COBALT: LITHIUM BATTERIES SEND HUMAN RIGHTS TO EARTH AND PRICES IN A SWING
When you buy your beautiful “Green” electric cars, you are probably understanding a child exploitation asset in the Congo. An essential component of current lithium batteries is cobalt, which is a necessary component of the cathode:
The cathode is made up of a cobalt and lithium oxide, and the first material is almost exclusively extracted from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). this country has only partial control of its territory and often the important mines of precious materials are in the hands of warlords who use, or allow the use, of the exploitation of the workforce beyond any respect for human rights with a extensive use of child labor. The violation of the foundations of labor is so profound that even China , the largest buyer of Congolese cobalt, recently declared that it will stop purchasing from small producers, who often produce with heavy exploitation of workers. On the contrary, Tesla and other American companies have reached an agreement with the giant Glencore, despite the fact that this is being accused of failing to respect workers' rights. Now some of these companies, from Apple to Tesla to Dell, are in danger of going to court for their behavior.
However, cobalt also presents market challenges. Its price has often been linked more to the expectations of success of electric cars than to the actual rare earth market.
After a price boom in 2018, with a peak that had reached four times the starting prices, there was less interest, also due to the slowness in the introduction of electric mobility, slowed down by economic and political reasons.
However, on the sprint of Biden's promise of one million more jobs in new mobility, linked to the complete, or nearly complete electrification of transportation in the US, it is pushing the price of cobalt back up. It is not yet a question of an increase in demand, but of expectation of demand, therefore of speculation. We can expect, soon, a further increase in prices therefore, despite the problems of human rights and a demand that has not yet exploded. But beware: the new lithium metal or carbon nanotube batteries exclude the use of cobalt, which must then be completely recycled, so we are careful not to lose the pens.
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The article COBALT: LITHIUM BATTERIES SEND HUMAN RIGHTS TO THE GROUND AND SWING PRICES comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/cobalto-le-batterie-al-litio-mandano-i-diritti-umani-a-terra-ed-i-prezzi-in-altalena/ on Sun, 24 Jan 2021 16:16:06 +0000.