your ruined flashlight is toxic, and so is the ooze that will inevitably leak from every battery in a landfill.
All batteries eventually rupture; it just takes rechargeable batteries longer to end up in the landfill.
In addition to dry cell batteries, there are also wet cell ones used in automobiles, boats, and motorcycles.
The good thing about those is, ninety percent of them are recycled.
Unfortunately, many others do not yet know how to recycle batteries like me, or care to dispose of single-use ones properly.
... For those of you excited about electric cars and a green revolution, I want you to take a closer look at batteries and also windmills and solar panels.
These three technologies share what we call environmentally destructive embedded costs.”
... “Everything manufactured has two costs associated with it, embedded costs and operating costs.
I will explain embedded costs using a can of baked beans as my subject.
In this scenario, baked beans are on sale, so you jump in your car and head for the grocery store.
Sure enough, there they are on the shelf for $1.75 a can.
As you head to the checkout, you begin to think about the embedded costs in the can of beans.
The first cost is the diesel fuel the farmer used to plough the field, till the ground, harvest the beans, and transport them to the food processor.
Not only is his diesel fuel an embedded cost, so are the costs to build the tractors, combines, and trucks.
In addition, the farmer might use a nitrogen fertilizer made from natural gas.
Next is the energy costs of cooking the beans, heating the building, transporting the workers, and paying for the vast amounts of electricity used to run the plant.
The steel can holding the beans is also an embedded cost.
Making the steel can requires mining taconite, shipping it by boat, extracting the iron, placing it in a coal-fired blast furnace, and adding carbon.
Then it’s back on another truck to take the beans to the grocery store.
Finally, add in the cost of the gasoline for your car.
But wait – can you guess one of the highest but rarely acknowledged embedded costs?”
“It’s the depreciation on the 5000 pound car you used to transport one pound of canned beans!”
... embedded costs not only come
in the form of energy use;
environmental destruction, pollution,
disease, child labour,
and the inability to be recycled.
(an V battery can) contain
twenty-five pounds of lithium,
sixty pounds of nickel,
44 pounds of manganese,
30 pounds cobalt,
200 pounds of copper, and
400 pounds of aluminium,
steel, and plastic.
Inside are 6,831 individual lithium-ion cells.
... all those toxic components come from mining.
For instance, to manufacture each
auto battery pack, you must process
25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium,
30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt,
5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and
25,000 pounds of ore for copper.
All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds
of the earth’s crust for just – one – car battery.
... Sixty-eight percent of the world’s cobalt,
a significant part of a battery, comes from the Congo.
Their mines have no pollution controls
and they employ children who die
from handling this toxic material.
Should we factor in these diseased kids
as part of the cost of driving an electric car?”
... California is building the largest battery in the world near San Francisco, and they intend to power it from solar panels and windmills.
They claim this is the ultimate in being ‘green,’ but it is not!
This construction project is creating an environmental disaster.
Let me tell you why.
The main problem with solar arrays is the chemicals needed to process silicate into the silicon used in the panels.
To make pure enough silicon requires processing it with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride, trichloroethane, and acetone.
In addition, they also need gallium, arsenide, copper-indium-gallium- Di selenide, and cadmium-telluride, which also are highly toxic.
Silicon dust is a hazard to the workers, and the panels cannot be recycled.
Windmills are the ultimate in embedded costs and environmental destruction.
Each weighs 1688 tons (the equivalent of 23 houses) and contains
1300 tons of concrete,
295 tons of steel,
48 tons of iron,
24 tons of fiberglass, and
the hard to extract rare earths
neodymium, praseodymium,
and dysprosium.
Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds
and will last 15 to 20 years,
at which time it must be replaced.
We cannot recycle used blades.
Sadly, both solar arrays and
windmills kill birds, bats, sea life,
and migratory insects.
... There may be a place for these technologies,
but you must look beyond the myth of zero emissions.
I predict EVs and windmills will be abandoned
once the embedded environmental costs
of making and replacing them become apparent.
It takes of battery of kids to make a single Tesla battery."