This shift may be important to Jeff’s mine holdings. The IEA had a report out last year:
In it they note that:
“A typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired plant of the same capacity.”
The report also has a chart showing the growth in selected minerals necessary to meet the Paris agreement goals.
Rare earths 7x
Nickel 19x
Cobalt 21x
Graphite 25x
Lithium 42x
These numbers are for 2040 relative to 2020.
Perhaps more importantly, the fossil fuel mineral usage is already baked into the economy (and the prices of mining companies).
The very large mineral increases needed may place limits on the expansion of alternate energies and batteries. The increases will certainly have knock-on effects, raising the costs for non-energy uses such as computers and consumer appliances.
Of course all power sources requires materials. Looking at the proposed energy transition (the title of the linked IEA article is “The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions”) means replacing the energy capacity system ‘F’ with system ‘R’. An example would be replacing a nat gas plant with wind turbines of the same capacity. This replacement “requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fires plant”. The same would apply to new power in an expanding system, say, in Africa.
Do you agree with the conclusion that more renewable systems mean more demand for the mining companies?
Energy is the main ingredient of life. Energy cannot be recycled, it can only be created by converting mass by fission or fusion which is what the Sun does. We can capture all the energy we need with solar panels and windmills.
Materials, on the other hand, can be recycled using energy derived from the Sun. In the long run we will be able to replace mining with renewable solar energy.
Fuel Intensive, of course, refers to “fossil fuel intensive.”
This shift may be important to Jeff’s mine holdings
Maybe Jeff could include recyclers in this mining mix. Maybe recyclers are too far in the future, maybe not.