One of the most frequently repeated complaints of the opponents of renewable technologies (solar, wind, and electric vehicles) is the amount of waste generated at the end of their life. They are usually accompanied by many false or exaggerated claims about their toxicity, volume, lack of value, or lack of recycling. Most opponents of renewables insist that this cost of recycling be paid up front, usually in an attempt to discourage their growth, by accounting for its full cost. I agree, we should account for the full cost for all energy sources.

Electric car batteries, for example, come in many different sizes, but a good average is 1,025 pounds, about ¢ ton. They also come in many different chemistries, and the field is evolving rapidly with new technologies or tweaks to existing technologies. A BEV battery system is a complex set of batteries, electronics, and housings built into a durable structure. The batteries themselves are constructed from graphite, lithium salts, and various metals such as aluminum, copper, cobalt, and nickel. They are not easy to recycle and do contain some toxic elements, but have you ever looked at what is in a gallon of gasoline or tried to recycle that? Have you ever considered what comes out of your tailpipe and why we don’t insist on recycling it rather than just dumping it into the air?

Before you can have a recycling industry for li-on batteries, you have to have some raw materials to work with. It is estimated that an EV li-on battery will last for about 200,000 miles, or 17 years. Most of the EVs produced are still driving around, so there is little raw material available to build a recycling industry around. Even after an EV has reached the end of its useful life in a car it still has 70-80% of its capacity left. There is a very hot market for used EV batteries for fixed storage for renewables, grid peak shaving, back up power, and classic car conversions. Because of the demand from DIY startups, used EV batteries are selling for a premium of 60% more than new ones.

Let’s take a look at what powers the old-fashioned internal combustion engine: gasoline. The average car on the road today gets about 25 miles per gallon and travels 14,000 miles per year, using 560 gallons of gas (your mileage may vary). At 6.3 pounds per gallon, that comes to 1764 pounds of fuel per year and 30 tons over the 17 year expected lifetime of an EV battery. In one year alone, the fuel required for an ICE vehicle already weighs over 70% more than the EV battery. (The electrons passing through an EV battery do have a weight, but it doesn’t add up to much, even over years and years.) But just how toxic is gasoline compared to batteries?

The exhaust coming out of your tailpipe contains some pretty nasty stuff. Over 17 years, a typical gasoline car will emit 2,639 pounds of carbon monoxide (toxic to humans and animals), 1,418 pounds of sulfur and nitrogen oxides (respiratory irritants and causes of acid rain, smog, and thinning of the ozone), 1,583 pounds of hydrocarbons (a carcinogen and climate warming gas), 132 pounds of fine particulates and soot (a carcinogen and contributor to lung disease), and 162,840 pounds of carbon dioxide (a climate warming gas). In fact, car exhaust in the US kills 53,000 people, 50% more than car accidents do, according to a 2017 study by MIT.

An observant person will point out that I am comparing the dangers of the exhaust from a gasoline car to the battery of an EV. I’m not including the pollution released from the production of electricity to power the car. That is true, but isn’t that the point? Aren’t they really saying that the generation of electricity (primarily from fossil fuels) creates pollution and that should be accounted for when evaluating electric cars but should be ignored when evaluating the harm done by gasoline cars? Renewables opponents also ignore the pollution from coal mining and burning, oil extraction and refining, natural gas fracking, transportation, and burning, and the pools of highly radioactive spent fuel from nuclear power plants. They cry alarm over false claims of toxins leaching from solar panels but ignore the toxins spewing from their exhaust pipes. They moan over the birds lost to ‘killer’ wind turbines but ignore the fact that open waste pits from oil and gas extraction kill many, many more.

What is really needed is to convert our transportation as quickly as possible away from fossil fuel powered cars to electric, while also converting the electrical grid as quickly as possible away from fossil fuel generation. Recycling a half-ton of batteries after 17 years (or more) of pollution free use will be nothing compared to the damage done by 30 tons of gasoline burned with the toxic byproduct dumped into our air over that same period

Thomas Meara is a Jamestown resident.