{"id":41954,"date":"2018-12-24T12:52:11","date_gmt":"2018-12-24T17:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=41954"},"modified":"2018-12-24T12:52:11","modified_gmt":"2018-12-24T17:52:11","slug":"we-dont-mine-enough-rare-earth-metals-to-replace-fossil-fuels-with-renewable-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=41954","title":{"rendered":"We Don’t Mine Enough Rare Earth Metals to Replace Fossil Fuels With Renewable Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We Don’t Mine Enough Rare Earth Metals to Replace Fossil Fuels With Renewable Energy<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Rare earth metals are used in solar panels and wind turbines\u2014as well as electric cars and consumer electronics. We don’t recycle them, and there’s not enough to meet growing demand.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Image:\u00a0Shutterstock<\/p>\n

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A new scientific study<\/a> supported by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure warns that the renewable energy industry could be about to face a fundamental obstacle: shortages in the supply of rare metals.<\/p>\n

To meet greenhouse gas emission reduction targets under the Paris Agreement, renewable energy production has to scale up fast. This means that global production of several rare earth minerals used in solar panels and wind turbines\u2014especially neodymium, terbium, indium, dysprosium, and praseodymium\u2014must grow twelvefold by 2050.<\/p>\n

\"1544640003589-Fig1-1\"<\/picture>\n
Fig 1. Graph depicting global critical metal demand for wind and solar panels, between 2020 and 2050, compared with the 2017 level of annual metal production (2017 = 1).<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

But according to the new study by Dutch energy systems company Metabolic, the \u201ccurrent global supply of several critical metals is insufficient to transition to a renewable energy system.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study focuses on demand for rare metals in the Netherlands and extrapolates this to develop a picture of how global trends are likely to develop.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the rest of the world would develop renewable electricity capacity at a comparable pace with the Netherlands, a considerable shortage would arise,\u201d the study finds. This doesn\u2019t include other applications of rare earth metals in other electronics industries (rare earth metals are widely used in smartphones, for example). \u201cWhen other applications (such as electric vehicles) are also taken into consideration, the required amount of certain metals would further increase.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We Don’t Mine Enough Rare Earth Metals to Replace Fossil Fuels With Renewable Energy Rare earth metals are used in solar panels and wind turbines\u2014as well as electric cars and consumer electronics. We don’t recycle them, and there’s not enough to meet growing demand. Image:\u00a0Shutterstock A new scientific study supported by the Dutch Ministry of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[23595,11654,2092,674],"class_list":["post-41954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-dutch-ministry-of-infrastructure","tag-motherboard","tag-nafeez-ahmed","tag-renewable-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41954"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41955,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41954\/revisions\/41955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}