Will we have enough minerals for the energy transition?

 An interesting video from Just Have A Think.

The answer: prolly, yes, because we'll need less than it seems, as only one third of primary energy ends up being used.  The rest is wasted.  

And the argument that we'll need massive storage is wrong.  What we'll do instead is have excess renewable generation capacity, with the surplus output either being curtailed or used for processes that don't require 24/7 availability of electricity, such as desalination and charging EVs.  Also, energy return on energy invested is now higher for renewables than for fossil fuels. Finally, battery technology is shifting, with new technologies such as sodium-ion using readily available, cheap minerals.  Sodium-ion batteries will cost half of lithium-ion batteries.

However, there's this article which suggests that price of copper (an EV uses 4 times as much as a petrol car, mostly for wiring) is beginning a phase of secular growth.  As it happens, the price of copper has fallen since then!  Never mind, it happens to the best of us.

My take: as demand driven by the energy transition pushes up prices of certain commodities, advances in technology will create alternative ways to achieve the same goals.  An obvious example: after the price of lithium soared, research on sodium-ion batteries took off.  Now, sodium-ion batteries are commercially available and have been installed in EVs.   They're not yet as energy dense as lithium-ion batteries, but they're much cheaper.  And research continues.

If somebody had told you 70 years ago that we would use sunlight to produce electricity, they would have replied, had they even known about it, that it was so expensive that it could only be used for spacecraft.  And anyway, where were we going to get all that silicon?  Yet here we are.  I'm typing this on a laptop with the power several orders of magnitude more than the first IBM computer, using sunlight to power not just it, but also my internet connection.  Inconceivable 70 years ago.  Routine, now.

Energy Payback

One of the classic techniques of soft denialists is to assert that the construction and installation of solar panels or wind turbines uses more energy than they produce over their useful lifetimes.  I call them soft denialists because they don't come right out and say that there is no such thing as global warming and so we can continue to use fossil fuels.  What they say instead is that renewables won't work, and so we have to use fossil fuels.  They don't then add that this will inevitably mean that CO2 emissions will go on rising, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere will go on rising. and so global temperatures will go on rising.  Even if they were right about the energy payback ratios of renewables, the fact is that we have no choice.  We have to cut CO2 emissions to near zero to prevent catastrophic global warming.  Fortunately, the soft denialists are completely wrong.

So what are the facts?

Solar: According to NREL, current PV systems take 3.5 years before the energy they generate exceeds the energy used up in their creation and installation.  Now, solar panels lose about 2% of their capacity in their first year of use, but thereafter capacity declines by 0.5% per year.   This means that over 40 years, PV panels will lose a cumulative  mere 20% of nominal capacity.  Clearly, that's a positive energy balance.  As a corollary, note that costings of solar power assume that project life is 25 years Even with low interest rates, the increase in the present value of the investment after 25 years is small, so that makes sense.  But what that means is that after 25 years, the electricity generated is (virtually) free.

Source

Wind:   On-shore wind turbines produce 34 times the energy it "costs" to make them.  As my source points out, though, this doesn't include the energy cost of batteries or backup.  What is truly fascinating is that the energy payback ratio for coal is much less: between 2.5 and 5.1; and for CCGT (combined cycle gas turbine) is about the same (between 2.5 and 5).  CCS (Carbon capture and storage) is even less efficient.: it reduces the coal payback ratio to between 1.6 and 3.1.  These data mean that even if you include backup for wind for half the time, it still (obviously!) has a far better energy payback ratio than coal or gas on their own.

Source  (Click to enlarge)

Conclusion:  Renewables pay back the energy used to create them many times over.  The soft denialist claim is just wrong.