Metals, the Carbon Impact of Metals, and So Called "Renewable Energy."

[NNadir]

I will briefly refer to two papers, one from three years back that is already highly cited, and another in a very recent issue of the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

The two papers are:

Sonter, L.J., Dade, M.C., Watson, J.E.M. et al. Renewable energy production will exacerbate mining threats to biodiversity. Nat Commun 11, 4174 (2020).

...and...

Decomposition Analysis of the Carbon Footprint of Primary Metals Kajwan Rasul and Edgar G. Hertwich Environmental Science & Technology 2023 57 (19), 7391-7400.

The abstract for the first one, which is open sourced and can be read in its entirety, begins with a nonsense statement, this one:

Renewable energy production is necessary to halt climate change and reverse associated biodiversity losses.

The abstract clearly contradicts the text, since so called "renewable energy" drives rather than reverses biodiversity losses. The first clause that "renewable energy production is necessary to halt climate change" is not supported by any data. The trillions of dollars already squandered on solar and wind energy in this century has only resulted in the acceleration of the rate of climate change. Both have proved worthless, useless, without value, inconsequential, meaningless...a thesaurus is a wonderful thing...if the goal is to address climate change. That was never the goal of so called "renewable energy;" the goal was to attack the only possible effective tool to address climate change while protecting ecosystems, nuclear energy.

I came across the first of these references - there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of papers focusing on the extreme and destructive material and land impacts of so called "renewable energy" when an antinuke began complaining about mining in connection with nuclear energy, although nuclear energy has the highest energy to mass ratio known, and thus is the least dependent form of energy on mining. Reality has a way of presenting itself; all efforts to obscure it by obfuscation are futile.

An antinuke complaining about mining is rather like Ron Desantis complaining about racism.

The paper is open sourced but some text is provided for convenience:

Climate change poses serious threats to biodiversity1,2. To keep temperature increases below 2 °C, and halt associated biodiversity losses, 140 nations committed to the Paris Climate Change Accord to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions by 90% (from 2010 levels) and reach carbon neutrality by 21003. Energy sector innovation is where most progress is achievable4, but since renewable energies currently account for only 17% of global energy consumption5, significant production increases must occur to phase out fossil fuel use6. However, the production of renewable energies is also material-intensive—much more so than fossil fuels7—meaning that future production will also escalate demand for many metals8,9,10,11. It is unlikely that these new demands will be met by diverting use from other sectors or from recycling materials alone12,13. When required commodities exist in biodiverse countries that lack strong resource governance, such as the world’s second largest untouched lithium reserve in Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni salt pan5—a biodiverse area currently untouched by mining14—mining poses serious threats to species and ecosystems15.

The Salyar de Uyuni salt pan is just one example of course of a region where lawlessness prevails in mining.

A word about that "percent talk," 17%, in this text. Combined, as of 2021, solar and wind produced 12 Exajoules of the 624 Exajoules of Energy consumed by humanity in that year, this after the expenditure of more than 3.3319 trillion dollars on solar and wind junk, almost all of which will be landfill in about 25 years. (The number 3.3319 trillion dollars refers to the period between 2004 and 2019 inclusive.) Solar and wind are thus responsible for less than 2% (in "percent talk" ) of the world energy supply. The bulk of rest of the 17% comes from strip mining forests (biomass), and the destruction of major river systems (hydro). Neither of these systems will be available for huge growth in increasingly destabilized weather. Indeed forests all around the world are burning before we can chop them up and send them up smokestacks while claiming they're "renewable." The cause is climate change.

Source for the 3.3319 trillion figure: Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2020 (Figure 42, page 62).

The second paper notes that metal demand is rising at an enormous rate, even without trying to bulldoze vast stretches of land to make industrial parks for wind turbines that will be landfill in 20 years.

An excerpt:

Materials, and especially metals, play a key role in the development of modern economies. While population only increased fourfold from 1900 to 2010, (1) the rate of material extraction increased 11-fold. (2) This discrepancy is mainly driven by a fivefold increase in per capita stock of manufactured capital, such as buildings, infrastructure, and durable goods. (2) In the last couple of decades, production rates of all primary metals have increased significantly faster than global population (Figure 1). In the case of iron and steel, aluminum, and nonferrous metals, their rates have even grown substantially faster than the global gross domestic product (GDP). Especially aluminum stands out with a growth of 1.8 times the GDP growth. Gold is the only metal that has experienced stagnation for a prolonged period (more than 2 years) but has increased steadily in the last 10 years of this study.

Metal production has severe environmental impacts, both locally and globally. On a local scale, it is mainly a matter of waste and toxicity, while globally it has been recognized as a main contributor to climate change. (3) The latter is due to both high process emissions and energy use in metal production and its supply chain. Direct process emissions are for a range of metals identified as sources of emissions that are particularly difficult to abate, (4) while the high energy intensity of metal production uses roughly 8% of the total energy supply. (5)

Historically, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been strongly coupled with increasing affluency through the increasing demand for goods. (6) Some international organizations, governments, and scenario models argue or assume that decoupling between increasing affluency and GHG emissions is possible through the concept of green growth. (7−12) On the other hand, some scientists have been critical of the possibility of a green growth pathway. (13−15) It is however uncertain if such decoupling in a green growth scenario is universally feasible, or if it is only the case for specific metals and their GHG emissions. (16) These emissions can be reduced through both technological developments and environmental policies. (12,17) Since the early 1990s, efforts have been made in mitigating GHG emissions through international agreements. (18,19) Studies have shown that emissions in the upstream supply chain of metals have increased significantly in the last two decades especially due to the rapid expansion of metal refining in China, which relies heavily on coal. (20−22) However, it is not clear how different technological and socioeconomic drivers have impacted these emissions and what role they have played in a potential decoupling.

The paper notes that the highest rates of metal consumption are in developing countries, and gives "unsurprising" reasons for this:

The decomposition results showed that it is mainly high-income regions, which have managed to reduce their emissions embodied in metal consumption. This is unsurprising for three reasons. First, these regions have the highest metal consumption rate per capita and thereby the largest potential for reduction. Second, they have also built most of their essential infrastructure in the recent century, whereas the other regions still require metals for such infrastructure to develop their economies and improve the well-being of their population. (63) Other IO studies have shown that the global carbon footprint of metals is increasing due to rising infrastructure in especially China, (20,36) where there is a strong reliance on coal in industry. (21) Third, the high-income regions are the main driving forces behind the climate deals of the recent decades. (18,19) These may bring changes in consumption patterns and services, which in turn may reduce metal consumption and the associated environmental impacts. (3,64−66) However, consumption patterns are often bound to culture and may take long to change profoundly. An example of such cultural tradition that heavily impacts metal consumption is that houses become valueless after one generation in Japan. (67) Hence, old houses are demolished, and new metal is needed to build a new house. This may be a reason for the relatively high metal consumption rate of JKTA when compared to Europe and the USA and Canada, where old houses are investments that usually increase in value.

One of the things notable about bourgeois types, for instance the battery worshippers who lack the moral strength to confront the issue of cobalt slavery, or wind energy advocates who couldn't care less about the conditions in the Baotou China lanthanide mines and refineries, is that they love to complain about developing nations from a lofty height of consumerism and self satisfaction.

If I hear one more complaint about how China alone is driving climate change while we're all innocent in the West, I'm going to throw up. The Chinese (nor the Indians) did not agree to remain impoverished so rich and oblivious Americans could sit in front of their computers and worship pictures of wind turbines.

Anyway, the argument that the word "renewable" in the term "renewable energy" is as dishonest as is the continued insistence in the face of rapidly accelerating rates of carbon dioxide accumulation in the planetary atmosphere can, or should be addressed by "renewable energy."

Reality does not respond to wishful thinking.

I trust you've enjoyed the long holiday weekend.

[jpak]

1. Moronic twitfest

Lol