Sustainable production of critical minerals for the green energy transition.
Critical Minerals
We currently have only 5.8% of the critical minerals most needed to achieve the green energy transition.
Did you know that just to meet the wind energy demand in the IEA’s Net Zero by 2050 Scenario, rare earth production capacity needs to increase by sevenfold? And that’s only one example of the many minerals needed to build green energy infrastructure. Without enough critical minerals, we will be unable to transition to emission-free sources of energy.
What are Critical Minerals?
Critical minerals are the elements that humans need to build the green energy infrastructure that will enable a transition away from fossil fuels. Right now, the current production capacity is dwarfed by the estimations of what will be required to completely switch to green energy. In simple terms, we don’t have enough critical minerals to stop using fossil fuels. More specifically, there are not enough mines producing critical minerals or processors that can turn those minerals into the metal products that are used in green energy.
Let’s start by identifying the minerals and metals in question.
The 2023 DOE Critical Minerals Assessment identified 50 minerals that are essential to energy infrastructure and have vulnerable supply chains. The list includes elements needed for energy generation infrastructure like solar panels, wind turbines, and electrolyzers, battery metals needed for energy storage like lithium, nickel, cobalt, and graphite, elements needed for energy transmission like copper, and others.
Here’s the short and medium term “Criticality Matrix” which shows the elements with the highest supply chain risk and most limited production capacity. In the medium term, there are 12 minerals in red that are the most critical with the most vulnerable supply chains. Among the 12 highest risk elements are metals used in batteries, fuel cells, semiconductors, and permanent magnets.
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The estimated demands for some of these minerals are shown below. The green solid and dotted lines represent the Net Zero by 2050 Scenario with high and low material intensities, the blue solid and dotted lines represent a low level of energy technology deployment with high and low material intensities, and the red solid and dotted lines show our current production and production capacity. Clearly, there is a huge problem. In every scenario, production capacity is nowhere near estimated demands in just 2035.
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For wind turbines, by 2050, rare earth production needs to increase by sevenfold to meet the wind energy demand in the IEA’s Net Zero by 2050 Scenario. Each wind turbine requires over 1,500 lbs of rare earth metal which cannot be “designed out” or substituted for anything else.
That’s why Hydrova is building an extraction platform for minerals including rare earth elements, which you can learn more about by clicking HERE.
Sustainability
Mining and metal production accounts for 10% of global emissions.
We need to mine, extract, and refine the critical minerals for the green energy transition without harming the environment in the process. That’s why Hydrova develops technologies for critical minerals production, waste valorization, and clean energy.
The question looms: how are we going to mine and process all the critical minerals we need for the green energy transition in a sustainable way? Traditional mining and refining processes have been environmentally damaging, even for many years after the mining operation is complete. It is imperative that we develop innovative mining and extraction technologies to enable the level of production needed for the green energy transition without significant harm to the environment along the way.
False-color image of Rare Earth mine in Bayan Obo (Baiyunebo), Nei Mongol Autonomous Region, China, resulting from combination of satellite images captured by ASTER (NASA)
This mining district filled with hazardous tailings ponds is the result of rare earth mining in China, captured by NASA’s satellites. Nearby, rare earth refineries in Singapore and Malaysia have created environmental disasters*. Clearly, if we are to scale up rare earth production by sevenfold for wind turbines alone, we need better technologies that enable mining and processing without the same kind of environmental impact.
* Ichihara, M., Harding, A. Human Rights, the Environment and Radioactive Waste: A Study of the Asian Rare Earth Case in Malaysia. 4 Rev. Eur. Comp. & Int'l Envtl. L. 1 (1995) https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9388.1995.tb00190.x
Sustainability is the motivation for everything we do at Hydrova. That’s why we are focused on sustainable production of critical minerals for the green energy transition and waste valorization technologies like our zero waste dross recycling solution, DrossZero.
Our goal is to enable domestic production of critical minerals for the green energy transition with a well-rounded suite of technologies that cover everything from waste valorization to decarbonization. That’s how we are doing our part in protecting our amazing planet.
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