CLEAN ENERGY MINERALS ARE NOT CLEAN

  

                As the planet moves away from fossil fuels towards a green future, the focus now is on the ramping up of mining for various rare earth minerals like Lithium, Cobalt and Nickel. These minerals are crucial for the production of batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines which are going to replace our fossil fuel-based society in the future by 2040. To achieve this objective, we will see a 4 to 6 times increase in the overall requirement of these minerals by 2040:  for Lithium, it is 40 times higher, and for Cobalt and Nickel 20 to 25 times higher. However, the ramping up of these minerals has been slow enough to meet the energy transition goals of the Paris Agreement as it is plagued by a lot of hurdles like technical barriers, environmental and ethical issues. 

       First, their mining is a time taking process and it often takes nearly 5 to 10 years for these minerals from mines to reach the market. Secondly, as the source of these minerals is very scarce and limited to a very few countries like China and Africa, the world has not enough circulation of these minerals for the production of clean energy to meet the global need. Thirdly, unlike oils, these minerals do not burn off completely in the device as they can be recycled many times to retrieve nearly 10 to 15% of the useful materials in recycling plants and, this too is a great technical challenge. Lastly, the quality of these ores is liable to be declining by 2040 with their dwindling reserves in nature and we must need very advanced technologies and energy-intensive processes by that time to harness these minerals.   

          However, the mining industries dealing with these minerals across the world are now paralyzed by many hurdles like health, human and environmental issues. From the health front, lungs disease and heart failure have been linked to high levels of these elements in our biosphere while scientists are also investigating a possible link to cancer. From the environmental point of view, the mines that produce them are blamed for devastating landscapes, water pollution, contaminated crops and loss of soil fertility. Blasting activity and high electricity consumption are also detrimental to the environment. Global warming resulting out of these activities is the most impacting factor to climate change as Carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide emissions are highest from these mining.

       Ethical issues like human rights abuse, illegal trafficking, the corruption that have been always associated with the mining industry are also expected to make their footprints felt in the extraction of these clean energy materials. To cite an example, for Cobalt, the key ingredient for the Lithium-ion batteries used in our smartphones to laptops to electric cars, more than 60% of the supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)  in Central Africa, a country that has historically been affected by conflict and corruption. Although low labour costs, loose safety regulations and poor governance in the DRC allow for the flourishing of the mining industry and cheap sources of cobalt, the sector in the country is tainted by many ethical and humanitarian glitches like child labour and corruption.  In 2017, some campaign groups in the country found that only 6% of the country’s mining revenue ended up in national treasuries meant for the benefit of the population and the rest of the money siphoned off elsewhere. This is primarily because the major owners of these mines, the Chinese companies, are not paying much heed to resolving the humanitarian and environmental issues arising out of these activities at the cost of their lucrative trading practice. Dozens of environmental groups and NGOs of Africa have raised concern in the recently concluded COP-26 climate summit about the impact of mining of these clean energy minerals on the communities and environment.

             As the mining industry is changing, the future of these clean mineral industries to enjoy the confidence of the people depends a lot on all their stakeholders on how they formulate policies and practices for the mining, processing, recycling and marketing of these materials.  It is, however,  hard to imagine how these clean energy materials, which are going to revolutionize our carbon-based society in near future, can be mined sustainably in the most environmental-friendly ways free from conflicts, human rights abuse, and environmental damage. Hence, clean energy materials are not always clean!

                                                                         Nikunja Bihari Sahu

                                                                          Education Officer 

                                                                Regional Science Centre

                                                                              Bhopal

                                                                     Phone: 8018708858