BANGKOK: As American electric vehicle maker Tesla eyes up a hefty investment in Indonesia, concerns are growing over the potential environmental consequences of a nickel mining rush.
"I'd just like to re-emphasise, any mining companies out there, please mine more nickel. Wherever you are in the world, please mine more nickel," Tesla CEO Elon Musk said during a Tesla quarterly conference call in July last year.“Go for efficiency, obviously environmentally friendly nickel mining at high volume. Tesla will give you a giant contract for a long period of time, if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way. Please get nickel," he said.
Johansyah has observed the impact of mining in local communities and advocated for the rights of workers and protection of the environment. He is concerned that more big investments will worsen existing problems, after witnessing pollution in lakes and drinking water sources, damage to coral reefs, deforestation, fishing impacts and frequent flooding.
But the opportunity for Indonesia remains enormous; one potentially even more valuable than its vast palm oil industry. The International Energy Agency predicts that some 70 million EVs will be on roads by 2025 and a huge number could contain battery parts mined and manufactured in Indonesia.ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES
“Indonesia can and has produced very sustainable nickel. But that is insufficient production to feed the EV boom. Certainly, the western nickel producers, particularly in North America, are jumping on this sort of narrative, that they are producing clean, green nickel and implying that Indonesian nickel is not.
“If Tesla’s plans to ramp EV production up massively by 2030 are to be achieved, it has to consider Indonesian nickel,” said Jim Lennon, a senior commodities consultant at Macquarie Bank. A worker poses with a handful of nickel ore at the nickel mining factory of PT Vale Tbk, near Sorowako, Indonesia's Sulawesi island, January 8, 2014.
“Later, we can learn from them. Because one of the things we ask of them is technology transfer,” he said.Beyond the pure economics of staggering growth of Indonesian nickel - production could grow from an estimated 100,000 tonnes in 2014 to 1.1 million tonnes by next year - the injection of a company like Tesla could fast-track cleaning up the sector, in terms of energy use, waste disposal, forest management and worker rights.
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