Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

“… Each new megawatt of solar power requires 35-45 tonnes of steel, which still needs iron ore and coal …”

Critical minerals ‘main event’ in climate change action

By Marion Rae
Updated June 26 2023 – 12:41pm, first published 12:38pm

More mining, not less, is needed to support the world’s climate change targets and avert an energy shortage, a global summit has been told.

The shift to clean energy systems is gaining momentum, and unlike previous transformation it relies on critical minerals and rare earths, Resources Minister Madeleine King said on Monday at a mining symposium in Brisbane.

An onshore wind power plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired power plant, Ms King said.

Each new megawatt of solar power requires 35-45 tonnes of steel, which still needs iron ore and coal despite “exciting developments” in hydrogen that may eventually lead to Australia producing green steel.

“That remains distant, so metallurgical coal will remain a necessary component of steel for some time to come,” she said.

…

Critical minerals are “not a sideshow for clean energy, it’s really part of the main event”.

…Read more: https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8246914/critical-minerals-main-event-in-climate-change-action/

Its refreshing to see Canberra Times mention some cold hard facts, even if they are mixed with fantasies about the shift to clean energy systems gaining momentum.

The reality is nobody knows where the minerals required for clean energy targets will come from. In 2019 Foreign Policy analysed what would be required, one of the requirements was a 2000% increase in Lithium production: (2050 – 2023) x 2000% = 540 years worth of current Lithium production to hit Net Zero by 2050.

The minister mentions “hydrogen” smelted green steel. For now industrial scale green steel is a pipe dream. Iron ore can be smelted using hydrogen rather than coal, but the process is expensive, because all traces of hydrogen must be removed from the final product. The slightest hydrogen contamination in steel causes embrittlement, which leads to serious and difficult to detect structural defects in the final product.

If you add green regulatory hostility towards industry, spiralling energy prices, a struggling manufacturing sector, and aggressive enforcement of environmental regulations to the gross shortfall of green mineral resources, it is not difficult to see why the world is on track for a big Net Zero miss.