The powerful possibilities of recycling the world's batteries | Emma Nehrenheim

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2023

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The world has plenty of clean energy. The problem is storing that energy and getting it where we need it, when we need it, says battery recycling pioneer Emma Nehrenheim. While batteries are fundamental to powering a sustainable future, their production is surprisingly harsh on the environment. She lays out the science behind a breakthrough in recycling a battery's core elements, offering a manufacturing solution that could vastly reduce the industry's environmental impact and demand for new materials from mining.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ted Audio Collective.
0:02.0	Audio Collective.
0:04.0	I'm Elise Hugh, you're listening to TED Talks Daily.
0:13.0	There are so many industries at the heart of the renewable energy transformation.
0:17.6	Wind, solar, batteries.
0:20.6	But production processes for these sources of power can still be extractive and resource heavy.
0:26.0	Battery Recycler Emma Nurenheim is changing that with a circular economy for batteries,
0:32.0	which she lays out in her talk from the TED
0:34.5	countdown summit in 2023 after a short sponsor message.
0:40.3	Like TED Talks you should check out the TED Radio Hour with NPR.
0:45.0	Stay tuned after this talk to hear a sneak peek of this week's episode.
0:51.0	So the world is going electric.
0:54.0	And batteries will do for electrification what the refrigerator did for food.
1:01.0	Because batteries will allow us to move clean energy through time and through space.
1:08.0	We don't have a problem with the But if we approach battery manufacturing the wrong way, we will end up repeating mistakes from the past.
1:27.0	Mistakes that are at the heart of the climate environmental crisis that we see today. And that's what I'm here to explain.
1:37.0	It's all about the way we are using the Earth's resources.
1:42.0	So historically and today, we have been mining oil from the Earth
1:48.2	crust with little concern to the long-term effect. And this example of how we've been approaching the fossil fuel industry
1:57.0	and how we've been dependent on it,
2:00.0	how we have been extracting oil where it's economically possible
2:05.2	refined it burned it and it ends up in the atmosphere
	...

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