Child Labor and our electric cars

Cobalt is mostly mined as a secondary process in copper or other mines. Largest supplier is DR Congo, followed by China and Russia.


Roughly 2/3 goes into batteries. One third into high-performance metal alloys such as used in jet engines. Other uses are much smaller including (interestingly) magnets. I expected larger there. Battery production is sure to increase, so new mines will be developed or current ones expanded.


There is no inherent reason why mining this metal needs to be associated with bad behavior. Yet is seems to be so. There is no inherent reason why a different company could not produce under whatever ethical standards one might propose. Its product is likely to have higher direct costs (here are externalities again). If you can pass that through to consumers, with cruelty-free batteries and jet engines, good for you.


Cobalt was co-mined with copper in Germany, back in old times, and miners died because heating ores released some toxic gas. Kobbold means evil spirits in German (so the story goes). Hence the unusual name. Those spirits are still with us it seems.


Painted in broad strokes, no mining industry is ‘clean’. Each could be made better including this one. It is a matter of what people are willing to put up with (on the down side) or pay for (on the up side).


It does not seem entirely fair to use use bad cobalt mining as a cudgel against rechargeable batteries. Especially if the FUD comes from people who fly on jets
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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361106029_US_Cobalt_A_Cycle_of_Diverse_and_Important_Uses

 

Worth noting that cobalt use is almost a 50/50 split between “batteries for portable devices “ / (not EV stuff) and the batteries used in EVs .

Also worth noting that the “cheapest/dirtiest” Cobalt almost entirely goes to Chinese cellular companies which own much of the worldwide Cobalt supply
and was such an issue that even China took some action against its worst Companies/ sub contractors who abuse Foreign workers.

The majority of the Cobalt that goes into domestic EVs is not using Child labor but the same cannot be said for a lot of the cheap portable devices you find littered throughout the U.S. and world markets

 

Were you aware of this when you bought your last steak?
Meat-plant contractor hired kids to clean "razor-sharp saws" with chemicals, government says - CBS News

 

A kobold was a thing you had to watch out for, in Rogue.

 

Making child abuse awareness is one thing ..... setting up an article to make EV's the primary source of said evil is another.
How does one spell disingenuous.
This "dirty ev" article is simply a disengenuous re-do of the bogus "Sudburry" nickel mine claims . . . that hybrids (& now ev's) battery needs were the cause of the mine's pollution. In fact the Sudburry mine (lots of copper - but nickel & other elements also) was cleaned up long before massive battery needs came into vogue. 100 years ago during the filthy operation, the nickel was used for OTHER things - like flatware.
Anti plug-in proponents love love love the Sudbury story of it being the cause of "plugin-dirty-secrets" & repeat its bogus narrative to this day.
ALL mining - many decades ago were prone to cause enviro damage . . . whereas now days, corporate responsibility recognizes its importance.
Other areas of the world? not so much, necessarily.
.

 

Does comparing it to coal show a nonzero difference?

Perhaps even a substantial nonzero difference?

If so, what purpose is served by losing sight of that?

 

I couldn’t agree more. Perhaps the OP would take that advice?
Oh, wait…

 

... and for shiny chrome plating on Hummers.

 

Those all sound like nice things to me.

But I'm not sure about the "just as". I mean, humanity has spent a long time developing ways of comparing things quantitatively.

I don't, for this post, have the answer about how those three contributions compare, quantitatively.

But I'm sure there is one, and it might not be that they are all equal.

 

Bob Wilson

 

The topic is addressed in PNAS today:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2212037120

open access publication indicating artisanal cobalt production has been decreasing since about 2005 (last data included 2020).

 

Thanks, but work is incomplete. We could find out how much cobalt goes into batteries, magnets and jet engines per year. Then fairly place artisan (which to some extent has or at least had child workers) blame on end uses.

EV have both batteries and magnets, so they are double dipping. But most of fleet is very young so they have been dipping into a different pool than 2005 and earlier.

 

The number of approvals for new mines has fallen every year as long as I can remember.


Our state has stopped new mines via long fights and they are a not in my backyard scenario.

the one featured no different, would be curious to know the environmental impact report and the type of mine.

My biggest issue with the mine featured is that it was allowed to have a large Chinese investor. We should have the balls to own our own infrastructure land, mines, etc

Other first world nations block foreign land ownership of domestic property as is correct and proper

https://www.csis.org/analysis/united-states-needs-shift-perspective-mining


All this is maybe a good reason to flesh out brine mining and alternative battery chemistries like sodium.

if we want enough materials for all EV eventually we need to accept that cars might need to use underpowered motors to save precious materials
We might have to perfect aluminum wiring and use alternatives for active compounds in batteries

 

It might be better to have separate threads for cobalt and lithium, but here we are. Shifting targets.

Not disputing US' interest in domestic Li sourcing, but the largest 'play' is Bolivia and others on dry side of Andes. Invest there, see to environmental concerns, and grow towards market dominance. There's just not a lot of 'there' there in Nevada. All due respect etc. But to me it's just another cudgel to hold EVs back by whatever FUD possible.

"We should have the balls to own our own infrastructure land, mines, etc" Avoiding discussion of what balls are for the whole self-owned nation thing sounds ... OK to me. I guess There is another risk to spin off into foreign ownership of Smithfield's hams and similar, so let's not.

But seriously, for lithium, go to the big play as international largest investor. US does not, and guess who will?

 

EV materials can come from Canada, Mexico, and a large number of S. American countries. As for USA sources, it is case-by-case.

Bob Wilson

 

We might see Na-ion hybrid batteries in EVs by the end of the year. The first gen is mixed with L-ion in the pack to offset the drawbacks of each. So this only means a reduction in lithium and cobalt used.