Decarbonizing US transportation with an eye toward global justice

02/08/23 • 78 min

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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, we have to electrify transportation. We need electric vehicles, but there are better and worse ways of doing that, more and less just ways of doing that, more and less lithium-intensive ways of doing that, and we should do it the best way we can. Is that fair?

Thea Riofrancos

That is fair. And you've also quoted one of actually my personal favorite lines of the report, because I agree with you that it really gets at the heart of what our goals are, the kind of questions that we're asking, and also this desire to align goals that might seem in tension with one another, right? Which is r...

(PDF transcript)

(Active transcript)

Text transcript:

David Roberts

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.

Alright. Thea Riofrancos, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.

Thea Riofrancos

Thanks for inviting me.

David Roberts

Thea Riofrancos

Understandably.

David Roberts

Thea Riofrancos

Previous Episode

Getting electric school buses in the hands of school districts

How can electric school buses be made accessible and cost-effective? In this episode, Highland Electric Fleets CEO Duncan McIntyre makes the case for why school districts should overcome the challenges to bus electrification, and the ways his company’s subscription model helps them do so.

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David Roberts

One of my very favorite things in the world to talk about — second perhaps only to electric postal vehicles — is electric school buses. It's difficult to think of a more righteous cause than reducing air and noise pollution in direct proximity to the country's most sensitive lungs and ears.

Currently, however, electric school buses still cost two to three times what their diesel competitors cost, which can be daunting for school districts with tight budgets. Electric buses pay themselves off over time through dramatically lower fuel and maintenance costs, but the upfront costs of the transition are steep enough to scare away many administrators.

My guest today runs a company called Highland Electric Fleets that is attempting to overcome that challenge by offering a new business model. Rather than purchase and maintain the buses themselves, school districts pay Highland a subscription fee, locked in for a 15-year contract, which covers the buses, a depot, charging infrastructure, scheduling, training, and ongoing maintenance and replacement of buses when required.

In addition to a saving most school districts money immediately, the subscription contract derisks the transition to electric buses. That is about the best thing I can think of that someone could be doing these days, so I was eager to talk to Highland CEO Duncan McIntyre about the advantages of electric buses, the challenges school districts face, and the problems solved by the subscription model.

Alright, with no further ado, Duncan McIntyre, welcome to Volts. Thank you for coming.

Duncan McIntyre

David, thanks for having me.

David Roberts

This is awesome. Volts listeners are so interested in electric school buses, so I just have a gazillion questions, so let's jump right into it. Tell us, what are the advantages or benefits of an electric school bus over the current line of school buses, which as I understand it, are mostly diesel?

Duncan McIntyre

That's right, they're mostly diesel. A little over 80% today. But your question is about the advantages of electric. I think the list is long, but I would highlight a few of the big ones. There's a clear benefit in emissions profile just in the health of everyone who's operating or riding a bus. There's no tailpipe at all, and as a result, they're very clean. Another big advantage is they just operate much cheaper. The fuel is a lot less expensive, there are very few moving parts compared to a diesel bus, and as a result, there's no oil changes, there's no exhaust filters. There's lots of things that just aren't on electric buses, and so operating is much less expensive.

David Roberts

And I don't want to get caught up in the whole thing too early, but I'm trying to sort of conceive of the sort of magnitude of the pollution reductions here. Like, have there been measurements or studies about the difference when an electric school bus replaces a diesel bus? Or are we too early to know for sure about that kind of stuff?

Duncan McIntyre

I think there have been plenty of studies about the health impacts of a diesel bus. And the comparison is simply the health impacts of not having a diesel bus since the electric format has literally no tailpipe and no emissions profile at all. But the health studies have been done by groups like American Lung Association, groups like that, and there's quite a few data points that look at reduction in NOx and particulate matter, specifically on things like pediatric asthma. I would say that's one of the main studies that has taken place, but also tying the emissions associated with the diesel tailpipe to just other general health key indicators.

Next Episode

Utilities are lobbying against the public interest. Here's how to stop it.

In this episode, utility watchdog David Pomerantz discusses all the ways that utilities use ratepayer money to lobby against the clean-energy transition — and what regulators and policy makers can do to stop it.

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David Roberts

There are many features of US public life that I believe, perhaps naively, would be the subject of a great deal more anger were they better understood. One of those is the role utilities play in climate policy.

A rapid transition to a low-carbon energy system is necessary to avoid the worst of climate change. Happily, that transition is going to be an enormous net benefit to US public health and the US economy. It's good for quality of life, economic growth, international competitiveness, national security, and the long-term inhabitability of the planet.

But it’s not necessarily good for the companies that actually sell energy to customers — power and gas utilities. In fact, utilities are using every tool at their disposal to slow the energy transition, from lobbying to PR campaigns to donations to, as the last few years have demonstrated, outright bribery.

And here's the even more galling bit: they are fighting against the clean-energy transition using your money. They use ratepayer money — from captive customers over whom they are granted a monopoly — to fund their lobbying. They have effectively conscripted their customers, who have no choice where to get their power and gas, into an involuntary small-donor army working against the public interest.

It’s outrageous. In a new report called “Getting Politics Out of Utility Bills,” the Energy and Policy Institute — one of the best utility watchdogs out there — details some of this utility corruption and offers recommendations for how to prevent it. These are not futile recommendations to Congress, but actions that fall within the current powers of state regulators and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

I have been ranting about utilities for years, and one of my most reliable sources on the subject has always been the report’s author, Energy and Policy Institute Executive Director David Pomerantz, so I was eager to talk to him to air some shared grievances, hear some enraging tales of utility shenanigans, and discuss what can be done to rein them in.

All righty, then. David Pomeranz. Welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.

David Pomeranz

Thank you so much for having me.

David Roberts

I was thinking of you just earlier today as I saw a new story in the Washington Post about how the gas industry is under fire and it is now hiring Democratic politicians to shill for it. And I thought: "Golly, isn't that thematically on point?". So it seems like a perfect time to be covering this report. Before we get into specifics of who's done what and how to stop them from doing it, let's just start with power utilities are out there getting involved in politics. And let's just sort of discuss what is their net effect on politics. Like, what are they pushing for and against out there in the states and at the federal level?

David Pomeranz

That is a great question, and I think it will be important in context for your listeners who I am count myself as a loyal one, and I know many are thinking about climate change, and energy policy, and decarbonization, and the energy transition. And if they are concerned about those things then they should be concerned about utilities, political power and their political machines. So let's talk about what their political agenda is. And we're talking about both electric and gas utilities. Oftentimes the same companies, but sometimes, you know, there are utilities that sell gas only and electricity only. And they're all relevant to this conversation.

So, since you mentioned, gas utilities pushing back against building electrification, and that has certainly been in the news quite a lot this month, so we can start there, because that's really simple. The gas utilities sector is, with almost no exceptions, united in its aggressive political effort to stave off building electrification. They basically see that as an existential threat to ...