No one even knows if EV’s will reduce carbon dioxide
By Jo Nova
States all over the world have declared we have to change our cars to EVs and do it tomorrow so we can save the world. But as Mark Mills points out, despite the rush “No one can really say whether widespread adoption of EVs will cut carbon emissions.” I mean, does carbon dioxide matter at all?
The problem with EVs is that it takes a staggering amount of energy to dig up the 250 tons of specialty rocks required, and then crush, purify and mold them into one half-ton battery. While normal cars are naughty burners of fossil fuels for their whole lives, an EV emits a mountain of CO2 before it even gets to the saleyard.
Mark P. Mills
Electric Vehicle Illusions
EV emissions realities start with physics. To match the energy stored in one pound of oil requires 15 pounds of lithium battery, which in turn entails digging up about 7,000 pounds of rock and dirt to get the minerals needed—lithium, graphite, copper, nickel, aluminum, zinc, neodymium, manganese, and so on. Thus, fabricating a typical, single half-ton EV battery requires mining and processing about 250 tons of materials. (These figures hold roughly true for all lithium chemistries.) For the carbon-counters tracking such things, the global mining and minerals sector uses 40 percent of all industrial energy—dominated by oil, coal, and natural gas—and that’s before we take into consideration the massive expansion that would be required to supply all the battery factories planned for widespread EV adoption.
Lithium Mining makes a big hole in the ground, and we’d need about 10,000 times as many big holes to get to Net Zero. Not that I have anything against big beautiful open pits but the Greens may not have thought this through…
https://joannenova.com.au/2023/06/no-one-even-knows-if-evs-will-reduce-carbon-dioxide/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=no-one-even-knows-if-evs-will-reduce-carbon-dioxide
