Net zero vs net extraction: Are we just shifting the environmental burden?

The clean energy transition is essential for the future of the world. Electric vehicles produce 60 to 90% fewer lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than internal combustion engine powered vehicles. Battery storage is enabling renewable penetration at a pace that was unimaginable a decade ago and the carbon trajectory is improving. Net zero in practice seems painful but directionally correct.

However, this framing is incomplete. The material intensity needed to successfully transition to net zero, presents a category of environmental harm that is not always accounted for in carbon footprints reports that the governments or corporations are necessarily focussing on. The drive towards net zero by the global community has a structural paradox; in reducing emissions we may be shifting other forms of environmental harm out of view.

What does Shifting the Burden Mean?

Burden shifting refers to reducing environmental impact of one category causing increase in another; or reducing harm in one geography while concentrating it in another. On both dimensions, the evidence of burden shifting of the lithium-ion supply chain is evident and should not be ignored.

For instance, higher nickel usage in batteries is an engineering decision that allows batteries to be of high energy density. Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of laterite nickel for battery grade nickel supply. This nickel is processed through furnaces and carries a carbon intensity of 60 to 120tCO₂e per tonne. In contrast, Canadian and Russian sulfide deposits carry a lower footprint of 10 to 17tCO₂e per tonne. Thus, the decision to use the former was not environmentally neutral.

Lithium tells a different version of this story. Lithium brine extraction across the South American Triangle (where the Atacama desert is located) consumes up to 20 cubic meters of water per tonne of lithium carbonate putting acute stress on these already water-stressed locations.

Hardrock spodumene mining generates up to 17.1 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of lithium hydroxide produced versus 5.7 tonnes for brine. While neither is a clean option at the volumes being demanded, there are trade-offs. These trade-offs are borne by communities like andean indigenous groups, Indonesian coastal ecosystems, Congolese cobalt miners who are not the primary beneficiaries of clean energy.

The Limitations of the Net-Zero Lens

“Environmental burden” is largely being viewed in carbon terms. The IEA’s net zero scenarios, corporate sustainability, and climate targets are all structured around greenhouse gas emissions as the primary metric of environmental performance. This is understandable since climate change is an urgent threat to civilization and that is what is driving the transition. However, this lens leaves a systemic blindspot.

A battery electric vehicle, that is powered by a battery with primary nickel from Indonesia originally, versus the same vehicle with recycled or even sulfide sourced nickel has a materially different environment profile. There is a modest but real carbon difference as well as a difference in water consumption, land transformation, biodiversity loss and human health impact and yet much of this does not appear in the lifecycle greenhouse gases figure of sustainable reporting.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that reaching net zero emissions by 2050 will require 6 times the current volume of mineral extraction. The energy sector now accounts for 85% of the total demand growth across battery materials. Lithium demand rose 30% in 2024, and nickel, cobalt, graphite all grew between 6 to 8%. These are not marginal increases. They are the foundation of a new era of extraction, largely built without much scrutiny of the environmental costs at source.

The Flipside of this Argument

Even with the extraction burden accounted for, electrification still produces a better environmental outcome alternative. Fossil fuel usage carries its own wealth of issues impacting water, land and public health harm but it happens over a period of time rather than so quite so visibility at the point of extraction. Between continued fossil dependence and energy transition, transition to renewables remains the better pathway by far.

The problem however is that this becomes the end of the conversation rather than complete environmental harm mitigation. It does not resolve the question of whether the transition architecture is distributing its costs fairly, measuring impacts carefully and always pursuing the lowest impact paths.

What can the World Do?

The answer is not to abandon the transition but to expand the frame in which the transition is evaluated. Life cycle assessments that address water stress, land use, biodiversity impact, human toxicity should be considered in corporate/ regulatory reporting.

We must also acknowledge that some burden shifting is unavoidable. For example, to improve the ESG statistics, the industry made the decision to switch from cobalt-heavy to nickel-rich chemistries. It reduced exposure to mining risks in the Democratic Republic of Congo. However, it also simultaneously shifted the burden through dependence on higher-carbon emissions in nickel processing.

Research suggests the nickel extraction from recycling sources could reduce global warming potentially, by over 80% compared to conventional virgin extraction. The IEA similarly reports that recycled nickel, cobalt and lithium incur an average of 80% fewer greenhouse gas emissions compared to primary mining.

In the current scenario, however, even with processing end of life batteries and recovering materials that are already above ground, the burden still lies with primary mining. There is a gap between what responsible recycling can achieve and what traditional mining supply chains are required to deliver. Recycling can help address this gap, but it cannot solve it on its own; as it needs voluntary market signal, implementation of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) mandates and green procurement standards to scale.

There is little question if net zero is worth pursuing. The more important question is whether it is being built on a foundation of shifted burdens that will require its own reckoning eventually; and whether the industry will wait to address these trade-offs made or account for it now.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those held by pv magazine.

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