However, the European Commission is currently assessing a proposal by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) to classify lithium carbonate, chloride and hydroxide as dangerous for human health.
That would result in a more restrictive regulatory framework for their use at a time when the EU is aiming to be self-sufficient in electric vehicle batteries by 2025.
The proposal doesn’t ban lithium imports, but if legislated will add to costs for processors from more stringent rules controlling processing, packaging and storage.
Sigh
I have a wonderfully simple solution to alleviate the problems this’ll cause.
Go back to fossil fuels!!!!
We never went away from fossil fuels, the transition away from them is nothing but a pie in the sky pretense. Everything is dependent upon fossil fuels, quite literally everything. People who think that we can convert everything to run on renewables and just carry on with life as normal are dangerously deluded.
@Stonyground: some undoubtedly are but the leaders are simply charlatans and liars.
WE are not meant to drive: this is to get us priced and regulated off the roads so that our betters can have zil lanes and internal combustion engines.
Now wait and see how long before it’s realised that large lithium batteries in consumer premises or housing estates contain this.
“What, you want to put a 5G phone mast outside the school, just next to the 100 tonnes of brain-poison inside the incendiary bomb?
No way!”
Very soon there will be nothing left for the EC to ban – then what?
Like all the other eco legislation, this will just push the dirtiest work overseas, into countries with less stringent laws.
Top lithium producer Albemarle Corp (ALB.N) may have to shut its Langelsheim plant in Germany if the metal used in electric vehicle batteries is declared a hazardous material by the European Union, its finance chief told Reuters.
There’s an excellent chance they’ll have to shut it anyway, given there’s no current or plausible medium term future way to sustain German industries without cheap, reliable Russian gas. And even though they’re still (for now) buying Russian gas, it’s no longer cheap or reliable thanks to lockdowns and sanctions.
Idk why people aren’t screaming bloody murder about this yet – Europe is about to be deindustrialised and its jobs shipped overseas thanks to the gods of the spreadsheet headings. The massive rise in energy costs is incompatible with keeping German factories open and competitive for any length of time, they’re simply going to be eaten alive by China and the US.
The EU/UK aren’t run by serious people tho, if they were serious they’d be fracking and digging coal pronto. India is now frantically importing millions of tons of coal, in addition to stepping up its impressive domestic production, because they can see the obvious on the horizon. The Indians are serious people who are serious about not returning to poverty, we are ruled by idiot fucking spivs who imagine they can virtue signal their way out of disaster.
@Ljh
That is absolutely the intention but it is at total variance with the lies being told: milk floats are far better, cleaner, cheaper and – excuse me while it reinsert my colon, it having just prolapsed through laughing so much – that there will be plenty of available power from windmills and a perfectly adequate network of “fast chargers” as easy and convenient to use as petrol stations currently are.
Once upon a time a pal used to lecture on Safety and so on. He wanted to warn the class of the sort of problems they would undoubtedly face when the planned European Chemicals Agency was set up. So he showed them the EU rules on curvature of cucumbers.
The EU/UK aren’t run by serious people tho, if they were serious they’d be fracking and digging coal pronto
Austria’s gas bill from Russia has trebled it was reportedon the wireless this morning