Monday evening, at the Port of Montreal, a fire broke out in a container that was storing 15,000 kilograms of lithium batteries. The city issued a lockdown notice at 7:06 PM. Residents of the Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough were told that it was “important to stay indoors, close doors, windows and ventilation systems for (their) safety.” The notice remained in effect until 10:57 PM when they ended the lockdown, assuring the public it was issued as a “precaution,” that the fire was now “under control,” even though the “operation could still take a few more hours,” and that “tests (had) confirmed that any danger to public health and safety (had) been ruled out.”
That was some quick population health testing.
This airborne toxic event is a reminder that even though the Liberals have given lithium the green light as a “key material in the renewable energy transition,” lithium is anything but green. Unfortunately, many Canadians who want to help the environment now believe that electric vehicles and the lithium batteries that power them, are the answer.
In a scene in Don Delilo’s “White Noise” the main character, Jack, and his son Heinrich are driving in their car as it starts to rain. The 14 year-old tells his father, “It’s going to rain tonight.” The father responds, “It’s raining now.” The son responds, “The radio said tonight.” His father retorts, “Look at the windshield. Is that rain or isn’t it?” to which the son responds, “I’m only telling you what they said.” The father replies, “Just because it’s on the radio doesn’t mean we have to suspend belief in the evidence of our senses.” Likewise, it’s time Canadians stopped trusting the Liberal government to give them accurate information about the harmful effects of lithium batteries and started looking out their windshields.
Lithium is a soft silvery-white metal derived from a mineral unlike other alkali metals which were found in plant material. Its name is Greek for “stone.” It has no “known biological role” and is “toxic, except in small doses” — a strange choice for a green transition. Nonetheless, lithium is present in many everyday items we use, such as the rechargeable batteries in our smartphones, laptops, energy grids, and electric vehicles. It’s everywhere.
Despite our common use of lithium, if it’s physically-damaged or gets too hot, it catches fire. Lithium is known to burn hot and fast and is notoriously hard to extinguish, as we saw in the Port of Montreal yesterday where firefighters struggled for hours to extinguish a fire in one container.
Worse, the burning of lithium can release toxic gases into the environment, including hydrogen fluoride gas, which even at low levels “can irritate the eyes, nose, and respiratory tract” while “breathing in hydrogen fluoride at high levels or in combination with skin contact can cause death from an irregular heartbeat or from fluid buildup in the lungs.” I am so glad the City of Montreal has determined everyone is OK, though. Like Heinrich, I guess we should all just ignore the heavy, low, ominous ash-grey clouds that wafted through the borough of Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve this week, like Stephen King’s The Mist.
Despite the Liberal’s full support of the metal as a green alternative to fossil fuels, as evidenced by their battery plant subsidies and their carbon tax, the impact of mining lithium for EV’s isn’t all sunny ways either. The extraction of lithium requires an inordinate amount of water — “It takes 682 times more water to extract one tonne of lithium versus one tonne of sodium,” and, “for every tonne of mined lithium, 15 tonnes of CO2 are emitted into the air,” meaning the extraction process is not CO2-free.
Lithium mining can also disrupt ecosystems. In 2016, in Tibet, a toxic chemical leak from a lithium mine poisoned the Lichu river. Workers in these mines, which sometimes includes children, work in dangerous conditions. Even recycling lithium batteries can generate large amounts of harmful emissions.
The presence of lithium batteries on planes has also become a concern, so much so that flight attendants and pilots are worried that they will catch on fire and fill the cabin with smoke.
One of the most forgotten considerations in determining whether lithium batteries in EVs are more environmentally-friendly is the question of which energy source is being used to charge the batteries. If you’re in a province that enjoys hydro, wind, or solar power, it’s cleaner, yes, but that’s only true of a handful of provinces in Canada, and not for their entire energy grids. It is questionable whether the lifecycle of extraction to disposal of lithium is actually more environmentally-friendly than other sources of energy, and that is leaving out the social effects.
Why are the Liberals so gung-ho on a metal that can produce an airborne toxic event, when other countries, including the U.S., are beginning to focus on newer, less toxic, and less flammable technologies such as sodium-ion batteries? The science of energy storage is always improving. Shouldn’t we be keeping up?
Knowing that lithium is toxic, finite, and not as environmentally-friendly as originally assumed, why isn’t this government interested in newer technologies? Is it pure ignorance, in which case they can just do the research that I did? Or is there some other reason we don’t know about? It’s as if Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault hasn’t updated his knowledge on lithium since 2001, when he was rescued from the CN tower in an orange jumper. No matter what the Liberals on the radio are telling us, Canadians need to remember to keep looking out the windshield if they are truly concerned about saving the environment.
National Post