The vast majority of the world’s cobalt reserves are to be found in one of the world’s most unstable countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where conditions in the mines can be notoriously poor. Nor is cobalt the only important battery metal that poses such questions. We also need lots of nickel for many high-performance battery chemistries, yet much of the world’s nickel is produced in Indonesia, where it often involves the destruction of pristine rainforests
