Quick Key Facts

• Tropical forests make up six percent of Earth’s land surface area, but are home to a stunning array of biodiversity.
• More than 50 percent of land-based plant and animal species on Earth can be found in tropical rainforests.
• Brazil is home to about a third of the planet’s remaining tropical rainforests, including two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest.
• Tropical forests store about a quarter of the world’s terrestrial carbon.
• Twenty-five percent of modern medicines are derived from plants found in tropical rainforests.
• According to a 2023 study, humans have already caused the degradation of more than a third of the Amazon rainforest.
• This year alone, 11.8 million acres have been destroyed by wildfires in the Brazilian Amazon.

What Are ‘Tropical Forests’?

Tropical forests are rich ecosystems located in tropical zones surrounding the equator. They have a dense upper canopy of broad-leafed trees and an astonishingly diverse array of animal and plant life.

These forests pack an enormous amount of biodiversity into the six percent of the planet’s land surface they occupy. In fact, 50 percent of known plant and animal species on Earth can be found in their wondrous depths, including ancient trees, fungi, two-thirds of all flowering plants, millions of insects, more than a thousand bird species and hundreds of mammal species.

Why Are Tropical Forests Important?

Tropical forests are essential habitats for many species, as well as sources of food, medicine and livelihoods for many humans. They also play a critical part in the planet’s water cycle and are crucial carbon sinks, storing about a quarter of all terrestrial carbon on Earth.

Types of Tropical Forests

Wet Tropical Forests

Wet tropical forests are of two types: moist forests, which include montane/cloud forests and monsoon forests, and equatorial evergreen rainforests.

Equatorial Evergreen Rainforests

Equatorial rainforests are frequently considered “real rainforests.” They get more than 80 inches of rain equally spread throughout the year and have a thick canopy of vegetation, as well as the most biodiversity. These rainforests make up about two thirds of the tropical wet forests on the planet.

Equatorial rainforests experience little variation throughout the seasons, and daytime sunlight is consistent all year long. They are most abundant in the Congo Basin, Amazonia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

Tropical Moist Forests

Tropical moist forests are farther from the equator, and the amount of sunlight in a day and rainfall vary by season. They get 50 inches of rain per year and experience a dry season marked by cooler temperatures. The forest canopy thins out during the dry season as trees shed their leaves, allowing more sunlight onto the forest floor, which leads to the growth of “understory” vegetation.

Moist forests are prevalent in the Caribbean, South America, West Africa, Southeast Asia — primarily Burma, Vietnam and Thailand — and Sri Lanka in South Asia.

Monsoon Forests

Monsoon forests, known as “mixed forests,” make up part of the tropical forests in southeast and southern Asia. They experience a three- to five-month dry period when many deciduous tree species lose their leaves. Sunlight is thus able to reach the understory where rich vegetation grows.

Montane / Cloud Forests

Tropical montane cloud forests have continuous cloud cover or fog at ground level that provides the tree canopy and vegetation on the forest floor with a regular source of water that condenses on the surface.

These distinctive tropical ecosystems can be found in the mountains of Africa, Asia, America and Oceania between altitudes of about 2,625 to 11,483 feet.

Where Are Tropical Forests Found?

Tropical forests are found in the regions right around the equator, between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer, where the climate is relatively stable and warm year-round.

The nations with the most tropical forest area are Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Peru and Columbia, in that order.

Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guyana, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, Malaysia, Laos, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, India, Suriname, Venezuela and Mexico also have vast areas of rainforest.

The largest rainforests on Earth are the Amazon rainforest in South America; the Congo rainforest in Africa; the Australasia rainforest, located in New Guinea, Papua New Guinea and Australia; the Sundaland rainforest in Southeast Asia; the Indo-Burma rainforest, also found in Southeast Asia; the Mesoamerica rainforest in North and Central America; the Wallacea rainforest, located on a group of islands between continental Asia and Australia; the West Africa rainforest; and the Atlantic and Chocó rainforests of South America.

Benefits of Tropical Forests

Rainforests are important to the health of our planet in a multitude of ways, including as habitat for many species of plants, animals and fungi, and for climate regulation, carbon sequestration and the maintenance of the world’s water cycle through evapotranspiration.

Habitat

More than 30 million animal and plant species — many of them threatened and endangered — call tropical forests home, in addition to an unknown number that have never been documented.

Mountain gorillas, jaguars, leopards, brown-throated three-toed sloths, okapis, capybaras and scarlet macaws are just some of the spectacular species that grace the forest floor, shrub layer and trees of the rainforest. Examples of species that might make you want to head in the other direction include the green anaconda, electric eel, bullet ant and poison dart frog. Preserving the habitats of the incredible plant and animal diversity found in tropical forests also means preserving these irreplaceable species.

Many songbird species travel thousands of miles to spend the winters in tropical forests, such as wood thrushes, the blue grosbeak and the yellow warbler.

Ancestral Territory of Indigenous Peoples

For millennia, Indigenous Peoples have been living with the rainforest and relying on it for shelter, food and medicine without overtaxing its abundance. It wasn’t until humans started stripping the balanced yet sensitive ecosystem with livestock grazing, monocrop agriculture like soybeans and palm oil, deforestation, poaching and oil extraction that the lungs of our planet began to falter.

Climate Regulation

Rainforests are a consistently moist environment thought to store more than half of the rainwater on Earth. Their abundant trees form clouds and mists by extracting water from the floor of the forest and releasing it into the atmosphere. This remarkable process recycles a huge amount of water that feeds the planet’s lakes and rivers and is used to irrigate crops.

Plants perform transpiration, the process by which water moves through a plant and evaporates from its stems, leaves and flowers. Evapotranspiration is the combination of evaporation and transpiration — water is transferred into the atmosphere when it evaporates from soil and other surfaces and through the process of transpiration by plants.

Prevention of Soil Erosion

Rainforest soils are actually nutrient-poor due to the fact that nutrients are stored in the abundant plants and trees. The thick canopy keeps heavy rains from oversaturating soils while tree roots prevent erosion by binding them together.

One of the reasons deforestation is so bad for the planet is because removing a tree means removing the nutrients and carbon it is made of along with it. This leaves topsoil bare and unanchored, meaning it and its nutrients are susceptible to being washed away when it rains, which can also lead to flooding of lowland rivers and cause blockages, while upland rivers stay dry. 

Medicinal Plants

For thousands of years, Indigenous Peoples have used medicinal plants from tropical forests to soothe and cure ailments. A remarkable quarter of modern medicines are derived from the more than 200,000 plant species found there. However, these just scratch the surface of the possibilities, as we have discovered the medicinal uses of only one percent of the plants found in this natural healing pharmacy.

Challenges Facing Tropical Forests

Forest Clearing for Agriculture & Wildfires

One of the biggest threats to tropical forests is clearing for unsustainable agriculture and cattle ranching. This destroys trees, habitats and biodiversity in one fell swoop, leaving a wasteland where there was once a balanced ecosystem teeming with life.

Stripping the natural, fertile landscape to make way for what is often monocrop farming — most commonly soybeans and palm oil — leaves the environment more prone to wildfires with the potential to spread quickly.

Since the beginning of 2023, 11.8 million acres have been decimated by fires in the Brazilian Amazon. These fires were primarily caused by industrial agriculture and ranching.

Logging for Timber

Another contributor to the destruction of tropical forests is logging for wood to make flooring and furniture and for use in construction. To harvest the trees, roads are built to access remote areas of forest, further contributing to the degradation of the ecosystem. Logging workers hunt “bushmeat” like deer and endangered species such as gorillas and chimpanzees.

According to research, species numbers in logged areas of the rainforest are much lower than those in what is known as “primary” forest, which has remained untouched.

Traditionally, the harvesting of wood by local communities for building and firewood did not strip the ecosystem in permanently damaging ways, but populations have grown to the point that this practice has become unsustainable.

Oil Extraction

Oil extraction is one of the most damaging activities affecting tropical forests. In order to access areas with natural gas, oil companies cut through the forest to make roads. Workers come in to occupy the area temporarily, employing slash-and-burn agriculture and harming forests through hunting, introducing domestic animals and using trees for firewood. As they drill, oil companies burn natural gas flares, increasing the risk of fires and polluting the air.

The process of extracting oil means the risk of oil spills and toxic byproducts that are sometimes dumped into local waterways. Toxic chemicals stored in waste pits can also pollute streams, rivers and the surrounding land that can include swamps and flooded forests, floating meadows, sandbars and oxbow lakes.

Indigenous Tribes and other local communities have shouldered much of the displacement and pollution caused by oil extraction while not seeing much benefit. This can lead to conflict between Tribal and community members and oil companies.

Drought

The Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world. So big, in fact, that it makes its own weather. As much as half the rainfall it gets is produced by the moisture recycled by the forest itself. When there is a drought, trees can die in a domino-like effect. According to a 2022 study, for every three trees in the Amazon that die due to drought, a fourth tree will also die, even if it isn’t directly the result of drought.

The sooner humans move away from fossil fuels and stop the global heating that is the main hallmark of the climate crisis, the sooner tropical forests can go back to maintaining their natural balance without having to face threats like oil extraction and drought.

Mining

Illegal mining can cause serious social and ecological effects on the delicate rainforest ecosystem. Mining and deforestation go hand in hand, as trees are cut down to make charcoal for fuel in iron plants. The practice of mining also interferes with water drainage and pollutes rivers, streams and other water sources with run-off — affecting water quality and food supplies for wildlife, as well as Indigenous Peoples and others in the local communities.

Mercury is a toxic byproduct of gold extraction and may contaminate fish and the local populations that rely on them for food. Mercury also pollutes the atmosphere, making its way to locations other than the mining site.

Gold mining has also caused conflicts between Indigenous Peoples and the approximately half a million prospectors mining for gold on their land in the Amazon River Basin.

Dams

Damming rivers to produce hydropower has caused the decline of many fish species, as well as the degradation of wild and scenic rivers, including those in tropical forests.

Dam building takes a huge toll on biodiversity, and biodiversity loss can reduce the tropical forests’ ability to help mitigate and withstand climate change, according to studies.

Damming also traps the silt from a river at the point where it is dammed, which limits the nutrients and sediments that trees and forests rely on. Dams also stop natural flooding from occurring during the rainy season in the Amazon Basin, which prevents natural seed dispersal.

Wildlife Poaching

Poaching is the illegal hunting of wildlife and is one of the biggest threats to tropical forest biodiversity, threatening the survival of many species. International networks traffic in animals around the world to be sold for use in traditional medicine, the pet trade or for parts of animals such as their horns or tusks. 

And it isn’t just animals; some timber species are overexploited, and the harvesting of rare flowers for use in cosmetics puts certain plant species at risk.

Overfishing

Around 3,000 species of fish can be found in the rivers and floodplains of the Amazon Basin, the highest biodiversity of freshwater species in the world. The more diverse fish populations are, the more resilient they will be. Fishing is essential for the sustenance of Indigenous Peoples living in the Amazon rainforest, but overfishing is threatening both the diversity and potentially the resiliency of fish populations, which can lead to food insecurity.

Climate Change

As global weather patterns shift and the planet heats up due to climate change, it can influence tropical forests’ ability to help form clouds through evapotranspiration. Fewer clouds mean less rainfall, which can lead to dryer intervals or even drought conditions, leaving the forest more prone to wildfires. Warmer and dryer conditions can also make fire seasons more destructive, putting stress on ecosystems.

What Can We Do to Support Tropical Forests?

As a Society

Humans have a lot to tackle in the immediate future with respect to tropical forests. The time has come for us to decide whether we will drive the cradle of the planet’s biodiversity to the brink of collapse, or turn the tide and stop the destruction.

At the same time that we are transitioning to renewable sources of power and putting a stop to the fossil fuel era as quickly as possible, we must also stop tropical forest destruction and begin to restore what has been degraded.

Governments of countries with tropical forests within their borders must work to stop deforestation, whether it be for agriculture, timber, mining or any other practice. They must also shut down mines, stop building dams and remove existing dams, crack down on wildlife poaching and end overfishing.

In Our Own Lives

There are important actions individuals can take in their everyday lives to help tropical forests. Here are a few ideas:

1. Reduce your carbon footprint by taking public transportation, eating less meat and dairy, flying less, avoiding fast fashion and using less energy. 
2. Cut down or eliminate from your diet foods that are commonly grown on lands that have been razed for agriculture and grazing in tropical forests, such as beef, palm oil and soybeans.
3. Choose products made by ecologically responsible manufacturers — look for those certified by the Forest Stewardship Council or similar organizations — or that donate to rainforest causes.
4. Shop less and choose products made from recycled materials in order to avoid new materials having to be sourced.
5. Support Indigenous Peoples by purchasing fair trade products made by the people themselves. Make sure to support companies owned by Indigenous Peoples or those that source from Indigenous communities without taking advantage of them.

Takeaway

Tropical forests are in many ways the lungs and soul of our planet. They contain an extraordinary number of the plant and animal species on Earth in just six percent of its land surface area. But this magnificent testament to the world’s biodiversity is under threat from agriculture, deforestation, mining, wildlife poaching and climate change.

More than half of the tropical forests on the planet have already been destroyed, and more than a third of the Amazon rainforest has been degraded by humans. The time is now to switch from destruction to rehabilitation. Earth’s tropical forests can’t wait and neither can we.

The post Tropical Forests 101: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on EcoWatch.

It’s the fifth day of COP28, and Harjeet Singh is running late — again. He left his hotel at 7:20 a.m. to get to Expo City in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where the annual United Nations climate conference is underway. By 8:25 a.m., he’s been stuck in the security line alongside a New York Times reporter and the Canadian climate minister for the last 20 minutes. 

Singh ultimately made it to his first engagement with just a minute to spare. Over the next half hour, he led a group of protesters in chants demanding that the world’s richest countries contribute to a new “loss and damage” fund to help vulnerable countries pay for the irreversible costs of climate change. “What do we want? Fill the fund!” his voice boomed. “When do we want it? NOW!”

Singh is the head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International, or CAN, an environmental group. While CAN is one of some hundreds of environmental advocacy groups that descend on COPs to try to sway climate policy, it’s among the more influential — in part because of its size: The umbrella organization has more than 1,900 member groups in over 130 countries.

As a result, an official CAN position often represents broad agreement among its diverse member base. When national negotiators look for civil society groups’ approval for the positions they take at COP, they are typically looking to CAN. As such, Singh’s work for CAN at COP28 provides a rare window into the ways that the thousands of COP attendees who don’t directly negotiate on behalf of U.N. member states — the vast majority of those at the conference — nevertheless make their voices heard in closed-door negotiations.

CAN has a two-pronged strategy, working both in the halls of power and outside of it. On the one hand, CAN members are constantly trying to make inroads with people in power, setting up one-on-one meetings with government officials to make their case. But in the streets, members engage in direct action and media campaigns like “Fossil of the Day,” a satirical award given to countries seen as blocking climate action. The award invariably results in negative press, motivating officials in all sorts of countries to work with CAN to avoid winning the award. 

“Some countries don’t want to be seen as blockers, and it’s a tool CAN uses to highlight some of those instances,” said Nathan Cogswell, a research associate at the World Resources Institute, a research nonprofit.

In addition to his role at CAN, Singh is the global engagement director for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, and he runs an organic farming business with his wife near New Delhi, India. At CAN, he wears many hats: He helps craft the organization’s policy priorities, puts pressure on political leaders, and engages with the media. Over the course of the day I spent with Singh earlier this week, he did all of these things, while also barely eating and constantly getting lost in the sprawling venue. And he continued to run late.

Just after the protest, he was 10 minutes behind for the start of CAN’s Political Coordination Group meeting, a key part of his day. As the head of global policy, Singh is pulled in many directions and doesn’t have time to follow all aspects of COP negotiations, which take place in different groups on parallel tracks. His colleagues are his eyes and ears, and every morning a core group tracking the negotiations meets to discuss where the fault lines are, who is blocking progress, and how to strategically pressure countries to adopt ambitious climate targets. 

That morning, Singh hadn’t seen the agenda for the day. As soon as he took his seat, advocates began to report their observations from various negotiations. Over the next hour, CAN members discussed which countries were holding up negotiations and an overall advocacy strategy, including setting up one-on-one meetings with national representatives. 

“I can’t tell you the number of bilaterals we do,” Singh said later, referring to those one-on-ones. “That’s how we influence.”

The meeting ended with a call for nominations for Fossil of the Day. A few days prior, CAN issued the award to Japan for providing public finance for fossil fuels. Advocates had been trying to meet with Japanese officials and were hitting a wall. But when Japanese media picked up the story, the government was forced to respond, and suddenly CAN advocates secured a meeting with officials.

After the meeting and a quick huddle with colleagues, Singh had a 20-minute break. He scarfed down a palm-sized cheese sandwich he packed into a metal lunchbox from the breakfast buffet at the hotel in the morning — a common strategy among COP veterans. It was the first thing he’d eaten since his breakfast, a single banana. “Whenever I get time, I just eat on the way,” he said.

After an interview with an Axios reporter and another journalist, Singh rushed to speak at a 1:30 p.m. panel about the role of faith in climate action. He suspected he’d be crunched for time, he told me as he sprinted, but he’d been invited by the Brahma Kumaris Environment Initiative, the environmental arm of a spiritual movement that originated in India, and he couldn’t say no. Singh is Sikh and deeply spiritual.

“It’s not then about whether the timing is perfect and journalists are going to be there,” he said as we raced across the hot pavement. “They want me with them, so I said yes.”

After the panel, Singh set off to CAN’s daily meeting. Unlike the coordination meeting in the morning, which is open to a small group of members who follow the negotiations closely, this meeting is open to the broader group — and is also where the Fossil of the Day is decided. Singh was more than 15 minutes late to the meeting. He snuck in and stood off to the side, charging his phone and munching on whole cloves and cardamom he pulled out of his backpack. “It’s antibacterial,” he told me, hoping to ward off the sickness that can accompany a week like this. 

After a round of voting, CAN members crowned Brazil Fossil of the Day for announcing that it will join OPEC+, the international oil cartel, and gave South Africa a dishonorable mention for expanding coal mining operations. The process is surprisingly democratic for such a large group: Members vote through a show of hands at the meeting, and those from the region of a nominated country can veto a nomination.  

Next up was a two-hour memorial for Saleem Huq, a longtime champion of loss and damage funding for vulnerable countries, and a close friend of Singh’s. Huq picked up social media in his 60s and insisted on daily selfies with him, Singh told the crowd at the memorial, which was organized by Huq’s son. “He was an embodiment of adaptation,” Singh said.

By 4 p.m. Singh was showing no signs of slowing down. He was still running on a banana and a small cheese sandwich, but he picked up an iced Americano and sat down at a bench near the Saudi Arabia pavilion to take a break. Suddenly, he spotted someone walking in the distance, ended the conversation with me mid-sentence, yelled “Emma!” and sprinted off.

He’d spotted Emma Fenton, team leader on international climate policy with the Scottish government. Scotland was the first developed country to formally acknowledge that wealthy countries should help developing countries shoulder the costs of climate change. Singh and the current Scottish first minister, Humza Yousaf, had met at an event earlier this year and built a rapport, Singh later told me. Now he wanted to leverage the connection for a formal meeting with the minister. Yousaf was flying out from Dubai that night, but Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero and Just Transition Màiri McAllan would “obviously like to talk to you,” Fenton told Singh, agreeing to set up a meeting. 

Later in the evening, Singh received a Whatsapp message from Fenton, asking him to moderate a panel on loss and damage funding with McAllan. The event clashed with CAN’s daily press conference, but McAllan was the priority — Singh was trying to enlist countries to sign on to the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, and this looked like a good opportunity to make some headway, given Scotland’s leadership on other climate justice issues. “Not bad,” Singh muttered. “In any case, we want a meeting with Màiri to discuss the fossil fuel treaty, so she’s the right person.” 

After getting off the train back to his hotel, Singh was ready for a beer. Not all restaurants in Dubai serve alcohol, and he insisted that we find one that does. He ordered a Peroni and promptly returned his attention to his phone to promote social media posts, respond to Whatsapp messages and emails, talk to journalists, and figure out his schedule for the next day. 

Singh reached his hotel lobby around 9:30 p.m., but his day wasn’t close to over. Over the next four hours, he updated CAN leadership and a Scottish CAN member about his conversations with Fenton. He also talked to the editor of Eco, a CAN newsletter published daily during COPs, which targets negotiators and is handed out at the entrance of the COP28 venue early in the morning as decision-makers walk in. Later, when Singh got to his room, he messaged a producer at the independent TV news program Democracy Now! about his big takeaways from COP28 and the key points he wanted to emphasize in a segment he’d record with host Amy Goodman in the coming days. 

By the time he hit the bed, it was a little past 1 a.m. He was ready to do it all over again the next day.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘I’ll just eat on the way’: A climate activist’s 18-hour sprint through COP28 on Dec 8, 2023.

About three times a day, Rich Benoit gets a call to his auto shop, The Electrified Garage, from the owner of an older Tesla Model S whose car battery has begun to fail. The battery, which used to provide several hundred miles of range, might suddenly only last 50 miles on a single charge. These cars are often out of warranty, and the cost of replacing the battery can exceed $15,000.

For most products, repair is a more affordable option than replacement. And in theory, lots of these Tesla batteries can be fixed, said Benoit, who runs one of the few Tesla-focused independent repair shops in the United States. But due to the time and training involved, the safety considerations, and the complexity of the repair, Benoit said that the bill to fix one car battery at his shop might run upwards of $10,000 — more than most consumers are willing to pay. Instead, he said, many choose to sell or donate their old vehicle for scrap and buy a brand new Tesla.

“It’s getting to the point where [the car] is almost like a consumable, like a TV,” Benoit said.

Benoit’s experience heralds a problem that early adopters of EVs, as well as electric micromobility devices like e-bikes and e-scooters, are beginning to face: These vehicles contain big, expensive batteries that will inevitably degrade or stop working over time. Repairing these batteries can have sustainability benefits, saving energy and resources that would otherwise be used to manufacture a new one. That’s particularly important for EVs, which contain very large batteries that must be used for years to offset the carbon emissions associated with making them. But many EV and e-mobility batteries are difficult to repair by design, and some manufacturers actively discourage the practice, citing safety concerns. The small number of independent mechanics who repair EV or e-bike batteries struggle to do so affordably due to design challenges, safety requirements, and a lack of access to spare parts.

“There’s a lot of batteries in the recycle bin that could be repaired,” said Timoté Rouffignac, who runs a small e-bike battery repair business called Daurema in Brussels, Belgium. But “because they are not made to be repaired, it’s quite hard to propose a good price.”

A lithium-ion battery in a smartphone contains a single “cell” consisting of a graphite anode, a metallic cathode, and a liquid electrolyte that allows lithium ions to move from one side to the other to generate an electrical potential. An e-bike battery often contains dozens of cells. EV batteries, meanwhile, can contain hundreds to thousands of individual cells, which are often packaged into “modules,” and from there, bundled into a battery pack. In addition to cells and modules, electric car and e-bike batteries typically include a battery management system that monitors the battery’s state of health and controls the rate of charging and discharging.

All lithium-ion batteries degrade with use and eventually need to be replaced. But when a battery contains many individual cells and other components, its lifespan can sometimes be extended through repair, a process that involves identifying and replacing the bad cells or modules and fixing other faulty parts, like a glitchy battery management system. In some cases, a single module is all that needs to be replaced. Swapping that module out, instead of replacing the entire battery, reduces demand for battery metals like lithium, as well as the carbon emissions tied to manufacturing replacement batteries (or new vehicles). That makes battery repair “highly desirable for a circular economy” — a system in which resources are conserved and reused — said Gavin Harper, a research fellow who studies battery sustainability at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.

And while not necessarily cheap, repairing batteries can save money. Tyler Helps of Cox Automotive, which repairs in-warranty EV batteries on behalf of automakers and their dealers across the United States, said that in general, a refurbished EV battery is about half the cost of a new one. Since it began offering EV battery repair services in 2014, Cox Automotive estimates that it has saved over a gigawatt hour’s worth of batteries — enough to power about 17,000 new EVs — from being prematurely discarded. 

“There’s a myriad of different reasons repair is vastly [more] beneficial than replacement,” Helps told Grist.

But battery repair is dangerous and shouldn’t be attempted at home or by novices, experts say. If battery cells are damaged during a repair attempt, it can cause a short circuit that leads to a fire or explosion. If the person attempting the repair isn’t wearing the proper high-voltage gloves, they could be electrocuted. “You’d be playing with fire” if you didn’t know what you were doing, said John Mathna, who runs the e-bike repair shop Chattanooga Electric Bike Co., noting that some e-bike batteries contain “enough current to kill someone.” 

At a bare minimum, battery repair requires high-voltage training, electrical experience, personal protective equipment, and “a baseline understanding of the architectures and how the battery works,” Helps said. Those wishing to fix EV batteries also need equipment to lift the car off the ground and physically remove the battery, which can weigh thousands of pounds. 

“There’s very few people that could or even should attempt something like this,” Benoit said. 

But even those who have the proper training often struggle to repair EV or e-bike batteries because of how they are designed. Many e-bike batteries are housed in heavy-duty plastic cases that can be difficult, if not impossible, to open up without damaging internal components. Inside an e-bike battery, or inside individual modules of an EV battery, cells are often glued or welded together, making them difficult or impossible to replace individually. What’s more, as a 2021 report by the European Environmental Bureau highlighted, some e-mobility batteries contain software that causes the battery to shut down if it detects evidence of unauthorized tinkering.

Manufacturers argue that their batteries are designed to promote safety, durability, and high performance, which can come at the expense of repairability, and many offer free or discounted replacement batteries within the warranty period (typically around two years for major e-bike brands and eight to 10 years or 100,000 miles for EVs). Repair advocates, on the other hand, contend that modular designs with reversible fasteners, such as clips or adhesives that can be unstuck, don’t necessarily compromise safety and that the benefits of designing for repair far exceed the costs.

European policymakers are beginning to listen to advocates. In August, the European Union adopted a new regulation aimed at fostering battery sustainability. Among other things, it includes a provision requiring that the batteries used in e-bikes and other “light means of transport” vehicles, like e-scooters, be repairable down to the individual cell level by independent professionals. The European e-bike industry, which strongly opposed this provision due to concerns over safety, battery certification, and legal liability issues, is now grappling with how to comply. 

“We are still examining how the requirements of the new EU battery regulation can be made possible while complying with the applicable safety regulations and our high quality standards,” e-bike battery manufacturer Bosch told Grist. One challenge for manufacturers, Bosch noted, is the “contrary development in the USA,” which is “on its way to stronger regulations and higher standards for e-bike batteries and systems.” 

Indeed, the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission recently announced that it is considering regulations for e-bikes and their batteries. This comes after a recent rash of e-bike battery fires that have also spurred a policy response on a local level. The New York City Council recently amended its fire code to prohibit “the assembly or reconditioning of a lithium-ion battery” using secondhand cells from another battery, which repairers sometimes do. 

The city also recently enacted a law requiring that e-mobility manufacturers ensure their products’ batteries are certified to the UL 2271 design standard, which is intended to promote safety. Ibrahim Jilani, the global director of consumer technology at UL Solutions — a multinational company that tests safety certification standards for a wide range of industrial and consumer products and materials — said that repaired batteries can meet this standard. But the company doing the repair would be required to “keep the design exactly how it was prior to needing repair,” Jilani said, including using the same make and model of cells and electronic components. Battery repair shops would also need to submit to UL field inspections four times a year, which would cost them a little over $5,000 a year, Jilani said.*

Compared with e-bikes, lawmakers have been relatively quiet on EV battery repair. In the U.S., there are no specific laws or regulations that address the issue. The EU’s new battery regulation doesn’t touch on EV battery repair either, other than to suggest lawmakers update a separate vehicle regulation “to ensure that those batteries can be removed, replaced, and disassembled.” 

That’s an idea that GDV, the German Insurance Association, “strongly supports,” a spokesperson told Grist. In October, the group published the results of a study that found EVs are a third more expensive to repair than similar gas-powered vehicles, a finding it attributed in part to the high costs of fixing or replacing batteries.

“There are a lot of automakers who do not allow battery repair, even in case of minor damages to the battery case,” a GDV spokesperson told Grist. Automakers sometimes choose to replace the battery if the car was involved in an accident that caused the airbags to activate. Both practices “will lead to an increase of repair costs,” and ultimately, higher insurance premiums, the spokesperson said.

New rules around EV battery repairability would come at a critical time. Helps, of Cox Automotive, said that two trends in EV battery design are occurring in parallel: “Batteries are either becoming very serviceable, or not serviceable at all.”

Some, like the batteries inside Volkswagon’s ID.4, feature LEGO-like modules that are easy to remove and replace. Others, like Tesla’s new 4680 structural battery pack, don’t include modules at all. Instead, all of the cells are bonded together and bonded to the pack itself, a design Helps described as “impossible to service.” If a bad cell group is found, the entire battery must be replaced.

“It’s still a fully recyclable battery,” Helps said. “You’re just not able to repair it.”

Tesla didn’t respond to Grist’s request for comment.

*Correction: This story originally misstated the nature of UL Solutions’ work and the costs associated with obtaining UL certification.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline EV battery repair is dangerous. Here’s why mechanics want to do it anyway. on Dec 8, 2023.