I understand that two concerns over the use of fossil fuels are that it is bad for the environment and it is finite in supply.
I fully support the move towards more renewable energies but how is the use of electric power, which uses mainly lithium batteries, a better alternative? Lithium is finite and it’s mining causes water pollution. Is the use of lithium batteries a better temporary solution to fossil fuels, rather than a permanent one?
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Lithium is used in a lot of rechargeable, high power batteries. Those take electricity to charge, and much of the industrial power grid is still using fossil fuels Sure, there are types of alkaline batteries that use lithium, but that’s less of a use of lithium than rechargeable batteries.
A battery is a small storage facility for electricity and isn’t directly linked to renewable power. That being said the lithium can be reused and used for a new battery down the line, but lithium is a rather rare element, lithium is the lightest metal, but is also highly reactive. https://youtu.be/d401zH0UaOY
Well a good portion of the electrification doesn’t need any lithium. You don’t need lithium when you produce electricity at a connected power plant.
But for sure you are talking about transport. Anything we do cause damage to the enviroment, from growing vegetable to driving a truck. The real question is how much impact this have on the enviroment.
Include battery production, a electric vehicle produce around half the emissions over their life vs a gasoline car. Of course this depend on the source of your electricity (aka how the power plant produce their electricity).
Lithium is also used in a far lesser quantity than gasoline is. In 2018 the world was producing 85,000 tonnes of Lithium a year and at this rate we would run out of known source in more than 700 years. Of course, the production will increase and we will find new sources, so who know how much time lithium will last. Compared to oil, which we produce at around 10 million tonnes a day. It’s hard to estimate in how much time we gonna run out of oil, a lot of people claimed a date in the past and were wrong. The reason is that as the price increase, new method that were not profitable, become avaible, new technology allow new source to be exploited and we find new source as we explore the ground.
We won’t run out of oil and lithium ever. But the sources will become smaller and smaller, which will make the price go up by a lot. This most likely not gonna happen for a generation or two for lithium, but we are seeint in this generation for oil. Lithium battery are not the only option for batteries and new models using other material already exist or will be developped in the future, something we can’t do with oil.
Lithium batteries are not consumed to power your electric car. Even when they wear out, the lithium is still there. Even century-old lead car batteries are highly recycled, to reduce lead emissions and the need to mine lead. Once we’ve mined enough lithium, we’ll just be recycling car batteries to make new ones, like we do with lead.
Mining fuels is completely different. The CO2 they dump into the atmosphere isn’t recyclable into coal.
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