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The drill rig is at the Hells Kitchen Lithium and Power project in Calipatria, California. The Salton Sea in California's Imperial Valley is home to the largest concentration of brines for the production of electric vehicles.
Bing Guan/Bloomberg is pictured.
One of the biggest challenges for the clean energy sector is how to get enough minerals to build solar panels, wind turbine, and big batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage. Figuring that out will be crucial for escaping the ecological disaster. It will be crucial for policymakers and industry to move forward without throwing certain communities under the bus.
The clean energy industries and their suppliers will open up the Earth to find critical minerals like copper, which are hard to find in oil and gas wells. An offshore wind turbine requires nine times more resources than a gas-fired power plant, according to the International Energy Agency. A gas-powered car requires less minerals than an EV.
Don't throw certain communities under the bus.
It is about time to scrutinize what that hunger for minerals might mean, given the recent boom in pledges from countries and companies alike to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions. It is proving to be a challenge to dig up the minerals. People are protesting at proposed mines that they don't want in their backyard. The conflicts that happened in the year of 2020 are just the beginning of a difficult road.
The International Energy Agency warned in May that the world isn't mining enough of the minerals that are the building blocks of a clean energy future. According to the IEA, supply chains for critical minerals are vulnerable. Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said in a statement that the potential vulnerabilities could make global progress towards a clean energy future slower and more costly. This is what energy security looks like in the 21st century.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is the main supplier of the metal used in EV batteries. Most of the world's rare earth minerals are produced and processed in China. The world might feel the effects of anything that rattles production in those countries. Concentration of power over vital resources in specific countries and companies creates the potential for environmental and human rights abuses, which have plagued supply chains for rare earth minerals. There have been investigations into the labor abuses that have been found at the cobalt mines.
The COVID-19 Pandemic has put more pressure on clean energy supply chains. According to a research firm, rising shipping and commodity prices could delay or even cancel solar projects. According to the International Monetary Fund, soaring metal prices could slow down the transition to renewable energy.
There are a lot of labor abuses.
The US will be halving its emissions from peak levels this decade according to Joe Biden. He wants a clean-energy grid by the year 2035 and net zero emissions by the year 2050. The US will need large quantities of minerals in order to reach those goals, which is why the Biden administration has made securing them a priority. By June, Biden had announced a whole-of-government effort to shore up domestic supply chains with a focus on critical minerals and advanced batteries used for renewable energy and electric vehicles. The administration sees domestic supply chains as a way to help the US wean itself off dirty fossil fuels while also decreasing its reliance on mining in other countries.
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The San Carlos Apache Nation prays outside the US Capitol while protesting a land swap included in the National Defense Authorization Act that threatens the sacred Apache Leap site with environmental damage from nearby high-risk copper. Oak Flat is home to hundreds of Apache traditional coming-of-age ceremonies and acorn gathering customs, which have been protected by the federal government for over 55 years.
The photo was taken by Win McNamee.
Even in the US, clean energy-related mining can come with costs, and it is already looking like Native Americans and other marginalized groups might bear a disproportionate burden of those costs. Thacker Pass is the site of the largest lithium resource in the country. If the proposed mine moves forward, it will dig up a gravesite that is sacred to members of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribes. Residents are worried about how the mine will affect wildlife and use up water in a state that is in a historic dry spell. The Nez Perce Tribe in Idaho is facing the prospect of a new mining project tearing up their landscape to produce gold, a key ingredient for many electronics, and antimony, which could be used in futuristic batteries. The San Carlos Apache Nation and other Indigenous peoples in the region are against the proposed copper mine at Oak Flat in Arizona. Copper is used in a wide range of energy technologies.
The race is on to find new sources of the minerals needed for clean energy around the world. The patches of the seafloor that contain polymetallic nodules are now being eyed by mining companies. Hundreds of marine scientists published a statement in September saying that mining the seafloor could irreparably hurt deep-sea ecosystems, because of companies' eagerness to bring heavy industry to a largely unexplored environment. The International Seabed Authority, which oversees activities on the high seas, is poised to push through new rules that could open up the world's oceans for deep sea-mining after meeting earlier this month.
Free, prior, and informed consent are the rights of the tribes.
There are ways to get the minerals the clean energy revolution needs while not having a huge impact on people or the planet. There are companies trying to figure out how to get better at recycling batteries. Joe Biden promised to create millions of clean energy jobs while defending the right of workers to unionize, which could mean more protections for workers in US mines. Under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, tribes are entitled to free, prior and informed consent for any project that might affect them. We can use more public transit and use less energy.
Fossil fuels need to be avoided at all costs as renewable energy starts to surpass them. If decision-makers can chart a path for a just transition to renewable energy, they might be able to heal more than the damage our demand for energy has inflicted on the climate.
