E-Revolution: What's the cost? Who pays? Who benefits?

Two-faced revolution

Electrification of transportation (aka the e-revolution) is often hailed as an absolute positive phenomenon. However, the impacts of this revolution closely resemble those of its predecessor, the fossil fuel revolution. African countries have earned net negative returns on their oil and gas reserves while the Global North has reaped the benefits. The fossil fuel revolution continues to perpetuate environmental, economic and social injustices while fueling the normalization of the same. It is sad but unsurprising to see the same script unraveling in the battery industry. Given the precedent, the Global North’s pursuit of the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at the expense of the Global South is just business-as-usual.

The ‘burden’ of riches

When natural resources occur in the Global South, the Global North tends to exploits the resources and then term the resources a burden or a curse to the host nation (for the obvious consequence that the majority of the Global South rarely benefits from its resources). Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a country in Central Africa (and part of the East African Community) with abundant natural resources that have been plundered by the West and the East continually. First, the DRC was robbed of its rubber by the Belgian colonizers, its uranium was then exploited by the US and the UK during the nuclear revolution and is currently sustaining the burden of the e-revolution given its vast cobalt reserves. Cobalt is one of the major metals used in the manufacture of the lithium-ion batteries that power most electric consumer products (gadgets and electric vehicles) and serve as energy storage systems that reduce the variability of solar and wind power generation.

Complicit governments

The plundering of the DRC since its independence from Belgium has occurred with the complicity of the country’s regimes over the years. The administrations of Mobutu Sese Seko (1965 to 1997) and Joseph Kabila (2001 to 2019) were especially notorious in squeezing wealth out of the DRC through state institutions and multinational companies. In the cobalt era, the DRC’s political elite and the multinationals have turned the country’s political instability into an exploitation opportunity.

The massive toll

The state and impacts of cobalt mining on the DRC:

1. Child labor: thousands of children miss school every year to help their parents earn daily bread. Mining companies have put little effort into establishing schools in mining towns and paying fair wages to enable parents to send their children to school.

2. Inhuman working conditions: artisanal miners (self-employed small-scale miners) work with crude tools in deep underground shafts and without proper protective gear. Numerous lives have been claimed by collapsed mining shafts.

3. Monopolization: 14 out of 19 major mines are currently run by Chinese companies. This has given rise to cobalt price fixing to the advantage of the monopoly.

4. Forced evictions: thousands of Congolese residing in and near mining towns have faced wrongful eviction and insufficient eviction compensation over the years as industrial mines expand.

5. Unfair wages: artisanal miners are paid a small fraction of the real value of their output. The miners claim that the scales and cobalt content measuring devices are manipulated to cheat them off of their wages. Monopolization of the market by Chinese companies is a major facilitator of this malpractice.

6. Health crisis: the worst health impact of cobalt mining has been an increase in cobalt-related birth defects affecting limbs and facial features. A generation of the Congolese is literally losing its limbs to the e-revolution!

7. Environmental pollution: companies frequently dump contaminated water into rivers due to acutely insufficient environmental regulations.

8. Corruption: multinationals such as Glencore and Eurasian Resources Group (ERG) have been accused of obtaining mining permits through bribery (bribery schemes with the immediate former president Joseph Kabila and his family at the core).

9. Gross domestic product (GDP) losses: the DRC economy loses billions of US dollars annually due to the corruption schemes addressed above.

What can we do about it?

Our entire society is complicit in inflicting the cobalt pain; a majority in relatively small scale (end-users) and a minority in massive scale (the battery supply chain). The battery supply chain consists of three main parts: upstream (mining), midstream (metal processing and refining) and downstream (battery manufacturing, use and end of life management).

The silver lining of this societal complicity is that each one of us has some level of influence in preventing the ruining of at least one Congolese life. How so?

1. Consumers: boycotting and raising awareness on products manufactured by companies complicit in the treacherous cobalt supply chain. Exposés by human rights groups such Amnesty International (see: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/AFR62/7009/2023/en/) and media giants such as DW (see: https://youtu.be/0Q2IW7UEclI?si=KHqLb5YosM7FoYdA) combined with consumer pressure have become a potent recipe for forcing most popular brands to (promise to) adopt transparent supply chain practices. Brands fear being linked to child labor and inhuman working conditions for (mostly) bottomline and (not so much for) ethical reasons. Each additional electric car or mobile phone produced can be a matter of life and death for a Congolese!

2. Governments and international organizations: developing and implementing policies and standards aimed at ensuring responsible cobalt sourcing.

3. Battery Industry:

   • Diversifying battery options: reducing overreliance on cobalt and mining

     • Utilizing alternative lithium-ion battery chemistries (see: https://rechargeable.beehiiv.com/p/battery-knowwhatwhy) such as lithium iron phosphate (LFP) and lithium titanate (LTO) in applications with high energy density requirement such as electric vehicles and portable electric gadgets.

     • Employing alternative battery chemistries in commercial, industrial and utility-scale energy storage applications. Alternatives such as organic redox flow batteries have zero dependence on mining thus greater sustainability.

   • Promoting a circular economy

     • Repurposing: reusing battery products for various applications until the battery is completely dead (for instance, dead laptop and electric vehicle batteries can have a second life in home back-up battery systems).

     • Recycling: breaking down end of life batteries to extract and reuse cobalt that would have been mined otherwise.

   • Supply chain auditing and due diligence: establishing independent cobalt supply chain auditing bodies with an emphasis on upstream activities. Joint industry programs aimed at promoting responsible cobalt sourcing such as the Responsible Cobalt Initiative (RCI) and Responsible Mineral Initiative (RMI) are promising avenues. Midstream and downstream actors ought to reject suppliers unable to demonstrate responsible sourcing practices.

In a nutshell …

The e-revolution is an undeniable net positive (note ‘net’) measure against climate change and must be embraced as such. However, the welfare of the current generation trumps that of future generations and in any case, we cannot help the future by destroying the present. Thankfully, the e-revolution can be implemented without the human and environmental costs it bears currently. Actors need only change their attitude and start to value non-financial metrics. Embracing Environmental, Social and Governance factors in the lithium-ion battery supply chain is a sound first step in the long journey towards responsible cobalt sourcing.

References

1. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/AFR62/7009/2023/en/

2. https://youtu.be/0Q2IW7UEclI?si=KHqLb5YosM7FoYdA

3. https://www.nrdc.org/bio/jordan-brinn/electric-vehicle-battery-supply-chains-basics