Randolph Kirchain

Sustainable Mobility: Lithium, Rare Earth Elements, and Electric Vehicles

Recognition of the importance of climate change and energy security has led to interest in electrified vehicles. Electrified vehicles contain substantial amounts of lithium and rare earth elements. There has been concern that the supplies of lithium may not be sufficient to support the development of a large scale global fleet of electric vehicles. We conducted a comprehensive analysis of the global lithium resources and compared it to an assessment of global lithium demand from 2010 to 2100 that assumes rapid and widespread adoption of electrified vehicles. We show that that even with rapid and widespread adoption of electric vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries lithium resources are sufficient to support demand until at least 2100. The future availability of rare earth elements (REEs) is of concern due to monopolistic supply conditions, environmentally unsustainable mining practices, and rapid demand growth. We evaluated potential future demand scenarios for REEs with a focus on the issue of co-mining. In the absence of efficient reuse and recycling or the development of technologies which use lower amounts of Dy and Nd, following a path consistent with stabilization of atmospheric CO2 at 450 ppm may lead to an increase in demand of more than 700 and 2,600 % for Nd and Dy, respectively, over the next 25 years.