The planned energy transition signed by world’s nations in the Paris agreement sets the target to phase out fossil fuels by mid-century. This “green reset” requires a build-up of fossil fuel-free energy capacities (in production, end-use, and storage) which will entail on an unprecedented demand in mineral resources. While the Earth crust hosts such resource in sufficient quantities, I will highlight the key bottlenecks in bringing these metals to the market and show that the target cannot be met in the allocated timeframe. Finally, I will explore the way earth scientists can cushion the commodity race until nations decide on and implement a better plan.
Very good event highlighting the hard facts and the needed actions to keep our current way of life and consumption. The issue of mining in the green transition – like most of the current #deathcult we are fucked on this one.
What was only lightly touched on at the event was that the change we need is social, let’s look at a group that have made this change over the last ten years. Boaters, they have shifted 90% from fossil fuels to solar to generative living power on boats. They have also shifted their behaver to using power during the middle of the day rather than in the evening. We should study this to find a way of rolling this “social/technological” change to other groups as examples to push this to wider society.
At the event in the room, the divide between social and science based thinking is strong in Oxford, tin the room the people look and behave very differently, his block’s meany basic conversations that are needed in the current mess.