Collaborative Pathways to Just Transitions: Assessing the Consumer’s Role in EV Manufacturing Policy

• In Event: State-Level Dynamics in Energy Governance in the United States

Abstract

Electric vehicles (EVs) play a crucial role in mitigating climate change, as they displace GHG emissions from gasoline-based vehicles from the transportation sector (EPA, 2025). Despite their importance, EVs are increasingly criticized for negative impacts associated with the mining and manufacturing of their batteries (Lienert, 2021; Tabuchi and Plumer, 2021). Batteries contain critical minerals and mining these critical minerals has led to environmental problems as well as human rights issues (Amnesty International, 2016; Carr-Wilson et al., 2024; Faber et al., 2017; Niarchos, 2021; RAID, 2021). In response, technological solutions such as alternate battery chemistries and blockchain traceability have started to emerge. However, these solutions are still in early development stages and will be costly to implement. This raises the question of who should bear the costs of implementing such solutions and how the cost-sharing mechanisms within the policies enforcing these solutions should be designed (OECD, 2021). 

Some recent research that has begun to explore these questions assumes that if EV consumers are aware of these concerns and demand EVs that are sustainably and ethically produced (i.e., without negative impacts), automakers and battery manufacturers will readily change their production processes (Cao et al., 2023; Fan et al., 2022; Zhao et al., 2025). However, none of this work directly examines EV consumers. Consequently, EV consumers remain vastly understudied in this literature (Hofmann et al., 2019), and yet they are surprisingly presumed to be the primary catalyst in creating a collaborative solution that will lead to a market of sustainably and ethically manufactured EVs. Without empirical evidence for EV consumers’ awareness and willingness to shoulder these costs, successfully implementing these solutions relies on untested assumptions. My research addresses this significant gap by examining the relationship between electric vehicle (EV) consumers and the negative impacts associated with EV production. This study aims to understand the role that EV consumers can play in collaborative policy solutions aimed at transforming the EV supply chain. Using a survey of 500 US recent EV buyers and a discrete choice experiment (DCE), I thus answer the following research questions: a) What is EV consumers’ awareness about the negative impacts of mining for EV batteries, and b) how much are they willing to pay for EVs with batteries that contain ethically and sustainably sourced critical minerals?

The energy transition is expected to create a sixfold increase in demand for critical minerals by 2040 (IEA, 2021). If left unaddressed, this increase in demand will lead to a corresponding rise in environmental and social harms, directly impacting mining communities and threatening a consistent supply of critical minerals necessary for an uninterrupted energy transition (Barbanell, 2023). Additionally, some studies also suggest that these solutions might create an unjust distribution of costs if they are borne by on-ground miners who these solutions seek to protect (Schleper et al., 2022). Thus, this research addresses both of these urgent and distributive concerns by providing empirical insights for the design of policy solutions and cost-sharing mechanisms within these solutions for sustainable and ethically manufactured EVs. 

Author

• Mokshda Kaul, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Presenting Author