Critical minerals needed to build ‘green energy’ technology such as solar panels, nuclear power stations, electric cars and wind turbines could run out within 10 years, researchers have warned. The Times has the story.

Researchers at the Beijing Institute of Technology found that if the world attempted to build enough clean technology to limit climate change to 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures, it would exhaust known reserves of several minerals within decades.

Reserves of tin, which is used in wind turbines and solar panels, could be exhausted by 2085, while cadmium, used in control rods of nuclear reactors, could run out by 2060. Indium, a crucial ingredient in specialist thin-film solar panels, could be used up by 2035.

The researchers said that their results showed the need to look for new reserves, particularly in under-explored regions such as Africa and central Asia, as well as scaling-up recycling, and substituting more common minerals for scarce ones.

Worries about the scarcity of cobalt, 70% of which is sourced from the Democratic Republic of Congo, have already led carmakers to use less of it in electric vehicle batteries. Bloomberg New Energy Finance has estimated that almost half of EV batteries manufactured this year would instead be made from lithium iron phosphate.

Another reason to think that the world may overcome these resource constraints is that in the past, known reserves have grown quickly once companies are incentivised to look for them. The researchers estimated that if known reserves of critical minerals grow as quickly as those of petroleum have since 1980, then shortages of many minerals would be avoided.

Yet with critical minerals distributed unevenly around the world, the researchers stressed the need for countries to trade openly together to prevent the clean energy transition being held back by resource constraints.

Worth reading in full.