It’s Time to Wake Up – The Currently Known Global Mineral Reserves Will Not Be Sufficient to Supply Enough Metals to Manufacture the Planned Non-fossil Fuel Industrial Systems
The research report made by Associate Research Professor Simon Michaux from Geological Survey of Finland GTK shows that if we want to transition away from fossil fuels, mining of minerals and using recycled minerals and metals from industrial waste streams in new ways will have to increase greatly.
No matter what minerals will be needed, we will need large quantities of them as the renewable power sources like wind and solar, require extensive mineral resources to manufacture the infrastructure for fossil-free energy.
And there is a challenge. Given the estimated required number of Electric Vehicles (EV’s) of different vehicle class, it is clear that there are not enough minerals in the currently reported global reserves to build just one generation of batteries for all EV’s and stationary power storage, in the global industrial ecosystem as it is today.
The World needs a new plan to build a genuinely sustainable non-fossil fuel industrial ecosystem
Decisive actions need to be planned to diversify sustainable material/metal/mineral sourcing, where manufacture could be done with parallel technology systems that require different material chemistries. In doing so, current reported mineral reserves may be sufficient for long term supply.
Key elements include developing new ways to utilize minerals, metals and materials of our industrial waste and to promote manufacture of easily recyclable products.
Exploration for new mineral deposits, feasibility studies, and pilot scale tests of existing known deposits will be needed on an unprecedented scale, will be needed all over the world. The restructuring society and the industrial ecosystem to consume less and establish a new relationship with raw materials and energy might be needed.
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