Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Worlds of Lithium (A multi-sited and transnational study of transitions towards post-fossil fuel societies)
Reporting period: 2021-08-01 to 2023-01-31
Emissions reduction has emerged as a key strategy to respond to global warming. According to the latest landmark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released in October 2018, risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people will only be reduced if humans stabilise the planet's temperature by reaching 'net zero' emissions by 2050. At the forefront of strategies to reach these goals is the replacement of fossil fuel transport with a new breed of electric vehicles powered by lithium batteries. More electric vehicles mean more lithium carbonate, the commercially valuable powder used in batteries. More than half of the earth’s identified lithium deposits are found in South America’s ‘lithium triangle’: extracting it from underground brines in salt lakes is a far cheaper process than mining the hard-rock deposits found in places like Australia. This ‘cheap’ South American lithium is used in China to produce the lithium-ion batteries that power sustainable electric transport in North America, Europe and Asia. However, even if lithium-ion batteries are sustainable (because they are rechargeable), they do not last forever. The Global Economic Forum warns of a looming recycling crisis, as current infrastructure is inadequate to support a circular economy for the estimated eleven million tonnes of spent lithium batteries that will be discarded by 2030. Worlds of Lithium is a multi-sited and transnational study that empirically examines how the strategic replacement of fossil fuels with electric transport powered by lithium-ion batteries is taking place in Chile, China and Norway. The project studies how Andean landscapes and communities are being remade by lithium extraction in Chile, the largest lithium producer worldwide; how ‘smart lithium-enhanced batteries’ are part of the ecological civilization project, driven by a green growth paradigm in China, the world leader in lithium-ion battery production; and how the looming lithium- ion battery recycling crisis is being approached in Norway, likely to become the world’s first ‘zero emission’ electric vehicle country. Based on empirical research on these sites, the project creates ground-breaking conceptual tools to support, think, and document emerging collaborations for sustainability capable of powering planetary eco-responsibility.
The effective start date of the project was 1 February 2020. The PI hired the post-doc for the Chilean case in March 2020, Marina Weinberg, who started working for the project in April 2022. The PhD for the Norwegian case started in September 2020. The post-doc for the China case was hired in September 2021. The pandemic outbreak entailed some unexpected changes for the research; during the first year of the event, the biggest change was postponing the fieldwork dates for the postdoc in Chile. However, during this time, Marina Weinberg and the PI organized a series of public conference sessions on-line focusing on lithium in Chile and beyond. This activity has had a significant impact in concerned audiences, allowing to a) foster the visibility of the project within academia and beyond b) preparing the fieldwork in Chile by the consolidation of local contacts and c) generating precious audio-visual materials in Spanish and English.
In August 2021, Weinberg began 9 months of fieldwork in Chile. She pursued ethnographic research by following lithium from salt flats in the Atacama Desert to the chemical plants, and from these industrial facilities to the port. She delivered three publications and has two publications under review. In June 2022, Weinberg was invited as Keynote Speaker to three International Conferences and she also participated at brokerage events with the Colombian minister of Environment.
The pandemic outbreak has entailed major changes concerning the research in China. The postdoc Ampuero, however, has dedicated part of his time in writing about the Chinese concept of Ecological Civilization; online fieldwork has been possible with lithium market experts on Chinese markets. He was co-convenor of the EASA 2022 panel.
The PhD, Michelle Geraerts, wrote an excellent research proposal as required by the host institution supervised by the PI. From September 2021 till August 2022, Geraerts successfully conducted ethnographic research in Norway, Trondheim, following lithium-ion batteries’ innovation and recycling practices and has been back in Amsterdam since September 2022.
The PI carried out fieldwork in Chile and supported the empirical research of Weinberg, presented the project in several conferences, was invited to participated in several workshops, and coordinated the publication of a special issue, a co-edited book, and published several articles and book chapter. See https://worldsoflithium.eu/
In August 2021, Weinberg began 9 months of fieldwork in Chile. She pursued ethnographic research by following lithium from salt flats in the Atacama Desert to the chemical plants, and from these industrial facilities to the port. She delivered three publications and has two publications under review. In June 2022, Weinberg was invited as Keynote Speaker to three International Conferences and she also participated at brokerage events with the Colombian minister of Environment.
The pandemic outbreak has entailed major changes concerning the research in China. The postdoc Ampuero, however, has dedicated part of his time in writing about the Chinese concept of Ecological Civilization; online fieldwork has been possible with lithium market experts on Chinese markets. He was co-convenor of the EASA 2022 panel.
The PhD, Michelle Geraerts, wrote an excellent research proposal as required by the host institution supervised by the PI. From September 2021 till August 2022, Geraerts successfully conducted ethnographic research in Norway, Trondheim, following lithium-ion batteries’ innovation and recycling practices and has been back in Amsterdam since September 2022.
The PI carried out fieldwork in Chile and supported the empirical research of Weinberg, presented the project in several conferences, was invited to participated in several workshops, and coordinated the publication of a special issue, a co-edited book, and published several articles and book chapter. See https://worldsoflithium.eu/
The anthropology of natural resources has mostly focused on understanding resource making as a human endeavour. Anthropologists have approached this topic in different ways: by revealing how processes of capitalist value formation of natural resources entail different regimes of commoditization; by focusing on the social production of resources as commodities and the inequalities and conflicts these give rise to; by attending to the symbolic aspects of resources as portrayed in power relations; by demonstrating the complex interplays between different meanings and value regimes at stake in the movement of resources; and by examining the material potentialities of resources beyond their status as commodities. None of this valuable scholarship has yet studied how planetary efforts to replace fossil fuels with electric energy devices entail situated processes of resource making, thus leaving unanswered the question about how these processes are enacting multiple, unequal transitions towards post-fossil fuel societies. Worlds of Lithium contributes to this scholarship by empirically studying how transitions entail both the collision and mutual interaction of different social and material realities and the configuration of multiple transitions across widely divergent transnational settings. The project is revealing how reducing CO2 emissions through the technological replacement of fossil transport with an electric one powered by lithium-ion batteries urgently requires to critically analyze and reflect about how to also reduce the (social and material) ‘omissions’ the emission reduction project itself is enacting. The growing awareness proposed by the project about the need to ‘reduce omissions’ in attempts to reduce ‘emissions’ is opening a new critical analysis about how to understand time (see Bonelli and Dorador, 2021) and space (see Weinberg and Bonelli 2021, and Weinberg, Bonelli and Ampuero 2022) within contemporary energy transitions. The project is thus revealing how promises of great milestones and decarbonization goals to be achieved by 2030, 2040, or 2050, assume univocal space-time understandings that ‘omit’ other ways of life and understanding of space and time. The project is revealing how transformations around lithium that take place in multiple presents, and in doing so, the project is decolonizing hegemonic temporalities and spatialities of energy transitions.