Sustainable Minerals Institute UQ
1 HN recommender · recommended in 6 months, 2022–2023
1:12:38 · 122K views · Aug 19, 2022
Associate Professor Simon Michaux presents estimates of the metals needed to build one generation of renewable technology to replace fossil fuels. He argues current production and reserves fall far short, with copper a key shortfall.
Cited in energy transition threads for ballpark numbers on mineral demand, though some commenters criticize its assumptions.
12 comments from Hacker News
this video Long video, but informative. TLDR: We don't have enough minerals (including reserves) to completely switch our energy from ff to renewables, assuming our current energy consumption flatline, and our renewable technology efficiency and mineral consumption remain the same.
While obviously an opinion piece,these kinds of deranged articles are dangerous IMO. Between the two authors, one is a spokesman for a free-market thinktank, the other is a pop scientist known for writing books on the debunked parallel universe theories. This kind of "oh we'll figure it out" kind of attitude is why every major nation's plan for climate change includes the imaginary technology of carbon capture. We have about 20% of mineral reserves required for a full green energy conversion.[1] These type of think tank grifters(I'm sorry I cannot think of a better term for these people) have a single goal, to throw us all over the cliff of climate change while enabling their patrons to extract as much value from us on the way down. Due to this prevailing "we'll figure it out" opinion, every major country in the world has increased their carbon emissions, continues to destroy environments, and overall has done very little to counter pollution, emissions, and fossil fuel usage as a whole. Oh you're going to mine at the bottom of the ocean? Sure, that sounds about as likely as Musk actually sending himself to Mars. But here's the thing, we didn't figure it out! The polar vortex jet stream has been interrupted, we've broken an extremely important meteorological system due to the endless search for growth, and these people want us to do more growing! more profit! At what cost? We still pretend like carbon capture will save us, that telling the average joe to recycle will save us,
1) It is dangerous yes. That is the nature of the energy being so concentrated. But this concentration is a blessing because you don't need to mind nearly as much material, and it is far far easier to keep an eye on the waste. Where does the waste from coal/gas go? Into the air. It costs way more to try to contain the harms of those substances because they are the opposite of energy dense. Nuclear waste is such a tiny tiny amount that we just keep it on site. It's solid. It's not going to leak out of its containers. It just sits in concrete casks on site. Even better, it still has 98% of the energy in it so you don't really want to get rid of it. It can be used in breeder reactors to extract more energy. I quote this too much, but all the nuclear waste the US has ever generated would sit in a single football field, 10 yards high. 2) Nuclear is capital intensive AND the only energy generation that is forced to pre fund its own decommissioning and cleanup. The increased operating costs of nuclear plants is largely due to intentional mismanagement b/c of politics. For example, in France they force nuclear plants to stop outputting power when renewables are generating. They prioritize renewables because that's what politics dictates. They also mandated a cap on power allowed to be generated by nuclear plants, forcing the closure of perfectly good and already paid for plants, so they could buy more renewables. These privatized energy markets don't want stable cheap energy because
There's also this much longer talk he gave that I watched recently: this video The premise is that we don't have enough minerals to transition to a decarbonized economy if we just do the most obvious, naive thing. For some reason, he assumes we need a battery capable of storing the world's energy use for 4 weeks, and then shows that there's no way we can manufacture that amount of lithium ion batteries. His analysis also assumes pretty heavy use of hydrogen for ground transport to get around the limitations of batteries, despite being rather energy-inefficient by comparison. I'm actually kind of optimistic: his result just means we can't do things that don't scale, but we could do other things instead. Rather than building huge chemical batteries for grid storage, we can use pumped hydro and expand our power grids so we can move energy between continents and buffer out renewable energy variability and day/night cycles. Instead of using hydrogen fuel cells or huge batteries for ground transport, we can electrify our major highways so trucks only need small batteries to get from the freeway to their delivery/pickup point. (We could also rely on trains a lot more than we do.) Instead of building billions of brand new cars, we can convert many of the cars we already have to electric if they're still in good shape and worth the effort. We can stop using so much copper in everything, and use aluminum instead where it makes sense.
Easy one. Apple pays a premium (to their suppliers) compared to what other non-luxury-hipster-feelgood companies can, thus buying up those (more or less) green capacities (which are scarce). Which leaves those other companies less of these green capacities. Which makes their production less green. Don't get me wrong, it's totally ok they do that. But it shouldn't lead people to think, that since Apple/Tesla succeeds, humanity doesn't need to drastically change its way of doing things. Sustainable ressources are scarce. One company stocks up on them -> others are pushed to less green sources or they have to reduce output (which they try to avoid obviously). Yeah, sure, there's also positive effects such as economies of scale improving things with sustainable business when there's more demand for it. But, in my opinion, the mining and sourcing of raw materials and the supply of renewable energy is in a pretty inelastic situation right now because of physical constraints. This inelasticity means: one players buys up more, others are pushed elsewhere. > ... falling prey to the fallacy that decarbonization is impossible. Oh it is possible. It's not possible as fast as most politicians make it appear. Here are some numbers at minute 40: "Assoc Prof Simon Michaux - The quantity of metals required to manufacture just one generation of renewable technology to phase out fossil fuels" this video