Climate Change Thread

[ReluctantSamurai]

Although late to the party, at least there is some discussion finally happening in the US concerning recycling lithium ion batteries and other materials from EV's:

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...appens-to-them

A tsunami of electric vehicles is expected in rich countries, as car companies and governments pledge to ramp up their numbers – there are predicted be 145m on the roads by 2030. But while electric vehicles can play an important role in reducing emissions, they also contain a potential environmental timebomb: their batteries.

By one estimate, more than 12m tons of lithium-ion batteries are expected to retire between now and 2030.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing into recycling startups and research centers to figure out how to disassemble dead batteries and extract valuable metals at scale.

There is big momentum behind lithium-ion battery recycling. In its impact report, published in August, Tesla announced that it had started building recycling capabilities at its Gigafactory in Nevada to process waste batteries.

Nearby Redwood Materials, founded by the former Tesla chief technology officer JB Straubel, which operates out of Carson City, Nevada, raised more than $700m in July and plans to expand operations. The factory takes in dead batteries, extracts valuable materials such as copper and cobalt, then sends the refined metals back into the battery supply chain.

Legislation could help. While the US has yet to implement federal policies mandating lithium-ion battery recycling, the EU and China already require battery manufacturers to pay for setting up collection and recycling systems. These funds could help subsidize formal recyclers to make them more competitive, Pennington said.

[ReluctantSamurai]

I'm not a big fan of EV's, but if this recent innovation, combined with fuel-cell technology can reduce emissions from rail transport, then that's a step in the right direction, IMHO:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...port-emissions

The new train, known as the FLXdrive battery-electric locomotive, underwent successful trials in California earlier this year where it was found to have cut fuel consumption by 11%, which meant reducing the amount of diesel used by 6,200 gallons. Wabtec said that the next iteration of the locomotive, to be rolled out within two years, will be able to cut the consumption of diesel, the fossil fuel traditionally used in freight rail, by nearly a third.

The company also said emissions will be entirely eliminated through the development of accompanying hydrogen fuel cells. If the technology is used worldwide, Wabtec estimates planet-heating emissions could be cut by 300m tons a year, with nearly half of those saved emissions occurring in the US.

Wabtec is betting the FLXdrive will change this dynamic. Housed in a traditional locomotive body, the new battery system drives the axles of the train and uses the kinetic energy of the train’s braking to recharge, meaning the batteries should never run out. The newest version will be a 7-megawatt battery locomotive, which is “100 times the power and energy within a Tesla – it’s dramatically more powerful”, said Eric Gebhardt, Wabtec’s chief technology officer.

That last part about using a train's own kinetic energy to recharge batteries is important, as currently many or most recharge stations are powered by fossil fuels, negating the benefits of EV's in the first place.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I'm not a big fan of EV's, but if this recent innovation, combined with fuel-cell technology can reduce emissions from rail transport, then that's a step in the right direction, IMHO:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...port-emissions {...less excerpts...}

That last part about using a train's own kinetic energy to recharge batteries is important, as currently many or most recharge stations are powered by fossil fuels, negating the benefits of EV's in the first place.

Nice. Despite our rail system's limitations, we move a huge amount of goods that way. I was never a fan of the hydrogen cells for cars thing, but this seems like a great usage.

[ReluctantSamurai]

I was never a fan of the hydrogen cells for cars thing

Fuel cells in general, or just for use in cars?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Fuel cells in general, or just for use in cars?

Private auto usage is what I am leery of. They work well for fleet vehicles and heavier applications. I will admit that my view of this is also colored by my appreciation for the skills of the typical USA motorist.

[ReluctantSamurai]

I will admit that my view of this is also colored by my appreciation for the skills of the typical USA motorist

Actually, to date, the biggest danger is explosions of plants producing the H2, rather than the vehicles themselves. I don't particularly care for EV's much, not because of the cars themselves, but because of the glut of lithium and the 17 other rare-earth minerals that's needed to produce them. We've raped the land surface plenty to get these, but in order to feed the beast (so-to-speak) countries are going after deep-sea deposits. There is little to no regulations about how this mining will occur, and you know what that means...a SeaQuest DSV situation come to life.

The EU is ahead of the curve, somewhat, when it comes to recycling the minerals for all the planned EV's, but here in the US it's just talk, for the moment. I'm not holding my breath on that one as I remember how long it took to get lead-acid batteries into the recycle bin, but god only knows how many ended up in landfills or out in the back yard junk pile...

This is a pretty balanced discussion of the pro's and con's of BEV's vs FCV's:

https://youmatter.world/en/hydrogen-...ability-28156/

[ReluctantSamurai]

I know you folks probably think I keep crying Wolf! on this topic, but none-the-less, world governments better wake the hell up before it's too late or we really will see seaQuest DSV come to life (somewhere in the ethos, Roy Scheider is smiling):

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...e-the-deep-sea

A short bureaucratic note from a brutally degraded microstate in the South Pacific to a little-known institution in the Caribbean is about to change the world. Few people are aware of its potential consequences, but the impacts are certain to be far-reaching. The only question is whether that change will be to the detriment of the global environment or the benefit of international governance.

In late June, the island republic of Nauru informed the International Seabed Authority (ISA) based in Kingston, Jamaica of its intention to start mining the seabed in two years’ time via a subsidiary of a Canadian firm, The Metals Company (TMC, until recently known as DeepGreen). Innocuous as it sounds, this note was a starting gun for a resource race on the planet’s last vast frontier: the abyssal plains that stretch between continental shelves deep below the oceans.

The risks are enormous. Oversight is almost impossible. Regulators admit humanity knows more about deep space than the deep ocean. The technology is unproven. Scientists are not even sure what lives in those profound ecosystems. State governments have yet to agree on a rulebook on how deep oceans can be exploited. No national ballot has ever included a vote on excavating the seabed.

“This is now a test of governments who claim to want to protect the oceans,” she said. “They simply cannot allow these reckless companies to rush headlong into a race to the bottom, where little-known ecosystems will be ploughed up for profit, and the risks and liabilities will be pushed on to small island nations. We need an urgent deep-sea mining moratorium to protect the oceans.”

And here's the crux of the matter:

Mining companies also insist on urgency – to start exploration. They say the minerals – copper, cobalt, nickel and magnesium – are essential for a green transition. If the world wants to decarbonise and reach net-zero emissions by 2050, they say we must start extracting the resources for car batteries and wind turbines soon. They already have exploration permits for an expanse of international seabed as large as France and Germany combined, an area that is likely to expand rapidly. All they need now is a set of internationally agreed operating rules. The rulebook is being drawn up by the ISA, set up in 1994 by the United Nations to oversee sustainable seabed exploration for the benefit of all humanity. But progress is slower than mining companies and their investors would like.

So net-zero emissions is going to be the back pressure excuse to fuck up the world's deep-sea eco-systems, which we have little to no knowledge of, all in the name of "Green Energy".

History does not offer much encouragement to the denizens of the deep that the issue will be resolved in their favour. In modern times, particularly the great post-second world war acceleration of the past 70 years, more has probably been gouged from the Earth than in all of previous human history combined.

The materials for a built and manufactured environment are extracted at the expense of natural beauty, resilience and stability. For most of human history, this was considered a fair trade-off. The costs – cleared forests, scarred landscapes, polluted water, air filled with dust, carcinogens and greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere – were either unknown or deemed small compared with the gains. They rarely appeared on corporate or national balance sheets. Miners extracted oil, gas, coal, iron, gold, copper, lithium and other minerals, while leaving other species, remote communities and future generations to pay the price.

So we might see a return of the "Robber Baron" era of the 1870's, except that this time oversight will be extremely difficult. News agencies can't exactly send investigative reporters a mile or two beneath the ocean surface to film what's happening.

Stating the obvious:

Matthew Gianni, co-founder of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, said: “This is all about money – money for DeepGreen [TMC] and its shareholders and money for Nauru – and the fear that if DeepGreen doesn’t get a licence soon, investors will walk away from the company and both DeepGreen and Nauru will lose out on any revenue.” He said the case showed the need to shake up international governance. “The ISA’s decision-making process is seriously flawed and needs to be fixed.”

And who is the ISA (International Seabed Authority)?

https://www.isa.org.jm/about-isa

But, as usual, corruption abounds:

In theory, every country in the world is involved in the ISA’s decision-making. In practice, power lies with a small group of experts that is weighted in favour of mining. There is no specialist environmental or science assessment group to vet applications for new contracts. Instead, new contracts are initially made by the ISA’s Legal and Technical Commission (LTC), which comprises just 30 members. Their decisions can only be overturned by a super-majority of two thirds of the full council, which comprises 36 states.

That's like putting the fox in charge of overseeing the hen house...

The commission has a 100% record of approving exploration applications, for which ISA charges a $500,000 (£365,000) processing fee. Membership of the LTC is skewed towards extraction rather than environmental oversight – a fifth of the members work directly for contractors with deep-sea mining projects. They include Nobuyuki Okamoto, who established Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation, which has started its own seafloor exploration, and Carsten Rühlemann, who works for Germany’s Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, which holds exploration contracts in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Many others have a background in mining or oil and gas exploration. Among them are the chair of the commission, Harald Brekke, who is a senior geologist at the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate; Pakistan’s representative, Khalid Mehmood Awan, who has worked for offshore oil and gas companies; and an Australian geologist, Mark Alcock, who is listed as working previously in surveying for petroleum and minerals exploration. By comparison, only three members are obviously focused on marine ecosystems, such as Gordon Lindsay Paterson, a zoologist at the Natural History Museum in London.

And, of course, shady deals already abound:

It is not just small island states that are complicit. Seabed resources are supposed to benefit all of humanity and promote sustainable development, but just three companies from wealthy nations have a hand in eight of the 10 contracts to explore for minerals in the Pacific’s Clarion-Clipperton zone that have been awarded since 2010: the Canadian-registered TMC (formerly DeepGreen), the Belgian corporation Dredging Environmental and Marine Engineering (DEME), and UK Seabed Resources, a subsidiary of the US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin.

The role of these companies is opaque. None of the parent companies are included by the ISA in its list of contractors. A common practice is to operate through subsidiaries or by taking shares in partners in small island states, often in conjunction with national governments. This leads to concerns about accountability in the event of an accident: the subsidiaries are often small, which could leave poor nations with huge liabilities.

Look at the opening picture (in the article linked) of what typical deep-sea mining equipment looks like. Does that look like any of the companies currently involved in deep-sea mineral extraction gives a shit about environmental consequences? For that matter, has any mining company ever conducted business with the environment in mind?

Will McCallum, head of oceans at Greenpeace UK:

“Any claim of not being environmentally damaging is meaningless, as we have no idea now what that environment is.” “We have never entered a frontier and not fucked it up more.”

To date, the earth's oceans have mitigated global warming by absorbing nearly 90% of the excess heat caused by CO2 and other emitted gases since the 1870's. And noone has ANY idea how any of this proposed deep-sea mining will impact the earth's oceans ability to continue as a heat sink for our environmental irresponsibility. So here we are, about to gleefully run through the lush green meadow of net-zero carbon emissions, only to fall into the quicksands of exploitation and greed once again.

Today’s technology has moved on, but scientists and conservationists doubt that it is ready and the environmental risks are fully understood. They would like more time. Nauru and TMC have given them less. The countdown clock now has 21 months left, and counting.