Deep-Sea Mining Not Necessary for Renewable Energy Transition, Experts Argue – EcoWatch

Source: Deep-Sea Mining Not Necessary for Renewable Energy Transition, Experts Argue – EcoWatch

Do we really need to put ocean ecosystems at risk in order to transition to a renewable-energy economy? Proponents of deep-sea mining claim that the as-yet-untested practice is the best means of supplying minerals like cobalt, lithium, nickel, copper, vanadium and indium used in electric vehicles, storage batteries and other green technologies.

But a new article published in Frontiers in Marine Science on Thursday challenges this view. The team of experts from the University of Exeter, Greenpeace Research Laboratories and Globelaw instead says that human societies can both preserve marine biodiversity and eschew fossil fuels by making different choices about how new technologies are designed and used.

“If businesses, researchers and members of the public work collaboratively we have the means to achieve a future in which technology can be designed and manufactured to be sustainable and not involve extracting additional non-renewable resources,” study lead author Kathryn Miller told EcoWatch in an email. “It will require changes in behaviour but it is possible.”

Unfixed Futures

Thursday’s paper builds on two previous studies from the same research team considering the risks of mining minerals from the sea bed. The first, published in 2018, focused on the environmental risks posed by disturbing ecosystems where many species are still unknown to science. The second, also from 2018, looked at how the deep sea bed should be governed and regulated for the benefit of all people, not just the profit of wealthy corporations in the global North. The new paper also addresses these issues, but emphasizes how the green transition might proceed without seabed minerals.

Specifically, the researchers considered the case of electric vehicle batteries.

“[T]he point we make in the paper is that estimates of future demand for minerals… always depend on a set of assumptions about how we will live and which technologies will be available,” study co-author David Santillo told EcoWatch in an email, “and we have to remember that neither of those things are fixed.”

For one thing, those projections assume the use of the current lithium-ion battery that incorporates cobalt or nickel. However, there are already alternatives either in use or in development, such as Svolt’s cobalt-free lithium-ion car battery or Tesla’s lithium-ion phosphate batteries.

For another, mineral needs depend on the sustainability of both transportation systems and technological design. A move away from a one-person-one-car model and towards improved metal recycling could significantly reduce the demand for novel mineral resources.