We should stop them from doing that. Exxon wanted to go so hard on making fuel and destroy the world, but now they want to start mining lithium? Nope. Stop them. They can't do that. They don't get to turn around and start being environmentally clean after what they've done. They still have yet to pay for all the damages they have caused
this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
154 points (97.5% liked)
Technology
57453 readers
4610 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
We should embrace anything that gets us off fossil fuels faster even if it comes from companies that have contributed to the problem in the past. We don't have time for purity tests if we actually want to tackle this problem.
Yeah have you seen lithium mining...... You think Exxon will do it safely? Cleanly?.....
Lithium mining isn’t exactly “environmentally clean”. At 500,000 gallons of water per metric ton of lithium mined and ~10kg of lithium per car battery, that makes each electric car take up at least 5,000 gallons of water just from the extraction process of the lithium, to say nothing of refining, transportation, and other components that also use lithium.
Aaaand that’s all assuming there’s no localized pollution from the extraction process!
Electric cars are not here to save us.
It may suck but its a path to get off fossil fuels which are worse overall. Also, alternative battery technologies are being developed that have less lithium and cobalt needs. I would like to see interchangeable batteries from manufactures so new batteries can easily be installed on old cars without it being a hardship to the owner.
read about the lithium separation process, water evaporates into the environment rather than being used from it
They will just use the water from fracking. I’m not surprised Arkansas is allowing this, just look who the governor is.
I doubt all this lithium will be good for the environment in the long run.
Exxon comes in to help pay for podiums.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Automakers had an inkling that would happen, so we've seen a flurry of announcements for new battery plants in the United States that will make the cells and assemble the packs for future EVs, but we've heard slightly less about new local sources of lithium.
But today, Exxon revealed it is about to extract the stuff from a rich deposit in Arkansas.
At one point, California's Salton Sea looked like a promising source of lithium, but working with the corrosive brine has proven extremely challenging to industrial equipment.
Exxon says it will then use direct lithium extraction on the brine (as opposed to evaporating it in big ponds) before pumping the remaining salt water back underground again.
"This landmark project applies decades of ExxonMobil expertise to unlock vast supplies of North American lithium with far fewer environmental impacts than traditional mining operations," he said.
Assuming all goes to plan, Exxon wants to begin producing lithium by 2027, with an output sufficient to build a million EVs annually by 2030.
The original article contains 258 words, the summary contains 169 words. Saved 34%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Oooh yes, the EVs are so green and sustainable! Let’s consume more!
Like it or not, cars cannot reasonably be phased out within a decade - certainly not in a place where entire cities are designed around them. In the meantime, people are going to get new cars (remember the high prices and empty lots during the chip shortage?) especially when they need it to get to work (again, no way to practically redesign entire cities in a reasonable timeframe). If someone gets rid of their year-old ICE to get an EV, sure, that's not doing anyone any favors. But if someone needs a new car, and they convert from ICE to EV, sure. That can definitely help.
Also, we're not necessarily talking cars. We're talking lithium for batteries. Large batteries are an important component to make sustainable energy sources like solar practical on a bigger scale with less nighttime help from fossil fuels.