Shortages could drive up the price of electric vehicles or hamper production, slowing their adoption. Until then, experts say, a steady flow of freshly mined minerals will be key to decarbonizing transportation. "Recycling can have a major role, probably, after the 2030s," says Tae-Yoon Kim, an energy analyst for the International Energy Agency and an author of its recent report, when technology has improved and spent clean energy batteries are ready to be recycled. By 2050, global demand for minerals such as cobalt and nickel will shoot up nearly 500%, the World Bank predicts. But reports by the World Bank and the International Energy Agency conclude recycling alone will not address the world's clean energy mineral needs. More than 75% of lithium and rare-earth elements come from Australia, China and Congo, which also holds more than 70% of the world's cobalt.Įnvironmentalists argue the best option is to forgo all mining and gather critical materials instead through electronics recycling. Mineral production on land is also concentrated in certain countries, giving them outsize power over extraction and distribution. Just like with land mining, DeepGreen says, permits should be decided on a "project-by-project" basis. The company points to a peer-reviewed paper in the Journal of Cleaner Production, which it commissioned, that found "nodules put 94 percent less sequestered carbon at risk and disrupt sequestration by 88 percent less" than terrestrial ores. "If your nickel comes from Indonesia, you are guaranteed that your atmospheric carbon emissions will be many times higher than if your nickel was coming from nodules," DeepGreen, Nauru's Canadian-based contractor, tells NPR. Cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo has long faced accusations of child labor abuses. A traditional land mining project for lithium has already sparked controversy in Nevada because of alleged environmental degradation. Advocates for marine mining say harvesting ocean minerals would be safer for workers than traditional mining and would have a lower carbon footprint by avoiding deforestation. Metals to make clean energy batteries can be extracted from the land, sea or recycling. Scientists are researching and developing models to determine how far this sediment will spread across the seafloor. Marine and climate scientists counter that there's scant data on the deep sea to gauge potential consequences for oceanic biodiversity and carbon sequestration, and that it would take decades of study to get a holistic assessment.Ī sediment plume (above in the foreground) created by deep sea mining vehicles unfurls over a field of deep sea polymetallic nodules. Industry proponents say deep sea mining is more environmentally friendly than land-based mining, making it the best option in the face of looming mineral shortages for electric vehicles and a tight timeline to decarbonize transit. The industry's first commercial mining applications may be filed in as little as two years despite incomplete regulations and unsettled science about mining's effects. A nascent industry of deep sea mining is growing to harvest these rocks. Below miles of ocean, these nodules burst with copper, nickel, manganese and cobalt, all key to building batteries for electric vehicles.Īs the global push for electric transportation grows, these metals have converted a remote underwater plain into a battleground over the hard decisions required to address climate change. Sprawling fields of rocks about the size of your fist coat the Pacific seabed. NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research Polymetallic nodules coat fields of the ocean floor and are rich in critical minerals needed to make batteries for electric vehicles.
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