[IMTDb]

Lithium extraction to build millions of solar panels, batteries etc is not a 0 impact operation.

[wkat4242]

Solar panel production doesn't use lithium. They're made from sand and a lot of energy. A bit like silicon wafers.

You might mean the storage to keep those data centers running throughout the night though and yeah. But this problem is not very big in the scope of other battery challenges like transportation. Because for data centers you don't need the best energy per weight or volume which you do need in a car.

And there's other sources of renewable energy too.

[Veedrac]

Hence why I said “displacement effects are likely to dominate [...] the marginal environmental cost of the renewables themselves.”...

[GaggiX]

Well good news you don't need lithium to build solar panels.

[Spooky23]

This is a straw man usually used by anti electric car people.

There’s always an impact. If you had a sandwich for lunch, the wheat in the bread destroyed a grassland somewhere.

Usually in context of energy, we’re talking about carbon impact.