A very observant longtime friend of mine opined recently that the clean energy economy is really just a metals energy economy where metals provide the basis for energy production and transmission. The idea that this emerging economy is going to be light on resources compared to our current fossil-fuel based economy is a fantasy.
And you don’t have to take his word for it. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has attempted to project the needs of this new economy. The IEA’s report entitled “The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions” contains some eye-popping statistics that drive home just how much in the way of metals might be needed in order to supply the builders of this clean energy infrastructure.
Using two scenarios the IEA estimated that growth in demand coming from clean energy industries just for battery-related minerals will explode by 2040 relative to 2020:
1. Lithium: Between 13 to 42 times.
2. Graphite: Between 8 and 25 times.
3. Cobalt: Between 6 to 21 times.
4. Nickel: Between 6 to 19 times.
5. Manganese: Between 3 to 8 times.
Demand related specifically to renewable energy and its infrastructure is projected to increase for the following minerals under two scenarios:
1. Rare earth elements (REEs): Between 3.4 and 7.3 times more. REEs are important for electric motors and generators.
2. Molybdenum: Between 2.2 to 2.9 times more. Molybdenum is used in solar and wind power because of its ability to transmit electricity well.
3. Copper – Between 1.7 to 2.7 times more. Copper, of course, has long been used in electrical motors and wires.
4. Silicon – Between 1.8 to 2.3. Silicon, of course, is a semiconductor widely used in solar panels. Silicon is the second most abundant element in the earth’s crust after oxygen, so it is widely available. However, it takes considerable energy and a multi-step process to produce silicon of sufficient purity for semiconductor and other applications.
These lists are, of course, not complete. Here are two more examples. Presumably, aluminum use will grow in order to lighten new vehicles thus reducing their energy use. And, startup companies are trying to encourage adoption of iron powder as fuel that can be recycled and burned again.
What is not often discussed is the vast number of new mines which will have to be discovered, developed and operated in the coming years. It is not certain enough deposits of sufficient concentration to justify mine development will be found to supply these huge new sources of demand.
And when economically viable deposits are found, their development and operation will consume a large amount of liquid fuels. Currently, almost all of those fuels are derived from oil and to a much smaller extent natural gas. This mine build-out will result in significant ongoing emissions of greenhouse gases. And the refining of these metals will require copious amount of energy to achieve the high temperatures required. The advocates of this build-out say that eventually new nonpolluting fuels will be substituted for petroleum- and natural gas-based fuels. The key word here is “eventually.”
A World Bank report provides the following nifty chart which maps metals to their use in the emerging clean energy economy. It makes clear why the clean energy economy is really a metals energy economy that isn’t going to be as clean as many think.
Main photo:Â Chemetall Foote Lithium Operation (2010) by PDTillman. Via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chemetall_Foote_Lithium_Operation.jpg
“The Chemetall Foote Lithium Operation in Clayton Valley, a dry lake bed in Esmeralda County, Nevada, just east of Silver Peak, a tiny town that has been host to various kinds of mining for about 150 years.”
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All true and good points in your article, Kurt. I’m still a fervent supporter of renewables. The
key issues are recycling, reducing energy use (no matter what the
source), and innovation to reduce inputs.
With energy sources, there are always going to be side effects. Fossil fuels
lead to suicide of human civilization and have the most powerful lobbies on the planet behind
them. Anything to get us offf them is positive, even with their side
effects.
We WILL end up on renewables by default – fossil energy being finite.
But the rest of your posit is wrong. GND territory; just wrong.
Given energy and resource curtailment (and remembering that recycling takes more energy than we can spare even now) the need is to identify a level of activity that we can maintain long-term – and attempt to achieve that.
Your approach allows the waste of time, resources and energy that will taken by the inevitable attempt to replace like-or-like our current infrastructure/lifestyles.
I’m worried about what the world will look like in 50 years, when, assuming we can kick fossil fuels, we’re tearing up the planet mining metal for wind farms….. if we actually want to preserve any nature at all, it seems like we need to go back to subsistence farming and ditch high-powered energy altogether… but I don’t think people will do that in sufficient numbers. When I’m old we’ll be talking about how we need to kick mines… seems like it’s always the same story.
We will be recycling all those Wind Turbines and solar panels so there will not be a problem.
However, if we do stick with Global Capitalism the we do have a problem.
Another hit piece from an oil shill.
It’s over for humanity. All limits have been reached and breached.
8 billion will go down!
Even some of my scientist colleagues at the USAF/SMC believed we didn’t have to worry about the future because we’d just innovate our way out of trouble (or something). Thinking this is simply denial, especially for the scientifically educated. The only question is if you’re technically competent, and yet still denying the problem – that borders on being greedy or crazy or delusional. The simplest way I’ve heard it expressed is: “Technooptimism will be the last great scam of Western Civilization. Many participants may even mean well while they’re doing it.”
The most fundamental fact is that, without the by-now-lost Holocene, none of our ideas of-or-for civilization remain applicable. This is The Great Folly that technooptimists spread while simultaneously neglecting the fact that there are no useful models to guide us into the unknown Anthropocene, and certainly opinions are much less useful than good models. Ultimately, that’s all technooptimism is – a useless, uninformed-by-model, cluster of opinions that might be useful if we hadn’t destroyed the Holocene.
I have a different opinion, I am not as hopeful as the commenters who are arguing about strategies. Unfortunately, for the last hundred years or so our world has dug the hole we’re stuck in too deeply for us to get out. The world is too dependent on an industrialism requiring an enormous use of energy, mainly from fossil fuels. Our populations have been well trained to think in the short term, to maximize wealth, to give short shrift to the environment, and to distrust others who propose grand plans for the world. The fossil fuel industry will remain strong for decades while we build up “renewable” energy sources, because it will be a long time before there is enough of the latter to supplant the fossil fuels. That transition will produce too many greenhouse gases, our dreams of limiting climate change will be dashed. If degrowth comes at all, it will be through economic depression (since the world is resting on very shaky financial grounds, and will probably see shortages in fuels, energy production, and mineral extraction as Kurt implies). Wars for resources will become quite likely. I don’t see plans by Resilience readers and their ilk having any chance of being adopted so as to save us from this mess.
Hi Kurt
That IEA report has been somewhat debunked. See link below.
Even though the increase in mining will be large, there will be a net overall reduction in mining, when we stop extracting and burning Fossil Fuels. Mines are already decarbonising, but of course not nearly fast enough. We will be recycling nearly all those minerals, so the mines will not be operating forever, unlike Fossil Fuels.
This is not to say we shouldn’t be focusing on reducing energy consumption as an absolute priority and be moving away from a growth based economy.
https://carbontracker.org/mineral-constraints-for-transition-overstated-by-iea/
I’m confused by the concern for Molybdenum?
Thin-film are only 5% of all solar cells made today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-film_solar_cell
Molybdenum is only used in CIGS thin-film, which is 1 of 3 types of the thin-film solar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_indium_gallium_selenide_solar_cell
Molybdenum is more important to wind, used in making steel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molybdenum
However, industrial metallurgy is an evolving field with new mixes and grades of steel being experimented with constantly as the prices of various materials change. Given the enormous range of potential steel mixes and the enormous quantities of iron ore – it’s ridiculous to claim we will struggle to make steel in the future.
Yet – for other reasons entirely such as ease of transport – Vestas are making giant wood wind turbines! It seems the CLT tech that is letting us now build skyscrapers out of wood also allows wind turbines to be made from easy transportable flatpacks that do not require the same level of forest clearing for turning corners that the giant turbines require.
“Construction is underway in Sweden on a 105-metre wind turbine tower made entirely from wood, a milestone for Swedish wood technology company Modvion.”
Made by Vestas, 2 MW turbine, tallest in the world so far. August 2023
https://reneweconomy.com.au/worlds-tallest-wind-turbine-tower-made-of-wood-goes-up-in-sweden/
The rapid growth in the Energy Transition will no doubt increase the mining primarily of silicon, aluminium and iron – the 3 core material requirements for wind and solar. (These can be doped with rare-earths for niche performance boosts but most solar and many brands of wind are pivoting away from rare earths due to cost. There are wind turbines that do not require any rare earths even in the generator!) These materials are super-abundant, being 27%, 8% and 5% of the earth’s crust. Grid storage can be OFF-RIVER Pumped Hydro Electricity Storage, with Professor Andrew Blakers showing the world has 100 TIMES more potential sites than we need. Grid storage can also be from sodium batteries, which of course use no lithium, copper, cobalt, or graphene. (We’re not going to run out of sea-salt.) Lithium mining will also need to increase – but I’m seeing signs that the next generation are more interested in New Urbanism so there’s also hope there.
But the most premium EV’s and fancier brands will probably still require rare earths and cobalt – so we really need to encourage our field activists from the big environmental NGO’s to monitor the social justice and environmental issues of all this increased mining.
Remember the big picture. By 2040 about half the lithium used in EV’s should be from recycled lithium – and as the circular economy rises, the demand for new resources shrinks. Eventually this metals economy will be mostly recycled. And imagine the recycling of the 22,000 cargo ships – 40% of all global shipping – let alone all the oil rigs and mining kit. That’s a lot of steel for new wind turbines!
Regarding clean mining – what are these ‘non-polluting fuels’ and how do they compete with the prototype giant mining EV’s already being trialled? Mining is going electric. Catepillar, Liebherr, Fortescue, Komatsu and Hitachi have their own new super-sized EV mining trucks. Some charge on a trolley-truck system going uphill while doing twice the speed of their old diesel cousins. An Australian industrial think tank comprising about a third of the Australian stock market, with big players such as BHP and Bluescope, have plans to build out about 5 TIMES Australia’s 2020 electricity grid capacity in renewables to power all their mining, transport, and industrial heat and smelting needs. https://energytransitionsinitiative.org/
Trucking is going electric. Janus Electric battery-swap system for the big 100 ton Aussie Road trains will work? A guy in a forklift does it in a minute. The batteries can take their time charging from solar on the the warehouse roof (which does up to 10 trucks) and rural areas could have their own solar farms. Once installed, it means no weekly deliveries of expensive polluting diesel. It’s easier on the batteries, and easier on the local grid. Then even agriculture can go electric. There’s a crazy John Deere swarm-harvester that runs on 3 km long power-cords! Seems chaotic – and I’m not sure it will take. But they’re trying different things. (And with Precision Fermentation on the way – I’m not sure what agriculture will even look like in a decade or so!)
Finally, keep in mind that the biggest mining operation by far is the 14 billion tons of fossil fuels we mine and transport each year. It’s an order of magnitude or more than the height of our metal mining will ever reach.
Mining metals and minerals requires a massive amount of energy, as does smelting and making useful metals, then manufacturing…. So any rapid and dramatic expansion of renewable energy technology applications will result in greater emissions in the near term — being our current period of 2023-2033, a period in which we should be reducing rather than increasing emissions. (See: https://rword.substack.com/p/2023-2033-the-decisive-decade )
Not that energy is the only thing that matters. Large scale mining is ecologically harmful, however done, and it requires more of our fresh water than we can spare.
” … the need is to identify a level of activity that we can maintain long-term – and attempt to achieve that.”
Something like that. To reduce energy and materials flows to a sustainable rate would mean ending the luxury-dependent mode of modern economy, and would be an end to capitalism’s growth-dependent mode of finance and economy. It would also result in massive failure of urban economies and a dramatic need to rapidly de-urbanize, enabling vast numbers of people to leave the cities in order to have access to livelihood … which won’t exist in cities because urban economies would collapse due to a rapid disappearance of “jobs”.
The choice now for the mainstream is between renewables and FFs.
Changing lifestyle is down the road.
I’ve been saying for years that I really don’t much care what “the mainstream” is thinking all that much — because they really aren’t thinking at all. I only speak with thinking people about topics which require actually thinking.
The revolution will not be led by unthinking “mainstream” people. It occurs on the edges and peripheries. And in time what is now mainstream will be simply over with and done for.
Down the road? You mean after the inevitable collapse? We can’t wait any more. It’s not as though the time will come when politicians and the fossil fuel industry will agree to a transition. They’ll be ready for that when the last lump of coal, the last drop of oil and the last puff of gas has been burned–only we’ll probably have an ecological and therefore a civilizational collapse before that happens. We’re caught between a rock and hard place, biophysical reality and sociopolitical reality. I realized this when I read Heinberg’s Our Renewable Future–he showed that there were PROBABLY solutions to all the problems of a transition, but each one would be a heavy lift and there are so many. What we need if the goal is to have enough energy for a decent life for all 8 billion of us–say at ten percent of what’s normal for the US–and not destroy the biosphere on which we all depend– is an immediate, massive, wrenching change in every sphere of life, of our economy. But we still aren’t even honestly discussing this.
All that said, I still would like to see a speedup in the buildout of renewable energy infrastructure…but with an understanding that this is to make the next generations’ lives less miserable, not to reduce emissions. Because it won’t do that, it will INCREASE emissions–unless at the same time we drastically cut consumption WHICH WE SHOULD DO.
Mary Wildfire: ” … but with an understanding that this is to make the next generations’ lives less miserable, not to reduce emissions.”
When have our corporate-owned politicians and media ever been so honest about anything. I’ll not be holding my breath! They will say, “We’re doing this so you can go on living in an ever-prosperous American Dream.” Just like they have been doing. And this means the true-believing flock will not prepare for what’s really coming our way.
I don’t disagree.
The political reality is that renewables have widespread support and are a potent challenge to the fossil fuel companies with their powerful lobbies.
Degrowth and reduced consumption are not on the political agenda, much as I wish they were.
My hope is that renewables will break us from our addiction to oil and open us up to new thinking. Renewables are absolutely not a cure all.
There’s a political sphere which requires realistic thinking, and the cultural sphere which is the place for small-scale individual visions.
Both are important.
I mostly operate in the cultural sphere, but I support political action.
I’m genuinely at a loss to understand what the political sphere is if not part of the cultural sphere. What I mean is, I’m now so deep into a systems perspective on the world that I can’t even fathom what “mainstream” people are meaning to say when they segregate “the political” from “the cultural”. Huh? What? I don’t understand.
And what do you mean by “realistic”? If you believe that the mainstream narrative on any of these things we’re talking about is “realistic” we’re inhabiting differing planets.
As one of the Odum brothers said, “Small is beautiful but Big is powerful.”
Politics is about power, policy and economics. Many of us have given up on politics, having felt powerless for so many years. It’s understandable.
Cultural change is what you, me and Resilience are about. I think it’s vitally important, but people with our views are not being elected, not making policy.
For a viable future:
– The mainstream will begin taking our ideas seriously.
– At least some of us will develop the political skills to help shape policy