A low-carbon energy future depends on sustainable metals and minerals

Graphic indicating countries accounting for the largest share of critical raw materials

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The global low-carbon revolution could be at risk unless new international agreements and governance mechanisms are put in place to ensure a sustainable supply of rare minerals and metals, a new academic study has warned
The amount of cobalt, copper, lithium, cadmium, and rare earth elements needed for solar photovoltaics, batteries, electric vehicle (EV) motors, wind turbines, fuel cells, and nuclear reactors will likely grow at a rapid pace in the upcoming years. Even if alternatives are found for one metal, there will be reliance on another as the scope of possibilities is inherently limited by physical and chemical properties of elements
However, with global supplies often heavily monopolized by a single country, confronted by social and environmental conflict, or concentrated in poorly functioning markets, there is a real possibility that a shortage of minerals could hold back the urgent need for a rapid upscaling of low-carbon technologies. In some cases, markets are providing misleading signals to investors that can lead to poor decisions. In other cases, the countries or regions supplying minerals are politically unstable
An international team of researchers have made a number of recommendations to help manage the demand for such low-carbon technology minerals as well as limiting the environmental and public health damage of their extraction and processing, supporting social benefits, and also ensuring the benefits are shared more universally and equitably
“The impacts to mining rightfully alarm many environmental campaigners as a large price to pay to safeguard a low-carbon future. But as the extraction through terrestrial mining becomes more challenging, the on-land reserves of some terrestrial minerals dwindle or the social resistance in some countries escalates, even oceanic or even space based mineral reserves will become a plausible source.”
Although the new study calls for renewed attention to tackle existing conditions of terrestrial extraction and processing of metals, it also states that there are important prospects of cobalt and nickel on the continental shelf within states’ Exclusive Economic Zones as well as on the outer continental shelf regions
Within international waters, metallic nodules found in the vast Clarion-Clipperton Zone of the Pacific as well as in cobalt and tellurium crusts, found in seamounts worldwide, provide some of the richest deposits of metals for green technologies
Morgan Bazilian, Professor and Director of the Payne Institute for Public Policy, Colorado School of Mines, said: “As the global energy landscape changes, it is becoming more mineral and metal intensive. Thus, the sustainability and security of material supply chains is essential to supporting the energy transition. How we shape that pathway will have important consequences for everything from the environment, to development, and geopolitics.”

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A low-carbon energy future depends on sustainable metals and minerals

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