Dirty Secret: Green Energy “Panacea” Revisited – Implications of Raw Materials Requirements for EVs
May 9, 2023
Article by Jeffrey Price
The panacea that is ascribed to a world that has migrated away from gas-powered automotive transportation to EVs has a dirty little big secret. In a nutshell, the disruptions to the environment and societies associated with magnitudinal increases in consumption of key elements (e.g., lithium, cobalt, and copper) are going to be colossal. Here’s another in an intensifying trickle – actually a flow – of articles about adverse repercussions of the transition to electrified personal transport, this one from the Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/net-zero-will-mean-a-mining-boom-electric-cars-minerals-oil-fossil-fuels-climate-change-policy-cb8d5137?st=wsk1xit42bvh24y&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink. Places like the Congo, Bolivia, Argentina, and New Guinea are going to experience huge impacts – good and bad.
Add to those concerns this fact: Much of these raw materials when they are refined flow through China. The global strategic implications are colossal. Are any of the “leaders” clamoring for EVs giving thought about that “detail” while stampeding us to drive an EV? In my mind – as I witness the nasty Ukrainian War – it’s a pretty dumb strategic idea to shift our purchases of oil from ourselves to lithium batteries from Beijing. Russia is ill-equipped to win the Ukrainian War in no small part because the world is not tethered to its oil & gas. China is very well-endowed to prevail in a Taiwan conflict. Hello!? Wake up!
That’s why the Permian is so geopolitically strategic! It’s the reason the Russian oil ain’t so critical. In wading through this minefield of conflicting energy policies, we at First Keystone Pecos Industrial Park remain committed to providing infrastructure to support the U.S. domestic oil & gas industry by offering industrial land for sale in Pecos, Texas. We are part of the solution…not part of the problem!
In closing, we would suggest some due diligence be conducted by the EV advocates who earnestly want to cut down on carbon emissions by devoting some of their attention to the unintended consequences of their efforts.
The opinions expressed above reflect only those of the author and do not represent those of the First Keystone Pecos Industrial Park organization. First Keystone welcomes responsible fact-based discourses on these topics.