Quote:
Originally Posted by Im1
Is the planet affected any less by the intense mining required to make all these batteries ?
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Valid question. An honest assessment of this question would be very complicated, but consider the following:
Tie: Petroleum has to be extracted from the earth and refined as well, so it's not as if the mining of battery elementals is unique in this regard.
Advantage Battery: The the advent of fracking, the extraction of petroleum has seen an
increase in environmental impact.
Advantage Battery: Petroleum products that are extracted and refined can only be used once. When you burn petrol to create heat to drive an engine, it is immediately used up. Battery elementals are cycled over and over. There is degradation, of course, but what they lack in energy density, they make up for in their ability to store and release energy over time.
Tie: Battery elementals are not an energy source; they are a storage medium. This means that in addition to the environmental impact of mining the elementals, we must consider the production of energy that will be stored in the battery. This varies greatly from country-to-country, and requires broader strategic planning than simply expecting consumers to buy EVs. In countries like France, the win easily goes to batteries. In the U.S., it's a different story.
Ultimately, there is no single answer to your question. The mining of elementals is only a small part of the overall picture. The most important aspect remains energy production. With a petrol powered ICE, the actual production of energy occurs at the moment of combustion. With an EV, the production of energy occurs at a power plant.
An ICE achieves a maximum thermodynamic efficiency of around 40%, and that is in a car like the Prius, which uses an Atkinson cycle engine. Most car engines are doing well if they achieve >35%. Note that this thermodynamic efficiency is not affected by the hybrid aspect of a car. I'm speaking strictly of converting heat in to motion. An efficient power plant can achieve thermodynamic efficiency of around 60%, so there's a 20% gain on the table by moving energy production to a power plant.
However, that energy has to be transmitted and stored in your battery. Fortunately, the losses involved are low. Transmission systems (6% - 8% losses) are highly optimized for efficiency, because even small gains in efficiency can result in millions of dollars saved for the electric utility company. The energy cycle of a battery is also very efficient. It can be as high as 99%, but as low as 90%, depending upon charging rate and state of charge.
So the 20% gain in efficiency by using a power plant doesn't translate directly to an EV. It can be whittled away by transmission and charging losses, resulting in an effective efficiency of 2% to 12%.
We still have further down the rabbit hole to go though, because this only considers energy efficiency. It doesn't speak to the full environmental impact of both, because not all power generation technologies have the same emissions.
The key thing to understand is that this is a
major technological shift. I put the shift to renewables on the same plane as the shift to solid state circuitry. I really do believe the impact of this shift will be just as great, of not greater, than the transition to solid state electronics. I don't think the timelines will be at all similar, but the impact will absolutely be just as great.
It is a goal worth pursuing, but you are right to be skeptical. Just be sure not to decide the answer before you ask the question. Be genuinely curious.