Just as you were about to think that batteries represent the NEW way of energy use versus fossil fuels standing for the OLD way, then continue reading.
Even if no internal combustion engines were on the road any longer, oil would still be required to continue driving our cars. Why? To produce the very batteries they rely on.
In a great thread published on Twitter last weekend by Skye News reporter Ed Conway, the journalist explains why this is the “One of the best kept secrets of the green revolution.”
It’s because most attention with regards to batteries goes to what he calls the “sexy” elements: lithium, manganese, nickel and cobalt. Even when we know that there is nothing sexy about cobalt mining in some places.
Anode
These “sexy” elements form part of the cathode in batteries. But there’s another piece, the anode. Historically produced from naturally-occurring graphite, the much better performance of new generations of batteries increasingly relies on synthetic graphite. And where does this synthetic graphite find its origin? In oil.
As Ed Conway explains in his thread, it is the Humber refinery in England that plays a key role in this process of producing synthetic graphite. The building block for synthetic graphite is coke, the substance that remains after all the lighter elements of the crude have been extracted and processed into jet fuel, diesel and all sorts of petrochemical products.
Until recently mainly used in the aluminium and steel industry, the owners of the refinery also became aware of another purpose for coke: synthetic graphite for the booming battery industry.
Producing good quality graphite is not as trivial as it sounds though. But the Humber refinery has a key role in this worldwide, as Conway further explains in his piece. This is known by insiders, given the attempted theft of details regarding the production process that Reuters reported on.
Another reason why oil production will remain important
Now being aware of this other rather essential element of the energy carrier of the future, the question should be asked why this is never being mentioned in the public debate around continuing oil production. Probably because it is not “sexy”?
Although this BusinessLive story from October 2021 emphasises that the owner of the Humber Refinery – Phillips 66 – is going to use more bio-oils instead of crude oils in the production process, the spectacular growth of the demand for synthetic graphite must be powered for a good deal by fossil fuel.
In a personal communication we had with Ed Conway, who asked people at the refinery whether bio-oils had the potential to replace crude in the process to generate graphite, the response he got was that people were less hopeful about that.
As a follow-up of Conway’s article, it would be good to gain more insight into the CO2 footprint of battery production using synthetic graphite and the amount of consumer time required for a battery to be more environmentally friendly than a purely oil-based way of energy provision.
A real opportunity
So, there seems to be a real chance for the Humber area here. Now knowing that the industrial cluster has such an important and recognised role in the production of a key ingredient for the new generation of batteries, combined with plans to decarbonise industrial operations through carbon capture and storage, the area has got some key ingredients to rise above the stigma of being a provider of “old” type of energy.
HENK KOMBRINK
