Me and John Oliver

Plus: The Death and Destruction Powering Electric Cars; Power Shift; Lasers Could Boost Solar Recycling; and more about the real costs of renewable energy and digital tech, and how we can do better.

Jun 20, 2024

Does a straight-up brag deserve the top slot in this week’s newsletter? Probably not, but I can’t resist: Dudes, John Oliver quoted my Wired cover story about deep sea mining on Last Week Tonight! I’ve been a fan of his since his days with the Daily Show, so that was a big, fat kick. And of course I’m very glad that John (can I call you John?!) is raising awareness around the issue. New research keeps coming out on more ways mining could harm ocean life, but sea mining companies are still pushing to start operations as soon as 2026. There’s a whole chapter on this complicated and tremendously important issue in my book, Power Metal, coming out November 19. Yeah, I’m bragging again.

The Death and Destruction Powering Electric Cars

Last Christmas, twenty-one people were killed when molten metal erupted out of a furnace in a giant industrial park in Indonesia. It was just the latest in a series of lethal accidents at the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park, reports Bloomberg, a place filled with dangers “from construction sites where a moment of inattention can be fatal to growling, temperamental smelters, capable of immolating their attendants if mishandled.” The park is also one of the world’s major sources of nickel, a crucial ingredient in the batteries in most electric vehicles and digital gadgets. Probably including the one on which you’re reading this.

Indonesia is home to the world’s biggest nickel reserves, and it is moving fast and hard to make the most of them in a world increasingly hungry for the metal. The government has encouraged a tremendous expansion in nickel mining as well as the more lucrative industries involved in processing the raw ore. The goal is to ultimately capture much of the whole battery supply chain, from digging the nickel out of the ground to refining it to making the batteries it goes into to assembling the cars powered by those batteries. It’s a push that has created thousands of jobs and earned Indonesia millions—but which has also come with huge costs, many of them borne by the people working those same jobs.

Dozens of workers have been killed or injured at the $30 billion IMIP complex in the last few years. The damage goes far beyond its grounds: “In surrounding communities, residents complain of respiratory ailments that they blame on pollution from smelters and the coal-fired power plants that sustain them,” says the Bloomberg piece. (Here’s a gift link if you don’t have a subscription.) The nickel industry has torn up more than 290 square miles of tropical forest, an area bigger than the sprawl of Atlanta—some of it illegally, according to Mighty Earth. “Nickel will help other countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. But it does the opposite in Indonesia, where most of the metal is mined from beneath rainforests and is refined using energy from coal-burning power stations,” notes Yale Environment 360. It also eructs all kinds of toxic waste, some of which is threatening the livelihoods of the world’s last nomadic sea tribe.

The world needs Indonesia’s nickel, and Indonesia needs the money it brings in. But there are many ways to make the extraction and refining of that nickel less destructive, mainly by raising environmental and labor standards. Yes, putting such standards in place would drive up costs, which would make our EVs and devices more expensive. That’s a tradeoff we should be willing to make.

Power Shift

Then again, maybe soon we won’t need nearly so much nickel. Several major automakers are considering shifting from using standard lithium-nickel-cobalt batteries in their new electric vehicles to cheaper batteries made with lithium, iron and phosphate. Mercedes and Stellantis, parent company of Chrysler, Fiat and others, recently halted construction of a major new battery plant in Europe, partly so they can decide which format to manufacture. (Thanks to John Lando for sending this news my way.)

Lithium-iron, or LFP batteries, don’t hold as much energy as their nickel-based cousins, which means you get fewer miles per charge. That puts off Western customers worried about driving range. On the other hand, the raw materials that go into them don’t entail nearly as much destruction. More important to most consumers: they’re cheaper. In the last five years, LFP batteries have surged in popularity, mostly in China, where they now power two-thirds of all new EVs. So far they have barely made a dent in the European and American markets. But sales of electric cars in the West are slowing, largely because of their still-steep prices. Shifting to cheaper and more planet-friendly batteries seems like a pretty obvious move.

How We Can Do Better: Lasers Could Make Solar Recycling Easier

A femtosecond laser welds a piece of test glass. NREL, via IEEE Spectrum

Solar installations are spreading all over the world, but what happens when all those photovoltaic panels wear out? We should recycle them, of course, but that’s extremely difficult. Now, though, researchers say they’ve found a way to use lasers to build solar panels that are easier to recycle, reports IEEE Spectrum.

Currently, manufacturers coat the silicon wafers inside the panels with sticky polymers to protect them from moisture and damage. Removing that stuff is difficult, and requires costly and often toxic chemicals. As a result, many recyclers only salvage the panels’ aluminum frames and glass panes. The polymer-coated wafers, along with the silver, copper and other valuable materials they contain, get junked. But scientists at the US National Renewable Energy Lab say they’ve figured out a way to weld the panel’s glass panes together by using powerful femtosecond lasers. The result is a panel free from polymers, and therefore easier to recycle.

There are many other research projects underway aimed at increasing solar recyclability. It’s a pressing issue because as much as 160 million tons of solar modules are expected to wear out by 2050. At the moment, the most cost-effective way to handle them is toss them in a landfill.