[1053r]

The parent comment is a pack of memes straight out of a propaganda machine.

https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/new-data-show-electri...

Lithium is a mine once, use forever resource. It's an element. It will cost energy to recycle it, but that energy is increasingly sourced by clean energy sources. Let me cite the oil company, BP.

https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/stat...

Coal is in terminal decline. Solar and wind have been growing exponentially, and are on a path to pass coal within the decade. Projections to the contrary have to explain why decades of industrial economics theory are wrong, where manufactured goods (like solar and wind generators) get cheaper by a fairly consistent % every time you double production. This creates a virtuous cycle that will drive coal and other fossil fuels out of business through profit seeking alone. (We are past the tipping point on costs here.) The burden of proof is on the fossil fuel advocates like yourself at this point. (This article is from 2015, and the IEA and similar keep getting it wrong since then.)

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2015/11/17/why-the-iea-is-consis...

[djsumdog]

> Lithium is a mine once, use forever resource

The article goes into why this is incredibly difficult. The vast majority of lithium batteries are in landfills, compressed between all our other garbage because maybe 2% of people on the planet properly dispose of e-waste.

As far as clean energy, have you watched Planet of the Humans (2020)? I want to say, I despise Michael Moore emotional bullshit, but despite his influence on the film's production, the case it makes is solid: the vast majority of "renewables" are actually trees. When you hear "woodchips" .. there is no amount of industrial wood scrap waste that is viable without also cutting down trees. You start burning fast-growing trees (often planted for paper or lumber) for fuel and you get a system of power production that makes no sense over traditional gas or oil.

Solar and wind may have been growing exponentially, but they still require oil/gas standby plants. They also take a lot of resources to make. Wind turbines aren't currently recycled.

The fact of the matter is, we have one real hope left. The ITER. If real fusion power is possible, we'll find out once it's completed. If ITER fails to produce sustainable and efficient power, it's unlikely anyone else will get the funding to build a bigger reactor.

It's not coal that's in terminal decline ... it's everything. No amount of increasing consumption or building "more green" is going to change that. We need to consume less, and let's face it ... that's fucking impossible.

[creato]

> The vast majority of lithium batteries are in landfills, compressed between all our other garbage because maybe 2% of people on the planet properly dispose of e-waste.

Is this representative of small electronics and not vehicles? It will obviously be a lot harder and more economically significant to improperly dispose of a battery pack for a car than a cell phone.

[Accujack]

You're ignoring current SMR technology in nuclear.

Old style giant, expensive nuclear power plants are a non starter, but small modular reactors have a lot of promise, are zero emissions once running, and can be built using green energy in factories instead of constructed on site.

Fission power plants are pretty much the only way to go fully "green"... renewables are great and have a big place in the future, but unless humanity wants to drastically change their consumption of technologies and products requiring large amounts of energy for production (like Aluminum), they don't provide power in the right amounts and time spans.

[wussboy]

“Why is it that when we see nothing but progress behind, we see nothing but disaster ahead?”

[h0l0cube]

> Lithium is a mine once, use forever resource. It's an element. It will cost energy to recycle it

... and human labor, and other chemicals. I'm not sure if you read the article, but it claims that recycling is still a somewhat tenuous economic proposition vs digging more out of the ground. This is especially true given the glut of lithium, while cobalt and other rare minerals are slowly being phased out of battery designs.

[hedora]

The second company described in the article claims to recycle using nothing but catalysts, and simply grinds up the used batteries in a giant vat before transportation (rendering them inert, and easier to safely move).

It sounds like their main problem at this point is continuing to scale the business to meet supply (they are already the largest lithium recycler in the US), and that the challenges there are logical, not the underlying technology.

What human labor and chemicals are you referring to?

[jeffreyrogers]

> Lithium is a mine once, use forever resource. It's an element. It will cost energy to recycle it

It's not at all obvious to me that recycling is easy/practical. E.g. recycling the alloy from alloy steel is not done because it is too costly to separate. I'm not sure why batteries would be much different.

[SV_BubbleTime]

> It's not at all obvious to me that recycling is easy/practical.

It’s not. Other poster is just ignoring reality that it’s currently cheaper to use new lithium than to recover it.