International Energy Agency report shows that green energy transition is a fantasy because of dependence on key rare minerals

A prestigious intergovernmental organization created by the world’s advanced economies is pointing out the bottleneck in the plans to substitute so-called green energy for hydrocarbon-based energy: the availability of key minerals necessary for battery storage, wind farms, solar panels, and other gizmos necessary for the switchover. Simply put: the world can’t provide the quantity of those minerals that would be necessary, and the environmental and social impact of trying to mine them in sufficient quantities would be devastating.

The cure, in other words, is worse than the disease.

 You can download the 287-page report here.

The International Energy Agency is an intergovernmental organization founded by the OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis to provide information and policy suggestions to help the advanced economies cope with energy needs. It currently is focused on the green energy transition so desired by many of the world’s most powerful special interests. 

The report on minerals is part of a larger project on the green energy transition. Mark P. Mills cites some of its most important findings in the Wall Street Journal.

The IEA assembled a large body of data about a central, and until now largely ignored, aspect of the energy transition: It requires mining industries and infrastructure that don’t exist. Wind, solar and battery technologies are built from an array of “energy transition minerals,” or ETMs, that must be mined and processed. The IEA finds that with a global energy transition like the one President Biden envisions, demand for key minerals such as lithium, graphite, nickel and rare-earth metals would explode, rising by 4,200%, 2,500%, 1,900% and 700%, respectively, by 2040.

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