Underground Construction - November 2020 - 6

EDITOR'S LOG

Robert Carpenter | Editor-in-Chief

Justifying Evils of EVs

Electronic vehicles (EVs) are all the big
rage. Millennials and Gen-Zers are all about
making the world environmentally safe.
Progressive politicians, environmentalists,
scientists and a liberal citizenry worldwide
tend to agree that footprints created by
petro-carbon energy are the root of all evil
and ultimately have led to climate change
and the pending death of our planet.
Popular culture has now placed electric
cars at the front line of the war to stem a
pending climate catastrophe. Worldwide,
governments have subsidized the electric car
industry in hopes of accelerating its development. While the cost of purchasing an electric
car is still high compared with conventional
vehicle, it is a far cry from what the cost
would be without subsidies. These subsidies
have allowed billionaire Elon Musk's Tesla
brand to finally become profitable over the
past year. In fact, Tesla's market cap is now
greater than Ford Motor Company and not
that far behind General Motors.
We can all concur that preventing climate
disaster is highly desirable and absolutely
necessary for succeeding generations.
We should all be respectful of the planet,
understanding its limitations, avoiding
abuse of the land and resources, recycling
and working to reduce carbon, etc.
Unfortunately, " trendy " solutions
have often overlooked costs with
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NOVEMBER 2020 | UCONonline.com

unintended consequences and impacts.
Such a quandary is presented by the
global rush to produce electric cars.
Let's examine some of those consequences. Obviously, what makes the electric
car possible is advancements in batteries
- specifically lithium-ion, rechargeable
batteries - which are created using rare
earth minerals such as lithium, manganese,
graphite and cobalt, found primarily in
Africa, China, and to some degree, Latin
America. Much of this type of mineral
production originates in many countries
that have been called out by international
groups such as Amnesty International for
being oppressive, corrupt and having despicable human rights records. For example, a
large portion of the world's cobalt is mined
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
principally by forced child labor. Dangers
abound for anyone, young or old, in those
mining operations.
To its credit, Tesla no longer sources
cobalt directly from the Congo. Rather,
it buys from Glencore, a large company
headquartered in Switzerland, which of
course still collects its supply of cobalt
from African mines.
A recent article in Forbes explains that
only about 1 percent of the world's car fleet
is currently electric. However, that rate is
expected to expand exponentially in coming
years. The Forbes article pointed out that
just to replace the United Kingdom's current
fleet of cars it would require twice the annual
global production of cobalt, three-quarters of
the world's production of lithium carbonate,
more than half of the world's production of
copper and nearly the entire world's production of neodymium. To fill the international
appetite for electric vehicles, including the
United States, the scale of mining for raw
materials is mind boggling, especially when
you consider where these minerals come
from and how they are mined.
Further, about 50 percent of the lifetime
carbon-dioxide emissions from an electric
car come from the energy used to produce
the car. Compare that to a conventional,
gasoline vehicle that has a life-time carbon

footprint from manufacturing of 17 percent.
And of course, there is that pesky problem of recharging electric cars. That power
typically comes from either carbon-heavy
coal power plants or carbon-lite natural
gas power plants. Add those figures to
manufacturing carbon footprints, and when
an electric vehicle is driven 50,000 miles
it will have succeeded in producing more
carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere than
a similar gasoline-powered car - and at a
much higher purchase price.
What happens to all those precious metal
batteries when they are no longer able to
be recharged? Landfills are taboo due to
the dangerous nature of the minerals and
the possibility of batteries corroding to the
point of explosion. However, secondary
life options are being developed. In China,
7-11 stores are now being powered by used
electric car batteries.
But sooner or later, the power will expire
and recycling the precious - and still valuable - minerals contained in the batteries is
a distinct possibility. That's not happening
to a large degree today, mainly because there
is no uniformity in the way those batteries
are built; everyone has their own version and
that makes it extremely difficult to automate
recycling. Even if battery production becomes uniform, the critical mass necessary
to produce automated economic recycling
is still 10 - 30 years away. In the meantime,
in about five years, we will start to have an
environmental problem with used electric
car batteries. Will science come to the rescue
in time? That remains to be seen.
Electric vehicles present an intriguing
transportation future. But it all has to
be balanced with practicality, reality of
purpose and cultural empathy, and it can't
be rushed until these issues are resolved.
The growth of the electric car industry can't
push forward and ignore the risk to human
lives and child labor. *

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