” Not In My BackYard! (“Not in my backyard!”) After several weeks of demonstrations to protest against a lithium mining project located near Loznica, in western Serbia, the government suspended its land expropriation law. residents. Even national glory, the world number one in tennis, Novak Djokovic went there from his post on Instagram: ” Clean air, water and food are essential for everyone’s health. Without them, talk about “health” no sense “, he writes under a photo of the demonstrations.
The case constitutes a parable of the contradictions with which the ecological transition confronts us. Healthy air is the promise of the advent of the electric car. But if the water and food are contaminated by the extraction of lithium, essential to the manufacture of the batteries that these vehicles need, this leads to reassess the real cost of the switch to sustainable mobility.
Turning the page on fossil fuels, some believed that the economy would end up becoming a path littered with rose petals, finally rid of pollution, dependence on raw materials and social or geopolitical unrest. The Serbian protests have the merit of making us aware that the future looks more complicated. The extraction of raw materials remains harmful for the environment, the resources are not infinite and, above all, they are not ideally distributed on the planet.
The problem of supply
What is striking since the launch of the first electric cars is the myopia with which this upheaval has been approached. At first, the debates were limited to vehicle performance. With the end of the thermal engine planned for Europe in 2035, came concerns about the consequences on employment. At the same time, the question of electricity production to operate such a park in a sustainable manner arose. It is finally time to ask ourselves if there will be enough to manufacture the tens of millions of batteries necessary for this gigantic transition.
During the presentation of the objectives of the French presidency of the EU in 2022, on December 9, Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed the desire to develop a European sector dedicated to batteries. Around ten factories will be set up by 2030. Enough to meet the demand forecast for that time. There remains the unresolved problem of the supply of raw materials.
You have 58.31% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.