Are there enough critical minerals for energy transition?

Over 20 years ago, two geologists made a stark prediction in Scientific American: “Probably within 10 years,” they wrote, “global production of conventional oil will begin to decline.” This argument, which became known as “peak oil,” captured public attention for well over a decade, sparking worries that abundant reserves of oil would give way to scarcity, runs on gas stations and sky-high inflation.

Peak oil, however, never came to pass. U.S. oil production increased far beyond the peak oil predictions, thanks to the increased use of “fracking” and other production methods. The term faded out of use, and concerns about oil shifted from a fear of running out of oil to fears of runaway global warming.

Now, as the world begins to slowly shift to renewable energy sources, there is a new focus on the materials that will be required to build electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines and much more. According to the International Energy Agency, the average electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional gas-powered car; an offshore wind-turbine, meanwhile, requires nine times the mineral inputs of a typical gas-fired power plant.

So, will we run out? There is no doubt that clean energy — that is, solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear and other sources that do not produce greenhouse gas emissions — requires more mineral inputs than power plants run on fossil fuels. The IEA estimates that if the world builds enough renewable energy to meet the goals established in the 2015 Paris Agreement, mineral demand will double or quadruple in the next 20 years. Countries will need copper for power and transmission lines, lithium for batteries, silicon for solar panels and zinc for wind turbines.

But there are a few reasons to think that — even as the world prepares to mine huge quantities of minerals — we won’t run out anytime soon.

Abigail Wulf, vice president of critical minerals for Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE), a D.c.-based energy think tank, says that when minerals become valuable enough, people get motivated.

“It all has to do with economics,” she said. “If people get super desperate for these minerals, they will find very creative ways to find them.”

The first is that there is a difference between the available reserves of a mineral and the resources of that mineral. Reserves are the amount of a mineral that humans know they can efficiently and economically mine. Resources are a best guess of the total amount of that mineral available in the world — whether they are costeffective to mine or not.

Take cobalt — a key ingredient in the lithium-ion batteries that power electric cars, smartphones and other electronics.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, there are about 7.6 million tons of cobalt reserves worldwide. But the total cobalt resources far exceed this number: The USGS estimates that there are 25 million tons of cobalt resources from the Earth’s surface and 120 million tons on the sea floor.

And those numbers tend to increase. Ten years ago, world cobalt reserves were estimated at 7.5 million tons and resources were only estimated to be about 15 million tons. As a commodity becomes more valuable, two things happen simultaneously: Reserves increase, as previously uneconomical resources become economical.

And resources increase as well, as governments and companies put more effort into mapping and exploring minerals in the Earth’s crust and on the sea floor. In 2012, the world’s lithium reserves sat at 13 million tons; now, they’re around 22 million tons. During that same period, the world’s estimated lithium resources more than doubled — from 40 to 88 million tons.

Companies are already touting the discoveries of new deposits of critical minerals. A Swedish state-owned mining company last month announced a deposit of 1 million tons of rare earth metals in the Lapland province. U.S. companies have also recently claimed discoveries of new deposits in Wyoming and Montana.

Recent research has also shown that the amount of minerals required for the shift to renewable energy is significant — but falls well within the amount of reserves available. A study released recently by scientists at the University of California at Irvine and Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that current reserves of minerals like aluminum, copper, manganese, silver and more should support building enough wind and solar power to meet climate targets.

What’s more, the mining from those operations would not have an outsize impact on global warming. (One repeated critique of renewable energy is that the intensity of mining might counteract the emissions benefits of wind and solar.) According to the study, the materials required for the transition to low-carbon electricity would take up somewhere between 1 and 9 percent of the remaining carbon budget: a significant amount but one that wouldn’t undercut overall climate goals.

“The emissions to produce a refined ton of steel or aluminum to meet all of this demand would not really threaten global carbon budgets,” said Seaver Wang, the co-director of climate and energy at the energy think tank the Breakthrough Institute and the lead author on the paper.

(The study focused on electricity generation. The researchers did not look at the mineral requirements for transportation or electric vehicles.)

The larger problem may be not whether the world as a whole has enough critical minerals — but whether they are available quickly enough and in the right places.

Minerals are not distributed equally around the globe — for example, much of the cobalt mined right now is from the Democratic Republic of Congo, most of the rare earths are mined in China, and much of the lithium is mined in Australia.

China also dominates the world’s processing of critical minerals: 80 percent of rare earth metals, over 60 percent of cobalt and over 50 percent of lithium are processed there. According to a recent analysis by the USGS, the United States relies on imports for almost 50 percent of the minerals it consumes.