0:02

Hey, Climate One fans. We recently got

0:04

a listener call about our episode featuring

0:06

Senator Cory Booker from Marjory

0:08

in New Jersey. I'm calling to tell you

0:11

that I just heard the Climate One interview

0:13

with Cory Booker.

0:14

He is an outstanding, outstanding

0:17

individual. And this broadcast has

0:19

been a long time coming. Thank

0:22

you so much, Climate One, for this interview.

0:25

I'm so happy that he

0:27

was a part of the program.

0:29

We love hearing what you think about our show, good

0:31

or bad. Share your thoughts with us

0:34

by leaving a review or a rating. Email

0:37

us at greg at climate one dot org

0:40

or call and leave a voicemail. The number

0:42

is on our website, climate one dot

0:44

org. And remember, if you like the

0:46

show, share it with a friend so you can help

0:48

us get more people talking about climate.

0:51

Thanks.

0:55

This is Climate One. I'm

0:57

Arianna Brocious. Batteries

1:00

are a critical part of our transition away

1:02

from fossil fuels. From electric

1:05

vehicles to grid scale storage for

1:07

wind and solar, demand for batteries

1:09

is expected to grow 500% by 2030.

1:14

While there are some exploring new battery technologies,

1:17

for now, making lithium ion batteries

1:19

requires a lot of earth bound materials.

1:22

Lithium mines around the world are opening or

1:24

expanding.

1:25

And in the Congo, children as young

1:27

as six carry sacks of cobalt laced

1:30

rocks on their backs.

1:32

Whether in the US or abroad, the

1:34

mining industry has a bad humanitarian

1:36

and environmental track record. There

1:39

is not a country in the world with laws

1:41

sufficient to prevent significant harm

1:43

where mining happens. That's

1:46

Amy Boulanger, executive director at

1:48

the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance,

1:51

who is working to change some industry practices.

1:54

We'll hear more from her later in the episode. Part

1:56

of this supply challenge could be addressed by reusing

1:59

materials.

1:59

from batteries that have already been made. That's

2:02

what JB Straubel, founder and CEO

2:05

of Redwood Materials, hopes to accomplish.

2:07

The batteries, technically, they're 99

2:10

or more percent reusable. All

2:13

the lithium, the nickel, the copper and cobalt,

2:15

all those critical metals. Straubel is also

2:17

former chief technology officer and current

2:19

board member at Tesla.

2:21

This episode is underwritten by ClimateWorks.

2:25

Greg Dalton spoke with JB Straubel in front of

2:27

a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California,

2:31

starting with how Straubel became dedicated

2:33

to focusing on climate solutions.

2:36

It was probably a passion

2:38

for the technology and the engineering first.

2:41

That's kind of what drew me into climate

2:43

and sustainability. I had a lot of friends

2:45

in college that were

2:47

hardcore environmentalists and activists.

2:49

And

2:50

I didn't totally understand where they were coming

2:52

from initially, but I think I've kind of migrated

2:55

to really see that side of things. Initially,

2:58

for me, it was just a love for the technology

3:00

and feeling like it was the right way to

3:03

engineer systems, where you didn't

3:05

have some open-ended

3:07

waste or some constrained

3:10

material that would eventually run out.

3:12

It was very elegant. Right. So there's many different

3:14

pathways. People come through technology or

3:16

a connection to the Earth or perhaps economics

3:18

opportunity. So how have you come

3:20

to realize your environmental friends, like the

3:22

urgency that they're feeling or

3:25

they're conveying? Well,

3:26

I think it's a combination

3:29

of watching some of the effects,

3:31

basically the cumulative effects of what we're doing,

3:34

seeing the trajectory

3:36

and how difficult it is to actually change

3:39

some of these industrial systems. To

3:41

me, that really resonates and it brings

3:43

a sense of urgency to this whole problem, which

3:45

is

3:46

we can't just sort of wake

3:48

up one day and flip a switch and decide, oh,

3:50

OK, yeah, we really should stop burning fossil

3:52

fuels. Let's do that today.

3:54

It's a very pervasive,

3:56

very challenging problem and touches so

3:58

many parts of our lives. that

4:00

we need to prepare and really engineer

4:04

toward a solution

4:05

way, way ahead of time. Right, and without

4:07

that scientific or urgency,

4:10

business will go at the weight that's comfortable for

4:12

business, which is not fast

4:14

enough. Tesla's first production model, the

4:16

Roadster, used about 6,800 batteries, essentially

4:20

laptop batteries strung together. Looking

4:23

back- 6831 actually. 6831, yes. My

4:26

producer wrote that and I rounded it up. Looking

4:28

back now, how crazy does that sound?

4:32

I mean, in hindsight it

4:34

was- Or genius maybe. I don't

4:36

know about genius. Many people said it was nuts

4:38

at the time. These were laptop batteries basically

4:41

way back then. They were slightly

4:43

tuned and improved laptop batteries,

4:46

but stringing together thousands

4:48

of those at the time when laptops

4:50

were catching fire in airports and causing

4:53

other problems. Many people were skeptical

4:55

and they had some data to be skeptical.

4:58

But in the end, it turned out to be a

5:01

really quite robust solution. And as

5:03

far as I know, there's never been a Roadster fire

5:06

in the entire history of that small fleet of

5:08

cars anyway.

5:09

Right, and there's kind of an interesting narrative

5:12

of how people talked

5:15

about the company, particularly people in

5:17

the industry. So tell us about how the

5:20

auto incumbents, the giants,

5:23

kind of shifted their narrative of

5:25

Tesla from the Roadster days to today.

5:28

It was fascinating to watch. It was kind of the innovator's

5:30

dilemma played out in live

5:33

feed. In the beginning, we were completely

5:36

dismissed, almost mocked if there was any

5:38

opinion whatsoever. The Roadster

5:40

was impractical, it was unsafe, it would

5:42

never work.

5:43

I was amazed at how many people thought we were outright

5:46

lying about, we'd

5:48

say, okay, it's gonna go 200 and some

5:50

miles, 250 miles. And they'd say, yeah,

5:52

that's a lie. I'm

5:53

like, well, no, it's not, we've engineered it, it's

5:56

going to do it, we'll build it and show it. But

5:58

that's a lot.

5:59

That was interesting in the very beginning. It was

6:02

kind of

6:03

mockery, dismissal,

6:05

and that evolved over time. But

6:08

there was always this sense of- Then

6:10

there came the Model S, and you were like

6:12

a rich boy's plaything.

6:15

Yep, I mean, suddenly the Model S

6:17

was 10 times the volume or more.

6:20

One Motor Trend car of the year, it was this impeccable

6:23

safety record, had obvious data

6:26

really supporting it,

6:27

but still there were a lot of reasons why

6:29

that couldn't change the industry. It

6:31

doesn't have enough range, or what about charging,

6:33

or what about XYZ?

6:35

It was kind of a lesson of really how powerful

6:39

momentum and even maybe denial could

6:41

be for whole industries that had so

6:43

much going in their direction.

6:45

And what I remember is like, yeah, but you can't

6:47

scale. It's one thing to make 50,000 cars a year,

6:51

which not that long ago was what Tesla

6:54

was making, but making 500,000, that's a whole different

6:56

game. We've been doing

6:58

this for 100 years. We know

7:00

how to scale manufacturing, and Tesla

7:02

had some challenges. Yeah, they were almost right.

7:05

Yeah, right. There were a

7:07

couple of near-death experiences there. Well,

7:09

I mean, truly scale is enormously

7:11

difficult, and that is

7:14

another, I think, underappreciated

7:15

challenge.

7:18

If I kind of zoom out on the history

7:21

of Tesla, getting the technology

7:23

right was a relatively small percent of the problem.

7:26

It took a small team and a small

7:28

amount of resources, and then

7:30

getting scale

7:31

correct and doing that profitably was

7:34

enormously difficult.

7:35

Took 1,000 times more resources and people. And

7:38

did you think that the GMs

7:40

and Toyotas of the world would respond

7:43

faster, would change faster to

7:45

what you were doing? Oh, absolutely. We

7:48

were almost maybe idealistic internally,

7:50

and we kind of thought, oh, okay, we've really shown

7:52

them now, and this car will

7:55

move the whole industry and look at

7:57

this, and then it would be kind of, you know,

7:59

front.

7:59

When we see the reality that no

8:02

one would change and everything would kind of

8:04

continue on the same way more or less.

8:07

It's only been quite recently when due

8:09

to customer pressure and economic

8:12

pressure that

8:13

a lot of the OEMs have truly and

8:15

genuinely started shifting and changing.

8:17

What change did they get scared? I mean, you're clearly

8:19

taking away market share from BMW, Mercedes,

8:23

these premium luxury brands. Now

8:25

you're moving into the Model Y is what almost

8:27

the most best selling car in a lot of places. That's

8:30

like this a new Toyota Camry, the utilitarian

8:32

affordable vehicle for the

8:34

masses. It's an

8:35

incredible vehicle. As you said, best

8:37

selling in many different countries and regions.

8:40

I think it's the data on what customers

8:42

are choosing. The fact that that's lasting year

8:44

on year and growing, not some fad.

8:47

It's lasting through high prices of oil and

8:49

low prices of oil. That's

8:51

I think what's finally shifting is customer voice

8:54

and the customers demanding this of

8:56

other brands that they maybe are loyal

8:58

to. Right. Bloomberg has written about the

9:00

tipping point. Now we're

9:02

seeing 20% or so of new car sales in California

9:04

approaching and companies

9:06

saying they're going to stop selling gasoline

9:09

cars pretty soon, 2035. There's

9:12

no way that happens without Tesla. As

9:15

a CTO for 15 years, you were instrumental in everything

9:18

from the roaster 68, 33, 6,830 batteries

9:22

to other things. I think this has achieved

9:24

the speed and scale that is often talked about

9:26

by investor John Doar and others

9:29

that would address the climate emergency. We

9:31

need things at speed and scale and

9:33

few

9:34

companies and honestly, few

9:36

individuals have achieved speed and scale like

9:38

you and Tesla. What lessons do you

9:40

learn from that?

9:42

Well, it was definitely

9:44

difficult. That

9:46

was more difficult to do both those

9:48

things than we would have assumed in the beginning. To

9:51

make an impact on sustainability on

9:53

global climate,

9:55

you need scale, ideas

9:57

and start-up ideas.

9:59

are relatively more common, but

10:02

we need things that can scale and do

10:04

it enormously quickly

10:06

to actually make a dent on the

10:08

whole problem.

10:09

Yet the brand has also been damaged by politics,

10:12

the offensive comments of Elon

10:15

Musk recently. Why did you step down from your

10:17

possession in 2019 and then you recently

10:19

came back on the board? Well,

10:21

I mean, I love Tesla. I always have.

10:23

It has some sort of place in my heart and it really

10:26

will for us in my life.

10:27

I love the team there. I love the mission, the products.

10:30

It's awesome. It doesn't mean it's an easy place

10:33

to work. It's challenging. It

10:35

kind of needs to be successful, I think.

10:38

Part of why I decided to

10:40

leave back in 2019 and it

10:42

was an incredibly difficult personal decision,

10:45

probably the most difficult decision

10:46

business-wise in my life, was

10:49

really reflecting on what I enjoy and what

10:51

I'm good at. I love being

10:53

an entrepreneur and I love creating and building

10:55

and being an engineer, actually being

10:57

hands-on and really

10:59

tinkering and building things.

11:02

Certainly that was still possible to some degree

11:04

at Tesla, but more and more the company

11:06

needed execution at scale. It needed

11:09

vehicle deliveries. It needed sales. It needed

11:11

manufacturing around. There

11:14

were people that are more passionate about that

11:16

and frankly much better at it than me.

11:19

That's kind of a difficult thing to admit sometimes

11:22

when you're in the midst of it and especially if you've

11:24

grown in an organization to have a position

11:26

where

11:27

maybe you're managing these people or alongside

11:29

them, yet

11:31

you have to realize that, wow,

11:33

these people are really passionate

11:35

about doing the thing that I have to force myself

11:37

to do because I know it's important.

11:39

That was all part of that calculus. I

11:41

also, from a topic point of view,

11:44

really, I love learning. I wanted

11:46

to go into an adjacent,

11:48

supportive, I thought, field where I could

11:50

do something that would potentially float

11:53

all the ships and help electrification, help

11:55

sustainability more broadly using

11:57

what I'd seen and what I learned in

11:59

our struggles and some of our challenges

12:02

at Tesla.

12:03

Redwood is positioning itself as a battery

12:05

component manufacturer though it's grabbed

12:07

a lot of headlines on recycling

12:09

and so I want to start there according to

12:12

one Stanford professor 95 percent

12:14

of lithium-ion batteries currently end up in

12:16

landfill. Why is that and

12:18

how are you planning to change it?

12:20

Yeah it's it's pretty amazing and I think

12:23

largely that happens because there's no obvious

12:25

place of where people should take them.

12:28

If you think about it and you had a lithium-ion battery

12:30

today you know where would you take it? Most people

12:32

don't know so a lot of people are storing

12:34

them up. It maybe don't want to throw it in the garbage

12:37

can for those people that feel guilty they'll

12:39

put it in a box in their garage or in a drawer somewhere.

12:41

I have a box at home that goes back to the

12:43

trio. Yeah because I

12:46

don't know what to do with them because

12:49

of the batteries. That's an opportunity. All those

12:51

batteries their materials are still in there

12:53

they're still usable as

12:55

long as they get reprocessed and remanufactured.

12:58

You know batteries more complicated than a beer

13:00

bottle or paper or aluminum

13:02

there are more components far

13:05

more materials but as new battery chemistries

13:07

are developed how big a challenge is it for you

13:09

to separate all these different materials

13:11

that are because batteries are changing so quickly.

13:13

Well

13:14

that's part of I think kind of the technology

13:16

fun of it all is you know making sure our our

13:18

ways to recycle and separate

13:21

all these things can adapt.

13:22

We also get this weird look in history

13:25

of personal electronics because what is

13:27

largely being recycled is

13:29

hopefully what's worn out. So we're getting

13:31

trios and blackberries and flip phones and

13:33

things like that occasionally. We have to kind

13:35

of be relevant and applicable

13:37

to technologies that were quite old. We still

13:40

see things like nickel cadmium batteries coming in

13:42

and even lead acid batteries from huge old

13:44

devices. The reality of it is a lot more messy

13:46

than taking a brand new clean feed

13:49

stock and then doing something precise

13:51

to it. I mean I was used to working and building factories

13:54

and building automation where we had parts presented

13:57

and pristine trays and everything was perfect

13:59

and even then

13:59

Then still, a robot would have enormously

14:02

hard time picking up the part that was in

14:04

the perfect place, brand new, and putting

14:06

it in the right place on the products and not somehow

14:08

screwing it up. Here we have a barrel

14:11

full of damaged, effective, dirty

14:14

materials, and trying to automate

14:16

that is a whole different type of challenge.

14:18

Redwood Materials recently announced that after a

14:20

year-long pilot program, it was able

14:23

to recover important metals from used batteries

14:25

at a rate of more than 95%. And

14:29

last I checked, gasoline is 0% recycled.

14:33

What's so interesting, I think, about

14:35

battery recycling, and especially as it relates

14:37

to EVs, is we can imagine

14:40

this future

14:41

where you don't need to

14:43

continually extract and supply

14:45

some chemical into a whole fleet of

14:48

cars. The batteries today

14:50

might be economically 95%, but

14:53

technically they're 99% or more percent

14:55

reusable.

14:56

All the lithium, the nickel, the copper, and cobalt,

14:59

all those critical metals. What

15:01

goes into that is quite complex. We

15:03

have to invent ways to neutralize

15:05

the battery to separate out electrolyte, which

15:08

is somewhat hazardous, make sure they don't catch

15:10

fire at the wrong time in the process,

15:12

and then purify and separate each one of these metals

15:15

from each other. It is a lot harder than notionally

15:17

taking an old beer can and melting it and then

15:20

stamping it into a new beer can. You

15:22

can look at that and very clearly

15:24

say, oh, it's aluminum. It's probably going to be

15:26

aluminum in a new shape.

15:28

But batteries are a complex mixture

15:30

of chemistry and chemicals altogether.

15:33

This really is like a dream circular economy.

15:36

How does this work? 2011, I bought a Nissan

15:38

Leaf, very early EV. It

15:40

was a range of around 100 miles. It

15:42

went down 2016 or so,

15:45

timed it to, I think, I actually gave

15:47

it away to a public radio station because I didn't know what

15:49

to do with it. What would happen

15:51

to that Nissan Leaf or another used

15:54

EV, but you take it back to a dealer? How does the battery

15:56

get in your hands?

15:57

It has a lot of different pathways.

15:59

with auto-dismantlers, we

16:02

work with sometimes consumers directly.

16:04

If that's relevant, we work with service

16:06

centers, parts that might be associated

16:09

with an OEM if it's a warranty battery. A car

16:11

maker. Car maker.

16:13

It's quite complex and it's kind

16:15

of the Wild West right now because people haven't

16:17

really evolved this at scale. We're

16:19

even having to invent efficient low-cost

16:22

packaging to be able to get your

16:24

old Nissan Leaf battery back from maybe

16:26

an auto-dismantler or wrecking yard where

16:29

the battery might turn up sort of dead or

16:31

a scrap

16:32

and we need to get it from there to a recycling facility.

16:35

But I'm confident we will electrify

16:37

everything. That's where we're headed.

16:39

Every passenger vehicle, every truck,

16:42

every boat, I think, trains, it's all going

16:44

to electrify. It really has to. And

16:47

once we're in that more steady state

16:49

where everything's already been electrified, we

16:51

don't need to keep mining those materials

16:54

to make the modern version of the fleet.

16:56

You're listening to a Climate One conversation

16:59

about improving the battery supply chain.

17:02

Please help us get people talking more about climate by

17:04

giving us a rating or review. You can

17:07

do that right now from your device. You

17:09

can also help by sending a link to this episode

17:12

to a friend. On our new website,

17:14

you can create and share playlists focused

17:16

on topics including food, energy,

17:19

EVs and more.

17:21

Coming up, the critical role of

17:23

batteries in the energy transition. I

17:25

don't see how we make the world

17:28

sustainable without storage. And right

17:30

now, batteries, lithium ion batteries, largely

17:33

are the scalable economic solution

17:35

to that. That's

17:36

up next.

17:45

Creating a circular battery production process

17:48

where the materials from decommissioned batteries

17:50

are recycled to create new batteries would

17:53

be the most sustainable way to meet our energy

17:55

storage needs. But at the

17:57

moment, there simply aren't enough batteries

17:59

to restore

17:59

recycle to meet growing demand. And

18:02

the recycling process isn't anywhere near

18:04

the scale it needs to be.

18:06

So what do we do in the meantime?

18:08

Let's get back to Greg's conversation with

18:10

Redwood Materials founder and CEO, JB

18:13

Straubel.

18:14

That's the complexity of this transition is we

18:16

have to do both things. We have to both

18:19

support and realize that mining responsibly

18:22

has to happen or else we won't have a transition

18:25

to recycle. We also have to be planning

18:27

ahead and really keeping an eye toward

18:30

what does that future look like to be ready to recycle

18:32

every one of those batteries. Because it's even

18:35

the worst thing we could do is go to all this destruction

18:37

and trouble to mine it, refine it, build the product

18:39

and then throw it away. That's the worst pathway.

18:42

So Redwood Materials, your company is investing

18:44

three and a half billion dollars in a gigantic

18:46

new South Carolina manufacturing

18:49

facility that will produce enough battery

18:51

components to power a million electric

18:53

cars. What percentage of the raw

18:55

materials for those million batteries

18:58

will actually come from recycled batteries and

19:00

in what time frames? Well,

19:02

we're also building a large campus

19:04

in Northern Nevada. So we have sort of two main

19:06

facilities, Northern Nevada and South

19:08

Carolina. And as part of the materials

19:11

we make for batteries, the cathode material

19:13

or the foils that make up the

19:16

anode will target between 30

19:18

and 50 percent recycled material.

19:20

So we blend some mined material

19:23

along with the material we recycle and refine

19:26

to go into a new battery.

19:28

Now,

19:28

there's no reason it has to be blended like that,

19:31

but

19:31

that's basically the sort of balance that

19:34

we see is about the maximum rate

19:36

that we can ramp up the feedstock of recycled

19:38

material.

19:39

And so I'm thinking about a soda

19:42

bottle that's like 30 percent recycled

19:44

plastic. Will I be able to go

19:46

to an EV

19:48

and see that like the battery has

19:50

X percent recycled material? Will that be visible

19:53

to customers?

19:54

There are already some regulations

19:56

in Europe starting to happen where certain

19:59

mandates are

19:59

exist around percent recycled content

20:02

in things like a battery. I don't know if that'll

20:04

be made visible to the consumer. The

20:06

battery is generally, if it's doing its job right,

20:08

it's pretty out of sight, out of mind. It's

20:10

hugely complex. There's whole businesses that need to get started

20:13

around basically supply chain

20:15

traceability and understanding how

20:17

to really figure

20:19

out where do the materials come from.

20:22

Was it the mine that people liked or didn't like

20:24

or did it root through some country that other people

20:26

don't like? According to the Union of Concerned

20:29

Scientists, the US has only about 7%

20:31

of the global battery recycling

20:34

capacity, while China has 80%. How

20:37

can the US compete when China has such

20:40

a head start and so much lower

20:42

labor costs?

20:43

China in particular, but Asia broadly, has

20:45

been investing in this space for decades.

20:48

Very strategically, there have been consistent incentives

20:51

and consistent support from the governments in those

20:53

countries to build these industries.

20:56

The one thing that we have is

20:58

we're the consumers. We're buying these

21:00

cars. We're bringing them here. We're using them.

21:03

That is a really unique advantage.

21:06

There's an inherent benefit, an economic

21:09

benefit, an industrialization benefit to

21:11

locally reprocessing these materials once

21:14

they're

21:14

in a region.

21:16

That's what I think is really part of the toehold. It's

21:18

part of why at Redwood, we're

21:21

focused on linking recycling with the material

21:23

manufacturing.

21:25

If we just attacked material manufacturing,

21:27

we're competing head to head with China. It's

21:29

a brutal battle. I don't think it's the best battle

21:31

to fight. If you're linking recycling

21:34

of materials that are already in the region, there

21:36

I think we have a toehold and a leg up

21:39

to make this economic and to make it scale.

21:41

You're combining the recycling and the manufacturing.

21:44

According to testimony you submitted to the US Senate,

21:47

battery minerals typically travel 50,000 miles

21:50

from mine to refining to cathode production

21:53

to sell manufacturing. How do

21:55

we shorten that supply chain? Things are taken

21:57

from the global south. They go to China.

21:59

assembled in Japan, Northern Europe, come to the US,

22:02

they move like, that's just mind boggling.

22:04

It is almost a comical supply chain.

22:07

If you drew this, it would look like a joke.

22:10

It's like the joke of a supply chain you don't want.

22:13

But it's partly driven by the geology. These

22:16

minerals are scattered around in their prevalence.

22:19

Lithium is super prevalent in South America

22:21

and nickel in the Indonesian

22:23

region or Russia or parts of Canada. The

22:26

other problem is the countries that

22:28

have invested very strategically in refining

22:30

and converting them like China

22:33

and other parts of Asia. So

22:35

you kind of have a geologic spreading mixed

22:37

with centralization of refining and

22:40

manufacturing. It's all separated from the

22:42

consumer. So by the time you have the

22:44

poor consumer buying an EV in California,

22:48

this atom of lithium or nickel has traveled

22:50

all the way around the world, perhaps several times,

22:53

to really make it into that final product

22:56

before it even drives a mile. Of

22:58

course, that all has some impact that

23:01

can be somewhat negative. It contributes

23:04

to the energy payback

23:06

in an electric vehicle, which

23:08

is still very positive. I want to make

23:10

sure that's super clear. But

23:12

the reason that an electric vehicle has any

23:15

concept of energy payback, just like a solar

23:17

panel or a wind turbine or something

23:19

like that, is largely because

23:21

of the embedded energy it took to mine,

23:24

refine, move these materials around and

23:26

make the battery itself.

23:28

So some people are saying we should do more mining in

23:30

the United States. We have stronger environmental protections.

23:33

How important is it to have more mining in

23:36

the U.S.?

23:36

I think it would be great if we could do more of it

23:39

responsibly.

23:40

I think it's going to be very difficult.

23:42

We don't have excellent deposits of

23:44

some of these critical metals. We don't really

23:46

have excellent broad deposits

23:49

of nickel or cobalt. There are some, it's not

23:51

zero. That coupled with just

23:53

a very complex and expensive,

23:55

oftentimes your process to develop those

23:58

mines. So there's limits to what we can do here.

23:59

We're going to need to have get some of it overseas.

24:03

This is all moving very quickly. I've read about iron-air

24:06

batteries on the horizon and

24:08

solid-state batteries. Toyota claims to

24:10

have made progress on this front, though I'm not sure

24:12

Toyota seems to maybe be recycling some of its

24:14

announcements. What are other possible chemistries

24:18

and how close are solid-state batteries

24:20

and how could they accelerate the transition

24:22

we're talking about?

24:23

There are a lot of different possible chemical

24:26

couples to make new batteries, but

24:28

the process to mature a

24:30

battery and to really make sure it's robust

24:33

and get it to scale is very, very long. There's

24:36

a lot of companies that have struggled at this, and it's,

24:38

I think, surprised even some of the smartest people

24:40

that I know how long that can take.

24:44

I've learned to take new battery

24:46

announcements with a little bit of a grain of salt. Frankly,

24:48

we're also at a bit of a tipping point where, coming

24:51

back to the beginning of our conversation, it's almost more

24:53

about scale right now than it is

24:55

about a slightly better newfangled battery.

24:58

If I had a choice of an electric vehicle

25:00

that cost half as much or one that

25:03

went twice as far, and it's a no-brainer.

25:05

One of these would result in dramatically

25:08

greater adoption. The other one,

25:10

moderate impact. Right, and I

25:12

think this is a real trouble in the whole climate

25:14

conversation that we're sort

25:16

of have this pull toward the shiny new thing

25:18

out there rather than the

25:20

more known, maybe less sexy

25:23

thing that we need to do more of right now.

25:25

I saw a presentation recently on

25:27

solar power from outer space.

25:29

It can beam down without wires. I'm like,

25:32

yeah, sounds cool, but what about the solar

25:34

we have today that is economic? Let's

25:36

do that. It's already the cheapest source of energy.

25:39

As we're talking about electrified system, we've been talking

25:41

about electrifying mobility, but also batteries

25:43

have important applications

25:46

in homes, on the grid.

25:49

What advances are you seeing in batteries for

25:51

stationary applications?

25:54

Well,

25:54

it's vast. I mean, energy storage

25:56

and I think

25:57

electrochemical batteries are kind

25:59

of the central

25:59

technology into many,

26:02

many sustainability products.

26:04

And I don't see how we

26:06

make the world sustainable without storage.

26:09

And right now, lithium-ion batteries

26:11

largely are the scalable economic

26:13

solution to that. It

26:15

doesn't mean they'll be the only one forever. As you

26:17

said, there's new technologies coming. But

26:19

right now, this is kind of the core technology

26:22

in grid storage at the utility

26:24

scale, grid storage at the home scale,

26:27

electric vehicles. It's quite pervasive

26:30

when you really look across all these different products.

26:32

It's part of why the bottleneck

26:35

and getting enough materials to make those batteries

26:37

and having access to the batteries

26:39

at all is such a scary bottleneck to

26:41

me. When I looked at this whole transition,

26:43

I said, geez, that could

26:46

derail simultaneously a whole

26:48

bunch of different industries and slow this whole transition

26:51

down.

26:51

We saw that in solar. There

26:54

was solar prices have been going down, down, down for decades,

26:56

and then solar ticked up because of those supply

26:58

constraints. How concerned are you that this

27:00

country or even your own company will

27:02

over-invest heavily in a supply chain

27:04

based on current lithium-ion technology

27:07

only to have newer, cheaper battery chemistries

27:10

enter the market?

27:12

That one, I'm really

27:14

not worried about that one. The

27:16

timeline is so long on some products,

27:18

like a new EV, to conceive of

27:20

it, to build a model year, to ramp

27:23

it, lifetime of that product. Even

27:25

if a battery technology matured and changed,

27:28

if solid state promises everything it can

27:30

do, it'll be wonderful, but it's

27:32

relevant a product generation or two

27:34

in the future. I don't

27:36

see really any risk right now that we're

27:38

over-investing in scale on some of these

27:41

products. From every angle I look at it, we're

27:43

dramatically under-investing. Under-investing

27:46

in the supply chain, under-investing in refining, infrastructure,

27:49

products, that's what keeps me up at night.

27:52

It's not an over-investment concern. It

27:54

sounds like you're a technologist. You believe

27:56

in technology, but there's also the other

27:58

side of JB.

27:59

the human personal side, how do you feel

28:02

about the broader transition we're making? Are

28:04

we going fast enough? As you

28:06

said, I mean, I'm an optimist on the

28:08

capabilities of what technology can do.

28:10

I can see a pathway. It's kind

28:13

of frustrating to both see a pathway that

28:15

can solve things

28:17

with known technology. We don't have to invent new

28:19

physics or chemistry. You just use what we have today. We

28:22

can do it today, but at the same time,

28:24

we are not going fast enough. We're absolutely

28:26

not going fast enough. I

28:28

don't think

28:30

we maybe collectively realize how

28:33

bad it probably will get. There's so

28:35

much inertia in this system

28:37

that we're fomettling with. Or how bad it

28:39

is. 100 million Americans were under heat watches

28:41

this week. It's part of what lights the

28:43

urgency for me, is seeing

28:46

and feeling the fact that this problem

28:48

is so big. It touches every part

28:50

of our economy, really. It's not a dramatization

28:53

to say that. I think it's something we'll be grappling

28:55

with and changing and working to

28:58

solve for decades. Our

29:00

kids and our kids

29:00

are going to be working to solve and transition

29:02

around this problem. There's a handful of people

29:04

on this planet who've done a lot. Certainly, Tesla

29:07

has disrupted and changed the whole

29:09

industry. Not perfect, created

29:11

a lot of wealth, but certainly Detroit and

29:14

Tokyo are moving a lot faster, thanks to

29:16

you and your work. One of the reasons

29:18

it is going slow is there is real organized,

29:21

well-funded opposition. The International Energy

29:23

Agency, the world's foremost authority on all things

29:25

energy, recently issued a milestone

29:27

forecast saying it predicts global demand

29:30

for oil to be burned will

29:32

peak in just five years. Oil

29:34

companies are facing a shrinking

29:36

demand. You and I watched a recent

29:39

advertisement by an oil company

29:42

that associates plug-in

29:44

cars with

29:46

chains, basically enslaved,

29:48

and that driving a fossil car is

29:51

liberty and freeing.

29:53

This was part of a campaign that really

29:55

is going more directly at the companies

29:58

that you're part of, Tesla and Redwood.

29:59

saying, basically, you're enslaving

30:02

us.

30:03

Almost take that as a little bit of respect. It's

30:05

like, okay, we've finally gotten to them a

30:07

little bit. But

30:10

unfortunately, it's going to take so long

30:13

for us to reduce the

30:15

entire... Because really, the amount of oil

30:17

consumption scales with the fleet of cars,

30:20

not with the new cars sold.

30:22

A lot of times, we track our progress on EVs

30:24

against new cars sold. We're celebrating 20%,

30:26

which is huge. It's a great

30:29

milestone. But that's 20% of the

30:31

new cars going into a pool

30:33

that takes perhaps 15 years to turn

30:35

over.

30:36

So, that's the

30:39

sort of math around that. It has a much

30:41

bigger inertia to it.

30:42

But anyway, I can't imagine what's more free

30:44

though than driving an EV powered on solar

30:47

energy at your own house. I mean, to me, that's

30:49

the most free set of products

30:51

and technology you can possibly have. A

30:54

cord is linking to your own roof. It's not linking

30:56

to the Middle East or even a different

30:58

part of the US. UAW negotiations

31:01

are heating up around job

31:03

transitions to the EVs, the so-called battery

31:05

belt, the region with new battery

31:07

and EV factories in the Southeast, right to work

31:10

states, whether or not welcoming

31:12

to unions.

31:12

Tesla has been hostile to unions.

31:15

Where do you and Redwood Materials stand on worker

31:17

unions? I mean, I

31:20

think it's important to figure out how

31:22

we fairly transition.

31:25

Essentially if you look at this whole movement,

31:27

that has to happen. We have to transition a whole bunch

31:29

of people who are working on various fossil fuel

31:32

products and technologies and minerals

31:35

and somehow move all of them, they're not

31:37

retiring, move them into sustainable

31:39

industries and sustainable products. So

31:42

broadly, to me, that's sort

31:44

of probably the most key metric of

31:46

success is where and when we can do something like

31:48

that. It's hard to do because their jobs

31:51

aren't in the same regions or maybe the skill sets

31:53

are different. Very different, yeah. But

31:55

I mean, that I think is what has to happen

31:57

for success here. We can't just sort of...

32:00

say, okay, those jobs all go away and those

32:02

people won't do anything.

32:04

But the other problem is we need huge amounts

32:06

of jobs to do these new things. So

32:08

we end up spending a lot of time training and recruiting

32:11

and hiring. It's a blend of

32:13

almost vocational training, starting even in trade

32:16

schools and community colleges and universities,

32:19

because as a country, we

32:21

don't have enough of the right skills to do some of these

32:23

things. I would implore

32:26

students out there right now to really

32:28

start trying and learn a little bit more about

32:31

chemistry, electrical engineering,

32:33

some of these different disciplines

32:36

that maybe weren't as trendy over

32:38

the last few years.

32:39

Tesla is battling at least four racism-based

32:42

lawsuits, including allegations that black workers

32:44

at the company's Fremont factory

32:47

are segregated into the hardest, most dangerous

32:49

and lowest paid jobs in an area of the factory

32:51

that managers allegedly called the

32:53

plantation. I recognize

32:55

that as a board member, you won't comment on ongoing

32:58

litigation, but generally, clean tech

33:00

companies have less diverse workforces

33:03

than even fossil fuel companies, old

33:06

line auto companies. So as CEO

33:08

of Redwood Materials, what are you doing about equity

33:11

and inclusion? Well,

33:12

I think

33:14

basically working to create jobs

33:16

and to build a company that can grow, to

33:18

me, is the first mission. We have to be

33:21

a sustainable company that can actually provide

33:23

a sustainable job for someone in the

33:25

first place. I worry

33:28

about the majority of my time and then making

33:30

sure that we are focusing

33:32

on the sustainability of our overall

33:34

company. Maybe I'm

33:37

totally incorrect, but I think some of the skewing

33:40

on this might be that there aren't quite as many

33:42

manufacturing jobs in some early clean

33:44

tech companies. We're building a lot

33:46

of manufacturing, very, very

33:48

hands-on work that has to happen, especially

33:51

with manufacturing these battery components, recycling

33:53

them. So we're welcoming to

33:56

any people. In fact, frankly, right now, the challenge

33:58

is how do we find enough employees? That's

34:00

really a

34:01

fairly key challenge as we

34:04

scale this up. And I hear that same refrain

34:06

from a lot of other leaders who are launching

34:08

new battery factories or new EV factories.

34:11

You said that you don't think anyone's moving fast enough.

34:14

How can we move faster? So

34:16

much this is driven by consumer choice.

34:19

It feels both simple and hard,

34:21

but I really do think that things could

34:24

move faster if people understood

34:26

a little bit better how to make truly sustainable

34:28

choices. That leads to more products.

34:31

It leads to driving behavior of other large

34:33

companies. So I think we

34:35

need more investment, as I said before, in all these different

34:38

areas. But I'm not sure I have a magic

34:40

bullet for how to suddenly get more investment.

34:42

I can see that it's needed, but that itself

34:45

is a slow process. Yeah. We're

34:47

all clinging to the things that we know and

34:50

the things that got us to where we are.

34:53

How optimistic are you that technology

34:55

can make the change? And what other kind of changes do you

34:58

think we need? I'm incredibly

35:00

optimistic about what the technology

35:02

can do. I'm pessimistic about

35:04

the speed.

35:05

So are you pessimistic about the human part of it?

35:09

Well, I... Hmm.

35:11

It's a good question. I think, yeah,

35:13

maybe I guess that is one of the complexities.

35:16

It's the human preferences and choices and

35:18

all the complexity of changing behavior.

35:22

As we talked about earlier, this transition

35:25

will move a lot of wealth from

35:27

one company to another. It moves

35:29

jobs from one region to another. It

35:32

has political impacts. It has government

35:34

impacts. So anytime that there's

35:36

something that some technical shift

35:39

that affects people in such personal

35:41

visceral ways, it's a very complex

35:43

thing to affect. So I

35:45

guess I am a little bit concerned

35:48

about how fast all

35:50

those human complexities can work

35:53

themselves through.

35:54

Yeah. There's lots of systems we need

35:56

to change. Economy, water, food, the

35:58

system between our ears is one of the... the most challenging

36:00

systems to address. Thank

36:03

you, JB, for joining us on Climate One and

36:05

sharing your insight and stories

36:07

and really one of the true climate

36:10

heroes for your passion for all that you've disrupted

36:12

and done. Thanks, JB. Thanks, JB.

36:16

Coming up, as battery demand

36:18

grows, how can mining be done

36:21

more responsibly? We

36:23

don't need 20 years of

36:25

research and technology

36:28

to get at best practice mining. This is

36:30

not nuclear fusion. We absolutely

36:32

know already how to do mining with

36:34

less harm. That's up next.

36:45

As the demand for batteries continues to grow,

36:48

mining for the raw materials to make them will

36:51

be a necessity. Industrial

36:53

mining has had a troubled history with humanitarian

36:56

and environmental abuses. Existing

36:59

oversight and standards are insufficient

37:01

and vary widely country by country.

37:04

But Amy Boulanger, Executive Director

37:06

at the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance,

37:09

wants to change that. Well,

37:12

I definitely understand the

37:14

skepticism people bring to

37:15

this. Industrial scale mining

37:18

is inherently destructive on

37:20

a landscape. It leaves the

37:22

impacts that last not just decades,

37:25

but centuries. That's why we never use

37:27

the word sustainable. Because unless

37:29

we're doing a lot better recycling and circular

37:31

economy, it's not sustainable. But

37:34

we are in industrialized societies

37:37

using these materials every

37:39

day. And so we

37:42

are complicit in that use. And

37:44

we're talking about using it a lot more for

37:47

energy transition, for wind turbines and solar

37:49

panels and electric vehicles. And so if that's

37:51

gonna happen, we're gonna need to talk about how do we access

37:54

those materials in a fundamentally

37:56

more responsible way.

37:58

One interesting aspect of your organization. is that

38:00

it has representatives from both industry

38:02

and environmental advocacy groups. And

38:04

you've described these as having sort of six

38:07

houses of bosses. So how do

38:09

you listen to what each member or

38:11

organization wants?

38:13

So Irma is governed by these six

38:15

houses and they agreed to

38:17

sit at the table to find value together

38:20

in a system while also inherently

38:23

saying they see value in different ways. But

38:25

the opportunity moment is that that

38:28

differences can be complementary to each

38:30

other. So you've got mining

38:32

companies who are being asked to

38:35

do something very difficult, which is provide materials

38:37

that people use every day out of

38:39

the earth, like broken out of

38:41

the earth. It's really difficult to get these materials

38:44

and they're frequently in tiny quantities,

38:47

locked in rock. And a lot

38:49

of the sector knows how to do that in ways

38:52

that reduce harm, but the market

38:54

hasn't really created value for that. And our

38:56

laws haven't created value for that. So it's

38:58

about then how do their customers who

39:01

buy mined materials, which is another house in

39:03

Irma, or how do their investors, which is

39:05

another house in Irma, lean in to

39:08

create value for that. And how

39:10

those customers and investors are moved

39:13

by nonprofit environmental and social justice

39:15

groups or the communities who are most affected

39:17

or indigenous rights holders, sort of

39:20

using those tensions between them to

39:22

leverage a market for these

39:24

materials that cares more about protecting

39:27

the earth and the people who live on it.

39:28

Well, so speaking to that power of the purchaser,

39:31

seven car companies are members of your organization,

39:33

BMW, Mercedes, Ford, GM,

39:36

Tesla, Rivian and Volkswagen. Those

39:39

are some of the largest companies and we

39:41

know that a lot of those are really actively committed

39:44

to transitioning to EVs. So

39:46

how much power do they have in

39:48

determining where the materials come from

39:50

that go into the cars that they make?

39:52

It's really difficult to

39:54

trace back up a supply chain to

39:56

where the raw materials come from. And

39:59

until recently,

39:59

it really wasn't happening. You had companies

40:02

like car makers who were buying bolts,

40:04

who were buying sheet metal, they

40:07

weren't buying raw material from a mining

40:09

company. And in many cases, they wouldn't

40:11

know the mining companies who were providing the raw material

40:13

that went into the bolts or the sheet metal they bought. But

40:16

increasingly, they've grown aware that

40:19

some of the greatest harm and the risks in their

40:21

supply chain are back at that mine level

40:24

and leveraging their influence

40:26

there to expect better

40:28

performance, to expect more honesty

40:30

and transparency in the impacts

40:33

there. And then increasingly, they

40:35

are leaning in to create value

40:38

for best practices and for reduced harm.

40:41

And when we talked before this interview, you

40:43

mentioned just the simple quantity that

40:45

car makers purchase and use as opposed

40:47

to other kinds of precious

40:50

metal users like electronics or jewelry.

40:52

Can you explain just like the scale we're talking

40:54

about there?

40:55

So in Irma's earliest years, the leading

40:58

companies who were purchasing mine material

41:01

who got engaged were in the jewelry sector

41:03

first. They really saw that

41:05

there's a disconnect between trying to craft something

41:08

beautiful and something that was going to stand for love

41:10

and long term commitment. If those

41:12

materials that go into that ring,

41:15

that necklace are inherently tied

41:17

to harm. And so they really led in this

41:19

space of saying, we're going to drive

41:21

our suppliers to meet our values

41:24

and to reduce harm at the mine level. And

41:26

then you had the electronics sector coming in, particularly

41:28

when increasing attention was going

41:30

to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and

41:33

Cobalt mining there and harm there,

41:36

but also tin in Indonesia.

41:39

But they also make small things, you

41:41

know, the electronics we carry in our hand. So

41:43

to have the car makers come in and say,

41:46

we also want to leverage improved

41:50

practices that completely changed the

41:52

conversation because of the volume of what

41:54

car makers buy. They just buy

41:57

so much more. It was a really important signal

41:59

to the mining.

41:59

industry over the last couple of years that their

42:02

customer base cares about these issues

42:04

and is interested to lean in and provide support

42:06

to them to do better. So speaking of the Democratic

42:09

Republic of Congo, there are an estimated 45,000

42:11

children involved

42:14

in cobalt mining, which is just

42:16

a really horrible thing to think about. What

42:18

would be the best way to end that practice? Well,

42:22

that's a really complicated question because

42:24

in the mining sector,

42:26

there, first of all, are two different

42:28

kinds of ways and gross

42:30

generalization that mining happens. There's mining

42:33

that's done by mining companies who tend to be large

42:35

corporations. And then there's also

42:37

what's called artisanal scale mining, which might

42:40

be an individual or a family or

42:42

a small cooperative with pick and shovel. And

42:45

there are challenges in both spaces and there's

42:47

need for work in both spaces to improve

42:50

practices, but it needs really different strategies.

42:53

Where you see child labor most often

42:55

is not in the mining company, although it can

42:57

happen. And in that case, we have requirements

43:00

in our standard for how you monitor that

43:02

and how you look for young workers

43:04

because any place where income security

43:07

is a huge risk

43:09

where you've got poverty, you're going to have people incentivizing

43:12

for younger and younger people to come in and help support

43:14

their families. But those companies

43:16

have an easier way to look at papers, to look

43:18

at age and oversight. But

43:20

at the artisanal scale side, where you might have

43:22

a family trying to basically do

43:24

the subsistence farming version of mining,

43:27

where they're out with a pick and shovel, you

43:29

may have their children along with them simply because

43:31

they don't want to leave them home or alone. So

43:34

you've got kids there, you've got people hand

43:36

digging tunnels and things like that. They

43:38

may be the smallest you in that's there. So if you're

43:40

trying to get into a tight spot, you've got

43:43

children who may be lower down into holes and things

43:45

because they're smaller to get into tight spaces.

43:48

So really, I mean, how you eradicate

43:50

child labor in these spaces is really about

43:53

what kind of formalization do you have

43:55

at the artisanal scale side? Like what kinds

43:58

of support do you have for those? people to

44:01

have training, to have incentives

44:03

for their kids to be in school, for their kids

44:05

to be safe. Because while

44:07

the large scale mining companies

44:10

provide the greatest volume and

44:12

majority of the flow of our mine materials,

44:14

the greatest number of jobs actually is over on

44:16

the artisanal scale side. So people are going

44:19

to keep doing this. The question

44:21

is what support do they have for their children to

44:23

be in safe places? And what kind

44:25

of benefit sharing might be going on between

44:28

a mining company where there is one and the

44:30

government and individual

44:32

pick and shovel miners like that.

44:34

So let's get back to the work of Irma, the Initiative

44:36

for Responsible Mining Assurance. And

44:39

to give an example of how members get audited,

44:41

can you tell us about the audit that

44:43

Albemarle's lithium mine in Chile's

44:45

Saltar de Atacama recently went through?

44:48

Yes. So in the case of Albemarle

44:50

in Chile, first of all, they are the third

44:53

company to release an Irma audit report.

44:55

So while our work building the Irma standard

44:58

for responsible mining and the rules for how it's

45:00

measured started 16 years ago, it's

45:02

taken much of that time just to

45:04

get to agreement on that.

45:06

What is the shared definition of what is responsible

45:09

mining and what's a trusted way to measure

45:11

that? So Albemarle was willing

45:13

to step into that and in

45:15

part because the materials they're providing go directly

45:18

to energy transition. One

45:21

of the first things that meant for them is that the whole

45:23

process is going to be transparent. So

45:25

that means this is not secret. Most audits

45:27

are secret. They end up being between like

45:30

an end brand that we buy our stuff from and

45:32

their suppliers secretly looking

45:34

at who is the supplier, what impacts, how can

45:36

I help them do better. But in this case, we say

45:39

in order to have truthful information

45:41

that's going to be meaningful and trusted, the world

45:43

needs to be able to participate in this process from the

45:45

beginning. So Albemarle stepped into that

45:48

so they knew we say to the world, hello world.

45:50

This lithium extraction operation in Chile

45:53

is beginning an Irma audit. If

45:55

you would like to comment in any way you can,

45:58

here is the emails to the auditors. or

46:00

the WhatsApp for those who aren't using

46:02

email with easy Wi-Fi connection.

46:05

And they can comment on anything. They can comment about,

46:08

is the company responsive to our concerns?

46:10

What about noise? What about the impacts to

46:12

flamingos in the region or the

46:14

fact that the Atacama is one of the driest places

46:17

on earth? How do they respond

46:19

to indigenous rights holders who are

46:21

in this region, who are concerned with extraction

46:23

and its impact on cultural heritage and

46:25

the long-term economy after lithium extraction?

46:28

So, any are welcome to participate

46:31

in that process. Auditors are

46:33

then looking at how the company performs

46:36

over 400 different requirements. So,

46:39

and they're looking at that from their desks. They're pouring

46:41

through documents. The company has uploaded

46:43

and turned over to those auditors, but

46:45

then they go on site and they're

46:47

on site for several days. It might be a team of

46:49

four to six auditors who walk the ground, who

46:52

will talk to indigenous rights holders,

46:54

who will talk to workers, who will talk to community

46:55

members willing to speak, and

46:58

the company. And then they're using that information

47:00

to basically triangulate what are the stories

47:02

here? What can we tell that's really going on? And

47:04

then the audit report that comes out from that

47:07

is more than 100 pages long, detailing

47:09

both what the company achieves, but also

47:11

what they don't achieve. So, you can very much see

47:14

against the Irma standards, best practice

47:16

definition, how they

47:18

have their strengths and also where their challenges

47:20

are. But even as I say

47:23

that, this is early days. And so,

47:25

if you're an auditor working against the Irma system

47:28

and you go out to rural indigenous

47:30

communities in Chile and say, we

47:32

want to get your perspective, we work for Irma, of course

47:35

they're gonna go, Irma who? Like, this is

47:37

not anything I know about. Why

47:39

would I think I should talk to you? Why would I think

47:41

I'm safe to talk to you? What's gonna happen with

47:43

this information? Is there gonna be some kind of

47:45

repercussion on me for talking? So,

47:48

we know that these first audit reports

47:50

may not yet have robust community

47:53

involvement and we have to be honest contextualizing

47:56

that.

47:57

And hope that we build the trust of local communities and

47:59

not...

47:59

profit groups to feel safe. And

48:02

same of course for workers as well, to feel safe

48:04

that they can participate

48:05

and offer honest perspectives.

48:06

And we count on the companies being audited

48:08

to help us reassure

48:10

people in their region of the same. And I noticed

48:13

that looking in the list of participating

48:15

companies, I didn't see any US or Canadian

48:18

companies. And I wanted to check that that's true and ask

48:20

why that might be that those companies aren't yet

48:23

members of Irma.

48:24

So there are both US

48:27

and Canadian companies who are confidentially

48:30

involved using the Irma self-assessment tool

48:32

and preparing for independent audits. But

48:35

it's a fair question to ask why are US

48:37

and Canadian companies slower in? And

48:39

I think some of it is because there has been

48:41

a perception by some like maybe we don't

48:43

need to do this Irma audit

48:45

and review because we operate in the US and Canada.

48:48

So people are probably pretty confident we don't have

48:50

child labor or gross human rights

48:52

abuses and that probably our workers

48:54

are safe and we must be following the Clean Water

48:56

Act or the Clean Air Act if you're here in

48:58

the US. And in

49:01

fact, the US has seen 100 years

49:04

of impacts from industrial scale extraction.

49:07

The US Environmental Protection Agency

49:09

estimates that nearly half of Western

49:11

watersheds are impacted with mine

49:13

waste and the pollution that comes from

49:16

that and heavy metals that are in our

49:18

waterways. And even recent mines

49:20

have had bankruptcies and left impacts

49:22

for US taxpayers to pick up and

49:24

contamination which continues to flow onto

49:27

indigenous lands places like Nevada and

49:29

Montana, California and otherwise. And

49:31

so we know we still need to strengthen

49:34

our laws right here. In the US, we

49:36

have the 1872 mining law, which just

49:38

like its name says goes back to 1872.

49:41

It just infamously celebrated its 150th birthday. It

49:45

was passed at a time when mining was done

49:47

with a pick and shovel. It was passed

49:49

with a set of philosophies of 1872

49:52

and European descended leadership

49:54

at that time, which was to extract more

49:56

materials, move more white settlers West

49:59

and to better control

50:02

what they saw as a problem with indigenous people

50:04

in the West and to increase the power of

50:07

white settlers over indigenous people. And

50:10

so the 1872 mining law is outdated for

50:14

the values of America today,

50:16

the values of diversity, the values of cultural

50:18

heritage, the values of protecting our water,

50:21

and the multiple uses of public

50:23

lands after a mining company

50:26

leaves. Industrial extraction is

50:28

a temporary set of jobs and

50:31

we want to know that after those materials come

50:33

out, can that land be restored in some way

50:35

to provide economy and

50:37

well-being to the communities who live near. Yeah,

50:40

and I want to spend just another minute on this

50:42

because I think it's important. And there have been efforts

50:45

to update the 1872 mining

50:47

law that have not happened yet. And though

50:50

the US is often maybe

50:52

seen as a safer place, a better place to do

50:54

some of this mining. As you mentioned, there

50:56

are innumerable impacts that we've seen, including

50:59

one listeners might recall hearing about in the news,

51:01

which was the Gold King Mine spill

51:03

in 2015, where 3 million gallons

51:06

of contaminated mine runoff poured

51:08

out of a mine that was in the progress of being

51:11

cleaned up by the EPA. And it turned

51:13

the Animas River in Colorado bright orange for

51:15

a while. Again, environmentalists hoped

51:17

that would spur more effort to continue

51:20

these reforms. And I don't think we've seen significant

51:22

reforms. So what pressure can be brought

51:24

here in the US to improve the

51:27

laws we have on the books?

51:28

Well, I think first of all, people have to

51:30

understand what mining is. I mean, most

51:33

people really don't know where their stuff

51:35

comes from. If it's mined, they

51:38

don't know both the countries that it comes from,

51:40

the process that it comes from to care

51:42

about changing the laws. They have to see themselves

51:45

as connected to the

51:47

impacts from that industry and

51:50

to the people who live around that.

51:52

And most Americans, even though we live in a

51:54

large mining country, don't

51:56

feel connected to it and don't see that. You

51:59

mentioned the Gold King Mine spill. mine, that actually

52:01

was a historic mine. It's many decades

52:03

old. It was left behind as

52:06

a mess without a company left

52:08

to pick it up. So that's what you had the US

52:10

Environmental Protection Agency in there doing

52:12

that cleanup because there was no longer a company

52:15

to clean up after itself. And that's

52:17

part of why the Irma standard has requirements

52:19

in there that we're measuring against for reclamation

52:22

and closure. What's the plan even before

52:24

the mining company starts mining to

52:26

return this land into some kind

52:29

of constructive, useful, productive,

52:31

healthy state for whatever

52:33

kind of economy or biodiversity

52:36

or human settlement is around it in

52:38

the future because we're left with a legacy

52:41

of abandoned mines across the United States and

52:43

across the world right now that weren't cleaned up. 79%

52:46

of extractable lithium

52:48

in the US is within 35 miles

52:51

of indigenous reservations. The Ninth

52:53

Circuit Court just denied a bid by tribes

52:55

to block a new lithium mine at Thacker Pass

52:57

in Nevada. Do you think there's enough industry

53:00

oversight to ensure that indigenous

53:02

people won't once again bear the burden

53:04

of consequences of this kind of industrial action?

53:08

There is not enough

53:10

oversight to ensure that indigenous

53:12

people won't bear the burden of

53:14

extraction. There is not a country

53:17

in the world with laws sufficient

53:19

to prevent significant harm where

53:21

mining happens. And

53:23

you have indigenous communities who

53:26

are saying,

53:27

we're being asked to

53:30

provide our lands and

53:33

the resources under them to address

53:35

the climate crisis.

53:37

We are not ignorant of the climate crisis, but

53:40

this still looks like the same white guy

53:42

with the same briefcase and the same shovel

53:45

who arrived here 100 years

53:47

ago looking for gold and now says,

53:49

I'm looking for lithium or I'm looking

53:52

for nickel or I'm looking for cobalt. And

53:54

I'm doing so in the name of protecting the planet

53:57

from a climate crisis. It sure seems

53:59

like this is what brought us the climate crisis in the first

54:01

place. So it is a difficult

54:03

cell to these communities, and it's a particularly

54:05

difficult cell when we don't have a

54:08

lot of existing mines that we can show

54:11

have not harmed water, that their

54:13

communities are happy to have them as a neighbor.

54:15

But it doesn't have to be that

54:17

way. We don't need 20 years

54:20

of research and technology

54:23

to get at best practice mining. This is

54:25

not nuclear fusion. We absolutely

54:27

know already how to do mining with less

54:29

harm. And there are a set of companies

54:32

who are stepping into that space right now,

54:34

but they haven't had markets that valued

54:36

it that much. There was a lot of pressure for

54:39

least cost production of materials

54:42

that could be sold at the lowest cost.

54:45

I feel like part of my work is to write

54:47

a permission slip through markets to lean

54:49

in and give reward

54:51

to those geologists and

54:54

economists working in those companies who already

54:56

know how to do it better and who

54:58

often live in these communities where extraction is

55:00

happening themselves and who are

55:03

ready to go. And we need to create

55:05

a set of values that support them to do it

55:07

better.

55:08

What do you think of the idea of sacrifice zones?

55:10

Were those in power agree that this

55:13

particular place, we can allow destruction

55:15

to happen here for sort of the greater benefit?

55:18

I think there's a lot of talk about sacrifice

55:20

zones right now. I mean, I think one hard thing

55:23

is when it comes to mining, minerals are

55:25

in the ground where they are. So first of

55:27

all, you're not going to just go choose a sacrifice

55:29

zone. You're not going to say, okay, over here, no one's

55:31

living here. So this is a convenient place. I mean,

55:33

I could do that with a different kind

55:36

of manufacturing plant, for example. I'm

55:38

going to place this away from human society,

55:41

or I'm going to place this in the least biodiverse

55:43

place. Minerals are in the ground

55:45

where they are. And I haven't

55:47

heard too many people who live around those places

55:50

saying, I'm raising my hand to be a willing

55:52

participant in a sacrifice zone. In

55:55

addition, while

55:57

our soaring temperatures

55:59

and

55:59

Changing precipitation and floods

56:02

and fires of climate change

56:04

are a global experience for us all.

56:08

So is this tremendous risk moment

56:10

for biodiversity. We've

56:12

got habitats under great stress. We

56:15

have watersheds that aren't our drinking

56:17

water right now, but they might be our drinking water

56:19

in 10 years or 20 years as the planet

56:21

continues to change. We have

56:24

watersheds that span hundreds,

56:26

if not thousands, of miles or kilometers

56:29

across countries where we need that

56:31

clean water for agriculture in the future

56:33

as well. So while I agree, we

56:35

don't have time to waste in

56:37

addressing the climate crisis and we must move

56:40

off of fossil fuels saying

56:42

we will just extract lithium, cobalt

56:44

and nickel with the same disdain

56:47

and with the same carelessness that

56:49

we extracted oil and gas is not

56:52

a path you take when your planet is

56:54

already living through the climate crisis right

56:56

now, especially since we have the technology

56:58

to do it better. Writing permission

57:01

slips to say we'll just waive permit requirements

57:04

and we'll say it can be weaker. Water

57:06

laws and a planet that's already struggling right

57:08

now doesn't add up to a solution

57:11

that is really a solution. We

57:13

may be trading one problem off of another,

57:15

which is still global in nature.

57:17

You mentioned that it took 16 years to get

57:19

to the point now where these companies are submitting themselves

57:21

to some voluntary audits and beginning to do reviews

57:24

of the practices under Irma's

57:26

standards. What is your projected

57:28

timeline, if you have one, for when

57:31

we might see a significant

57:33

number of these companies participating in the

57:35

process and having sort of that tipping point

57:37

moment where really we begin to see a big shift?

57:41

We are definitely in the middle of a tipping point

57:43

moment right now.

57:45

I mean, if you and I spoke three years

57:47

ago, the Irma standard wasn't

57:49

really known. It was very much driven by

57:51

jewelry-based materials. The early

57:53

attention that came to issues like blood diamonds

57:57

and jewelry really had

57:59

stayed

57:59

around gold and diamonds and

58:03

climate change and COVID

58:05

arriving at the same time in the sense of a

58:07

global crisis, which was then a sense of

58:09

a need of global action and that

58:12

future plans should have resilience, future

58:14

plans should have environmental health and

58:16

social well-being at their core. I

58:19

mean that all of a sudden the attention was

58:21

right on to, well, what is going

58:23

to happen with wind and solar

58:25

and electric vehicles? How are we going to power

58:28

ourselves in a different way? So

58:30

while the first 15 independent audits

58:32

are happening in Irma right now, there are more than 70

58:35

companies with more than 95 mine sites

58:38

who have already registered in and started

58:40

their self-assessments that are coming over. And

58:42

they are looking at the first mines coming out

58:45

saying, okay, what happens when you're honest? What

58:47

happens when you say out of a potential 100

58:50

points in the water chapter or the waste chapter or

58:52

human rights? What happens if you only get 35%

58:56

against the best practice measure or 41% there

58:58

or 18% there? How

59:01

does the world react? Can we

59:03

tolerate hearing the truth about how

59:05

we've allowed existing practices to

59:07

do harm now, but how we want to create

59:09

incentive to reduce that harm? Because

59:12

the truth is existing mines right now are

59:14

the places where we've got existing jobs and

59:17

we have existing impacts. So

59:19

while we might be able to create a set of better

59:21

mines that are better designed and constructed

59:23

in the future, and we will because we're going to need those

59:26

materials, it will be less harm

59:28

as well to take those existing

59:30

mines and really invest in getting

59:32

efficiency out of those, getting more

59:35

materials out of those ones, keeping

59:37

jobs there where they are and ensuring those

59:39

communities who've already hosted the mining

59:41

industry for the last 100 years feel

59:44

that they get some kind of benefit sharing.

59:46

And it's not a resource curse that it really is

59:48

some kind of shared value for them and investment

59:51

in their future. And that when

59:53

that reclamation finally does need to be done

59:55

there, that it happens and it's not just

59:57

move on to the next site, which will be done better

59:59

than we do.

59:59

did 30 years ago. Last

1:00:02

June, Nauru, the smallest island nation

1:00:04

in the world, invoked a legal provision that forces

1:00:07

the hand of regulators to finalize rules for

1:00:09

deep sea mining. But the International

1:00:11

Seabed Authority missed its July 9th

1:00:13

deadline to finalize the mining code. Could

1:00:16

you give us an update on where that stands and

1:00:18

where you stand on deep sea mining?

1:00:21

The Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance

1:00:23

does not currently allow its standard

1:00:26

to be used to measure how

1:00:28

responsible would a deep sea mining operation

1:00:31

be. Foremost that's because it

1:00:33

was not written with the sea

1:00:35

in mind when it was constructed. Some 15

1:00:37

years ago, it was written thinking about

1:00:40

mining on land and it is a completely

1:00:42

different context when you take this to

1:00:44

the sea and miles down into

1:00:46

the ocean. If deep sea

1:00:49

mining is going to happen on a commercial scale,

1:00:51

it absolutely needs something like Irma

1:00:54

because existing laws and structure to protect

1:00:56

the oceans are not sufficient on their

1:00:59

own right now the same way they're not sufficient on

1:01:01

land. But at this moment

1:01:03

right now, what we do know about the ocean

1:01:05

and the seas is we know they are under tremendous stress.

1:01:08

We know they are suffering from increasing temperatures,

1:01:11

from ocean acidification, from

1:01:14

increasing pressures of different commercial and

1:01:16

military uses of the ocean and its

1:01:18

own carbon

1:01:21

sink for us, its own

1:01:23

biodiversity. And this is

1:01:25

a space where we don't know what we don't know. There

1:01:28

right now, we know it's fragile, but we don't know

1:01:30

how this industry is going to impact that.

1:01:33

We also do hear the case that if we

1:01:35

are taking some of these nodules off the

1:01:38

sea floor in some way, well,

1:01:40

it will do less harm and have fewer human rights

1:01:42

abuses than if we take them from the Congo or

1:01:44

we take them from the Atacama. But I

1:01:46

haven't heard any companies operating in the

1:01:48

Congo or the Atacama agreeing that if

1:01:50

deep sea mining goes forward, they'll opt

1:01:53

out and stop mining on land. It

1:01:55

will be both and. Obviously,

1:01:58

it will force those on land to have to... compete

1:02:01

at a different level. But I think we'll see

1:02:03

more. And I think until we feel some confidence

1:02:06

that we've got assurance of

1:02:08

best practices in place, I think we better walk

1:02:10

pretty soberly into our oceans

1:02:13

under stress.

1:02:15

We recently had Ian Urbina, founder of the

1:02:17

Outlaw Ocean Project on Climate One, and he spoke

1:02:19

about the difficulty of enforcing environmental

1:02:21

laws on the high seas. How difficult do you think

1:02:24

it would be, even if there were a set of

1:02:26

agreed-upon practices, to

1:02:28

enforce those for deep sea mining?

1:02:31

At this moment right now, it's difficult

1:02:34

to enforce best practices no matter

1:02:36

where in the world we're talking about mining.

1:02:38

What I'm doing with Irma will never replace

1:02:41

the critical role of laws in

1:02:43

government enforcing those laws and holding

1:02:45

accountability. Because I don't have that authority.

1:02:48

And when you don't have that authority, law offers

1:02:51

an awful lot of latitude for people

1:02:53

to just opt out when they don't like

1:02:55

it or when the market signals to them they just don't

1:02:57

need to do as much. And we need to send really clear

1:02:59

signals right now. The market expects that

1:03:02

if you're providing materials that are supposed to

1:03:04

be part of the climate solution, they better not be

1:03:06

adding to the problem.

1:03:07

As we wrap up here, are there any examples

1:03:10

of countries or companies that are moving in the right

1:03:12

direction when it comes to mining?

1:03:14

There's some great examples of things going well

1:03:16

right now. First of all, we don't need 20

1:03:18

years

1:03:19

of new research for

1:03:23

best practice mining. We've got companies who already

1:03:25

know how to do it. We have

1:03:27

companies who are being open. And

1:03:30

that alone is a best practice that is

1:03:32

underrated, who are being open about

1:03:34

how hard it is to get these materials out and what

1:03:36

the impacts are. So transparency itself

1:03:39

is a best practice. And

1:03:41

then that offers space for innovation

1:03:43

to come up with new ways to reduce harm.

1:03:47

There are companies who are

1:03:49

providing resources to community-based

1:03:52

environmental groups to then hire their own

1:03:55

scientists to review water

1:03:57

quality data, air quality data. negotiate

1:04:01

with a mining company. That is

1:04:03

a wonderful construct. It's happening right

1:04:05

here in the U.S. right now. It's not a

1:04:07

company buying off a community. It's a company

1:04:10

investing in basically a watchdog

1:04:12

group who has their own independent rights

1:04:14

to use those resources to be able to

1:04:16

operate on a more level playing

1:04:18

field by hiring their own PhD hydrologist

1:04:21

to look at the water data and to press companies

1:04:23

to do better. And in the places where

1:04:25

we've seen companies do that, we have some of the better

1:04:28

operating minds of any on the world.

1:04:31

Well, that's very encouraging to hear.

1:04:34

Amy Bollinger is executive director of the

1:04:36

Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance.

1:04:38

Amy, thank you so much for joining us on Climate One. Thanks

1:04:41

so much for having me.

1:04:43

On this Climate One, we've been talking about building

1:04:45

a better battery supply chain. Climate

1:04:48

One's empowering conversations connect all

1:04:50

aspects of the climate emergency. Let's

1:04:53

face it, talking about climate can be hard

1:04:55

and sometimes depressing or complicated,

1:04:58

and it is critical to address the transitions

1:05:01

we need to make in all parts of society. You

1:05:04

can help us get more people talking about climate

1:05:06

by giving us a rating or a review, or

1:05:09

sharing this episode or another with a friend.

1:05:12

On our new website, climateone.org,

1:05:14

you can create and share playlists focused

1:05:16

on specific topics. By sharing,

1:05:19

you can help people have their own deeper climate

1:05:21

conversations.

1:05:22

Greg Dalton is our host and executive producer.

1:05:25

Brad Marshalland is senior producer.

1:05:27

Managing director is Jenny Park. Austin

1:05:29

Colon is producer and editor. Megan

1:05:32

Basilia is production manager. Wensi

1:05:34

Shada is development manager. Ben Testani

1:05:36

is communications

1:05:37

manager. Our theme music was

1:05:39

composed by George Young and arranged by

1:05:41

Matt Wilcox. Gloria Duffy

1:05:44

is CEO of the Commonwealth Club of California,

1:05:46

the non-profit and non-partisan forum

1:05:48

where our program originates.

1:05:51

I'm Arianna Brocious.