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0 pointsSchroedingersat3y ago0 comments

> So energy to mine the materials, energy to assemble the battery, energy to recycle the battery after it's useful lifespan (5-10 years)... None of these are ever counted in people's calculations. I tried to find data on energy required to produce the batteries and they still didn't count the mining cost.

This is a standard component of LCA databases and puts the ESOI in the 50-100 range for the first generation of batteries. Subsequent generations are higher.

Electrolysers also require mining, as do fuel cells, as does any source of heat for reverse gas shift or similar.

Your fud about rare earths is also a lie for any chemistry proposed for grid storage. None of them involve rare earths in any measurable quantity (nanoscale films on semiconductors for controllers and such are insignificant)

Hydrogen (or rather hydrogen derived molecules) are a viable method of seasonal storage, but that doesn't mean most of the hype doesn't exist to greenwash gas or that your talking points aren't propaganda.

Hydrogen cars are worse than BEVs and much worse than transit or active transport.

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Mikeb853y ago

> This is a standard component of LCA databases and puts the ESOI in the 50-100 range for the first generation of batteries. Subsequent generations are higher.

Yes that's the number I found WITHOUT accounting for mining the materials... Just manufacturing the battery.

> Electrolysers also require mining, as do fuel cells, as does any source of heat for reverse gas shift or similar.

Yes but there's far less of those materials required than the sheer amount of battery cells being produced for automobiles.

> Hydrogen (or rather hydrogen derived molecules) are a viable method of seasonal storage, but that doesn't mean most of the hype doesn't exist to greenwash gas or that your talking points aren't propaganda.

Greenwash gas? The whole point of hydrogen is to create it using renewable sources of energy... The whole problem with renewables is storing the energy since they don't produce reliable baseline energy. Hydrogen accomplishes that.

SchroedingersatOP3y ago

> Yes that's the number I found WITHOUT accounting for mining the materials... Just manufacturing the battery.

Are you sure you are reading the study right 'manufacturing' in standard LCA methodology also includes embodied enery/carbon of the ingredients?

You can also fermi analyse it. The absolute cheapest form of energy is lignite burnt at the mine front which is about $5/MWh. Before shortage induced price hikes, the 100 or so grams of lithium in a 1kWh battery was worth $1-2. The battery can store around 5MWh in its lifetime. This puts a fairly hard upper bound of 4-8% of the cycled energy. Phosphorus and iron are less scarce, copper might be significant. Any cost that isn't the cheapest possible energy pushes the lower bound down.

Green hydrogen is fine in niches where it's suited, but most of the hydrogen-for-everything schemes rely heavily on fossil fuel derived hydrogen whenyou look under the hood and ignore the amount of methane, CO2, and H2 that will escape at various stages. H2 is not a greenhouse gas on its own, but it makes methane much worse.

> Yes but there's far less of those materials required than the sheer amount of battery cells being produced for automobiles.

And if you look at the quantities required to replace the role of BEVs rather than as an adjunct, it's worse.

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