can someone explain to me why batteries are considered greener when they consist of lithium vs. fossil fuels?
In: 0
Because that’s what green means: not using fossil fuels. Of course this begs the question of how they are manufactured, but that’s a separate issue. They themselves are a green source of energy because they use no fossil fuels and produce no greenhouse emissions.
A battery can be reused multiple times. When the battery is finally dead, the lithium can be recycled (although it may be costly) to make new batteries.
Once you burn a lump of coal or a liter of diesel or kerosene, it’s gone forever. They’re called *fossil* fuels for a reason; they were generated over hundreds of millions of years, the same timespan as fossils were. Even if you could put the carbon dioxide, water, and smoke back into the ground, it would take hundreds of millions of years before that could turn back into usable fuel.
[deleted]
We have 14 Million known tons of Lithium on the Earth. At current use rate, it will take us 165 years to deplete it. That is if no more deposits are found.
At the current burn rate, we will run out of oil in 20-40 years. But if we convert most vehicles to using battery power, since oil powered power plants aren’t that common, we can decrease the use of oil vastly. Extending that 20-40 years a lot longer, until we can find something to replace it.
Nothing we do is 100% clean. It’s more about resource availability. We have a lot of lithium, not a lot of oil left.
Making a battery is dirty, certainly more than the same weight of petroleum. **But you can use the battery over and over and over and over**. And the power for the battery can come from green sources such as solar or wind. Even if the battery power comes from a natural gas power plant, that power plant is many times more efficient and cleaner than the number of car engines it can replace via battery.
tl;dr making batteries is dirty, but the electricity to feed them is cleaner, and they get reused. **A lot**. So they come out way ahead.
Because it’s marketed that way.
But seriously, if we’re talking about cars, manufacturing the battery itself is not green, charging them *can* be green.
It all depends on where you live, if in your area electricity mainly comes from nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal or tidal power plants, then electric cars are greener.
If it comes from burning fossil fuels, it’s more likely not greener. But you can argue that it’s still better because electric cars “pollute” at the power plant, while traditional cars pollute in the cities where people live.
Efficiency. EVs are more efficient than ICE vehicles. Both produce CO2 but EVs produce less and this is from the cradle to the grave, not just while using the vehicle. This is true in about 95% of countries. In some the difference is small due to how much electricity still comes from fossil fuels while in others it’s massive as the grid is mostly renewables.
As countries add more renewable energy to their grids and reduce their use of fossil fuels, existing and yet to be built EVs will get even greener. For ICE cars they will just keep polluting until they are takin off the road. EVs produce most of their CO2 when they are made while ICE vehicles produce it as they are used.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/26/lifetime-emissions-of-evs-are-lower-than-gasoline-cars-experts-say.html
Latest Answers