EPA Is Ignoring the Glaring Problem with Dirty Electric Vehicles

August 08, 2023

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by Benjamin Zycher (American Enterprise Institute/The Hill) The Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) has launched a new regulatory effort to force a massive transportation shift to electric vehicles (EVs) with its proposed “multi-pollutant emissions standards” for light- and medium-duty vehicles beginning with model year 2027.

The reality, however, is that the proposed rule has little to do with “pollutants.” Instead, it is an attempt by the Biden administration to force an economy-wide transformation away from conventional cars and trucks in favor of EVs. This is a complex policy nostrum, poorly thought through and replete with adverse consequences that proponents are determined to ignore.

The harsh realities of EVs are the reason regulatory agencies have tried so hard to force ever more such vehicles upon the market in ways insulated from democratic accountability.

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As a crude generalization, EV batteries weigh a half ton or more. Each contains roughly 30 pounds of lithium, 60 pounds of cobalt, 130 pounds of nickel, 190 pounds of graphite, 90 pounds of copper and about 400 pounds of steel, aluminum and plastics.

Mark P. Mills of the Manhattan Institute has done the attendant arithmetic on the amount of mining needed to produce these quantities for a single EV battery. By his estimate, each battery requires the extraction of 20,000 pounds of lithium brines, 60,000 pounds of cobalt ore, 10,000 pounds of nickel ore, 2,000 pounds of graphite ore and 12,000 pounds of copper ore.

This tally excludes three to seven tons of what is known as the “overburden” for each ton of ore — that is, “the materials first dug up to get to the ore.” It also excludes the environmental burden involved in extracting and refining materials to produce the steel, aluminum and other less uncommon materials that go into EV batteries.

In the context of the EPA’s climate justification for its proposed rule, Mills makes an obvious point that the proponents of forced EV adoption have avoided. “The variables and uncertainties in emissions from energy-intensive mining and processing of minerals used to make EV batteries are a big wild card in the emissions calculus,” he writes. “Those emissions substantially offset reductions from avoiding gasoline and, as the demand for battery minerals explodes, the net reductions will shrink, may vanish, and could even lead to a net increase in emissions.”

“Similar emissions uncertainties,” Mills adds, “are associated with producing the power for EV charging stations.”

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For lithium, the largest reserves are located in Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, the U.S., Australia and China. It is obvious that a supply crunch and rising prices are inevitable. “Earth has approximately 88 million tonnes of lithium,” Popular Mechanics recently noted, “but only one-quarter is economically viable to mine as reserves.”

The same supply-price dynamic exists for cobalt, nickel, graphite and copper. Note that China is among the major suppliers of all of these. It is not unreasonable to expect that political considerations will influence Chinese supply behavior, a potential problem in various short-run scenarios.

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The very fact that massive subsidies are needed to make EVs even marginally competitive suggests that the lack of enthusiasm on the part of consumers is no accident. EVs cannot satisfy a wide range of consumer needs, and they also create their own set of environmental problems.

The EPA’s proposed rule should not be finalized. READ MORE

STEVENS COLUMN: Electric vehicles bring their own environmental challenges (News and Tribune)

China’s Abandoned, Obsolete Electric Cars Are Piling Up in Cities -- A subsidy-fueled boom helped build China into an electric-car giant but left weed-infested lots across the nation brimming with unwanted battery-powered vehicles. (Bloomberg)

The oil industry’s trash could be EV treasure (Politico's Power Shift)

How Big Oil’s wastewater could fuel the EV revolution (E&E News Energywire)

Dirty Water and Dead Rice: The Cost of the Clean Energy Transition in Rural Minnesota -- Mining the critical minerals needed for electric vehicle batteries could threaten local water supply and Indigenous culture. (Inside Climate News)

Excerpt from News and Tribune: EV batteries, weighing up to thousands of pounds, will die just like every thing else. This is the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is (very roughly translated) “Everything tends to go to hell.” The big boom of electric vehicle sales today will mean a glut of worn-out batteries in the mid-2030s.

The first way to handle a worn-down battery is “re-use.” On the road a battery might weaken to the point that the range reduces from 400 miles to 250 miles. Even then, the battery still retains two-thirds of its strength, so it could be re-installed in an immobile situation that could use much of the remaining power.

On a small scale we are finding out the problems of recycling the batteries. However, only about 5% of them are now being recycled. The main problem holding back the recycling effort is the mindset of capitalism: make it, sell it, go to the bank. Even the manufacturers of batteries have troubles with their own pilot recycling programs because trying to retrieve the valuable used lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel and graphite is more expensive than finding these materials in raw nature.

Globally there are fewer than a dozen sites recycling EV car batteries.

However, recycling these minerals is made five-fold more difficult because of HOW the battery was made in the first place. The common recycling method is to shred the battery into small pieces. Then it either needs to be cooked (burned) or treated in liquids (acids) to isolate the material that will find their way back into new batteries.

Some of the casing for these thousands of battery cells is so tough the shredders find it too difficult to operate. One study found that the Nissan battery case took two hours to remove before the shredding could begin.

Another big problem is that glues, as in the Tesla cars, are used to hold together the folds of metal-impregnated fibers. These glues are almost impossible to separate from the powdered metals. Still another problem is that the recyclers don’t know what is in a battery because nothing is labeled. They have to know the materials to know how to isolate the components.

China is now placing the responsibility for recycling squarely on the vehicle maker.

It is obvious that at some point the battery manufacturers will have to hold an international conference to hash out how to establish some common design features that will make dis-assembly easier. They need to remember that the life cycle of a battery is not over when it fails to deliver the vehicle to its 400-mile range. The battery completes its mission only when there is a final disposition of all the materials that went into its beginning year.

Most of a new battery could be re-made from an old battery if we had the right frame of mind at the time of design and assembly. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico's Power Shift: But the highly sought-after mineral is also found in the salty wastewater produced through oil and natural gas drilling, write Hannah Northey and Shelby Webb.

Major oil companies say they are on the verge of commercializing technologies that can extract lithium from the brine in producing wells. That could supercharge the domestic supply of lithium for electric car batteries, boosting the Biden administration’s electric vehicle goals.

And it could mean that the oil companies, which have produced so much of the fossil fuel driving the climate crisis, could get yet another new revenue stream based on the transition to cleaner energy. (See also: carbon storage, geothermal and wind.)

A salty solution?
Demand for lithium — and other minerals such as nickel, cobalt and graphite — is skyrocketing as automakers around the world ramp up production of electric cars and trucks to meet carbon emission reduction goals. In the U.S., greenhouse gases from the transportation sector are the largest contributor to global warming.

Companies usually mine hardrock and clay for lithium or access the silvery-white metal through evaporation using massive ponds. China processes up to 70 percent of the world’s lithium supply, a continued sore spot for the Biden administration, which has sought to boost domestic production.

The U.S. is poised to increase lithium production through traditional mining projects like Nevada’s Thacker Pass mine, which is currently under construction.

But domestic and global supply will need to ramp up much more to meet the demand, and the oil industry is looking to close that gap by directly removing lithium from brine in salt flats and bodies of water.

A single week’s worth of wastewater from hydraulic fracturing could conceivably produce enough lithium for 300 electric vehicle batteries. For context, the industry produces billions of barrels of briny wastewater every year.

Exxon Mobil is already looking to build one of the world’s largest lithium processing plants in a producing region in Arkansas known as the Smackover, which is rich with saltwater brine after decades of oil and gas extraction. READ MORE

Excerpt from E&E News Energywire: But some say the oil and gas sector’s pivot toward critical minerals needs more oversight and scrutiny.

Brine can contain drilling chemicals, as well as minerals and radioactive material picked up from the underground formation, said Aaron Mintzes, senior policy counsel for conservation group Earthworks. But it is exempt from the federal law that governs most hazardous waste, known as the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

“This is one example of the oil and gas sector trying to extend the life of a business model that’s ending,” Mintzes (Aaron Mintzes, senior policy counsel for conservation group Earthworks) said. “They do so through various carbon management techniques — carbon sequestration, use of hydrogen and now also lithium. They only have to go one, you know, one or two elements down the periodic table.”

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Occidental Petroleum, through wholly owned subsidiary TerraLithium, has already developed a direct lithium extraction technique for brine wastewater. And Chevron CEO Mike Wirth told Bloomberg in an interview that his company is also considering getting into lithium but did not reveal specific plans.

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But in July, the Wall Street Journal reported that the company (Exxon) is planning to build a lithium processing facility near Magnolia, Ark., with the ability to produce up to 100,000 metric tons of lithium a year. In June, Reuters reported that Exxon had purchased Saltwerx LLC, now a subsidiary, and had agreed to develop more than 6,100 lithium-rich acres in the Smackover formation.

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“On the oil and gas side, they were already producing it. That water is already coming out of the ground,” he (Brent Elliot, a researcher and economic geologist with UT Austin’s Bureau of Economic Geology) said. “The process and the infrastructure is already there for taking that water somewhere.”

In comparison, it’s much harder to develop that infrastructure in the remote regions of Chile and China that currently produce lithium.

U.S. companies also may find the boost they need from the Inflation Reduction Act, which encourages automakers to use lithium sourced domestically or from countries that have free trade agreements with the United States.

“There’s the Salton Sea out in California, with some of these higher concentrations that are potential resources for extraction, where a lot of money is being pushed both from the federal government and from private industry,” Elliott said.

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Environmental groups across the country are calling for closer scrutiny of how direct lithium extraction projects could affect water quality and quantity in a time of drought.

Jared Naimark, an organizer with Earthworks, said he’s not opposed to direct lithium extraction. But he warned against efforts to characterize the practice as “greener” than other forms of extraction.

Direct lithium extraction may end up using less water than evaporation ponds, he said, “but in the context of the Salton Sea, where every drop counts, if water gets diverted from the sea for lithium extraction, … that’s something that needs to be carefully looked at.” READ MORE

Excerpt from Inside Climate News: Today, mining exploration company Talon Metals, also has its sights set on Minnesota. Some of the world’s richest high-grade nickel and copper deposits are thousands of feet below the state colloquially known as “the land of 10,000 lakes.”

Talon seeks to construct a mine in the rural town of Tamarack, which it says will be integral to building the nation’s domestic supply of materials necessary for a clean energy transition.

Nickel and copper are key components of rechargeable lithium ion batteries that are widely used for low-emission technologies like electric vehicles (EVs). The company already has an agreement to supply Tesla with nickel from its proposed mine, potentially bringing hundreds of unionized mining jobs to this rural area.

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The federal government has also recognized nickel and copper as “essential to national defense,” adding them to the U.S. critical minerals list in 2022 and 2023, respectively. And, this September, the Department of Defense awarded Talon a $20.1 million matching grant to continue searching for deposits throughout the Lake Superior region.

However, sulfide mining, the type that would happen at Tamarack, has a poor environmental track record. The Mille Lacs Band and local environmentalists warn that it could contaminate nearby lakes, streams and wetlands, threatening the vitality of wild rice and local water supply down the Mississippi River. READ MORE