Jose Avila and Duglas Carmona Barajas secured solar panels to a roof in Burien. An electric pickup with temporary plates rumbled over Interstate 5’s cracked pavement through North Seattle. A family in King County got a new electric heat pump to replace a dirty oil furnace.
These are snapshots of a future with less fossil fuel.
And the technologies needed to usher the world into a new energy paradigm require minerals: Copper. Lithium. Cobalt. Nickel. Manganese. Graphite.
Mining these materials is an inherently dirty and extractive process. It comes at a steep cost, disproportionately paid by communities that have dealt with legacies of contamination.
The Seattle Times traveled to some of these places, one near an expanding copper mine in British Columbia, and to the largest known deposit of lithium in the world, on the Oregon-Nevada border. Community members shared their stories to help illuminate the new mining boom in and around the Columbia River Basin and its complex balance of influences.
The amount of materials needed to supply the energy transition is staggering.
For example, an offshore wind turbine needs as much as 40 to 260 metric tons of copper, depending on its capacity, according to Adam Simon, a professor of Earth and environmental sciences at the University of Michigan.
A generic 40-kilowatt-hour electric vehicle battery, about the size in a Nissan Leaf, requires over 8 pounds of lithium, over 34 pounds of copper, 77 pounds of graphite, nearly 56 pounds of nickel, nearly 55 pounds of aluminum and 7 pounds of cobalt, according to Shabbir Ahmed, a senior chemical engineer for the Argonne National Laboratory.
Washington state, to meet sweeping clean energy goals, has to rely greatly on other states and nations for minerals and manufacturing, as well as siting of these resources.
Jay Turner, a professor of environmental studies at Wellesley College and the author of “Charged: A History of Batteries and Lessons for a Clean Energy Future,” said leaving fossil fuels in the ground and using clean energy instead will require a significant shift.
“The first step is acknowledging that if we’re going to make a clean energy transition … it’s going to require deploying electric vehicles, batteries, wind turbines and solar panels at unprecedented scales,” Turner said.
More clean energy technology means more materials — and more mining. It cannot yet be done by recycling alone.
It is essential that we source those materials in ways that are sustainable and just, said Turner, which is no easy task.
Mining of the past tells us an important story. In the Columbia Basin, mines, smelters and hydroelectric dams indefinitely harmed ecosystems and communities.
Yet Earth has already warmed more than 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels. Rising tides gnaw at the Pacific Coast’s ancient villages. Farmers and fish compete with data centers for water. Neighborhoods have been leveled in megafires.
To avoid more damage, the world needs to embrace a transition off fossil fuels, while striking a balance with communities on the front lines of climate change and resource extraction.
“It’s going to take time, take a lot of mindful effort on everybody’s part to help with this and engage in a manner that is conducive to improving the climate crisis,” said Jon Naranjo, who serves as the free, prior and informed consent manager for the National Wildlife Federation, helping the organization build relationships with tribal communities.
Naranjo is a tribal member of the Santa Clara Pueblo, whose lands and health have been impacted by Los Alamos’ radioactive waste.
” … It takes time to build relationships for the greater good. Then in most cases, we’ll have a favorable outcome. That’s what I pray for.”
Reporting for this project was funded in part by the Fund for Environmental Journalism of the Society of Environmental Journalists.
