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Lithium-Ion Batteries - Positive and Negative Rights Impacts
LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES
POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE RIGHTS IMPACTS
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ANDY SYMINGTON
Andy Symington is a PhD candidate at UNSW Law, an Associate of the Australian Human Rights Institute, and a guest editor on this issue. Andy tweets @andysymington
It is becoming increasingly apparent that the potential impacts of climate change make it not only an enormous environmental and political challenge, but also the defining human rights issue of this century. Minimising planetary warming and avoiding or mitigating its worst effects are crucial to ensuring that the ability of whole segments of global society to enjoy numerous rights is not severely curtailed. In many ways, the battle against climate change should be seen not just as a fight for rights but as a struggle for the feasibility of the very concept of human rights as we currently understand it.
Lithium-ion batteries, ubiquitous in smartphones and other consumer electronics, are also what power the new generation of electric vehicles. Additionally, they are our principal means of storage of renewable energy: Elon Musk’s much-hyped installation for the South Australian government in 2017 was an example of the technology’s ground-breaking capabilities. As such, lithium-ion batteries are currently key to the moving away from fossil fuels, but their manufacture is also associated with a series of worrying human rights impacts that pose a challenge to extractive companies, battery producers and vehicle makers.
HOW IT WORKS
There are various types of lithium-ion batteries but the basic configuration is of two electrodes immersed in a lithium salt solution. The negative electrode (anode) is usually made of graphite, while its counterpart cathode is typically made from a lithium oxide combined with other metals. Different cathode materials give distinct combinations of performance, safety, weight and cost. The configuration generally used for electric vehicles – which sport an array of several thousand batteries – has a cathode containing lithium, nickel, cobalt and either manganese or aluminium.
There are serious human rights concerns associated with the extraction of several of these metals as well as with the production of graphite for the anode.
GRAPHITE
An extended Washington Post investigation into the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries highlighted that, in China, this ‘clean technology’ was produced via ‘oldfashioned industrial pollution’ from graphite factories. 1 Refining mined graphite carpets local communities in sooty particles, polluting local water supplies, damaging food sources and endangering health. The heavy use of acid in the process causes further environmental damage. While synthetic graphite and an acid-free method of processing mined graphite are available, lower production costs of the pollution-heavy method 2 means that it predominates. As graphite is the largest single component of lithium-ion batteries, and electric vehicle makers are under pressure to produce cars at consumer-friendly prices, this presents a major business human rights challenge to companies right through the supply chain.
LITHIUM
Lithium is mined in many countries across the world, but it is another form of extraction that is causing particular alarm. High in the Andes of Chile and Argentina, companies pump enormous quantities of brine from beneath the surface of vast salt pans. The water is then evaporated off over the course of a year or so, leaving a lithium-rich sludge that can be refined. The region is an arid, environmentally precarious zone, and local indigenous communities have grave concerns towards the impact on fresh water aquifers and traditional livelihoods as well as the regular absence of consultation for projects on their lands. 3 Again, cost-cutting drives this form of lithium extraction, which is cheaper than traditional mining. While less water-intensive technologies are in development, these are likely to raise production costs too.
COBALT
A majority of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where an Amnesty International report revealed atrocious human rights conditions in its artisanal extraction, including young children working in dangerous underground environments with no safety equipment. 4 Though companies have since reduced the amount of cobalt in their lithium-ion batteries, under current technology there is a threshold beneath which it will be impossible to drop without compromising both performance and safety. Companies have voiced their intention to move to ‘next-gen’ tech, but a cobalt-free battery still appears some way off. 5
NICKEL
Mining and smelting of nickel take place in several countries and have been associated with serious air and water pollution. In 2017, the Philippines, at the time the world’s largest producer of nickel ore, shut down mines accounting for half of its production over environmental concerns—an extraordinary step. There have also been serious impacts from nickel mining in Russia and Canada, among other places. 6 The lowering of cobalt content in batteries has meant a corresponding increase in nickel, which now forms the majority of most electric vehicle battery cathodes by weight. This means that any increase in nickel price has a significant impact on the profit margins of carmakers such as Tesla, yet another area where cost pressures can compromise rights.
CHALLENGES
The issues discussed here can also be considered as part of traditional tensions between the extractive industries and human rights concerns. Yet the crucial potential of lithium ion technology to help reduce carbon emissions raises the stakes even further. Constantly-improving technology will likely mitigate some of the worst human rights impacts of mineral extraction over time, but market pressures also favour lower-cost extraction methods, which are generally those with the worst human rights impacts. These often disproportionately affect women and children, who tend to see few of the benefits of extractive industry presence but bear a significant portion of the risk.
As in many areas of business human rights, we can campaign for better government regulation of company practice, but given that some minerals are found in zones of poor governance and others can be sourced from multiple countries, corporate responsibility to respect human rights is also central. This responsibility extends right up the supply chain, from mining companies through to battery manufacturers and vehicle producers.
Consumers also have an important role to play. Though the rapid pace of technological advances can mean that human rights issues are sidelined until development is well underway, reputation-sensitive companies like Apple and Tesla have recently, under public scrutiny, made positive decisions to reduce problem elements like mined graphite and cobalt in their products. Better lithium extraction methods and improved nickel-smelting processes are further areas where corporations can be persuaded to take human-rights-friendlier approaches via civil society and consumer pressure.
Lithium-ion battery technology represents an enormous opportunity in the move towards renewable energy but also poses its own series of significant business human rights challenges. Pursuing technological advances while respecting on-the-ground rights is key to achieving a truly sustainable energy revolution.
1. Peter Whoriskey, ‘In Your Phone, In the Air’, Washington Post, 2 October 2016, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/ graphics/business/batteries/graphite-mining-pollution-inchina/?tid=a_inl
2. Karim Zaghib et al, ‘Purification process of natural graphite as anode for Li-ion batteries: chemical versus thermal’ (2003) 19 Journal of Power Sources 8
3. Todd C. Frankel and Peter Whoriskey, ‘Tossed Aside in the ‘White’ Gold Rush: indigenous people are left poor as tech world takes lithium from under their feet’, Washington Post, December 19 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/ batteries/tossed-aside-in-the-lithium-rush/?noredirect=on.
4. Amnesty International, ‘”This is what we die for”: Human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo power the global trade in cobalt’, 19 January 2016, available at https://www. amnesty.org/en/documents/afr62/3183/2016/en/
5. Angela Chen, ‘Elon Musk wants cobalt out of his batteries — here’s why that’s a challenge’, The Verge, 21 June 2018, https:// www.theverge.com/2018/6/21/17488626/elon-musk-cobaltelectric-vehicle-battery-science
6. Gavin M. Mudd, ‘Global trends and environmental issues in nickel mining: Sulfides versus laterites’ (2010) 38 Ore Geology Reviews 9.
