We aren’t doing the recycling necessary to reclaim used materials from ewaste that is needed. While we may “have enough” materials to build enough renewable energy to meet our current needs initially, those materials will eventually need to be replaced, and unless we degrowth the energy output we currently need to be met will only grow. Those materials are only going to get harder and harder to extract, requiring higher and higher fuel consumption as those minerals aren’t located in urban centers with easy access to the electrical grid, they will require higher and higher fuel consumption for ICEs, internal combustion engines.
This also isn’t considering the continued growth in consumer electronics and the integration of electronics in public and private infrastructure that use those same minerals taking those minerals away from the use in renewables. Then there is the damage to the environment and people that mining those minerals requires, nor the damage that recycling ewaste does to the environment and people.
Without a socialist revolution in the core capitalist countries (global north), the continued growth is going to mean that they will consume the majority of rare earth minerals for both products and renewables, while pushing the impacts on environment and people onto global south countries, until they either refuse to do the damage to themselves or collapse under the strain of climate change, or both. In turn, that will mean a global shift to fascism as capital seeks to protect itself at all cost. Which then will lead to climate wars, over resources, and denying those to people outside the global north.
Renewables are part of the solution, but without socialism and degrowth to consumption levels of that of Cuba, the focus of renewables as the only solution is a pipe dream.
Read How To Blow Up A Pipeline, or Socialist States and the Environment.
“Sodium ion devices do not need critical materials, relying on abundant sodium instead of lithium, and no cobalt or nickel. As lithium ion prices rose in 2022, amid predictions of material shortages, sodium ion was tipped as a rival and interest remains strong, even as lithium ion prices have started to fall again.”
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/carmakers-switch-to-electric-vehicles-strain-supply-of-battery-minerals/
https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions/mineral-requirements-for-clean-energy-transitions
https://thebulletin.org/2024/04/one-problem-for-renewables-not-enough-rare-earths-one-solution-recycling-but-theres-a-hitch/
We aren’t doing the recycling necessary to reclaim used materials from ewaste that is needed. While we may “have enough” materials to build enough renewable energy to meet our current needs initially, those materials will eventually need to be replaced, and unless we degrowth the energy output we currently need to be met will only grow. Those materials are only going to get harder and harder to extract, requiring higher and higher fuel consumption as those minerals aren’t located in urban centers with easy access to the electrical grid, they will require higher and higher fuel consumption for ICEs, internal combustion engines.
This also isn’t considering the continued growth in consumer electronics and the integration of electronics in public and private infrastructure that use those same minerals taking those minerals away from the use in renewables. Then there is the damage to the environment and people that mining those minerals requires, nor the damage that recycling ewaste does to the environment and people.
Without a socialist revolution in the core capitalist countries (global north), the continued growth is going to mean that they will consume the majority of rare earth minerals for both products and renewables, while pushing the impacts on environment and people onto global south countries, until they either refuse to do the damage to themselves or collapse under the strain of climate change, or both. In turn, that will mean a global shift to fascism as capital seeks to protect itself at all cost. Which then will lead to climate wars, over resources, and denying those to people outside the global north.
Renewables are part of the solution, but without socialism and degrowth to consumption levels of that of Cuba, the focus of renewables as the only solution is a pipe dream.
Read How To Blow Up A Pipeline, or Socialist States and the Environment.
“Sodium ion devices do not need critical materials, relying on abundant sodium instead of lithium, and no cobalt or nickel. As lithium ion prices rose in 2022, amid predictions of material shortages, sodium ion was tipped as a rival and interest remains strong, even as lithium ion prices have started to fall again.”
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/03/22/sodium-ion-batteries-a-viable-alternative-to-lithium/