How ‘green’ are green fuels?

THE EDITOR, Sir:

My longtime email buddy Alfred forwarded a link to the radio show on October 15, ‘Mike Campbell’s money talks’, and it can be accessed at: https://mikesmoneytalks.ca/category/mikes-content/complete-show/. It contains a clearly marked and really informative 20-minute interview with the CEO of leading Canadian technology company Nano One Materials. He has recently briefed federal government leadership during weeklong meetings in Washington and Ottawa, and the German chancellor; discussing problems surrounding batteries for electric vehicles (EVs), which all governments seem besotted with.

A major concern is how battery components such as lithium, nickel, copper, cobalt, manganese, iron, zirconium, graphite, etc, will be mined, refined, processed and purified. Governments around the world are setting deadlines for when EVs will be the only vehicles manufactured, apparently without having all the vital information and plans regarding battery manufacture.

These battery components come from several continents, with China currently leading the way in manufacture, but does not have to deal with the nimbyism that other countries experience in permitting mines, factories and related industries. There are so many hoops to jump through and hurdles to cross that the EV deadlines seem little more than pipe dreams, when listening to this very knowledgeable and professional CEO. He stresses that batteries will never replace the large semi-trucks now operated by diesel, and that carbon fuels will definitely be needed for the foreseeable future. It was so refreshing to hear someone at the top of his game affirm that fossil fuels are used in all aspects of mining, to make solar panels and components of wind farm turbines, for example.

Multitudinous, mostly mendacious, misleading media mavens canonised and beatified a stunted surly, sometimes sardonic, Swedish schoolgirl with a four-word mantra of “just follow the science”. If we, the great unwashed, had the temerity to request clarification, there were disdainful and rude accusations of being “climate-change deniers”, although nothing is further from the truth. We have been confronted with all sorts of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth by self-proclaimed environmental experts and politicians displaying differing hues of green, whose over-simplified solution is to: ‘leave all fossil fuels in the ground’. I sincerely hope your readers will spend 20 minutes listening to the inconvenient truth about EV batteries and fossil fuels, to finally put a stop to the continuous cacophony.

BERNIE SMITH

Parksville, BC

Canada