Rethinking Electrification

This is something that a lot of climate folks have been really hesitant to talk about, or even have been kind of defensive about, because they don't want people talking as though renewables have the exact same impact as fossil fuels, or this idea that they'll be even worse, or that they're not an improvement. All of these our talking points that several folks on the right are starting to push. You've got Ted.

that is to curb consumption. That is not something that any energy company wants to talk about, it's not something that most American capitalists want to talk about, but it is absolutely necessary for systemically addressing the problem of climate change. I wrote about this recently in the Intercept, and for that piece I interviewed a really interesting researcher on this subject,

the a Rio Francos. She recently put out a report for the Climate and Community Project entitled Achieving zero emissions with More Mobility and Less Mining. That report concluded that even relatively small, pretty easy to achieve shifts in our behavior, like reducing the size of cars and their batteries, could deliver big returns a forty two percent reduction in the amount of lithium needed in the US, even if the number of cars on the road and the frequency with

which people drive stayed the same. I asked Rio Francos to talk me through her report and all of its very interesting findings, and that conversation is coming up after this quick break.

and what some of the gaps are. So many years ago, in early twenty nineteen, when I was first in Chile researching the social and environmental impacts of lithium mining there, and Chile is the world's number two producer of lithium, and also some of the kind of contentious politics around extraction of this mineral, I started to kind of think, you know, would it matter in terms of how much lithium was needed, how the sort of global energy transition

is designed, or how the US energy transition is designed. Right, are there futures in which less lithium and less of these other transition minerals are required than some of the most alarming kind of reports and predictions I began to see from the International Energy Agency and then the World Bank and multiple other forecasting agencies which were and remain pretty alarming in terms of how much mining they are predicting will occur or be demanded. And I started to

kind of look for that research. And at the same time, I was doing a lot of climate advocacy work, a lot of Green New Deal organizing, and so I was thinking a lot about an urgent and rapid and just energy transition in the US. But I was kind of thinking about both ends of the supply chain at once, Like here I am in Chile and the Atacama Desert seeing these mining related harms, and then there I go in the US kind of advocating for a rapid transition,

Like how do I align these two goals? And is there a way to kind of have a less extractive energy transition? And the answer was that research didn't exist, at least not for the US transportation sector. Right, And each year that went on up until the present, up until the launch of our report, that research still didn't exist. I saw forecast after forecast that assumed basically a binary

of the future. Right, Either we stay with the fossil fuel status quo and the existential crisis that that is causing for the planet and all of its people, or we transition to an electrified, renewably powered future. But that doesn't really change anything about how these sectors or economic

activities are organized. Right, So it's binary. It's either fossil fuel or kind of electrified version of the status quo, and there was very little research sort of in between those two or that mapped out or sort of broke down.

Let's look at the electrified future and say that there are multiple ways to design it, with implications for all sorts of things, including how quickly advanced towards our climate goals, including how equitably we do so, and including these kind of supply chain considerations that we also bring to the table in this report. So, you know, with that kind of frustration, but also that kind of continued curiosity about like, is there another path forward that's not currently being modeled.

We set out to create that model and kind of actually have a data driven analysis of the very different pathways, all of which are zero emissions, all of which are electrified, all of which are renewably powered, but very tremendously in the specifics in ways that, as I said, have these

kind of broader implications. And to combine that with more qualitative research on the harms of mining, on some of the supply chain bottlenecks and constraints that we see on the horizon, and to produce something that we hope is kind of useful to advocates across the supply chain, you know, whether it's climate transit, folks that are concerned about mining impacts,

whatever the issue at stake is. I think that there's a way to align them if we think holistically about the design of the energy transition.

and very little policy movement on that front. I feel like, you know, every once in a while, Elon Musk will like pooh pooh the idea of public transit, and we'll get a little bit of like a Twitter dispat going about it, and like there's I don't know, there just hasn't been as much conversation about that as you might

expect when we're talking about decarbonizing transport. So I'm wondering if I could have you kind of map out these three different or four different scenarios that you in the report and kind of walk people through what would be required to.

would that actually concretely look like. And we sketch out four different scenarios, again, all of which eliminate emissions, but they differ and in some cases pretty dramatically, on a variety of parameters. So the first scenario, as you kind of suggested, and as I was hinting at earlier, just keeps everything the same except electrifize it. Right, So we have the same patterns of car usage and car dependency

and vehicle ownership. We also have the same kind of land use patterns of that suburban sprawl that itself incentivizes car use or even requires it. And so we change basically nothing about American society, built environment, infrastructure, but we swap out ice vehicles for evs, and we do so in a growing manner over time, until we get to twenty fifty. That scenario one electrified status quo. We have three others, and what they do is kind of progressively

in a stepwise fashion, add in more changes. Some of them are not huge changes, some of them are more dramatic, and so it gives us a real range and as I said, gets into the black box of electrification and opens it up and reveals it to be a whole host of choices. So in scenario two, what we look at is shifting mode share and that's just a fancy technical term for what percentage of people are using what types of transportation for their trips. You know, am I using a bus or am I using a bike? Or

am I you know which mode of transportation? Or am I using a car? Right? And so we move people so that more of those trips are being taken in non car options. But we still have cars, we still have evs, but we start to nudge people towards buses and cycling and walking.

see those that sprawl or that distance. And so we densify things a bit so that the distances are shorter, and those changes also get accompanied by a decrease in how many people own vehicles, right, so that scenario three more of a mode shift, slightly denser metropolitan regions, and lower levels of car ownership. Scenario four is like our turbocharged in a positive sense scenario, right, our most ambitious one.

We do all of those things, but more we say, like, you know, what if we really brought mode shares in line with like the places in the world where folks use like the most transit or cycle the most, Right, what if we densify even more, right, or bring vehicle

ownership rates down even more? And I just want to flag that even in scenario four, there are lots of evs, right, you know, and I'm aware of, you know, the debates around this topic, right, So I just want to flag that we don't actually eliminate electric vehicles in any of our scenarios. We just play around with getting people to take trips through different modes, making those distances shorter and discouraging car ownership, which tends to happen when there are

other modes available and also when the distances are shorter. Right, can you talk through what the obstacles to those kinds of shifts are? You know, what are the things stopping either.

is true. I live in a city which is Providence, Rhode Island. But it's very hard to just live your daily life and be a full member of society without owning a car. And it's actually the first place where I got a driver's license. I think I was thirty one or thirty two. In other places I lived, as I said, in the US and elsewhere in the world, it was just not a thing. You didn't have to

own a car. I grew up in New York City, so I know I'm weird, but I more kind of just want to say that, like I moved to a place that, again was an urban environment, and there are buses and people, there are some bike lanes a little bit, but it was impossible for me to commute to work and to do the rest of my daily life stuff without a car. I had this exact experience.

cars are for peorn working class people. Right, it's a real you know, it's just an expense, and it's a set of annoyances of maintaining increasingly old cars and filling them with gas that's increasingly expensive, right, right, And you know, there's a real affordability concern around electric vehicles, which obviously federal subsidies are meant to address. I don't oppose that, but I do think that it raises the question of

is there another path forward? Not that fully eliminates electric vehicles.

I don't see that as feasible in any like near medium term, but that kind of gives them the right proportion in a broader transportation system that involves other options and other possibilities for people to move around that are more equitable, more affordable, maybe even free if we look into experiments and like the fair free buses popping up in some cities that are more active like biking and walking and good for physical and mental health in that way.

You know, there's a whole host of benefits that a company just again not eliminating cars, but bringing them down to size and having other modes of transportation available to people and sort of creating different types of street scapes and land uses around that.

and the sort of great acceleration of the nineteen seventies. Right, we could look at all these critical moments where it's often a confluence of lobbying efforts by some combination of the fossil fuel or auto industry in some cases specifically to dismantle what prevailed in a prior era of like streetcars in downtown urban areas, right that weren't some cases eliminated to make more room for cars or to make wider avenues, you know, the neighborhoods that were destroyed by highways,

the whole emergence and very high levels of government and investment in the interstate highway system, the sort of declining investment on the other hand for public transit authorities and for the commuter rail systems, and let's not even get

into Amtrak sort of state of affairs. Right, So you know, I don't have a conspiratorial worldview, though some times it could be tempting, right, Yeah, But there are a lot of decisions that took place at relatively high levels of power authority and sort of financial investment and resource allocation that in combination and at critical junctures of US history where we see these inflection points that kind of both put us initially on a path of car dependency and

then reinforce that over time. And my concern and just to sort of close this point out is that we are at such a critical juncture, you know, between the sort of escalating climate crisis and the ways that that is destabilizing people around the world and in the United States, right on the one hand, and the other hand, this exciting and very important opportunity to totally change the energetic foundations of the world, right, like to move away from

fossil fuels once and for all, and to go, you know, to power our societies through renewable energy. But we're at a critical juncture in terms of specifically how that renewable energy transition is designed, who the winners and losers are, what decisions made around certain trade offs right in the

sort of policy and resource decisions. So I'm worried that this moment, which could if we think about it, critically organize around it, and advocate for it, maybe put us on a slightly less car dependent path, right and use this as a moment to create a different kind of infrastructure of transportation, will instead reinforce not only car dependency itself, but with the idea that like evs as an individual technology are the panacea, right, but actually reinforce some of

the worst trends within a car dependent status quo. And I specifically am thinking about gargantuan cars with gargantuine batteries, which actually take us further away from.

the battery, the more raw materials. And we'll get into in a moment, like what our findings were with different you know how much lithium would be required by these different scenarios. But you know, definitely larger battery means more lithium and more of anything else else that goes into that battery. It also, by the way, means more expensive. I think the e hummers like one hundred and ten

thousand dollars. It's so expensive that it doesn't even qualify for the IRA subsidies, which max out at eighty thousand for an E suv, so they're not affordable. They're very heavy. They're even heavier than the equivalent like a gas guzzler suv because the battery is so heavy, which poses safety risks to pedestrians and other drivers. So there's like they're

wrong on all counts. The real reason I think they're being pushed is because the auto industry has a massive need for new financial investment in retooling all of its factories to be to create evs instead of ice vehicles, and they want a profitable sales item. And as we know, just like with gas guzzling SUVs, e SUVs have really like wide profit margins, like they're really profitable compared to more compact cars. So that's their obvious interest, and then

they sell this as consumers are demanding it. Now that's less clear to me because of how tightly connected consumer

preferences are with fossil fuel and auto industry advertising. But you know, to the extent that consumers want these, I think, you know, there are different reasons we could get into sort of like toxic masculinity stuff, but to just put that aside, like, I think the most valid reason that a consumer would want a large vehicle, aside from if they're like a construction contractor or something, is that they're concerned about range. Right, they think a larger battery is true,

we'll get them more range. We'll get them to three hundred miles right on a charge. And we have a really insufficient charging network in the US, so that that is real, especially for folks again and those really sprawly rural and suburban areas and excerbs where you know you might be going long distances between a charging station. Of course, most folks are taking really short trips on average, so it's more of a mental anxiety than a sort of

real one, if that makes sense. But you know, the way we address that is through thinking about charging stations, through thinking also about density and the distances that folks I'm traveling, rather than filling that gap with an e hummer, which is just not a rational way to fill that social need.

it's sort of approximate to your own work. And then on the other hand, how they alongside mining companies, some of which by the way, are like coal companies too. I mean, these mega mining companies mine in multiple including in fossil fuel sectors, and so now mining companies and

auto companies are literally and this is no exaggeration. You can go to any of their websites investor relation communicats, press releases and see how they're setting themselves up as like climate saviors, like the auto industry with the mining industry is going to save us from the climate crisis that in a deep way the mining industry qua its role in fossil fuel extraction, and the auto industry as like the main consumer good aside from the power sector

that uses fossil fuels, Like these are the culprits, not the saviors, right, And I don't think we should be designing an energy transition or envisioning one in which these two industries have as large and sort of strategic roles as they currently do. And we should be sort of thinking about, like, you know, again, what were the causes

of the climate crisis. What would a society as zero emission society look like that's equitable and just, and like, what role then should technologies like lithium batteries, electric vehicles and the mind materials that furnish them play in that rather than kind of assume, as I worry that some colleagues in the climate sort of world are doing, is that any new lithium mind built is like climate action, or any EV sold is climate action when we know

that some many people buying evs it's their third car and we don't even know if it's replacing the use of their gas. I mean, the data is still in progress there, right, But it's not the same to buy an EV as to bring down emissions. Right. We have to evaluate those separately and see how they relate to

one another. While I'm absolutely in favor of electrifying transportation one hundred percent, and evs are going to play a role there, I just think we need to disentangle, like our goal is confronting the climate crisis and politically confronting and economically confronting the actors that caused it, and that should be our kind of horizon and our framework for

what specific policies or practices we advocate for. Yeah, the thing I kind of come back to over and over again is that just replacing the energy source is not ever going to be enough. There needs to be a different decision making free work. We can't keep.

But just to zoom out a little bit, you know, I think that I'm a little biased in terms of both family background and also my research area being Latin America for so long, But I do think Latin America really shows some of the most both harmful but also progressive and just and innovative, like instantiations of both attractive sectors and potential ways that humans and nature can relate to one another, like the whole range is there, like, you know, just to make it really stark, like, On

the one hand, Latin America is the most dangerous place in the world to be a water or environmental defender. Right to be someone who is defending their access to clean air, to their livelihoods, to culturally sensitive territory, against the encroachment of whether it's attractive sectors or the agribusiness sector, both of those are are pretty culpable here. It is extremely dangerous to be an activist and people get killed

every year doing that, right, engaging in forms of civil disobedience. Right, So, on the one hand, it's an extremely dangerous place to engage in this protest. On the other hand, it's the place where we see and these are probably in some ways not unrelated facts like some of the most militant inspiring forms of protests against fossil fuels, against attractive industries

more broadly, mining, et cetera. Against you know, large scale hydroelectric dams, you know, a whole host of projects that have been seen to be harmful to people or environments, people are willing to fight over them, right, and also you know, whether it's direct action, or whether it's in the electoral arena and electing people that hold these values, or you know, whether it's rewriting constitutions and ratifying them.

And so, you know, we just see a very contentious, both on the harmful end and on the inspiring end,

kind of political economy of extraction in Latin America. And I think this is more relevant than it seems, not just because Latin Americas are close by and we share a hemisphere, and so we should think about, you know, what's happening south of US, let's say, but also because you know, as the US, Canada, a bunch of European countries are wanting to onshore mining, so called critical minerals mining,

you know, for strategic purposes, right. We want to make sure we have lithium at home, close to home, and we build these supply chains at home instead of being reliant on you know, foreign entities of concern. I think that's the language that's used federally for China and other countries that have large roles in these supply chains, right, So there's this desire on the part of policy leads

to onshore a lot of mining, right. I like to refer to this map that the Center for Biological Diversity Nevada director Patrick Donnelley maintains of lithium mining in Western States, and he's mapped like one hundred and ten projects at some level of like permitting or financing across just the western part of the United States, just the Western States, right, one hundred and ten just lithium, right, not all the critical minerals and not all the states in the country.

And of course some of these minds will never happen. They'll encounter a regulatory hurdle or a financial hurdle. But it's a lot of projects, right. And so as the US is kind of scrambling, the US government, I should say, and to some extent, you know, corporations as well are kind of scrambling and saying like we want to do all this mining here. And GM just literally invested hundreds of millions of dollars directly into a lithium mining project

in Nevada. So this is the mining industry auto industry relationship is getting very close now, you know, as that's happening. It's going to spark conflicts that don't look that different from conflicts in Latin America. They're often going to involve indigenous peoples, not exclusively, but in many cases they do. They're often going to involve concerns about groundwater, about where we properly consulted, did we give our consent? And these

are exactly the structural conflicts in Latin America. And you'll see this, you know, similar opposing arguments like mining will bring jobs, mining is good for national security, you know, et cetera. Right, So that kind of whole gamut of the way the politics of mining plays out to sort of see how that has happened in Latin America, where which contains some of the top producers of x you know, xro y mineral in the world, right, Chile is also

the number one copper producer. I think shows us not exactly our future, but does show us what a society looks like that is riven over conflicts over extraction, which is maybe not how we think about the energy transition, right because obviously the energy transition involves moving away from the enormous volumes of extraction for fuel and that's important, and many a climate advocate will rightfully point out that the amount of coal and gas and oil mind in

our current energy system is so much bigger than the amount of critical minerals mining that will take place over the next few decades, and that is true and correct. But I think just saying that does not really tell us very much about how the politics and social conflicts and divides around the mining that will happen during the

energy transition are going to play out. And just saying that fact doesn't actually wrestle with the environmental, social, or even geopolitical and economic kind of impacts and dilemmas posed by the mining that's to come, you know, at the same time that we know that overall it's like less extraction from the Earth in a system that constantly stracks for the purposes of fuel.

But if we just take that snapshot year of twenty fifty and we look at lithium demand, our worst case scenario to our best case scenario is a ninety two percent difference. So if we just take the year twenty fifty, this future that we're looking at is eeromission transportation sector.

Our worst case scenario is we maintain current levels of car dependency, car usage, Cars have this outsize kind of share of overall transportation modes, Vehicle ownership rates remain like the same as they are now, and we also get to continue on the trend of bigger and bigger batteries right that are getting more and more out of step with like global averages. That's our worst case scenario. Things

get kind of actually worse but electrified. And our best case scenario is we bring battery sizes back to sort of reasonable size, We expand how many folks are using buses or cycling, We densify our suburbs a bit, we have maximum levels of recycling and recovery that are technically feasible. That second future is ninety two percent less lithium than the first future. And I know that the ambitious future is probably beyond the realm of what feels politically possible

right now. And I understand that, you know, I am not like living in the clouds. I'm aware of that, but I think that having that option on the table, because in that most ambitious future, we totally limited emissions and everyone has a way to get around, right, We're not denying anyone mobility, and we're not falling short of our climate goals. And we could have that future and use a lot less lithium and then have all these other amazing co benefits of reducing car usage. Right, And

then I want to throw out one other finding. I'm going to go for a drama right now, right because you can get into the granule findings where we have in between levels of X, Y and Z. Another finding that I really like, just because it addresses folks who are understandly concerned at like there is no America without car. You know, we can't move away from being heard a pendent. We just have to suck it up. And I say

to those people. We could stay in scenario one, which is the one where we keep levels of car usage and vehicle ownership rates and we don't identify anything, and

we have lots of sprawl. We could stay in scenario one, and we could just bring our batteries to like the right size or not this gargantuan size, and in twenty fifty we could use forty two percent less lithium with the same amount of cars and the same amount of car usage and vehicle ownership if we just make the batteries a more normal size, like rather than the super size.

because it like it did. Actually, I don't know, whenever I read reports like this, I'm like, oh, okay, like there is actually a way to do it, because I think that a lot of times that's where people get stuck, is like okay, but how on earth would we ever do it?