Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions
* Report: International Energy Agency. The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions
Review
Nafeez Ahmed:
"According to the International Energy Agency (IEA)’s report, The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions, solar PV plants and wind farms “generally require more materials than fossil fuel-based counterparts for construction.” The IEA points out that an EV typically requires “six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired plant of the same capacity.” As a result, minerals and metals demand will skyrocket, the IEA projects, as the transition to clean energy accelerates. By 2040, as we attempt to replace the existing fossil fuel system with a clean energy system, demand for materials could either double or even quadruple with a faster rollout, encompassing minerals and metals like copper, cobalt, nickel, lithium, chromium, zinc, aluminium and rare earth elements.
The World Bank’s assessment is that production of minerals like graphite, lithium and cobalt could increase by as much as 500% by 2050 to meet demand for the clean energy transition. Yet the report also notes that mining for “low carbon technologies” will only generate 6% of the carbon emissions of fossil fuel technologies – a significant reduction.
Even within the conventional frameworks of the IEA and the World Bank, they recognize that there are solutions: mining can be expanded in a way that is environmentally and socially responsible, but we must also ramp up the scope for recycling and reuse.
On the other hand, a number of other studies claim that even with such approaches in place, the clean energy transition is bound to hit materials bottlenecks.
For instance, one major EU-backed model appears to show that the full electrification of cars, trucks and trains to run on clean energy will be constrained by mineral bottlenecks in a global economy which continues to grow at the current rate. The EV transition will “require higher amounts of copper, lithium and manganese than current reserves” by 2050, even with high recycling rates of 57 percent, 30 percent and 74 percent respectively, the study says.
Similarly, a report by the Geological Survey of Finland concluded that there are insufficient global reserves of nickel and lithium to produce the number of batteries required to replace the existing global transport fleet with EVs, while also providing a power buffer for when intermittent solar and wind energy is unable to meet electricity demand in the winter. The report arrives at the following grim verdict: “… replacing the existing fossil fuel powered system (oil, gas, and coal), using renewable technologies, such as solar panels or wind turbines, will not be possible for the entire global human population. There is simply just not enough time, nor resources to do this by the current target set by the world’s most influential nations. What may be required, therefore, is a significant reduction of societal demand for all resources, of all kinds.”
Yet these conventional approaches are deeply flawed. They completely fail to understand the dynamics of the disruptions, because they assume that clean energy technologies are supposed to simply replace incumbent fossil fuel technologies by way of a one-for-one substitution: hence the use of the phrase ‘energy transition’. The underlying assumption is that the system itself will pretty much operate in exactly the same way we are familiar with, albeit transitioning from one set of things to another.
In reality, this is not an energy ‘transition’ – implying a smooth and incremental progression from one set of technologies to another within the same architecture. Rather this is a complete transformation of the energy system, ushering in entirely new dynamics, rules and possibilities. Only when we understand those new dynamics can we accurately grasp the risks and opportunities ahead."
(https://www.rethinkx.com/blog/part-1-the-mythology-of-mineral-shortages)