Green bonds are attractive because they can be designed in a number of ways to diversify risk, and they allow for debt financing that is structured so that both large and small-scale investments can attract funding from capital markets. Investing in GCF green bonds could provide an easy avenue for countries like Australia to contribute to climate finance initiatives abroad without putting further strain on already stretched national budgets, while also creating economic opportunities at home.
Prime Minister Turnbull’s attendance at COP21 is seen by many as a symbolic move signalling a shift in Australia’s position on the global fight against climate change. Let’s hope these small improvements build momentum and that Australia uses its co-chairmanship of the GCF to help create a sustainable future for the world and provide economic and social opportunities for all involved.
Developed countries have pledged to raise $100 billion (bn) per year by 2020 for the Green Climate Fund (GCF) as part of their commitments under the new global climate agreement being negotiated in Paris this week. Current financial contributions from developed countries like Australia have fallen short, so engaging the private sector will be key to successfully funding the GCF. A smart solution to bridging the gap — which will benefit Australia and Australian banks — is green climate bonds.
World leaders gathered in Paris on Monday for the opening of the United Nations (UN) climate change meeting, COP 21. After nearly a week of negotiations, finance remains to be a key issue of contention.
In his address to the UN, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull pledged $1bn (from the existing aid budget) in climate finance over the next five years. Though this is an improvement on Australia’s 2013 pledge of $200mn, it still falls short. According to a recent report from Oxfam, a fair contribution for Australia, based on the size of its economy, is estimated to be $1.6bn per year.
In the negotiations, achieving the $100bn by 2020 climate finance goal is seen as critical to get developing countries to the table in Paris. And though $100 billion by 2020 sounds like a lot, in the post-2020 period some projections suggest that around $400bn per year is required to effectively address the worsening consequences of climate change in the developing world.
The bottom line — innovative and bold new initiatives are required to raise long-term finance for clean technologies and clean economic development in the developing world —and private sector investment will be key.
Australia was recently elected co-chair of the GCF and could play a vital role in finding creative solutions to the finance shortfall. The emerging green bond market offers an appealing solution because, with the right support, economists estimate up to $1trillion in climate-focussed bonds could be issued per year by 2020.
And Australian banks stand to benefit. According to a recent report from ANZ, social impact financing is already becoming increasingly popular in Australia. The New South Wales Government pioneered Australia’s first two social impact bonds in 2013 for small-scale social projects, which raised $7mn and $10mn respectively.
ANZ issued its first green bond in May 2015 for $600mn. The bond was fully funded by private sector investors and will be used for investments in wind and solar projects and green buildings around Australia, New Zealand, and the Asia Pacific. With well-established Asian business branches, Australian banks like ANZ are well positioned to invest in climate-safe projects in our region through the GCF.
According to Australia’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Australian investors are very interested in investing for clean energy projects, but options to date have been extremely limited. These positive examples show that there is great potential for growth in the Australian market, and the future for social impact and green bonds looks very promising.
28 JAN 2013: REPORTBoom in Mining Rare Earths
Poses Mounting Toxic RisksThe mining of rare earth metals, used in everything from smart phones to wind turbines, has long been dominated by China. But as mining of these key elements spreads to countries like Malaysia and Brazil, scientists warn of the dangers of the toxic and radioactive waste generated by the mines and processing plants.by mike ives
In November, the first shipment of raw “rare earth” minerals arrived at an $800 million processing plant on Malaysia’s east coast near the home of Tan Bun Teet. The plant, run by Australia’s Lynas Corporation, has since begun refining the rare earth metals, essential components in wind turbines, hybrid cars, smart phones, cruise missiles, and other high-tech products. Once fully operational, the plant would become the world’s largest processing facility of rare earths, breaking China’s near-monopoly on producing the prized elements.
But Tan and others in the region are concerned that the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant, known as LAMP, will be plagued by the severe environmental problems that have been the hallmark of rare earths processing plants in China and, more than two decades ago, in Malaysia itself. The plant lies in an industrial zone atop reclaimed swampland, just 12 miles from Kuantan, a city of 600,000. The chief worry is that the rare earth elements are bound up in mineral deposits with the low-level radioactive element thorium, exposure to which has been linked to an increased risk of developing lung, pancreatic, and other cancers.
“We are not against rare earths processing,” says Tan, a retired schoolteacher who leads a citizens’ group opposed to the plant. “We’re only against the inappropriate choice of site, and the way they’re going to keep the waste.” Tan echoes scientists’ concerns that the plant’s toxic wastewater will leach into groundwater, and that its storage ponds are vulnerable to the monsoons that slam the swampy coastline every autumn.
As global demand has surged in recent years for rare earth elements, fears have grown that China, which accounts for more than 95 percent of rare earths output, will withhold supplies, as it did temporarily two years ago during a dispute with Japan. As a result, across five continents and numerous countries — including the United States, Brazil, Mongolia, and India — rare earth processing projects are being launched or revived. With them comes the potential threats to the environment and human health that have plagued China’s processing sites.
“As the world’s hunger for these elements increases... the waste is going to increase,” says Nicholas Leadbeater, a chemist at the University of Connecticut whose research focuses on developing green technologies. “The more mines there are, the more trouble there’s going to be.” To avoid such problems, Leadbeater says some researchers are now looking into ways of recovering rare earths from existing products, and of manufacturing products capable of running without rare earths. Toyota, for example, is developing an electric motor that does not use rare earths in its battery, as most currently do.
Contrary to their name, the 17 rare earth elements are relatively common — their rarity comes from the labor involved in separating them from surrounding rock. The process requires a cocktail of chemical compounds
In California, Molycorp Minerals recently reopened a rare earths processing operation that it abandoned in 2002 near Death Valley, after retooling its operation to meet environmental concerns over contaminated groundwater. In Brazil, mining giant Vale is considering whether to process rare earths at a copper mine in the Amazon. India recently agreed to export rare earths to Japan, and a Toyota subsidiary is preparing to mine rare earths in Vietnam. In Greenland, several companies are preparing to mine and process that island’s abundant rare earth resources, which will become more accessible as Greenland’s ice sheet continues to melt.
All of these projects, however, must come to grips with the toxic and radioactive legacy of rare earth mining. Scientists say under-regulated rare earths projects can produce wastewater and tailings ponds that leak acids, heavy metals and radioactive elements into groundwater, and they point out that market pressures for cheap and reliable rare earths may lead project managers to skimp on environmental protections.
In Malaysia, Mitsubishi Chemical is now engaged in a $100 million cleanup of its Bukit Merah rare earths processing site, which it closed in 1992 amid opposition from local residents and Japanese politicians and environmentalists. It is one of Asia’s largest radioactive waste cleanup sites, and local physicians said the thorium contamination from the plant has led to an increase in leukemia and other ailments. The legacy of that project has led many Malaysians to be wary of rare earths mines.
Few independent studies chart the industry’s global ecological fallout. But no country has as many rare earths processing plants, and their attendant environmental problems, as China. Last year, China’s State Council
Bayan-Obo, China’s largest rare earths project, has been operating for more than four decades. According to the Germany-based Institute for Applied Ecology, the site now has an 11-square-kilometer waste pond — about three times the size of New York City’s Central Park — with toxic sludge that contains elevated concentrations of thorium.
China’s lax environmental standards have enabled it to produce rare earths at roughly a third the price of its international competitors, according to a 2010 report on the country’s rare earths industry by the Washington-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. The report noted that China “has never actually worked out pollutant discharge standards for the rare earth industry.”
Like nuclear power plants, rare earths projects require strict independent auditing in order to prevent environmental damage, according to Peter Karamoskos, a nuclear radiologist and the public’s representative at Australia’s Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency. But as the rare earths industry expands to developing countries like Malaysia and Vietnam, such oversight will be unlikely. “A regulator will either be in the pocket of the industry or a government,” he says.
According to Gavin Mudd, an environmental engineer at Australia’s Monash University, rare earths mining provides a wide range of economic and social benefits and can be exploited in a responsible way. However, he says no company — including Mitsubishi and Lynas — has managed to set a good example.
Mudd says Lynas decided to process its rare earths in Malaysia rather than Australia, where they are mined, because it received tax incentives. But he says that Lynas hasn’t meaningfully engaged Malaysian communities to hear their concerns. A key problem with the company’s proposals, he adds, is that it never took a baseline sample of the environment before it began operations, making it difficult to gauge the future environmental impacts. “Their approach to solid waste management has been very haphazard,” says Mudd, who has offered unpaid advice to both the company and the activists who oppose its plans.
Lynas executives, including Executive Chairman Nicholas Curtis, say the plant will operate under high environmental standards and will dilute the thorium-tainted waste by mixing it with lime until it is below accepted international concentrations for the radioactive material. The lime mixture will be turned into solid structures that could be used for sea walls or construction materials, Lynas has said, although it remains unclear where those structures would be exported, and whether the process would use all of the plant’s toxic waste. Curtis has said that there is no comparison between his facility and the old Mitsubishi one, which “never should have been built.”
A recently released study of the plant by the Institute for Applied Ecology sketches a less sanguine portrait of the potential environmental impacts.
Over the next two decades, the plant is expected to produce about 1.2 million metric tons of “residue,” according to 2011 report prepared by Lynas for Malaysia’s nuclear regulatory agency. It said the plant’s waste will fall within radioactivity limits set by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and may be safely disposed of in “landfill type facilities with limited regulatory control.”
READ MOREThe waste, however, will emit low levels of carcinogenic radioactivity for centuries, according to scientists. The International Atomic Energy Association recommended in 2011 that Malaysia’s nuclear regulatory agency grant Lynas an operating license only after it submits a permanent decommissioning plan. Unlike Australia, Malaysia is not a party to the IAEA’s legally binding 2001 convention governing appropriate and safe disposal of radioactive waste.
For most of last year, Lynas was locked in court battles against retired schoolteacher Tan Bun Teet and his grassroots coalition “Save Malaysia, Stop Lynas!,” which challenged the government’s January decision to grant the company a temporary operating license. This fall, Lynas finally won its temporary operating license after clearing legal appeals, and Tan says the first truckload of rare earths from the company’s Australia mine rolled into its new Malaysia refinery on November 30 under police escort. But four Malaysian cabinet ministers warned in December that the company must export the radioactive waste from its new plant or risk losing its license.
Tan Bun Teet and his fellow activists, whose street protests in the Malaysian capital have faced tear gas and water cannons, are keeping up their legal fight by filing new appeals. Tan is especially concerned that the 247-acre Lynas plant sits atop reclaimed wetland that is prone to flooding and lies only about two miles from the South China Sea. The area receives about 10 feet of rainfall per year, and recent monsoon rains left the area drenched.
“We are worried,” he says. “We don’t want our environment to be destroyed as it was in China.”
POSTED ON 28 JAN 2013 IN BUSINESS & INNOVATION ENERGY POLICY & POLITICS POLICY & POLITICS SUSTAINABILITY ASIA ASIA AUSTRALIA
Poses Mounting Toxic RisksThe mining of rare earth metals, used in everything from smart phones to wind turbines, has long been dominated by China. But as mining of these key elements spreads to countries like Malaysia and Brazil, scientists warn of the dangers of the toxic and radioactive waste generated by the mines and processing plants.by mike ives
In November, the first shipment of raw “rare earth” minerals arrived at an $800 million processing plant on Malaysia’s east coast near the home of Tan Bun Teet. The plant, run by Australia’s Lynas Corporation, has since begun refining the rare earth metals, essential components in wind turbines, hybrid cars, smart phones, cruise missiles, and other high-tech products. Once fully operational, the plant would become the world’s largest processing facility of rare earths, breaking China’s near-monopoly on producing the prized elements.
But Tan and others in the region are concerned that the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant, known as LAMP, will be plagued by the severe environmental problems that have been the hallmark of rare earths processing plants in China and, more than two decades ago, in Malaysia itself. The plant lies in an industrial zone atop reclaimed swampland, just 12 miles from Kuantan, a city of 600,000. The chief worry is that the rare earth elements are bound up in mineral deposits with the low-level radioactive element thorium, exposure to which has been linked to an increased risk of developing lung, pancreatic, and other cancers.
Lynas Corporation LTD
The Lynas plant in Malaysia is set to become the world's largest processing facility of rare earths.
As global demand has surged in recent years for rare earth elements, fears have grown that China, which accounts for more than 95 percent of rare earths output, will withhold supplies, as it did temporarily two years ago during a dispute with Japan. As a result, across five continents and numerous countries — including the United States, Brazil, Mongolia, and India — rare earth processing projects are being launched or revived. With them comes the potential threats to the environment and human health that have plagued China’s processing sites.
“As the world’s hunger for these elements increases... the waste is going to increase,” says Nicholas Leadbeater, a chemist at the University of Connecticut whose research focuses on developing green technologies. “The more mines there are, the more trouble there’s going to be.” To avoid such problems, Leadbeater says some researchers are now looking into ways of recovering rare earths from existing products, and of manufacturing products capable of running without rare earths. Toyota, for example, is developing an electric motor that does not use rare earths in its battery, as most currently do.
Contrary to their name, the 17 rare earth elements are relatively common — their rarity comes from the labor involved in separating them from surrounding rock. The process requires a cocktail of chemical compounds
Market pressures for cheap rare earths may lead managers to skimp on environmental protections.and produces a “tremendous amount” of solid waste, according to the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. China’s rare earths mines have used only a fraction of the world’s total supply, and substantial untapped reserves are found in Australia, the United States, parts of the former Soviet Union, and other countries. Global demand for rare earths dipped last year on the heels of a speculative bubble, but the EPA said in December there is a “high likelihood” that some of the elements will be in short supply by 2014.
In California, Molycorp Minerals recently reopened a rare earths processing operation that it abandoned in 2002 near Death Valley, after retooling its operation to meet environmental concerns over contaminated groundwater. In Brazil, mining giant Vale is considering whether to process rare earths at a copper mine in the Amazon. India recently agreed to export rare earths to Japan, and a Toyota subsidiary is preparing to mine rare earths in Vietnam. In Greenland, several companies are preparing to mine and process that island’s abundant rare earth resources, which will become more accessible as Greenland’s ice sheet continues to melt.
All of these projects, however, must come to grips with the toxic and radioactive legacy of rare earth mining. Scientists say under-regulated rare earths projects can produce wastewater and tailings ponds that leak acids, heavy metals and radioactive elements into groundwater, and they point out that market pressures for cheap and reliable rare earths may lead project managers to skimp on environmental protections.
In Malaysia, Mitsubishi Chemical is now engaged in a $100 million cleanup of its Bukit Merah rare earths processing site, which it closed in 1992 amid opposition from local residents and Japanese politicians and environmentalists. It is one of Asia’s largest radioactive waste cleanup sites, and local physicians said the thorium contamination from the plant has led to an increase in leukemia and other ailments. The legacy of that project has led many Malaysians to be wary of rare earths mines.
Few independent studies chart the industry’s global ecological fallout. But no country has as many rare earths processing plants, and their attendant environmental problems, as China. Last year, China’s State Council
A half-century of rare earths mining in China has caused serious environmental problems.reported that the country’s rare earths operations are causing “increasingly significant” environmental problems. A half century of rare earths mining and processing has “severely damaged surface vegetation, caused soil erosion, pollution, and acidification, and reduced or even eliminated food crop output,” the council reported, adding that Chinese rare earths plants typically produce wastewater with a “high concentration” of radioactive residues.
Bayan-Obo, China’s largest rare earths project, has been operating for more than four decades. According to the Germany-based Institute for Applied Ecology, the site now has an 11-square-kilometer waste pond — about three times the size of New York City’s Central Park — with toxic sludge that contains elevated concentrations of thorium.
China’s lax environmental standards have enabled it to produce rare earths at roughly a third the price of its international competitors, according to a 2010 report on the country’s rare earths industry by the Washington-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. The report noted that China “has never actually worked out pollutant discharge standards for the rare earth industry.”
Like nuclear power plants, rare earths projects require strict independent auditing in order to prevent environmental damage, according to Peter Karamoskos, a nuclear radiologist and the public’s representative at Australia’s Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency. But as the rare earths industry expands to developing countries like Malaysia and Vietnam, such oversight will be unlikely. “A regulator will either be in the pocket of the industry or a government,” he says.
Green Left TV
Tan Bun Teet leads a protest against the Malaysia rare earths plant.
Mudd says Lynas decided to process its rare earths in Malaysia rather than Australia, where they are mined, because it received tax incentives. But he says that Lynas hasn’t meaningfully engaged Malaysian communities to hear their concerns. A key problem with the company’s proposals, he adds, is that it never took a baseline sample of the environment before it began operations, making it difficult to gauge the future environmental impacts. “Their approach to solid waste management has been very haphazard,” says Mudd, who has offered unpaid advice to both the company and the activists who oppose its plans.
Lynas executives, including Executive Chairman Nicholas Curtis, say the plant will operate under high environmental standards and will dilute the thorium-tainted waste by mixing it with lime until it is below accepted international concentrations for the radioactive material. The lime mixture will be turned into solid structures that could be used for sea walls or construction materials, Lynas has said, although it remains unclear where those structures would be exported, and whether the process would use all of the plant’s toxic waste. Curtis has said that there is no comparison between his facility and the old Mitsubishi one, which “never should have been built.”
A recently released study of the plant by the Institute for Applied Ecology sketches a less sanguine portrait of the potential environmental impacts.
The Malaysian plant sits atop reclaimed wetland that is prone to flooding and lies only two miles from the sea.The study faults a Lynas plan to dispose of wastewater through an open channel rather than a closed pipeline; a refusal by the company to disclose what the plant’s exact chemical byproducts will be; and a temporary waste storage facility that the institute predicts will cause radioactive leakage “even under normal operating conditions.” A Lynas spokesperson from the company’s Australia headquarters did not respond to a request for comment.
Over the next two decades, the plant is expected to produce about 1.2 million metric tons of “residue,” according to 2011 report prepared by Lynas for Malaysia’s nuclear regulatory agency. It said the plant’s waste will fall within radioactivity limits set by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and may be safely disposed of in “landfill type facilities with limited regulatory control.”
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READ MORE
For most of last year, Lynas was locked in court battles against retired schoolteacher Tan Bun Teet and his grassroots coalition “Save Malaysia, Stop Lynas!,” which challenged the government’s January decision to grant the company a temporary operating license. This fall, Lynas finally won its temporary operating license after clearing legal appeals, and Tan says the first truckload of rare earths from the company’s Australia mine rolled into its new Malaysia refinery on November 30 under police escort. But four Malaysian cabinet ministers warned in December that the company must export the radioactive waste from its new plant or risk losing its license.
Tan Bun Teet and his fellow activists, whose street protests in the Malaysian capital have faced tear gas and water cannons, are keeping up their legal fight by filing new appeals. Tan is especially concerned that the 247-acre Lynas plant sits atop reclaimed wetland that is prone to flooding and lies only about two miles from the South China Sea. The area receives about 10 feet of rainfall per year, and recent monsoon rains left the area drenched.
“We are worried,” he says. “We don’t want our environment to be destroyed as it was in China.”
POSTED ON 28 JAN 2013 IN BUSINESS & INNOVATION ENERGY POLICY & POLITICS POLICY & POLITICS SUSTAINABILITY ASIA ASIA AUSTRALIA
PrintCOMMENTS
Thorium 232 is a fuel for the Wigner/Weinberg Thorium Molten Salt Breeder Reactor. Thorium is truly ubiquitous and being a radioactive isotope manifest the electromagnetic shield protecting the Earth from the solar winds and generates heat sustaining life as we know it across mellinia.
As a fuel in the Wigner/Weinberg TMSBR, Thorium can repair the air by generating CO2
free thermal and electrical energy cheaper than coal. The TMSBR is a flex fuel reactor consumes nuclear weapons and LWR spent fuel burning 96 percent of the liquid fuel with very little waste reducing the need for the 10,000 year Yucca Mountain Type Storage to a manageable 300-year sequestration.
So in other words, the thorium in one cubic foot of dirt used in a TMSBR will yield the equivalent of one barrel of oil of CO2 free energy. The harm is not pursuing the TMSBR's rewards.
Just as a heads up to the author. My company has created a new way of producing rare earth oxides, without the toxic acid lakes, radioactive minerals come out as controlled product, and no waste stream other than manageable dry solids. Can produce at low concentrates, and so we can recover rare earths from existing mine tailings in certain locations.
Don't condemn all rare earth production - we are just getting started and are about to turn the industry upside down.
Mike Ives writes: "rare earth metals, essential components in wind turbines."
Wrong. Enercon has been using wound field rotors and no permanent magnets in their direct drive turbines for decades, and they are the most visible turbines in Europe.
http://www.enercon.de/en-en/1337.htm
They also have the largest turbine in production today, E-126, at some 7.5 MW capacity.
So let's not get carried away about the environmental ills of neodymium mining. Permanent magnets are a convenience, not an "essential component." Let's start by providing some education on the topic at Yale360 (and not environmental doublespeak from anti-wind energy talking points). There is also plenty of R&D on alternatives to rare earths in EVs, phones, missiles, and even nuclear power plants. Many ARPA-E projects speak to this. If we don't like rare earths, why don't we just use alternatives?
I just read the International Atomic Energy Agency's "Report Review Mission on the Radiation Aspects of a Rare Earths Processing Facility (the Lynas Project) 29 May - 3 June 2011, Malaysia" and wonder what went wrong. Actually, I believe the report did address the concerns expressed in the e360 report and recommended public education on safety of the radiation levels, but the effort apparently fell short. The plant is probably safe. Education will usually fall short once hysteria is locked in. http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/pdf/lynas-report2011.pdf
Please Allen Kruse, disclose your companies name or at least send me your contact information....
Arthur - my company's name is Rare Earth Salts.
I too have read that Thorium can be bred into fissile material for use in reactors and we have enough thorium to last millennia.
LFTR reactors "burn" more fuel leaving less waste. Can can rare-earth materials be recovered from discarded electronics?
Well, the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant in Malaysia has been operational for over a year now with no environmental issues evident. The LAMP is being strictly monitored by the Department of Environment, Atomic Energy Licensing Board and third party independent consultants. The results of radiation monitoring, air samples and water samples are posted on the DOE and AELB websites. Lynas has successfully recycled all residues produced at the LAMP into saleable co-products, so there will be very little to no waste that will require permanent storage.
Looks like the environmental concerns of the LAMP were unfounded.
Absolutely agree. The harvesting is one side, the non-
recycling is the worst part of this immense waste of
stuff, which is very limited.
It's all about money!
Thorium 232 is a fuel for the Wigner/Weinberg Thorium Molten Salt Breeder Reactor. Thorium is truly ubiquitous and being a radioactive isotope manifest the electromagnetic shield protecting the Earth from the solar winds and generates heat sustaining life as we know it across mellinia.
As a fuel in the Wigner/Weinberg TMSBR, Thorium can repair the air by generating CO2
free thermal and electrical energy cheaper than coal. The TMSBR is a flex fuel reactor consumes nuclear weapons and LWR spent fuel burning 96 percent of the liquid fuel with very little waste reducing the need for the 10,000 year Yucca Mountain Type Storage to a manageable 300-year sequestration.
So in other words, the thorium in one cubic foot of dirt used in a TMSBR will yield the equivalent of one barrel of oil of CO2 free energy. The harm is not pursuing the TMSBR's rewards.
Posted by Terry Floyd on 28 Jan 2013
Just as a heads up to the author. My company has created a new way of producing rare earth oxides, without the toxic acid lakes, radioactive minerals come out as controlled product, and no waste stream other than manageable dry solids. Can produce at low concentrates, and so we can recover rare earths from existing mine tailings in certain locations.
Don't condemn all rare earth production - we are just getting started and are about to turn the industry upside down.
Posted by Allen Kruse on 28 Jan 2013
Mike Ives writes: "rare earth metals, essential components in wind turbines."
Wrong. Enercon has been using wound field rotors and no permanent magnets in their direct drive turbines for decades, and they are the most visible turbines in Europe.
http://www.enercon.de/en-en/1337.htm
They also have the largest turbine in production today, E-126, at some 7.5 MW capacity.
So let's not get carried away about the environmental ills of neodymium mining. Permanent magnets are a convenience, not an "essential component." Let's start by providing some education on the topic at Yale360 (and not environmental doublespeak from anti-wind energy talking points). There is also plenty of R&D on alternatives to rare earths in EVs, phones, missiles, and even nuclear power plants. Many ARPA-E projects speak to this. If we don't like rare earths, why don't we just use alternatives?
Posted by EL on 29 Jan 2013
I just read the International Atomic Energy Agency's "Report Review Mission on the Radiation Aspects of a Rare Earths Processing Facility (the Lynas Project) 29 May - 3 June 2011, Malaysia" and wonder what went wrong. Actually, I believe the report did address the concerns expressed in the e360 report and recommended public education on safety of the radiation levels, but the effort apparently fell short. The plant is probably safe. Education will usually fall short once hysteria is locked in. http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/pdf/lynas-report2011.pdf
Posted by Jerry Nolan on 29 Jan 2013
Please Allen Kruse, disclose your companies name or at least send me your contact information....
Posted by Arthur Michael Ambrosino on 29 Jan 2013
Arthur - my company's name is Rare Earth Salts.
Posted by Allen Kruse on 30 Jan 2013
I too have read that Thorium can be bred into fissile material for use in reactors and we have enough thorium to last millennia.
LFTR reactors "burn" more fuel leaving less waste. Can can rare-earth materials be recovered from discarded electronics?
Posted by Tim S. on 28 Feb 2013
Well, the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant in Malaysia has been operational for over a year now with no environmental issues evident. The LAMP is being strictly monitored by the Department of Environment, Atomic Energy Licensing Board and third party independent consultants. The results of radiation monitoring, air samples and water samples are posted on the DOE and AELB websites. Lynas has successfully recycled all residues produced at the LAMP into saleable co-products, so there will be very little to no waste that will require permanent storage.
Looks like the environmental concerns of the LAMP were unfounded.
Posted by Bob Bob on 02 Mar 2014
Absolutely agree. The harvesting is one side, the non-
recycling is the worst part of this immense waste of
stuff, which is very limited.
It's all about money!
Posted by Armin on 07 Apr 2015
A Scarcity of Rare Metals Is
Hindering Green TechnologiesA shortage of "rare earth" metals, used in everything from electric car batteries to solar panels to wind turbines, is hampering the growth of renewable energy technologies. Researchers are now working to find alternatives to these critical elements or better ways to recycle them.by nicola jones
With the global push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it’s ironic that several energy- or resource-saving technologies aren’t being used to the fullest simply because we don’t have enough raw materials to make them.
For example, says Alex King, director of the new Critical Materials Institute, every wind farm has a few turbines standing idle because their fragile gearboxes have broken down. They can be fixed, of course, but that takes time – and meanwhile wind power isn’t being gathered. Now you can make a more reliable wind turbine that doesn’t need a gearbox at all, King points out, but you need a truckload of so-called "rare earth" metals to doit, and there simply isn’t the supply. Likewise, we could all be using next-generation fluorescent light bulbs that are twice as efficient as the current standard. But when the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) tried to make that switch in 2009, companies like General Electric cried foul: they wouldn’t be able to get hold of enough rare earths to make the new bulbs.
The move toward new and better technologies — from smart phones to electric cars — means an ever-increasing demand for exotic metals that are scarce thanks to both geology and politics. Thin, cheap solar panels need tellurium, which makes up a scant 0.0000001 percent of the earth’s crust, making it three times rarer than gold. High-performance batteries need lithium, which is only easily extracted from briny pools in the Andes.
Researchers and industry workers alike woke with a shock to the problems caused by these dodgy supply chains in 2011, when the average price of "rare earths" — including terbium and europium, used in fluorescent bulbs; and neodymium, used in the powerful magnets that help to drive wind turbines and electric engines — shot up by as much as 750 percent in a year. The problem was that China, which controlled 97 percent of global rare earth production, had clamped down on trade. A solution was brokered and the price shock faded, but the threat of future supply problems for rare earths and other so-called "critical elements" still looms.
That’s why the Critical Materials Institute, located at the DOE’s Ames Laboratory, was created. The institute opened in June, and the official ribbon-cutting was in September. Its mission is to predict which materials are going to become problems next, work to improve supply chains, and try to invent alternative materials that don’t need so many critical elements in the first place. The institute is one of a handful of organizations worldwide trying to tackle the problem of critical elements, which organizations like the American Physical Society have been calling attention to for years. "It’s a hot topic in Europe right now," says Olivier Vidal, coordinator of a European Commission project called ERA-MIN — one of a handful of European initiatives that are now ramping up.
"It's really urgent," says King. "We're facing real challenges today — we need solutions tomorrow, not the day after."
Despite the high cost and high demand of metals critical for energy technologies, very little of this metal is recycled: In 2009, it was estimated that less than one percent of rare earth metals was recovered. Ruediger Kuehr, head of the Solving the E-waste Problem (StEP) initiative in Bonn, says that 49 million tons of e-waste are produced each year, from cell phones to refrigerators. Of that, perhaps 10 percent is recycled. It’s ridiculous to simply throw so much valuable material away, says Diran Apelian, founding director of the Metal Processing Institute in Worcester,
Getting the metals out of modern technology is a pain, since they are incorporated in tiny amounts into increasingly-complex devices. A circa-2000 cell phone used about two dozen elements; a modern smart phone uses more than 60. "We’re making things more difficult for ourselves," says King. Despite the relatively high concentrations of rare earths in technology, he says, it’s actually chemically easier to separate them from the surrounding material in simple rocks than in complicated phones.
But it is possible. The Brussels-based company Umicore is at the forefront of recycling technologies for critical metals, says King. At its site in Hoboken, Belgium, the company annually recycles about 350,000 tons of e-waste, including photovoltaic cells and computer circuit boards, to recover metals including tellurium. In 2011, Umicore started a venture to recycle rare earths from rechargeable metal hydride batteries (there’s about a gram of rare earths in a AAA battery) at its Antwerp site, in partnership with the French company Solvay. Likewise, the Japanese car-company Honda announced this March that it has developed its own in-house recycling program for metal hydride batteries — which the company plans to test using the cars damaged by Japan’s 2011 quake and tsunami. The Critical Materials Institute is developing a method that involves melting old magnets in liquid magnesium to tease rare earths out. "When it comes to recycling, anything is possible," says Kuehr. "It’s a question of whether it’s economic."
One of the hardest steps in e-waste recycling is simply getting the battery or other critical-metal-rich components out of the larger device or machine. This is a menial but intricate task, which is often handed over to low-paid workers in places like China or Nigeria. In the Guiyu area of southern China, for example, more than 100,000 people work to take apart e-waste, boiling up circuit boards to remove the plastic and then leaching the metals with acid, at great risk to the environment and themselves. Uncontrolled burning leads to contaminated groundwater, and one study found elevated levels of lead in children living in Guiyu. Japan is at the
Even more important than technology, says Apelian, is policy and education. In a study of the U.S. recycling rates of about 20 products, from plastic to metal, the one with the highest rate of recovery is lead-acid batteries, used primarily in cars. Their recovery rate is 98 percent, compared to about 50 percent for aluminum cans. The reason, Apelian says, is because the government, worried about the lead, gives car companies a financial incentive to recycle the batteries themselves.
The onus, Apelian says, has to be put on the manufacturers to recover and recycle their own products, so they make them easier to re-use or break apart in the first place. "We need to manufacture for recovery. That’s almost non-existent."
Recycling is perhaps the best route forward for elements where demand is expected to level off in the long run. Demand for terbium and europium, for example, will likely fade as fluorescent bulbs are eventually replaced with much smaller LEDs. But for other elements, like neodymium, this can’t be the only solution. "Right now we need tiny amounts of neodymium, for the ear-buds of your smartphone," says King. "But for a high-performance wind turbine you need about two tons."
For elements where demand is expected to increase, one option is to open new mines. China currently dominates rare earth mining — in part, notes a 2011 American Physical Society report, because more relaxed environmental standards about land reclamation make it cheaper. But resources exist elsewhere. There are about 450 potential rare earth mines being looked at around the world, according to King. A few are fairly advanced. The rare-earth division of Mountain Pass mine in California reopened this year, after being driven out of business by China in 2002. Despite some initial disappointments in production capacity, King thinks that venture will succeed. Likewise, the Mount Weld mine for rare earths in
It can be difficult to develop economies of scale when dealing with materials only used in tiny amounts. Global demand for tellurium in 2009, for example, was just 200 metric tons. All of that came as a by-product from copper or gold mining. Though tellurium is extremely valuable at $145 per kilogram, the tiny amounts hardly make a blip in the profit sheets of these mining companies. "They have to be dragged into production kicking and screaming," says King.
Another option is to make the mining processes more efficient. For rare earths, says King, mining companies basically grind up the rock, throw it in water, and blow bubbles through it: The rare-earth-bearing minerals tend to float and can be skimmed off the top. But this only captures about 65 percent of the rare earths in an ore, says King. His institute is now using DOE supercomputers to search for molecules that might bind to the elements and help them to float. "If we can invent a fairy dust to sprinkle into the water to make that go from 65 percent to 75 percent, you instantly boost rare earth production
READ MOREwithout opening a new mine," says King. He hopes this strategy will succeed within a year or two.
A final approach is to find alternative materials that don’t need so many critical elements in the first place. This is a demanding task. "The rare earths are kind of magic," says King, in terms of their properties. They are a critical ingredient in magnets, for example, because of the way they wrangle the strong but unruly magnetic properties of iron — a task that no other element seems able to do. Research efforts attempting to make even stronger magnets without any rare earths are considered a long shot. But, says King, "We might not get them all out, but we can get the most expensive and rarest [rare earths] out."
King remains optimistic. Struggles with limited resources go way back, he notes. The Bronze Age, some 2,000 years ago, caused copper supplies to run dry. In response, King says, the ancients recycled bronze, looked for new mines, and spent 200 years optimizing the more-available but less-ideal alternative — iron — to do the same job. The solutions today are the same, though hopefully finding suitable replacements won’t take so long. "It doesn’t take us 200 years anymore," says King. "We’re shooting for two."
POSTED ON 18 NOV 2013 IN BUSINESS & INNOVATION CLIMATE ENERGY FORESTS POLICY & POLITICS SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY ASIA ASIA CENTRAL & SOUTH AMERICA
Hindering Green TechnologiesA shortage of "rare earth" metals, used in everything from electric car batteries to solar panels to wind turbines, is hampering the growth of renewable energy technologies. Researchers are now working to find alternatives to these critical elements or better ways to recycle them.by nicola jones
With the global push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it’s ironic that several energy- or resource-saving technologies aren’t being used to the fullest simply because we don’t have enough raw materials to make them.
For example, says Alex King, director of the new Critical Materials Institute, every wind farm has a few turbines standing idle because their fragile gearboxes have broken down. They can be fixed, of course, but that takes time – and meanwhile wind power isn’t being gathered. Now you can make a more reliable wind turbine that doesn’t need a gearbox at all, King points out, but you need a truckload of so-called "rare earth" metals to do
Haruyoshi Yamaguchi/Bloomberg
These bits of critical elements are bound for recycling at a Mitsubishi subsidiary in Japan.
The move toward new and better technologies — from smart phones to electric cars — means an ever-increasing demand for exotic metals that are scarce thanks to both geology and politics. Thin, cheap solar panels need tellurium, which makes up a scant 0.0000001 percent of the earth’s crust, making it three times rarer than gold. High-performance batteries need lithium, which is only easily extracted from briny pools in the Andes.
In 2011, the average price of 'rare earth' metals shot up by as much as 750 percent.Platinum, needed as a catalyst in fuel cells that turn hydrogen into energy, comes almost exclusively from South Africa.
Researchers and industry workers alike woke with a shock to the problems caused by these dodgy supply chains in 2011, when the average price of "rare earths" — including terbium and europium, used in fluorescent bulbs; and neodymium, used in the powerful magnets that help to drive wind turbines and electric engines — shot up by as much as 750 percent in a year. The problem was that China, which controlled 97 percent of global rare earth production, had clamped down on trade. A solution was brokered and the price shock faded, but the threat of future supply problems for rare earths and other so-called "critical elements" still looms.
That’s why the Critical Materials Institute, located at the DOE’s Ames Laboratory, was created. The institute opened in June, and the official ribbon-cutting was in September. Its mission is to predict which materials are going to become problems next, work to improve supply chains, and try to invent alternative materials that don’t need so many critical elements in the first place. The institute is one of a handful of organizations worldwide trying to tackle the problem of critical elements, which organizations like the American Physical Society have been calling attention to for years. "It’s a hot topic in Europe right now," says Olivier Vidal, coordinator of a European Commission project called ERA-MIN — one of a handful of European initiatives that are now ramping up.
"It's really urgent," says King. "We're facing real challenges today — we need solutions tomorrow, not the day after."
Despite the high cost and high demand of metals critical for energy technologies, very little of this metal is recycled: In 2009, it was estimated that less than one percent of rare earth metals was recovered. Ruediger Kuehr, head of the Solving the E-waste Problem (StEP) initiative in Bonn, says that 49 million tons of e-waste are produced each year, from cell phones to refrigerators. Of that, perhaps 10 percent is recycled. It’s ridiculous to simply throw so much valuable material away, says Diran Apelian, founding director of the Metal Processing Institute in Worcester,
A Belgian company now recycles 350,000 tons of e-waste a year, including photovoltaic cells.Massachusetts. "There’s something like 32 tons of gold in all the world's cell phones," says Apelian. "There's a huge goldmine in our urban landfills."
Getting the metals out of modern technology is a pain, since they are incorporated in tiny amounts into increasingly-complex devices. A circa-2000 cell phone used about two dozen elements; a modern smart phone uses more than 60. "We’re making things more difficult for ourselves," says King. Despite the relatively high concentrations of rare earths in technology, he says, it’s actually chemically easier to separate them from the surrounding material in simple rocks than in complicated phones.
But it is possible. The Brussels-based company Umicore is at the forefront of recycling technologies for critical metals, says King. At its site in Hoboken, Belgium, the company annually recycles about 350,000 tons of e-waste, including photovoltaic cells and computer circuit boards, to recover metals including tellurium. In 2011, Umicore started a venture to recycle rare earths from rechargeable metal hydride batteries (there’s about a gram of rare earths in a AAA battery) at its Antwerp site, in partnership with the French company Solvay. Likewise, the Japanese car-company Honda announced this March that it has developed its own in-house recycling program for metal hydride batteries — which the company plans to test using the cars damaged by Japan’s 2011 quake and tsunami. The Critical Materials Institute is developing a method that involves melting old magnets in liquid magnesium to tease rare earths out. "When it comes to recycling, anything is possible," says Kuehr. "It’s a question of whether it’s economic."
One of the hardest steps in e-waste recycling is simply getting the battery or other critical-metal-rich components out of the larger device or machine. This is a menial but intricate task, which is often handed over to low-paid workers in places like China or Nigeria. In the Guiyu area of southern China, for example, more than 100,000 people work to take apart e-waste, boiling up circuit boards to remove the plastic and then leaching the metals with acid, at great risk to the environment and themselves. Uncontrolled burning leads to contaminated groundwater, and one study found elevated levels of lead in children living in Guiyu. Japan is at the
The onus has to be put on the manufacturers to recover and recycle their own products, one researcher notes.forefront of efforts to automate these processes so they can be done economically and safely by machines, says King.
Even more important than technology, says Apelian, is policy and education. In a study of the U.S. recycling rates of about 20 products, from plastic to metal, the one with the highest rate of recovery is lead-acid batteries, used primarily in cars. Their recovery rate is 98 percent, compared to about 50 percent for aluminum cans. The reason, Apelian says, is because the government, worried about the lead, gives car companies a financial incentive to recycle the batteries themselves.
The onus, Apelian says, has to be put on the manufacturers to recover and recycle their own products, so they make them easier to re-use or break apart in the first place. "We need to manufacture for recovery. That’s almost non-existent."
Recycling is perhaps the best route forward for elements where demand is expected to level off in the long run. Demand for terbium and europium, for example, will likely fade as fluorescent bulbs are eventually replaced with much smaller LEDs. But for other elements, like neodymium, this can’t be the only solution. "Right now we need tiny amounts of neodymium, for the ear-buds of your smartphone," says King. "But for a high-performance wind turbine you need about two tons."
For elements where demand is expected to increase, one option is to open new mines. China currently dominates rare earth mining — in part, notes a 2011 American Physical Society report, because more relaxed environmental standards about land reclamation make it cheaper. But resources exist elsewhere. There are about 450 potential rare earth mines being looked at around the world, according to King. A few are fairly advanced. The rare-earth division of Mountain Pass mine in California reopened this year, after being driven out of business by China in 2002. Despite some initial disappointments in production capacity, King thinks that venture will succeed. Likewise, the Mount Weld mine for rare earths in
One approach is to find alternative materials that don’t need so many critical elements.Australia is ramping up. These efforts, among others, have reduced China’s production share from 97 percent to about 90 percent in the past year or two, says King.
It can be difficult to develop economies of scale when dealing with materials only used in tiny amounts. Global demand for tellurium in 2009, for example, was just 200 metric tons. All of that came as a by-product from copper or gold mining. Though tellurium is extremely valuable at $145 per kilogram, the tiny amounts hardly make a blip in the profit sheets of these mining companies. "They have to be dragged into production kicking and screaming," says King.
Another option is to make the mining processes more efficient. For rare earths, says King, mining companies basically grind up the rock, throw it in water, and blow bubbles through it: The rare-earth-bearing minerals tend to float and can be skimmed off the top. But this only captures about 65 percent of the rare earths in an ore, says King. His institute is now using DOE supercomputers to search for molecules that might bind to the elements and help them to float. "If we can invent a fairy dust to sprinkle into the water to make that go from 65 percent to 75 percent, you instantly boost rare earth production
MORE FROM YALE e360
Boom in Mining Rare Earths
Poses Mounting Toxic Risks
READ MORE
A final approach is to find alternative materials that don’t need so many critical elements in the first place. This is a demanding task. "The rare earths are kind of magic," says King, in terms of their properties. They are a critical ingredient in magnets, for example, because of the way they wrangle the strong but unruly magnetic properties of iron — a task that no other element seems able to do. Research efforts attempting to make even stronger magnets without any rare earths are considered a long shot. But, says King, "We might not get them all out, but we can get the most expensive and rarest [rare earths] out."
King remains optimistic. Struggles with limited resources go way back, he notes. The Bronze Age, some 2,000 years ago, caused copper supplies to run dry. In response, King says, the ancients recycled bronze, looked for new mines, and spent 200 years optimizing the more-available but less-ideal alternative — iron — to do the same job. The solutions today are the same, though hopefully finding suitable replacements won’t take so long. "It doesn’t take us 200 years anymore," says King. "We’re shooting for two."
POSTED ON 18 NOV 2013 IN BUSINESS & INNOVATION CLIMATE ENERGY FORESTS POLICY & POLITICS SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY ASIA ASIA CENTRAL & SOUTH AMERICA
PrintCOMMENTS
Excellent post. Yes. Rare earth metals play a crucial role in renewable energy. Well-written article. As a renewable energy expert I liked it.
Dr. A. Jagadeesh Nellore (AP), India
This article is intruiging. My science teacher showed it to us today during class — so enlightening!
Thanks for this amazing article! I love reading your articles while drinking my morning cup of coffee. It really makes me smile.
Nice cliche at the end... ruined the article
This is the best explanation of all this that I've seen. Thanks for making a complex situation understandable.
Thanks for the really nicely crafted and composed essay. I wonder whether you or other major voices in debates surrounding these issues consider whether using rare earth materials can be a long term piece of the sustainability puzzle? I mean, they are often toxic, they are rare (of course), and the process of extraction is extremely environmentally damaging. Do these negatives not outweigh the benefits promised in their use?
Solar panels, wind turbines, whatever...The only lasting robust solution is growing stuff, making stuff, and building stuff using mostly local materials. Many animals have solved basic resource problems by migration — birds, whales, tuna, butterflies — but humans are not that sort of animal. Our migration capabilities are small in spite of our modern (last 40,000 years) dispersal capacities.
If we apply our minds to the problem we may be able to keep some kind of worldwide electronic information and communication infrastructure. But the big container ships will stop coming. Flying across oceans or continents will become a rare thing for anyone who doesn't have wings.
Humans are a remarkable species but we've not yet crossed the threshold of being the engines of our own creation. For now we are just eaters of fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources. Consumers. Until we master telepathy and teleportation, or until smart phones grow on trees and can be disposed of in compost heaps, I'm not terribly optimistic about our future.
Odds are good we are just another one of those experiments in evolution (and there have been many these past billions of years) that won't make it down the long road. Human exceptionalism is as silly as any nationalistic exceptionalism. Nations don't last, and even less so, species.
In a similar vein to this article, there was a short J.M. Korhonen post summarizing a graph from a paper from Vidal, Góffe & Arndt (2013) (http://jmkorhonen.net/2013/11/29/graphic-of-the-week-the-hidden-fuels-of-renewable-energy/ ). If renewables were to be expanded to provide a significant degree of energy, there would need be absolutely enormous increases in the the production of certain needed raw materials (steel, glass, concrete), compared to current world use.
There is a universal concern about the future of rare earth metals, now dominated by PRC. This good, technical article would have greatly increased its value and utility if some graphics were included.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if all the multinational power control freaks of the financial world realized that mining has not kept up with the intelligent use of our resources needed to make climate control livable?
I suggest that one of the answers may be what is detailed about solar bundled with nepheline seynite as shown on www.SilverMininingclaims.com.
So sorry to have disturbed the cartels of the world wishing to make excessive speculative profits.
Great article! But it glossed over lead-acid batteries:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/world/americas/us-use-of-mexican-battery-recyclers-is-faulted.html?_r=0
This is cool.
Great article, Nicola! Rare earth metal is one of a set of seventeen chemical elements in the periodic table, specifically the fifteen lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium. Scandium and yttrium are considered rare earth elements because they tend to occur in the same ore deposits as the lanthanides and exhibit similar chemical properties.
Much gratitude to both Nicola Jones and Alex King for this lucid, instructive article.
Very helpful.
Dr. Jagadeesh, sir, I want to know some metals details. You
have mines and metals knowledge. Please contact me by mail my
ID is raja.govinda1@gmail.com.
Tiny mistake. Solvay is not French, it is also Belgian.
I am looking for a recent scientific article/reference relating to calculations on which and how many minerals need to be mined globally to build/manufacture wind and solar energy plants?
Are there reliable figures published from where such minerals are extracted and how these resources are being mined and at which prices?
Appreciate your help.
Kind regards from Windhoek/Namibia.
Martin B Schneider
Desert Research Foundation of Namibia (DRFN)
Excellent post. Yes. Rare earth metals play a crucial role in renewable energy. Well-written article. As a renewable energy expert I liked it.
Dr. A. Jagadeesh Nellore (AP), India
Posted by Dr.A.Jagadeesh on 21 Nov 2013
This article is intruiging. My science teacher showed it to us today during class — so enlightening!
Posted by Bob Smith on 22 Nov 2013
Thanks for this amazing article! I love reading your articles while drinking my morning cup of coffee. It really makes me smile.
Posted by Sarah Croce on 22 Nov 2013
Nice cliche at the end... ruined the article
Posted by Miles on 26 Nov 2013
This is the best explanation of all this that I've seen. Thanks for making a complex situation understandable.
Posted by Allan Freund on 27 Nov 2013
Thanks for the really nicely crafted and composed essay. I wonder whether you or other major voices in debates surrounding these issues consider whether using rare earth materials can be a long term piece of the sustainability puzzle? I mean, they are often toxic, they are rare (of course), and the process of extraction is extremely environmentally damaging. Do these negatives not outweigh the benefits promised in their use?
Posted by Carolyn on 03 Dec 2013
Solar panels, wind turbines, whatever...The only lasting robust solution is growing stuff, making stuff, and building stuff using mostly local materials. Many animals have solved basic resource problems by migration — birds, whales, tuna, butterflies — but humans are not that sort of animal. Our migration capabilities are small in spite of our modern (last 40,000 years) dispersal capacities.
If we apply our minds to the problem we may be able to keep some kind of worldwide electronic information and communication infrastructure. But the big container ships will stop coming. Flying across oceans or continents will become a rare thing for anyone who doesn't have wings.
Humans are a remarkable species but we've not yet crossed the threshold of being the engines of our own creation. For now we are just eaters of fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources. Consumers. Until we master telepathy and teleportation, or until smart phones grow on trees and can be disposed of in compost heaps, I'm not terribly optimistic about our future.
Odds are good we are just another one of those experiments in evolution (and there have been many these past billions of years) that won't make it down the long road. Human exceptionalism is as silly as any nationalistic exceptionalism. Nations don't last, and even less so, species.
Posted by Donnie M. Lopez on 04 Dec 2013
In a similar vein to this article, there was a short J.M. Korhonen post summarizing a graph from a paper from Vidal, Góffe & Arndt (2013) (http://jmkorhonen.net/2013/11/29/graphic-of-the-week-the-hidden-fuels-of-renewable-energy/ ). If renewables were to be expanded to provide a significant degree of energy, there would need be absolutely enormous increases in the the production of certain needed raw materials (steel, glass, concrete), compared to current world use.
Posted by crf on 07 Dec 2013
There is a universal concern about the future of rare earth metals, now dominated by PRC. This good, technical article would have greatly increased its value and utility if some graphics were included.
Posted by NorMan on 20 Dec 2013
Wouldn't it be wonderful if all the multinational power control freaks of the financial world realized that mining has not kept up with the intelligent use of our resources needed to make climate control livable?
I suggest that one of the answers may be what is detailed about solar bundled with nepheline seynite as shown on www.SilverMininingclaims.com.
So sorry to have disturbed the cartels of the world wishing to make excessive speculative profits.
Posted by Barry Murray on 21 Dec 2013
Great article! But it glossed over lead-acid batteries:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/world/americas/us-use-of-mexican-battery-recyclers-is-faulted.html?_r=0
Posted by Robert Callaghan on 02 Jan 2014
This is cool.
Posted by leafytree on 05 Feb 2014
Great article, Nicola! Rare earth metal is one of a set of seventeen chemical elements in the periodic table, specifically the fifteen lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium. Scandium and yttrium are considered rare earth elements because they tend to occur in the same ore deposits as the lanthanides and exhibit similar chemical properties.
Posted by Rushh Gold on 20 Mar 2014
Much gratitude to both Nicola Jones and Alex King for this lucid, instructive article.
Posted by Ira Caplan on 23 Jun 2014
Very helpful.
Posted by Jennifer on 18 Nov 2014
Dr. Jagadeesh, sir, I want to know some metals details. You
have mines and metals knowledge. Please contact me by mail my
ID is raja.govinda1@gmail.com.
Posted by govindaraju.k on 02 Mar 2015
Tiny mistake. Solvay is not French, it is also Belgian.
Posted by Peter Verbeke on 01 May 2015
I am looking for a recent scientific article/reference relating to calculations on which and how many minerals need to be mined globally to build/manufacture wind and solar energy plants?
Are there reliable figures published from where such minerals are extracted and how these resources are being mined and at which prices?
Appreciate your help.
Kind regards from Windhoek/Namibia.
Martin B Schneider
Desert Research Foundation of Namibia (DRFN)
Posted by Martin Schneider on 27 Jul 2015