[Mikeb85]

Yes but batteries contain toxic materials and rare earth minerals, require lots of energy to make, lots of energy to recycle, etc...

So energy to mine the materials, energy to assemble the battery, energy to recycle the battery after it's useful lifespan (5-10 years)... None of these are ever counted in people's calculations. I tried to find data on energy required to produce the batteries and they still didn't count the mining cost.

I'd wager that hydrogen is more energy efficient over the entire lifespan of a vehicle.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/14/electr...

Lithium mining is expensive and you need to move a lot of dirt to get a little lithium...

100 billion tons of waste and never mind the waste aspect, it takes a lot of energy to move a ton of dirt.

[Tade0]

Li-ion batteries don't contain rare earths.

Recycling li-ion is currently a booming business because it requires much less energy than processing raw ores - see Redwood Materials for more info.

Everyone takes these calculations into account because batteries come under intense scrutiny from people with ulterior motives.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

I can't wrap my head around how much lithium or other rare earth metals will need to be mined to transition entirely to solar, wind, and electric cars. What countries are these mined in? What percentage of the US grid is from wind or solar? Like 10%?

[TchoBeer]

what does the li in li-ion stand for

[jnsaff2]

Most of the mining waste you refer to is related to COAL. They produce roughly 5 billion tons a year of coal for which many times of that is waste rocks.

5 billion tons of coal gets mostly burned up.

Meanwhile 50 THOUSAND tons of lithium is produced per year. For which maybe millions tons of waste gets created.

[jnsaff2]

More context here: https://twitter.com/visaskn/status/1616813002547773444

[Mikeb85]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium

Hmmm, 500,000 litres of water per ton of lithium. Electrolysis required to create lithium metal. Plus the required dirt being moved, water being moved, energy for electrolysis, etc...

Sounds very energy efficient...

/s

[Schroedingersat]

> So energy to mine the materials, energy to assemble the battery, energy to recycle the battery after it's useful lifespan (5-10 years)... None of these are ever counted in people's calculations. I tried to find data on energy required to produce the batteries and they still didn't count the mining cost.

This is a standard component of LCA databases and puts the ESOI in the 50-100 range for the first generation of batteries. Subsequent generations are higher.

Electrolysers also require mining, as do fuel cells, as does any source of heat for reverse gas shift or similar.

Your fud about rare earths is also a lie for any chemistry proposed for grid storage. None of them involve rare earths in any measurable quantity (nanoscale films on semiconductors for controllers and such are insignificant)

Hydrogen (or rather hydrogen derived molecules) are a viable method of seasonal storage, but that doesn't mean most of the hype doesn't exist to greenwash gas or that your talking points aren't propaganda.

Hydrogen cars are worse than BEVs and much worse than transit or active transport.

[Mikeb85]

> This is a standard component of LCA databases and puts the ESOI in the 50-100 range for the first generation of batteries. Subsequent generations are higher.

Yes that's the number I found WITHOUT accounting for mining the materials... Just manufacturing the battery.

> Electrolysers also require mining, as do fuel cells, as does any source of heat for reverse gas shift or similar.

Yes but there's far less of those materials required than the sheer amount of battery cells being produced for automobiles.

> Hydrogen (or rather hydrogen derived molecules) are a viable method of seasonal storage, but that doesn't mean most of the hype doesn't exist to greenwash gas or that your talking points aren't propaganda.

Greenwash gas? The whole point of hydrogen is to create it using renewable sources of energy... The whole problem with renewables is storing the energy since they don't produce reliable baseline energy. Hydrogen accomplishes that.