Newslink February 2021

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Electric vehicles: so green, so good for the
planet... what could possibly go wrong...
Guy Annan
MSA Western
The media is full of stories about electric
vehicles at the moment – with the latest
being that we will all have to be buying
one soon. The Government has got
behind them because they are
environmentally friendly. Or are they.
Let’s explore the eco friendliness of the
electric vehicle....
As many ADIs will know, electric cars
do have their drawbacks. There’s a
shortage of charging stations, the high
cost of electricity and disappointing
battery capacity that limits the distance
the cars can be driven between charges.
But the good news is they are meant
to deliver benefits to the environment.
But how true is this?
In some areas, not very. Take their
power plant, for instance. The bad news
is that the lithium used in the cars’
batteries is not great. For a start, toxic
chemicals are needed to process lithium,
and the release of such chemicals
through leaching, spills or air emissions
can harm communities, ecosystems and
food production.
Moreover, lithium extraction inevitably
harms the soil and also causes air
contamination.
To manufacture an EV battery you
need as many as 20 minerals, including
cobalt, lithium and nickel as well as
other rare earth metals. According to the
British Geological Survey, there’s enough
‘metal in the crust’ to support the battery
industry globally. But from a UK
standpoint much of the resources are
inconveniently located, and there are
other political and non-geographical
factors that can hamper production and
squeeze supply chains. It doesn’t help
that these supply chains are tightly
controlled by China, which is a metals
superpower. It produces a lot and imports
a lot and is a very powerful force.
The UK has been an automotive
powerhouse for decades, but with the
advent of EVs the sector is now facing a
lot more competition for resources.
Jaguar Land Rover has plans to build EV
batteries in Wolverhampton, but other
companies such as Honda have mothballed
UK plants and decided to build
their EVs on the continent or in Asia.
Part of the problem is the UK has no
foothold on the minerals needed to
produce a battery and there is currently
no indigenous supply of battery raw
materials. There are some, such as
lithium in Cornwall and cobalt in Alderley
Edge, but these are mineral ‘occurrences’
rather than deposits, and it’s not enough
to sustain a whole EV sector and we’ll
have to rely on imports or recycling.
Shady practices
In many ways the situation is even
worse when we look at cobalt. A key
component in an EV battery, it is largely
mined in the Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC), but news reports have
regularly exposed shady practices
including child labour and criminality.
Carmakers have been accused of ‘turning
a blind eye’ to informal mining in favour
of protecting their profit margins.
Last year, BMW announced it would
only source lithium and cobalt directly
from ethical mines in Morocco and
Australia, and there are encouraging
signs that blockchain technology, which
allows the ability to trace every stage of
the mining process, could expose the
bad practices and lead to them being
stamped out for good.
So what are the alternatives?
There are other options to e-vehicles.
Alternative fuels such as hydrogen,
acetylene, natural gas, ethanol and
biofuels also use internal combustion
engines. Hydrogen in the gas phase is
about 14 times lighter than the air.
Moreover, it is the cleanest fuel in the
world – but it remains difficult to store,
transport and handle.
Unfortunately, to produce the west’s
shiny eco-friendly cars (left), Africa
needs to do this (right) to its landscape
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