Renewable energy
Metal and mineral extraction

The transition to renewable energy requires increased extraction of certain metals and minerals. Like all mining, this impacts the environment and can lead to environmental conflict. Wind power requires large amounts of copper and zinc, as well as smaller amounts of the rarer metal neodymium. Solar power is less resource-intensive, but still requires significant amounts of aluminum. The expansion of electrical grids requires both copper and aluminum. Batteries, which are critical to enable storage of renewable energy, use large quantities of copper, nickel, aluminum and graphite. Demand for lithium is expected to grow 42-fold from 2020 to 2040. Demand for nickel, cobalt and graphite is expected to grow by a factor of about 20–25. For each of the most relevant minerals and metals, its mining is dominated by a single country: copper in Chile, nickel in Indonesia, rare earths in China, cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and lithium in Australia. China dominates processing of all of these.

Recycling these metals after the devices they are embedded in are spent is essential to create a circular economy and ensure renewable energy is sustainable. By 2040, recycled copper, lithium, cobalt, and nickel from spent batteries could reduce combined primary supply requirements for these minerals by around 10%.

A controversial approach is deep sea mining. Minerals can be collected from new sources like polymetallic nodules lying on the seabed. This would damage local biodiversity, but proponents point out that biomass on resource-rich seabeds is much scarcer than in the mining regions on land, which are often found in vulnerable habitats like rainforests.

Due to co-occurrence of rare-earth and radioactive elements (thorium, uranium and radium), rare-earth mining results in production of low-level radioactive waste. In several African countries, the green energy transition has created a mining boom, causing deforestation, and threatening already endangered species.
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