Your average EV has six times more mineral content than a petrol- or diesel-powered vehicle. But what's the cost of mining all these metals?
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00:00 The electric car industry is scouring the earth for battery metals.
00:05 From lithium in the Chilean salt flats,
00:08 to nickel in Indonesian rainforests,
00:11 to valuable metals on the deep sea floor.
00:14 China, the US and Europe are engaged in a resource arms race
00:19 that stretches around the globe to try to meet skyrocketing demand.
00:24 But extracting those raw materials comes at a cost,
00:28 which can include scarred landscapes, toxic pollution and dangerous working conditions.
00:34 There's no question combustion engines are a problem.
00:40 They emit hazardous fumes and a fifth of yearly global greenhouse gas emissions.
00:45 Electric cars are promising to change all that.
00:49 Experts say the benefits of EVs outweigh the costs.
00:53 But where do battery metals come from?
00:55 And what is mining them doing to the planet?
00:59 Your average consumer EV has over six times as much mineral content as a petrol vehicle.
01:07 Most of that goes towards the massive battery pack.
01:11 Each one is made up of thousands of cells.
01:14 It's here that lithium ions move back and forth between an anode and a cathode
01:19 as the battery charges up and then powers the vehicle.
01:24 This is where you'll find many of the minerals at the centre of today's mining boom.
01:28 Change the mix of metals here and you change the car's performance,
01:33 including its range and charging speed.
01:36 And each metal has its own story.
01:39 What I found was the hidden supply chains behind all this were dominated by China,
01:44 but they also involved a lot of trade-offs, environmental impacts and a huge need for minerals.
01:52 This is Henry Sanderson.
01:54 His book, Volt Rush, looks at how the race to go green has upended global supply chains
02:00 and transformed landscapes, like in Chile's Atacama Desert.
02:05 What struck me when I went there was just the sheer size of these pools in the middle of the desert.
02:12 Locked away in these vast salt flats is a lightweight metal used in nearly all EV batteries, lithium.
02:19 The silvery white mineral is the world's lightest metal and can be found in rocks, clay and saltwater.
02:26 More than half of the global lithium resources are in the so-called lithium triangle in Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
02:34 Lithium here is stored in underground saltwater called brine.
02:38 Billions of gallons of it are pumped to the surface every year, where it is left to evaporate.
02:44 The lithium from Chile actually has a low carbon footprint because it's using the energy from the sun.
02:50 The more yellow the pond, the higher the concentration.
02:53 It can take more than a thousand gallons of brine to produce enough lithium for just one electric car battery.
03:08 Two companies control the right to operate here, American Alvamal and Chilean SQM.
03:14 In 2021 they exported more than $890 million worth.
03:19 And satellite imagery shows how their mining operations have transformed the landscape.
03:25 It can take around 18 months for the brine to move under gravity through the series of ponds.
03:32 The lithium-rich salts are then loaded into trucks and then taken to a processing plant near the coast,
03:38 where they're purified into battery-grade lithium.
03:41 Pumps suck out enough brine to fill an Olympic swimming pool every 20 minutes.
03:47 And the factories that process the salts draw fresh water from underground aquifers.
03:53 Water usage is of course a sensitive issue here in the desert.
04:00 In some areas of the Atacama, rainfall has never once been recorded.
04:05 Jorge Muñoz Coca is a member of the local Atacameño indigenous community.
04:25 Chilean mining company SQM has run into trouble with environmental regulators for extracting too much brine and fresh water.
04:33 In an email to Business Insider, SQM said it aims to be water-neutral by 2030,
04:39 as it switches to desalination plants and more efficient lithium extraction technology.
04:45 In neighbouring Bolivia, Chinese and Russian companies are investing nearly $3 billion in an array of new lithium plants.
04:55 But they're gambling on a relatively unproven set of technologies called DLE, or direct lithium extraction.
05:02 Instead of waiting for water to evaporate from brine, this approach draws out the lithium using a range of chemical or heat-based processes.
05:11 It can take only a few hours, but it's unclear how water- or energy-intensive these processes will be.
05:21 With foreign mining companies moving in, locals like Abdon Morales are worried about the precious water supply.
05:27 He's disillusioned after years of high hopes for Bolivia's lithium industry.
05:36 A pilot plant was opened 60 miles from his home in 2013, promising jobs and prosperity.
05:43 But Bolivia lacked the technical know-how to scale up, and the jobs never came.
05:50 Abdon is not against lithium mining. He just wants any company coming in to extract the metal to be open and honest.
05:57 We need to be open and honest.
05:59 As of 2021, there were 21 lithium mining operations globally.
06:25 Industry experts estimate it could take hundreds more to meet demand.
06:29 Lithium isn't the only thirsty industry in the Atacama Desert.
06:34 Chile is also the world's largest producer of copper, a highly conductive metal and another key ingredient in EV batteries.
06:43 An electric car can contain over 80 kilograms of the metal, more than twice the amount used in cars with an internal combustion engine.
06:54 In each battery cell, copper foil placed over the negative end, or the anode, acts as a bridge to the outer circuit, allowing electricity to flow through the car.
07:03 It's also of course used in a car's wiring and electric motor.
07:07 The existing mines in places like Chile, they've been going for decades, so they are coming close to the end of their lives, so we need new copper mines.
07:16 Finding and developing a new copper mine can take years and billions of dollars.
07:23 Most copper mines look like this.
07:25 Vast open pits where the rock is blasted out of the earth with explosives.
07:30 Leaving behind stepped walls that can plunge half a mile into the earth.
07:38 In many cases, these pits remain long after the mine has shut down.
07:43 This one in Butte, Montana, closed down in the 1980s, and the pumps that would normally keep water out were shut down.
07:53 The liquid you see is in fact a bath of acids and heavy metals leached from the surrounding rock.
07:59 In 2016, over 3,000 geese died soon after landing on the lake.
08:04 Now workers have to keep a round-the-clock vigil, scaring away migratory birds with gunshots, lasers, even drones.
08:21 If birds land here and start drinking the toxic brew, it can cause organ failure.
08:26 It's Mark Mariano's mission to make sure that doesn't happen.
08:31 Yeah, Mark Mariano, waterfowl protection specialist. We invented that title, but it fits.
08:40 These are propane cannons, and they fire all day.
08:47 They mimic gunfire, which a lot of the birds are scared of for obvious reasons.
08:52 On special occasions, the birds might get their own private fireworks display.
08:57 This is kind of a last resort, or we know something big would be coming. We've used them twice.
09:03 This acid lake is an extreme outcome.
09:08 But there's evidence toxic waste rock has contaminated soil near copper mines around the world.
09:16 As the EV market continues to grow, so does the demand for copper,
09:21 although design improvements mean that less will be needed per vehicle in the years to come.
09:26 Meanwhile, the US still has considerable copper reserves, as does Chile and the likes of Australia and Peru.
09:35 Other battery metals are not so well distributed, like cobalt.
09:42 The metal is a popular choice for battery makers because it withstands high temperatures and doesn't corrode easily.
09:48 It goes in the cathode of the most common battery type, NMC.
09:53 And just one African nation is responsible for producing over 70% of the world's cobalt.
09:59 The Democratic Republic of Congo is the Saudi Arabia of cobalt, or much more than that, in fact.
10:05 They really have a very uniquely dominant position.
10:09 Mining here has exploded since 2000, driven largely by Chinese investment.
10:14 Between 15 and 30% of the cobalt ore comes from artisanal mines, meaning low-tech, informal mining operations.
10:23 Miners use whatever tools they have available, often without protective equipment.
10:31 Miners here dig shafts into the earth and rock to reach seams of cobalt.
10:38 The tunnels are cut by hand and have been known to collapse and kill.
10:43 Mwandanjo Olivier has been working in these mines for 22 years.
10:50 When I start mining, I know that God will help me.
10:55 I know that God will help me.
11:01 I know that God will help me.
11:06 I'm going to go this way.
11:09 Oh my God, I'm going to die.
11:25 I'm going to die.
11:35 Mwandanjo and a team of three others work here.
11:39 They cut chunks of ore from the walls
11:42 and later haul their load back up to the surface.
11:51 Miners take the rocks to a local depot, where they are assessed and weighed.
11:55 Mwandanjo can earn between $200 and $300 a week.
11:59 The price can change on a daily basis, depending on the value of cobalt on the global market.
12:05 He says he makes enough money to support his family.
12:20 Hundreds of thousands of people work in DRC's artisanal cobalt mining sector.
12:25 Men tend to work as miners and traders, while women find work processing the ore.
12:31 Clarice says this site follows strict rules.
12:43 The ore is mined in the mine.
12:46 But over the years, human rights groups have also raised the alarm about child labour at unregulated mining sites.
12:56 A 2016 Amnesty International report found thousands of children working as artisanal miners.
13:03 The Amnesty report really opened a lot of people's eyes to what was actually going on in the DRC
13:11 and the extent of abuses.
13:13 Most companies had little idea about where they got their cobalt or what was going on.
13:18 Some manufacturers look to source their cobalt from large industrial operations instead.
13:24 These mines are big operations, fenced off, secured, big processing plants, big open pit mines.
13:31 But these mines haven't been without their problems either.
13:37 Satellite imagery shows how massive mining pits have consumed large parts of Colwazy, in the south of the country.
13:44 Another Amnesty report, this time focusing on large Chinese and European-run mining operations in the DRC,
13:52 details how residents have been forced from their homes to make room for the pits.
13:57 In some cases, residents were physically assaulted and even had their houses set on fire.
14:05 Locals say hundreds of homes have disappeared.
14:08 Meanwhile, artisanal mining hasn't gone away, and many don't want it to.
14:30 Human rights groups say that improving working conditions at these mines is a better approach than trying to outlaw them altogether.
14:37 And it's difficult for battery or car manufacturers to know which type of mine the cobalt comes from,
14:43 since the ores mix together at refining plants.
14:47 Almost all of the DRC's cobalt ends up in China,
14:52 where it has helped put around 14 million EVs on its roads, way more than Europe and the US.
15:00 In fact, the DRC has a long history of foreign countries benefiting from its riches.
15:05 Over a hundred years ago, Belgian colonisers scoured the vast country for its mineral wealth.
15:11 Later, other Western powers relied on the country for minerals used in military aircraft.
15:25 Without strategic materials, and by strategic materials I mean ones like cobalt, we really couldn't make a jet engine.
15:32 Today, the metallic element is used in things like paints, alloys and batteries.
15:38 Conventional combustion engine vehicles don't use any.
15:42 The mining boom, driven largely by EVs, has transformed the DRC's economy as well.
15:49 But the majority of Congolese people are not feeling the benefit of the country's mineral riches.
15:54 Economists call it the resource curse.
15:57 We've seen countries who have been blessed with natural resources that often it's elites that benefit.
16:03 You get these booms where they're actually more destructive than beneficial.
16:08 That's partly because minerals like cobalt gain value as they move through the supply chain,
16:14 from ore to refined metals to batteries.
16:18 It's difficult for many resource-rich countries to have the infrastructure, the energy, the chemicals, etc.
16:24 that's needed to produce processed products.
16:27 But whether processed at home or abroad, the amount of cobalt used in the most common EV battery, NMC, is going down.
16:36 From one third of the cathode to just 10%.
16:40 The trade-off means using more nickel.
16:44 And 6,500 miles away, one country is poised to benefit massively from that change.
16:50 Indonesia is the world's largest nickel producer and it's just going to extend that lead this decade.
16:56 Unlike the DRC, Indonesia receives far more investment from foreign mining firms and car makers,
17:03 including from China, the US and Korea, for things like refineries and battery plants,
17:09 helping it hold on to more of the supply chain.
17:13 The country's leaders banned nearly all nickel exports after decades of shipping it off to foreign stainless steel plants
17:19 with little economic gain to show for it.
17:22 Now they're saying, "Well, we've got all the processed nickel here, why don't you come build your battery factory in Indonesia?"
17:27 And then they're saying, "Why don't you build your electric vehicle factory?"
17:30 Nickel mining in Indonesia is concentrated on the resource-rich island of Sulawesi,
17:40 where mineral extraction is increasingly coming into conflict with nearby agriculture.
17:45 These are clove farms and some locals say mining companies have forcibly cleared their lands.
18:01 The clove trees are all gone.
18:04 They're gone.
18:07 We've been looking for them for so long.
18:11 We've been dreaming of them.
18:14 When our children go to school there, they'll be gone.
18:19 Now they patrol the land themselves, armed and ready to defend their crops.
18:30 Meanwhile, pollution from the mines has washed into the sea, visible here on the left,
18:36 and it's having a direct impact on fishing.
18:41 It's not like this. It's clean, you can bathe in it, you can fish. Now you can't.
18:46 So far, the vast majority of nickel coming out of Indonesia has gone to make stainless steel, not batteries.
18:57 That's because most of the country's ore has low nickel content.
19:01 And there's a lot of people who are still struggling to get their hands on it.
19:07 That's because most of the country's ore has low nickel content.
19:10 But Indonesia wants a larger piece of the EV pie,
19:14 and plans to scale up a process called high-pressure acid leaching.
19:19 This technique can transform low-grade ore into the kind of nickel useful to the EV battery industry.
19:25 But it uses hot sulfuric acid and can leave behind hazardous waste
19:31 that can cause environmental destruction if not properly stored.
19:36 The eastern side of the Indonesian archipelago is inside what's known as the Coral Triangle,
19:41 an area with more diverse marine life than anywhere else on the planet.
19:45 And the nation as a whole is home to more than a tenth of the world's mammal species,
19:50 and nearly a fifth of all bird species.
19:53 Environmental concerns have given some investors pause.
19:59 In 2022, Indonesian officials said Tesla would soon invest $5 billion in local nickel processing.
20:06 But an open letter from environmental groups to CEO Elon Musk
20:11 called for an end to all nickel investments in the country.
20:14 It cites water and air pollution, land grabbing and systemic large-scale environmental damage.
20:21 The deal didn't go through,
20:25 but Tesla switched its standard-ranged vehicles to a nickel-free variety.
20:29 The Indonesian government says it will improve environmental monitoring at mining sites.
20:35 But operations aren't likely to scale down any time soon.
20:39 Indonesia is the nickel producer to watch this decade,
20:43 and we won't have, in many cases, electric vehicles without Indonesia.
20:47 Seven and a half thousand miles away on the west coast of Africa,
20:53 Elon is busy mining another key ingredient in EV battery cathodes, manganese.
20:58 A company called Comilog, owned by French mining interests,
21:03 has operated here since 1951, leading to massive population growth and development.
21:09 The company says it's invested millions of dollars in social projects
21:13 that improve access to education and water.
21:16 But some locals say they've been left behind.
21:21 Here, on the road to Comilog, we don't have electricity, we don't have water,
21:26 we don't have a public bridge, so we want to have water and electricity.
21:33 Meanwhile, the government is counting on mining for manganese, iron and gold,
21:39 as it tries to transition away from an oil-based economy.
21:43 Right now, the majority of Gabon's manganese is used for making steel, not EV batteries,
21:50 but EV demand for the metal could grow eightfold by 2030.
21:54 There is one place where manganese, nickel and cobalt can all be found together,
22:02 and it's not on land, but within potato-sized rocks lying more than two miles below the ocean's surface.
22:09 They're called polymetallic nodules, and there could be billions of tons of them in the ocean.
22:16 A Canadian start-up called The Metals Company wants to be the first to cash in.
22:20 On a test run in 2022, it scooped up what the founder says is the world's biggest hole yet.
22:27 This is history. I've never stood in this. No one has. No one.
22:32 Gerard Baron is on a decade-long quest to mine the deep. His last venture ran out of money.
22:41 I wanted to do something that was near impossible.
22:45 I was pretty sure that if I didn't do this, then it may not move forward, and that would be a travesty.
22:50 The technology is available to collect these rocks at a commercial scale.
22:56 Here's how it works. The ship lowers a collector vehicle into the water.
23:01 The prototype weighs 90 tons and is about the size of a minibus.
23:14 Operators drive the collector remotely from inside the control room.
23:18 Each vehicle has four nozzles and sensors that adjust their positions.
23:26 They hover just above the seabed, and the nodules that are laying there are sucked into the nozzle.
23:32 They work kind of like a vacuum cleaner.
23:36 The machine also collects the top few centimetres of mud.
23:41 Internal pumps separate that from the rocks and shoot some of the sediment back out.
23:46 Next, air bubbles push rocks, mud and seawater up a tube that can extend up to two and a half miles.
23:53 After about 12 minutes, the slurry reaches the surface.
23:58 Here, a whirlpool uses gravity to separate the nodules from water and sediment.
24:04 Nodules are found in flat, soft parts of the deep ocean floor around the world.
24:10 One of the most promising nodule fields is in the Clarion-Clipperton zone,
24:14 a stretch of Pacific ocean floor about as wide as the continental United States.
24:19 A promotional video for the metals company calls this mining area...
24:24 "A vast underwater desert."
24:26 But even deserts have life in them, and this stretch of seafloor does too.
24:31 Recent expeditions have found a never-before-seen octopus,
24:36 a swarm of eels eating bait, plus sea cucumbers, fish and species not found anywhere else.
24:43 No matter how careful the miners are, some environmental impact is impossible to avoid.
24:49 We can't really predict the scale of species extinctions that would come from that much mining,
24:55 but there's reason to think it could be significant.
24:58 We don't actually know enough yet to understand all these impacts and therefore the costs.
25:05 Deep sea mining in international waters is regulated by the International Seabed Authority.
25:10 By the end of 2023 it had granted exploration contracts to 31 companies and governments.
25:17 It takes a different type of contract to mine the seafloor at commercial scale,
25:23 and no one has one of those yet.
25:25 If all goes according to plan, the metals company aims to build processing centres
25:30 at ports that will melt and refine the rocks.
25:34 The nodules wouldn't leave behind tonnes of waste rock like other ores do.
25:38 We generate zero waste and zero tailings.
25:41 We don't have the risk of any child labour.
25:44 We can commercially pick up these rocks and help stop some of the terrible deforestation
25:50 of our most biodiverse habitats on land.
25:52 However, it's not clear yet whether ventures like this can scale.
25:57 And experts say there's no evidence land-based mining would go away or even decline
26:03 if seafloor mining takes off.
26:04 You'll just end up with a situation that you are going to have increased ecological harm on land
26:10 and then at sea as well.
26:13 One mineral that can't be found in nodules but makes up the largest part of any EV battery is graphite.
26:22 It's used in the anode or negative end of each battery cell.
26:26 Most EVs use synthetic graphite derived from coal,
26:31 but there's still demand for natural graphite which is cheaper.
26:34 And China is the world's largest producer of both.
26:38 The country produces 70% of the world's mined graphite,
26:42 but in 2023 announced it was restricting exports.
26:46 The move spooked foreign EV makers who were wary of their over-reliance on Chinese supply.
26:52 As the world races to find a more diverse supply, countries like Sri Lanka are hoping to cash in.
27:00 The country is home to what's called vein graphite, the purest natural form of the element.
27:05 But at the moment Sri Lankan graphite is mainly used for steel making and as an industrial lubricant.
27:11 And working in the mines is difficult and dangerous.
27:17 Neel Suresh Abhishekara has worked in Kahatagaha, Sri Lanka's biggest graphite mine, for 11 years.
27:27 It descends 2,000 feet, the deepest in the country.
27:31 To mine the graphite, Neel and his colleagues use drills
27:44 and explosives.
27:51 We're going to tie this up.
27:53 We have to dig a little deeper.
28:00 We have to dig a little deeper.
28:02 Then we have to tie it up.
28:07 Working so far underground can make it hard to breathe.
28:28 Abhishekara exposes miners to toxic air particles, putting them at risk of lung diseases like pneumoconiosis.
28:34 But if the lift breaks or the power is cut, the only way out is this ladder.
28:56 About 60 workers earn a living from the mine here in Kahatagaha, but it's not much.
29:01 In January 2020, mine workers went on a hunger strike for increased wages, for the first time since 2012.
29:08 The government gave workers an increase of just 50 rupees a day.
29:12 That's three US cents, promising to meet other demands in the future.
29:17 But those needs have still not been met.
29:22 With more modern machinery, Sri Lanka could be well-placed to tap into the huge demand for graphite from the EV industry.
29:28 Miners here just hope they won't be left behind.
29:34 Whether on land or at sea, every form of mining comes with trade-offs.
29:43 After extraction and refining, battery metals head to gigafactories like this one.
29:50 At the moment they roll off the assembly line, EVs have a carbon footprint about 30% larger than internal combustion engine cars on average.
29:59 However, that begins to change as soon as you start the engine.
30:03 Because driving an EV has no direct emissions, they still have a lower climate impact over their lifetime,
30:14 even if they're charged with electricity that comes from fossil fuels.
30:19 Reducing greenhouse gases is the number one tool humans have to fight the climate crisis,
30:29 which is displacing people and threatening many species.
30:34 As EVs enter the mainstream, consumer power, Sanderson says,
30:41 will likely force car manufacturers and mining companies to clean up their acts.
30:45 Consumers, I think, are in a powerful position because electric vehicles are still relatively new to many people.
30:52 It's supposed to be a better product. People care more about where all the materials come from, so that's helping to drive change.
30:59 Meanwhile, one of the best ways to clean up the EV supply chain is by minimising the need for mining in the first place,
31:08 which means reusing and recycling as much as possible.
31:11 A handful of start-ups use end-of-life EV batteries for large-scale energy storage,
31:17 fields of lithium-ion batteries, which will be an essential part of scaling up wind and solar power.
31:24 And recycling rates for battery metals are trending upwards.
31:28 The US, Europe and Asia have seen massive public and private investment in recycling infrastructure.
31:36 Getting the minerals out of the complex battery cells is its own puzzle.
31:41 Crushing or shredding the batteries is risky because they can catch fire under pressure.
31:48 A company called Li-Cycle says its process addresses that issue.
31:54 The team built a machine that slices batteries into confetti-like shreds while keeping them submerged in liquid.
32:01 Without oxygen, there's no fire.
32:05 That liquid also helps separate the plastic, which many recyclers just burn away.
32:10 What is left is metallic foil.
32:12 So behind me we're bagging that metallic foil and we sell this for the copper content as well as the precious metals.
32:19 And black mass.
32:21 Black mass contains the nickel, the cobalt, manganese, graphite, lithium, etc.
32:28 As recycling operations like this scale up, recovered metals could eventually account for about half of the amount of cobalt and nickel the world uses.
32:36 But that might not happen until the year 2050.
32:39 By then, investments in public transportation and greater awareness of the climate crisis will possibly have even brought about a less car-centric world.
32:49 But while the car continues to be king, Sanderson says the electrification of transit is essential.
32:57 We shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
32:59 And it pales in comparison to the destruction wreaked on the planet by our addiction to fossil fuels.
33:06 And that we need to make this shift.
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