EDITORIAL: Battery cars pose significant hazards
Gov.
Jared Polis signed an executive order last week to put more coal-powered
cars on the road. The governor did not refer to them as “coal-powered,”
of course, preferring the cleaner-sounding “electric vehicles”
descriptor. He even referred to them as a “zero-emission” option.
As
explained by Trevor Reid in the Greeley Tribune, “the executive order
establishes a work group of 17 members from 13 state departments to
develop policies and programs supporting the transition to electric
vehicles, as well as a revision to the state’s allocation of the remains
of $68.7 million it received from the Volkswagen emissions settlement
to support electrifying transportation including transit buses, school
buses and trucks.”
In a
phone interview with the Tribune, Polis talked about his vision for more
“zero-emission vehicles” — as if we have such a thing.
Electric
vehicles are fine products for select consumers and almost certainly
have a big future. They are zippier and quieter than most traditional
cars and can be powered at home overnight. Regenerative braking systems
harness inertia and gravity to contribute electrons. Photovoltaic car
paint has promise. For those and a variety of other reasons, consumers
might prefer them as the technology improves and prices come down.
In the meantime, let’s not fool ourselves. Battery cars are not a “zero-emission” alternative to conventional cars.
In Colorado, battery vehicles will be coal cars for the foreseeable future.
Coal
generates more than half of electrons in our state, whether consumed by
electric cars or other products. This is the case despite a race by
public utilities to build windmills and solar arrays. That means
consumers contribute to coal-generated pollution the moment they plug a
“zero-emission” car into an outlet connected to the grid.
One
could charge a battery car with an off-grid outlet powered only by
solar or wind. Even in that unlikely scenario, the battery car falls
considerably short of zero emissions.
Consider
analysis offered by the The Zero Energy Project, an environmental
nonprofit that promotes electric cars. In fact-checking critics of their
cause, the project examined the matter of pollution generated by
electric car production.
“Studies
show that manufacturing an electric car uses significantly more energy
than manufacturing a conventional car,” the project reports. “Much of
the difference is attributable to manufacturing the battery … ”
Batteries for coal-powered cars create more demand for mining operations that pose enormous environmental hazards.
In
a 2018 article titled “The spiraling environmental cost of our lithium
battery addiction,” Wired magazine detailed a massive fish kill in
Tibet, after a toxic leak from the Ganzizhou Rongda Lithium mine
“wreaked havoc with the local ecosystem.”
“In
Chile’s Salar de Atacama, mining activities consumed 65 per cent of the
region’s water,” Wired explained. “That is having a big impact on local
farmers — who grow quinoa and herd llamas — in an area where some
communities already have to get water driven in from elsewhere. There’s
also the potential — as occurred in Tibet — for toxic chemicals to leak
from the evaporation pools into the water supply.” The chemicals
threatening water include hydrochloric acid, which can kill humans upon
contact.
It gets worse. The batteries also require cobalt and nickel.
“Unlike
most metals, which are not toxic when they’re pulled from the ground as
metal ores, cobalt is ‘uniquely terrible,’ said Gleb Yushin, chief
technical officer and founder of battery materials company Sila
Nanotechnologies.”
Cobalt,
Yushin told Wired, is found almost exclusively in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo and extracted by hand with child labor.
The
lengthy article details additional environmental, social, political,
humanitarian and ecological concerns caused by the proliferation of
batteries for coal-powered cars and other modern products.
Battery
cars, powered mostly by coal in Colorado and throughout the United
States, might find favor among American consumers. Government should
allow them to compete but should not force them on us under a pretense
of ecological virtue. They are not “zero-emission” vehicles — not even
close. They arguably pose as much damage as traditional cars, if not
more, to humanity and the planet.
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