Range-challenged electric vehicles could face further sales disincentives with a proposal from Britain’s top engineers that battery sizes be reduced by one third. In a just-published report on the supply of critical materials for Net Zero projects, the U.K.-based National Engineering Policy Centre (NEPC) points to an obvious fact – there isn’t anything like the amount of raw materials available to transition to Net Zero and most of the extraction processes required are an ecological disaster. The report sets out in terrifying black and white what is coming down the future political rationing track. The lack of resources to replace cheap and plentiful hydrocarbons is also noted in a new McKinsey report, which states that critical minerals face a supply shortage “as demand soars for raw materials to fuel [the] clean energy drive”. Current mineral supply could be as low as 10% of projected 2050 requirements, McKinsey suggests.
The NEPC brings together 42 engineering operations and is led by the Royal Academy of Engineering. Its report calls for “upstream mobility policies” to reduce transport demand via a shift from cars to buses, bikes and electric scooters operating in tandem with smaller batteries and alternative battery chemistries. The cynical might read this to mean that fanatical politicians such as the Mad Miliband mandate reduced EV range and throw further billions of pounds at yet more unproven technologies while ramping up the war on motorists.
The range of most EVs is not much cop to start with. Neil Winton is a senior contributor with Forbes and has looked in detail at the claimed ranges of EVs. He is not impressed with the figures supplied by manufacturers, writing recently that the Lexus RZ 300s, which retails at $71,350, has a claimed range of “up to“ 297 miles, but the battery only filled to an average of 224 miles. The problem is that range falls off a cliff at high speed, reports Winton. Sustainability Professor Peter Wells explains: “For an electric car, the extra energy required getting from 60 mph to 75 mph is astonishing and virtually doubles energy consumption to move all that air out of the way.”
Cutting battery size by a third or using low energy-density sodium batteries, as suggested by the NEPC, risks producing cars no one wants to buy. The only solution would be rationing using restrictions mandated by law. Of course, many such restrictions are already in force across Europe, where the traditional car industry and its large numbers of well paid jobs are being slowly destroyed.
The penny has been dropping about the obvious shortages of critical Net Zero resources for some time, although the public is mostly kept in the dark by the Net Zero-captured mainstream media. EVs are a particularly significant source of anticipated demand for critical materials, observes the NEPC, and a reduction in battery size could save 46,000 tonnes of lithium. This would stop the excavation of 75,000,000 tonnes of earth, enough to fill Wembley Stadium 19 times.
On the wider front, the NEPC says that developing new extraction infrastructure is slow and often risks worsening environmental and social harms. In the Baotou region of China, described as the rare earth capital of the world, toxic waste has contaminated groundwater. This has ended the local ecosystem’s ability to support agriculture and cattle rearing and necessitated the resettlement of whole villages. “Such pollution impacts can last for decades or centuries,” the report notes.
Over at McKinsey, the green light is being signalled for greens to dig up the planet to save Mother Earth from topping up CO2 plant food in the atmosphere. McKinsey reveals that demand for seven minerals could double in the next five years. These comprise lithium, cobalt, nickel, dysprosium, terbium, neodymium and praseodymium. Each is noted to serve specific functions in “clean” energy applications. Lithium demand could face a 700% surge. Significant shortfalls are forecast across multiple minerals by 2030. Supply of dysprosium – used in magnets for EVs and wind turbines – and terbium – useful in display electronics – could fall 75% below demand. Lithium, ubiquitous in batteries, may see its production targets fall by 40%.
Nowhere do the figures remotely add up. Indeed it is hard to comprehend the level of stupidity involved in those who plan the Net Zero disaster with no idea where the materials will come from or the costs involved. McKinsey writes of a significant scale-up of extraction but the energy transition is said to be in its early stages with “only an estimated 10% of required deployment of low-emission technologies by 2050 achieved in most areas”. In other words, it can only get worse.
There are also concerns about the geographic concentration of critical materials affecting the resilience of supply chains. The Democratic Republic of the Congo produces 75% of cobalt, while China processes 60% of all rare earth elements. Again to use other words, we must hope that greens don’t develop a conscience about child mining labour in the DRC, while the rest of us must desist from making disobliging remarks about the Chinese Communist Party.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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