PassW0rd – 11 November 2020

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Speaker A: Hello, I’m Peter Warren and I’m waiting at the bus stop. In my home village in Suffolk. And while I wait, I’m thinking about a little sand lizard named Axel in a forest in Germany, an 11-year-old Congolese boy called Ziki, and a sea cucumber foraging on the ocean floor in the Clapperton-Clipperton Rift of the eastern Pacific Ocean. Let’s call her Sally. You might be wondering what sort of drugs I’ve been taking to produce such wild and random visions. But actually, it all makes perfect sense. They’re all related, not in a soppy circle of life sort of way, but very specifically linked to the leading edge of new technology. They’re all part of the push for battery-powered electric cars and wind turbines, the so-called green energy revolution trumpeted by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson as our salvation and the government’s new direction of travel. Shirley Meng, a professor at the University of California San Diego, told me that there’s a big demand for the minerals that are used to make batteries for electric vehicles.

Speaker B: I think the most exciting development probably is the recent Tesla Battery Day, I would say, the September 22nd. There was quite a few big announcements. On the technology development side. So I’m very privileged to be part of this Battery 500 consortium. It’s a U.S. Department of Energy-funded consortium that works on lithium metal batteries. So I think there is very big differences between what we currently use in the cell phone and the laptops. These are Lithium-ion batteries. So the chemistry in those batteries uses, we call it intercalation chemistry. I know it’s not a very easy word to understand. Basically in our batteries there is no metallic lithium and it utilizes the chemistry that the 3 Nobel laureates for chemistry last year, They discovered this kind of chemistry more than 3, 4 decades ago, but today we are utilizing metallic lithium as the negative electrode, and then we’re trying to double the energy density of the batteries. And that’s, I think, one of the exciting developments in recent years. And the second very exciting development people probably heard over the news is the we call it all-solid-state batteries. So basically we replace the very flammable, dangerous liquid electrolyte that is based on the carbonate materials, carbonate liquids, to replace them with some oxides or sulfides or polymers that are non-flammable and safe, very safe to use without compromising the energy density or even improving the energy density by volumetric energy density metric. So I think that’s the second really, really exciting development in recent years.

Speaker A: What does this mean? You know, we’ve been told that the car batteries that we’re going to use are going to be enormous things. Do these advances in science mean that we’re actually going to get smaller, more effective batteries?

Speaker B: That is correct. Yeah, those developments mean that the future electric vehicles, you can drive 500 miles, or, you know, I think that’s approximately 800 kilometers per charge. The EV will outperform the internal combustion engine cars by a lot. And that’s why people are very, very excited about these new developments.

Speaker A: And how quickly will they be able to be charged?

Speaker B: I think that ability to fast charging really not only relies on our scientific breakthrough but also how the world, the nations build up their fast charging infrastructure. So I think a simple example is that, you know, if you have a Tesla Model 3, which is 65 kilowatt-hour energy, which means if you want to charge it within 15 minutes, you need something like 300, 400 kilowatt infrastructure for fast charging. So that is something I think that It’s really infrastructure challenge. As in scientifically, can I do fast charging with the new lithium metal batteries or solid-state batteries? At the moment, it is quite challenging to do that at room temperature, but we do not rule out the possibilities that we might need to heat up the batteries slightly before the charging. To say like 40, 50 degrees Celsius to do the fast charging. And when that happens, actually those battery chemistry can potentially be fast charged. So 15 minutes is our target, the ultimate target.

Speaker A: But this, this issue of storage is going to be a big one, isn’t it? Because I mean, again, this is why people are projecting or claiming that there are not enough battery minerals around for this new world of the battery, or battery world, whatever you want to call it.

Speaker B: So, Peter, if I can add here, I’m much less worried about whether there’s enough materials. I’m much more worried about if there are enough educated and trained workforce to make that happen. And for me, that is primarily the most important thing.

Speaker A: Right. So it’s people we need, not minerals.

Speaker B: Both. We need both. But I worry more about the trained people right now because Oftentimes it takes many, many years to actually raise the workforce that is needed. So yeah, that’s one of the reasons why, you know, the gigawatt factories, some of the choices are actually quite interesting, right? The last one was in Berlin, Germany, where we know they have very, very good material science and electrochemistry and they are ready to do that.

Speaker A: Okay. That’s fascinating, isn’t it? So the location of these, of these sites is really quite a lot to do with people who understand the materials and understand how to use them.

Speaker B: Yes, yes, that’s right.

Speaker A: Okay, what other developments are there that we can expect a little further down the line then?

Speaker B: Yeah, if I would imagine the future where we will be electrifying our vehicle fleet, you know, the projection of course, you know, depending on optimistic or pessimistic, I mean, there are a total of 1 billion cars. So, you know, we have a lot of work to do. Right now, the replacement for new cars, new cars is only 1%. I think that, you know, many countries gave this goal of 2035, no new internal combustion engine cars on the road. So I think the task is really, really tremendously challenged, and hopefully we will be able to deliver that. And the second one, I think you mentioned about the batteries in your household. And for that one, I do hope that lithium will not be the monopoly, but we will actually see the rise of sodium batteries or even zinc batteries. There will be more diversity in the chemistries so that the diversification of the battery chemistries also means we’ll have more robust supply chains and we also have a chance of Countries who are rich in zinc, they can do more zinc batteries. Countries who are more rich in the sodium sources, they can do sodium batteries. I think that in the next 2 or 3 decades, it really is really exciting for our field. I hope to see many, many exciting breakthroughs happen. Ultimately, of course, batteries, we try to make people’s life better. I think hopefully everybody don’t forget about that. We don’t want to, crowded by the battery waste. So we really, really need to do better at recycling and make sure those battery materials go back to the manufacturing line and, you know, have a second life or continuous circular life for the batteries.

Speaker A: The Gigafactory that Shirley mentioned near Berlin is the new carbon-neutral Tesla plant which makes the new Model Y electric car. And the plant will eventually employ between 20,000 to 40,000 people depending on demand for the vehicle. Tesla’s boss Elon Musk’s put out a global appeal for more nickel, and the plant will gobble up tons of cobalt, manganese, and other materials when cars start to roll off the production line. And before the Gigafactory was even built, Musk has shown his green credentials. He’s relocated the sand lizards anthill smooth snakes, and 16 species of bat that lived in the forest. All the trees have been chopped down, so Axel the sand lizard has been forced to live in another part of the forest. And in another forest altogether, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a young boy called Ziki is panning for cobalt with hundreds of other people, battling poverty by bringing out the metals from the earth with their bare hands. You might have seen Ziki on American TV networks. He can’t go to school because his grandmother relies on his income of $1 or $2 a day. The government is trying to end this child labor by enforcing a new mining code, as journalist and former information minister of the DRC, Guy Mulungi Mormat, explained to Password’s Jane Wyatt on the line from DRC.

Speaker C: With view to this new, I would call it, mining code, it means that it has been raised from 2 to 10. This is a big improvement, as you can see from that. These changes are making a big impact on the economical side and also about the population living around the mining fields in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Speaker D: So what kind of benefits are you seeing? Is the extra tax revenue going into infrastructure or social projects?

Speaker C: Before even the changes of the mining code, we had what the Congo have signed with China, which we can say is a main partner in mining field in the Congo. So they made that deal around $6 billion. So the deal was under Joseph Kabila is that you are coming in Congo, you’ve got minerals, but like we’ve got not enough money to make infrastructure. So that means you are taking the minerals and then you have the duty to construct roads, hospitals, and other infrastructure that have been made before, even if they knew mining code in Congo. And that you can see Congo under Mobutu and under Joseph, you can see big changes inside. We’ve got new roads and what they call the 5 pillars of the economy in Congo were made on benefit through the mining deal with China.

Speaker B: So you’re also getting help from China, but outside the official mining companies.

Speaker D: There are also, I believe, some informal miners involving some quite young people who maybe are at risk because they’re mining outside this official, properly regulated and funded mining companies. What can you tell us about this informal mining?

Speaker C: This is a big concern, not only for international community, Also for the Congolese authorities as well, because we’ve got the informal sector involving, like you said, many children and without any protection, and they are exposed to many risks. In that sector in Congo, we had some regulation. Like I said, the new mining code made some in place, some measures. To avoid that, like you said, and like I’ve observed myself as well, is a long process and which needs the help of the international community.

Speaker D: And how would they deal with it? For example, if you’ve got children who need to do informal mining of cobalt because that’s the only source of income for their family, how would you persuade them to stop?

Speaker C: Yeah, the thing is that, like you say, those children don’t have anything to do. So most of them, they’re coming from poor families, they’re coming from those vulnerable areas, and so they have no other issue to go to mining. And in my sense is that if those children are well involved and they can help them going back to school and also to do something else. That’s why in the new mining code, it means that all population around the mining field have to benefit. They are what they call the social duties for miners to change lives of those around the mining and in that fact to contract hospitals, to construct also schools. So children in those areas, instead of going to do the illegal mining job, they can get involved in education. So this is— we have to implement that and to have strong policies. And also the fact that people have to do evaluation and assessment. To make sure that all those rules implemented. That’s why I think that the first step— but like I said before, this is a long process and it can take some years to come. The main thing is that, that the political willings from President Joseph Kabila to deal this time with a mining code which takes into account all aspects of the population.

Speaker A: Well, how hard can it be for mega-rich mining companies to spare the cash required to give their miners a decent living, let the children go to school, and restore the local environment when all the precious ore is exhausted? I asked Gerard Baron, the CEO of Deep Green. His company’s not in the Congo, but in Canada, and he’s hoping to get battery metals to sell to green energy companies from the little nodules on the seabed. They’re between 2 and 10 centimeters long, and they’re being picked up even though no one knows how that might affect the ocean and the food chain.

Speaker E: People are right to be concerned, and, you know, as the leader of this company, we are building it on very sound environmental foundations. You know, we have a large ocean science team. We spend most of our money on ocean research so we can better understand what will be the impacts. But Pete, there’s some other things that we need to be realistic about, and that is that, you know, you have to understand the resource firstly to realize that it just sits there on the ocean floor. We don’t have to go down there and, you know, turn big rocks into little rocks. To pump them up and drill or blast. We have to collect them.

Speaker D: And—

Speaker E: but everything has an impact as well. And, you know, we can’t pretend that what we’re doing today and the externalities that have been created as a result are something that we can just turn a blind eye to because, you know, that we’ve all beaten up on fossil fuels. We liken it to a game of whack-a-mole, you know, where we’re whacking down fossil fuels but up pops batteries. So we need to think about what are the impacts of all the metals that we currently consume. And if metal demand is going to increase substantially, which it has to because we have to get the metals to build the batteries, to build the renewable power plants, to build the storage from that power plant when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. So there are some hard cold facts that we as a society have to account for. And that is, you know, we’re going to need a lot more metals. Now in time, in the future, we, I hope, extractive industries will come to an end. We have to work towards that because recycling will become an efficient industry. But today, We need an injection of metals into the system before recycling can become a viable option. And so, you know, what we have to do, and at Deep Green we’re very focused on letting the science talk. Let’s gather the data first of all, and then let’s consider those impacts compared to the known impacts of what else we know today. And, you know, as you and your listeners know, mining often happens out of sight, out of mind, but it often happens in some of the most biodiverse carbon sinks on the planet. And if we’re going to ramp that up even more extensively than it is today, then that’s going to be very, very impactful.

Speaker A: Okay. So what you’re saying is that collecting nodules from the bottom of the sea won’t have the same impact on the environment as trying to get more metals from the places that we currently do?

Speaker E: Not only will have less impact, but by significant standards. For example, a white paper published on Earth Day, which we funded, I will admit, a subset was recently published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, shows that you’ll be able to build an electric vehicle battery using our ocean rocks and generate more than 90% less CO2 than if you were to use land-based ores. And we’ll generate none of those nasty tailings that happen on land-based mining either, because these rocks are wonderful. They have all the metals we need to build the batteries, but they don’t contain all of the deleterious elements like arsenic and mercury very trace levels, so we don’t generate tailings. So the environmental and societal benefits are just enormous. And so it looks pretty obvious at the moment, Pete, but the science has to be completed, and that’s what we’re in the middle of at the moment. You know, the largest ever ocean floor to surface environmental ocean study.

Speaker A: Okay, so these nodules, they’re just for making batteries, or can you use them for other things?

Speaker E: Well, the main metals are nickel, copper, cobalt, and manganese. And so those metals are used in society for many things. Copper for wiring, and nickel is mainly used to make steel, stainless steel at the moment. And so what makers of batteries have found is that the battery cathodes will be mainly nickel dominant in years to come. And I guess when we think about transportation, Tesla have led the way. And we saw at Battery Week recently that while they’re moving away from cobalt because of availability and sustainability and price reasons, they’re doubling down on nickel. And as Elon Musk said, nickel miners, please go and find some more nickel. We need more nickel if we’re going to make this green transition happen. But unfortunately, there aren’t any major discoveries of nickel sulfides on land. The only real abundance of nickel is in the form of nickel laterites. And laterites form through wet leaching, which means rain, which means trees, which means biodiversity. And so we’ll be destroying some of these very biodiverse areas to get hold of these battery materials. When we think there’s a much more obvious and logical choice.

Speaker A: How many of these nodules are there? I mean, there’s got to be a lot of them for it to be viable for you to go down that far to try to collect them.

Speaker E: Yes, yeah, indeed. Well, I can’t give you an exact count other than trillions, but I can estimate— it’s been estimated that there’s more than 30 billion tons of them. Now, at Deep Green, we have 3 license areas, and so we have defined the resource on 2 of those. And on one of our blocks, we have around 900 million tonnes, and the— and on the other block, we have around 750 million tonnes. And, and that’s enough to build around 255 million electric vehicle batteries. So it’s a very large resource. In fact, It’s the largest undeveloped metal resource on the planet.

Speaker A: Jared Barron’s plans have been greeted excitedly in the Cook Islands, with the government’s Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority hiring popular local personalities known as the Aunties to promote deep sea mining in a promotional video.

Speaker F: What is this? Oh, babe, that? Yeah, he’s my friend. Your friend? He’s my friend too. What is he talking about? Babe, he’s talking about, um, you know, the seaweed, the nodules they’ve found in our waters over here. What are nodules, babe? You don’t know? No. Oh, hey, wait a sec, I’ll show you. Okay, those are nodules. What are they, rocks? Or are they pearls? Oh babe, no, no. Well, kind of like it, but where you get these from, it’s actually in deep, deep water. You know, like deep, deep water. Yeah. So what’s so great about it? Oh babe, you know, these nodules, they contain minerals. Maybe can be used for cars. Wow. Batteries.

Speaker A: 5.

Speaker F: Babe, I mean solar panels. Oh, so this is the thing that people are talking about that will ruin our seafloor. Oh babe, but no, no, no. Okay, you know my friend, I mean, are they going to do research first? Okay, and then let us know what’s happening. So are they gonna harvest now? Well, not right now, baby. Because, you know, we’re all about mana tia kia, looking after our environment. So they’re also going to do, you know, like I said, the research first. Oh, I see. Interesting. Oh babe, even better. Yeah? Soon we’re going to be driving an electric car. Oh yeah? Yeah babe. That’s us?

Speaker E: That’s us.

Speaker F: Cool. Babe, better still, you know what? What? We’re going to be super rich. Oh, hallelujah.

Speaker A: And, as Guy Mormant said a few minutes ago, the injection of large amounts of money into mining areas can bring great benefits. Papua New Guinea was promised $120 million by the Nautilus Minerals company, but lost most of that when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2019. After that commercial failure, the people of Tonga and the surrounding islands are skeptical of the Deep Green offer. Drew Javier is the chair of the Tonga Civil Society Forum.

Speaker F: Well, I think most of the people were not aware. I think a very high percentage of the population were not aware that exploration is going on and the government is interested in seabed mining. When 2014, the legislation of, uh, for seabed mining was passed in Tonga, we did a little survey and 90% of the population were not aware that we have legislation. So when we, when we found out that the government will be signing up with Deep Green Originally they had sponsored Nautilus in 2008, and when Nautilus went bankrupt, the government has decided to go with the Green. And that’s when we called a nationwide consultation to bring people’s opinion so that government understand where people’s position are in. Island-wide consultation, all the 5 island groups say no. And then actually what they were saying, to seabed mining, not on my island, not on my region, and not on my world. So we, we hope that as we share with common, that they understand where people sentiments and where people fear of the irreversible nature of mining. And I think they were quite— they understand very well that once you bring these resources out, that’s it. The ocean is destroyed and they cost the livelihood of more than 90% of our people in the Kingdom. So the no from all 5 islands, we hope it will give a clear message to the government of Tonga that deep sea mining should not be considered as an economic investment.

Speaker D: Drew, we’ve talked to Deep Green and they tell us that everything will be put back just as it was after the minerals have been—

Speaker A: well, they don’t even say extracted, they say collected because they’re lying on the seabed—

Speaker D: after the minerals have been extracted they plan to restore everything else that belongs on the seabed.

Speaker B: It will all go back down there.

Speaker F: The contract that Deep Green is signing with the government of Tonga through TOMO, they will be extracting 3 million tonnes a year, right? So when you look at 3 million tonnes a year,— that is not correcting, that is nickeling. And I think when you look at also the type of machinery that they will be using, it is not correcting. So, we’re not talking about people diving and correcting this magnesium off the top of the ocean. You, you are bringing in real heavy, heavy equipment gone to the sea, to bottom of the sea, to dig up the 3 million every year, 3 million tons. You just imagine what a hole that will be left and the damage that will happen to the ocean. And then I think what’s so concerned for us, that the contract that the Tongan government is signing up It’s like $2 US a ton. So in 3 million tons, you’re looking at, you know, $6 million US. At the same time, when you look at the fisheries in Tonga, we are getting $1 million US from snappers. And snappers live around the seamount where the ticking will be happening. And we’re also getting $7.5 million USD a year from tuna. So when you start looking at the figures, if we are getting $8.5 million from tuna and snappers a year, with the limited number of fishing vessels that we have in the Kingdom, that we can trade that off for $6 million, I’m not sure if we are sane in making such decisions. And like I said, the concern from the people that this is an irreversible nature of mining, while tuna and snappers will continue to feed generation and generation and generation to come, where if we get into deep sea mining, you know, that’s it. So the people of all the 5 island groups very concerned. Not only that, but church leaders are quite concerned. We have community leaders, we have young people here in the kingdom are asking, hey, what’s going to happen to our future. Are we going to have a future once you allow seabed mining and our lifeline will be destroyed? We have been living in the ocean. The ocean has been supporting us. This is our umbilical cord that sort of feeds us and our ancestors and also generations to come. So that’s the concern from the Five Island Groups for the people, because we need to be very mindful of the irreversible effect of human-induced exploitation.

Speaker B: Drew, as you say, the contracts have been signed, so what can you do now?

Speaker F: We— the contract is going to be signed or could have been signed by now, and if it’s already signed. We will be continuing to have government understand where we are. We will be continuing pushing our legislation, our parliament. We will be calling for more consultation and dialogue with government and the ministries. And, and I mean, just, just looking at what we are keeping from the ocean right now is not even comparable to what the minerals that will be extracted will be giving in Tonga.

Speaker A: If the King of Tonga needs convincing of the damage that deep sea mining can cause, he can turn to the 250 scientists who are calling for a moratorium, along with the United Nations and the European Union. The EU cites the fact that the substances found on the seabed and in the ocean’s thermal vents might help to diagnose and even cure COVID-19 and similar diseases in the future. One of the scientific signatories is Professor Alex Rogers at Oxford University, an expert in marine ecology.

Speaker D: The nodules are an important substrate for certain types of animals. Many marine invertebrates, the sort of squashy animals without backbones, actually require a hard surface to attach to. And in the deep ocean, much of the seabed is made of very soft mud, almost soupy mud in fact in some places. So the nodules, where you find these fields of nodules, they provide hard surface for the animals which require that type of surface to attach to. So you get animals like corals and sponges which live attached to the nodules, and they are different to the animals which live associated with the sediments. So things like sea cucumbers, which wander around on the sediment hoovering up organic detritus from the ocean surface, or the very great variety of animals that live either at the surface or actually within those soft sediments.

Speaker A: So if you remove these nodules, does that mean that you take away all of that basis for life, or will the sea cucumbers still go around eating up the detritus and they’re just not really being affected?

Speaker D: Well, the issue with removing those nodules is that yes, you certainly remove the main attachment surface for the animals that need those hard substrates, but you also disturb the upper 10 to 20 centimetres of the sediment as well, on which or in which most of the other life actually occurs. Now, one of the things we know about the deep sea is things happen very slowly, so the ability of that biota to recover from that disturbance— well, essentially it takes a very, very long time, tens of years if not hundreds of years, and of course the nodules take millions of years to grow, so they— those will not come back.

Speaker A: So presumably when you’re sucking up this seabed you’re also going to suck up the organisms, take them up to the surface, and then discharge those again.

Speaker D: Is that the case? Yeah, you’ll drag those up to the surface. They’re generally extremely delicate, those organisms, because again the deep ocean is a relatively quiet place, it has a low level of disturbance, natural disturbance, so most of the fauna will actually be pulverised during that process. And even if it isn’t pulverized, the decompression that takes place— because these animals are adapted right down to the cellular level to live at extremely high pressures, and you’re talking about pressures of 400 to 500 atmospheres at these types of depths— that the change in pressure will also kill them.

Speaker A: So those atmospheres, I mean, give me an idea of what that means. What are 400 to 500 atmospheres? What What sort of force is that?

Speaker D: Well, that’s an enormous amount of force. I mean, obviously humans live at 1 atmosphere pressure, and you’ll know that if you are out snorkeling or even swimming and you dive as deep as just 5 or 10 meters, then you have to clear your ears because the gas within your ears is being compressed. So you can imagine that effect but multiplied, you know, 100 times. The pressures are absolutely enormous. They’re so enormous actually that at the greatest depths of the ocean they actually squeeze together the molecules of water, and you get something called adiabatic heating, where the temperature in the deepest parts of the ocean actually increases because the molecules are being Squeeze together.

Speaker A: So then if you let these creatures up, you take them up to the surface, then they presumably expand terribly.

Speaker D: They don’t, no. That’s an interesting kind of myth about bringing creatures up to the surface from the deep ocean. That only happens if they have gas spaces in them. So for example, some fish, when you bring them up in a net, from relatively shallow depths here compared to what we’re talking about, the swim bladder— the gas inside the swim bladder expands and it pops out the mouth of the fish, and that’s why they look kind of as though they’ve exploded almost. But many of these creatures, in fact virtually all of them, will have no gas spaces in them, but their cells will be damaged beyond repair Their biochemistry will be altered beyond repair. Their proteins will be misfolded, so that they will die from multiple causes.

Speaker A: Right, so basically sucking them up, taking them to the surface, everything will die? Yeah. Save the sea cucumber might not sound as significant as save the whale or defend the diversity of the deep sea, but as Drew Javier, and Alex Rogers point out, removing 3 million tonnes of stuff a year is bound to damage the ecosystem. You’re listening to Password with me, Peter Warren, on Resonance FM. We’re exploring the green energy technologies that will power our electric vehicles and wind turbines as we move away from fossil fuels to stop climate change. After this on Resonance FM, you can hear DJ Ritu with A World in London. In London, as they say, you wait ages for a bus and then two come along at once. I have to say, that never happens here in this village. And all this begs the question, do we really need deep-sea metals in order to power the green revolution? One of the Nobel Prize-winning inventors of the lithium-ion electric car battery is Professor M. Stanley Whittingham at Binghamton University in the United States.

Speaker G: I would say what isn’t? I think they’re going to dominate certainly for the next 10 years or so. So they’re going to be the driving force behind electric transportation. And clearly they’re going very big now for grid storage and for grid smoothing. And people are putting them on wind farms and solar farms.

Speaker A: And is there enough lithium in the world? I mean, we’ve been told that it’s necessary to mine the deep seabed to get all of the minerals that we need for the projected electronic vehicles and for the wind turbines.

Speaker G: The comments I’m seeing on Bloomberg and elsewhere is right now there’s a lot of lithium. In other words, lithium companies are going broke because there’s not enough users. There’s plenty of lithium in South America, a lot of rock, hard rock lithium in the US and in Canada, and a lot of activity in Australia. I gather Australia is one of the biggest suppliers of lithium right now. And all the feedback I’m getting from national lab studies here are that by the time we start to run short of lithium, we’ll be recycling a lot of the batteries. So we’ll get a substantial proportion of the lithium from recycled systems. So I don’t think anybody’s worrying unless we start building many, many gigawatt-hour grid storage facilities.

Speaker A: We’re meant to be moving into the age of the battery. Batteries are going to be ubiquitous. Already we’ve got them in our mobile phones. There are so many of them on the desk in front of me. They’ll be in our cars. If we’re going to be using renewable energy, we’ll have them in our houses. Surely, you know, the appetite for batteries is going to be pretty inexhaustible.

Speaker G: I think so, but there’s got to be the political will as well. So I think it’s clear in Britain and Europe that, that you’re moving ahead much faster than we are in the States. So in the States, I think it’s all economic-driven. So where it’s economically viable, it’s happening, but there’s not the same political push here, except in two states— that’s New York and California.

Speaker A: Okay, so when you say there’s not enough political will, what is this? To move from the fossil fuel industry, from the petrol-driven car, to the electric vehicle, and to except that the time of the petrol car is over.

Speaker G: That’s about right. I think if you look back in the old days, it’s when the petrol car came into being and people still hung on to the horse and buggy type situation. So we have a, obviously, a government in the US right now that doesn’t believe in climate change, is trying to support coal even though industry doesn’t want it. So it’s— no, it’s in the US.

Speaker D: It’s up—

Speaker G: each individual state has a lot of power.

Speaker A: So you seem to be saying that this is a lack of policy. Do you think that globally we need an overarching policy on transport? Hydrogen batteries— I mean, obviously you’re very well known for the work that you’ve done with lithium. Hydrogen— a lot of people have suddenly started talking about that. There was a delegation of UK business leaders to the UK Chancellor saying that he needed to invest £1.9 billion in hydrogen. What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker G: Well, I’m thinking there’s— hydrogen is not going to power cars, I don’t think. No, you’re going to use fuel cells for that. Or, but we are— long-distance trucks, I guess you— I should call them lorries. There’s a lot of thinking there that they could run on hydrogen. You’d get this hydrogen electrochemically from renewable energy, so the trucks could now fuel up every few hundred miles. So there’s some effort there, but it needs a lot more research in how to make green hydrogen in a cost-effective manner. I think it’s 4 or 5 times away from being cost-effective at the moment. So that is one way. I’m not sure what the general public will think about it. They still remember the Hindenburg disaster in New Jersey.

Speaker A: Of course, but presumably we will have become a lot better in terms of safety with regard to hydrogen. I mean, it’s even been suggested, for example, the UK being one of the windiest places on Earth, that we could generate a lot of the power necessary to slake hydrogen in places like the Hebrides, become the Saudi Arabia of the renewable age. Is there any truth in that?

Speaker G: I think I’m skeptical. I think you’re going to generate the hydrogen where you’re going to use it. It’s not easy to ship hydrogen, and that’s been one of the challenges of Making fuel cell cars and buses is— it takes a lot of material and to store a little bit of hydrogen. So I don’t know, I’m suspicious about shipping it. You can’t easily send it through pipelines.

Speaker A: In case you don’t know, the Hindenburg was a hydrogen-filled airship that crashed in New Jersey in 1937 at the end of its transatlantic voyage and brought the era of the airship to an end. 36 people died from burns after the hydrogen caught fire. Professor Whittingham is right to believe that hydrogen is probably too risky to use as a fuel. He also made a very good point. With 7.2 million electric cars already on the world’s roads, Why don’t we just recycle the old batteries? And we’ve all got at least one mobile phone full of cobalt, manganese, and copper. Why are we throwing away these precious metals? The answer is that recycling is not as easy as it sounds. John Godfrey has built up Intelligent Lifecycle Solutions in Britain and the US over the past 20 years. So he understands the problem.

Speaker H: There’s two sides to that. Do we reclaim enough of the— I mean, if we focus on the strategic materials, then the short answer is no. A lot of those materials are lost in the recycling process, especially in, in the smelting process. In fact, it’s a source of great frustration for me that we do tremendous damage to the environment to mine tiny quantities of rare earth materials from and have to process vast quantities of raw material to get those, those tiny proportions. And yet we throw away with the waste stream many of those materials. And the simple reason for that is that it’s cheaper to process in bulk the virgin material than it is to recycle when the assumption is that the recycling will be paid for in the value of the material. So what I mean by that is the whole recycling marketplace is based on that assumption that the material that you recover will be cheaper than virgin material. Otherwise, virgin material is easier. You get it in nice barcoded containers and it’s ready to use and the purity is consistent and there’s lots of advantages in the supply chain for virgin material. But the economics of recycling is based on the assumption that the value pays for itself. And in many material streams, that just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work in plastics. It doesn’t work in, in many aspects of of rare earth recycling. So the recycling marketplace is not currently meeting the aspirational needs when we’re talking about certain strategic materials.

Speaker A: What you’re saying is that the market is not set up to actually recover the materials. It seems to be stupid, isn’t it? Because surely the material is already in the form that you want it. If you’ve got rare earths, if you’ve got lithium, if you have these metals, they’re already in the form that you want them to be in to use them?

Speaker H: Yes and no. The density of the material is much greater in the waste stream than you’ll find it in the natural environment. So there’s a higher proportion of those materials, but most of those materials do require some reprocessing. So, I mean, for example, with neodymium, there’s an issue with oxidization.. And so taking the recycling material, if you shred it, then you oxidize it, and then the only way to recover it is by, you know, relatively expensive chemical process or energy-intensive process. So it’s not just that it’s already there and we just need to take it, and it’s really— because actually separation in the recycling process is one of the most, if not the most complicated part of the process. In other words, those materials are lying next to or they’re highly integrated with other materials. That’s how batteries and the such work. So there needs to be a separation process that has to be economic. Now, I agree with you. I think it is stupid. I think it’s crazy that we, that we mine rare earth materials from, from some of the most sensitive ecological locations in the world., and then we throw them away, or we lose that material in the smelt. I agree with that aspect, but the fundamental financial structure of recycling needs to change. And until it does, then if it’s cheaper to buy virgin material, then people will buy virgin material because it’s easier. So how do we change that? Well, I think we need to change the economics of recycling, and we do that through regulation and through incentives. It’s carrot and stick, and that needs to happen on at least a pan-European basis to, you know, to really— ideally on a global basis. So, and we can put in place, and we have successfully put in place, European regulations that have made huge changes in the recycling marketplace. On cardboard, for example, the Packaging Directive has completely changed the way that products are packaged. But we need to do that with strategic materials too. And, you know, if there are— I mean, I do some work with Birmingham University on the recovery of rare earth magnets from hard disk drives. And currently that material, even though it could be somewhere between 10 and in some cases close to 20% of the global demand for neodymium, then, you know, it’s ridiculous that that material is then being wasted. The economics of separating it are really challenging. So the path of least resistance and the easy path for, for recyclers is, is to lose that material in the smelt, which is a tragedy.

Speaker A: Well, if recycling is not financially viable, even for an astute businessman like John Godfrey, How are we to make transport more climate-friendly? Here’s Professor Carlo Ratti, a leading architect from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States.

Speaker I: The first thing we can do is actually make our mobility systems much more, much more efficient. And, you know, for instance, if you look at the car today, we build the car, there’s a lot of the materials that go into building, into making the car, and the car is usually parked 95% of the time. We only use it 5% of the time. And you know what? When we use it, it’s usually a 5-seater, and usually it’s 1 or 2 people inside it, on average 1.6. So if you combine it, you get, we got a very expensive system in terms of energy, in terms of manufacturing, materials, and with an efficiency of what, 2%? So if we manage to change that, that could be a big deal globally. And it’s quite easy. If you think about, for instance, what we’ve been seeing over the past few years with mobility on demand, you just get a car when you need it, then the same car doesn’t need to be parked. It’s not your car. It can be just used by one person and then another one person and then another one, and so the efficiency increases dramatically. Also, the other interesting thing is that, you know, if you get mobility on demand, you don’t need to have a 5-seater all the time. We could imagine that, you know, when you need it, you need maybe for a small displacement, you just get a micro-mobility solution like a scooter, an e-bike, or, you know, maybe a 1-seater. And then, yes, when you got a whole family, then you will get on demand 5-seater. So I think somehow the first thing we could do is actually make the present-day systems much more efficient.

Speaker A: But there’s a sort of— there’s a whole culture of the car, isn’t there? The culture of the car where we see ourselves as being in this carriage, as it’s giving us status. You see American motorcades for the president, for example, at the moment rolling up lots and lots of lots and lots of cars arriving. Everybody thinks that that’s important. To actually move from this idea of this space which confers importance to going around on an electric scooter is going to take quite an ask for a lot of people.

Speaker I: I’m not really sure. You’re right. I think that was certainly the prevailing view in the 20th century, but when I— and it’s still in some places places around the world. But for instance, when I look at our students at MIT, a few decades ago, I’m told that it was cool to get to MIT with a big flashy car. But today, I see that most of our students don’t have a car. Sometimes they don’t even have a driver’s license. And actually, they love to maybe brag about on Instagram or online about the latest scooter or the Uber they took in order to get to the university. So I think this idea of owning a car and showing off, this idea of conspicuous consumption, I think is moving from the physical world to the digital one. And if we can actually accelerate that, then, you know, that could be good news for the planet. We can actually use less atoms and more bits. This is, you know, next to our streets and also our office buildings.

Speaker A: This idea that we’ll be using electric cars, uh, will we be using cars in the same number that we have done? You’ve pointed out the utter inefficiency of the car. It does seem to be a bit foolish to dig up the seabed to obtain minerals to build cars for everybody to have. This includes people right the way across the world. So there is now an increased demand for cars in India and China. Perhaps we can get around this demand for cars by rebuilding our cities in the way that you’re saying, by changing the software in the cities and by changing the way that we work in the cities and thinking out a new way that doesn’t involve as much travel.

Speaker I: You’re totally right. I think, you know, what we should try to do is is think of a city where we use less asphalt or less lithium, you name it, but less physical things, less concrete and more silicon. By more silicon, I mean more intelligence. So I think there’s a lot of potential for running our cities in a more efficient way that applies to the mobility infrastructure. It applies to how we organize our lives, how we work, how we swap, you know, avoid commuting and connect digitally. And so I think there is where I would look to start mining that untapped potential before actually mining the seabeds.

Speaker A: I’m beginning to think this bus will never come. Somebody should do something about it. Somebody should make sure that young Ziki can stop digging up cobalt and go to school. There’s a petition to the big technology companies against child labour. Child Labour. You can find it on change.org and Some of Us. It’s urging Apple, Samsung, and Co to switch away from minerals where extraction involves human rights abuses. Drew Javier and the people of Tonga have voted overwhelmingly against deep sea mining. They’re defending the sea cucumber as well as their own children’s future. Tesla’s nature conservation program has taken care of Axel the sand lizard, and he’s settling into his new home. These are the little things that ordinary people can do—signing petitions, protecting wildlife, making waves. But the big picture shows that so-called green energy can come at a terrible cost to our planet unless the world’s governments start doing the joined-up thinking that is missing to date and come up with a sustainable transport policy. That’s all from this edition of Password. It was produced by Blue Buffery and written by Jane Wyatt. But it’s not the end of the story. You can follow me on Twitter @petewarren, visit my website Future Intelligence, listen again on Mixcloud, and join me back here on Resonance FM next month. It looks as though the bus to Ipswich is clearly not coming. There’s no real-time data, no e-bike, and no Uber. We just don’t have a joined-up transport policy. We might as well go home.

Speaker B: This program has been brought to you by Resonance FM. If you like what you heard, please support our work by making a donation at resonancefm.com/donate.