Decarbonizing US transportation with an eye toward global justice
Will widespread electrification of the US personal-vehicle sector inevitably be accompanied by a huge rise in environmentally destructive lithium mining? Not necessarily, says a new report. In this episode, lead author Thea Riofrancos discusses options for reducing future lithium demand through density, infrastructure, and smart transportation choices.
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David Roberts
The transportation sector is the leading carbon emitter in the US economy, and unlike some other sources, it is on the rise. Decarbonizing it is inevitably going to involve wholesale electrification of personal vehicles. We're going to need lots and lots of EVs.
That’s going to mean more demand for minerals like lithium, which is mined in environmentally destructive ways and almost everywhere opposed by local and indigenous groups.
But lithium can be mined in more or less harmful ways, depending on where and how it’s done and how well it’s governed. And the number of EVs needed in the future — and the consequent demand for lithium — is not fixed. The US transportation sector could decarbonize in more or less car-intensive ways. If US cities densified and built better public transportation and more walking and cycling infrastructure, fewer people would need cars and the cars could get by with smaller batteries. That would mean less demand for lithium, less mining, and less destruction.
But how much less? That brings us to a new report: “Achieving Zero Emissions with More Mobility and Less Mining,” from the Climate and Community Project and UC Davis. It models the lithium intensity of several different pathways to decarbonization for the US personal-vehicle market to determine how much lithium demand could be reduced in different zero-carbon scenarios.
It’s a novel line of research (hopefully a sign of more to come) and an important step toward deepening and complicating the discussion of US transportation decarbonization. I was thrilled to talk to its lead author, Thea Riofrancos, an Andrew Carnegie Fellow and associate professor of political science at Providence College, about the reality of lithium mining, the coming demand for more lithium, and the ways that demand can be reduced through smart transportation choices.
Alright. Thea Riofrancos, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Thea Riofrancos
Thanks for inviting me.
David Roberts
I've been meeting to get you on forever and waiting for the right occasion, and this is just a humdinger of an occasion here, this report. It's right at the nexus of, like, a lot of things I cover a lot, and a lot of things I feel like I should cover more, bringing them together. So before we jump into the details, I just want to take a step back and summarize the report, the framing of the report as I see it, because I've seen and heard some media coverage of the report, and I'm always just a little frustrated by how other journalists cover things.
Thea Riofrancos
Understandably.
David Roberts
It's just this weird oblique... they don't take the time to sort of say, "what is the main thing?" Before getting on into weird little side questions. So I'll just say, as I understand it, the premise of the report here is we need to decarbonize transportation, yes. And electrifying vehicles is a huge and unavoidable part of that and extracting a lot of lithium is an unavoidable part of that. However, and here I will quote the report, "The volume of extraction is not a given. Neither is it a given where that extraction takes place, under what circumstances, the degree of the environmental and social impacts, or how mining is governed."
So the idea here is: yes, we have to decarbonize, we have to electrify,
