5 billion tons of coal gets mostly burned up.
Meanwhile 50 THOUSAND tons of lithium is produced per year. For which maybe millions tons of waste gets created.
Hmmm, 500,000 litres of water per ton of lithium. Electrolysis required to create lithium metal. Plus the required dirt being moved, water being moved, energy for electrolysis, etc...
Sounds very energy efficient...
/s
But still, that 5 billion tons of coal gets mined, transported and then burned to produce energy once.
A kg of coal contains about 8kWh of energy which it can release once. This is the best kind of coal. Also you only get about 40% of it as electricity.
A kg of lithium will store about 1.1kWh energy in a battery .. thousands of times before it needs to be RECYCLED.
Your efficiency is off by many orders of magnitude.
Coal production is terrible and I'll never support it.
So why are you attributing the coal mining waste to lithium then?
If you actually look at the numbers the benefits of mining for lithium FAR outweigh its downsides.
Coal is an existing form of energy reserve which has stable long-term storage and can be consumed once. Batteries are not native energy, though batteries can be manufactured and then charged to temporarily time-shift energy.
But important distinction nonetheless.
Sometimes the media conflates energy production, storage, and transport. This leads to confusing arguments.