Are EVs Really Green?

Fossil fuel power is being replaced by renewable energy over the first half of the 21st century, and lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are seen as a future major technology in this. Batteries can be non-rechargeable primary batteries or secondary rechargeable storage batteries. Most LIBs can be recharged many times until they reach their end of life. LIBs are considered superior to some properties, such as high-performance batteries in applications with high energy density, long cycle life, and fast charging. LIBs have been applied in smartphones, electric vehicles (EVs), and other applications requiring such characteristics. Due to the close relationship between these advantages, LIBs have been globally announced by governments as an important technology for a sustainable future global community. However, with increasing demand for LIBs, public concern has arisen over sustainability issues like land destruction and resource depletion caused by LIBs. In this essay, I would stress "our responsibility for inheriting our natural resources without disturbing the environment". Besides, the current lithium technology is far from sustainable in the genuine sense, meaning that the process involved in the lithium mining process severely disturbs the environment, and we are supposed to consider the limit of the number of natural resources, with the risk of catching fire during the mining process. Thus, we must deem our current LIBs a temporary solution, rather than a substitute for fossil fuels. 

Lithium Mining and Environmental Effects 

In 2023, world reserves of lithium totaled an estimated 28 million tons. Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile contain most of the world's lithium reserves in the Lithium Triangle of South America. However, development for mining in the area has caused meaningful environmental damage and water depletion. 

Extracting lithium requires a lot of water as well. Lithium within the brine mineralization of Atacama and other salt flats is extracted from the salt crust through brine evaporation ponds. People pump salty groundwater through wells, spread it across evaporation ponds, and allow it to evaporate over months to years, which concentrates the lithium salts until people can purify them through chemical precipitation and solvent extraction. The process consumes a large amount of water and energy, although some alternatives, such as ion-exchange systems and solar-powered evaporators, are still not suitable for large-scale production. For each ton of lithium carbonate taken from within the Atacama Salt Flat in Chile, 500,000 gallons (‚àº1,900,000 liters) of water are used. A typical US household uses roughly 300 gallons of water each day. Therefore, 500,000 gallons would supply a household for over 4 years if only this amount were used. This is like the volume inside an Olympic-sized swimming pool (500,000 to 660,000 gallons). It shows the high-water footprint of lithium extraction. This depletes local aquifers in addition to degrading soil, deforesting, and leaking toxic chemicals, harming local ecosystems and human communities. According to academic research out of Chile, the Atacama Salt Lake is sinking one to two centimeters on average annually, due to lithium brine extraction. Lithium extraction is causing a decline of up to 2 cm a year in the Atacama Salt Lake, with the subsequent subsidence of land caused by the loss of groundwater. This sinking can lead to the destruction of natural habitats, unique flora and fauna; to loss of landscape structure and wetland, hurting biodiversity; to hurt indigenous populations' ways of life, too. More sensitive to soil salinization, in addition to toxic contaminant leaching, and eventual ecosystem collapse. 

Sinking is a clear, very visible problem. It is hard to replace aquifers and soil. Local waters and ecosystems are irreparably changed once the aquifers and structures are gone. Thus, while lithium mining creates a different kind of environmental issue than fossil fuel pollution, the question is more about whether the "carbon emissions reduction" from lithium mining is worth the environmental cost. 

Surging demand for lithium and limited supply 

With rising EV penetration comes an increase in demand for lithium, as the material is required to make battery packs. Lithium-ion batteries are used in all passenger EVs, all commercial EV fleets, and individual public transport buses due to their relatively high energy density and ability to be recharged. EV batteries have lithium. Usually, a battery pack has 10-20 kg or 22-44 lb. In 2024, people extracted over 70% of lithium to manufacture batteries, including much of that for electric vehicles (EVs). Industry analysts indicate that this trend could deplete lithium reserves sooner than expected, with possible future supply chain disruptions and high prices. This grew fast, so the lithium carbonate price fluctuated. The 2020 global price came to about US$6,000 per metric ton. Because supply was constrained in 2022, prices soared to $70,000 per ton. In 2025, after the capacity to produce increased and the prices suddenly increased in the past, prices lowered to $18,000 to $26,000 per ton, depending on region and grade, when compared to historic levels. This is three to four times as much as five years prior. 

Because of this, research is being performed on lithium recycling and lithium recovery from dead batteries, but currently, lithium recycling is limited and inefficient. The lithium recycling industry is in the early stages of growth as of 2025, with an estimated 10%-12% of total end-of-life lithium-ion batteries recycled globally. However, most batteries are disposed of in landfills or partially recovered. Battery recycling methods involve pyrometallurgical (high-temperature smelting), hydrometallurgical (wet chemical extraction), and direct physical reconditioning (mechanical recycling) techniques. Lithium and other metals have a potentially recoverable range of 60 to 80%. Recycling lacks the economic and technical efficiency for mass application currently. Research and pilot projects exist. Recycled lithium of battery-grade quality still represents only a small fraction of lithium-using industries. Recycling is unlikely to greatly supplant primary lithium supply in the short term. Therefore, I argue that it is important to establish a 'battery recycling system' rather than securing lithium ores. Although a lithium shortage does not create an emergency in the short term, the long-term solution for a range of issues related to sustainable batteries must include efficient recycling and alternative chemical systems. 

Exploring alternative battery technology: sodium ion, solid battery, magnesium battery 

Other battery technologies are being investigated due to potential future limits on lithium supply, including sodium-ion, solid-state, and magnesium-ion batteries. 

Compared with lithium, sodium is more abundant in supply and recycling, and disposal presents lower environmental concerns. 

Sodium exists as the sixth most abundant element on Earth, like sodium chloride, and people obtain it from such sources with more ease using desalination and electrolysis than they extract it from its minerals. Lithium is often extracted using energy-intensive methods like evaporation ponds. These ponds sit in deserts. They use aquifer water. This water source depletion harms ecosystems in the region. 

While extracting sodium degrades soil and contaminates water less than lithium because mining techniques intrude less and processes demand fewer chemicals, lithium mining degrades landscapes meaningfully with toxic waste. Sodium exists in large amounts in seawater. It exists as sodium chloride, also known as common table salt, NaCl. Often, it is extracted from seawater by electrolysis. 

Sodium extraction is less energetically expensive and less destructive of land than other forms of mining, though without question, sodium is an environmental contaminant to the ocean. Sodium has polluted water supplies in industrial accidents or leaks and spills, making salt mining a potential environmental pollutant. sodium cyanide (NaCN)leaked from an industrial plant to a canal in the UK in 2024, killing about 90 kg of fish, for example. This shows that in the event sodium occurs in concentrated form or as a reactive species, it may be very toxic to marine or freshwater organisms. Too much sodium in the ocean hurts organisms that cannot handle salinity because it alters the salinity. As an example, in 2024, 90 kg of fish died when NaCN leaked from a plant into the Walsall Canal in the United Kingdom. 

Furthermore, commercial-scale sodium-ion batteries do not hold energy as lithium-ion batteries do. Solid-state batteries and magnesium batteries have high energy density but are more difficult and expensive to manufacture. 

Sodium-ion cells present a lower energy density with raw materials that are abundant and harmless. Solid-state and magnesium batteries may prove practical at some point in the future, despite technical and economic hurdles that remain. How long will lithium ions remain the dominant technology, or will better alternative technologies replace them? Therefore, I argue against tolerating only one technology, and investing should be outside dominant technologies too; we need to invest to investigate other options. Nonetheless, there is a risk of unexpected problems and accidents when these products are used outside laboratory conditions. 

Safety issues of lithium-ion batteries 

Lithium-ion batteries are at risk of thermal runaway, fire, and/or explosion, which in the case of lithium-ion batteries occurs whenever there is a rapid increase in the temperature of a battery cell due to a failure or abnormal event such as an electrical short, mechanical damage, excessive heating, or overcharging. In EVs, thermal runaway may occur if the following criteria are met: 

• A cell is punctured or damaged (from a collision or production) 

• An internal short circuit occurs (caused by dendrite growth or separator breakdown), 

• The battery pack overheats from either outside or inside. 

• Overcharging bypasses protection circuitry. 

  
  

If the exothermic breakdown reactions are started, they may propagate to other cells, causing a fire or explosion by producing more heat and gas. 

Electric vehicle fires are rare, but present different challenges for firefighters due to the different fire spread characteristics involved with an EV. Its battery fire suppression is difficult for several reasons: 

• Even if quenched by water, the burning battery can restart. 

• Conventional cooling water or foam can slow the spread but is often not sufficient to extinguish the internal reactions in the pack. 

  
  

The standard firefighting approach is to douse the fire with water to cool it and prevent it from re-igniting, sometimes by flooding the entire vehicle. In some cases, specialized fire blankets or dry chem agents may be used to suppress such flames, although cooling the core directly, however unlikely, could endanger surrounding people. 

In one of the first fully electric Tesla Cybertruck crashes, in Houston, Texas, in August 2024, after the vehicle struck a concrete barricade and started a fire, the fire was considered difficult to extinguish. Authorities noted that lithium-ion battery fires can burn at 2,760‚ÑÉ (5,000‚Ñâ) compared to gasoline fires burning at 815‚ÑÉ. Lithium-ion cells have high energy density, and if thermal runaway occurs, energy is released in a short time as heat and other by-products, including fire and flames. Exothermic decomposition of any electrolyte, or organic solvents mixed with flammable salts, and positive electrode materials can produce flame temperatures of 2,600℃(4,700℉), which are more than three times the maximum flame temperature of gasoline fires. Combustion of gases, producing hydrogen and methane, etc., may contribute to the heat and flame. 

As lithium-ion batteries have such high energy density, fires are difficult to extinguish and persist for long periods. Research into thermal management, solid-state cells, and fire and heat-resistant materials is being carried out with the aim of making lithium-ion cells safer, although there is no way to eliminate the problem. There is, therefore, a need for the research of alternative technology that fulfills both safe and efficient. 

Conclusion 

Lithium-ion batteries energize green technology, possessing its potential of high energy density and work efficiently. Nevertheless, the technology faces environmental criticism on account of lithium mining, depletion of the lithium resource, low recycling efficiency, and fire risk. Overcoming these barriers requires not just an efficient recycling system but also the development of alternative batteries, including sodium ion batteries, solid state batteries, and magnesium batteries, in place of just additional lithium production. The next generation of safe and sustainable batteries should not rely on a single technology as researchers work towards a safer and more sustainable energy future.