Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few decades, you’re almost certain to have heard about this problem humanity has been dealing with called “global warming”, induced by many decades of burning fossil fuels and dumping carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. And over the past few years, you’ve probably also been hearing about proposed solutions for this: phasing out internal combustion engines (ICEs) in favour of battery-powered electric vehicles (BEVs), or at least phasing out fossil fuels in favour of cleaner fuels like Hydrogen or e-fuels (a class of synthetic fuels produced using CO2 captured from the atmosphere).
The issue with this? Well, it doesn’t exactly take much thinking about the proposed alternatives to realise they’re not exactly helping stop climate change, merely shifting the problem from one place to another.
How so? Well, let’s take a look at each proposed solution.
Battery-Powered Electric Vehicles
BEVs do not burn fuel, and as such have greatly reduced emissions during day-to-day operation (but not a flat zero, as the rubber tires still contribute to the emissions of cars). So what’s the issue? The batteries that power BEVs are primarily built using lithium, and mining lithium has quite a few issues:
- The water usage is quite high, with as much as 2.2 million liters of water being used for each metric ton of mined lithium
- Lithium mining also contaminates the air, water, and soil around the mine, threatening both humans and wildlife in the area.
- Human rights issues! [queue sfx for effect] - Alongside the aforementioned contamination of the environment, indigenous people are often affected by the mining, either by having their entire water supply redirected towards the mining, the water and air in the area they inhabit being contaminated, or by being outright displaced so the area they inhabit can become a lithium mine.
Lithium mining could be done much cleaner, but it definitely isn’t done today during the gold rush to become the top supplier of lithium as demand is at an all time high.
Oh, and did I mention lithium isn’t even the only element in this gold rush? Cobalt is also an important element in the construction of lithium batteries, with the top supplier in the world being the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Needless to say, take all the environmental issues with lithium mining, double them, and also add everyone’s favourite: slavery! [sfx for effect, again]
So with all that said, are we really fixing anything if this is how we build our “green future”?
Oh, and on a final note: mass electrification also has a number of issues when it comes to deploying the infrastructure needed for BEVs. I won’t go into much detail about that, however, as they are quite well presented in this video by driving 4 answers over on YouTube (yes, he’s a petrol head, but he presents the issue quite well and partially inspired this article).
Hydrogen and E-Fuels
Hydrogen has a decades long history of being touted as the green fuel of the future. But how green is it, really?
Well, according to MIT’s climate portal, about 95% of all hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels. Needless to say, this doesn’t really solve the issue, it just moves the pollution away from where the fuels are used.
So, that’s a bust. What about E-Fuels? The EU definitely seems to consider them the future of fuels for ICE vehicles, backing out of a proposed ban on all sales of ICE vehicles by 2035 in favour of only banning traditional fossil fuels, with E-Fuels being allowed.
Well, as mentioned earlier, E-Fuels are synthetic fuels produced using CO2 captured from the atmosphere. This means that it doesn’t really eliminate CO2 emissions, but it could be carbon neutral if the carbon is then captured and used to manufacture other E-Fuels. This plan is definitely ambitious considering carbon capture stations are yet to capture more carbon than we release into the atmosphere, leading many to question if it’s even worth deploying carbon capture stations at this stage if we could instead use all that energy to power things that otherwise run on power generated from fossil fuels.
But back to E-Fuels. Outside of the feasibility of the whole plan of recycling CO2 from the atmosphere, they have another key ingredient: Hydrogen! So really, even if you ignore the issues with carbon capture, you still run into the issue of hydrogen production emitting a bunch of CO2 into the air.
The Core Issue
You’re probably starting to notice the pattern with the main proposed solutions: they all rely on future technological advancements we’re yet to make, and that we don’t really have time to wait for because climate change isn’t just very bad, but it’s also getting worse even faster as yet more CO2 is released from the melting ice sheets.
In other words: we can’t really engineer our way out of this mess. We need a different approach.
Actual Solutions?
Now don’t get me wrong, I find all of the above really interesting, and I do like seeing them explored, even if none ends up being what we end up doing. However, for actual solutions we need more radical change. We need to reduce motorization where it’s not needed.
Building cities around walking, cycling, and public transport would help greatly: not only do you have the increased efficiency of moving tens of people in a bus, or even hundreds of people in a train, all using a single engine, but you also remove all the time stuck in traffic when nothing is moving but fuel is still being burned, further decreasing emissions even if all the public transport keeps being powered by ICEs, either using fossil fuels or E-Fuels (if they ever become truly feasible).
And another issue: minimising waste. Quite a lot of the pollution that happens is a direct result of things being produced cheaply to last just a couple weeks, months, of years, just to then be thrown out. Anything ranging from cheap crap from Wish, Jumbo, or Temu, to phones and laptops being made just to be thrown out after 2 to 5 years, to car parts or even whole cars being made to last just the warranty then nothing more. Sure, we could recycle, but constant recycling has higher emissions than just making something that lasts longer to begin with.
In short: we need a fundamental change in mindset. We need people to think more about the long term, and we need policy makers to actually encourage such changes, because, as we’ve learned time and time again, the private sector can only be trusted to line up its own pockets when left to its own devices.