Futureworld brings you Mindbullets: News from the Future, to spark strategic thinking about leadership, innovation and digital disruption. These fictitious scenarios aim to challenge conventional mindsets and promote understanding of the future context for business.
Dateline: July 30 2031
It was common cause that all global growth, all added economic value, came ultimately from two sources — agriculture and mining. Even manufacturing relied on raw material inputs, and everything else was just supporting activity. But that was before the digital age.
Now services account for 80% of all economic output, virgin mining is declining fast, and agriculture has been totally disrupted by hi-tech food factories. And manufacturing has changed completely. It’s all about recycling and upcycling, and raw materials barely exist.
Gone are the days of extracting vast quantities of underground ore and shipping them halfway around the world to be made into generic products; then shipping them back again to be sold to consumers, and then finally discarded. That was the model that fuelled the “supercycle” boom in commodities a decade ago. Mass production was a simple exercise — heat, beat and treat.
That was unsustainable, and now it’s unnecessary, and uneconomic. Steel and aluminium can be almost infinitely recycled, and mining companies have had to pivot to urban mining for new energy metals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt. Mining the e-waste dumps, solar panel scrapyards and used battery depots is proving to be amazingly profitable. And it can all be done above ground.
Likewise, manufacturers don’t want slabs of steel and ingots of titanium; the preferred feedstocks for precision printing are bulk supplies of nanoparticles, specialised “inks” for their multistation 3D printing machines. And carbon composites, graphene, and biosynthetic materials have replaced steel, copper and concrete in industries ranging from construction to cars.
Yes, the supercycle is over for base commodities, but the circular economy is revving up. It’s the start of the spin cycle.
Date published: July 29 2021
Dead batteries worse than nuclear waste
China is drowning in unusable electric car batteries
Dateline: May 3 2024
They say that the only real problem with nuclear power is taking care of the depleted fuel rods, often called nuclear waste, for hundreds of years after they’ve ceased to function. Sure, a small percentage can be “reprocessed” into new types of nuclear fuel, but costs are so punitive, most power stations simply store the used fuel on site.
Now we’re running into a similar problem with electric cars, but on an exponential scale. New energy vehicles, or NEVs, have been a runaway success, in the US, Europe, and even more so, in China, where government policies and consumer choice have made them the predominant type of new car sold.
The cars themselves are great, and can go for hundreds of thousands of kilometres with little service requirements, except for the batteries. When your batteries stop charging properly, as they all do after a few years, you only have two options: buy a new car, or swap out the battery pack.
Like nuclear waste, dead batteries are difficult and costly to recycle, heavy to transport, and full of toxic heavy metals and rare earth minerals. OK, they’re not radioactive, but still, the mountains of useless batteries piling up in China are a real pollution problem, and regulations prevent carmakers from just dumping them. In California, state law obliges the original equipment manufacturer of NEVs to take back old batteries and “repurpose” them, no matter the cost.
Mining companies are prospecting for lithium and cobalt in battery dumps in Shanghai and Nevada. Tesla, BYD and Panasonic are all trying to design new cells that are easy to disassemble, but still leakproof. Researchers at MIT are hoping to replace lithium with “cleaner” metals such as nickel and aluminium.
But for now, if you’re eagerly planning to upgrade to an electric car, remember that you’re paying — upfront — for the cost of a dead, useless, old battery. It just hasn’t happened yet.
Date published: May 2 2019
• Despite appearances to the contrary, Futureworld cannot and does not predict the future. The Mindbullets scenarios are fictitious and designed purely to explore possible futures, challenge and stimulate strategic thinking.
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