https://stopthesethings.com/2021/06/15/rapacious-renewables-how-the-wind-solar-transition-is-devouring-the-planet/
Crony capitalists aren’t just promoting subsidised wind and solar,
they see subsidised Electric Vehicles as yet another means of lining
their pockets with taxpayers’ money.
The marketing pitch is that this is all for the good of the Planet.
Whirling wonders lovingly caressing breezes to capture ‘free energy’;
energy-rich sunbeams falling gently onto sheets of shimmering
glass-covered fields of silicon – what could be cleaner or greener than
that.
Plug an EV into a notionally wind and solar power grid and the Planet
must surely avoid our rapacious appetite for destruction, and last for
eons to come.
Well, that’s the marketing myth, anyway.
At the heart of every EV, solar panel and wind turbine there is a
bevy of rare minerals which, are fast becoming rarer thanks to our
‘inevitable transition’ to an all wind and sun powered future and the
much heralded (and overhyped) shift to all EV motoring.
As Michael Klare explains below, there is no such thing as a free
lunch. In short, ‘rare earths’ are so named for a reason; they happen to
be mined in the more politically unstable and socially challenged parts
of the world; and the Chinese Communist Party has taken a strategic
interest in both mining and processing rare earths, to its significant
economic advantage.
Lithium, Cobalt, and Rare Earths
Tom Dispatch
Michael Klare
20 May 2021
Thanks to its very name — renewable energy — we can picture a time in
the not-too-distant future when our need for non-renewable fuels like
oil, natural gas, and coal will vanish. Indeed, the Biden administration
has announced a breakthrough target of 2035 for fully eliminating U.S.
reliance on those non-renewable fuels for the generation of electricity.
That would be accomplished by “deploying carbon-pollution-free
electricity-generating resources,” primarily the everlasting power of
the wind and sun.
With other nations moving in a similar direction, it’s tempting to
conclude that the days when competition over finite supplies of energy
was a recurring source of conflict will soon draw to a close.
Unfortunately, think again: while the sun and wind are indeed infinitely
renewable, the materials needed to convert those resources into
electricity — minerals like cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel, and the
rare-earth elements, or REEs — are anything but. Some of them, in fact,
are far scarcer than petroleum, suggesting that global strife over vital
resources may not, in fact, disappear in the Age of Renewables.
To appreciate this unexpected paradox, it’s necessary to explore how
wind and solar power are converted into usable forms of electricity and
propulsion. Solar power is largely collected by photovoltaic cells,
often deployed in vast arrays, while the wind is harvested by giant
turbines, typically deployed in extensive wind farms. To use electricity
in transportation, cars and trucks must be equipped with advanced
batteries capable of holding a charge over long distances. Each one of
these devices uses substantial amounts of copper for electrical
transmission, as well as a variety of other non-renewable minerals.
Those wind turbines, for instance, require manganese, molybdenum,
nickel, zinc, and rare-earth elements for their electrical generators,
while electric vehicles (EVs) need cobalt, graphite, lithium, manganese,
and rare earths for their engines and batteries.
At present, with wind and solar power accounting for only about 7% of
global electricity generation and electric vehicles making up less than
1% of the cars on the road, the production of those minerals is roughly
adequate to meet global demand. If, however, the U.S. and other
countries really do move toward a green-energy future of the kind
envisioned by President Biden, the demand for them will skyrocket and
global output will fall far short of anticipated needs.
According to a recent study by the International Energy Agency (IEA), “The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions,”
the demand for lithium in 2040 could be 50 times greater than today and
for cobalt and graphite 30 times greater if the world moves swiftly to
replace oil-driven vehicles with EVs. Such rising demand will, of
course, incentivize industry to develop new supplies of such minerals,
but potential sources of them are limited and the process of bringing
them online will be costly and complicated. In other words, the world
could face significant shortages of critical materials. (“As clean
energy transitions accelerate globally,” the IEA report noted ominously,
“and solar panels, wind turbines, and electric cars are deployed on a
growing scale, these rapidly growing markets for key minerals could be
subject to price volatility, geopolitical influence, and even
disruptions to supply.”)
And here’s a further complication: for a number of the most critical
materials, including lithium, cobalt, and those rare-earth elements,
production is highly concentrated in just a few countries, a reality
that could lead to the sort of geopolitical struggles that accompanied
the world’s dependence on a few major sources of oil. According to the
IEA, just one country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC),
currently supplies more than 80% of the world’s cobalt, and another —
China — 70% of its rare-earth elements. Similarly, lithium production is
largely in two countries, Argentina and Chile, which jointly account
for nearly 80% of world supply, while four countries — Argentina, Chile,
the DRC, and Peru — provide most of our copper. In other words, such
future supplies are far more concentrated in far fewer lands than
petroleum and natural gas, leading IEA analysts to worry about future
struggles over the world’s access to them.
From Oil to Lithium: the Geopolitical Implications of the Electric-Car Revolution
The role of petroleum in shaping global geopolitics is well
understood. Ever since oil became essential to world transportation —
and so to the effective functioning of the world’s economy — it has been
viewed for obvious reasons as a “strategic” resource. Because the
largest concentrations of petroleum were located in the Middle East, an
area historically far removed from the principal centers of industrial
activity in Europe and North America and regularly subject to political
convulsions, the major importing nations long sought to exercise some
control over that region’s oil production and export. This, of course,
led to resource imperialism of a high order, beginning after World War I
when Britain and the other European powers contended for colonial
control of the oil-producing parts of the Persian Gulf region. It continued after World War II, when the United States entered that competition in a big way.
For the United States, ensuring access to Middle Eastern oil became a
strategic priority after the “oil shocks” of 1973 and 1979 — the first
caused by an Arab oil embargo that was a reprisal for Washington’s
support of Israel in that year’s October War; the second by a disruption
of supplies caused by the Islamic Revolution in Iran. In response to
endless lines at American gas stations and the subsequent recessions,
successive presidents pledged to protect oil imports by “any means
necessary,” including the use of armed force. And that very stance led
President George H.W. Bush to wage the first Gulf War against Saddam
Hussein’s Iraq in 1991 and his son to invade that same country in 2003.
In 2021, the United States is no longer as dependent on Middle
Eastern oil, given how extensively domestic deposits of petroleum-laden
shale and other sedimentary rocks are being exploited by fracking
technology. Still, the connection between oil use and geopolitical
conflict has hardly disappeared. Most analysts believe that petroleum
will continue to supply a major share of global energy for decades to
come, and that’s certain to generate political and military struggles over the remaining supplies. Already, for instance, conflict has broken out over disputed offshore supplies in the South and East China Seas, and some analysts predict a struggle for the control of untapped oil and mineral deposits in the Arctic region as well.
Here, then, is the question of the hour: Will an explosion in
electric-car ownership change all this? EV market share is already
growing rapidly and projected to reach 15% of worldwide sales by 2030.
The major automakers are investing heavily in such vehicles,
anticipating a surge in demand. There were around 370 EV models
available for sale worldwide in 2020 — a 40% increase from 2019 — and
major automakers have revealed plans to make an additional 450 models
available by 2022. In addition, General Motors has announced its
intention to completely phase out conventional gasoline and diesel
vehicles by 2035, while Volvo’s CEO has indicated that the company would
only sell EVs by 2030.
It’s reasonable to assume that this shift will only gain momentum,
with profound consequences for the global trade in resources. According
to the IEA, a typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs
of a conventional oil-powered vehicle. These include the copper for
electrical wiring plus the cobalt, graphite, lithium, and nickel needed
to ensure battery performance, longevity, and energy density (the energy
output per unit of weight). In addition, rare-earth elements will be
essential for the permanent magnets installed in EV motors.
Lithium, a primary component of lithium-ion batteries used in most
EVs, is the lightest known metal. Although present both in clay deposits
and ore composites, it’s rarely found in easily mineable
concentrations, though it can also be extracted from brine in areas like
Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. At present,
approximately 58% of the world’s lithium comes from Australia,
another 20% from Chile, 11% from China, 6% from Argentina, and smaller
percentages from elsewhere. A U.S. firm, Lithium Americas, is about to undertake the extraction of
significant amounts of lithium from a clay deposit in northern Nevada,
but is meeting resistance from local ranchers and Native Americans, who
fear the contamination of their water supplies.
Cobalt is another key component of lithium-ion batteries. It’s rarely
found in unique deposits and most often acquired as a byproduct of
copper and nickel mining. Today, it’s almost entirely produced thanks to
copper mining in the violent, chaotic Democratic Republic of the Congo,
mostly in what’s known as the copper belt of Katanga Province, a region which once sought to break away from the rest of the country and still harbors secessionist impulses.
Rare-earth elements encompass
a group of 17 metallic substances scattered across the Earth’s surface
but rarely found in mineable concentrations. Among them, several are
essential for future green-energy solutions, including dysprosium,
lanthanum, neodymium, and terbium. When used as alloys with other
minerals, they help perpetuate the magnetization of electrical motors
under high-temperature conditions, a key requirement for electric
vehicles and wind turbines. At present, approximately 70% of REEs come
from China, perhaps 12% from Australia, and 8% from the U.S.
A mere glance at the location of such concentrations suggests that
the green-energy transition envisioned by President Biden and other
world leaders may encounter severe geopolitical problems, not unlike
those generated in the past by reliance on oil. As a start, the most
militarily powerful nation on the planet, the United States, can supply
itself with only tiny percentages of REEs, as well as other critical
minerals like nickel and zinc needed for advanced green technologies.
While Australia, a close ally, will undoubtedly be an important supplier
of some of them, China, already increasingly viewed as an adversary, is
crucial when it comes to REEs, and the Congo, one of the most
conflict-plagued nations on the planet, is the leading producer of
cobalt. So don’t for a second imagine that the transition to a
renewable-energy future will either be easy or conflict-free.
The Crunch to Come
Faced with the prospect of inadequate or hard-to-access
supplies of such critical materials, energy strategists are already
calling for major efforts to develop new sources in as many locations as
possible. “Today’s supply and investment plans for many critical
minerals fall well short of what is needed to support an accelerated
deployment of solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles,” said
Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency.
“These hazards are real, but they are surmountable. The response from
policymakers and companies will determine whether critical minerals
remain a vital enabler for clean energy transitions or become a
bottleneck in the process.”
As Birol and his associates at the IEA have made all too clear,
however, surmounting the obstacles to increased mineral production will
be anything but easy. To begin with, launching new mining ventures can
be extraordinarily expensive and entail numerous risks. Mining firms may
be willing to invest billions of dollars in a country like Australia,
where the legal framework is welcoming and where they can expect
protection against future expropriation or war, but many promising ore
sources lie in countries like the DRC, Myanmar, Peru, and Russia where
such conditions hardly apply. For example, the current turmoil in
Myanmar, a major producer of certain rare-earth elements, has already
led to worries about their future availability and sparked a rise in
prices.
Declining ore quality is also a concern. When it comes to mineral
sites, this planet has been thoroughly scavenged for them, sometimes
since the early Bronze Age, and many of the best deposits have long
since been discovered and exploited. “In recent years, ore quality has
continued to fall across a range of commodities,” the IEA noted in its
report on critical minerals and green technology. “For example, the
average copper ore grade in Chile declined by 30% over the past 15
years. Extracting metal content from lower-grade ores requires more
energy, exerting upward pressure on production costs, greenhouse gas
emissions, and waste volumes.”
In addition, extracting minerals from underground rock formations
often entails the use of acids and other toxic substances and typically
requires vast amounts of water, which are contaminated after use. This
has become ever more of a problem since the enactment of
environmental-protection legislation and the mobilization of local
communities. In many parts of the world, as in Nevada when it comes to
lithium, new mining and ore-processing efforts are going to encounter
increasingly fierce local opposition. When, for example, the Lynas
Corporation, an Australian firm, sought to evade Australia’s
environmental laws by shipping ores from its Mount Weld rare-earths mine
to Malaysia for processing, local activists there mounted a protracted
campaign to prevent it from doing so.
For Washington, perhaps no problem is more challenging, when it comes
to the availability of critical materials for a green revolution, than
this country’s deteriorating relationship with Beijing. After all, China
currently provides 70% of the world’s rare-earth supplies and harbors
significant deposits of other key minerals as well. No less significant,
that country is responsible for the refining and processing of many key
materials mined elsewhere. In fact, when it comes to mineral
processing, the figures are astonishing. China may not produce
significant amounts of cobalt or nickel, but it does account for
approximately 65% of the world’s processed cobalt and 35% of its
processed nickel. And while China produces 11% of the world’s lithium,
it’s responsible for nearly 60% of processed lithium. When it comes to
rare-earth elements, however, China is dominant in a staggering way. Not
only does it provide 60% of the world’s raw materials, but nearly 90%
of processed REEs.
To put the matter simply, there is no way the United States or other
countries can undertake a massive transition from fossil fuels to a
renewables-based economy without engaging economically with China.
Undoubtedly, efforts will be made to reduce the degree of that reliance,
but there’s no realistic prospect of eliminating dependence on China
for rare earths, lithium, and other key materials in the foreseeable
future. If, in other words, the U.S. were to move from a modestly
Cold-War-like stance toward Beijing to an even more hostile one, and if
it were to engage in further Trumpian-style attempts to “decouple” its
economy from that of the People’s Republic, as advocated by many “China
hawks” in Congress, there’s no question about it: the Biden
administration would have to abandon its plans for a green-energy
future.
It’s possible, of course, to imagine a future in which nations begin
fighting over the world’s supplies of critical minerals, just as they
once fought over oil. At the same time, it’s perfectly possible to
conceive of a world in which countries like ours simply abandoned their
plans for a green-energy future for lack of adequate raw materials and
reverted to the oil wars of the past. On an already overheating planet,
however, that would lead to a civilizational fate worse than death.
In truth, there’s little choice but for Washington and Beijing to
collaborate with each other and so many other countries in accelerating
the green energy transition by establishing new mines and processing
facilities for critical minerals, developing substitutes for materials
in short supply, improving mining techniques to reduce environmental
hazards, and dramatically increasing the recycling of vital minerals
from discarded batteries and other products. Any alternative is
guaranteed to prove a disaster of the first order — or beyond.
Tom Dispatch
‘Clean’ energy pipe dream turns toxic.
The one positive to come out of the Ukraine conflict for people in the west is that our eyes have been opened to the fact that most of that most of the energy consumed by the the people of western nations comes from countries run by chest thumping tyrants or head amputating Islamic theocrats who have neither like or respect our values and liberal attitudes and who are quite prepared to cut off our energy supplies as the whim takes them. This being unarguably the case it would make sense for western democracies to admit the folly of green thinking, abandon virtue signalling idiocies like 'net zero' and try and produce as much of our own energy as we possibly can.
It should be noted that due to green hysteria our decisions on energy policy, the abandonment of fracking, for instance, have worked in the interests of Russia and the middle eastern oil states, on whose wish lists keeping Europe hooked on Russian energy wouild have figured close to the top. In 2014, there were reports that Anders Fogh Rasmussen, then the secretary general of Nato, had grown concerned that Putin's government was supporting propaganda campaigns to discredit fracking. Given the fanaticism of the green lobby it would not have taken much propaganda to convince people like the fanatical crusties of Exstinktion Rebellion that fracking would release a hoard of Enochian demons on the world.
Forget global warming and trying to save the planet from overheating. If we are to minimise our dependence on authoritarian dictatorships for our energy, we need to be able to make our own energy right now and that means firing up our mothballed coal and gas here and if in the long term it is shown that we need clean energy, that means hydrogen, nuclear, perhaps in the form of Small Modular Reactors or even nuclear fusion if it can be made to work economically and Thorium Molten Salt Reactors.