Electric batteries carry a cost, too

Re: What the recent budget means for EVs, April 23

This headlong rush to electric vehicles carries significant environmental costs no one is discussing.

Canada’s goal is net zero emissions, with 60 per cent of new vehicles being EVs by 2030, which is saner than Britain’s plan to ban the sale of all petrol-consuming vehicles by 2040. And a major boost to Canada’s auto sector is always economically significant.

But no one has come out and provided a plan to dispose of the used batteries. As those of us who carefully store household batteries to take to an appropriate disposal site know, batteries are toxic and cannot just be dumped.

Furthermore, batteries consume huge amounts of important minerals of which we have only a limited supply, especially lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite and manganese.

The technology exists in Canada, as well as other countries, to extract carbon from the air and convert it back into fuel for vehicles, and there are companies already doing so. This process also results in net zero emissions, without the environmental impact of depleting valuable minerals or the need to dispose of millions of EV batteries.

Some environmentalists hate this because they do not want carbon involved in the solution to climate change.

Surely we should be pursuing all possibilities that reduce emissions and not throwing all our eggs in one seriously flawed basket. Major

financial investment in carbon recycling is in order.

The investment in the EV auto sector smacks of politics, as does ignoring technology that allows people to continue, cleanly, to drive traditional vehicles. We still get to net zero.

Victoria Andic-Whealy

St. Catharines