On this episode, we meet with Associate Professor of Geometallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland, Dr. Simon Michaux.
Key take is that renewables are the right answer to the wrong question. We shouldn’t ask ourselves how we can perpetuate our current infinite growth economy, that will never work, even with renewables. We need de-growth, a steady state economy in balance with what the Earth can provide, anything less will result in major issues.
Unless we can mine other planets or asteroids, but we’re far away from that so we need to do more with less. We need to apply the same type of thinking as we do for our planned moon and mars bases, we need to plan based on the carrying capacity of the environment and our needs.
Currently we have a utopian economy, or maybe a better term for it is a Mordor economy where we blindly consume with little to no regard for the social and environmental consequences.
We need to make our logistics more efficient, localization rather than globalization. We need to make products last longer by making them modular, and thus easy to upgrade, repair and recycle as I discussed in my Fairphone episode. We need to change our economy to a more sustainable one, instead of this this profit motivated, planned obsolescence oriented, focused on short term profits with long term waste as a result in this infinite growth economy.
If the current economy was inside your body then your doctor would likely diagnose you with cancer. Cancer is infinite growth and if you’re unfortunate, it will only stop when the host of that cancer dies. Oh, and by the way that’s us, all of us, in case you were not paying attention.
Hi Keyes,
I agree with the goal of your observations, and think we have the economic tools to create a stable state economy when the Global Demographic Transition kicks in mid century. Then we’ll have a stable or declining population. But I do not think we have to institute that before we do the energy transition, or even that we have to limit the energy we use at this stage. Basically, I’m not convinced Michaux is telling us the whole story!
WIND AND SOLAR do not need rare earths.
While they can use them sometimes, they do not have to. The majority of brands are moving away from rare-earths due to cost. 95% of Solar uses silicon (which is 27% of the Earth’s crust) and aluminium (8%). Wind is made from iron (5%), aluminium and now recyclable fibreglass. There are new wind generators that do not use ANY rare earths in the magnets, and we now have the technologies and companies that can recycling up to 95% of the materials in a wind turbine - even those pesky fibreglass blades.
OVERBUILD WIND AND SOLAR TO REDUCE STORAGE:
Peer-reviewed engineers plan to Overbuild the grid to get through winter with just 2 days for storage for each city. Many reports show this will works, from Tony Seba’s work on Overbuild and Storage through to Professor Andrew Blakers of the Australian National University.
AVOID METAL BATTERIES THROUGH PUMPED HYDRO WHERE POSSIBLE
These are “batteries” mainly of water and gravity. The metals in them are equivalent to a coal power station - instead of burning millions of tons of coal - we’re just moving millions of tons of water. Professor Blakers has a satellite atlas of the earth’s many pumped hydro sites we could use. There is 100 TIMES more potential sites than we would need. https://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/
SODIUM GRID BATTERIES USE NO RARE METALS
SODIUM batteries use NO lithium, cobalt, graphite, or copper. They’re less flammable, less toxic, and 30% less expensive than Lithium. We’re not going to run out of sea-salt!
IRON BATTERIES rust and “derust” iron
Iron is 5% of the earth’s crust. No rare earth’s required! Form Energy are building one in Minnesota.
ELECTRIC VEHICLE BATTERIES are moving to Lithium Iron Phosphate
These do not use ANY rare earths. The USGS reserves from 2022 show we have 89 million tons of lithium which at 6 kg of lithium per EV would build 14 BILLION EV’s - we only need a 1.4 billion. That was before Sept 2023 when America found the world’s largest lithium deposit (so far!) We keep finding it faster than we can use it.
TRUCKS: Tesla have their 40 ton Semi, Australia have 100 ton Janus trucks that do a quick battery swap every 400 km or so, and mining giants are now experimenting with fast-charge battery packs. Why? Remote mines can now run on renewable electricity generated on site rather than expensive diesel trucked in from interstate.
RECYCLING: There are remarkable new technologies in recycling all these things. Every ton of minerals mined will be recycled forever in a growing pool of resources. By 2040, HALF of the EV batteries made will be from recycled materials. Basically, Big Battery is replacing Big Oil. Clean energy has a 4 year doubling curve. We are moving from finite and polluting energy that was starting to run low into renewable energy made from super-abundant materials that can be recycled forever. Then when everyone has everything they need and are living in first world economies, the population growth will stop. Worldwide Demographic Transition will kick in. We’ll finally be sustainable - at least in terms of energy supply!
Hello @Eclipse, we also need to consider the location of resources and change the way we obtain resources. The current mining methodology is highly dangerous and sometimes unethical. Also, to produce the same product locally everywhere in the world, a resource should be on all continents, close to factories and cities.
For example, just because a common earth mineral is abundant in North America, this doesn’t mean that it’s as abundant in Asia or Australia.
If we manage to develop asteroid mining, then we can place minerals from Space on Earth to increase abundance in some regions. Right now, we should strategically plan how we use the minerals that are not available everywhere.
I’m not sure you can recycle forever, I suppose material degrades over time, like energy? I hope you’re right though about all what you stated about renewable technology.
By the way, there is a battery thread:
Hi, thanks for your comment.
we also need to consider the location of resources
Given the sheer abundance of 3 biggest ingredients - silicon, iron ore, and aluminium, location isn’t the issue. Economics is. Economies of scale in production and cheap labour are. There are economic reasons China produces most of the silicon PV panels in the world - not geological resource reasons. And Bidenomics / IRA is starting to stimulate all kinds of clean tech manufacturing in the USA - and the EU is starting to think about energy security - especially after depending on Russian gas.
The current mining methodology is highly dangerous and sometimes unethical.
What are you referring to? Sure - mines in some developing and South American nations have all kinds of social issues - I agree. I’m saddened by some of the copper mining stories I’ve watched. But that’s more about Work Health and Safety laws in those countries - not a fatal flaw in green tech as a whole. Australia is starting to ramp up how many rare earth’s we mine, as are many other first world nations. This is in an industry that will be ‘electrifying’ - going green - for economic reasons.
Also, to produce the same product locally everywhere in the world, a resource should be on all continents, close to factories and cities.
Oil isn’t everywhere in the world, nor the other fossil fuels. But it doesn’t stop us. We use 40% of global shipping - or 22,000 gigantic oil and coal and gas tankers - to ship that stuff around. Mining for minerals will be an order of magnitude less. And once you install an off-grid solar EV charger, it’s there for 25 years and does not need a weekly highway tanker to refill it.
For example, just because a common earth mineral is abundant in North America, this doesn’t mean that it’s as abundant in Asia or Australia.
Ah, but again - silicon, iron ore, aluminium.
There’s 10 times the lithium we need worldwide and America just discovered the world’s largest single lithium resource.
If we manage to develop asteroid mining, then we can place minerals from Space
I’m a fan of space, and have watched so much Isaac Arthur over the years it isn’t funny! But we’re talking about 3 of the most common metals on earth here to make our renewable energy grid - and sodium batteries and pumped hydro stations to back it up. And the absolutely ridiculous idea that somehow there aren’t enough minerals to build out the energy transition needs to die, now.
I’m not sure you can recycle forever, I suppose material degrades over time, like energy? I hope you’re right though about all what you stated about renewable technology.
I’m no scientist but my understanding of recycling tech is that the metals can be recycled indefinitely as long as you can separate out every bit of them. If tiny fragments of bits are attached to waste that ends up in landfill, like some of the rare earths for electronics, then that’s tricky. Plastics “downcycle.” That is, each time you recycle them they get worse. That’s something to do with it being too expensive to use try recycling techniques at the moment - as it requires too much energy. But if we get “Super-Power” from Overbuilding renewables - maybe we’ll even be able to use a Gasifier to process all our old rubbish tips?
Silicon, iron ore and aluminum are finite, which means if they are available now, and we mine them, then there will be less availability in the future. Also, if the resource is mined at faster rate in a certain continent than the others, then it will not become available worldwide at a large quantity.
This problem can be solved with recycling, which recirculates materials at a global scale, ensuring that we will never run out of resources.