Carbon offsetting is a way to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions that an individual, company, or establishment has produced or will produce in the future. This can be done by purchasing credits from another organization that reduces or removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Reduce the need for offsetting by minimizing in-house carbon generation.
Use ratifiable offsetting organizations that are accredited by governing bodies.
Maintain accurate reflections of current emissions, Net Zero targets, accounting practices, and offsets to improve process transparency.
Carbon Removal > Emission Reduction.
Carbon Removal offsetting processes involve advanced scientific methods such as atmospheric scrubbing to capture carbon dioxide and reverse the greenhouse effect caused by a century of brazen human industrialization. Utilizing these processes is key to achieving the Net Zero target by 2050.
Emission reduction offsetting processes are simpler to adopt and commonly used. These involve various methods to counteract the emissions that we currently produce, however, they are not enough by themselves to reverse the looming greenhouse impact on our planet in time.
Invest in Long-Lived Carbon Storage Offsetting.
Short-lived carbon storage methods like afforestation are considered to have a high risk of reversal within years or decades. For example, socioeconomic challenges can cause a revocation of protected regions, or a forest fire can wipe out an entire carbon sink mitigating decades of efforts.
Long-Lived Carbon Storage methods provide highly stable, low-risk platforms to store carbon for centuries and millennia. They involve processes such as ‘Mineralizing’ that not only store captured emissions safely, but also provide a dependable end-point to bank your carbon credits on.
Participate and support the development of Carbon offsetting by:
Early adoption with long-term agreements and advanced planning to empower offset project developers pushing Net Zero offsets.
Establish sector-specific forums, networks, and collaborations for effective and replicable knowledge transfer among peers.
Be environmentally proactive by supporting the restoration and conservation of endemic natural biodiversity.
Set an encouraging standard by incorporating the Oxford Principles into regulation and publicizing them.
Today, the human race has collectively embraced battery-powered Electric Vehicles as our next large-scale mobility solution, so it is important to know about the complete life cycle of the prototypical lithium-ion battery. To begin with, batteries are toxic and have a negative impact on the environment if left to biodegrade. However, a used battery can yield sizable amounts of reusable material through recycling, making this business a profitable venture. Unlike plastic, this is a good situation to be in since it encourages investors to invest in the post-use stage of a battery’s life cycle.
At the moment, almost 75% of waste material in a battery recycling factory comes from the production or manufacturing of new EV batteries instead of waste derived from used EV batteries. Simply said, there just aren’t enough scrap EV batteries to kickstart the EV recycling revolution yet. Moreover, with EV batteries getting drastically more efficient in the last few years, the market is unlikely to have adequate scrap batteries for this industry until the mid-2030s or later. *Reference Link
This poses a momentary 15-20 year gap in the process of implementing optimum battery waste management. A situation wherein, legitimate investors remain bearish about entering the recycling market due to supply chain issues whilst parallel market forces push hard for the EV revolution on a global scale. This problem can become even more amplified in regions of the globe that suffer from negligible or non-existent standards of environmental policy administration.
To understand that comprehensively, one needs to break down the recycling process of batteries. Lead acid batteries, like the ones used to start a petrol-engined vehicle, are broken into little pieces and put into an industrial vat. Lead being heavier sinks to the bottom while polypropylene pieces float up, separating the two. Lithium-ion batteries like the ones used in EVs are recycled to recover lithium, cobalt, manganese, and nickel through similar mechanical and hydrometallurgical processes called low carbon dioxide processes.
The caveat in this hot topic comes in the form of ‘black mass’ or ‘black mass powder’, a by-product of the lithium-ion battery recycling process. Black Mass Powder is basically what is leftover after lithium-ion batteries are recycled.
The Paradox
This leftover material is still rich and can be further recycled to obtain more chemicals and minerals, eventually making it a highly profitable business as well. The catch is, this leftover black mass powder would need several pyrometallurgical processes to recover anything more from its current state, processes similar to smelting at over 1500 degrees C called high carbon dioxide processes. *Reference Link. Pyrometallurgical factories functioning on an industrial scale would directly contradict net zero goals as well as the basic purpose of going electric in the first place.
The Potential Powder Keg
While marketing companies and EV manufacturers around the globe beat their drums to an ecofriendly and green tune. While governments subsidize the use of EVs to flex their soft power to their vote-banks, it is very easy to become blissfully ignorant and put this intermittent issue under the rug. Instead, having the foresight and better data could help people mitigate this gap more effectively.
Most data points with regard to EVs in general come from developed countries, making our data set severely malnourished. For example, Norway is reported to have the most number of electric car sales in the world as of now. Yes, they sell more Teslas and the likes, but that doesn’t account for the flood of assembled electric tuk-tuks or cobbled-up electric scooters sold across high-density developing nations in Africa and Asia with barely any climate policy charter in prace.
When it comes to recycling of EV batteries specifically, our data points are even more unbalanced or opaque, as 80% of global Lithium-ion scrap batteries are recycled in China. This is also natural because China’s EV industry is 10 years older than most other countries. So much so that by 2025 it is expected that the nation will have over 6 million aging electric vehicles ready to be recycled. Perhaps they will take the lead in setting good environmental standards, who knows? *Reference Link . Given that so much of raw materials can be recovered from a lithium ion battery, it seems likely that lithium ion scrap stockpiles would be recycled through pyrometallurgical processes, with much of it being underreported in a global context.
Developing or third-world nations suffer from the effects of extreme poverty making black mass powder an attractive proposition to purchase in unregulated markets around the world. Without a global support ecosystem set up, It would end up being processed in highly unsafe environments causing physical harm to workers and their surroundings whilst dealing a huge blow to global environmental efforts. Below is an example of a lithium ion battery that snuck its way into a common metal shredder.
From a global perspective, only a small number of recycling plants have advanced fire monitoring systems or mitigatory plans in place, with most underdeveloped nations still using the landfill-burn method. Moreover, even in the continental USA, there has been a sharp rise in landfill fires, indicating further credence to similar unrecorded occurrences in developing or undeveloped nations. Reference Link
Conclusion
Yes, EV battery recycling is headed towards sustainable and environmentally friendly use by about 2035. However, what we need is in-depth operational transparency of landfills and lithium-ion recyclers globally. This is key to understanding where this sub-industry is headed in this interim period of lull. Perhaps it is just an industry in its infancy experiencing growing pains, or a consequential tanking of net-zero goals as we grapple with issues born from evolving toward a better and cleaner form of mobility.
Regardless, it is quintessential to initiate far-reaching policies about managing and recording the use of black mass powder. How we deal with black mass has a big vote on how well we do in terms of overall net-zero performance through the coming decades.
What is your opinion on this? Leave your comment below.
Additional Insight:
Question: Will my EV catch fire?
Answer: If it is designed to inhibit electrical shorting and the product is rigorously tested, then EVs are less likely to suffer from spontaneous fires than conventional internal combustion vehicles.
Having said that, Lithium-Ion cells burn at 1100 degrees C and an entire battery of them on fire can reach temperatures of 2000 degrees C consuming everything around it. Always buy electric vehicles from certified manufacturers who have roadtested their product locally.
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