From water to the road. If an electric car has the advantage of not emitting CO2, the production of batteries is a black point. The extraction of rare metals, such as nickel or cobalt, or even the use of water for the production of electronic chips, are, and rightly so, cringe. But as it seems obvious to protect the natural resources present on earth, companies are forcing themselves to seek viable solutions, less polluting and more respectful of the environment.

This is the case of a Danish architectural firm ( Bjarke Ingels Group ) and a company specializing in the collection of metals from the oceans based in Vancouver ( The Metals Company ). Together, they imagined an autonomous and aquatic robot, which looks like a modern football stadium, to travel the depths of the oceans in search of "polymetallic nodules", mineral concretions (they are like rocks) rich in manganese, cobalt, nickel or copper

34 billion nodules. As The Metals Company website explains , “  Formed over millions of years by absorbing metals from seawater, these nodules are not attached to the abyssal seabed and are almost entirely made up of usable materials. Unlike terrestrial ores, they do not contain toxic levels of heavy elements and the production of metals from nodules generates 99% less solid waste with no toxic residues. In other words, these natural stones at the bottom of the oceans are a clean resource for building batteries for electric vehicles. In the idea, through a long pipe, the metals will transit to a 215-meter-long boat which serves as a storage platform before transporting it to a processing plant.

One of the places where The Metals Company plans to harvest the metal is called the Clarion Clipperton area. It is a surface of 9 million km2 between Hawaii and Mexico where there would be, according to the French Research Institute for the exploitation of the sea , 34 billion tons of “nodules”.