Meeting global climate goals and reducing harmful air pollution requires a shift away from fossil fuel-powered vehicles and toward more plug-in electric cars, trucks and buses. This transition has already started.

Some 10mn EVs were sold last year, accounting for 14% of global vehicle sales, according to the International Energy Agency. That number is forecast to accelerate quickly, with EV sales set to jump by 35% this year.

EVs require large rechargeable batteries, and those batteries contain minerals that must be mined – specifically lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite. And mineral mines can contaminate surrounding waters and ecosystems, jeopardise the health and safety of local communities and workers, and run roughshod over sacred Indigenous lands.

Some have seized on the very real problems with mineral mining to argue that this transition to EVs is a mistake.

A surmountable challenge 
In contrast, a new report from the NRDC lays out key strategies so the necessary transition away from fossil fuels and to EVs can drive better mining practices. The report, Building Batteries Better: Doing the best with less, also details specific policies needed to reduce the need for these minerals, reuse older batteries and recycle the components at the end of the battery life.

EV batteries did not create this problem and are far from the only products that require mined materials. Minerals are in countless items we use every day, including laptops, cell phones, home appliances, and the buttons and zippers on pants and jackets.

This new NRDC report lays out a number of ways that the transition to a clean energy economy can serve as a catalyst to reduce environmental impacts from mining, as well as helping clean up centuries of harm from the mining industry. The very real problems with mining are not going to disappear by sticking with the dangerous petroleum-based status quo.

EVs will always be a more environmentally friendly choice than fossil fuel-powered cars simply because they do not rely on continuous fossil fuel extraction, which has destroyed aquifers, polluted the air and harmed the health of so many people over the past century. After all, EVs emit less than half the greenhouse gas emissions over their lifetime as internal combustion engine vehicles, as per research by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

In 2021 alone, the US transportation sector used 4.86bn barrels of oil – that’s enough barrels to cover an area larger than the entire city of Los Angeles. Once this oil is burned, it is gone forever – although the CO₂ produced can remain in the atmosphere for between 300 and 1,000 years.

Shifting away from a transportation system dependent on massive oil fields and continuous pushes to drill in new communities and in wild places will provide enormous environmental and public health benefits. For instance, the World Health Organisation estimates that 99% of the global population breathes dangerously polluted air and air pollution kills around seven million people worldwide every year. Since they don’t burn fossil fuels, EVs produce no CO₂ emissions when driving, resulting in far cleaner air.

On the other hand, an old EV battery is essentially a small mineral reserve filled with extremely concentrated and high-quality materials like lithium and nickel that can be reused again and again. Transitioning to EVs creates an opportunity to reduce long-term reliance on extractive industries. This is not an option as long as we are reliant on gasoline-powered engines.

EVs will always be a more environmentally friendly choice than fossil fuel-powered cars simply because they do not rely on continuous fossil fuel extraction, which has destroyed aquifers, polluted the air, and harmed the health of so many people over the past century.

The problem with mining 
The Building Batteries Better report focuses on both improving mining practices and reducing the type and amount of minerals needed.

Specific strategies and policies to improve and reduce mining include:

• Recycle older batteries and reuse their component minerals.
• Update the 150-year-old federal mining laws.
• Improve and clean up extraction and waste management. 
• Require comprehensive community consultation for mining projects. 
• Increase material efficiency though improvements in battery technology.
• Prioritise second-life applications for batteries as appropriate.

Current mining regulations, laws, standards and practices need to be brought into the 21st century to mitigate negative impacts to ecosystems, communities and indigenous people. Congress needs to update the antiquated Mining Law of 1872 – decades, if not a century overdue.

The US administration should issue improved environmental standards while ensuring that mining and mine permitting requires informed consent from indigenous people and adequate community engagement. It should also require mining companies to adhere to best practices for mine siting and waste and tailings management.

Minerals mining will always have impacts on land, water and people. Therefore, reducing the amount of mining needed is key to reducing the harm it causes. Given the rapid increase in EV production and sales, increasing material efficiency though improvements in battery technology, second-life applications for vehicle batteries and better recycling will pay dividends over the coming years and decades. These long-term strategies will not completely eliminate, but can greatly reduce, the need for mining of battery materials.

The federal government has recently taken steps toward strategically building environmentally responsible EV battery supply chains in the US through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. However, not enough of the funding in this legislation – or strategic planning – is currently going toward reducing the amount of minerals we need.

Mining solutions 
Building a low impact and more circular battery supply chain can be achieved by decreasing reliance on difficult-to-access critical minerals through technological improvements. For example, the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office should direct funding toward improving material efficiency in EV battery manufacturing.

The DOE should continue to award grants to commercial scaling of improved battery chemistries and ensure that research and development of novel chemistries is also supported. And battery reuse and recycling policies and programmes should be developed now so that unnecessary waste and hazards are avoided as more and more EVs are retired.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Transportation should create a separate category for used lithium-ion EV batteries within their hazardous waste regulations to reduce unnecessary barriers and costs to reuse and recycling. The EPA should enforce national battery labelling requirements based on the Global Battery Alliance’s Battery Passport through the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the DOE’s Vehicle Technology Office should explore opportunities to expand funding for battery health testing and second use research and commercial scaling.

The DOE should also expand funding for the ReCell Center’s research on battery recycling methods that minimise impacts and maximise recovery rate. The State Department, if possible, should include batteries as one of the next sectors of focus for the First Movers Coalition to encourage public-private collaboration on battery supply chain issues. While the EPA should set recovery rate targets for battery recycling like those in the EU Sustainable Batteries law, and require that all EV batteries be recycled. And the DOE should prioritise high recovery efficiencies in its selection criteria for infrastructure grants.

Beyond the technology itself, public policies should provide people with the variety of cleaner transportation options and encourage the use of more efficient vehicles so that fewer minerals are needed in the first place. All of these actions that support more efficient use of minerals and decrease the need for mining must occur in parallel with the much-needed mining reforms.

The EV battery supply chain starts with mining; later steps can include reuse and recycling
Source: NRDC 

Multifarious benefits 
Transitioning our transportation sector from fossil fuel-dependent vehicles to EVs will mitigate the worst impacts of climate change and improve the health and quality of life for the most pollution-burdened communities living near rail yards, highways and ports. It will also reduce the environmental, economic and human rights impacts of oil extraction and spills.

With more than 30% of current US greenhouse gas emissions coming from transportation, the transition to EVs is a crucial piece of climate action. However, the mineral extraction, material processing and manufacturing of EV batteries come with their own set of harmful impacts and need to be addressed.

Demand for EVs – and therefore EV batteries – is growing. We currently have an important window of opportunity to implement policies that improve extraction practices, support new battery technologies, promote reuse and recycling, provide diverse mobility options that reduce demand for battery minerals, and set up the regulatory environment and infrastructure required for a circular economy before the number of retired EV batteries grows exponentially.

Policymakers must adopt and implement these policies to limit the impacts of EV battery supply chains, so that we can meet climate and air quality goals while protecting already overburdened environmental justice communities and indigenous communities.

The task before us is to produce the minerals we need for a cleaner economy in the best way possible so that we can address the climate crisis and put the very real dangers and damages from fossil fuels in the rearview mirror. Working together we can improve upon mineral mining, which has needed an update for decades. And, with the right technology and policies on reuse and recycling, the need for new minerals can be radically reduced.