Assoc Prof Simon Michaux - The quantity of metals required to manufacture just one generation of...

[VIDEO] Long video, but informative. TLDR: We don't have enough minerals (including reserves) to completely switch our energy from ff to renewables, assuming our current energy consumption flatline, and our renewable technology efficiency and mineral consumption remain the same.

Solar energy isn't free, it takes a lot of metals just to turn solar energy into electrical energy (including batteries for storage) and they don't last forever. Here's a link to a talk from an associate professor doing an estimation of how much metals are needed to switch to renewable energy: [VIDEO]

On the flip side, the amount of materials, metals, and energy necessary to produce enough batteries to replace current fossil fuel usages, are order of magnitude larger than the current world production and known reserves. This presentation does ballpark analysis of the problem: [VIDEO] Even if the numbers are off by an order of magnitude, them problem remains worrisome and difficult to solve at scale.

I don't believe that BEV economics will improve. It could actually get worse as we are running out of material, especially copper The quantity of metal required to make just one generation of renewable tech units to replace fossil fuels, is much larger than first thought. Current mining production of these metals is not even close to meeting demand. Current reported mineral reserves are also not enough in size. Most concerning is copper as one of the flagged shortfalls. Exploration for more at required volumes will be difficult, with this seminar addressing these issues. [VIDEO]

There's also this much longer talk he gave that I watched recently: [VIDEO] The premise is that we don't have enough minerals to transition to a decarbonized economy if we just do the most obvious, naive thing. For some reason, he assumes we need a battery capable of storing the world's energy use for 4 weeks, and then shows that there's no way we can manufacture that amount of lithium ion batteries. His analysis also assumes pretty heavy use of hydrogen for ground transport to get around the limitations of batteries, despite being rather energy-inefficient by comparison. I'm actually kind of optimistic: his result just means we can't do things that don't scale, but we could do other things instead. Rather than building huge chemical batteries for grid storage, we can use pumped hydro and expand our power grids so we can move energy between continents and buffer out renewable energy variability and day/night cycles. Instead of using hydrogen fuel cells or huge batteries for ground transport, we can electrify our major highways so trucks only need small batteries to get from the freeway to their delivery/pickup point. (We could also rely on trains a lot more than we do.) Instead of building billions of brand new cars, we can convert many of the cars we already have to electric if they're still in good shape and worth the effort. We can stop using so much copper in everything, and use aluminum instead where it makes sense.

Here is a longer presentation from same author from this year about lack of copper to even start with renewables as planned [VIDEO]

Toyota is probably only company who understands that poor people can't afford BEVs and will be left behind. And introducing another EV Hummer or Cybertruck for 100k USD won't really help them to get affordable EV. I am convinced that BEV are not the future, because there is not enough of material, especially there is not enough copper. Assoc Prof Simon Michaux on shortage of copper [VIDEO] [LINK]

1) It is dangerous yes. That is the nature of the energy being so concentrated. But this concentration is a blessing because you don't need to mind nearly as much material, and it is far far easier to keep an eye on the waste. Where does the waste from coal/gas go? Into the air. It costs way more to try to contain the harms of those substances because they are the opposite of energy dense. Nuclear waste is such a tiny tiny amount that we just keep it on site. It's solid. It's not going to leak out of its containers. It just sits in concrete casks on site. Even better, it still has 98% of the energy in it so you don't really want to get rid of it. It can be used in breeder reactors to extract more energy. I quote this too much, but all the nuclear waste the US has ever generated would sit in a single football field, 10 yards high. 2) Nuclear is capital intensive AND the only energy generation that is forced to pre fund its own decommissioning and cleanup. The increased operating costs of nuclear plants is largely due to intentional mismanagement b/c of politics. For example, in France they force nuclear plants to stop outputting power when renewables are generating. They prioritize renewables because that's what politics dictates. They also mandated a cap on power allowed to be generated by nuclear plants, forcing the closure of perfectly good and already paid for plants, so they could buy more renewables. These privatized energy markets don't want stable cheap energy because