Sustainability Paradox: The Price of Electric Vehicles Batteries to the Ocean's Deepsea Floor

By: Ken Fowler

The prospect of deepsea mining provides a predicament for environmental activists and policymakers globally. It has largely been accepted that a transition from gas to electric vehicles would help decrease the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Despite this fewer than one percent of vehicles on the road today are electric vehicles. Part of this disparity is that current gas vehicles won’t reach the end of their lives for well over a decade, contributing to a slow transition to electric vehicles. Additionally, electric vehicles remain out of the price range of the majority of individuals, with the average new electric vehicle in 2021 priced about $10,000 higher than the industry average (which includes both gas-powered and eclectic vehicles). The most expensive part of constructing electric vehicles is the construction of electric vehicle batteries, constructed with rare minerals that are expensive to harvest. Currently, most electric vehicle rare minerals, including lithium and colbalt, are mined in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, causing environmental degregation and human rights abuses.

The deepsea bed of the ocean contains fields on rocks that contain high concentrations of nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese. The presence of such minerals provides an alternative avenue for electric vehicle manufacturers to obtain much needed rare minerals in high quantities, providing an opportunity to make eclectic vehicles at cheaper prices and on a tight decarbonization timeline. Despite their presence, no commercial scale mining has taken place in the oceans deep seabed as of yet. The deepsea bed of the ocean is not under the jurisdiction of any single nation. Instead, it is governed by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), an entity under the United Nations. The International Seabed Authority regulates exploration in the deepsea bed, and, per its responsibility under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), needs to create regulations should any nation wish to start extractive activities within the deepsea bed. In June 2021, the Republic of Nauru wrote a letter to the Council of the International Seabed Authority indicating the intent of their national company NORI to seek approval for plans of work for exploitation in the deepsea bed. Per. section 1(15) of the 1994 Implementing Agreement to Part XI of UNCLOS, if a nation requests that the International Seabed Authority complete the adoption of rules, regulations, and procedures necessary for the exploitation in the deep seabed, the ISA must do so within two years of the request. This means that the ISA has until June 2023 to complete their exploitation regulations. The COVID-19 pandemic has restricted in-person ISA meetings, putting negotiations for exploitation regulations far behind schedule. Additionally, cries for a moratorium on deepsea mining have echoed from environmental groups, scientists, and politicians from around the world due to the uncertainties of the impact of deepsea mining on marine and coastal environments.

Many environmental advocates see this time before regulations are created, as an opportunity to halt deepsea mining before it even begins, providing hope for avoiding deepsea destruction, disruption of ecosystems, and possible negative impacts on nearby coastal communities. If deepsea mining is restricted, the minerals to create the batteries in electric vehicles will remain rare, their extraction expensive, and their consumers mostly wealthy. This catch-22 has environmental activists and policymakers stuck between two evils, the limited use of electric vehicles in the face of mounting greenhouse gas emissions from conventional gas vehicles or extraction of rare minerals from the ocean’s deepsea bed that could cause catastrophic effects across the ocean. Most concerning of all is that industry’s first commercial mining applications may begin to be filed come the June 2023 deadline. If the ISA has not completed regulations, it becomes legally ambiguous weather those applications will be conditionally approved or not and when mining could actually start. Is the mining of the deepsea a price that needs to be paid for a cleaner energy transition, as proponents of deepsea mining say, or is mining the deepsea bed too big of a risk with limited scientific data, as advocates for a moratorium on deepsea mining state? Big questions loom as June approaches, greenhouse gas emissions continue to deplete the Earth’s atmosphere, and the threat of deepsea mining to marine habitats becomes more real.