Why the Production of Batteries 🪫 for Electric Vehicles isn’t Sustainable?
Unless massive investments in green hydrogen fuel cells technologies power electric cars; their future is unsustainable if they should be powered on battery 🪫 technologies given the constraints of critical minerals used in the manufacturing of those batteries.
In other words; the EV industry needs urgently a disruptive creative destruction from battery technologies to green hydrogen fuel cells technologies to make EVs sustainable over time.
The production of a battery for an electric vehicle (EV) requires in average the extraction, the refinement and the processing of 225 metric tons of minerals with the current state of such battery technologies. According to different sources of data, an EV battery of 450 kg contains:
* 11 kg of lithium;
* 27 kg of nickel;
* 20 kg of manganese;
* 14 kg of cobalt;
* 90 kg of copper;
* 180 kg of aluminum, steel and plastic;
* +6,000 individual lithium-ion cells inside.
To get the composition of minerals within the EV battery; the following amount of mineral raw materials should be extracted, refined and processed:
* 11,000 kg of salt for lithium;
* 15,000 kg of cobalt mineral;
* 2.270 kg of resin for nickel;
* 11,000 kg of copper mineral;
Combining these elements to all of other ones; the fabrication of an EV battery of 450 kg requires the extraction, the refining and the processing of 225,000 kilograms of mineral raw materials.
The current global annual production of all cars is estimated around 100 million vehicles. Ceteris paribus, if we assume that by 2030, the estimated annual worldwide motor vehicle production will double to 200 million vehicles; if all of those vehicles should be EVs powered on batteries; given that it takes 225 metric tons of raw minerals for producing one sigle battery; it will require the extraction, the refining and the processing of 45 billion metric tons of minerals each year for the production of those batteries alone for those vehicles. That’s almost impossible.
Yet most of those minerals are rares and in limited known amounts of reserves that cannot supply such amounts of raw materials. With such levels of required minerals; the production of such amount of minerals is not sustainable and almost impossible. To the amount of critical minerals needed for EV batteries; there should be added the amount of the same critical minerals needed for other electric and electronic devices such as more big batteries used for the storage of electricity from solar and wind power; devices for computers and data center equipments of Artificial Intelligence (AI); devices for telecommunication, spacial, marine, aviation , defense systems, and other industries. There aren’t enough critical minerals to supply and meet such global industrial demand. Even if recycled materials such as cobalt and nickel should be used; it won’t be enough to meet the exponential demand.
There is no doubt that AI will play a transformative role in almost all aspects of the human activities, including in designing and implementating climate change solutions.
AI will drastically increase the demand and consumption of electricity. It is critical to ensure that the increase of the supply of electricity to meet such demand will be from renewable and clean sources of energy WITHOUT such sources cleansing and transferring their greenhouse gas emissions to other sectors like it is often the case nowadays. About critical minerals; at some point, given the limited availability of such minerals; and given that the processing and fabrication of EV batteries and other electronic devices require huge quantities of those materials; there will be difficult arbitration for the allocation of those minerals between AI needs and other ones. To avoid such difficult arbitrations; it is right now that we should be rethinking and reshaping global choices in technologies; in the architecture of supply chains, etc. Unfortunately we are not being heard on these issues as natives of the Congo 🇨🇩, a country, which is a global strategic and critical asset for those issues.
Minerals will not be enough to meet at the same time the demands for the electrification of transport with batteries, the development of Artificial Intelligence, and other industries needing them. There will be at some point difficult arbitrations to do if wise decisions aren’t made now for smart choices to avoid such arbitrations…
The world cannot sustain and afford a couple of decades of such production of EVs with the current state of the technologies of batteries 🪫 and the current state of reserves and production of minerals. This is why powering EVs with green hydrogen fuel cells technologies is the future of mobility.
It will require massive investments in innovations of technologies and business models, and in innovations of policymaking to get the production, the transportation, the storage and the distribution of green hydrogen fuels and their derivatives cheaper, more efficient and more abundant than those of fossil fuels and those of EV batteries for making electric vehicles sustainable over the long term. Otherwise the EV technologies will simply collapse if the current state of EV battery technologies should power them over time.
Critical minerals aren’t the only structural constraint and systemic risk threatening the long term sustainability of the production of EV batteries 🪫. The electricity supply for charging the exponential consumption of electricity from EV batteries is another structural constraint and systemic risk to EV batteries. China 🇨🇳 electricity ⚡️ consumption is surpassing the sum of those of the United States 🇺🇸, the European Union 🇪🇺 and India 🇮🇳 combined all together! Beyond the fact showing that the real economic capacity of China 🇨🇳, especially the industrial and real economic one, is of the size of the 3 economies together; such exponential growth is the outcome of EV batteries.
In fact, the exponential growth of the electricity consumption in China 🇨🇳 is driven by the households’ consumption. It is very easy to notice the correlation between the exponential growth of electric vehicles of households powered with batteries and the exponential growth of electricity consumption in China 🇨🇳. Yet electric vehicles just make 37% of all vehicles in China 🇨🇳.
Now let consider the exponential growth of electricity consumption should all cars be electric with batteries in China 🇨🇳… Let transpose such scenario in the entire global economy. Many countries in the world haven’t the means, capacity and skills of China 🇨🇳 to adjust quickly the generation and supply of green and renewable energy to such exponential growth of the demand of electricity from EV batteries 🪫.
As outcome at the global scale; the exponential growth of the electricity consumption driven by EV batteries will drive the growth of the supply of the electricity generation from fossil fuels where most of countries cannot adjust such supply with green, clean and renewable energy. This is one of the reasons why the growth of EV batteries increases the consumption of fossil energy and their greenhouse gas emissions instead of reducing them. Not only the mining, the refining and the processing of huge quantities of minerals increase drastically the consumption of fossil energy and their greenhouse gas emissions; their exponential growth of the consumption of electricity at the global scale will do too. This makes the EV batteries 🪫inefficient as green and clean technologies aiming to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and their greenhouse gas emissions.
Replacing EV batteries with green hydrogen fuel cells to power electric vehicles is the future of mobility. It is critical to massively invest in technologies, business models and policymaking for getting the production, transportation, storage and distribution of green hydrogen fuels and their derivatives cheaper, more abundant and more efficient than fossil fuels and batteries for a sustainable global energy transition.
Beyond cars, battery 🪫 technologies are very limited in powering other mobility systems in aviation, marine, railway, defense systems and heavy duty machinery and equipment. Yet green hydrogen fuels and their derivatives can perfectly substitute fossil ones in powering all of these systems with all kind of engines from combustion, jet, propulsion to even electric ones. The versatility of green hydrogen fuels and their derivatives perfectly matches the versatility of fossil fuels. That’s not the case of battery technologies. A factual evidence that will very quickly make battery technologies obsolete when green hydrogen energy will succeed to phase out the fossil energy.
The increase of efficiency of EV battery 🪫 technologies will only worsen the constraint of critical minerals by drastically increasing their consumption for the fabrication of those batteries. That’s the Javons Paradox effect. The global economy needs to find functional solutions, which the sprawling technologies from the increasing is their efficiency will phase out fossil fuels to reduce drastically the greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. Such solution is the development and sprawling of the green hydrogen energy and economy.
