[Vision2020] 5-2-2018: CNN Wrongly Blames Electric Cars for Unethical Cobalt Mining

[Ted Moffett]

Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
***** Original material contained herein is Copyright 2000 through life
plus 70 years, Ted Moffett.  Do not copy, forward, excerpt, or reproduce
outside the Vision2020.Moscow.com <http://vision2020.moscow.com/> forum
without the express written permission of the author.*****
----------------------------------
Perhaps this article is correct that currently electric cars are not the
primary use for cobalt, but more for cell phones, laptops, and turbines for
jet engines, etc.  But electric cars are not the solution to the
numerous biosphere and human life impacts of widespread individually owned
daily lifestyle use of motor vehicles.  The solution is abandoning the
assumption this is how we should live... Of course this is not a popular
message, for many reasons, even among those who give lip service to global
warming and other pollution/ecological concerns, or who face the human
costs of the death and injury toll on highways.  Electric cars still are
embedded in a system with large upstream and downstream CO2 emissions and
other pollution releases.  Fully autonomous electric cars would at least
greatly lessen the highway death toll...
----------------------------------
CNN Wrongly Blames Electric Cars for Unethical Cobalt Mining

Ben Jervey <https://www.desmogblog.com/user/ben-jervey> | May 2, 2018

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/05/02/cnn-wrongly-blames-electric-cars-unethical-cobalt-mining?utm_source=dsb%20newsletter

This week, CNN published a startling multimedia report on cobalt mining in
the Democratic Republic of Congo
<https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2018/05/africa/congo-cobalt-dirty-energy-intl/?iid=EL>.
The investigation revealed troubling conditions in so-called “artisanal”
cobalt mines, where hand mining operations are carried out with a
combination of unsafe working conditions and child labor. As is all too
often the case with resource extraction — whether for cobalt in Congo, oil
in Ecuador, or coal in West Virginia — unsafe, unhealthy local labor
practices deserve media exposure.

Unfortunately, CNN’s promotion of the investigation and headline
misappropriate the blame, leaving casual readers to conclude that electric
vehicles are responsible for these awful labor conditions.

The headline that ran in the top spot on CNN.com’s international edition on
Monday warned of the “Real cost of green energy” and asked, “Sure, your
electric car is better for the environment. But is it really ethical?”

In reality, electric cars still represent a small percentage of the market
for mined cobalt, and laptops, cell phones, airplanes, medical equipment,
and military applications are large consumers of the raw material.
Cobalt Mining Gets the Attention it Deserves

The investigation by CNN echoes other similar exposés published over the
past two years. In 2016, Amnesty International blew the doors open on the
issue <https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/afr62/3183/2016/en/>, revealing
“the hazardous conditions in which artisanal miners, including thousands of
children, mine cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” The Amnesty
International report goes on “to trace how this cobalt is used to power
mobile phones, laptop computers, and other portable electronic devices.”

Later in 2016, the Washington Post
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/congo-cobalt-mining-for-lithium-ion-battery/>
ran a multimedia piece on the “cobalt pipeline,
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/congo-cobalt-mining-for-lithium-ion-battery/>”
with a headline that promised to “[trace] the path from deadly hand-dug
mines in Congo to consumers’ phones and laptops.”

The Post returned to Congo this year, publishing a powerful and disturbing
photo essay
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2018/02/28/the-cost-of-cobalt/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.70aa10a511e5>
in February on “the hidden costs of cobalt mining.” And CBS News ran an
investigation in March
<https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cobalt-children-mining-democratic-republic-congo-cbs-news-investigation/>
finding child labor still being used for cobalt mining in Congo.

Unfortunately, these reports have been used by fossil fuel proponents to
attack electric vehicles, often directly attributing the growing market for
EVs, many of which use lithium ion batteries or other battery technologies
that rely on cobalt, with the troublesome labor practices associated with
hand mining for cobalt. CNN’s report plays into this deceptive messaging.
*Cobalt and Electric Vehicles, By the Numbers*

According to the U.S. Geological Survey
<https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj3lIaQicPWAhXIDcAKHWmcD3oQjBAIMzAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fminerals.usgs.gov%2Fminerals%2Fpubs%2Fmcs%2F2017%2Fmcs2017.pdf&usg=AFQjCNGarWXjI5IdhUcMhAw0l0tT4OvYQg>,
58 percent of the world’s cobalt is mined in Congo. (CNN’s investigation
claims in consecutive slides, that “two-thirds of the world’s cobalt come
from Congo” and that 58.8 percent is cobalt produced in Congo, providing
the London Metal Exchange as the source for the latter figure). Of the
cobalt sourced in Congo, according to CNN, roughly one-fifth is mined by
hand. Accordingly, roughly 7.5 percent of the world’s cobalt is mined in
the disturbing manner portrayed in the CNN multimedia piece.

That’s still far too much, of course, but the startling conditions at the
“artisanal” hand mines shown by CNN are still the minority fringe of
the industry.

Additionally, electric vehicles — which CNN’s headline and language within
the article blames for the unethical mining practices — are responsible for
a relatively small percentage of the total cobalt that is mined, marketed,
and put to use.

Rechargeable batteries (like lithium ion) make up about 42 percent of the
market for cobalt <https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/01/no-cobalt-no-tesla/>,
according to the Cobalt Development Institute <http://www.thecdi.com/>.

Of the 42 percent that is used for batteries, roughly one-quarter is used
for electric vehicles
<https://phys.org/news/2018-02-electric-car-jumpstarts-cobalt-prices.html>.

In other words, just over 10 percent of the world’s cobalt supply is
currently being used for batteries to power electric cars.

The bigger culprits are portable consumer electronics — like cell phones
and laptop computers — which use around 72 percent of the cobalt that goes
into lithium ion batteries, or roughly 30 percent of all cobalt mined.

Another 16 percent of cobalt demand is for the production of superalloys
<https://c1cleantechnicacom-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/2017/11/Cobalt-Demand-by-Industry.png>,
typically used for <https://www.chemicool.com/elements/cobalt.html> for
casting airfoils and other structural parts of turbine engines for jets and
natural gas power plants.

The production of carbides and diamond drills for industrial operations
currently uses the same amount of cobalt, 10 percent, as electric
vehicles do.

Other major uses are for manufacturing steel, magnets, and
medical equipment.
Alternatives to Unethical Cobalt: Sourcing, Substitution, and Recycling

As the market for electric cars grows, battery- and automakers will have to
reckon with their supply chains for cobalt and to find alternatives.
Fortunately, there are better places to get cobalt than the artisanal mines
in Congo, and alternative chemistries and cobalt recycling are also
providing promising pathways toward lowering raw cobalt demand.

According to the Amnesty International report that first opened the world’s
eyes to the troubles of cobalt mining in Congo, Tesla was not called out
“because its main battery cell supplier, Panasonic, sources its cobalt from
the Philippines and not Congo.” Tesla also has committed
<http://www.scdigest.com/ontarget/14-04-08-3.php?cid=7971> to sourcing
cobalt and other raw materials exclusively from North America for its new
Gigafactory battery production facility.

Car companies should do more to provide transparency in their supply chains
to ensure that they are not supporting the market for unregulated,
dangerous hand-mining operations in Congo. Many are taking steps in the
right direction, and companies like Apple could provide a valuable example
<https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/20/apple-mining-end-recycled-material-products.html>
for how to avoid “unethical” or “conflict” cobalt.

Additionally, alternative battery chemistries are already proving to reduce
the need for cobalt. As Reuters reported last year
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-battery-cobalt/asian-battery-makers-eye-nickel-top-up-as-cobalt-price-bites-idUSKBN1AJ0S8>,
Asian battery makers have “tweake[ed] the recipe,” and are cutting in half
the amount of cobalt needed per battery.

Tesla has started using nickel-cobalt-aluminium-based (NCA) battery cells
made by Panasonic, which the companies claim use far less cobalt than
other, traditional forms of lithium-ion batteries.

Other electric car companies, like China’s BYD, are using cheaper
lithium-iron-phosphate batteries that don’t use cobalt at all.

Finally, the cobalt recycling industry is breaking out. With cobalt prices
at record highs, companies are developing new recycling processes that
can recover
100 percent of the raw material
<http://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/critical-metals-investing/cobalt-investing/recycling-cobalt-sustainable-and-affordable/>.
Already, 15 percent of cobalt used in the United States is sourced from
recycled scrap. As those processes are refined, and the costs of raw cobalt
continue to spike, recycled cobalt likely will become increasingly
economical and an integral part of any responsible battery producer’s
supply chain.

There is no question that the worst corners of the cobalt industry are rife
with human rights and labor issues. But, as Josh Goldman of the Union of
Concerned Scientists writes
<https://blog.ucsusa.org/josh-goldman/electric-vehicles-batteries-cobalt-and-rare-earth-metals>,
“let’s also not forget that the supply chain for gasoline-powered vehicles
has its fair share of issues, ranging from human rights violations
<http://priceofoil.org/thepriceofoil/human-rights/> like the use of child
labor, to disastrous oil spills like Deepwater Horizon.”

Electric cars are still a small, but growing, part of the market for raw
cobalt. Electric carmakers, however, will continue to improve battery
technology to reduce dependence on cobalt and can better source the cobalt
that they do require from well-regulated mines and from recycled resources.
Meanwhile, gasoline-powered cars will always depend on oil, which has a
long and irrefutably exploitative supply chain that harms communities at
the point of extraction, in the areas that is it refined, and then again
when the byproducts of its combustion spew out of tailpipes.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20180503/cd11c166/attachment-0001.html>