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Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books
Charged: A History of Batteries and Lessons for a Clean Energy Future
Few technologies are more important to unlocking a clean-energy future than batteries. Batteries will help store electricity from solar panels and wind turbines. Batteries will help improve the reliability, versatility, and efficiency of the electric grid. And batteries will power a new generation of zero-emissions vehicles, from cars to bikes to planes. But while batteries may make it possible to scale up renewable energy sources and help to solve global warming while preserving the conveniences of modernity, this transition risks trading one set of resource dependencies and injustices for another, as batteries present their own unique environmental demands and consequences. How will scaling up the production of renewable energy technologies to meet the demands of a clean energy future affect workers and front-line communities who bear the risks and consequences of building this future? What role will batteries play in a "just transition" to a clean energy future?
In Charged, James Morton Turner explores the environmental history of the three most common battery types to yield insights in into the prospects, challenges, and material consequences of scaling up batteries to support a clean energy future. These types of batteries include: lead-acid batteries, which in part because of the hazards they pose, have become the most recycled product in the world; disposable AA batteries, which although extraordinarily energy intensive to manufacture, became a little-known environmental success story when mercury was eliminated; and lithium-ion batteries, which create unique environmental issues as they require a wider array of highly refined raw materials to manufacture and perform.
Turner also engages three ideas that challenge the usual thinking about the past and future of energy and environmental sustainability: the importance of energy quality, the ways in which batteries make energy visible, and how batteries underpin a broader culture of mobility. Through this, batteries become the vehicle for an illuminating analysis of the social and environmental dimensions of modern systems of production and consumption. Considering batteries as the starting point for an investigation into the paradoxes of modern technology, this book tells a story of environmental degradation and social injustice, but also of technical advances and environmental sustainability toward a resilient future.
In Charged, James Morton Turner explores the environmental history of the three most common battery types to yield insights in into the prospects, challenges, and material consequences of scaling up batteries to support a clean energy future. These types of batteries include: lead-acid batteries, which in part because of the hazards they pose, have become the most recycled product in the world; disposable AA batteries, which although extraordinarily energy intensive to manufacture, became a little-known environmental success story when mercury was eliminated; and lithium-ion batteries, which create unique environmental issues as they require a wider array of highly refined raw materials to manufacture and perform.
Turner also engages three ideas that challenge the usual thinking about the past and future of energy and environmental sustainability: the importance of energy quality, the ways in which batteries make energy visible, and how batteries underpin a broader culture of mobility. Through this, batteries become the vehicle for an illuminating analysis of the social and environmental dimensions of modern systems of production and consumption. Considering batteries as the starting point for an investigation into the paradoxes of modern technology, this book tells a story of environmental degradation and social injustice, but also of technical advances and environmental sustainability toward a resilient future.
234 pages, Hardcover
Published August 16, 2022
30 people are currently reading
363 people want to read
About the author
James Morton Turner
3 books1 followerJames Morton Turner is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Wellesley College.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 27, 2024
First non-fiction i’ve read in a while and would strongly recommend reading! Makes the admittedly dry history of batteries as interesting as possible and uses it to teach lessons on modern environmental issues. The author really focus on real ways to improve climate health without getting caught up in well meaning but ineffective ways to live a more “natural” life. Enjoy the following quotes, I thought these were bangers:
“a clean energy transition must overcome the currents of anti modernism that run deep in environmental thought: an opposition to extractive industries, suspicion of synthetic materials, and discomfort with scale.”
“instead of pining for a return to nature or a world of material simplicity, we need to take responsibility for our deepening and inescapable “entanglement” in the natural world and the cascade of consequences”
“will a transition to a clean energy future really matter if we don’t also rethink consumerism, curb consumption, and rein in global capitalism”
“a clean energy transition must overcome the currents of anti modernism that run deep in environmental thought: an opposition to extractive industries, suspicion of synthetic materials, and discomfort with scale.”
“instead of pining for a return to nature or a world of material simplicity, we need to take responsibility for our deepening and inescapable “entanglement” in the natural world and the cascade of consequences”
“will a transition to a clean energy future really matter if we don’t also rethink consumerism, curb consumption, and rein in global capitalism”
Read
January 6, 2025Lots of good facts and helpful for understanding the substantial diversity in batteries. Strong focus on supply chains. Doesn't necessarily tie together into a clear policy vision, but it is a history so we can let that slide.
December 19, 2022
Batteries are a little-talked about yet integral piece of our future (and past) energy usage. We all know that fossil fuels will eventually run out and humankind must switch to renewable sources of energy, (regardless whether it happens during our generation or the next) and in order to capture that energy and store it, we will need the best batteries available. Thanks to a century and a half of innovation, batteries have continually optimized for power, capacity, durability, and safety. It has been a long road.
The first widely distributed battery was the lead-acid battery. These batteries were large and leaky, and manufactured at a time when we didn’t fully comprehend the damages that lead can cause when it infiltrates the blood stream. Once upon a time in the United States, we had lead in our paint, lead in our water pipes, and lead in our batteries. We mined a large proportion of this lead from mines in Louisiana and the safety measures were abysmal. People throughout the entire surrounding area of the mine were documented with lead in the their blood at high enough levels to incite a myriad of health problems, shortening life spans and inciting sickness and death. Eventually, in the 1970s, regulators recognized the bodily harm induced by lead and demanded more safety measures at the mining facilities (in addition to removing lead from paint and pipes). Many lessons were learned the hard way.
On the heels of the lead-acid battery came portable, disposable batteries, which brought a host of other pros and cons into the limelight. The pros were the use and enjoyment of portable electronics that revolutionized the modern world; things like flashlights, toys, and music players. The major con was the pile of trash they became once their charge was used up. “A profusion of products, many designed to be convenient and disposable, meant consumers were buying and throwing away more and more stuff. Although batteries accounted for less than one-tenth of the nation’s household trash, batteries accounted for the vast majority of the toxic heavy metals in household waste.” Logically, the industry began a campaign of recycling batteries for reuse (as they also did with lead-acid batteries as well).
Recycling batteries created new problems: It often took more energy to collect, sort, and ship them to recycling centers than was actually saved by avoiding the production of new raw materials. “In the case of energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and resource consumption, recycling was more costly than landfilling for existing recycling scenarios.” Here again, there were pros and cons, as our author elaborates: “Where it was a net positive was in reducing toxicity—meaning the threat of pollution to human health and the environment—although this was also the metric with the highest levels of uncertainty.”
While regulations in the United States were improving the health and safety of workers in the domestic mineral mines, those aboard were a different story. Cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, nickel mines in the arctic circle in Russia, and lithium mines in Chile and China all sprang up to meet the demand of precious metals needed for newer and more efficient batteries. However, the regulations in these areas lagged behind those in the United States, and many locals communities were (and still are) negatively effected. Their water is poisoned, their children grow up sick, and their land is pulverized until it is empty of minerals, at which point the companies move on. These problems have exacerbated as more and different minerals have been sought for a larger and wider supply of efficient batteries.
While the 1920s saw the rise in batteries attributed to the rise of household radios, the future will see battery production ramp up for usage in electric cars and other transportation vehicles. The newest on the market are lithium-ion batteries, most popularly used by Tesla in their fully-electric vehicles. A major positive for lithium-ion batteries is their rechargability—in addition to their longer-lifespan and low toxicity. Making batteries rechargeable has been another important step in helping to curb the creation of so much waste.
In his conclusion, Turner asserts that we must recognize the reality that a Prius or a Tesla “contributes a lot more than it doesn’t to the wildly high-polluting industrial practices that devastate our atmosphere, bodies, forests, rivers, oceans, wetlands, wildlife, and more.” Batteries these days have a large variety of precious metals that go into their manufacturing, and sourcing these materials from around the world is costly, both financially and environmentally, especially when you consider the fact that we are still using fossil fuels to do it. Even in our modern age, batteries still pose a need for a balance between two important factors: the need for clean, efficient, socially and environmentally friendly energy, and the reality that making these necessary batteries continues to harm our planet and our communities.
While there are many ways to help alleviate this problem, there is one that will change things the most: “reducing economic activity, downscaling consumption, and giving up on the ‘fantasy’ of decoupling economic growth from environmental impacts.” In short, we need to stop our constant growth, for as long as we are growing, we will continue to consume, and the earth only has so much to offer. This idea challenges the very basis of modern society, especially in more-developed countries such as the United States, and will be hard-pressed to be adopted. In the meantime, we must do our best to find the balance between what society demands and what our planet can safely offer.
The first widely distributed battery was the lead-acid battery. These batteries were large and leaky, and manufactured at a time when we didn’t fully comprehend the damages that lead can cause when it infiltrates the blood stream. Once upon a time in the United States, we had lead in our paint, lead in our water pipes, and lead in our batteries. We mined a large proportion of this lead from mines in Louisiana and the safety measures were abysmal. People throughout the entire surrounding area of the mine were documented with lead in the their blood at high enough levels to incite a myriad of health problems, shortening life spans and inciting sickness and death. Eventually, in the 1970s, regulators recognized the bodily harm induced by lead and demanded more safety measures at the mining facilities (in addition to removing lead from paint and pipes). Many lessons were learned the hard way.
On the heels of the lead-acid battery came portable, disposable batteries, which brought a host of other pros and cons into the limelight. The pros were the use and enjoyment of portable electronics that revolutionized the modern world; things like flashlights, toys, and music players. The major con was the pile of trash they became once their charge was used up. “A profusion of products, many designed to be convenient and disposable, meant consumers were buying and throwing away more and more stuff. Although batteries accounted for less than one-tenth of the nation’s household trash, batteries accounted for the vast majority of the toxic heavy metals in household waste.” Logically, the industry began a campaign of recycling batteries for reuse (as they also did with lead-acid batteries as well).
Recycling batteries created new problems: It often took more energy to collect, sort, and ship them to recycling centers than was actually saved by avoiding the production of new raw materials. “In the case of energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and resource consumption, recycling was more costly than landfilling for existing recycling scenarios.” Here again, there were pros and cons, as our author elaborates: “Where it was a net positive was in reducing toxicity—meaning the threat of pollution to human health and the environment—although this was also the metric with the highest levels of uncertainty.”
While regulations in the United States were improving the health and safety of workers in the domestic mineral mines, those aboard were a different story. Cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, nickel mines in the arctic circle in Russia, and lithium mines in Chile and China all sprang up to meet the demand of precious metals needed for newer and more efficient batteries. However, the regulations in these areas lagged behind those in the United States, and many locals communities were (and still are) negatively effected. Their water is poisoned, their children grow up sick, and their land is pulverized until it is empty of minerals, at which point the companies move on. These problems have exacerbated as more and different minerals have been sought for a larger and wider supply of efficient batteries.
While the 1920s saw the rise in batteries attributed to the rise of household radios, the future will see battery production ramp up for usage in electric cars and other transportation vehicles. The newest on the market are lithium-ion batteries, most popularly used by Tesla in their fully-electric vehicles. A major positive for lithium-ion batteries is their rechargability—in addition to their longer-lifespan and low toxicity. Making batteries rechargeable has been another important step in helping to curb the creation of so much waste.
In his conclusion, Turner asserts that we must recognize the reality that a Prius or a Tesla “contributes a lot more than it doesn’t to the wildly high-polluting industrial practices that devastate our atmosphere, bodies, forests, rivers, oceans, wetlands, wildlife, and more.” Batteries these days have a large variety of precious metals that go into their manufacturing, and sourcing these materials from around the world is costly, both financially and environmentally, especially when you consider the fact that we are still using fossil fuels to do it. Even in our modern age, batteries still pose a need for a balance between two important factors: the need for clean, efficient, socially and environmentally friendly energy, and the reality that making these necessary batteries continues to harm our planet and our communities.
While there are many ways to help alleviate this problem, there is one that will change things the most: “reducing economic activity, downscaling consumption, and giving up on the ‘fantasy’ of decoupling economic growth from environmental impacts.” In short, we need to stop our constant growth, for as long as we are growing, we will continue to consume, and the earth only has so much to offer. This idea challenges the very basis of modern society, especially in more-developed countries such as the United States, and will be hard-pressed to be adopted. In the meantime, we must do our best to find the balance between what society demands and what our planet can safely offer.
September 7, 2022
Charged is full of surprising facts about the history of batteries and big insights about the importance of them and the supply chains that make them possible. We NEED this information in order to thrive in a post- fossil fuel world. Professor Turner has given us an interesting, well-written account of the past and future of batteries. I highly recommend it!
June 7, 2024
This was a great overview of the history of batteries. I especially enjoyed the sections on lead acid and disposable AA & AAA batteries. The conclusion includes a call to action that singles out NIMBYism in American environmentalists with respect to mining & resource processing, and to me that was a very novel and compelling argument.
February 28, 2023
A historian’s take on batteries with a very realistic look at what we all must embrace in support of an electrified future. Eye opening history of batteries and what they tell us about how lithium ion batteries will develop.
December 4, 2023
Viva la gasolina!
Moving from oil to rare minerals results in the same shit, different days.
Moving from oil to rare minerals results in the same shit, different days.
January 26, 2024
Somewhat dry but provides good background knowledge for anyone working in batteries or recycling
December 31, 2024
mainly focused on the environmental impact rather than the technological development of batteries
November 14, 2025
Great historical overview of batteries (and the intensive processes to make them) with some well researched educated guesses on the future of this important industry.
July 25, 2024
Tough, slow, academic read. Gave it a 3 because Turner is clearly a subject matter expert, and I chose the book and topic so it wasn't ever going to be enthralling. Some interesting stuff in here but wouldn't push it to anyone unless they wanted to go deep on all things batteries (the reason I read it).
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews