Green Energy Supply Chains and Child Labor
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Under Trump, this report would never even happen, so it’s good that the Department of Labor has filed a report about the serious problem with forced and child labor in the global supply chains for the green energy transition.
A new report from the Department of Labor raises tough questions about whether and to what extent forced labor and child labor are intertwined with climate-friendly technology.
The department released a report this month finding that several minerals that are key components of electric vehicles and solar panels may be produced through these unethical labor practices.
The findings point to major ethical quandaries surrounding the ongoing energy transition. Climate change, if not addressed, endangers many of the world’s most vulnerable people. At the same time, the report raises serious human rights concerns about the technology being used to address it.
“There are supply chains where there are certain bottlenecks in countries with a very bad performance when it comes to human rights,” said Tom Moerenhout, a research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
“The ethics of that is critical not just for a government [that] is trying to direct public policy in an ethical way, but also often for consumers and companies,” Moerenhout added.
The new report stated forced labor is involved in the extraction of Chinese aluminum and silicon, Indonesian nickel and cobalt from Congo. It said child labor was being used to mine the aforementioned cobalt as well as copper from Congo and Zambia, Zambian manganese, Zimbabwean lithium and inputs used for South Korean Indium.
It also highlighted labor concerns regarding the supply chain for certain Chinese products, saying Chinese lithium-ion batteries were produced with minerals from Congo that used child labor and/or forced labor.
Central to a green economy needs to be a moral economy of labor. We’ve seen positive changes in relationships between unions and environmentalists in the United States, but we’ve seen almost no real conversation about policing the supply chains. I’ve beaten this drum for a decade now–it’s not impossible and we actually do this on occasion for some goods. Labor with dignity no matter when in the global economy you reside needs to be a strong priority for all of us.