Your 2030 EV is Parked at the Bottom of the Pacific Ocean Right Now

A seabed nodule exploration ship over the Clarion-Clipperton Zone of the Pacific Ocean

A big issue for humanity and the biosphere is where we’re going to get materials for the cleantech future — in particular, where we’re going to get the metals to make batteries and connectors for more than a billion electric vehicles, as we set about replacing the existing fossil-fueled car, bus, and truck fleets. A big part of the answer will hopefully be: From the seafloor.

A polymetallic nodule, composed of about 31% manganese, 7% iron, 1.4% nickel, 1.2% copper, and 0.17% cobalt. The International Seabed Authority has estimated that about 21 billion metric tons of polymetallic nodules sit within the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a 4.5 million square km area of abyssal plain between Hawaii and Mexico, where the nodules have been sitting and peacefully accreting metals from ambient seawater, growing thicker at the rate of a few tens of mm per million years for a very, very long time.

I wrote this piece for Deutsche Welle Online (click on the link!) briefly explaining why harvesting polymetallic nodules from the ocean floor makes eminent sense from an environmental point-of-view: It will be far less ecologically costly and less greenhouse-gas-emissions intensive than obtaining the same metals via land-based mining, as an assessment comparing seafloor nodule harvesting and land-based mining has shown.

During the pandemic, more people than ever are relying on delivery services. Over the past several years, DHL, the world’s biggest delivery service, has developed its own line of fully electric delivery vans; the company is determined to reduce its carbon footprint. But if the whole world’s car, van, bus, and truck fleets are to go electric, we will need a big increase in key metals like nickel, copper, and cobalt to manufacture batteries and connectors. That’s why deep-sea polymetallic nodule harvesting will be crucial to a cleantech future

Feel free to post this Medium.com piece or my dw.com article on your Facebook or Twitter feeds. Why should you bother? You should bother because it’s high time to get serious about a rapid global cleantech transition, and that means, among many other things, that it’s high time to get on with seafloor polymetallic nodule harvesting. Posting information about real engineering solutions to the grand challenge of avoiding climate catastrophe helps spread hope, and helps us build the level of energy and determination we will need in order to rise to the challenge.

A polymetallic nodule retrieved from the seabed in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, which is in international waters between Hawaii and Mexico, by the Vancouver, Canada-based company Deep Green Metals Ltd.