The contentious path to a cleaner future

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

The world is building solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and other crucial climate technologies faster than ever. As the pace picks up, though, a challenge is looming: we need a whole lot of materials to build it all. 

From cement and steel to nickel and lithium, the ingredient list for the clean energy transition is a long one. And in some cases, getting our hands on all those materials won’t be simple, and the trade-offs are starting to become abundantly clear. 

My colleague James Temple, senior editor for energy here at MIT Technology Review, has spent over a year digging into the building tensions around mining for critical minerals. In a new story published this week, James highlights one community in rural Minnesota and the conflicts over a mining project planned for the nearby area. 

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you check out that article. In the meantime, I got to sit down with James to ask him a few questions about the process of reporting and writing this feature and chat about critical minerals and the energy transition. Here’s some of what we talked about. 

So, what’s the big deal with critical minerals?

To address climate change, “we just need to build an enormous amount of stuff,” James says. And building all of it means a whole lot of demand for materials. 

We might need nearly 20 times more nickel in 2040 than the annual supply in 2020, according to the International Energy Agency. That multiple is 25 times for graphite, and for lithium it’s over 40 times the current figure. 

Even if people agree in the abstract that we need to extract and process the materials needed to build the stuff to address climate change, figuring out where it all should come from is easier said than done. “We came to realize that mining proposals were creating community tensions basically anywhere they appeared in the US,” James says. 

There’s pushback to all sorts of different climate tech projects—we’ve seen very vocal opposition to proposed wind farms, for example. But there seems to be an additional layer to the concerns around mining, James says. Among other reasons, it’s a legacy industry with a particularly checkered past in terms of environmental impact. 

Even as communities raise concerns over new mining projects, “you also saw the companies proposing them stressing the potential benefits to cleantech and climate goals,” James says. This combination of clear potential climate benefits with community concerns was worth exploring, he tells me. 

What does a proposed nickel mine near a small town in Minnesota tell us about conflict over critical minerals?  

The town of Tamarack, Minnesota, has a population of around 70. 

Despite its small size, Tamarack could soon be key to a crucial landmark for climate technology, because Talon Metals wants to build a huge mine outside the town that could dig up as much as 725,000 metric tons of raw ore each year. The primary target is nickel, a metal that’s crucial to building high-performance EV batteries. 

Talon has been very explicit in claiming that this mine would have benefits for the planet, going as far as applying to trademark the term “Green Nickel.” That’s one of the reasons this particular site piqued James’s interest, he says. 

At the same time, local concerns are growing. Drilling could release 2.6 million gallons of water into the mine every day, which Talon plans to pump out and treat before it’s released into nearby wetlands. This part of the plan has caused some of the greatest unease, since local fresh water is crucial to the community’s economy and identity. 

The central tension was abundantly clear on a nearly weeklong trip to Tamarack and the surrounding communities, James tells me. He went to Rice Lake National Wildlife Refuge and learned about native wild rice that grows there and its importance to Indigenous groups. He went to see samples of the ore that Talon dug up and spoke to a geologist about the resources in the region. He also attended community meetings that got a little heated, and even had to contend with some local bees. 

“We’re talking about a story of two different, very precious resources that have created a really difficult-to-address conflict,” he says. “It’s a tension that’s ultimately going to be very hard to resolve.”

There are rarely easy answers when it comes to the massive task of addressing climate change. If you’re interested in getting a better understanding of this complicated web of trade-offs, take the time to read James’s story. You’ll get all the details about why this particular deposit is such a big deal, and hear more about where things are likely to go from here.

And the story doesn’t stop there. James also has another big project out this week, in which he worked to understand how this one mine could unlock billions of dollars in government subsidies. Dig into that here.  

Related reading

Yes, we have enough materials to power the world with clean energy. Mining and processing it all might prove tricky, though.

Here’s how China hopes to secure its supply chain for critical minerals. 

Some companies are looking deep in the ocean for new sources of nickel and other metals crucial to the energy transition. Deep-sea rocks that look like potatoes could hold the key.

Keeping up with climate  

Some truck drivers are falling in love with EVs. Electric trucks are still limited in range, and they make up a small fraction of the trucks on the road, but drivers are starting to see the upside, even as critics say the move to electric is going too fast. (Washington Post)

Gas prices are down in the US, but charging up an EV is still way cheaper. Here’s how cheap gas has to get in every state to compete with EV charging. (Yale Climate Connections)

Old cell phones might provide a much-needed source of rare earth metals. These metals are crucial for motors, including the ones in electric vehicles and wind turbines, and recycling could meet as much as 40% of US demand by 2050. (New York Times)

→ Old personal devices can be a source for other metals, like lithium and cobalt, as I wrote in this story on battery recycling from last year. (MIT Technology Review)

Nobody knows when the next nuclear plant will come online in the US. The former front-runner was a NuScale modular reactor array, but the future of that project is uncertain now. (Canary Media)

Local bans can eliminate nearly 300 single-use plastic bags per person per year, according to a new report. Bottom line: the policies work. (Grist)

→ Think that your plastic is being recycled? Think again. (MIT Technology Review)

Europe will need 34,000 miles (54,000 kilometers) of additional transmission lines to handle the growth in offshore wind power. It could be Europe’s third-biggest energy source by 2050, if infrastructure can keep up. (Bloomberg)

Note: This article have been indexed to our site. We do not claim legitimacy, ownership or copyright of any of the content above. To see the article at original source Click Here

Related Posts
Neanderthal Bones Reveal Presence of Ancient Human Viruses thumbnail

Neanderthal Bones Reveal Presence of Ancient Human Viruses

Neanderthal remains from the Altai Mountains contain human viruses, a team of researchers has found, suggesting that infectious diseases may have been transmitted between anatomically modern humans and our closest (extinct) cousins. The team’s research, posted to the biology research preprint server bioRxiv last month, describes conserved segments of ancient viral genomes the team identified
Read More
Razer Seiren BT: compact wireless audio thumbnail

Razer Seiren BT: compact wireless audio

Box comes with everything you need to start streaming on the go. Image by TechAU.Today, Razer has just released a new, compact version of the Razer Seiren. The Razer Seiren series is a line of microphones for streaming. Now, the Seiren has been squished into a USB sized device, designed for streaming on the go.…
Read More
Get 46% off Anker’s three-device fast charger right now thumbnail

Get 46% off Anker’s three-device fast charger right now

Image: Anker Anker’s speedy three-port charger is on sale this Cyber Monday for $30 on Amazon, a solid 46 percent under its $56 MSRP. Given how useful this charger is, you may as well get a few of them. We all have a handful of devices that always need charging, from phones to tablets, smartwatches
Read More
Grab this smartwatch for Mom for only $50 and free shipping thumbnail

Grab this smartwatch for Mom for only $50 and free shipping

StackCommerce The following content is brought to you by ZDNet partners. If you buy a product featured here, we may earn an affiliate commission or other compensation.Sure, there are all kinds of fun electronics you can gift Mom on May 8, But between phone calls, texts, reminders, health tracking and more, there's little that can…
Read More
Samsung demos improved Wi-Fi service in subways thumbnail

Samsung demos improved Wi-Fi service in subways

Home News Appliances (Image credit: focustech) Samsung has claimed that it has successfully demonstrated improved Wi-Fi service, which is reportedly 25 times faster, on a fast-moving subway train in Seoul. This was possible, the company said, because of |its advanced 5G mmWave solution.Samsung said its 5G mmWave Compact Macro helped boost Wi-Fi data speeds in…
Read More
How do archivists package things? The battle of the boxes thumbnail

How do archivists package things? The battle of the boxes

It’s been a while since we posted one of our articles pulling back the curtains on archival work. To make up for that, here’s a special edition of our popular Archives FAQs and Facts series. For the first time, we’ll compare how archivists in two countries do things a little differently to achieve a common
Read More
Index Of News
Total
0
Share