Key Takeaways
To this day, the demand for metals has kept increasing. The energy transition necessary to meet climate objectives will add to that demand during the upcoming decades, for low-carbon energy technologies require larger metal quantities than their fossil-fuel based counterparts. This frequently raises concerns over the actual capacity of geological stocks to meet demand at scale, which we investigate in the present analysis.
Mining of metals
Ores are parts of the Earth’s crust that show particularly high mineral concentrations, allowing to extract metals in a technically and economically viable way. Some metals (aluminium, iron…) are orders of magnitude more abundant than others(precious metals). Rare earth elements, a group of metals that share specific properties, should not be mistaken with rare metals in a geological sense, some rare earths being almost as common as copper.
The heterogeneous ore repartition and potentially conflicting national interests result in a geopolitically complex mining landscape. China notably is a main actor of the sector, controlling most rare earth extraction chains and large shares of the refining processes for most metals required for the energy transition.
Will we run out of metals?
Resources are the part of a geological stock whose exploitation is deemed potentially feasible – reserves are the part of it that can be exploited under current standards. Those are dynamic entities, which are not only defined in geological terms but also vary with the socio-economic context.
Resource depletion is difficult to assess. Resources are only known from statistical estimates. Globally decreasing mined ore concentrations can result from a variety of factors, e.g., technical enhancements. Peak models are often criticized for being too simplistic. The ratio of reserves to production, or“depletion time”, is confusing on the long term because of the dynamic nature of resources and should be used as a short-term indicator solely.
The availability of metal commodities is a concern that goes way beyond their geological abundance only: it is mainly a problem of supply that should be assessed in a comprehensive way, by considering a variety of socio economic indicators – using, for instance, the concept of criticality.
The future supply of metals
Energy demand scenarios differ a lot regarding both the total energy demand considered by 2050 and the shares of individual technologies in the global mix. This results in a variety of estimates for the metal demand. However, all scenarios highlight a significant increase in demand for the energy sector – with, for some metals, a likely increased share of energy uses in the total demand.
Vulnerabilities along the supply chain, that are likely to be exacerbated by the scale of demand, might lead to supply shortages. Such vulnerabilities include more complicated mining and refining processes with increasing energy expenditure, long development times for mining projects, geopolitical vagaries, or increased water stress due to climate change.
Reducing dependency on primary metals extraction can both lessen vulnerabilities and reduce some negative (e.g., environmental) impacts of the mining industry.However, strategies to reduce demand, such as material substitution or gains in material efficiency, come with a number of significant limitations. High recycling rates can be very energy-intensive, and there are structural limitations to the quantities of materials available for recycling at a given time (locked-in in infrastructures). The potential impacts of behavioural changes and sufficiency strategies should also be considered in that regard.
The relation between metal demand and GDP is key to understanding the dynamics of demand increase: both factors are strongly coupled in developing countries, which are expected to be the main drivers of demand growth in the upcoming years. Quantitative research on such topics shall be further developed.
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