From LA to Gaza, Damaged Renewables Turn Toxic; Trump Does Something Good

And more about the human and environmental costs of renewable energy and digital technology — and how we can do better.

Feb 13, 2025

Los Angeles and the Gaza Strip are literally a world apart, but they share at least one serious problem: they’re both riddled with hazardous waste from the shattered remains of technologies meant to create a cleaner future.

In LA, workers cleaning up after the devastating wildfires are facing what an Environmental Protection Agency official called "the largest lithium-ion battery cleanup that’s ever happened in the history of the world.” When damaged by fire, those batteries—which are used in almost all electric vehicles, as well as many smaller machines—can emit toxic gases, leach heavy metals into the ground, explode or even burst into flames long after the wildfires have passed. (Related: A huge California battery factory fire in January spewed out a similar cocktail of pollutants.) Removing a fire-damaged car’s battery pack takes an eight-person EPA squad wearing fire-resistant clothes, masks and other protective gear.

No one knows exactly how many damaged batteries are lurking in the ash and rubble. As of February 7, the EPA had already removed 200 electric vehicle batteries. There are surely more to come. Los Angeles County is home to some 400,000 registered electric vehicles, as well as a number of battery-based home energy storage systems. “The 2023 (Maui) wildfire … was the first conflagration where cleanup crews encountered a significant number of electric cars,” reports Todd Woody at Bloomberg. “They processed 94 vehicles in Hawaii; (they) expect to find more than 500 electric cars, including hybrid vehicles, in the L.A. burn zones.”

All those batteries may have made the wildfires worse, too. Lithium-based battery fires generally burn hotter and are harder to put out than more conventional conflagrations. “ If you add lithium to a fire, does it make it worse? I absolutely think so,” an LA County Fire Department member told LAist. “If you introduce materials that are combustible and or pose explosion hazards, it absolutely makes it more difficult.”

In the Gaza Strip, batteries were already a concern before the Israeli invasion began in 2023. With the local grid long beset by power outages, residents rely heavily on batteries to keep their homes lit and warm. But the Strip has no facilities to recycle those batteries when they wear out, and the Israeli blockade prevents them from being sent elsewhere. Result: Thousands of tons of old batteries were piled up in several places around the Strip, potentially leaking toxins. Who knows how many have since been blown to pieces, scattering toxic shrapnel?

Meanwhile, regular readers may recall that Gaza had perhaps the world’s highest density of rooftop solar systems—again, a response to an unreliable electric grid. Now, after months of Israeli bombardment, at least two-thirds of those solar panels have been damaged or destroyed. According to a UN report, all those shattered panels could be leaking dangerous metals including cadmium and lead into Gaza’s soil and water. Panels that were burned may also have released hazardous chemicals and heavy metals into the air.

There are similar concerns to the north in Lebanon, which Israel also bombarded last year. There too there has “been an exponential rise in the use of solar panels and battery storage to compensate for the country’s faltering electrical grid,” reports The New York Times. A local research group “estimates that in just one area, the Dahiya, nearly 4,000 solar panels were badly damaged in the conflict. Pulverized into toxic dust and leaching dangerous chemicals, they could pose a serious risk if they are not adequately treated before disposal.”

Let me underline my usual caveat: none of this should be taken as an argument against deploying renewable energy. We must transition off of fossil fuels. But we also have to recognize that in an increasingly disaster-prone, politically unstable world, renewable energy systems can mutate into environmental hazards. Another cost of the energy transition we need to contend with.

Trump Does Something Good

I believe I’ve made my own political views abundantly clear. Nonetheless, I also believe in keeping an open mind, and giving credit where it’s due, and so I will say that President Trump’s demand that the US stop making pennies is a positive and long-overdue move. Those little coins aren’t just pointless pocket-litter—they’re expensive. Crazy but true: Making each 1 cent coin costs 3.7 cents. Last year alone, the US Treasury spent some $85 million making pennies.

Canada stopped making pennies back in 2012, and has since melted down billions of them for scrap, a much better use of that metal. How much metal might we be talking about in the US? As I wrote last year:

there a lot of pennies out there—as many as 240 billion, estimates The New York Times. A modern penny weighs 2.5 grams, which means it contains .0625 grams of copper. Multiply that by 240 billion, convert the grams into tons, and you get 16,534 tons of copper. That’s enough for more than 200,000 electric cars!

With all that in mind, I wholeheartedly endorse the proposition that with Trump as president, America will no longer make cents.

Book News

I’m proud and honored to have Power Metal named a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism! Kudos to the other four finalists. Looks like an outstanding bunch of books by a very impressive group of writers.

Nice review in The Times of India.

My next public talk will be at the public library on beautiful Bowen Island, BC. Come on by if you’re in the area!