{"id":55925,"date":"2020-12-08T18:37:49","date_gmt":"2020-12-08T23:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55925"},"modified":"2020-12-08T18:37:49","modified_gmt":"2020-12-08T23:37:49","slug":"the-curse-of-white-oil-electric-vehicles-dirty-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55925","title":{"rendered":"The curse of ‘white oil’: electric vehicles’ dirty secret"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Brine pools and processing areas of the Rockwood lithium plant on the Atacama salt flat, Chile. Photograph: Iv\u00e1n Alvarado\/Reuters<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The curse of ‘white oil’: electric vehicles’ dirty secret<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The race is on to find a steady source of lithium, a key component in rechargeable electric car batteries. But while the EU focuses on emissions, the lithium gold rush threatens environmental damage on an industrial scale.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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E<\/span><\/span>ven before the new mine became the main topic of village conversation, Jo\u00e3o Cassote, a 44-year-old livestock farmer, was thinking about making a change. Living off the land in his mountainous part of northern\u00a0Portugal<\/a> was a grind. Of his close childhood friends, he was the only one who hadn\u2019t gone overseas in search of work. So, in 2017, when he heard of a British company prospecting for lithium in the region of Tr\u00e1s-os-Montes, Cassote called his bank and asked for a \u20ac200,000 loan. He bought a John Deere tractor, an earthmover and a portable water-storage tank.<\/p>\n

The exploration team of the UK-based mining company Savannah Resources had spent months poring over geological maps and surveys of the hills that ripple out from Cassote\u2019s farm. Initial calculations indicated that they\u00a0could contain<\/a>\u00a0more than 280,000 tonnes of lithium, a silver-white alkali metal \u2013 enough for 10 years\u2019 production. Cassote got in touch with Savannah\u2019s local office, and the mining firm duly contracted him to supply water to their test drilling site. The return on his investment was swift. After less than 12 months on the company\u2019s books, Cassote had made what he would usually earn in five or six years on the farm.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brine pools and processing areas of the Rockwood lithium plant on the Atacama salt flat, Chile. Photograph: Iv\u00e1n Alvarado\/Reuters The curse of ‘white oil’: electric vehicles’ dirty secret The race is on to find a steady source of lithium, a key component in rechargeable electric car batteries. But while the EU focuses on emissions, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[113,13275,279,284,16991,30691,6917,30692],"class_list":["post-55925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-electric-vehicles","tag-eu","tag-european-union","tag-lithium","tag-oliver-balch","tag-the-guardian","tag-white-oil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55925"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55926,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55925\/revisions\/55926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}