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Comment by zyngaro | Hacker News Reader

So basically we are transitioning from a fossil energy based world to lithium based one. Why does media never talk about the sustainability of build lithium ion batteries at large scale? Have the recycling problem been sorted out (I have a couple of lithium ion batteries and I don't know what to do about them) I also heard that lithium is very very scarce on Earth.

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It's not talked about in "the media" (at least not front page stuff) because it is not a huge problem. While "scarce" is relative, global demand until the year 2100 is estimated to be between 12 and 20 million tons, while currently known reserves are about 39 million tons. So we should be good for at least 80 years. Recycling is also a solved problem, though we'll have to build a few more factories to keep up with the increased amount.

Note that eventually, graphene based energy storage may take over anyway. Or possibly someone will invent proper hydrogen storage.

Finally, you could easily have found multiple studies by respected universities about the estimated amount of lithium on Earth, about the feasability of large scale recycling of Li-ion batteries and about transitioning into a lithium-based economy. If you are willing to take advice, reading up first before become alarmed and posting concerned comments will help a lot for your peace of mind.

What crystal ball are they using to predict the future out for 80 years? Are they making the assumption that there will be no technological paradigm shifts and demand growth will continue along current levels? Do they factor in the effects of climate change and global instability?

If you use an estimate of demand to justify increasing demand, you immediately, tautologically invalidate the estimate: the estimate did not account for your policy decisions based on itself.

If you want to know which assumptions they made, why not just read the studies and see for yourself? To be sure, predicting the future is super difficult. If we have a global thermonuclear war in 2020, we will probably not need any tons of lithium at all, what with everyone being dead. Same thing if we get hit by a really large asteroid, etc. Also if someone ever develops man-portable fusion reactors we might not need batteries at all. :)

Your point about the self fulfilling aspect of basing policy on research is well taken, though in this case the researchers used multiple scenarios for policy development, including one where lithium demand is heavily stimulated by eg subsidies on EVs and the like. That is the upper part of the range of 12-20 million tons of demand, which is still well below the lower bound of estimated reserves.

No studies were cited. I would love to see them.

The crystal ball comment is not helpful. The same argument applies to all forecasting. For instance next years budget may be invalidated by a financial crisis, a war, a new invention.

What a forecast does is provide a helpful generalization for questions like, 'can we really use Lithium batteries at that scale'. 80 years of expected availability doesn't mean we can will run out in 80 years, it does mean that in our short to medium term planning the risk of running out of lithium is low. So in the context of the question, 'should we be using lithium, as it is scarce?', the forecast is perfectly reasonably applied.

The same argument does indeed apply to all forecasting of what will happen by 2100. You can't predict what demand and supply will be 80 years in the future.

Had you changed the tone of your writing the answer would have been perfect. But thanks anyway very informative.

I love it when people make 80 year old predictions with a straight face.

Reminds me of "peak oil" when everybody was predicting us running out of oil. Today somehow that doesn't seem to concern us anymore. Some are even more concerned about over-abundance of oil (Saudi Arabia for one).

Seems like there is plenty of lithium, but mines are not keeping up with demand. Here's an interesting story from FT about Chile's lithium mines, with pictures:

https://www.ft.com/content/cde8f984-43c7-11e6-b22f-79eb4891c...

(You may need to Google for the title to bypass paywall: "Lithium: Chile’s buried treasure")

It takes time to construct new mines. When Tesla started building the gigafactory, they signed long-term contracts with companies building new mines in the US and Mexico.

Between sodium ion batteries and flow batteries, we aren't likely to end up dependent on lithium.

Sodium ion aren't really commercialized yet but the cost implications provide a whole lot of motivation to figure it out.

I've seen the media talk about the sustainability of lithium ion batteries at scale.

Hopefully, we'll be mining asteroids by the time lithium scarcity becomes a problem

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