Elements of Power

Not long to wait now until everything is hunky-dory. Ed Miliband will no longer be Wallace, and will learn to eat a sandwich, Greta Thunberg will no longer be a doom-goblin and will make a (halfway, let’s not get carried away) intelligent remark, and the world will be bathed in golden light as the evil use of fossil fuels will be banished, to be replaced by the lovely, non-damaging, infinitely renewable electricity. No more pollution, no more planet-killing emissions.

Now, don’t get me wrong; it is an attractive prospect, and there is no reason not to work on the basis that this is probably where the world should be directing its scientific development. Mining coal and drilling oil are both messy, ecologically-damaging occupations. Burning them as fuel generates atmosphere-polluting gases. So why wouldn’t we move towards clean, renewable power and its necessary handmaiden, battery technology? After all, an electric vehicle doesn’t produce the same poisons as emerge from a petrol or diesel one. A heat pump doesn’t send plumes of coal or oil smoke up into the atmosphere. All very true; but unfortunately, there are other considerations which people like those I mention above seem to be able to overlook - and these considerations are very unpleasant.

In order to make the electric dream work, we need to use batteries. Battery technology is at the forefront of scientific research , and will doubtless develop in the years ahead. However, right now, the lithium-ion batteries which power so many of our devices - from mobile phones to electric vehicles - require cobalt as part of the package. Something around 70% of the world’s cobalt is mined in Congo, and conditions in the mines in that poor, benighted country are far from welcoming. Not to beat around the bush, the ‘artisanal’ mining sector is a significant part of Congo’s cobalt production, and those operations see a heavy death toll amongst the ‘creuseurs’ who scramble down unsupported, dangerous shafts into the earth to grub out the ore, armed with nothing more sophisticated than a pickaxe and shovel. Many of them are children, 10, 11, 12 years old - sent down the tunnels because it’s the only way to keep the family fed. The history of colonialism in Congo is bleak, from Leopold II, through the first half of the twentieth century, then the brutal civil war in the sixties, producing then the corrupt regime of Mobutu, and his successors.

I’ve just read a book called “the Elements of Power’, by Nicolas Niarchos (part of the Greek shipping family, and an award-winning journalist). He takes us through the developments of battery technology, and the growth of Chinese influence in the production of both batteries and EVs. It’s a murky picture, which he describes as ‘the dirtiest supply chain on earth’.

That supply chain is what we all rely on to produce our electric gadgets, and those peddling the instant green dream should be aware of it. We are all guilty, to one extent or another. Like most of the readers of this, I’ve got a smartphone, a laptop computer, a hybrid car and all the other bits of electronic wizardry that are so essential to modern life.

Do the ultra eco-sensitive ever hear in their dreams the screams of the children as the red earth suffocates them and breaks their bodies? Or do they just wake up and make another TikTok video telling us all about how clean electricity is compared with oil or coal? Yes it is, at the point of use; but there is a whole hinterland there that it seems convenient to forget.

The Elements of Power, by Nicolas Niarchos. is published by William Collins.