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March 25th, 2025 
Awake Goy The Real Carbon Footprint of Electric Vehicles
Surface and Seafloor Mining
The real carbon footprint of electric cars is far greater than we have been told, even greater than the carbon footprint of gasoline cars.
This is because the current method of calculating their carbon footprint doesn’t consider all the steps needed to build, fuel, and operate an electric car. All these steps have enormous carbon footprints.
As proof, we will review the carbon footprint of surface mining, seafloor mining, generating electricity, distributing electricity, building an electric car, installing electric charging stations, and environmental consequences.
Keep in mind that all the above will be ongoing for many years. For instance, opening new surface mines and maintaining old surface mines will continue for many years.
Surface Mining
To achieve the goal of replacing all gas-powered cars with battery-powered cars, it will be necessary to open hundreds of new surface mines. You may be thinking it’s no problem because we are continuously opening new mines that will harvest many things.
However, to build electric cars we will have to open mines that are rich in specific metals and minerals. The carbon footprint of these mines must be added to the carbon footprint of going electric. This significantly adds to the total carbon footprint of electric cars.
Figure 1 shows a 50-foot-tall mining truck that is hauling rock from an enormous surface mine. I was one of two on-site geologists who aided in the expansion of Idaho’s huge Maybe Canyon Phosphate mine.
This experience taught me that it is difficult to appreciate the size and complex operations of a giant land surface mine unless you have worked in one. The processes involved in operating a land surface mine would shock most people.
Many think that the minerals and metals required to build an EV or a gas-powered car are easily attainable and within reach. They are not.
Here are the tasks needed to obtain permission and then begin operations of a land surface mine such as Utah’s Kennecott Copper Mine (see Figure 2).
- To begin operating a land surface mine it takes approximately ten years. Why? The mining company must obtain permission from numerous environmental groups, purchase or lease the land, prove to surrounding communities that the mining will not affect their health or daily lives, and lease or build hundreds of diesel-operated machines.
- Then you need to gather materials taken from another mine to make dynamite. This dynamite explodes the mine’s solid rock areas into large boulders.
- Depending on the size of a land surface mine, it is necessary to build or lease approximately 100 hauling trucks powered by fossil fuels to transport the boulders out of the mine.
- Use diesel-powered machines to reduce the size of large boulders into sand-sized particles.
- Send the sand-sized particles to a processing plant that extracts the minerals and metals.
- Build a large reservoir capable of holding vast amounts of sand-sized rock that no longer has the metals and minerals needed to build an electric car. (Figure 12).
- Construct a network of pipelines to transport waste rock to a large reservoir.
Ship the now concentrated minerals and metals via fossil-fueled transportation to various locations that use these minerals and metals to build an electric car.
Figure 2 shows Utah’s Land Surface Kennecott Copper Mine, which is 2.5 miles wide, 0.75 miles deep, and has mined 350 million tons of rock. To give you a perspective of just how large this mine is, the red dot in Figure 2 is the 50-foot-tall mining truck.
Mapping the Geological Setting
The geological setting in and around a surface mine can impact two things. First, it assists geologists in defining the area and depth of rocks rich in the type of substance that they intend to mine. Second, it helps mine engineers estimate the chance that the mining operations will pollute regions adjacent to the mine.
Figure 3 illustrates the geological setting of the proposed Kvanefjeld surface mine located in the southern part of Greenland, which has a pristine coastline. Rocks in this region contain radioactive uranium, mercury, and phosphate.
Environmentalists have stated that these minerals are harmful to our land and oceans. Also, these minerals aren’t necessary to build electric cars. However, the mine rocks have large amounts of rare earth metals needed to build electric cars (see here).
Figure 3 shows the Kvanefjeld mine as solid red, ocean water as blue, major faults as thick white lines, and minor faults as thin white lines. All the geological features provide pathways that allow fresh water, ocean water, and pollutants to intermix.
Additionally, mining in this region generates new micro-fractures. These microfractures act to crush up the rocks into smaller pieces, which facilitates the amount of radioactive uranium, mercury, and phosphate that flow into ocean bays and open oceans.
Radioactive Uranium
Greenland’s mineral and rare earth metals are rich in radioactive uranium.
In the not-so-distant past, Greenland was on the verge of opening a monster land surface mine that contained significant amounts of uranium.
“Greenland may soon start building the world’s fifth-largest uranium mine and second-biggest rare earth operation, which could fuel independence dreams in the island, an ‘autonomous administrative division’ within Denmark since 2009.” (see here )
However, native Greenlanders strongly objected to the mining of radioactive-rich rocks near their hunting grounds and villages. Eventually, a law was passed that allowed the mining to proceed if it had a relatively low concentration of radioactive uranium.
However, it is impossible to know the exact concentration of minerals such as uranium while extracting large amounts of rocks each day.
The companies that own the mine are not going to stop operations in all areas of the mine if one location has higher concentrations of uranium.
The bottom line is that the surface mines in southern and Southwest Greenland may infuse uranium into the environments in the mine region. Maybe not but why take the chance? Is it worth risking? Essentially, we are saying that it is okay to risk polluting Greenland so that the USA does not become more polluted.
Mercury
Two research studies have concluded that the subglacial rock layers located in the southwest and southern portions of Greenland are anomalously hot (see here and here) and contain extremely high concentrations of mercury (see here and here). Environmentalists believe that mercury damages aspects of our physical and biological environments.
Phosphate
The failure of Florida’s Piney Point phosphate mine waste retaining reservoir occurred on April 4, 2021. This failure leaked massive amounts of phosphate into Tampa’s inlets that connect to the Gulf of Mexico (see here, here, and here). It was an environmental disaster that could irreversibly damage all the physical and biological environments in the region.
The real carbon footprint of electric cars is far greater than portrayed by research studies, government entities, and the media.
It’s difficult to understand why we would allow Greenland’s Kvanefjeld Mine, whose rocks are rich in phosphate, to begin operations knowing that phosphate can damage ocean bays and open ocean regions as per the Piney Point mine.
Seafloor Mining
In the last two years, several mining companies have discovered extensive deposits of metals and minerals present on ocean floors needed to build EVs. These companies have asked for and in a few cases received rights to begin mining (see here, here, and here).
Seafloor mines will almost certainly be of the same size as surface mines. Therefore, they would be approximately one mile wide and 0.3 miles deep.
How will the mining operations be monitored and how will the mining companies limit the massive amounts of fluids and particles released from the mine and into the ocean?
The problem is that estimating the magnitude of the environmental consequences or carbon footprint before the mining starts is impossible (see here). This is because seafloor mining at this scale has never been attempted.
Not sure why the potential pollution of large parts of our ocean will justify building electric cars (see here). As is true with surface mines, the carbon footprint of seafloor mines must be added to the carbon footprint of electric cars, not gasoline cars.
Summary
The real carbon footprint of electric cars is far greater than portrayed by research studies, government entities, and the media. This is because they only take into account a few of the steps needed to build an electric car.
When adding all the carbon footprint values of each step together, it turns out that electric cars have a greater carbon footprint than gasoline cars.
Generating Electricity
The carbon footprint of generating the electricity needed to fuel an electric vehicle (EV) is significantly greater than what the government and media are touting. As more electric cars are built, this becomes a critical aspect of fueling them.
Natural Gas (Methane)
Natural gas generates 37% of the USA’s electricity. Those advocating the climate change theory state that natural gas is not very harmful to the atmosphere.
For instance, many public transportation buses are labeled, ‘Powered by Natural Gas.’ Turns out that natural gas is not environmentally friendly because it is 97% methane gas.
Locating open pockets of methane gas requires drilling downward from land or ocean floors. The left part of Figure 4 is a photo of a land-drilling rig. Teams of engineers, geophysicists, and land people work to find promising underground areas that could contain pockets of methane gas.
Once promising areas were found, important geological information was recorded as drilling proceeded. When drilling discovered methane gas, new wells were drilled throughout the entire area to increase gas production.
The upper-right of Figure 1 is an offshore drilling rig. As a geologist for several seafloor mining drilling projects, my involvement and duties were the same as surface mining projects.
Drilling for methane gas taught me that discovering and then using this gas to generate electricity is a complex operation that takes years to complete. Generating sources of “green” energy will also take years.
Likely, generating this type of electricity will also take years. This means that the number of EVs needed to reach Net Zero by 2050 will not happen.
Once the natural gas is discovered, it is then transported to a plant (Figure 2). This plant ignites the gas, which is in a closed chamber that also has a large turbine in it. The heat acts to turn the turbine, which generates electricity (see here).
Oil is used minimally for electricity generation, accounting for less than 1% of the total mix.
Coal
Coal generates 17% of the nation’s electricity. Those advocating climate change theory state that coal is extremely harmful to many physical and biological environments.
Converting 17% of electricity to “green” electricity has a very large carbon footprint. Imagine ripping up miles of coal seams as shown in the lower-right portion of Figure 1. Mining and restoration of coal-strip mines has the largest carbon footprint of all methods to generate electricity.
Nuclear
Nuclear makes up 19% of our electricity and remains a significant contributor. In 1986, the construction of new nuclear power plants was prohibited. Furthermore, the building of new plants was shut down.
“Most of the nuclear power reactors in the United States were constructed between 1970 and 1990, but construction slowed significantly after the accident at Three Mile Island near Middletown, Pennsylvania, on March 28, 1979. From 1979 through 1988, 67 nuclear reactor construction projects were canceled, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.”(Source here).
Building new nuclear power plants is safe. The first new USA plant will soon open. It has been seven years since one opened. Plans are underway to build more new plants.
Renewables
Combined, renewables (including hydro, wind, solar, and biomass) account for around 26% of electricity generation. Most of this is from hydro dams. The US government does not allow for the construction of any new hydro dams.
Wind and solar combined contribute about 14% of the country’s electricity. It has taken a great number of years for these sources to capture 14% of the electric market. Biomass contributes a smaller portion but is included in the overall renewable energy mix.
There is no way that these sources will capture 100% or even 50% in the next 50 years.
Distributing Electricity
The United States power grid is old and needs updating. Currently, there are no plans to update this system or any significant amount of money allocated to research what needs to be done.
Before converting from gasoline cars to millions of EVs, it will be necessary to update our entire power system. Deciding which areas or cities should first be updated is a big problem.
After all, we certainly can’t update the entire grid at once because there are not enough power lines, engineers, money, or materials to do this.
Now onto a few of the details of how to locally or regionally update our power grid:
- Lease or purchase new land strips to build huge electric towers or use the existing land strips. This will require digging up significant areas adjacent to the existing huge power lines.
- Tear up roads and highways to lay down underground power lines.
- Configure local electric systems to ensure homes and businesses near the major power-line construction get power.
“Almost two-thirds of energy is lost in the generation and transmission of electricity” (See here). To bring the electricity level back to 100% during transmission, it is necessary to build reconcentration facilities.
Enough.
The magnitude of updating the power grid to fuel the millions of new EVs will create a very large carbon footprint.
Building Electric Cars
The significant carbon footprint of building an EV (Figure 3) is rarely mentioned by the media, government agencies, or manufacturers of the car.
There are currently 290 million gasoline cars and four million fully electric cars in the USA (or 1.3%). To accomplish the above goal, we would need to build 143 million electric cars by 2030, or 24 million per year. Building 143 million electric cars will leave an enormous carbon footprint.
There are so many steps involved in building an EV that it would be necessary to write another lengthy article to explain them. Here are a relatively few of the things needed to build an electric car.
Tires
Tires are made from petroleum products. Once the oil-derived synthetic rubber is formed it is sent to a manufacturing plant (Figure 4). So, each of the 143 million cars will need 572 million tires.
They also have to be stronger and thicker to support the weight of the much-heavier EV thanks to its enormous battery.
Steel Frames
A large part of electric car frames are made of steel. I worked in a steel plant (Figure 5) before entering college to help pay off my upcoming college loans.
Again, if you haven’t worked in a steel mill it is impossible to understand how much energy, equipment, and mined rocks rich in iron are involved in building the steel frames.
Batteries
Lithium batteries are the key component of an electric car. On average each car will need ten lithium batteries. Figure 5 shows lithium batteries as the light gray rectangular blocks positioned on the floor of the car (see Figure 6).
Mining Lithium has immense environmental problems (see here and here) and a huge carbon footprint. Disposing of these batteries also has numerous problems and environmental consequences (see here).
Part of the process to get pure lithium involves using 20 tons of water. This will give you one ton of pure lithium. Where is the polluted water dumped? Depleting the local freshwater systems may occur.
Installing Charging Stations
Install Citywide Electric Stations
Figure 7 (below) is a photo of an EV charging station. This photo gives the appearance that charging stations are environmentally safe. That is incorrect.
For instance, there are 170,000 gasoline stations in the USA. Installing several charging stations in each of these gasoline stations would be necessary to dig up the underground gasoline tanks, some of which have leaked petrol into the soil and properly dispose of the tanks and the polluted soil.
Next, you need to restructure the area’s electric system to provide enough electricity to fuel all the new charging stations. This requires tearing up local roads, installing miles of large electric cables, and running smaller electric cables to all of charging station complexes.
Figure 8 (below) is a photo of New York City and its surrounding suburbs. Converting all this area’s taxis, buses, and cars to electric would require building thousands of new charging stations. Another possibility is to have all gas stations install several electric chargers.
In both cases accomplishing this goal would be nearly impossible because it would require finding enough open land to build new charging stations, ripping up roads, and redoing the electric systems.
New York City has a population of 8.8 million. Making these changes would have a huge carbon footprint as it would in other major cities.
Install An Electric Charging Station In Your Home
Installing an electric charging station in your home may be necessary to avoid long waiting times at a local charging station or conform to government laws that force you to install one station.
Installing Charging Stations Nationwide
Installing enough charging stations needed to accommodate the increasing number of EVs can be accomplished in two ways.
First, gradually close all gasoline stations and replace them with charging stations. The second way is to keep all the current gasoline stations and convert half to electric. Both ways will still have an enormous carbon footprint.
The value of either footprint must be added to the total footprint of electric cars because installing charging stations wouldn’t be needed if we remained a country of all gasoline cars.
When adding the carbon footprint of installing charging stations to the other carbon footprint factors, it turns out that the carbon footprint of electric cars is greater than that of gasoline cars.
Summary
The real carbon footprint of electric cars is far greater than is portrayed by research studies, government entities, and the media. This is because they only take into account a few of the steps needed to build an electric car.
When adding all the carbon footprint values of each step together, it turns out that electric cars have a greater carbon footprint than gasoline cars.
Environmental Consequences
The environmental consequences associated with electric cars are astounding and are never fully explained to the public.
Instead, those in favor of electric cars have used generic words that downplay the severity of these consequences.
Surface Mine Waste Reservoirs
Surface mine waste reservoirs are a scar on the land and in some cases, they leak very toxic chemicals into our water systems and land environments (see here).
Figure 1 is a photo of a surface mine waste reservoir. These reservoirs store pieces of rock that had minerals and metals extracted from them.
Restoration
Restoring a mined area to its original state typically takes at least four years (Figure 2), a process pushed by environmentalists to clean up and return the lands to their original state.
When completed it represents the last step in an open pit mine’s existence. However, this restoration process uses monster trucks, graders, tons of new soil, planting of vegetation, etc. The restoration effort has an enormous carbon footprint.
Summary
The real carbon footprint of electric cars is far greater than portrayed by research studies, government entities, and the media.
This is because they only take into account a few of the steps needed to build an electric car.
When adding all the carbon footprint values of each step together, it turns out that electric cars have a greater carbon footprint than gasoline cars.
Biography
James Edward Kamis is a retired geologist with 47 years of experience, a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology from Northern Illinois University (1973), and a Master of Science degree in Geology from Idaho State University (1976). More than 46 years of research have convinced him that geological forces significantly influence, or in some cases completely control climate and climate-related events as per his Plate Climatology Theory. Kamis’ new book, Geological Impacts on Climate, is available now.
Thomas Richard, CCD editor, contributed to this article.
See Parts 1 and 3 here and here, respectively.
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