Transition to Renewables will require a 10-fold Increase in Mining Materials

 The following is an extract from a new paper by Irish scientists Michael and Ronan Connolly and Willie Soon et al which shows the true environmental and social cost of the Renewables revolution. Full report here.

Some have noted that the transition to these technologies would require a huge increase in the mining of limited resources, with Mills (2020) arguing that, “Compared with hydrocarbons, green machines entail, on average, a 10-fold increase in the quantities of materials extracted and processed to produce the same amount of energy”

Because of this 10-fold increase in quantities of minerals required by green technologies relative to those driven by hydrocarbons, Mills cautions that any significant expansion in green energy will create “an unprecedented increase in global mining”, which would radically exacerbate environmental and labor challenges in emerging markets, and dramatically increase the vulnerability of America’s energy supply chain.  Capellán-Pérez et al. (2019) underscore the concern that the extraction of the minerals required for the proposed transition to renewable energies is likely to intensify current socio-environmental conflicts associated with resource extraction. As we will outline, this gives rise to concern regarding potential uncertainty of supply. In contrast to the concerns about hydrocarbon peaks outlined above, projected mineral requirements seem likely to exceed current reserves within the very short time frame to the year 2030. This concern appears particularly pressing with regard to e-vehicles, which we discuss next, followed by related concerns regarding solar and wind energy.

Electric Vehicles

The projected production of electric vehicles (EVs) to replace vehicles powered by fossil fuels requires the consumption of a new range of metals, as outlined in a letter from a group of geologists and other earth scientists to the Committee on Climate Change in London who had recommended increasing the percentage of the UK’s cars that are electric or hybrid from 0.2% in 2017 to 100% by 2050. Herrington et al. warn that in order to replace the UK’s fleet of cars (currently 31.5 million) entirely with EVs, it would require “just under two times the total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper production during 2018 [ . . . ] If we are to extrapolate this analysis to the currently projected estimate of 2 billion cars worldwide, based on 2018 figures, annual production would have to increase for neodymium and dysprosium by 70%, copper output would need to more than double and cobalt output would need to increase at least three and a half times for the entire period from now until 2050 to satisfy the demand”. They further note that this proposed transition for the UK would also lead to a 20% increase in electricity usage for the country, due to the extra power generated needed for recharging the vehicles.

Even under its modest “New Policies Scenario”, the International Energy Agency’s projections to the year 2030 indicate that cobalt and lithium reserves are inadequate to meet EV needs (see figure below). Modeling on the assumption of a shift to 100% renewable electricity by the year 2050, with lithium-ion batteries accounting for approximately 6% of energy storage and 55% of energy for road transport being accounted for by electric vehicles, Giurco et al. (2019) consider that the cumulative demand for both cobalt and lithium is likely to exceed current reserves unless recycling rates are improved. They consider that the annual demand for cobalt for EVs and storage could exceed current production rates by around 2023, and that the annual demand for lithium could exceed current production rates by around 2022. Although they consider that high recycling rates can keep cumulative demand for cobalt and lithium below current resource levels, they caution that there is likely to be a delay before recycling can offset demand until there are enough batteries reaching end of life to be collected and recycled.

Increased annual demand for materials for batteries from deployment of electric vehicles by scenario, 2018–2030. Green dots indicate current supply. NPS = New Policies Scenario. EV30@30 =30% sales share for EVs by 2030. 

From extensive field research, including expert interviews, community interviews with miners and traders, and observation at 21 mines and nine affiliated mining sites, Sovacool (2019) documented displacements of indigenous communities, unsafe work environments, child labor, and violence against women in communities near cobalt mines. Because most of the world’s cobalt is produced in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the major increases in demand arising from global interest in EVs have created a rise in the number of local “artisanal” mines extracting cobalt. Several journalists have warned that these are often poorly regulated and sometimes involve the use of child labor. These socio-environmental issues give rise to further concern regarding security of supply. 

Capellán-Pérez et al. (2019) identify the technologies most vulnerable to mineral scarcity to be solar PV technologies (tellurium, indium, silver, and manganese), solar CSP (silver and manganese), and Li batteries (lithium and manganese). The transition to alternative technologies will also intensify global copper demand by requiring 10–25% of current global reserves and 5–10% of current global resources. The authors report that “other studies considering a full transition to 100% RES and considering the material requirements for transportation of electricity reach higher levels, e.g., 60–70% of estimated current reserves”. 

Solar

Solar Modeling on the assumption of a shift to 100% renewable electricity by the year 2050, with solar PV accounting for more than one-third of capacity and the remainder being generated by wind and other renewables, Giurco et al. (2019) calculate that to generate one-third of the world’s energy from solar power by 2050, this would require ~50% of the current reserves of silver. They consider that increasing efficiency of material use has the greatest potential to offset the demand for metals for solar PV, while recycling has less potential because of the long lifespan of solar PV metals and their lower potential for recycling. They also caution that declining ore grades may have a significant influence on energy consumption in the mining sector, associated with polymetallic ore processing and the mining of deeper ore bodies. They note that, although silver has an overall recycling rate of 30–50% almost no recycling of silver from PV panels occurs, because most recycling of PV panels focuses on recycling the glass, aluminum, and copper. 

Wind Turbines

Several types of wind turbine, such as the permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG), require magnets that orient wind turbines into the wind. These magnets contain rare metals such as neodymium (Nd), praseodymium (Pr), terbium (Tb), and dysprosium (Dy). The estimated demand for Nd is projected to increase from 4000 to 18,000 tons by 2035, and for Dy from 200 to 1200 tons. These values represent a quarter to a half of current world output. There are also concerns over the amount of toxic and radioactive waste generated by these mining activities. Current research is focusing on lowering the dependence on these materials by reducing and recycling. The construction of extensive wind and solar energy installations will require large quantities of base metals such as copper, iron and aluminum, which will be unavailable for recycling for the lifetime of the installation, thus exacerbating scarcities.

Green Programme for Government will be Terrible for the Environment

The top three priorities for the new FF/FG-Green coalition government are housing, climate and the ending of direct provision. 

There is a commitment to increasing the housing stock by 50,000 each year, which means building another Cork city every year. These houses will presumably be needed for the additional million people who will be coming to Ireland in the next decade or two .  If there truly is a housing crisis, then the first thing any logical government would do is "hit the pause button" on immigration. This is simple supply vs demand economics. 

This means more concrete, more electricity, more heating, more power stations, more pylons, more emissions, more cars, more hospitals, more public services, more data centres, more spending, more imported goods, more imported food, more air flights, and increased pressure on water supplies and sewerage infrastructure. It means less green areas, less trees, less plants, more pollution, more waste. 

The housing and immigration policy is directly at odds with their climate policy of raising the carbon tax, the purpose of which is to get people to consume less petrol and home heating oil.

More cities and housing estates will make it more difficult to find small micro solutions to energy and community needs (a popular green concept for a while) .  It will require large scale solutions and projects such as power stations, pylons and motorways.

There are also plans for more wind farms, including offshore wind farms which will have a serious impact on our marine environment. The wide scale industrialization of our environment will be seen in the future as madness. Irish wind farms have already caused irreversible environmental damage.  The 4,000MW of wind farms we have already installed have failed to curb emissions and fossil fuel imports.

The Government plans to enact the Climate Action Bill within the first 100 days. This will set in law a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 51% by 2030 and down to zero by 2050 and a ban on sales of new and secondhand petrol and diesel cars by 2030. 

If you were to buy a basic petrol car such as a Fiat Punto, which does 120 g of CO2 per km, you could drive it for nearly 170,000 km before you would have emitted the equivalent 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide released during the manufacture of an electric car. As Pat Swords pointed out :

if you want to be able to charge 3,000 electric cars in an hour, which is only 0.15% of the number of cars out there, you need a new 300 MW power plant, which is large enough to cover 10% of the current country's demand. It's pretty obvious that unless you string up the country with new power stations and pylons, none of this is going to work, unless the public is prepared to spend a lot of their hard earned cash on electrical vehicles, which they will just have to park most of the time, as they don't have the hours to stand in line, awaiting an opportunity to get a charge in at one of these new 'charging infrastructures'. 

With two million cars currently in Ireland, that means we will need over 600 new power stations to replace the entire fleet of petrol and diesel cars !

Of course, none of this scrutiny is taking place in the media who are grossly incapable of doing their job.

Air Travel Gets a Free Pass

Air Travel only gets a couple of mentions in the Government's latest Climate Plan where the aim is to offset emissions from air travel through the purchase of carbon credits. The main focus of the plan is on electric vehicles with legislation to be introduced to ban the sale of fossil fuel cars from 2030.

Meanwhile, on the same week that the Climate Plan was announced, the Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar travelled to Brussels to obtain a €350 million loan from the European Investment Bank for investment in Dublin Airport - to facilitate European and global travel in the future.  

 It is perhaps one of the most astonishing cases of cognitive dissonance in Irish political history. Or it indicates that the European Union and the Irish government are not actually concerned about (or believe in) climate change except when it suits their own agendas.

The Gaping Holes in the 2040 Plan for Electric Vehicles

Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated

Mark Twain wasn't the only one to whom this applied.

Sales of diesel cars in Germany are increasing again, 33.1% in the first quarter of 2019 versus 32.3% this time last year. Down a bit from the nearly 50% four years ago. However, purchasers are canny and recognise a good buy, particular so that with the new Euro 6 emission standards, even the Environmental NGOs have to recognise that they are very clean. A 95 to 99% NOx emissions reduction on previous Euro 5 emission standards based on actual measurements driving on the street.

Also on the plus side a diesel car has less CO2 emissions than an electric car.

Just goes to prove that our lords and masters with their forthcoming ban on internal combustion engines have their heads once again in the clouds.

  The principal findings of the study are:

• In the natural turnover of the vehicle fleet, the significantly reduced NOX emissions from Euro 6d diesel passenger cars will be as effective as zero emission vehicles in helping cities become compliant with air quality standards. 

• For NO2, PM2.5 and PM10, no appreciable effect on air quality compliance or population exposure is observed between any of the modeled diesel passenger car scenarios or their replacement with equivalent zero emission vehicles. [Full Report can be read here].  

It's unsurprising to see that even though Norway are throwing six grand of subsidies per electric vehicle per year, giving them free access to bus lanes and exemption from tolls, have the cheapest electricity in Europe (lots of hydro), the whole electrical vehicle initiative in Norway is running into big practical difficulties.

Same maths as I was doing below in the Irish situation and we won't have those levels of subsidies! Also interesting in that Japanese carmakers are renowned for being driven by their engineering departments, they do practical sums and don't let marketing spin dominate decision making. In other words if you assess technology trends because you are fully immersed in all aspects of them, you can make rational decisions about future investments, for example, Honda :

https://www.manufacturingglobal.com/leadership/how-honda-became-one-worlds-most-innovative-car-companies 

As to what this bubble economy electrical vehicle initiative actually delivers, well a short analysis of this lunacy:

• An electric car with a 100kWh battery has thus emitted 15-20 tons of carbon dioxide even before the vehicle ignition is turned on. This calculation assumes a 50-70 per cent fossil share in the electricity mix [Link]. 

If you were to buy a Fiat Punto, which does 120 g of CO2 per km, you could drive it for nearly 170,000 km before you would have emitted the same 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide. 

Recently, our 'rulers' announced their plan for 2040. Let's just focus on one 'trendy' aspect:

• At least 500,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2030 with additional charging infrastructure to cater for planned growth
• No new non-zero emission vehicles to be sold in Ireland post 2030
• No NCT Cert will be issued for non-zero emission cars post 2045
• http://www.gov.ie/en/pdf-viewer/?file=https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/govieassets/18/5569359-NDP%20strategy%202018-2027_WEB.pdf#page=76  

So lets look at some simple sums, not a strong point of our glorious rulers, but relevant for plans which are meaningful and don't end up as an awful mess. To put the above into perspective, the CSO figures tell us that we have some 2 million cars in this so called 'Republic'. I accept that if one has enough money to buy a top range Tesla, one gets a 100 kWh battery pack, which on a good day can do something close to 400 km. This is what one is entitled to expect from what is a 'car' after all. However, the problem is when one needs to recharge it, as a domestic house is typically only set up for 7 kWh. So if you turn off all your other electrical appliances and wait 14 hours, you'll be ready to go again. Not very practical is it?

However, not to despair as they are going to build out new charging infrastructure for us instead. Well that 100 kWh battery may theoretically be 'supercharged' in something like 30 minutes, but let's assume that such a charging point can charge three such Teslas in an hour. This means that it has to deliver 300 kWh in an hour equivalent to 0.3 MW. So if we build a thousand of these, we then need a 300 MW power station to supply them. By international standards, this is a medium sized power station, which would be comfortably able to cover 10% of the average demand currently on the Irish grid.

So in simple terms if you want to be able to charge 3,000 electric cars in an hour, which is only 0.15% of the number of cars out there, you need a new 300 MW power plant, which is a large enough to cover 10% of the current country's demand. It's pretty obvious that unless you string up the country with new power stations and pylons, none of this is going to work, unless the public is prepared to spend a lot of their hard earned cash on electrical vehicles, which they will just have to park most of the time, as they don't have the hours to stand in line, awaiting an opportunity to get a charge in at one of these new 'charging infrastructures'. 

This is actually some pretty basis stuff and you would think that before they go off announcing their grandiose plans, they would have thought about it first. After all the data is published and readily available, such as from the SEAI's annual publications:

• http://www.seai.ie/resources/publications/Energy-in-Ireland-1990-2015.pdf 

Transport uses some 42% of energy consumed in Ireland, more than double that which goes into electricity generation. If that energy demand is to be switched from fossil fueled vehicles to electric vehicles, then the electricity infrastructure we have would need to be more than doubled, even allowing for the fact, that the current grid is somewhat lightly loaded at night. Think about this one, you get an allocated slot to drive your Tesla to the new charging infrastructure to hook it up between 2.30 and 3.00 am - is this progress?

Cost Benefit Analysis 

There was a Strategic Environmental Assessment completed for this Project Ireland 2040, but it does not include a cost benefit analysis for EV's : 

• http://npf.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Environmental-Report-%E2%80%93-Ireland-2040.pdf 

Even when the above embedded CO2 impact of EV's is not included, the costs still do not stack up : 

 • Driving an EV for 200,000 km @ 437grams CO2  per kWh of electricity from the Grid,  assuming 90% charging efficinecy and 0.2kwh per km, runs to CO2 emissions of about 19.5 tonnes of CO2.

• Driving a Diesel Skoda Superb 200,000 km @ 4.7 litres per 100km and 254grams of CO2 per kWh of fuel  (10.4 kWh per Litre) runs aboput 125grams of CO2 per km or emissions of 25 tonne of CO2 over a 200,000 km vehicle life.

• The Tax/Exise Revenue on Motor Fuel runs at about 66%

• Revenue foregone on diesel fuel over 200,000 kms (9400 litres) @ 66% of €1.30 = €8,065 Revenue foregone

• EVs availing of Toll refunds of up to €500 per year could cost an additional €5,000 over a vehicle life. http://www.etoll.ie/electric-vehicle-toll-inc/

The total cost of direct and indirect subsidies for EVs could touch €25,000 per vehicle over 10 years and 200,000 km for a saving of up to 5 tonnes of CO2. Under ETS the value of a tonne of CO2 saved ranged between €15 and €25 per tonne over 2018 (see page 9) 

Spending €25,000 to save CO2 that could be saved for  €75 to €125 under ETS makes no sense.

If Air quality is the argument in Urban areas then tackling solid fuel heating emissions should be the approach. The 2016  Residential Solid Fuel and Air Pollution Study North South Ministerial Council (NSMC)  reckoned something like 93% off Urban Air Pollution ( which account for some 1200 deaths annually) was caused by Solid Fuels related pollution. The Report urged switching from solid to liquid fuels as the most effective remedy to improve Urban Air Quality.

Thanks to Pat Swords and John Callaghan for the number crunching. 

Colombian Mine Hypocrisy

The green movement in Ireland have in recent months drawn attention to human rights abuses in a Colombian coal mine where Ireland imports coal for Moneypoint power station. The matter has been raised in the Irish parliament (The Dail) and there are calls to shutdown Moneypoint before it's planned closure in 2025. As this blog has recently shown, this would lead to increased dependence on gas imports as our significant wind energy infrastructure is incapable of replacing Moneypoint.

While these issues are concerning, one has to ask the question as to why the human rights abuses and environmental damage taking place in China, where rare earths are processed for use in wind turbines and electric cars, is also not being highlighted in the Dail. 

The first picture is of the coal mine in Colombia. The second picture is of a radioactive acid lake in China beside a rare earth processing plant.  

National Development Plan Short on Sums

Last week, the Government announced their plans for long term infrastructure spending that we, the already overtaxed taxpayer, will have to pay for. As is usual with these big PR events, they are big on glossy brochures but short on facts and critical analysis. Somehow the cognitive dissonance of Ministers announcing investments in airports while at the same time allocating €22bn to help fight "climate change" was lost on most of our media.

In this article, Pat Swords explores one part of the plan - electric cars.

This week our 'rulers' announced their plan for 2040. Let's just focus on one 'trendy' aspect:

• At least 500,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2030 with additional charging infrastructure to cater for planned growth
• No new non-zero emission vehicles to be sold in Ireland post 2030
• No NCT Cert will be issued for non-zero emission cars post 2045
• http://www.gov.ie/en/pdf-viewer/?file=https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/govieassets/18/5569359-NDP%20strategy%202018-2027_WEB.pdf#page=76  

So lets look at some simple sums, not a strong point of our glorious rulers, but relevant for plans which are meaningful and don't end up as an awful mess. To put the above into perspective, the CSO figures tell us that we have some 2 million cars in this so called 'Republic'. I accept that if one has enough money to buy a top range Tesla, one gets a 100 kWh battery pack, which on a good day can do something close to 400 km. This is what one is entitled to expect from what is a 'car' after all. However, the problem is when one needs to recharge it, as a domestic house is typically only set up for 7 kWh. So if you turn off all your other electrical appliances and wait 14 hours, you'll be ready to go again. Not very practical is it?

However, not to despair as they are going to build out new charging infrastructure for us instead. Well that 100 kWh battery may theoretically be 'supercharged' in something like 30 minutes, but let's assume that such a charging point can charge three such Teslas in an hour. This means that it has to deliver 300 kWh in an hour equivalent to 0.3 MW. So if we build a thousand of these, we then need a 300 MW power station to supply them. By international standards, this is a medium sized power station, which would be comfortably able to cover 10% of the average demand currently on the Irish grid. 

So in simple terms if you want to be able to charge 3,000 electric cars in an hour, which is only 0.15% of the number of cars out there, you need a new 300 MW power plant, which is a large enough to cover 10% of the current country's demand. It's pretty obvious that unless you string up the country with new power stations and pylons, none of this is going to work, unless the public is prepared to spend a lot of their hard earned cash on electrical vehicles, which they will just have to park most of the time, as they don't have the hours to stand in line, awaiting an opportunity to get a charge in at one of these new 'charging infrastructures'. 

This is actually some pretty basis stuff and you would think that before they go off announcing their grandiose plans, they would have thought about it first. After all the data is published and readily available, such as from the SEAI's annual publications:

http://www.seai.ie/resources/publications/Energy-in-Ireland-1990-2015.pdf 

Transport uses some 42% of energy consumed in Ireland, more than double that which goes into electricity generation. If that energy demand is to be switched from fossil fueled vehicles to electric vehicles, then the electricity infrastructure we have would need to be more than doubled, even allowing for the fact, that the current grid is somewhat lightly loaded at night. Think about this one, you get an allocated slot to drive your Tesla to the new charging infrastructure to hook it up between 2.30 and 3.00 am - is this progress?.

And what of the alleged CO2 savings ? 

• An electric car with a 100kWh battery has thus emitted 15-20 tons of carbon dioxide even before the vehicle ignition is turned on. This calculation assumes a 50-70 per cent fossil share in the electricity mix. 
• https://www.ivl.se/english/startpage/top-menu/pressroom/press-releases/press-releases---arkiv/2017-06-21-new-report-highlights-climate-footprint-of-electric-car-battery-production.html 

If you were to buy a Fiat Punto, which does 120 g of CO2 per km, you could drive it for nearly 170,000 km before you would have emitted the same 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide. 

When one does simple sums, none of this makes the slightest sense, not least as to the why? We don't have an urban air pollution problem in our cities and the weather is just doing its own thing, claims of weather doomsdays are just wild speculation and with each increasing year it is clearly obvious how wildly speculative those claims are. So in essence electric vehicles are a trendy solution to a problem, which has never been assessed and quantified and actually doesn't currently exist. So why do we end up with this dysfunctionality? After all the Government's own procedures highlight:

• Regulations and their implementation often result in considerable costs to the public service, to citizens and to businesses. It is important that these costs are taken into account.  Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) is a tool to assess the likely effects of a proposed new regulation and involves a detailed analysis to:
• (i) ascertain whether or not the new regulation would have the desired impact and
• (ii) to identify the costs and benefits associated with the regulation.

Can't find a Regulatory Impact Analysis for this Project Ireland 2040 and above announced regulatory changes with respect to vehicles in Ireland. However, there was a Strategic Environmental Assessment completed for this Project Ireland 2040, but there is no assessment in it at all with respect to what has now been adopted above with regard to electric vehicles:

• http://npf.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Environmental-Report-%E2%80%93-Ireland-2040.pdf 

Theoretically the Lisbon Treaty, which we voted for, states in its Article 3 that we have a  right to a "highly competitive social market economy". As far as I'm concerned, what car I choose to buy is my business and why should I be dictated to by some barmy ideological politician? I would also recommend that one spend some time talking to older Eastern Europeans about the 45 years they spent behind the Iron Curtain and subject to the rigours of a planned economy there. This whole proposal is an outrageous abuse. It is not the State's entitlement or function to intervene in the free market in this manner, not least as it doesn't have a single scrap of analysis to justify the position it has now adopted. 

After all oil in 2014 was $110 a barrel and due to the technology advances brought on by fracking, has reduced to a value consistently around $55. While we have not seen all of that benefit, due to the degree of tax on these fuels, we have seen quite a benefit due to the market forces, which control supply and demand of this energy source. On the other hand, the electricity market in Europe is totally distorted by political intervention, costs have soared out of control and we saw how recently Viridian with two perfectly good power stations in Dublin simply decided to walk away from them, as the electricity market place is such a distorted mess here. So why on earth would anybody in their right mind want to be forced by the State to buy a vehicle, for which the facilities to refuel it are completely inadequate and the fuel supply is from a completely distorted market place lacking in transparency and demonstrating no shortage of political interference? In other words cronyism and a lack of accountability, which is breeding corruption.