“We are now imagining that shutting off the power grid is going to be a fact of life.” “All of us had the power to our houses shut off at least once this summer,” Fiske says of himself and his colleagues. If the phrase “drop in the bucket” comes to mind, you might not be all that far off.īut that’s not the only way in which the green-energy future will call for vast increases in lithium production, says Whittaker’s colleague Peter Fiske.Ĭlimate change already appears to be fanning the flames of fires in large parts of the world, from California to Australia, and power companies are realising that they need to cut service in dry, windy conditions, lest sparks from downed powerlines produce catastrophic conflagrations. With current global production at 77,000 tonnes, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS 2019 data), that means the world is only producing enough lithium to power 1.2 million new electric cars per year – at a time when total automobile production is more like 92 million. A Tesla Model S needs 64 kilograms of lithium – roughly 10,000 times the amount in the typical mobile phone.
#MAGIC BATTERY LITHIUM DRIVERS#
One of the biggest drivers of that expanding demand is going to be electric vehicles. And that has everyone scrambling to find new sources of it, lest lithium shortages grind the green economy to an unhappy halt. Demand is expected to double in the next five years – and increase tenfold by 2030. There are concerns about how we can get enough of it to power the alternative-energy future. The electrons follow the same path in the outer circuit. As it recharges, the cathode gives up some of its lithium ions, which move to the negative electrode (anode). In a rechargeable battery, lithium ions move across the electrolyte to the positive electrode (cathode), producing the energy that powers the electrode. “For lightweight applications, lithium batteries will likely remain an integral part of the battery market for a long time to come,” he says. If you’re going to haul it around in a wristwatch, laptop computer, electric vehicle, or even an airplane, he says, it really is vastly better. Michael Whittaker, director of the newly formed Lithium Resource Research and Innovation Center (which sports the musical-sounding acronym of LiRRIC) at America’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, adds that lithium is so light that it makes up only 1–2% of a lithium-ion battery’s total mass.
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It’s a problem reminiscent of the 1970s environmental rallying cry TANSTAAFL (There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch), drawn from a 1966 novel by science fiction writer Robert A. But that doesn’t mean it can be done without significant challenges – not just in the economy (as it makes the changeover), but technologically and scientifically as well. Predicting the life and death of batteriesĪs the climate warms, sea levels rise and droughts, heatwaves and bushfires multiply, the need to usher in the green-energy future is increasingly urgent.Exploring potential of solar-flow batteries.Batt-trees? Cellulose in solid-state batteries shows promise.