Where We’re Going We Won’t Even Need Lithium: A Neurotic Look at Our Energy Future
Editor’s Note: Gas 2.0 writer Karen Pease has written a response to this post entitled “Lithium Counterpoint: No Shortage For Electric Cars.”
So I stumbled across a time machine the other day and made my way into the future. I noticed something rather bizarre while I was riding my hover-board and wearing a pair of Air McFlys. First I couldn’t pump any more gas into my Delorean, so I asked the good people of the undisclosed future what they used for fuel. They used lithium-powered batteries, and their supply was running out…
For the record, I support all forms of alternative energy. Anything but oil I say, it’s a relic of the Cold War as far as I’m concerned. But what will be the future of energy? Well, my time machine wasn’t completely accurate. While I sincerely hope that we can establish an electric infrastructure, it appears that the market will decide our energy future (for more on the economics, read my last post).
- » See also: Leo Motors CEO Dr. Robert Kang on the Future of Electric Vehicles
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In the scientific community, we keep running into this massive roadblock known commonly as thermodynamics. It’s an intimidating word for an intimidating world-view. Simply, thermodynamics states that we just reuse matter. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be converted. It appears that we will only be converting matter to energy for the next, oh I don’t know, maybe million years or so? Sorry, my imagination couldn’t take me much further past 2015 (plus I had a broken flux-capacitor).
There is a huge philosophical implication here. Won’t we eventually run out of everything we can possibly use for energy? Following this logic, that would mean that we could only use ethanol from corn to power the world’s economy. I believe in progress above all, and I sincerely hope that someone, somewhere is thinking about completely redesigning the engine. According to William Tahil of the Meridian International Research Group, the Earth only has 35 million tons of Lithium available and we only know where to find 15 million tons of that total. I know that seems like a lot, but remember what we used to think about oil? Our great grandfathers probably shouldn’t have bathed in it for health reasons and our futures.
So maybe it is the Woody Allen inside of me talking, but isn’t it totally feasible that we run out of lithium someday just like we are running out of gasoline? The age of cheap gasoline is over, and soon the age of relatively cheap gasoline will be a memory as well. As a nation we hardly even blinked. There was some yelling by that old guy running for president about removing a gas tax to save us from high prices, but I feel like people would rather just deal with the price hike than change lifestyles.
After a bit of research I found that the lithium supply more closely mirrors our silicon supply. We have enough of it to theoretically meet our demands for now and the foreseeable future, its just that most of it is currently tied up. Lithium is a highly reactive element and is very rarely found on its own, ready to make into a lithium battery (like silicon, which is readily found in sand, but needs to be separated to be useful).
I know this all seems a little far-fetched, but just think about what pulling lithium from our ecosystems would do to them. All ecosystems are cyclic and each part is important to how it runs on its own. We won’t fully understand how lithium fits into the world until we start pulling it out. If everyone drove electric cars (and more than one, like a normal American family), imagine how much lithium would be needed! On the other hand, not tapping into lithium for electric cars would be like not doing homework because the universe is expanding. It just doesn’t make economic sense. It’s best to ignore these very large and general fears because they are inevitable. But there is one thing that we can do, especially a nation as rich as America. We can strive for efficiency.
We should not worry so much about a new energy infrastructure as much as we should worry about being efficient with the supplies we do have. Efficiency is key to never having an energy crisis again. I got some great feedback on my last post stressing efficiency over all forms of alternate energy, and I couldn’t agree more with that sentiment. We’re not talking just about transportation, but we need American industries to stop wasting gasoline and investing in more sustainable energy sources. If we had been worrying all along, none of this would be an issue.
It’s a fast rule of economics that we never run out of anything because when we do we just find a new resource to fill the void. Sorry to get neurotic again, but that is an awfully scary concept. What happens when we get to the point where there is nothing else to switch to? I guess worrying about that is a lot like worrying about the sun burning out. But just because it is so far away, doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
If you tend to worry a lot like me, follow these links:
- My Mileage is Better Than Your Mileage
- 100+ EcoDriving Tips to get Better Mileage in Your Car
- Toshiba’s Super-Charged Battery: Nearly Full in 5 Minutes
- Lithium Batteries
Thanks to Matt Comi for the image, under Flickr’s Creative Commons.
Here is the rest of William Tahil’s research on the element Lithium.
Worried about lithium supplies?!? Don’t be. It’s already becoming old technology and is simply a stop-gap until better energy storage is feasible.
And besides, electric cars really don’t make much sense long-term anyway. The internal combustion engine is wonderfully robust and efficient technology, and combined with a renewable hydrocarbon (algae farms) will ultimately be the best choice for vehicles.
Here’s one thing to consider: Iron fluorophospate cathodes can accomodate both sodium and lithium in their chemistry. This gives rise to the possibility of Sodium-Ion batteries replacing their lithium counterparts if price or availability becomes an issue.
Lithium is not the end all be all of our energy future. Attitudes like this only serve to focus undue attention to a non-existent problem and waste resources.
Lithium is a bit player in the energy future. It will have it’s place but it isn’t going to be replacing oil in any way shape or form.
Oil is a fuel, lithium is a storage device. The entire premise of the article is faulty.
Supply exceeding demand is the key to never having an energy crisis again. Efficiency does not reduce demand or increase supply. Only prices and wants have that effect.
The overall point of not worrying about lithium at this time is a good point to make, as these things go, but you’ve got to have supporting arguments that actually support the argument.
Great views on the subject.
Have you had a look at “The Energy Machine of Joseph Newman”.
Seams to be like “flux capacitor” as can run on small amount of energy and produce an incredible output…
It doesn’t sound, to me, as though you know as much thermodynamics as you think you do.
Lithium is not a source of energy that can do work. It is a component of a system designed to store energy that can do work.
Even at maximum theoretical effiency, the amount of energy available to do work will continue to decrease–this is the second law of thermodynamics.
Having no batteries to charge is not what makes an energy crisis. It is having nothing with which to charge them.
What charges your batteries? Is it nuclear power, fossil fuels, or solar power (which thermodynamically includes wind and water).
Each is a finite resource. The Earth only has so many tons of nuclear and fossil fuels, and only intercepts so much sunlight in a year.
We will have energy crises as long as we rely on energy. Until someone figures out how to use magic or the Force, we are stuck with converting energy to work. and hence with energy crises.
Efficiency just means it takes longer to get there.
We need NEW sources of useful work. Efficiency is a stopgap.
And if you are relying on batteries of any kind–especially ones charged by burning fossil fuels–then you are making the problem worse, not better. It is more efficent to use energy directly, like an engine does, than to convert to electricity, with losses, store in the battery, with losses, and convert the electricity to work, with losses.
“Finally, the sun will eventually either implode or explode, apparently in about 4 million years.”
4 BILLION years, although it’s possible the sun will extinguish life on earth in the next billion years or so.
This should also be very bad news to manic-depressives…….
But I can’t be bothered about silly things like … WHAT’M I GONNA DO!!!!!
Well, if you insist on worrying about the big picture, the sun is going to burn the Earth up eventually, and if we survive that it will burn itself out completely over time. That ol 2nd law of thermodynamics puts a definite lifespan on life in this universe. You’ve got a few billion years to think about it, but thats it, finito.
So, uh, what’d ja power dattime machine wit’, sport? Good thoughts? Nice to know you’ve heard of the cold war. Relics are “objects associated with the Saints, which bodies were the living members of Christ and ‘the temple of the Holy Ghost’ (1 Corinthians 6:19) and which are by Him to be raised to eternal life and to be glorified are to be venerated by the faithful.” (Catholic Encyclopedia) Got nothin’ to do with the Cold war, but with that other War.