by ggreer | 2025-04-18 23:01:22+00:00
This post seems to either be misinterpreting facts or deliberately skewing them to argue for a specific conclusion. For example, it claims that "According to Gruber et al. (2021), a single ton of lithium extraction guzzles about 500,000 gallons of water." But the source link[1] is an abstract to a different paper titled Oil import portfolio risk and spillover volatility, which has no author named Gruber. So I have no idea if the claim is true or not. What I do know is that lithium is extracted from brine that is pumped out of the ground, then evaporated. It isn't useful for anything else, as it's far too salty for irrigation or drinking. And there are plenty of other ways to get lithium. Brines are just the most economically feasible option right now.

Another claim is, "The International Energy Agency documents that producing battery-grade lithium compounds demands 50-70 kWh of energy input per kilogram." but again, if I follow the link[2], I can't find that information anywhere. Maybe he's deriving the figure from some graph in one of the sections of the report. But assuming it's true, a typical 80kWh battery contains around 10kg of lithium, which would be 500-700kWh of electricity. If we pessimistically assume retail consumer prices, that's $50-100 worth of electricity embodied in the lithium. This is a tiny fraction of the total cost of the battery. It's 5-10 charge cycles out of the >1,000 that is expected of an EV battery.

And both of these claims neglect the fact that lithium in batteries is not destroyed over the life of the battery. It can be recycled once the battery has failed or degraded.

After that he says, "Here's the uncomfortable truth from EPA's eGRID database: the carbon intensity of our electrical grid varies by a factor of 4× depending on where you are." and links to the EPA's Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database.[3] Again, the link is to a general site and not the specific information he's referencing. I did find CO2 emissions per megawatt hour in the data explorer.[4] The most carbon-intense subregion I could find in the continental US was SRMW, which corresponds to most of Illinois and Missouri. Its CO2 emissions are 1,238lbs/MWh, which is 562g/kWh. Typical EV efficiency is around 250 watt-hours per mile, but let's assume 300 watt-hours per mile to account for losses in transmission, charging efficiency, etc. In that case, traveling one mile will have used electricity that emitted 168 grams of CO2. Burning a gallon of gasoline emits 8.9kg of CO2, so a gas car would need to get over 52mpg to emit less than 168 grams of CO2 per mile. Again, that's in the most coal-heavy subregion on the EPA map. I don't know where he gets the "carbon break even point" from, as it would require incredibly inefficient EVs or incredibly efficient gas cars.

There's also a claim that 70% of the energy consumption of EVs happens before they ever move. This claim is both misleading and false. To understand why it's misleading, consider a steam powered vehicle. Compared to a gas vehicle, it requires much less energy to construct than to run. But that's because steam powered vehicles are incredibly inefficient and need many times more energy to travel the same distance as a gas vehicle. EVs do require more energy to construct than gas vehicles, but they quickly make up for that by being more efficient to run. Battery production uses approximately 30-35kWh per kWh of battery capacity.[5] So an 80kWh battery will require 2,400-2,800kWh to produce. If the battery is used for 100,000 miles and then thrown away (not recycled so some of the embodied energy can be recovered), then at 300 watt-hours per mile, the battery will have stored and discharged 30,000kWh over its life. Even using these pessimistic assumptions, the battery's embodied energy is less than 10% of the energy used by the vehicle over its lifetime.

In summary, the whole post is poorly reasoned and based on information that is either misinterpreted or nonexistent. If its conclusions are correct about anything, it's by accident.

1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...

2. https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in...

3. https://www.epa.gov/egrid

4. https://www.epa.gov/egrid/data-explorer

5. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3298/12/1/24