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“The combination of readily available and relatively harmless substances and high energy efficacy gives our method potential to work for large scale extraction.” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Scientists have experimented with many types of materials in hopes of making EV batteries, their storage, and their recycling more efficient. One of the latest breakthroughs, developed by a team from Linnaeus University in Sweden and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in India, is derived from perhaps the most unexpected substance yet: urine. The new method, which the scientists described in a study published in the scientific journal ACS Omega, summarized by Anthropocene, can be...

Net zero’s dirty little secret is the African child labor and China’s forced labor for mining cobalt. But what that also means is that the United States is heavily dependent on our existential enemy and child labor for one of the most important minerals in modern society. Even NPR recognizes the problem. “Right now, most of the cobalt the US and its allies use comes from mines that are owned or controlled by China or the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” the outlet reported. Of course, NPR did not explain that those supposedly wonderfully eco-friendly electric cars, besides being unreliable,...

The U.S. is turning to a much-criticized source as it races to secure supplies of battery metals to meet the growing demand for electric vehicles. To do so, it is homing in on cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo’s informal mining sector, where miners, sometimes including children, often work with no safety equipment in dangerous, hand-dug mines. Congo supplies around 70% of the world’s cobalt, a key metal in the lithium-ion batteries used in EVs, with about a third of that coming from these so-called artisanal miners. The U.S. Agency for International Development said earlier this year that it...

Global cobalt demand soared with the advent of cell phones and laptop computers. It exploded with the arrival of electric vehicles and now is skyrocketing in tandem with government EV mandates and subsidies. Cobalt improves battery performance, extends driving range and reduces fire risks. Demand will reach stratospheric heights if governments remain obsessed with climate change and Net Zero. States and nations would have to switch to electric cars, trucks, buses and tractors; end coal and gas electricity generation; convert gas furnaces, water heaters and stoves to electricity; and provide alternative power for windless, sunless periods. Electricity generation would triple...

Smartphones, computers and electric vehicles may be emblems of the modern world, but, says Siddharth Kara, their rechargeable batteries are frequently powered by cobalt mined by workers laboring in slave-like conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kara, a fellow at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health and at the Kennedy School, has been researching modern-day slavery, human trafficking and child labor for two decades. He says that although the DRC has more cobalt reserves than the rest of the planet combined, there's no such thing as a "clean" supply chain of cobalt from the country. In his new...

A speaker at the World Economic Forum (WEF) held at Davos, Switzerland, said Tuesday that mining cobalt, a material vital for the batteries used by electric cars, had “horrific” costs. “The question about mining is — we mine for cobalt and we don’t recognize that cobalt mining has a catastrophic impact if it’s — if it’s, you know, local cobalt mining or even if it’s large-scale cobalt mining, it’s really horrific,” Alan Dangour, the Wellcome Trust’s director for climate and health, said during a panel titled “Protecting the Climate Vulnerable.” Cobalt is one of several metals and minerals critical for...

The Islamic State came dangerously close to obtaining a radioactive dirty bomb, in fact the ingredients were readily available to the group for more than three years, but an apparent lack of knowledge or know-how prevented a disaster. ISIS gained a military treasure trove after its seizure of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in June 2014. Everything from tanks to guns were spoils of war, many of them American-made. But the most valuable prize the group unwittingly obtained were two supplies of cobalt-60, a highly radioactive substance used in cancer treatment which is also perfect for a dirty bomb, according...

While China has been relentlessly pursuing self-reliance when it comes to raw materials -- especially strategic ones such as titanium, tungsten and cobalt, which are used in the defense industry -- the US for the past several decades has been selling off huge chunks of the strategic minerals stockpile to the extent that the National Defense Stockpile is reportedly reaching insolvency. By comparison, China, as of 2020, was the world's third-largest exporter of titanium, while the US was the number one destination for the Chinese titanium exports. It is China's growing influence in Africa, especially through its Belt and Road...

Ford Motor Co.’s hot-selling Mustang Mach-E electric SUV and other plug-in models are being rendered unprofitable by rising raw material costs. “We actually had a positive bottom line profit when we launched the Mach-E, commodity costs have wiped that out,” Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said Wednesday at the Deutsche Bank Global Automotive Conference, referring to 2020, when the vehicle went on sale. “You’re going to see pressure on the bottom line when we launch our EVs, they’re not going to be positive.”

President Biden has tucked another $500 million to fund production of the minerals used to make batteries for electric cars into the Ukraine aid bill passed by Congress. Both Biden and Ukrainian leaders had said that the $40 billion emergency aid package was essential for Ukraine's war against Russia. But tucked into that package was not only military aid but half a billion dollars to be allocated under the Defense Production Act to companies obtaining critical battery minerals like nickel, cobalt, lithium and graphite, Bloomberg first noted. That's in addition to the $750 million the Defense Department (DOD) was authorized...

Cobalt mining is still fraught with danger and unethical practices, and our dependency is only growing. Cobalt is a problem material and it's one that lithium-ion batteries can use a lot of. As EV factory production ramps up for nearly all automakers, EVs have become the main driver of demand for cobalt, surpassing smartphones, which also rely on the metal. Mobile devices have driven demand for cobalt until now because lots of little batteries still need a cathode and anode in each one. A phone battery doesn't need anywhere near as many materials as an electric or hybrid car battery,...

House Republicans have called on Hunter Biden to testify before Congress later this week, according to a letter from a senior House Republican. "House Committee on Oversight and Reform Republicans request the attendance and testimony of Hunter Biden," Ranking Member James Comer said in a letter to House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney. The committee hearing, titled "It’s Electric: Developing the Postal Service Fleet of the Future," is scheduled for Tuesday, April 5.

For more than a decade, Chinese companies have spent billions of dollars buying out U.S. and European miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s cobalt belt - the world’s richest source of a mineral that has become critical to the global transition to cleaner energy. Now the Chinese firms are running into trouble after a court ordered one of the largest to temporarily cede control of one of its mines. Just one electric vehicle can require between 10 and 30 pounds of cobalt to build its battery, depending on the manufacturer, though Tesla Inc. and other auto makers are now...

Soaring battery metal costs are leading to a renewed interest in ithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. Manufacturers are looking to cut cobalt use as they are looking to cut costs and improve their ESG profile. Tesla is making the switch to LFP mandatory in all its markets after a positive reception in the U.S. In the vast majority of cases, technological innovation leads to newer, cheaper, and more efficient designs than their predecessors. But every once in a while, technological progress goes into reverse gear when progress turns out to be turbocharged regress. ... During an investor presentation last year,...

UCLA researchers have designed a device that can use solar energy to inexpensively and efficiently create and store energy, which could be used to power electronic devices, and to create hydrogen fuel for eco-friendly cars. The device could make hydrogen cars affordable for many more consumers because it produces hydrogen using nickel, iron and cobalt — elements that are much more abundant and less expensive than the platinum and other precious metals that are currently used to produce hydrogen fuel. “Hydrogen is a great fuel for vehicles: It is the cleanest fuel known, it’s cheap and it puts no pollutants...

But rushing to replace gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles would hand the keys to the American transportation sector to China, given Beijing’s near-monopoly on rare-earth elements like neodymium and dysprosium, which are used in the high-output motors of most electric vehicles. ... manager at a state-owned rare-earth enterprise based in Ganzhou: “The new company will enforce stricter rules on the production quantity as well as the export volume of rare earths, which may also drive up prices.” In May, the International Energy Agency reported that an electric-vehicle motor requires “upwards of 1 kilogram,” or more than 2 pounds, of rare-earth...

he name “cobalt” comes from the German word kobold, which translates as “goblin” or “evil spirit.” When sixteenth-century miners in Saxony discovered the metal, they thought they had stumbled upon silver, yet it was later revealed that the ores were poor in metals that were known at the time. Upon smelting, the ore (where cobalt is twinned with arsenic, resulting in cobalt arsenide) was found to produce poisonous fumes and became known for causing “mischievous effects”1 upon miners’ health. Then, as now, the element had a dubious reputation.2 Although once it was feared for its toxic health effects,3 today the...

Long before the Biden administration came to be, and President Joe Biden pushed green energy credits in his Build Back Better spending plan this year, Hunter Biden helped grease the wheels for a Chinese business to buy up key rare-earth minerals used in batteries for electric vehicles. The New York Times reported Saturday that Hunter Biden was part owner in an investment firm that was involved in a Chinese conglomerate's $3.8 billion purchase of one of the world's largest cobalt deposits in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Biden's spending package passed the House on Friday night and it plans to...

Hunter Biden’s investment firm helped broker a 2016 deal that gave a Chinese state-backed company control of a massive African mine rich in cobalt — a mineral essential for the production of electric car batteries. The deal, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon during the 2020 presidential campaign, was spotlighted by the New York Times Saturday as Congress inches closer to approving President Biden’s $2 trillion social spending plan, which earmarks billions of dollars to promote electric vehicles. In 2016, an investment firm founded by Hunter Biden with several Chinese partners was cut into a complex $3.8 billion transaction...

An investment firm that counts Hunter Biden among its founders helped a Chinese company purchase one of the world’s most lucrative cobalt mines from an American company, according to a report by The New York Times. Biden established the firm Bohai Harvest RST (BHR) Equity Investment Fund Management Company with two other Americans and some Chinese partners in 2013. The American members controlled 30 percent of the Shanghai-based operation and served on the board. The company notably completed a deal in 2016 that saw a Congo cobalt and copper mine transfer from American company Freeport-McMoRan to Chinese outfit China Molybdenum...