Energy Independence Day, Part 1
For the renewable energy industry in the United States, the new administration brought with it hope: hope for a voice in the country’s energy policy, hope for incentives that support the growth of renewables, and hope that the federal government’s focus on clean energy infrastructure will bring states slow to encourage renewables into the fold.
But hope is not enough. Neither are policy, incentives, and a shared will. Meeting the President’s energy independence and climate change goals will take something a whole lot more basic. And without it, even a move to 100% clean energy won’t result in true independence.
Energy independence is not just about producing and storing energy, but also about having some modicum of control over the means to produce and store energy. The clean energy industry is learning this the hard way.
The oil and gas industry likes to claim it has made America energy independent by producing energy using on- and off-shore reserves and exploiting less-accessible reserves reached through fracking. It produces so much energy that the United States is now a net energy exporter, but what is the value of energy independence if it results in climate change? Carbon-based energy independence leaves America vulnerable to forces much larger and more chaotic than global markets. The United States will never be energy independent while we depend on dirty energy.
Challenges to energy independence
The solar industry may have limitless access to its input—sunshine—but it is far from independent when it comes to the means of production. The U.S. controls very little of the materials and manufacturing facilities that make the solar panels, inverters, and steel mounting or tracking hardware in a solar PV system.
With almost half of the global supply of the polysilicon that is used to make solar cells coming from one region of China, 45% comes from Xinjiang Province, and another 35% coming from other regions of China, the industry is vulnerable to supply limits. The issue is not just that China’s support of its solar industry has pushed down global prices and driven foreign competitors from the market, or that China’s rapid scaling of its solar industry is consuming much of the output, but—most concerningly—there is increasing evidence that China may have built its dominance using forced labor. The United States has dipped its toes in the roiling political waters by banning imports from one supplier that is alleged to use forced labor, and the industry is scrambling to develop protocols to verify supply chain integrity.
The energy storage industry faces similar issues: little of the lithium and the cobalt used in lithium-ion batteries comes from the U.S. or even from friendly countries. Globally, the largest lithium reserves are in Bolivia, Argentina, Chile and Australia, though Australia leads production. While production is being ramped up quickly—so quickly that prices are taking a hit—the United States only produces lithium in one place: a brine operation in Nevada. This is why energy storage innovation is critical.
The solar industry may have limitless access to its input—sunshine—but it is far from independent when it comes to the means of production. The U.S. controls very little of the materials and manufacturing facilities that make the solar panels, inverters, and steel mounting or tracking hardware in a solar PV system.
But Australia’s friendly and stable, so concerns about the lithium supply chain are not as great as concerns about cobalt’s supply chain. About 95,000 of the 140,000 metric tons of cobalt produced globally comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, which also has more than half of the world’s known accessible deposits. When it comes to ethical supply chains, DRC is about as far from Australia as can be. It is not stable, its mines are alleged to have a range of human rights abuses, and on top of that, China has a near monopoly on refining DRC’s cobalt, again leaving the United States with little to no supply chain autonomy.
There is no quick fix here. It will take years for the U.S. to develop any significant sources of polysilicon, lithium and cobalt, and it may never get close to supplying its own needs. This means that the U.S. clean energy industry also needs to diversify not only where it gets its inputs from today but also what materials it needs.
But there are other ways to increase energy independence.
Materials-based energy storage innovation
Energy storage innovation—Enzinc’s reason for existing—means looking at alternative battery chemistries that leverage metals other than lithium, metals such as iron, lead, zinc and vanadium. The batteries being developed may not be suited for every application, for example, both iron and vanadium are used in bulky flow batteries which may work well in stationary applications such as deployment at a utility-scale solar plant but will never be used for electric vehicles.
Zinc stands alone in energy storage innovation. It occupies the ideal position in the Venn diagram of the dream battery: it’s mined in the U.S., it’s plentiful, it’s inexpensive, it’s not prone to thermal runaway, it’s fully recyclable, and it can be used to make energy-dense batteries. While not quite the same energy density as lithium-ion batteries, without the need for thermal management systems and protective casings, it’s a serious contender for all mobility applications like Urban Electric Vehicles, that is, anything except the longest-distance vehicles.
Ultimately, it’s unlikely that the U.S. will develop, or even want to develop, complete independence all the way back to materials extraction. However, today all of our clean energy eggs are in other countries’ baskets, leaving the industry at risk. We will be stronger the sooner we both support U.S. manufacturing and develop new clean energy technologies that have a supply chain that starts in our own backyard.