Do we mine enough to replace fossil fuels with other enegy supplies?
The Answer? Almost definitely not.
“The quantity of metal required to make just one generation of renewable tech units to replace fossil fuels is much larger than first thought. Current mining production of these metals is not even close to meeting demand. ”
This quote from Prof Simon Michaux (GTK Finland) encapsulates one of the key issues with replacing all current fossil fuel-based energy infrastructure with ‘green’ alternatives such as wind and solar. These new technologies generate energy from sustainable sources, but the cost to build them is high - they require tons and tons of non-sustainable (on the human timescale) metals and minerals to make them work, which are often sourced from countries with poor environmental regulations.
Supply of some of these elements is already less than demand, a problem which will be exacerbated by a rapid transition
Some wind turbines use up to 180kg of neodymium (Nd) per meagwatt of generated power. In 2019, the global production of neodymium was just under 24,000kg, which would be the ability to produce 133 MW of wind power, assuming 100% usage of the Nd. 133 MW of power is enough to provide energy to about 46,500 homes (Natural Resources Canada) - and that’s assuming 100% efficiency in the system.
What we see for neodymium at least, is that at current mining levels we can only provide sufficient energy through wind to power an additional 46,500 homes each year. At that rate, we could provide energy to Britain (population 67.22 million) in roughly 1,446 years, give or take*.
Clearly this wont work. We need to either:
Mine a hell of a lot more metal
Find alternatives to hard to recover elements like Nd
Significantly reduce our energy consumption as a society
Massively increase recyclability and recycling rates of sustainable tech
Accept that the transition will be a slow and/or painful one.
Recycling will play a huge factor as all of these new technologies have a finite lifespan (~10 - 20 years) before they need replacing. Critical to providing enough metals for the next generation will be the ability to recover metals efficiently and effectively from decommissioned generators - this means that generators need to be built with ease of metal recovery and recycling in mind, and we need new technologies to recover and recycle metals.
The time of doing what we like and hoping a future technology will fix todays problems is over, and new, metal intensive technologies should be designed and operated responsibly, with an eye to the future.
Check out the talk from Prof. Michaux above, a webinar from the Sustainable Minerals Institute at the University of Queensland (SMIUQ), Robert Hunziker provides more discussion in Counterpunch.
*This is a pretty back of the envelope calculation - Simon estimates it would (only) take 40 years to mine enough Nd to meet the required power output, however other elements arent so fortunate - he estimates it would take over 7,000 years of mining at 2019 levels to produce the vanadium (V) used in the red-ox batteries required for a full conversion to sustainable power generation.