A quick google search of “Lithium-ion battery fires” will reveal a concerning and growing risk associated with the battery technology. Heralded as an innovative path forward for green energy and a reduction in emissions, lithium-ion batteries are now common place in every day life in everything from mobile phones and eScooter batteries to large scale Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) used as reserve power for national energy grids in nations around the world.

However, what you don’t tend to hear very much about is when these things go wrong. When they go wrong, they go very wrong. The video below is from a facility in South Korea where 23 people were recently killed by a lithium battery fire, most likely by poisonous fumes. Eye-witnesses say batteries rained like bullets:

Here’s another short video from the Scottish Sun of a recycling facility in Scotland where a lithium fire occurred:

As you can see, the plumes of toxic smoke from this are enormous and will wreak havoc on the surrounding hinterland for a long time. Water used to fight these fires carries toxins into the soil and waterways and into human consumption through the air we breath, drinking water and food. As you will see from the video, locals were advised to “stay in doors and close the windows” – as toxins rain down.

These instances are not isolated. They are increasingly common. The fires happen randomly in everything from phones to e-scooters to battery storage facilities.

Here’s another one from two months ago where batteries meant for recycling rained down from the sky:

ALL OF THESE INSTANCES CITED ABOVE HAVE HAPPENED SINCE APRIL 2024.

EVACUATION ORDERS

This one, reported by Fox News in the US included an evacuation order.

Another fire at Drogenbos in Belgium happened in late 2017 during the commissioning phase of a battery storage facility – it was destroyed in a fire before it even opened.

This problem is not going away, yet the Irish government continues to allow lithium-ion battery storage facilities to be built within close range of people’s homes. This amounts to criminal negligence.

The main news media outlets don’t cover these stories and you would have to wonder why. It seems any attempt to criticise the transition to so-called green energy is immediately censored, as though we live in an authoritarian state.

The people who control the news in Ireland don’t share these catastrophic events. They will most likely accuse us of “misinformation” and “scaremongering” – but your eyes do not deceive you. These threats are real, they are frequent and they are deadly.

For a full list of known BESS fires, visit this online database:

https://storagewiki.epri.com/index.php/BESS_Failure_Incident_Database

Who benefits from this silence? It’s not the Irish people, it’s not our future generations. So why do we accept it?