The great battery challenge
So the world is gonna need a lot of batteries if we want green energy to work properly. The challenge is how to do this without exploiting people or the planet even worse than the status quo of fossil fuels.
Basic requirements
Qualitative
We need battery tech that...
- doesn't require too many rare minerals
- doesn't require too much energy to produce and later recycle
(...)( This implies an additional requirement: Recyclability ) - doesn't require too much labor
There doesn't need to be a "one size fits all" solution. Clearly different battery tech is good for different applications. But as a simple viability test, we need to imagine what would happen if the battery tech was scaled up to the amount of energy storage we'd need in a world without fossil fuels.
Quantitative
Scale used: Estimated energy storage that would be needed if all vehicles were electric. See whyIt's a compromise between a few considerations:
- On one hand, we're going to need more than just vehicle batteries if solar and wind are main power sources. We'd also need on-grid energy storage. Also, the same minerals might also be needed for other things besides energy storage.
- On the other hand, battery tech won't be one-size-fits-all: it's possible to have a mix of battery tech (each with different mineral profiles) that could together meet 100% of all potential demand (full green energy scenario), even when no individual battery tech (within the mix) could meet the 100% on its own (limited by mineral reserves). Also, there are ways to reduce the need for vehicle energy storage (public transit and walkability)..
https://ev-database.org/cheatsheet/useable-battery-capacity-electric-car
https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2021/06/how-many-cars-are-there-in-the-world/
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Minerals
For each mineral, divide its global reserves by scale. This gives you a reasonable limit
https://www.statista.com › statistics › reserves-of-...
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Added up all the countries: 9,200,000 + 4,700,000 + 1,900,000 + 1,500,000 + 750,000 + 220,000 + 95,000 + 60,000 = 18,425,000 metric tons
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Note: This is not a full list of minerals.
If you're designing a battery, consider the limit for any minerals in the battery. It can be calculated the same way as the above examples.
Energy and labor
For simplicity sake