09-02-2021

tUeSdAY, FeBrUArY 9, 2021
5
The unhappy secrets of Lithium ion battery
Oliver BAlCh
Even before the new mine became the main topic of village
conversation, João Cassote, a 44-year-old livestock farmer,
was thinking about making a change. Living off the land in
his mountainous part of northern Portugal was a grind. Of
his close childhood friends, he was the only one who hadn't
gone overseas in search of work. So, in 2017, when he heard
of a British company prospecting for lithium in the region of
Trás-os-Montes, Cassote called his bank and asked for a
€200,000 loan. He bought a John Deere tractor, an
earthmover and a portable water-storage tank.
The exploration team of the UK-based mining company
Savannah Resources had spent months poring over
geological maps and surveys of the hills that ripple out from
Cassote's farm. Initial calculations indicated that they could
contain more than 280,000 tonnes of lithium, a silver-white
alkali metal - enough for 10 years' production. Cassote got in
touch with Savannah's local office, and the mining firm duly
contracted him to supply water to their test drilling site. The
return on his investment was swift. After less than 12 months
on the company's books, Cassote had made what he would
usually earn in five or six years on the farm.
Savannah is just one of several mining companies with an
eye on the rich lithium deposits of central and northern
Portugal. The sudden excitement surrounding petróleo
branco ("white oil") derives from an invention rarely seen in
these parts: the electric car. Lithium is a key active material
in the rechargeable batteries that run electric cars. It is found
in rock and clay deposits as a solid mineral, as well as
dissolved in brine. It is popular with battery manufacturers
because, as the least dense metal, it stores a lot of energy for
its weight.
Electrifying transport has become a top priority in the
move to a lower-carbon future. In Europe, car travel accounts
for around 12% of all the continent's carbon emissions. To
keep in line with the Paris agreement, emissions from cars
and vans will need to drop by more than a third (37.5%) by
2030. The EU has set an ambitious goal of reducing overall
greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by the same date. To that
end, Brussels and individual member states are pouring
millions of euros into incentivising car owners to switch to
electric. Some countries are going even further, proposing to
ban sales of diesel and petrol vehicles in the near future (as
early as 2025 in the case of Norway). If all goes to plan,
European electric vehicle ownership could jump from
around 2m today to 40m by 2030.
Lithium is key to this energy transition. Lithium-ion
batteries are used to power electric cars, as well as to store
grid-scale electricity. (They are also used in smartphones and
laptops.) But Europe has a problem. At present, almost every
ounce of battery-grade lithium is imported. More than half
(55%) of global lithium production last year originated in just
one country: Australia. Other principal suppliers, such as
Chile (23%), China (10%) and Argentina (8%), are equally
far-flung.
Lithium deposits have been discovered in Austria, Serbia
and Finland, but it is in Portugal that Europe's largest lithium
hopes lie. The Portuguese government is preparing to offer
licences for lithium mining to international companies in a
bid to exploit its "white oil" reserves. Sourcing lithium in its
own back yard not only offers Europe simpler logistics and
lower prices, but fewer transport-related emissions. It also
promises Europe security of supply - an issue given greater
urgency by the coronavirus pandemic's disruption of global
trade. Even before the pandemic, alarm was mounting about
sourcing lithium. Dr Thea Riofrancos, a political economist
at Providence College in Rhode Island, pointed to growing
trade protectionism and the recent US-China trade spat.
(And that was before the trade row between China and
Australia.) Whatever worries EU policymakers might have
had before the pandemic, she said, "now they must be a
million times higher".
The urgency in getting a lithium supply has unleashed a
mining boom, and the race for "white oil" threatens to cause
damage to the natural environment wherever it is found. But
because they are helping to drive down emissions, the mining
companies have EU environmental policy on their side.
"There's a fundamental question behind all this about the
model of consumption and production that we now have,
A lithium ion battery from a Mercedes S-Class hybrid.
which is simply not sustainable," said Riofrancos. "Everyone
having an electric vehicle means an enormous amount of
mining, refining and all the polluting activities that come
with it."
In the tiny hamlet of Muro in Trás-os-Montes, Cassote has
concerns of his own. The prospecting phase ended earlier
this year, and his expensive new machinery is standing idle in
his farmyard. Savannah is waiting for the final green light
from the Portuguese government for its lithium mine. If
approved, the company is promising to invest $109m in the
project. It will also create a quarry like an open wound in the
mountainside. Cassote doesn't mind. He just wants to be
back on his earthmover.
Not everyone shares Cassote's enthusiasm for lithium
mining. After three decades living in Amsterdam, Mario
Inacio, a 50-year-old professional dancer, recently returned
to his home in Portugal with plans to build a yoga retreat
deep in the countryside - somewhere bucolic and isolated
where guests could wake to the sound of birdsong.
Inacio and his partner, Milko Prinsze, had identified the
perfect spot, an abandoned farmstead set in 47 acres of
grassy wilderness in central Portugal. The main house would
require considerable renovation, but the rest was exactly as
they had imagined. Driving down the sinuous, bumpy
driveway for the first time, Inacio dreamed of the changes
they could make - extending the house off to the side,
converting the outhouses into private living quarters, carving
out a natural pool in the rocks. He pinpointed the spot for the
yoga studio: a small rise with expansive views over the
grounds and out to the hills beyond.
Six years after the couple first set eyes on the place, Quinta
Da Lua Nova is now ready to open its doors to paying guests.
The global pandemic is creating a shortage of international
clients and making it difficult to fill the nine rooms, but a
much greater worry hangs over the business in which Inacio
Photo : Alamy
has invested his life savings. Moving to one of the large
ground-floor windows of his new home, he pointed to the
lush expanse of open country outside. "Any of this could be
exploited for lithium soon. Possible exploration orders hang
over all of it."
In the past few years, small groups of anxious residents
have come together across Portugal, concerned about the
government's lithium plans. With few facts in the public
domain, these groups started making inquiries to local
planning departments and town halls. In Inacio's case, he
said that he was told his requests would be "passed on". He
never heard any more.
At the same time, early-stage exploration works, led by the
likes of Savannah and the Portugal-based Lusorecursos, were
reportedly sighted across the country. An objector unearthed
a technical assessment of Portugal's lithium resources
commissioned by the energy ministry in 2016. Eventually, a
government spokesperson confirmed that discussions were
under way with various mining companies, but said no firm
decisions had yet been made. Then, in January 2020, a map
began circulating among the various WhatsApp and
Facebook groups set up by concerned residents like Inacio.
The map, put together by a local software developer
specialising in cartography, appeared to confirm their worst
fears. A tapestry of geometric shapes spread across the
country's interior, abutting designated nature reserves. A
series of local and national protests, including a march in
Lisbon last year, sought to raise awareness about the impacts
of modern mining on the natural environment, including
potential industrial-scale habitat destruction, chemical
contamination and noise pollution, as well as high levels of
water consumption. They also raised concerns about the
impact on tourism - an economic mainstay for the country's
interior, with an annual turnover of €18.4bn in 2019.
All these concerns appear in a "national manifesto"
recently published by a coalition of civic movements. Despite
vociferous local media coverage, they have made little impact
so far. In part, this reflects the relative weakness of the
national environmental movement. Portugal is one of the few
countries in Europe not to have a Greenpeace affiliate, for
instance, and according to an EU survey, of all European
consumers, the Portuguese are the least likely to pay more for
eco-branded products.
For Maria Carmo, a 43-year-old university lecturer from
the village of Barco, in the central district of Castelo Branco,
such lack of engagement reveals the alienation that most
urban or coastal-dwelling Portuguese feel towards the
country's rural heartlands. The trend in the past 50 years or
so has been one of continued rural depopulation. Hundreds
of thousands of people have left Portugal's poor and already
under-populated interior for new lives abroad or in the
country's coastal cities. Few of them return.
If a mining licence is granted in their region, Inacio and a
small core of diehard supporters are prepared to fight it in the
courts. Carmo is less sure. Her campaign group in Castelo
Branco has already split, with half its members now open to
the possibility of an open-pit lithium mine above her village.
It will happen anyway, they say, so why not negotiate some
guarantees? Barco used to have a tin mine, the villagers
argue, and it wasn't so bad.
But Carmo feels it's a mistake to compare the two
operations. Her own father and grandfather both worked in
the Argemela tin mine outside the village before it closed in
the early 1960s. Back then, mining was small-scale and
subterranean. A new mine, in contrast, could see half the hill
disappear, potentially damaging the remains of a bronze-age
settlement on its peak. Villagers also fear that chemical
runoff will pollute the nearby Zêzere river, which they
depend on for their crops.
After a three-year struggle, Carmo is exhausted and ready to
give in. She feels the government is deaf, and that her fellow
citizens aren't interested. "So much destruction," she said. "And
for what? So eco-minded urbanites in Paris and Berlin can feel
good about driving around in zero-emission cars."
Advocates of Portugal's hoped-for lithium boom argue that
local disruption is a small price to pay for tackling the climate
crisis. They point out that innovations such as windfarms,
solar energy parks and hydroelectric plants, while
contributing to lowering CO2 emissions in the long term, all
have some impact on local populations. In a note to
investors, Savannah observes that its proposed mine (which
boasts projected revenues of US$1.55bn over its initial 11-
year lifespan) will contribute to enough battery packs to
prevent the emission of 100m tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Floating nuclear platns could
power countries by 2025
traffic and snow along the vine Street expressway in Philadelphia on wednesday.
Photo: Cameron Pollack
How climate change is
affecting winter storms
JOhn SChwArtz
The major winter storm that hit the
Eastern United States on Wednesday
and Thursday probably prompted some
people to ask, "What happened to global
warming?"But although it's becoming
increasingly clear that climate change
does have an effect on storms, the
relationship can be complex and, yes,
counterintuitive. "There were these
expectations that winter was basically
going to disappear on us," said Judah
Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at
AER, a company that provides
information to clients about weather and
climate-related risk.
Although winters are becoming
warmer and somewhat milder over all,
extreme weather events have also been
on the increase, and especially in the
Northeastern United States, as Dr.
Cohen pointed out in a recent paper in
the journal Nature Climate Change.
From the winter of 2008-9 until 2017-
18, there were 27 major Northeast
winter storms, three to four times the
totals for each of the previous five
decades.
One of the factors potentially feeding
storms is a warmer atmosphere, which
can hold more water vapor; not only can
that mean more precipitation, but when
the vapor forms clouds, "it releases heat
into the air, which provides fuel for
storms," said Jennifer Francis, a senior
scientist at the Woodwell Climate
Research Center. Also potentially
important, but less understood, she
noted, is "the increased tendency for the
jet stream to take big swoops north and
south," setting up weather phenomena
like the dreaded polar vortex.
Does that mean this particular storm
has been fueled by climate change?
Jonathan E. Martin, a professor in the
department of atmospheric and oceanic
sciences at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison, cautioned against drawing
quick conclusions.
Because of the "enormous natural
variability" in storms and the weather
they deliver, "I think it is a dangerous
business attributing individual winter
storms, or characteristics of them, to
climate change," he said. And this storm
in particular, he added, is getting a lot of
its moisture from water vapor
evaporated off the Atlantic Ocean, which
complicates the picture.
Dr. Francis agreed that any
connections are complex, but added, "all
storms now form in a greatly altered
climate, so there's little doubt that the
same storm decades ago would not be the
same."
JilliAn AMBrOSe
Floating barges fitted with advanced
nuclear reactors could begin powering
developing nations by the mid-2020s,
according to a Danish startup
company.Seaborg Technologies
believes it can make cheap nuclear
electricity a viable alternative to fossil
fuels across the developing world as
soon as 2025.
Its seaborne "mini-nukes" have been
designed for countries that lack the
energy grid infrastructure to develop
utility-scale renewable energy projects,
many of which go on to use gas, diesel
and coal plants instead.
The ships are fitted with one or more
small nuclear reactors, which can
generate electricity and transmit the
power to the mainland. The first ship of
this kind began supplying heat and
electricity to the Russian port of Pevek
on the East Siberian Sea in December
2019.
Troels Schönfeldt, the chief executive
of Seaborg, said the company's 100-
megawatt compact molten salt reactor
would take two years to build and
would generate electricity that would
be cheaper than coal-fired power.
Seaborg has raised about €20m
(£18.3m) from private investors,
including the Danish retail billionaire
Anders Holch Povlsen, and received
the first of the necessary regulatory
approvals within a four-phase process
from the American Bureau of Shipping
this week.
Most developing nations have been
unable to pursue nuclear energy
because it requires a carefully managed
regulatory regime to prevent nuclear
accidents or proliferation of materials
that could be used to create nuclear
weapons.
Seaborg hopes to begin taking orders
by the end of 2022 for the nuclear
barges, which would be built in South
Korean shipyards and towed to
coastlines where they could be
anchored for up to 24 years, he said.
The "turn-key solution" is important
to fast-growing developing economies
to power their nascent industries,
purify drinking water, and produce
clean-burning hydrogen as demand for
energy access rockets in the years
ahead.
"The scale of the developing world's
energy demand growth is mindboggling,"
Schönfeldt said. "If we can't
find an energy solution for these
countries, they will turn to fossil fuels
and we surely won't meet our climate
targets." The International Energy
Agency's has found that the
accelerating demand for electricity -
due to a growing global population and
rising levels of affluence - is on course
to outpace the growth of renewable
energy and increase reliance on fossil
fuels. Although nuclear energy has
been used onboard seaborne vessels for
decades to power submarines and
"icebreaker" tankers, Seaborg's design
would be one of the first examples of a
commercially available nuclear barge
used to provide electricity to the
mainland.
Chris Gadomski, a nuclear analyst at
Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said:
"The concept of a floating nuclear
power plant has been around for a long
time, and makes a lot of sense. But
there are concerns." There was
inherent risk involved with nuclear
reactor technologies and floating power
plants, so combining to two could raise
serious questions for investors and
governments, he said.
"In places like the Philippines and
Indonesia it makes a lot of sense. But it
wasn't so long ago that the Philippines
was the site of a major tsunami, and I
don't know how you would hedge
against a risk like that," he added.
Jan Haverkamp, from Greenpeace,
said floating reactors were "a recipe
for disaster" including "all of the flaws
and risks of larger land-based nuclear
power stations". "On top of that, they
face extra risks from the
unpredictability of operation in
coastal areas and transport -
particularly in a loaded state - over
the high seas. Think storms, think
tsunamis," he said.
Schönfeldt said the advanced reactor
was designed to be as safe as possible in
a worst-case scenario accident, with a
system causing the radioactive material
to form a solid rock outside of the
reactor core so it cannot disperse into
the air or sea as a catastrophically
harmful gas or liquid.
the world's first floating nuclear reactor, the Akademik
lomonosov.
Photo: lev Fedoseyev