Renewable energy has biodiversity costs:
https://news.mongabay.com/2019/06/shift-to-renewable-energy-could-have-biodiversity-cost-researchers-caution/
Interesting article -
“The transition towards a renewable energy and transport system requires a complex mix of metals — such as copper, cobalt, nickel, rare earths, lithium and silver — many of which have only previously been mined in small amounts,”
We only mined for copper, nickel, and silver in small amounts in pre-EV/RE days?
“The mining of many metals used for renewable energy technologies and EVs already impacts wildlife biodiversity,” Dominish told Mongabay, citing the example of bauxite mining.
Bauxite ore is used to produce aluminum, a key component in almost all renewable technologies
How much bauxite do we mine that gets turned into soda cans in landfills vs. the amount of aluminum that is used for solar panel frames, stays in use for decades, and is easily collected for recycling?
New mines that will become active in the next two years, listed in the Earthworks report, include one for cobalt in the Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), nickel in Zambia, and rare earth metals (a group of 17 elements such as scandium and yttrium) in South Africa’s Western Cape region. These highly biodiverse sites are not the only areas at risk; threats to wildlife from such mining can be found nearly worldwide.
Battery technologies are moving away from cobalt.
"We use less than 3% cobalt in our batteries & will use none in next gen" - Elon Musk Jun 2018
"Tesla has succeeded in reducing the cobalt content of the Model 3’s batteries to just 2.8% as of last year." Apr 2019
"Scandium is a rare earth metal from the transitional metal group. It is a soft but strong metal with a high melting point that is mostly used with aluminium alloys in the manufacturing of sporting equipment, aircraft, light bulbs and future predicted use in fuel cells."
"The largest use of the element is as its oxide yttria, Y2O3, which is used in making red phosphors for color television picture tubes. Yttrium metal has found some use alloyed in small amounts with other metals and It is used to increase the strength of aluminium and magnesium alloys." Apparently a small amount is used in solar panels.
“We need conservation scientists to identify the sites that house immense biodiversity value and should therefore be off-limits to mining,” Sonter added, while allowing that mining in some areas would be necessary: “These sites must be [robustly protected against] threats posed by mining, but also flexible enough to ensure a transition to a renewable-energy economy is feasible.”
At present, though, conservation officials are largely unaware of the increased threat to biodiversity that is posed by the shift to a renewable energy economy, according to Sonter.
We absolutely need to avoid the most critical parts of the ecosystem. Except we might not have the luxury of saving "0.01%" if it means the destruction of "50+%". We haven't yet had to make very tough decisions about accepting the bad over the terrible but it might come to that.
Recycling will be “the most important strategy” to reduce primary demand for battery metals, according to the report, although some materials, like lithium and manganese, are not currently recovered at high enough rates.
The first step in recycling EV batteries is to obtain enough used batteries to support a recycling program. Tesla designed in battery recycling at their Reno Gigafactory but when you're selling batteries that last half a million miles or more it will take time for used batteries to show up for recycling. Used batteries are the most concentrated source of raw materials for battery manufacturing to be found. Shred, separate, reuse.
My take? Yes, we need to be aware and we need to work to minimize the damage we create. But we need to balance that against the damage we are avoiding. Think of the damage being done now by mountaintop removal and open pit mining, fracking for oil and gas, massive oil spills and simply sloppy oil production and transportation practices. Think about the metals we already use for ICEVs, for oil rigs, for pipelines, for refineries.
Honestly, if we had no option but to mine as much steel, copper, and aluminum for solar panels, wind turbines, Evs, and batteries as we now mine for fossil fuel use and ICEVs wouldn't we produce a net gain for the environment?
And we must be careful to not let "It's not a perfect solution" keep us from replacing something truly terrible with something that is less than perfect. We're in a crisis situation. We need to make progress, take the steps we can take now. That should buy us some time to seek out better solutions.