But cynicism aside, the key to making renewables a practical base load replacement for fossil fueled plants is a solid battery infrastructure. And those batteries aren't 'car batteries' they are 'city batteries'. We really do want to get to the point where energy independence is possible so continuing to improve batteries is a good thing.
It is just hard for some people to prioritize without an imminent threat of disaster.
No, it's a solid storage infrastructure, of which batteries are only one type.
Where weight and size do not matter, more choices for batteries are possible.
E.g. redox flow batteries.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/fuel-cells/its-big-and-...
In the near future, atmospheric CO2 will be recycled to create organic fuel.
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2017/09/18/solar-fuel-system-recyc...
https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2017/Q2/instantly-r...
Solid state batteries are also interesting. Lithium-ion batteries will be replaced because they can develop dendrites and catch fire.
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/26/the-solid-state-lithium...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324734826_Non-Tradi...
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/04/19/016213/the-slas...
That’s been around for quite a while already; you’re describing a tree.
If you have unlimited free energy in this near future, then maybe you can do what yoj say (or maybe electrolysis to produce hydrogen is better/more profitable).
Otherwise no, this won't happen.
Besides:
From https://lustysociety.org/ethics.html#climate:
Annual global fossil fuel subsidies amounting to $5.3 trillion in 2015 (6.5% of global GDP).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X1...
According to the Global Carbon Atlas: 36 183 million metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2016.
According to estimates in 2018 by Carbon Engineering and Climeworks: The cost of capturing 1 metric ton CO2 from the air costs $ 600 in 2018 and could fall under $ 100 in 5 - 10 years. A plant could make a liter fuel for a dollar.
At a cost of $ 600 per metric ton of CO2, the capture of the emissions of 2016 (36 183 million metric tons) costs $ 21 710 billion or $ 21.7 trillion.
At a cost of $ 100 per metric ton of CO2, the capture of the emissions of 2016 (36 183 million metric tons) costs $ 3 618 billion or $ 3.6 trillion.
The organic fuel should be used with batteries and fuel cells and not with combustion engines.
In order to decrease the CO2 concentration in the environment, the waste products must be contained and recycled later without release into the atmosphere.
Reuse rate is only 68%.
That's a 32% reduction in stock per generation.
High rates of recycling are possible in theory, yes, but have not been demonstrated in practice. The loss rate over n generations for a recovery rate r (percent/100) is r^n. At a 90% recovery rate, you've lost 50% of initial stock in 7 generations.
https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/recycle/
https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/recycle/my...
[1] Though in a handful of cases it gets dispersed in a way that's very difficult to recover. I mentioned phosphorus in another post: P is being unsustainably pulled out of rocks and put into biomass, where it gets flushed into the oceans. Figuring out a way to get it back out is a far bigger mess than mere cobalt recycling is going to be. But even there economics will save us as fertilizer costs make recovery new techniques worthwhile.
Not using current technology. You can't recycle lithium (for example) using smelting. It's also not very profitable.
It's still very much an unsolved problem.
I would love to be proved wrong!
Edit: I don't know why this is being downvoted. Using current recycling methods, the lithium is not recyclable (the cobalt is). I then asked if I am not correct, to please correct me.
So if not recycled, what's currently happening to lithium batteries in all our electronics and car batteries (etc)? Is it just handled as hazardous waste?
Lithium is not a limiting resource for battery production, it's actually fairly common in the earth's crust. The limit is cobalt[1].
Extracting cobalt from a junked battery is orders of magnitude cheaper than mining and smelting it from the (very diffuse) ores that are available.
[1] Also, per the article, nickel, which surprises me so much that I suspect it's wrong. Per wikipedia nickel reserves are 30x yearly production, and of course new exploration and extraction techniques are always pushing the reserve number up.
The real issue is that, just as you hint, it’s actually cheaper to get lithium from mineral rich dirt, than to set up collection, disassembly and recovery operation for existing batteries. We can do it, it’s just not most economically efficient way to get raw lithium. If lithium goes up in price, it might become viable.
Can you point me to a recycling facility that's doing this?
OK, question answered.
> As mentioned above, you've been fooled by the name of the technology and are looking at the wrong part of the periodic table.
I asked about lithium recycling. How am I being fooled?
(Though I threw that last one in deliberately: we're pulling P out of rocks and throwing it into the biosphere at an unsustainable rate right now, and are going to have to radically adjust the way we do agriculture fertilization in the coming decades. But even then there's going to be plenty of P around, we just have to change the sources we use to extract it.)
> Unlike petroleum, batteries are almost 100% recyclable.
Although they can be, they're not.
That's a big point in electric cars, that I think gets swept under the rug in the green-washing of electric cars: the main widget that makes electric cars electric cars is discarded as hazardous waste.
It's too costly and impractical to recycle them. We essentially want to replace a billion gasoline cars with electric ones, and the tech. to recycle those future billion batteries doesn't really exist.
Just a point I wanted to be cleared up.
You're still missing the whole point, which is why you are being downvoted. The technology to recycle the future billion batteries exists today, and will improve in future. The issue here is that at a current price point it is simply not competitive compared to extracting raw lithium from ground. As the most accessible and profitable fields run out of the material, and as the demand for lithium grows, the price will go up, which might make the battery recycling economically viable.
Compare it to our current wood usage: the wood we use for furniture production is usually recyclable. You could take a wardrobe, disassemble it, and after some recutting and sanding you might use the wood for some other project. However, doing this in the end costs much more than using new materials, because collecting used furniture for recycling purposes, and labor needed to disassemble it and prepare wood for reuse is simply too much for it to be worth it, especially as it cannot be manufactured in a process as automated as making plywood, MDF, 2x4s or hardwood flooring is these days. Same with getting lithium from batteries: we could do it, but you'd have to pay extra for it.
But I disagree that recycling is a big point regarding solar panels and batteries.
IMO lack of recycling and toxic waste are very lame and ignorant and misleading excuses (by the main stream media) to refuse the solar power industry, the battery industry and the electric car industry.
The threat and harm of climate change is catastrophic and very real and change is very urgent.
The fight against climate change must not be a debate of wrong priorities (waste vs climate change) and short term profitability of companies.
No foolish austerity and no local (and needless) poisoning by solar panels and batteries is worth the harm of climate change.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/0...
https://truthout.org/articles/release-of-arctic-methane-may-...
http://www.climate-change-emergency-medical-response.org/2-d...
http://globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm
For more links:
FWIW, though: Li isn't particularly hazardous.
Not really there yet, but it's ultimately a very solvable problem: the elements are right there and in high concentrations.
As cheaper sources are exhausted, the more expensive ones become viable. So we won't run out on the projected time horizon.
The main reason why US and Australian rare earth production has gone away is because Chinese sources are so much cheaper (aka no pollution or safety regs). No production, no exploration, and no development of rare earth sources.
As cheap production goes away, people again look for, build, and use other sources.
Planning on a backup plan and providing large numbers of jobs through factories to increase the value of labor in these places is a much better way to increase the standard of living other without installing socialist governments.
Other countries with large resource extraction industries, such as Chile and Norway, have been able to take advantage of the profits to build their economy, thanks to their political stability. The resource curse can clearly be lifted by a suitably durable politics.
This article is about cobalt and nickel, neither of which are rare-earths.
> Recycling cannot replenish supplies. Lithium-ion batteries last for 15–20 years, 3 times longer than the 5–7 years for lead-acid batteries. Refiners might exploit poorer quality ores, especially as prices climb. But greater processing costs would push the prices higher.
So... no. We aren't going to run out. We'll see a continuous bend in the demand curve as new production methods come online.
It's exactly the same logic that led to all the fretting about "peak oil" in the 90's and early 00's. No, all that happened (sadly) was that when gas crossed $3/gallon we suddenly invented fracking and prices stabilized.
Batteries will get more expensive. We'll survive.
Just look at the recycling rates today for car batteries (lead acid): it's nearly at 100%, though of course part of that is because almost no one changes their own battery, and when they do, they do it at AutoZone in the parking lot and leave the old one there. But it's perfectly possible, especially with them retaining value, to have extremely high recycling rates for Li-ion batteries, so that the lithium, cobalt, and nickel inside never goes to waste and is continually recycled.
What we really need is better standardization for batteries for small devices, particularly phones, and elimination of the ability of devices to have non-replaceable batteries. I would actually favor a legislative approach to this: ban the selling of devices with sealed-in batteries altogether in major markets, forcing manufacturers like Apple to come up with standards and making batteries at least somewhat easily removed to facilitate recycling.
The opposite is true; removable batteries almost entirely end up in landfills.
Putting batteries non-removably inside devices makes them much more likely to be recycled, along with the rest of the recyclable components of the device.
Right now, that may be the case, but that's because those batteries generally have zero scrap value, so you're just hoping users will care enough about the environment to not do this, and take them to a proper recycling bin (like at the entrance to Target).
But the parent was predicting that batteries would become significantly more expensive as these materials became more scarce. In that future, a dead phone battery would still have some value, so people would generally want to take them someplace where they can get money back for them.
The other factor is that, in this possible future of expensive batteries, it'd be much more important for them to be standardized and more easily replaced. If your phone costs $500 sans battery, but the battery for it is another $500, you're going to want a standardized design that you can swap between different phones or other devices.
That's because they have near-zero value, the component elements still being much cheaper to produce from ore than from recycling. That flips around once we start running out of ore.
Basically, economics takes care of this for us. At the end of the day, battery reagents are unconsumed resources, so we'll be fine (at some price equilibrium probably higher than their price today) so long as the number of people and their need for power storage remains bounded.
There's a $12 deposit (core charge) you pay if you don't exchange one, which drives recycling, plus stores and landfills tend to accept them for free.
By 2050, producing 50 million to 80 million electric vehicles a year would require 500,000–800,000 tonnes of cobalt. Beyond 2030, this would far exceed current mining capacities. Similarly, 2–3 times more nickel would be needed by 2050. Nickel shortages would be evident by the mid-2030s.
Like Oil, there is enough oil on earth should we need to continue to growth not using any renewable energy for the next 100 years or more. The problem is somewhere down the line it may not be $100 per barrel but likely be $200+.
The same is lithium, there are still huge known reserve. But key here is economically variable reserve. The reason Australia aren't doing much of it is because they cant complete with Congo with when the lithium price is $80 without much profit.
Once the price reach high enough, it is for certain someone else will come and do the dirty work. And I expect lots of investment coming from China.
The only reason 15 year batteries are not recyclable are it will be 15 years before current cars get old enough to need that infrastructure. There is plenty of money to be made if you want to invest in recycling them, but you need to invest at the right time. You probably should be thinking about recycling in Central America or Africa (consider political issues before investing!), and make sure you don't over invest, lead acid batteries fundamentally need twice as much infrastructure because they are replaced twice as often.
Which is why the brands of cars less wealthy people buy are over-represented in the 15-25yo age group on US roads compared to when they were newer. All the stuff rich people buy get traded in, auctioned and (mostly) shipped to Central America. The stuff less well of people buy sticks around because they get private party sold to the next guy and the next guy and the next guy. You'll have an easier time finding early '00 Hyundai parts than early '00 Honda parts.
There's plenty of CRVs and SantaFes on the road but the present market share of the 2002 SantaFe has increased relative to the market share of 2002 CRVs when compared to what the situation was in 2005 or so.
We're obviously talking at a statistical, not individual level here. Of course not only wealthy people buy Hondas, just more wealthy people buy Hondas than Kias and wealthy people are more likely to trade in their old car at a dealer which makes it more likely to wind up overseas (if it's got too many miles to easily resell in the US).
I've seen lots of cars in Morocco that were more like ~30... maybe the dry air helps reducing wear, I don't know. My 10-year-old Corsa in England was starting to rust pretty bad, it wouldn't have lasted another decade for sure.
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/09/f37/fotw%239...
That is incorrect. The article states that Australia has 14% of the world's cobalt reserves, and does not specify their utilisation.
I personally find our waste, specifically with batteries, pretty disgusting.
What would be interesting would be for batteries to be treated as a national resource, where you basically check them out and need to return them when they are finished.
I also think it would be interesting to require that certain products, specifically everything related to connecting a device to the power grid, should all be standardized and regulated.
The amount of waste in batteries, power cords, USB cords etc - just seems unsustainable. I am sure most would disagree with me, but I find all this product/design/resource waste to be evidence of lazy and disturbingly poor engineering.
I look at a particular video of Apple's as a true marker of the level of their engineering prowess (lack of):
There is a video showing the ridiculously complex method for battery replacement in the iPhoneX - requiring a many stepped procedure and a battery-tamping-device that was obviously contract manufactured by a small-ish shop for their genius' use.
I just find that with the amount of time, effort and resources put into the design development and production of all apple products (just as a singular example among many many companies) to illustrate their lack of full competence in sustainability in their products. Sure, they may reduce waste in many areas as compared to the old way, or others, but there is still a CRAP ton of waste across the board.
/rant
The wording here is also really awkward, and shows how little the author actually knows about batteries. There is no Li-ion battery in the world with a "100kg cathode". There may be 100kg of cathode material used in within the cells of a battery pack, but to say "100kg cathode" is just flat out wrong and makes me question this entire analysis.
I made this mistake reading the article–I divided 10^7 / 10kg per car --> only enough cobalt for about 10^6 cars (1 000 000) cars.
Instead the calculation is 10^7 tonnes * 10^3 kg/tonne = 10^10 kg / 10kg per car = enough cobalt for 10^9 battery packs = 1 billion cars.
I think we will be ok...
But there is enough Uranium and Thorium for many centuries, even millennia.
The most important problem to solve is climate change; besides aging as the most important reason for misery and death today.
But the replacement of animal products by vegan food is the only sane choice for medical, ethical, economic and ecological reasons.
http://www.whatthehealthfilm.com/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGJq0eQZoFSwgcqgxIE9MHw/vid...
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJRjK20fHylJyf-HiBtqI2w/vid...
A big problem with Mars is that getting fuel there is expensive, they sometimes have large dust storms, and their atmosphere is very thin. Solar power would work fine there 90+% of the time, but outside of fission, there doesn't seem to be any good technology for powering a human habitat over long periods. A rich thorium deposit on Mars could go a long way in creating a self-sustainable habitat. Some thorium reactor designs are notable for their high inherent safety, which is probably a big concern for any human habitat on Mars for morale reasons (think about how much a fatal nuclear disaster on a Martian colony would scare people about space exploration)
But going to Mars in the next decades is a useless horrific suicide mission that only serves to make a few people famous.
IMO persons will colonize moons, planets and space ships once their biological body is replaced by a machine body. In a biological sense, the human race will die on Earth.
The ten years meme is based in a false premise. The article even says Australian known sources are only utilised at 14% and yet predicts a long term supply problem without asking what other sources might be discovered.
From the article A lithium-ion car battery with a 100 kg cathode requires 6–12 kg of cobalt and 36–48 kg of nickel so work on 10kg without improvements and same article says at current economic models only 10 exp 8 tonnes economically extractable. So 10 exp 10 batteries. (1000 kg per tonne) 10,000,000,000 batteries. One car for everyone alive... And that's before normal levels of production efficiency, scavenging nice cobalt rich sources like old batteries or even the intent of the article: new sources and new technologies.