FT: Europe faces critical shortage of metals needed for clean energy

 The Financial Times writes: 

Europe faces a critical shortage of clean-energy metals and needs to decide urgently how it will bridge the looming supply gap or risk new dependencies on unsustainable producers. 

 That is the conclusion of a new study commissioned by Eurometaux, an industry group that represents some of the region’s biggest metal producers, including Glencore and Rio Tinto.

  The report, written by Belgium’s Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, marks the first attempt to provide some EU-specific numbers around last year’s warning from the International Energy Agency of supply challenges owing to the amount of metals needed for batteries, solar panels and wind turbines. 

 It comes as the EU, which is aiming to be carbon neutral by 2050, looks to reduce its dependence on imported Russian energy and make a quicker switch to renewable energy.

 “There is a risk . . . with the geopolitical developments we are seeing round the world that Europe . . . will not have the metal for its climate programme,” said Mikael Staffas, president of Eurometaux and chief executive of Boliden, one of Europe’s biggest metals and mining companies. He was speaking before the launch of the study in Brussels.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.ft.com/content/72400b96-4c67-4a7f-9a98-53371f5ab421?fbclid=IwAR1UsPYM-oQNYFWHwUxkkBA10T2vOMrWTR_xoNpwwpl71F3sAZO7lIdMnx4

Renewables: the devastation of nature for sustainable technologies

Deforestation and environmental devastation from mining activities - especially in third world countries - are the little-known downside of the energy shift, explains WELT:

When Ecuador reported a new wood export record, the spokesman for the indigenous association NAE called for an export stop of the coveted balsa wood. "Stop your investments," said the letter to international donors in June. "The loggers are causing a division among the indigenous brothers."

The dirty drawbacks of supposedly "clean" renewable energy

Interesting angle by Jason Hickel in Foreign Policy: 

"The phrase “clean energy” normally conjures up happy, innocent images of warm sunshine and fresh wind. But while sunshine and wind is obviously clean, the infrastructure we need to capture it is not. Far from it. The transition to renewables is going to require a dramatic increase in the extraction of metals and rare-earth minerals, with real ecological and social costs."

 (...)

"In 2017, the World Bank released a little-noticed report that offered the first comprehensive look at this question. It models the increase in material extraction that would be required to build enough solar and wind utilities to produce an annual output of about 7 terawatts of electricity by 2050. That’s enough to power roughly half of the global economy. By doubling the World Bank figures, we can estimate what it will take to get all the way to zero emissions—and the results are staggering: 34 million metric tons of copper, 40 million tons of lead, 50 million tons of zinc, 162 million tons of aluminum, and no less than 4.8 billion tons of iron."

(...)

"The problem here is not that we’re going to run out of key minerals—although that may indeed become a concern. The real issue is that this will exacerbate an already existing crisis of overextraction. Mining has become one of the biggest single drivers of deforestation, ecosystem collapse, and biodiversity loss around the world. Ecologists estimate that even at present rates of global material use, we are overshooting sustainable levels by 82 percent."

You can read the rest of this interesting piece via the below link:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/09/06/the-path-to-clean-energy-will-be-very-dirty-climate-change-renewables/