I do not ignore these issues far from it, see

www.investopedia.com/investing/lithium-mining-dirty-investment-or-sustainable-business/ 
www.theguardian.com/news/2020/dec/08/the-curse-of-white-oil-electric-vehicles-dirty-secret-lithium
www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environment-impact

Yes Lithium mining can be dirty as you say just as any form of mining can be and often is, however you have to balance that against the impact of continued drilling, exploration and use of crude oil, natural gas(methane) and coal. The impact of the oil industry is pretty well documented, and it is pretty well known that methane has 80 times more affect as a CO2 in terms of impacting global warming, and we all know coal is very dirty. There are around 25 million well heads in the world, about 90% are now longer in use, of these it has been reported that only about 25% are properly capped and not leaking crude or gas. That leaves about 2.5 million currently active and in various states, the oil industry is currently exploring on average 2500 new well heads every year, so the impact continues. 

Remember there is a great deal of Oil, Gas and Coal lobbying going on all around the world with very rich backers involved, Fossil fuel companies, old school car industry companies and even countries that have very large vested interests in keeping the Fossil Fuel Money Cow going. We have seen this in the Tobacco industry and also in the lobbying that took place and still goes on to try and rubbish the existence of global warming. 

Continuing to burn stuff is not an option. Battery technology will evolve and improve and become more efficient, Green Power generation is and will increase globally, and is accelerating very quickly, this will lead to a decrease in CO2 emissions. Ships and Planes also need to be addressed. Ships may be easier as most modern ones have electric motors driving the propellers, the electricity being generated by diesel engines running generator, so replacing the diesel engines with hydrogen is a probability, in fact some ships already have this. Planes are not so simple to address due to weight payload ratios and fuel efficiencies using green alternatives to Kerosene, but there are clever people working on it.

Rather than take just a snap shot of a time at 7:25pm and probably on a not very windy day/time of year you need to look at the averages, as below. At present around 44% is from fossil fuels. The rest apart from the purple sector(Biomass scheduled to be stopped in UK in 2027) is as a whole considered much cleaner that Gas/Coal. 



Another National Grid Wind farm has just come on stream supplying Scotland, and is reported to be able to meet the needs of 2.5 million homes, another very large Wind farm is under construction on the North Sea to supply the UK, I think scheduled to go online by end of 2024.  I believe this is planned to reduce Gas usage by at least 40%, further Wind farms and solar farms are planned to address the remaining Gas in the very near future. By the way these Wind and Solar facilities are incorporating TerraWh battery storage to enable release of power to support peak grid needs. Have a look at the Podcast by Greame Cooper (Head of Future Markets National Grid) this may clarify the shape of things to come.

There will be false steps, U turns and cul de sacs as we make our way into trying to do things better
The main thing is to make the steps and learn

The more money one has the more insulated from the big disasters
The poor will die in millions the ones scraping by go next and so on
The fabulously rich could survive. For that reason alone we need to be on the case !

Well for a start, the claim for the amount of oil is dependent on oil and gas being being used for the generation of electricity (or smelting), which one assumes eventually it won't. The tipping point for mining vs recovery will come and be based on the economics of the processes used. Tesla, as I understand it, are significantly advanced with this by first re-purposing the old batteries for non-transport energy storage before recycling.

As to claiming there is not enough materials / mining capacity globally to satisfy demand I suspect in simplistic terms (and ignoring improvements in recycling) that could be 'true'. However, that ignores other societal shifts. The automotive industry already plans for a decrease in car ownership and are looking at short-term rental / sharing as a model for the future. If you look at the changes in car ownership in cities and in younger age groups you can see why. HGVs, busses and even small vans will probably exploit fuel cells rather than battery technology. Public transport networks will improve. Remote working practices will change the way we use private vehicles and all of this will be running at the same time as a transition away from internal combustion engines and the use of oil and gas to generate electricity and power industrial processes.

I think there is more that a hint of the smell of gasoline about those videos!

The Cebr report on Economic impacts of the 2030 – 2040 bans on the sale of fossil fuel vehicles

Using the government’s values for reduced carbon emissions, the value of the environmental benefits add-up to £76 billion. In contrast, the assessed costs add up to £400 billion. These costs are FIVE times the benefits; even when using the government’s own valuations of the environmental benefits.

The study shows that the major costs from the proposed ban are likely to be additional costs of:

1. New vehicle purchases of £188 billion (in extra costs).
2. Increased time lost due to waiting whilst recharging EVs, valued at £47 billion.
3. Infrastructure for electricity generation and additional charging points of £99 billion.

I read quite a bit of the report and skim read some of it, along the way I began to wonder where they were actually getting their figures and stats from, there is no clear corroboration or evidence of the data upon which the report is based.

At the beginning of the report states £188billion in new vehicle purchase, siting additional costs of EVs to market, EV prices are already falling as take up is increasing, just look at MGs and other manufacturers.  They also fail to recognise that new vehicles are purchased every year and the difference would be EV instead of ICE so a transition will take place.

They harp on about lost time charging vehicles, but fail to do any comparison with refuelling ICE vehicles or the fact that EV charging times are likely to at least halve with new battery and charging technology. They also fail to point out the 95% of all daily journeys undertaken in cars are less than 50 miles, and so the majority of charging for this can and should be done effectively at home. Before we start harping on about no charging infrastructure in cities for owners that do not have a driveway or garage, just look at Norway, Holland and several other EU countries and what has been done there, also councils in the UK are already rolling out chargers in streets. 

On the charging infrastructure point, they completely ignore the massive investment already being undertaken by commercial operations, ie Telsa, BP, Shell, Gridserve to name a few, who are putting in EV Supercharging infrastructure and working with the government to do so. 

With respect to grid capacity and costs, I have cited several times before a video done with Graeme Cooper - National Grid Head of Future Markets, they are full aware of what needs to be done to increase grid capacity for EVs and Green infrastructure for the next 30 years and are already working on it. 

On the lost taxation revenue, this is a massive assumption, on what basis do they get this, they fail to point out that people would no longer be paying massive tax on petrol revenues, and obviously the government would need to replace this. To put this into perspective if a car does 10k miles per year averaging 40mpg that is 250 gallons of fuel or 1135 litres, currently taxation on a litre of Petrol or Diesel is 80-90p a litre, so taking 85p/litre of tax this is £965 for 10K miles. It is quite obvious a method of replacing this revenue will need to be found, the fairest method would be based on an EVs yearly reported mileage and charged to the owner, not impossible to do with modern technology. 

It is also quite clear in the introduction that the report is approaching EVs from a negative perspective and sites the usually quoted or perceived reasons that people do not purchase one, but carefully ignores that more and more people are buying them and sales of EVs are growing rapidly, both for home and commercial use!

I noted that it is Funded by FairFuelUK ,the Alliance of British Drivers, and the Motorcycle Action Group. If you look into these groups it is very clear that are ardent ICE vehicle supporters for all sorts of reasons, with clear links to various industries with vested interests in ICE technology, that says it all really.

Yet another smoke and mirrors report IMO. 

Sorry Martin even if ICE hybrids were produced that did a real 100 mpg they would still be pumping out CO2 and other nasty pollutants, and would not be energy inefficient compared to an EV.

We have a great opportunity to change for the better for the future of future generations. Getting rid of ICE vehicles is just one aspect, but it will force a move to green energy production, we need to innovate and change, the shift will also have the added benefit of creating many new jobs to support it.

We and the rest of the world need to stop burning stuff. That will need to be applied to all forms of transport and power production, failure to do so will result in further global warming, resulting in loss of habitable land, inability to produce enough food (we struggle as a world to do so already), and mass migration of humans to parts of the planet that can support them.

Carry on as we are and there will not be much left of this planet in 50 years that’s worth talking about!