Charging ahead or running low?
Earlier this month, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry to three men who were one after the other pivotal for the development of lithium-ion batteries, the lightweight, rechargeable batteries that are at the heart of modern life, powering everything from mobile phones to laptops and electrical cars.
“These men have laid the foundation of a wireless, fossil-fuel-free society, and are of the greatest benefit to humankind,” the Academy declared.
The three elderly men, John B Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino, playfully testing new materials more than 30 years ago, helped make batteries lighter, more powerful and more efficiently chargeable. It is their personal triumph that so far no better way has been found to store energy in a meaningful way.
Yet it is worrying too. In a world determined to avoid climatic Armageddon by switching to renewable power and battery-driven transport, exponential growth of battery production may lead to a scramble for raw materials, a race for production capacity and a growing burden of new environmental hazards.
While the three men were driven not by private gain but by scientific curiosity,...