A new report released during the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Forum on Responsible Mining has revealed that the European Union’s (EU) yearly metal demand for Electric Vehicles (EV) is expected to reach 24.5 million tonnes by 2030.
The study, “Driving change not deforestation: How Europe could mitigate the negative impacts of its transport transition,” commissioned by Fern and Rainforest Foundation Norway, was carried out by researchers from the French Think-Tank négaWatt.
The researchers proposed a credible alternative pathway for the EU’s EV sector, named the CLEVER scenario, which would decrease projected deforestation by an estimated 82%, from 118,000 to 21,300 hectares.
According to the report, the minerals needed to power the EU’s demand for Electric Vehicles (EVs) will place a huge toll on the world’s forests and on communities of Indigenous Peoples, unless policymakers urgently change course.
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However, the study also showed that the apocalyptic vision of the future can be avoided.
The authors identified two main ways to limit the deforestation risk linked to future demand for EVs in the European Union these include the adoption of battery technology and new mobility measures that would slash demand for transition minerals, and also smarter sourcing strategies to help mitigate deforestation impacts.
According to Perrine Fournier, campaigner at the forest and rights group, “There is no question of whether we need a sustainable transition in the transport sector. But we need to ensure that it doesn’t come at the expense of the world’s forests and the people living in them.
“Our study suggests that when you consider the repercussions of the green transport transition on forests and rights, there is an opportunity to innovate by rethinking car use and investigating battery technologies that reduce deforestation. This would also increase Europe’s security by reducing its reliance on vulnerable supply chains.”
Main findings from the study noted that Different battery technologies require different metals, stating that in all scenarios, metals for the car body, such as steel and aluminium, make up the largest share of minerals.
However, the choice of technology strongly influences the types of battery metals needed. NMC 811 batteries rely heavily on nickel and cobalt, whereas LFP batteries use iron and phosphate.
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“Sufficiency measures reduce metal demand. The CLEVER scenario, which includes shared mobility, smaller vehicle sizes, and reduced passenger kilometres, leads to significantly lower material demand compared to the Business as Usual (BAU) scenario – a reduction of 82%.
The Report stated that the deforestation footprint of the EU’s growing EV fleet. Under the BAU scenario, EV-related mining expansion could result in 65,200 hectares of deforestation by 2050.
“If NMC 811 batteries dominate, deforestation could increase by 81% to 117,800 hectares. In contrast, switching to LFP batteries could reduce deforestation by 43% to 37,300 hectares. A CLEVER scenario, which combines sufficiency measures with LFP batteries, would decrease the deforestation footprint by 82% (compared to BAU with NMC 811) to 21,300 hectares.
This is the first time a report models the potential deforestation fuelled by future demand for EVs in the EU (through to 2050)
The report finds that a business-as-usual scenario, relying on batteries composed mostly of minerals extracted from the soil of carbon-rich ecosystems, would cause the destruction of 118,000 hectares of forests. This corresponds to 18 football fields of forest vanishing every day for the next twenty-five years.
