Abstract
The global energy transition is widely framed as a technical pathway to decarbonization, but its material requirements are reshaping older patterns of extraction and inequality. This paper argues that cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) exposes a central paradox of climate action: low-carbon technologies can reduce emissions while reproducing “sacrifice zones” through forced labor, child labor, dangerous working conditions, and environmental contamination. Using the energy justice framework – distributional, procedural, and recognition justice – this paper synthesizes scholarship on environmental justice in renewable deployment and energy burden alongside policy and investigative reporting on battery supply chains. Methodologically, it is a cross-disciplinary literature-based analysis that connects upstream mineral extraction to downstream renewable planning and electricity systems. The analysis shows how benefits (mobility, grid storage, cleaner air, and technological advantage) are concentrated among consumers and firms, while burdens are disproportionately borne by Congolese mining communities and other marginalized groups affected by inequitable energy systems. The paper concludes with justice-centered priorities for decarbonization planning, including stronger labor and safety enforcement, transparent supply-chain mapping and community investment, participatory decision-making for affected communities, and demand-side strategies that reduce material intensity rather than simply shifting extraction elsewhere. These findings are relevant across sustainable development fields, linking human rights, supply-chain governance, energy systems planning, and environmental policy.
Author’s note:
I wrote this piece as my final project for Global Environmental Justice at Middlebury College, taught by Professor Kemi Fuentes-George. The clean energy transition is too often discussed as if it begins at the point of consumption – an EV purchase, a grid-scale battery project, or a new wind farm – rather than at the point of extraction. In researching cobalt supply chains and reading energy justice scholarship, I became convinced that decarbonization strategies need to be evaluated not only by emissions outcomes but also by the social relations and power structures they reinforce. My goal is to make the upstream harms of the transition legible within mainstream climate narratives and to show why distributional, procedural, and recognition justice are practical tools for better policy and project design.
Full Piece
The global transition to renewable energy is widely viewed as an unequivocal dispositive,broadly regarded as an absolute necessity to save society: solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles promise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enabling humanity to avert the worst impacts of climate change. Yet the details of the transition, notably the infrastructures that support critical aspects of transition architecture, are powered by an enormous reliance on mining for “critical minerals,” such as lithium, nickel, graphite, and, especially, cobalt. Cobalt is essential for lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles, grid-scale energy storage systems, and everyday electronics like smartphones and laptops (U.S. Department of Labor, 2023). The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) now produces the vast majority of the world’s cobalt, making the country essential to the clean energy transition, but also the frontline of its hidden harms. In southeastern DRC, hundreds of thousands of miners, including tens of thousands of children, labor in dangerous conditions for tiny wages, while surrounding communities endure toxic pollution and economic precarity.
Over the last decade, the demand for battery metals has risen sharply alongside global electric vehicle (EV) deployment: “In 2022, about 60% of lithium, 30% of cobalt and 10% of nickel demand was for EV batteries. Just five years earlier, in 2017, these shares were around 15%, 10% and 2%, respectively” (International Energy Agency, 2023). In particular, cobalt demand and production have surged: “Global production of cobalt rose from an average global production of 38,000 tonnes per annum over the 1970 to 2009 period to around 145,000 tonnes per annum over the recent 2010 to 2019 period, and demand is likely to double again by 2030” (U.S. Department of Labor, 2023, vi).
The DRC sits at the center of the growth of the green energy transition, accounting for about 70% of global cobalt supply (U.S. Department of Labor, 2023). In 2024, 220,000 metric tons out of 290,000 metric tons of the world’s cobalt was mined in the DRC’s southeastern provinces of Haut-Katanga and Lualaba (Kara, 2025 p. 9; 37). Rechargeable batteries drive most of this growing demand, with cobalt used primarily in EVs: in 2024, one in five cars sold globally (about 17.1 million vehicles) were electric, up from around 320,000 a decade earlier. EV sales are projected to reach 27 million by 2026 (Kara, 2025 p. 36). Between 2023 and 2030, the market value of cobalt is anticipated to more than double, from $10.8 billion to a forecasted $24.9 billion (Kara, 2025 p. 40).
Cobalt demand not only comes from the electric vehicle industry; it is used in wind turbines, computers, cell phones, vacuum cleaners, hearing aids, and grid-scale batteries (U.S. Department of Labor, 2023). The International Energy Agency estimates that 126 countries have active renewable energy policies, ranging from financial incentives and regulatory instruments to strategic plans and direct investments (Levenda et al., 2021). In this context, cobalt is often framed as a necessary material in the sprint to achieve decarbonization.
To understand the injustices of cobalt mining in the DRC, it is crucial to map its role in a longer history of exploitation. The Congolese region has been a site of extraction for centuries. During the Atlantic slave trade, roughly one-quarter of all Africans trafficked across the ocean departed from Loango Bay near the mouth of the Congo River (Kara, 2025 p. 20). In the late nineteenth century, the Berlin Conference granted King Leopold II of Belgium personal control over the Congo Free State. Under his rule, terror, torture, and slavery were used to force the Congolese population to extract rubber sap for export to Europe, where it was used for bicycle and car tires; one notorious punishment involved severing the hands and feet of the wives and children of men who did not meet quotas (Kara, 2025). These brutal practices were justified through a “ruse of humanitarian intentions,” but in reality the colonial projects were organized around extracting value from land and labor (Kara, 2025). The mining sector has remained the country’s primary source of wealth since its colonial era (Kara, 2025). Today’s cobalt scramble, centered in Lualaba’s capital, Kolwezi, represents a new phase of this long-running pattern of external demand driving violence, dispossession, and injustice in the Congo (Kara, 2025). The historical context of the DRC matters because it highlights what energy justice scholars call recognition justice: “the identification of the significance and impact of past and current structural inequities of energy project execution, such as redlining (historical outlining of minority areas as high risk for loans), other predatory lending practices, and infrastructure siting and investments” (Romero-Lankao et al., 2023 p. 8). Cobalt is not simply a neutral input for green technologies; it is inextricably linked to a place in which exploitation has long been normalized in the name of progress and capitalism.
The clean energy transition’s reliance on cobalt is made possible by an enormous Congolese workforce operating under hazardous and often coercive conditions. Cobalt is mined in both large-scale industrial sites (LSM) and artisanal and small-scale mines (ASM). Artisanal mining “‘refers to a largely manual mode of extraction, practiced by individuals, groups or communities.’ Small-scale mining is similar to artisanal mining except that the first stage, stripping of the first layers of earth, is mechanized” (U.S. Department of Labor, 2023 p. 2). In practice, ASM functions as an informal underbelly to industrial mining: tens of thousands of tons of artisanal cobalt ore are funneled into corporate supply chains, where they are blended with industrial output and eventually end up in the same location: rechargeable devices and vehicles (Kara, 2025).
Reliable data is limited, but estimates suggest that “500,000 to 2 million people depend on artisanal mining for their livelihood, and an estimated 30 to 50% of workers are women” in the DRC (Scharff, 2025). Additionally, the World Bank has estimated that around 10 million people in sub-Saharan Africa depend directly or indirectly on ASM (Save the Children, 2024). This economic dependence makes it difficult for workers to leave, despite the risks. A survey of 1,431 artisanal and small-scale miners in Haut-Katanga and Lualaba found that 27.7% began mining as minors, only 7.3% have a secondary source of income, and about 70% would prefer to quit mining but cannot because they have no other means of survival. Not a single respondent had a written work agreement, reflecting the deep precarity of the sector (Kara, 2025).
Children also make up a notable/sizable portion of cobalt mine workers: one estimate suggests that 40,000 children work in cobalt mining in the DRC (Scharff, 2025). Save the Children reports that tens of thousands of children work at mine sites daily in the DRC’s cobalt-bearing regions, often to help support their families (Save the Children, 2024). Another estimate indicates that more than one million children worldwide work in mines and quarries, including in lithium mines in Nigeria, mica mining in Madagascar, and copper mines in Zambia (Save the Children, 2024). Children in DRC cobalt mines are exposed to precarious and dangerous conditions, including dust inhalation, prolonged sun exposure, and being tasked with carrying heavy loads, resulting in heightened respiratory and digestive illnesses and spinal deformities (Save the Children, 2024).
Forced labor further compounds the injustice of these mining activities. A large-scale study of cobalt workers in Haut-Katanga and Lualaba used probability sampling to survey 946 adult mine workers in 64 villages near cobalt sites (U.S. Department of Labor, 2023). The study concluded that “more than three-fourths (78%) of employed workers experience forced labor. This amounts to an estimated 67,000 to 80,000 cobalt workers in the DRC” (U.S. Department of Labor, 2023 p. 36). Coercion often takes the form of forced overtime hours, pressure to perform hazardous tasks, and abusive working conditions (U.S. Department of Labor, 2023).
Workplace hazards are widespread: “Among all workers, the most common hazards are dust or strong fumes without appropriate protective equipment (84 percent), using dangerous or sharp tools or heavy machinery without appropriate protective equipment (77 percent), and carrying unreasonably heavy loads (77 percent). Less than half of workers (43 percent) report usually wearing protective gear. The proportion who report wearing protective gear is much lower for workers at ASM sites (29 percent) compared to those at LSM sites (79 percent)” (U.S. Department of Labor, 2023 p. viii).
Cobalt mining not only negatively affects the workers, but also has severe environmental impacts on local communities, due in large part to waste dumping. In and around Kolwezi, water sampling reveals heavy metal concentrations between 10 and 930 times the World Health Organization’s recommended maximums (Kara, 2025). Residents who rely on nearby lakes and rivers for drinking, bathing, and fishing report nausea, diarrhea, rashes, chronic stomach problems, headaches, and crop failures (Kara, 2025). Villagers describe their water as “destroyed” by the mines, linking everyday sickness directly to mining-related contamination (Kara, 2025).
The conditions of mining cobalt illustrate profound distributional injustice: Congolese communities absorb the health risks, injuries, and environmental damages that make the consumption of EVs and batteries in wealthier regions possible. In 2024, China, Europe, and North America dominated EV sales, while Congolese communities faced tunnel collapses, landslides, and toxic water in the name of decarbonization (Kara, 2025).
The injustices of the clean energy transition do not stop at the point of extraction. Even as renewables expand, their deployment often reproduces unequal distributions of benefits and burdens. A systematic review of the social and environmental implications of renewable energy technologies found that many projects classified as “renewable,” including hydropower, biomass, wind, and municipal solid waste (MSW) incineration, have significant environmental justice concerns (Levenda et al., 2021). Documented burdens include exposure to air and water pollution, loss of agricultural and cultural lands, reduced access to water resources, negative impacts on wildlife, and highly uneven distributions of benefits including electricity and revenues (Levenda et al., 2021). In many cases, renewable energy projects are sited in low-income, rural, or minority communities with limited political power, echoing long-standing patterns of environmental racism (Levenda et al., 2021). Hydropower and MSW incineration, for example, are associated with numerous cases in which disadvantaged groups bear concentrated burdens while others reap the gains (Levenda et al., 2021).
Spatial planning conflicts around renewables in the Basque Country in Spain similarly highlight how rural and mountain communities are regulated as mere sites for utility-scale energy infrastructure (Azkarraga et al., 2024). “The Territorial Sectoral Plan for Renewable Energies aims to organize the deployment of large-scale projects for multiple energy sources, on rural, non-developable land and on a regional scale” (Azkarraga et al., 2024). Critics argue that these projects disrupt attachments to place and compromise local adaptation capacities, instead prioritizing mitigation goals and investor interests. Similar dynamics exist within biofuel development and wind projects. In regions of U.S. corn ethanol production, communities experience new jobs but often lower wages and vulnerability to global policy shifts (Romero-Lankao et al., 2023). In Tehuantepec, Mexico, Indigenous communities confronted wind projects that promised benefits but failed to respect land rights or include residents in decision-making, leading to long-lasting intra- and inter-community conflicts grounded in both procedural and recognition injustices (Romero-Lankao et al., 2023). Energy justice issues also appear in electricity access and grid reliability. “It is estimated that the United States (U.S.) consumes approximately 101 quadrillion British Thermal Units of primary energy in support of human development and existence; this is approximately 17% of world primary energy consumption, while the U.S. only accounts for approximately 4% of the world population,” demonstrating how energy abundance is not equitably distributed. Studies show that low-income and minority households face higher “energy burdens,” spending larger shares of their income on energy while more likely to experience outages and energy insecurity (Garland et al., 2025). During the 2021 Texas winter blackout, “census blocks with a high minority population were four times more likely to experience a power outage, as 10–11% of prominently white neighborhoods experienced a power outage, whereas 47% of minority populations experienced an outage” (Garland et al., 2025).
These disparities are rooted in poorly conceived, discriminatory historical housing and infrastructure policies. Federal housing programs such as the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) institutionalized redlining, systematically denying loans to families of color and entrenching a racial wealth gap (Ramirez, 2021). Reduced wealth and limited geographic mobility have left many BIPOC communities in older, less resilient housing stock and neighborhoods with weaker infrastructure (Ramirez, 2021). In this context, clean energy incentives such as rooftop solar and EV subsidies can increase energy burdens if they are financed by raising electricity prices for all customers while only higher-income households can afford to participate (Garland et al., 2025). Without intentional grid upgrades and equity-centered policies, the renewable energy transition risks reinforcing existing inequalities in energy access and reliability (Ramirez, 2021).
In short, from cobalt extraction in the DRC to utility-scale renewables and household energy burdens, the clean energy transition currently operates through uneven geographies of harm and benefit. The same global systems that require Congolese miners to endure dangerous conditions also determine which communities enjoy the stability, lower emissions, and technological advantages made possible by their labor.
Energy justice scholars define energy justice as an approach which examines “the origins, quantification, and resolution of persistent and potential inequities within the energy sector, serving as a foundational pillar for societal harmony” (Ren et al., 2025). This framework emphasizes three interrelated dimensions: distributional justice (how benefits and burdens are shared), procedural justice (who participates in decisions), and recognition justice (whose histories, vulnerabilities, and perspectives are acknowledged) (Romero-Lankao et al., 2023).
Applying these principles to cobalt mining in the DRC and to renewable deployment as a whole suggests several opportunities for remediation. First, distributional justice requires addressing the steep imbalance between profits captured in the Global North and harms experienced in the Global South, such as those suffered by Congolese mining communities. Recommendations from research on cobalt supply chains include completing and making public transparent maps of how artisanal cobalt enters corporate production, as well as requiring companies to invest at least 0.5% of net profits into the communities whose labor and resources their products rely on (Kara, 2025). Wage protections, enforceable bans on child labor, and robust safety standards are also paramount to directly improving distributional outcomes for workers (U.S. Department of Labor, 2023).
Procedural justice demands that affected communities (artisanal miners, female caregivers, rural landholders, Indigenous groups, and frontline urban communities) have power in shaping energy policies and projects. In the DRC, enforcing procedural justice would entail engaging miners and local civil society in decisions about mining concessions, community investments, and environmental protections rather than treating their participation as obligatory and unamendable (Kara, 2025). With regard to renewable planning projects in places like the Basque Country or Tehuantepec, employing procedural justice includes designing participatory processes that respect local knowledge and land rights from the outset, rather than imposing projects that later provoke resistance (Romero-Lankao et al., 2023).
The recognition of justice also requires confronting the colonial and racist histories that structure today’s energy systems. In the DRC, this involves acknowledging how cobalt mining is embedded in a longer trajectory of exploitation stretching from the Atlantic slave trade through Leopold’s rubber regime to contemporary mining concessions (Kara, 2025). In the U.S., it involves recognizing how domestic policies like redlining have shaped energy poverty and grid vulnerability for BIPOC communities (Ramirez, 2021; Garland et al., 2025). Efforts like the Justice40 Initiative, which “aims to direct 40% of federal climate and clean energy benefits to disadvantaged communities,” represent one attempt to institutionalize this recognition, though their effectiveness depends on implementation (Ren et al., 2025).
Technological change alone will not resolve these injustices, and effective responses, while encouraging, remain illusory. Battery chemistries with lower cobalt content, such as certain NMC or LFP formulations, have partly emerged in response to public concern about cobalt mining, but rising overall demand for batteries continues to amplify material consumption (International Energy Agency, 2023). A just transition to clean energy will require not only new and innovative technologies but also differjent patterns of consumption to help balance abuses: smaller average battery sizes, more investment in public and shared mobility, and policies that reduce the material intensity of the energy system rather than simply shifting extractive pressures elsewhere are important guide posts for future efforts.
The case of cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo exposes a central paradox of the global clean energy transition. Cobalt is indispensable for lithium-ion batteries that underpin the functionality of EVs, grid storage, and digital technologies. Yet the communities that make this production possible through mining endure child labor, forced labor, dangerous working conditions, toxic water, and deep economic precarity. These harms occur in a country with a long history of resource exploitation, from the slave trade and Leopold’s rubber regime to today’s joint ventures between a weakened state and foreign mining companies (Kara, 2025). At the same time, renewable energy projects and electricity systems in the Global North often exhibit domestic environmental racism and uneven energy burdens, leaving low-income and minority communities with higher risks and fewer benefits (Levenda et al., 2021; Garland et al., 2025; Ramirez, 2021).
This paper is not an argument against decarbonization. Rather, it presents an argument that understanding the details of decarbonization’s planning and execution is essential to authentically achieving the outcomes embodied in the movement referred to as the “climate transition.” Without energy justice, the renewable energy transition risks becoming another chapter in a long story of extractivism, in which some communities become sacrifice zones so that others can enjoy cleaner air and climate-friendly technologies. By prioritizing distributional, procedural, and recognition justice, from Congolese mining provinces to rural wind corridors and urban grids, policymakers, companies, and social movements can push for a transition to clean energy that reduces emissions while also confronting historical and structural inequalities. A truly sustainable future will require not only phasing out fossil fuels but also transforming the social relations that have rendered certain lands and lives as expendable in the pursuit of clean energy.
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