While it’s true that mining and drilling for energy have environmental impacts, it’s essential to place the emissions and pollution from battery production into perspective.
The Energy Transition Commission’s latest report, “Material and Resource Requirements for the Energy Transition,” published in July 2023, sheds light on this issue. The report indicates that the cumulative global emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases from battery mining, as well as the production of solar panels and wind turbines over the next 30 years, will amount to between 15 to 35 gigatonnes of CO2. To contextualise this, it’s important to compare this figure to the ongoing 40 gigatonnes of CO2 emitted annually from global fossil fuel energy extraction.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported in 2018 that a staggering 89% of global emissions stem from fossil fuels. Therefore, arguing that emissions from mining battery minerals could surpass the global emissions from the extensive process of exploration, drilling, extracting, shipping, refining, transporting, distributing, and burning of fossil fuels is quite a stretch, even for the most sceptical critic of EVs.
In essence, while all forms of energy production have environmental consequences, the scale of emissions from battery production for EVs pales in comparison to the ongoing emissions from fossil fuel extraction and usage. The transition to electric vehicles, alongside renewable energy sources, remains a critical step towards mitigating climate change and reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.
