Zero-Emission Mining Technologies are Here
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 พ.ค. 2024
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In this video we’re going to get serious about mining for the energy transition. We're going to find out where emissions in mining come from, what solutions are available, and check in on progress from the industry towards that goal.
The general vibe is that we can make mining less harmful to the environment, it can be zero emissions, companies are already making moves in that direction and we’re going to find out about the technologies they’re using to achieve that. But the serious part is: mining doesn’t come without a local environmental cost. It can’t. This is one of those tricky tradeoff situations, where we have to do something a little bit bad, to prevent something very bad from happening.
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Bookmarks:
00:00 Intro
02:12 Problems in context
04:44 Emissions in mining industry
05:07 Extraction
06:19 Processing
07:32 Waste management
08:22 Transportation
08:38 Towards sustainable mining
10:04 Zero-emission progress in iron mine (Fortescue)
11:45 Zero-emission progress in copper mine (Antofagasta)
12:57 Conclusion
Sources:
For data, images & graphs
canadianminingmagazine.com/un...
thedriven.io/2023/07/27/forte...
icn.org.au/project/pilbara-ge...
fortescue.com/news-and-media/...
www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/0....
hydrogenwire.com/2023/08/05/f...
www.globalminingreview.com/mi...
www.antofagasta.co.uk/sustain...
Journals & Scientific Papers
pubs.rsc.org/en/content/artic...
www.researchgate.net/publicat...
www.nature.com/articles/s4156...
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
www.nature.com/articles/s4324...
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
link.springer.com/article/10....
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
link.springer.com/article/10....
Reports
iea.blob.core.windows.net/ass...
cdn.fortescue.com/docs/defaul....
fortescue.com/docs/default-so...
www.antofagasta.co.uk/media/4...
The Engineering with Rosie team is:
Rosemary Barnes: Presenter, producer, writer
Javi Diez: Editor / javierdiezsuarez
Fatini Nur: Research and production assistant / fatinin - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
You can't imagine the gas industry ads I'm getting served in the middle of this video! 🤣🤯
Oh we can 😀!
Adblockers: exist.
@@sirensynapse5603 I'm pointing out the irony, not bitching about a stupid ad.
@@sirensynapse5603seen none as i have both premium and ublock origin
I think there is room for optimism for co2 reduction in mining.
1) The emissions are mostly localized to the mine and refinery, so co2 mitigation strategies can be focused at these locations
2) You only need to persuade a relatively small management team to make changes, rather than millions of people to change habits etc.
3) Co-locating renewable power generation with the mine/refinery is likely to be a financial no-brainer.
Luckily many mining companies are now investing in renewable energy to power their mines, simply to save money, and it also has the benefit of reducing emissions, cant really say CO2 emissions are a local thing, we all share the same atmosphere.
Easy put up 50,000 wind turbine and use electric equipment. We will only need 1,000 more mines to make the turbines!
we need more co2 not less.
there are already mining operations working without fossil fuel. For instance in Congo they are using children to extract cobalt without any fossil fuel. They are on the cutting edge of zero-emissions mining technologies.
@orionbetelgeuse1937 How many million tons of CO2 are produced shipping it on framers burning Bunker C?
That low-temp electrolysis project sounded really interesting, and I wish you went into further detail about that.
Low-temperature and high-temperature electrolysis can work with using geothermal, waste heat from nuclear reactors, solar thermal, and industrial waste heat.
I'm desperate to learn more about that because it poses a massive solution for decarbonizing the steel industry, a solution for oil refineries that need to shift away from natural gas, and source of zero-carbon hydrogen for making e-fuels for aviation, the marine shipping industry, and rocket fuel.
Thanks, I appreciate your talking about recycling and a comparison with petroleum consumption. I really think that on a civilizational level our recycling efforts need to improve. Garbage is our next resource.
In Germany we outlawed landfills in 2005 and tried to recycle most either by reusing it or turning it into Energy in a WasteToPower plant.
Reducing waste is key, but outlawing landfills should be a nobrainer.
@@TBFSJjunior Definitely not a nobrainer. Sometimes it's better to bury than to burn. When you bury plastic, you are sequestering carbon. When you burn it, you're creating toxic pollution and CO2. Some waste, like glass, is utterly harmless when buried, as it's just melted rock. If it can be reused or recycled cheaply enough, then great, but there's no harm in returning it to the ground that it came from.
@@incognitotorpedo42 With regard to burying plastic, I came round to this way of thinking quite recently after seeing a number of scientific reports that backed it. The comment that it is better to landfill than ‘airfill’ made sense to me, and that simple comment changed my view. I.e. don’t burn it and put the CO2 in the air, put it back in the ground where it came from.
It’s not quite that simple of course, but the general premise is solid. There are bacteria that can eat plastic in landfills, but the process is slower than burning it at least. The only thing to do is make sure particles of plastic and other chemicals in the plastic are prevented from entering water courses. The UK has plenty of deep coal mines that have been abandoned and could be used for this instead of subsurface landfill.
@@javelinXH992 Not mentioned is the use of leftover plastics as building material. I have seen some interesting presentations of building blocks mad from recycled material.
@@chrisconklin2981 Using the plastic to replace wooden pallets is another good one.
Hello from the Main Gate at the Olympic Dam Mine in South Australia 😂.
That is very cool that this video has already made it onto a real mine site! Can you hook me up with a tour? I'd love to make some more mining content and get an insider perspective 😀😀
Thanks for a well balanced and informative video Rosie.
Proof?
i hate mining for those reasons, but understand we need it, as long as we don't burn what we mine, then thats a win at the moment, end game would be circular economy where recycling is the default position, not digging up raw materials. but we need incentives and tax policies to force the use of recycled materials over raw.
Yes to everything you just said. 😊
I wish people would understand that oil extraction is also mining, so is coal and gas. And you use it once with zero possibility of recycling.
We can’t escape mining, but we can choose the level of negative impact on the environment and the people doing the work that comes from it.
Rosie talks about alternatives to mining for various structural metals. What about the Dow process for magnesium, from sea water? This doesn't harm the balance of ocean minerals and can be implemented in conjunction with desalination as a buffer to curtailment for massive amounts of renewables.
Recycling can, depending on the material, require more energy (transport and processing) than mining. I don't think we should simplistically aim for one over the other but instead seek to reduce the greenhouse impact of both as much as possible and use what's best for a given material.
Well what about mining for hydrogen? We can burn that without co2 emissions
@@peterkratoska4524 And it's ALWAYS a big negative sum energy game.
Both winning, and using it
You should do a follow-up video that goes over the processes, energy, and carbon footprint of recycling key materials that are already above ground and part of the circular economy, such as steel, copper, plastics, rubble, wood, glass, etc
Thanks for the great video!
You went to Mt. Rosie lol 😂
The argument that a mine can't be re - greened as good as before depends on the willingness to actually return something better.
It's just laziness and unwillingness to spend the required money ( Tage bau Leipzig)
Not far from where I live is the Cotswolds. Here large amounts of gravel was extracted leaving huge holes in the ground. These filled with water creating an unnatural natural habitat, the nonetheless is rich in wildlife. Although accidental, it does show that mineral extraction can be done in a way that, while it may change the habitat, that change can be beneficial.
Wiki up Cotswold Wildlife Park for more details. It’s quite a remarkable thing.
It's not just laziness, it's required energy and materials. There are real costs with their own associated environmental impacts. There are always tradeoffs with real costs to consider.
It's a hole in the ground. Are you going to fill it in? With what? Where does that come from? How does it get there?
@@zarfmouse You don’t have to fill it with anything though. Water will naturally do some in some cases (see Cotswolds Water Park).
But think about an ecosystem this way. You start with a flat or flattish area then dig a big hole. What was the surface area before and what is it now? You increase the available surface area by digging holes, increasing the available space for life. You’ll have terraces built in - those trucks need to drive on flat surfaces. The depth provides a variation in habitat from top to bottom - light, shade, temperature and humidity can vary quite a lot. That can provide surprising diverse and robust ecosystems in small spaces - though you may have to wait a long time to achieve it.
People all over the world are finding they can re green landscapes with relatively simple methods at low cost. Have a look at some of the work on Africas Green Wall as an example of quite startling regeneration with massive investment or modern tech. Where some see destruction, I see opportunity, it just needs a little assistance to get going. There is an old saying - when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.
@@javelinXH992 check out Leipzig neuseenland. Used to look like the surface of the moon In the 90s ( thats when I saw it) now its 3 ( or2 ?) Lakes and a summer recreational area for the city of Leipzig.
Many times the secret is to assign potential monetary value and if its only real estate taxes from the surrounding areas. ( Google and view pictures gives a good before and after)
@zarfmouse interesting
So how do we rehab to original condition?
What do you suggest we put in the cut??
Do we dig a hole somewhere else?
I live in north dakota where we have large scale pit mining for coal. After the coal is removed the overburden is put back and the topography reestablished. Unless you know an area has been mined, nothing visually would show it. They do an excellent job of reclamation and restoration.
Same is done in Australia.
Very good, finding Mount Rosey to illustrate your point...
Facts and context are like gold. Thanks for this enriching content!
Nice to see the mining industry making real strides.
Early days for sure, but a few companies are proving it's possible, we just need to make sure the rest of the industry follows quickly.
Great lifetime analysis with focus on mining. Looks like there is a lot of room to improve climate impact. The energy capture from significant grade change is pretty cool. A surprising thing for me was the impact resulting from crushing raw material. Not having delved into this in depth I just assumed (know what they say) the major contributor was melting all this stuff.
I was so shocked about how big an energy consumer crushing is!
REALLY interesting Video Rosie! It's great to see that Aus is leading the way in decarbonising. I found the crushing/grinding section interesting, as I used to detail installation of crushers a long time ago. This case is really interesting because it can be done intermittently, storing the inputs/ outputs of the crushers/grinders. Of course they'll need 2-3 times as much plant, which the bean counters won't like, but once they've made the investment the process should be cheaper, and the plant will last longer, and have residual value when the mine is exhausted. Hey maybe the mine could continue longer with the poorer ore if these processes are made cheaper in the long run. Also, when the sun goes down the workers can go to the pub!
Great vid!
My bell is on but I'm not getting notifications here near NYC.☹️
I've enjoyed your channel for years now, and since uploads are in the wee hours of the morning here it gives me something to distract myself from CPTSD... 😁
Sustainability is one of the things that push my geek buttons, and I really appreciate the insider perspective.
Thank you Rosie. I think mining will continue to expand regardless, but electrification of ‘everything’ will surely create additional demand. There’s just so much to manufacture to create the renewable generation that will power subsequent manufacture of additional and ongoing infrastructure. Global energy demand will continue rising as more countries raise living standards and new technologies are invented - like power-intensive data centres for machine learning and AI.
Australia alone exports about 400 million tonnes of thermal and metallurgical coal. That’s a massive amount of energy to replace! but at least perhaps some of that is being used to produce the solar panels that we import. But it’s not just what we burn. Gas and oil (or byproducts) are fundamental to products most people use every day, for which substitution is possible but not always practical or scaleable, so they will continue to be extracted and refined in some volume for a very long time.
I don’t mean to mischaracterise what you say and agree our aim should be to reduce our environmental impact in all activities; but that task is enormous and complex. It is also, effectively, infinite.
We need to move (eventually) to 100% recycled materials - for everything that can't be composted.
Great video! Thank you, Rosie.
Thanks for the balanced overview. I'd like to add a consideration about inequality: the fact that mining takes place mostly in the Global South, while in the Global North mining projects are much more difficult to carry out and when they are, they are subjected to stricter environmental protections.
As an Australian, I always find that term global south jarring! We also mine a lot here, but am aware that we're strongly in the minority for rich countries.
What great video transitions!
Great discussion, with numbers!
Thank you for the great, constant, high quality info. I think you are a huge deal. Very impactful and very appreciated. Videos are visually epic too.
I appreciate that!
I find it hard to believe that there are people out there that are against mining but only for sustainable processes.
The same people who are against wind turbine blade or solar panel waste, but not against waste from coal power plants. They also care a LOT about birds killed by wind turbines, but not the thousands of times more birds killed by cats, cars and buildings (and cliamte change).
These people are fossil fuel industry shills and their handmaidens in the right wing political universe.
Mining is the backbone of Australia.
I worked at a sand quarry and we used 3 times the power because head management didn't want to recondition the electric motors.. this is in australia.
washed sand to 10% silts needed 5kwh of power and 3.5lt of diesel per tonne of washed sand.
ONRL reckon they have got processes which can give 100% recycling at the full strength of the material for carbon reinforced plastics (CFRP). If it pans out, that is revolutionary for everything from car bodies to wind turbines.
I also like basaltic fiber, which has comparable qualities to S-glass, somewhere between fiber glass and carbon fiber, with the cost in between too.
Its very high melting point means that it is much easier to separate from the polymers etc for recyclability, and it is simply basalt rock.
It would not totally replace steel, as it is non conductive, as opposed to metals which are very conductive, but shows good potential to reduce needed iron output.
Great episode, Rosie. Thanks.
Fantastic video with not just great in-depth information, but options for doing something about serious issues at a personal level. I'm impressed, though distracted by the crush on Rosie that developed about 3 minutes into the video. Now I need to find a video explaining what to do about that...
Interesting video. Thanks.
Excellent video.
As you pointed out, we have most of the solutions we need.
The task now is scaling those solutions to actually make a difference.
This is where humans have failed so far.
Hopefully we will turn that around this decade.
Planet Wild seem to be a good organization.
They aren't the only ones doing this, and another one (that I heard of first) is Mossy Earth.
Both are worth supporting, as would other groups doing similar things, whether globally or locally.
5:25 I like how you talk about all the emissions from mining except for the emissions from the explosives.
Probably a pretty minor contributor. The bigger sins are probably hidden between other claims vs reality.
You could make green explosives with the same tech as green fertilisers: Green hydrogen + atmospheric nitrogen.
As someone who was supportive of environemental activism from the 1980s. The stereotype that all mining was bad and opposed, is slightly annoying.
How its done. Whether what is extracted can be recycled and is recycled, can the site be adequately "rehabiliated" and will it, have always been issues. Mining for energy is always and has always been unsustainable; creating toxic waste and electrivcity/heat from a limited resource has always appeared rightly ridiculous.
Hi
Very informative and factual information on how zero or much reduced emissions can be achieved, but the fly in the ointment is money I am sure that many of the mine operators will take on some of these practices but when profit is at risk only 2 outcomes are available the price goes up and emissions get ignored all quite sad really
Keep up the good work
I think this is one area where the issue of cost will be won by clean techs for the most part (not all). Onsite diesel is really expensive, renewables, batteries, EVs are cheap and getting cheaper!
Would love to know your thoughts on T-Swifts flight emissions and offsets, by my math its about 500k/life of a VT Commodore for 3 months which honestly seems little to me for moving her about private for a quarter at her peak.
Excellent !!!
Great episode
The EIA graph at 2:55 shows coal and natural gas at the bottom as very short. But this is deceptive becausethey *should* include coal or methane, because those *are minerals that are extracted*.
At 4:19 Rosie says the key phrase: it is *not* fair to ignore the fossil fuels! We should *not* be hypocritical and keep complaining about the mining of minerals for EVs when combustion engines are a hundred times worse.
The 6x mineral contents is nonsense when Iron and Aluminium isn't included. It means "unusual" minerals that we didn't mine so much before. Perhaps the elements are less dense that with Iron and Aluminium, but I'd expect that the amount of total material is similar. EVs weight a little more but not 6x.
Yes we need different a more diverse materials, but its just a matter of time before we have enough of those new materials in circulation.
Iron and aluminium ores are much more concentrated and therefore much less energy intensive to process, hence an order of magnitude cheaper. (Cost is often a good measure of energy intensity.) The worse crime here is comparing the fossil fuel consumption with the battery and not including the energy production infrastructure required to charge it. Which at some point will have to include the gargantuan amount of battery storage we will need to stabilise intermittent renewable generation if we are to finally ditch coal and gas.
@@tbayley6 We don't need and cannot store our way out of variable renewables (with current tech). If you watch this channel you should know that transmission is the way to deal with it, however 80% renewables is fairly easy with CCGT to make up the difference. Batteries are mainly for grid stability and peak demand. Wind or solar power needs to come from a windy area if your area is low in wind and solar. This video is more about the mining, not about energy totals, but EVs need alot less energy than combustion vehicles, its easier than fossil fuel companies like to make it sound. Forgetting about renewables the capacity for charging is already there, in fact coal production is more feasible with EVs, and still gives a reduction in CO2 output.
A big thumbs down for the lies and misinformation in this video.
1. Rosie claims 10% of global CO2 emissions are from mining, "with over 90% of that from fugitive methane released during coal mining". First, she just confused methane and CO2. Doesn't she know the difference? Second, according to "Our World in Data" "Greenhouse Gas Emissions" chart, "Fugitive emissions from energy production" is only 5.8%. This includes all CO2 and methane from all types of energy production. Does she just make up numbers?
2. She compares the 12,750 Kg of fuel burned by a petrol vehicle with the 160 Kg of minerals used in an EV, and says that's 99% less mining. Surely she knows that in order to get 160 Kg of minerals, you need to mine at least 2 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE MORE ORE. In other words, you need to mine 16,000 Kg of ore (and overburden) to get that 160 Kg of purified, finished metals. This doesn't even take into account losses of materials from the manufacturing/fabricating processes. (I'm not including the recycling of batteries since it is only hypothetical, and not commercial reality at this point in time.) Petroleum extraction generally removes only the petroleum from the ground.
3. She talks very flippantly about increased mining being good for the planet since it reduces the amount of plant food (CO2) released. Plant food becomes people food through photosynthesis. Do a search for "Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth" to find an article on the NASA website about a study showing increased CO2 is 70% responsible for increased plant growth on earth. Also, interestingly, climate change is responsible for 8% of INCREASED plant growth. (Yes, the MSM and the IPCC are lying to you.) In reality, the climate is getting MILDER! High temperatures are NOT increasing. Low temperatures are increasing, primarily at night, in the winter, at higher latitudes. That's why the average temperatures are increasing. Also, severe weather is NOT increasing; that's just fear porn to convince you to give up your freedom and money to the elites.
4. She also talks about the efforts to decarbonize mining and material production with no consideration of real-world economics and pricing. It's easy to wave hands and pretend that all this will come about at no cost to anyone. In the real world, these things have costs, making poor people suffer. Poverty kills.
Bauxite mining for aluminum is atrocious.
All the fossil fuel fans conveniently leave out the missing engine block and transmission when they are whining about the EV batteries.
Kinda brings the EV to only slightly more emmisions to make, which is easily offset in their first couple of years of driving instead of a gas car.
@@tonystanley5337 It's still a complete nonsense to compare battery costs to lifetime fossil fuel running costs. I'm not saying a proper comparison would be in favour of fossil fuels, just that the comparisons offered are meaningless. And in my experience, it's the kind of conflation often made by idealogues (of whatever persuasion) to promote their divisive cause rather than to help identify a level-headed consensus. There are so many examples of this, from those who have spent decades running down nuclear power, to those who refuse to recognise gas as a transition fuel (though I'm glad to see you do seem to?) I suspect there is similar demagoguery behind the idea that "transmission" can replace storage, and I don't see how CCGT can stand in for 80% wind and solar, unless we are also talking of immense levels of standby redundancy. This seems to be the nature of the world today - selling stories for short term gain - and it's especially prevalent wherever financial interests have acquired significant political backing. It's not just the fossil fuel industry that employs self-serving PR.
I'm trying to find a source for the 8% number for the Olympic Dam Copper-uranium mine. That seems rather high for a single mine complex, could the number refer to something other than worldwide emissions?
I guess the problem is in what appears on the screen "worldwide", which is not what Rosie says 🤦♀️
Yes it's 8% of that mine, not worldwide. I can see that the graphics are misleading, sorry about that! The source should be in the description.
Earth: It was a nice place... while it lasted.
IMHO, comparing systems with figures of Life-cycle emissions might be more appropriate and accurate.
Still can be misleading with different life cycles and if some of the material will reduce external emissions (due to later recycling for example)
Hi Rosie will the ability to recycle all the minerals in renewable technology be able to be self sufficient and no longer be able to need to mine in the future ?
The growth rate is so high that it will be several decades before that question can be answered
Have you looked into sea bottom mining? Those nodules of the metals we need.
The environmental destruction of scraping the ocean floor seems hugely worse than digging a hole in the ground. You have to wreck a lot more seafloor than ground surface area to get the same amount of metal.
Carbon negative mining: Estibalitz Ukar, a research scientist at the Bureau of Economic Geology at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences is looking at injecting CO2 into ultramafic rocks to extract critical minerals, and store CO2 instead of emitting it.
Thank you, Rosie! I was wondering how are biofuels or hydrogen used in mining industry? How is heat used in the industry? Thank you!
What is the source for Figure 6, on emissions contribution by stage of copper mining? Thank you!
You should analyse the Saudi megapolis project Neom, and its largest settlement, THE LINE.
15:18 yeah… but…chocolate… come on! 🤤😂
Why does wind use so much copper when compared with other spinning generators, especially offshore? The extra cables required to spread your power plant across the entire county? 🤔
EVs aren't zero-emissions and the UK's advertising standards agency have banned them from claiming such. They are remote emissions. I think I'll start calling them REVs from now on.
What will you call them when the grid is 100% clean? That's the direction we're heading.
@@incognitotorpedo42 Nothing will ever be 100% clean. There are few to no concrete plans for most of the waste generated by "clean" energy.
There are huge wind turbine cemeteries filled with discarded blades nobody knows what to do with since most composite materials don't really have second life potential as anything else.
Solar cells may be hypothetically recyclable but most glass "recycling" projects end up as alternative concrete fillers or other crude disposal methods because it is prohibitively expensive if not impossible to purify silicon enough to use again in anything that requires high-purity silicon, like semiconductors such as PV cells if you want remotely decent yields and performance. We'll be dredging ocean floors and beaches for semiconductor-grade virgin silicon for decades to come.
Batteries may be (mostly) recyclable but total demand for the stuff is unlikely to stop growing and there will always be losses from fires, disasters, batteries going to landfills, etc. so the battery ecosystem will never achieve closed loop. All of the raw material mining will persist forever, albeit possibly at a reduced rate.
Pretty much every aspect of the "green revolution" has massive environmental impact somewhere else that isn't going to end any time soon if ever.
EVs will always be remote emissions at best. At worst, their battery can catch fire and release all of those yummy fluoridated battery compounds wherever they croaked and we are likely 50 years away from finding out how nasty exposure to this new modern-day hazard is.
@@incognitotorpedo42we currently live here as such it isn't emission free.
The vehicle ect has to be manufactured coke for steel and so on.
This is the real world you can't dream the future expecting it to be so.
What are your thoughts on phytomining?
You can see in the chart at 9:53 that gold about equals copper for total emissions.
It really surprised me too, how huge the emissions from gold are considering it's not doing any nearly as useful as copper is! It is a logarithmic scale so it's not as close as it looks, but still, it's a lot.
I still think that OCEANIC CARBON SEQUESTRATION AND STORAGE through electrolysis should be taken more seriously. There are research projects that show that this process can capture carbon from seawater combining it with calcium and magnesium, creating a byproduct which is basically lime. So you are using energy to produce lime and capture carbon in the process. And considering there is a much higher concentration of carbon in seawater than in the air, It seems to me it should be muh more energy efficient. Oh! and also, electrolysis produces the much needed green hydrogen too!!
So whats not to like? I would love to see a video from you Rosie about this topic. Maybe you can show us the low points of this method, a more realistic version, but also start a conversation about it, since the IPCC reports have already said that we are going to need some form of carbon capture to reach net zero.
Other than for any possible consideration of environmental impact, including emissions and waste, mineral mining IS totally sustainable over the entire life of the planet IF one can assume that all of humanity will have become extinct prior to all mineable resources having been fully extracted.
The infinity train sounds like it's breaking a law of thermodynamics lol. It must used a little bit of extra energy from somewhere else coming back up but it's a great idea.
It doesn't break any laws and not sure why you think so or what it is that you misunderstood there.
The Train rides down hill loaded and up hill unloaded.
So it needs to restore less potential energy as it weighs less going up hill.
Some of the potential energy of the mined material is turned into electricity in the process, which is later used to run the empty train up hill.
oh..no I thought the train was coming up loaded. If it's empty coming up then yeah that works.@@TBFSJjunior
@@NGC-7635
Ok.
There is also a 120ton Dump Truck in Switzerland running the same way.
eDumper on google. Going down hill fully loaded and up hill empty.
They charge the battery during work and don't need breaks down hill.
It does sound like that! Check out my full video on that idea for all the physics to show why it doesn't break any laws of thermodynamics. It's just in the idea phase, but it is not supposed to need any extra backup. The Antofagasta conveyor is a similar concept that does actually exist, and it generates surplus energy they can use for mining operations.
I will check that out, thanks :)@@EngineeringwithRosie
I have always thought that old mines should be filled with trees and sealed off. Forests grown for carbon removal, cut down and transported with electric trucks powered by renewable energy, then replanting the forest and repeat. Is this possible, how efficient would it be. In areas prone to bushfire I would think it is better than just having the trees just go up in smoke.
Interesting idea! I'd probably say maybe not whole trees since that's a bit of a waste of a good low carbon building material. But you could fill them with carbonates as a form of CCS.
Related issue: how is the steel needed for a wind turbine compare to the steel used to build an oil well?
Totally peanuts in overall emissions! Moreover, the steel is recycled in both cases at the end of the respective life cycles. However, none of the oil extracted by the well is ever recovered.
@@st-ex8506just the same with the coke required to recycle the turbine.
@@0Aus What coke? Turbines are not being recycled either in Columbia, or in Georgia!
Seriously, no coal is needed to recycle steel, which already contains the necessary proportion of carbon. Steel recycling is rather done in an electric-arc furnace. So you need electricity... possibly from wind mills... to recycled wind mills! A complete and virtuous cycle!
@@st-ex8506 yep the green steel dream.
Let me know when it happens. As for now scale?
🤣 we still use coke.
You decidedly know nothing of steelmaking!
Electric furnaces are used to recycle steel since the late 19th century!!!
Nothing new!
And even Aussie steel mills do not use coke for steel recycling for one simple chemical reason: coke is the agent reducing the iron ore into iron and then steel. Scrap steel is not iron ore, it does not need to be reduced, just melted!
Inform yourself!... It'll be less embarrassing than laughing at your own ignorance!
Phasing out fossil fuels != phasing out liquid hydrocarbon fuels
Very true, but can also be kind of misleading, depending on the intention.
For example we can replace fossil petrol with synthetic petrol from renewable energy, but for that we need 7 times ( 5 to 10 times) the energy. So we need 7 times the space, 7 times the amount of solar/wind plus efuel reactors, so probably more than 7 times the minerals than going electric.
Biofuel is also a non fossil option but it has a low EROI and it needs 190 times the land than solar + EVs.
So yes non fossil fuel liquid fuels will be part of the solution (in planes and ships, etc.), but going electric if possible is almost always the most cost effective and resource optimizing option.
Ships will probably mine to ammonia or some other fuel. In theory we could go back to wind for ships.
Short haul flights might move to green hydrogen, ammonia, or batteries. Long haul flights is harder. Either break flights into shorter legs or use synthetic fuels.
@@anywhereroam9698
True but ammonia is more toxic than carbon based fuels, so we might not want to open that can of worms
Thanks for the reply! It's a hot topic for sure : )
"we need 7 times the space, 7 times the amount of solar/wind plus efuel reactors, so probably more than 7 times the minerals than going electric."
Nuclear uses 400x less land than solar per kw. So the land use would go down by 393x. There is no limit to the amount of energy that can be produced from thorium. More than humans could ever use in a billion years.
"Biofuel is also a non fossil option but it has a low EROI and it needs 190 times the land than solar + EVs."
You are correct. The land use of biofuel is a serious issue. Nuclear methanol (for transport) and hydrogen (for stationary) solves that issue while using far less land than we already do.
"but going electric if possible"
Going electric in what sense? Most energy humans use is in the form of heat not electrical energy. Basically it's as pointless as a goal as you would expect governments to come up with.
@@TBFSJjunior
"Ships will probably mine to ammonia or some other fuel."
Ships will move to methanol not ammonia. There's no need to use wind to power ships we figured out how to split the atom.
"Short haul flights might move to green hydrogen, ammonia, or batteries."
Synthetic JP8 (methanol isn't suitable for aircraft)
"synthetic fuels"
Yup.
@@anywhereroam9698
Mount Rosey? Interesting...
Not to do with this video but something I hope you will have some knowledge of. I have read a number of articles claiming wind turbine are having erosion tissues within the first 2 years of operation, resulting in the surrounding area being sprayed with miro plastics which are highly toxic. Would like to hear your comments on this.
At rhe root all of this is premised on the notion that moderate global warming and higher co2 levels are bad.
Working in agricultural i can see with my own eyes that as co2 levels rise, food and commodity production per acre is flourishing. Definitely positive development. Also living at an upper latitude, higher temps mean not only can croos be grown further north, but overall living is much more pleasant.
Therefore i believe this irrational fear of higher co2 and temps is simply a tool being used to control and alter peoples behavior by the powers that be.
Talk to people that don't have your privilege of living at upper latitudes and whose crops are failing because of ever more frequent dry spells, talk to people living by the seashore, whose land and homes (and even whole country in the case of some island nations) are being taken away by the rising sea level, talk to people whose home, or fields, are being flooded over and over again by ever more frequent floods (yeah, more frequent floods AND more frequent droughts... but at different places), talk to people who lost their homes in ever more frequent forest fires...
Those people don't just believe, but KNOW, that things are changing, and changing faster and faster!
I also live at a latitude at which global warming is, perhaps, beneficial... my heating bill is decreasing just about every year... I can now save on winter tires for my car, snow having become a rare occurence... another degree or two, and I'll be able to plant a pasture or two with olive trees! But your case, or my case are definitely exceptions!
@@st-ex8506 Somebody better tell Obama that his multi million dollar seashore mansion is about to go under. Over it's geologic history sea levels have always risen and fallen over time. We need to adapt. In fact the geologic record shows that many times in Earth's history CO2 levels have been many multiples of what they are currently. In fact we're currently near the very bottom of where plants can live. Dropping below 180 PPM is the level where plants cannot live. So at 400, we are certainly not too high. Many geological records indicate that plant life thrives even up to 1600 PPM. Currently satellite imagery shows that the earth is greening as plant life benefits from modestly higher CO2 levels that have very slowly risen.
Further, how come the proposed "solution" always results in mankind becoming poorer and living a more uncivilized, primitive existence? In fact, the CO2 we are now releasing by burning hydrocarbons is merely putting the CO2 right back into the atmosphere where it came from before plants used it to grow, and thus become sequestered in the earth's crust. If the earth survivied before when the CO2 was in the atmosphere, how can putting some of it back lead to armageddon. I simply do not subscribe to this climate religion and it's sacraments of living cave man type existence.
I'm still holding out hope that "energy reduction" in stead of "energy transition" will for a large part solve the contradiction between global environment and local environment whereby you started the video. 15 min cities made of wooden buildings and interconnected through electrified public transport and extensive car sharing, heating and cooling grids, international HVDC super-grid, anti-waste food sovereignty (urban agriculture), LED lighting, rewilding... To some extent I believe that is something that the people actually want.
Electrification IS energy reduction, because electric devices are much more efficient than combustion devices. You don't have to replace the energy of a 25 gallon tank of gasoline when your EV gets effectively 140 miles to the "gallon" (electrical equivalent of a gallon of gas).
@@incognitotorpedo42incidentally, it is a part of an energy reduction strategy, but the point is that it is most often not the most direct way: abandoning an individualistic lifestyle for a more social one beats electrifying an individualistic lifestyle.
Engineering with Rosie, Just Have A Think, Undecided with Matt Farrell (an Aussie, Pom and Yank - no this is not the start of a joke); three youtubers that make me optimistic about the future.
Why do clever people talk fast? As an old boy I could say ; it won't affect me. But I care enormously and fear that social media has given the nay-saysa an enormous platform. I hope they lose out. I'm off to join your sponsor.Thought provoking, thanks.
Those who are against mineral mining are not true environmentalists but rather, many are paid on the side by fossil fuel groups and interests.
Anyone who doesn't want more mining needs to think of this: coal mining is 24/7/365 around the world because coal power plants have to burn coal 24/7/365 around the planet.
A mineral mine is different because once the minerals/metals are mined, they aren't burned up. Those minerals/metals last decades in batteries and can then be fully recycled.
You've drunk the kool-aid regarding 100% recyclable batteries. Go back and look more carefully. The degree of recycle recapture is economics driven, and would take decades to have an impact on demand for new battery resources. Dirty mining production will win out over dirty recycling, and no hydrometalurgical recycling is not without its own unsustainable biohazards in the form of many repeated acid baths. Tech waste debt isn't free. You have to account for the new problems you create with fundamental shifts. We're building 212kWh batteries, like they grow on tree, to power Hummer EVs to compact the ground and snuff out the remaining trees.
We write "paid", not "payed".
@@b43xoit Correct. Digital keyboards are awful.
A big thumbs down for the lies and misinformation in this video.
1. Rosie claims 10% of global CO2 emissions are from mining, "with over 90% of that from fugitive methane released during coal mining". First, she just confused methane and CO2. Doesn't she know the difference? Second, according to "Our World in Data" "Greenhouse Gas Emissions" chart, "Fugitive emissions from energy production" is only 5.8%. This includes all CO2 and methane from all types of energy production. Does she just make up numbers?
2. She compares the 12,750 Kg of fuel burned by a petrol vehicle with the 160 Kg of minerals used in an EV, and says that's 99% less mining. Surely she knows that in order to get 160 Kg of minerals, you need to mine at least 2 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE MORE ORE. In other words, you need to mine 16,000 Kg of ore (and overburden) to get that 160 Kg of purified, finished metals. This doesn't even take into account losses of materials from the manufacturing/fabricating processes. (I'm not including the recycling of batteries since it is only hypothetical, and not commercial reality at this point in time.) Petroleum extraction generally removes only the petroleum from the ground.
3. She talks very flippantly about increased mining being good for the planet since it reduces the amount of plant food (CO2) released. Plant food becomes people food through photosynthesis. Do a search for "Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth" to find an article on the NASA website about a study showing increased CO2 is 70% responsible for increased plant growth on earth. Also, interestingly, climate change is responsible for 8% of INCREASED plant growth. (Yes, the MSM and the IPCC are lying to you.) In reality, the climate is getting MILDER! High temperatures are NOT increasing. Low temperatures are increasing, primarily at night, in the winter, at higher latitudes. That's why the average temperatures are increasing. Also, severe weather is NOT increasing; that's just fear porn to convince you to give up your freedom and money to the elites.
4. She also talks about the efforts to decarbonize mining and material production with no consideration of real-world economics and pricing. It's easy to wave hands and pretend that all this will come about at no cost to anyone. In the real world, these things have costs, making poor people suffer. Poverty kills.
The comparison of mining required for EVs vs ICE cars isn't right. The numbers excluded AL and Fe, which are the vast majority of the car, particularly for ICE. When those are taken into account, instead of EVs being six times as much mining, they're more like 25-30% more mining. A huge difference. Cars are highly recycled already, and EVs will be extremely recycled due to the value of the metals in the battery. There is already a gigantic lithium ion battery recycling industry; it's here now. Mining may not be "sustainable" but cars will be largely a circular economy, so pretty sustainable.
When people argue that eliminating fossil fuels requires mining which can harm local environments and thus shouldn't be done I wonder if they also say the same thing about cancer and chemotherapy. Chemo is quite destructive to healthy cells but it's still good because of the larger problem that it's addressing. It would be nice if we didn't have to do any mining or chemotherapy and hopefully in the future that will be true.
The best solution is still for people to consume less and reduce their ecological footprint.
That is a good partial solution, but not nearly enough to make a change to climate outcomes.
@@EngineeringwithRosie It used to be that the 'best' solution was a war, particularly because it resulted in a sharp decline of males of reproductive age.
Unfortunately war is not effective at present, because of the staggering quantity of explosives expended daily.
@@chrisdsouza8685 Not to mention the kerosene burned in flying jet bomber airplanes around.
Mining could be much more responsible. It is a question of economically holding their feet to the fire. Corporations that fail to meet standards should be barred from mining in the future including members of their boards. Energy for copper; it is electrolytically refined which is very energy intensive. I am surprised it was not identified.
In Australia mining companies are held accountable.
Some of the controls in place not only cost a lot they also reduce productivity drastically.
I understand that recycling process of batteries will be the last nail in earth's coffin.
What makes you think that? Do you think battery recycling can't be done without destroying the biosphere? I suggest you visit a modern lithium ion battery recycling facility. Then visit a coal stripmine and a coking plant at a steel mill. Compare and contrast.
Wow - are you saying that 8% of all greenhouse gas emissions is from that one Billiton Olympic mine? If so that’s staggering!
No just 8% of that mine's emissions come from that source. The text overlay makes it seem like I mean global emissions. Id better blur it out so it's not so confusing.
As long as there are volcanoes. There will be a need to mine. Mining isn't going anywhere.
What do volcanoes have to do with it?
Another big issue is that we may need new mines in pristine areas - not many of them remaining.
There are actually a lot of pristine areas, in terms of fraction of the earth. Large parts of the US, Canada, Australia, Russia, and China/Mongolia are undeveloped.
@@incognitotorpedo42what percentage of the rivers in the USA can no longer support life?
To paraphrase a slogan from the 1990’s logging industry
Earth first!
We’ll mine the other planets later.
If people want to live in homes mining needs to exist
Per capita consumption of minerals must be reduced, EVs are a part of this as is public transport, better designed cities and (perhaps most controversially) a change in lifestyle habits.
2:56 Look at that graph of "demand for minerals", in which an EV is declared to use 6x more material than an ICE auto. *But wait... does that even make sense?* EV's are only a little heavier than an ICE auto. If you look at the key on the right of the graph you will see two important things are missing: 1) iron, 2) petroleum. Iron is used extensively in all autos and reducing iron ore is a big contributor to GHG emissions. And petroleum is used for all the plastics/synthetics that are now significant in autos. In reality, *any automobile, regardless of engine type, is a huge consumption of mined resources* . The only way out of this problem is to greatly reduce the use of autos, of any kind.
Indeed. Getting petroleum out of the ground is also mining. The graph is therefore misleading.
It's not six times the material, it is six times the minerals. I think it's because the elements being used to make EV batteries make up a smaller share of the rock than something like iron, meaning to get the more exotic elements you have to dig up a lot more of the minerals in question.
@@AlRoderick There are many twists and turns with this topic. I am glad there is a dialogue. I think your nuance is very important.
Cobalt is used to refine petrol. Current battery designs are using fewer rare minerals; research is pointing to Salt, Carbon, Sulfur, Iron chemistries on the horizon. All of which can be reused by our grandchildren...... where petrol gets used once.
You could reduce the weight and size the original mini was small and light the new one is big and heavy from 600 kg up to 1,250 kg over 1/2 the cars sold are huge SUVs and crew cab trucks to take kids to school, You got strange looks if you came to school in a car when I was a kid. Now 8.30 and 3.10 is like a monster truck grid lock.
@@AlRoderick But the refining of iron and aluminum, the two metals that were ignored, are both large CO2 emitters. Since the topic was mining in general, and the environmental cost thereof, we should consider all the materials in a car if we're comparing EVs to ICE. To say EVs are SIX TIMES "worse" than ICE is highly misleading. They involve maybe 25-35% more mining.
To save the planet humans will have to give up a lot of creature comforts, but I think necessity will take care of that one way or the other.
To save the planet humans will have to give up 90% of their population
No we don't. We just need to electrify and use clean power.
1. Yes "green" solutions still require mining, emmissions, environmental and social consequences. The point is they require LESS mining, emmisions, environmental and social consequences. When opponents complain about the materials for green solutions they always fail to balance a comparison with the materials for the solution they are replacing. Better is better even if it is not perfect.
2. "Green" solutions improve themselves. The more we adopt green solutions the greener it gets to make green solutions.
3. Of course we should put some resistance to new "green" solutions to ensure they actually are better. Why most environmental minded people are against hydrogen fuel transportation and carbon capture on energy projects. Because the math on these proposed solutions does not add up. But when we find green solutions that do decrease environmental harm, we need to make the move to the new solution.
4. If you really like to complain about the environmental impact of "green" solutions...then your only recourse is to adopt minimalism. You cannot complain about the harm of green solutions, then keep using the even worse fossil fuel solutions. Just stop consuming all things, then you can cut environmental harm from all solutions. If you are not willing to minimize your own consumption - then get on the bandwagon of green consumption and stop obstructing progress.
At least at this point, mining is essential to an advanced society. The question is how to do mining with as little negative environmental impact as possible. Mining traditionally exports most of the money from a region along with the minerals, leaving behind a ruined environment, sick people, and poverty when the minerals play out. We can and should do better. Meanwhile, the minerals EVs require tend to be high value. That is a big help to the recycling part of the equation.
Maybe what's needed is the opposite of an advanced society, which would be a retarded society [braces for cancellation].
If it can't be grown, it must be recycled.
I agree, but we are still using nearly all the lithium ion batteries, solar panels, wind turbines etc. So we'll need mining for a while yet.
And d making All the steel for all that
So , you appear to give a very rosy picture that the transition to net zero is just a tidy up of existing mining and refining practises. Then switch to a circular economy. What you don't address is the estimated requirement for battery backup of renewables which means at least 5-10 times more copper for interconnects and the batteries themselves. When you show an EV you just show your need 6x more stuff. But that stuff need to mining of 100 times that waste dirt to get to the 0.5% grade copper ore.
Actually she has already addressed this, and no we don't need that much backup. Also do you think they pump pure petrol out of the ground out back of the petrol station? No they have to extract impure crude oil and purify it with a very energy intensive, chemically complex and process, then use part of that energy to ship and truck the purified fuels all around the world to where they are used. And none of it can be recycled, ever. Renewables and EVs are vastly, vastly better than thermal fuels.
That train is a perpetual motion machine. We need more of those. This video is full of false comparisons and misleading summarizations.
It goes up empty and comes down loaded. No laws of thermodynamics are broken.
Copper where's out quickly
oh you said liters of fuel not gallons - still same question.
One thing I have been wondering is why are we not investing more in direct extraction of materials from sea water. That is where most of the magnesium in the world used to come from and every material on earth for better or worse ends up dissolved in the oceans at some concentration. Plus we have all this excess energy during the day from solar here and there is a bunch of stuff we should be doing more to filter out of the oceans.
I know the scale would be ridiculous and would obviously have its own environmental draw backs, but seeing the rare earth mine they opened back up in Germany is the most stupid thing I have ever seen.
Some are doing that, e.g. Magrathea is developing a process to extract magnesium from brines/ sea water. The reason it's not more widespread? It's usually not the most economic way.
PLAN ALL TREE
The big problem is consumer products are not made with recycling in mind. The minerals in our phone are in tiny amounts and realistically can not be recycled, or if they can be, it is not economic to do so. Those phones will be landfilled and all those previous molecules of metals are lost to mankind. Unless there are sweeping laws on the construction of all products, we'll have to endlessly dig and dig and dig, and thats not sustainable.
There are countries like mine (Switzerland), where any landfilling is simply outlawed... with one exception, clinker from our waste incinerators. But even for that, other solutions are being considered. Phones, as well as all other dead consumer electronic products are collected separately, as well as batteries, in separate containers, and recycled to the best they economically can. The same is done for glass, plastics, other type of packaging, paper/cardboard, as well as compostable waste.
I am not saying that it is perfect, but it is a pretty good start, and not even so difficult to organise. All rural communes, and all quarters in cities, have their collection point(s)... and people are pretty good at using them.
The incentive is simple: the collection of pre-sorted waste is free of charge, while unsorted garbage, which goes to incinerators, must be in special bags, which cost a couple of bucks each! So... a pretty good incentive to reduce the volume of unsorted waste.
@@st-ex8506 But how many phones are being recycled? The last time a looked into this it was very few, less than 5%, and even with those, the material being recycled as limited
@@markkelly4804 Worldwide, you are probably correct with that 5% figure.
It is unfortunate, but it is not the "fault" of the technology, but of a) too small a market (see below), and b) a lack of institutional attention to the problem... something that can be easily fixed, as the Swiss example shows (and, BTW, some countries are even doing much better than us at recycling), with very little investment... but significant public education! A deposit of, say $10, would be paid on each phone at purchase, and handed back when the dead phone is returned. That would create a small economy of millions of people chasing discarded phones, particularly in developing countries!
Anyway, let's consider the relative sizes of the issues at hand:
- 8.58 billion phones in the world, lasting an average 2.5 years, with an average 30 g battery. result: ca. 100'000 tons a year of waste batteries, of which only 5% get recycled. That's a lot, and we have to do better, no doubt about it.
- But let's consider 2 billion EVs, with each an average 50 kWh battery, weighing each 300 kg, with a lifetime of say 30 years. That would generate 20 MILLION tons per year of dead batteries, once the market is at steady-state. That is 200 TIMES bigger than the dead cell-phone battery tonnage will ever be!
And that is a pretty good explanation of why there isn't yet much of a market incentive to build battery-recycling plants, as very few EVs have yet reached their end of life, but why there DEFINITIVELY will be a huge incentive in the coming years!
That's right -- the whole process from end to end should be evaluated for cost/benefit ratio.
@@markkelly4804 My answer seemingly got lost. So, let's repeat the substance of it:
Few phones are indeed being recycled for the time being. It's a shame, but it's true.
However, the reason is that neither the problem, nor the business/industrial opportunity is big enough... YET!
8.6 billion smart phones in the world, with an average lifetime of 2.5 years (awfully short... I tend to keep my phones 4-5 years...) and an average battery of 30 g, equates to ca. 100'000 tons of battery waste per year. That seems a lot, but at the scale of the planet, it is peanuts! It does not justify even a single recycling plant per country, not even one for the entire US of A. Having said this, there are already some pilot plants doing it (Redwood Materials for instance), but they main business at this point is recycling batteries that are production reject.
However, by the time EVs will have reach "steady state", like phones already have, they will generate ca. 20 MILLION tons of en-of-life batteries per year. That is 200 TIMES more... and THAT is a huge business opportunity!
So, the reason of why there is little recycling today, and why there will be 100% recycling, at least of vehicle batteries, in the coming years is a question of relative scale of the business incentives for doing it.
Cement lasts a long time if you don't change it every 2 years like tar
Being 'green' has to include the disposal at end of life. Still waiting for a recycling/ reclamation factility for all these wind turbine blades, solar panels and EV batteries here in Aust!!!
Yeah, I'm still waiting for a recycling facility that will suck CO2 out of the air and put it back in the ground, and not break the bank. I'm not holding my breath. Why are you so stressed out about clean tech when you don't seem to care about oil rigs, refineries, leaking petrol tanks and the like? You must be an ideologue.
@@incognitotorpedo42firstly what you speak of is science theory not fact.
the emissions you speak off you are no doubt responsible for as well.
The resources made the world you live in just the same as us.
We must stop comparing ICE cars to EV cars in an effort to answer the question "are cars sustainable?" Your video is important for testing the actual viability of EVs in a zero emissions society. As the mining world actually attempts to scale to meet the insanely ambitious yet preposterous goal of a (disposable) Tesla for everyone forever, we also need to factor in the massive drain that a zero emissions mining/processing industry would have on the need for the world"s renewable energy resources. Put another way, if a mining hauler needs a battery fifty times the size of a Tesla and we need to continuously supply the ever expanding mining industry with such resources to build and power the haulers, at what point do we reach that epiphany that we have neither adequate immediate access to resources nor adequate time to pull off the destructive, herculean task; in a way that satisfies our privileged notion of business as usual with like for like cars as our transportation choice? At what point do we instead agree that while a return to horses and walking is not acceptable by this generation, our mobility choices of shared catenary electric trams,, trains, and high speed rail (for rare occasional long distance travel) are more rational choices of a civilization facing Climate Crisis? At what point do we actually admit that an e-bike requires 1/400th the battery of a Hummer EV, and given that consideration, and the fact that every gram of CO2 emitted today in creating our transitional mobility modes is a gram beyond our planetary boundary, we must resolve to stop aspiring to build those things we desire, and instead build the things that are actually sustainable, like a bamboo e-bike or a catenary driven electric tram that serves an entire community for generations without the need for relatively short lasting batteries or replacement rails or even full replacement of the tram cars.
It's time to actually design and transition to actual sustainable transportation modes instead of faux, unsustainable ones for one last generation. And, BTW, sustainable transportation experts understand this dilemma and absolute need for mode shift. It is the insistence of the car dependent and the car profiteers that they can be sustainable, that keeps us believing the false promise of BEVs as our future solution. We should never look to the car makers or EV pioneers as the prophets of sustainable tech. They have only half-hearted notions of the truly radical demands of a zero carbon emissions world, so their half-hearted choices are routinely rationalized, not unlike the way EV zealots rationalize EVs as sustainable by comparing them, in a straw man argument, to ICE.
You are obviously fundamentally correct! But the energy transition will not happen like that... because nobody or just about want it to happen like that. That transition will take time and happen in steps. EVs might not be the ultimate ideal, but they are a good first step that can happen... is happening within a generation lifetime or even less. And even then... millions of people are opposing that, and are still literally considering that they have a constitutional right to pollute. In some countries, in some regions, minds are starting to change... in others, they plainly are not.
Conclusion: opposing EVs, even for "good" reasons, is making sure nothing changes for another couple of decades in road transportation!
@@st-ex8506 I disagree with your conclusion and point to a prior false solution as evidence. We fought coal power plants and shut them down in many parts of the USA, celebrating the transition to natural gas power plants as they were described as a far cleaner solution. As early as 2011, the scientific community knew that fugitive releases of methane at fracking wells and across the supply chain and even at homes in residential settings made natural gas no less troublesome than coal for the climate. President Obama celebrated the oil and gas boom that made us the world's largest producer of fossil fuels. Now we must fight all over again to shut down natural gas plants/extraction/use, all because we lacked the foresight to describe the so-called "bridge fuel" as a terrible unsustainable solution. Bridge solutions play into the hands of those who fully understand the seriousness of the Climate Crisis, but who are unwilling to undergo radical change that is needed. EVs which have grown from 24 kWh battery sizes to 100, 135, and even 212 kWh in a span of a few short years are becoming less sustainable as we adopt them. The mining industry is already unable to properly address the demand which has stalled predicted battery and therefore EV price drops, and for many companies (if not all) delivering reasonably priced EVs and doing so without taking losses, has become increasingly harder. The Cybertruck missed all of it's intended design brief promises because batteries remained expensive. The EV revolution is starting to stall and it's directly related to resource supply.
Free market economics has encouraged a race to the bottom for skirting emissions responsibility as witnessed by global carmakers sourcing batteries and manufacturing entire production lines in China. IPCC rules demand that emissions inventories center on territorial point of origin emissions, so a Canadian Tesla built in China counts as Chinese emissions. This has allowed rich countries to offshore their growing car production emissions when producing EVs. The transition from lithium brine to spodumine alone created a 10x increase in lithium production, but policy and climate analysis failed to track that critical snag. As the Biden Administration's incentives to extract/refine/produce batteries and whole cars domestically, inspire massive new mining/refining/production efforts, we'll be exchanging ICE emissions for industrial emissions, with no plan to stop. The transition timing to a mythical circular economy where every new EV is built from a ground up old EV has been assessed and fails in time we have left vs. time needed for regulations and/or the free market to exercise that ambitious but flawed plan. EV zealots have a ton of blind sides, and I know this because I have witnessed their pitches and coverage on EVs every day for the last 15 years. I didn't arrive at this conclusion overnight. But understanding Life Cycle Assessment of cars/SUVs/pickups helps to quickly expose the flaws in a lasting EV society.
@@karlInSanDiego I have known everything about the NG "scam" for over 10 years. That was the type of academic papers I routinely read for my job. That is no news. My country, Switzerland, has also decommissioned ALL its gas-fired electric plants at least a decade ago.
Yes, methane leaks through the whole system makes NG a worse GHG offender than coal! Even if coal stays more polluting overall.
Now, have the US citizens been lied to by fossil-fuel lobbies... assisted by the government? Assuredly! At least, they never said that NG was clean, only that is was a transitional fuel away from coal.
As to mineral resources for batteries, do not worry! There is more than enough to transition the global road fleet several times over! Have you noticed that, despite EV sales reaching unprecedented heights, that the price of ALL metals are at a several-year low... and dropping? There is hardly a month that goes by without some new lithium, manganese, lanthanide, or other deposit being found, and new refining capacity coming on stream.
This story of "resource shortage" is FUD promoted by the lobbies who have (much) to gain at slowing down EV adoption. Don't tell me you fell victim of that FUD?!
BTW, battery manufacturing will be nearly 100% carbon-emission free with the decade. Large manufacturing groups often have policies that new plants must use 100% renewable energy. I was until last year project manager (I recently retired) for designing precisely such a plant for a global-scale French manufacturer.
While your point of view is most respectable... and not very different from mine as to its ultimate objectives, you are ill-informed to what is really going on in the industry. Just one example: you talked of the transition of lithium brine to spodumene mining for lithium production. While that was true in the last few years, it will be the exact reverse in the coming years, as huge lithium brine resources are being found in many countries, and totally innovative adsorption technologies developed. Well... those technologies are innovative in the case of lithium extraction, I have been using them for several other recovery processes for over a decade.
What about fertility reduction to reduce demand?
The developed world is below replacement fertility rates. Google "demographic collapse". If you want to suggest fertility reduction in Africa, where much of Earth's future population growth is expected, good luck, you'll need it.
Engineering with Rose Coloured Glasses. There are many technologies being tested but few have been applied with any level of viability. The reality is if it can't be grown or harvested then it has to be mined. This IS NOT going to change especially as most of the high grade deposits have been mined. Mining has to be sustainable otherwise the standard of living we currently enjoy is lost to future generations. Most of the solutions you mention are efforts to gain an improved ESG rating with little desire to actually apply the technology. The sites you are showing are small scale operations developed with little care for the environment. The Mining Industry I entered >45 years ago is very different from the industry that now supports our lifestyle. IN WA the actual area disturbed by mining is >>>1% of the area of Western Australia to provide >$250 Billion of export income. Farming and pastoral activities have severely impacted >45% of WA for
Welcome to today's Alberta. This bit about 99.9% reduction will fall on deaf ears, assuming the current provincial government allows those electro-magnetic waves to penetrate the province, both e and sound to even reach our ears.
We could also use less stuff and less energy #degrowth
Good summary, 👍, good work.
May I suggest one way is heavy on fossil fuels and financing and resources.
World wide it is impossible.
5 to 7 times more electricity means 5 to 7 times more national electrical grid capacity.
Australia has 1million klm of national grid and 20million buildings, customers.
ALL CENTRAL ELECTRICITY GENERATION needs a grid to the millions and millions of customers.
Iron ore and coal and copper and zinc to build the bigger grid capacity. CO2 emissions exploding with mining and smelting and refining and rolling and manufacturing and fabrication and galvanising and construction projects.......
Hello 👋 do the calculations.
The world's electrification is a bigger problem.
EV big batteries and rooftop solar PV DOES NOT NEED A bigger grid.
Sodium batteries production has started.
EV big batteries are 'free' with the vehicle and recyclable.
Rooftop solar PV panels silicone glass and aluminium is recyclable.
You are correct that decentralized solar is an excellent solution to charge EVs. I know, I have both. I have also visited a village in Kenya, who could only afford, as the sole transportation mean for the all village, a single electric van, which they could recharge from their solar installation. No way they could a) be connected to any grid, and b) afford fuel for a petrol or diesel van!
But EVs are NOT going to multiply electricity demand by 5 or 7 times! Should, by some miracle, 100% of the world's car fleet (ca. 1.5 billion cars) go electric tomorrow, it would increase electricity usage by... ca. 11%!!! Not 11% per year, 11 % total! Due to the much higher prevalence of cars in the USA, their larger average size, and the higher mileage driven than the world's average, the US grid's overall generation would have to grow 25% (again, not per year, but total over the next 20 years) to accommodate a 100% electric car fleet!
You have a total wrong order of magnitude in mind!
The electric grids' capacity extension due to the electrification of the road transport fleet is LESS, than that required in predominantly the 60s, and 70s in the USA by the adoption of air conditioning in most homes and buildings! Our forefathers managed that growth then. We couldn't manage something of much lesser amplitude today??? Furthermore, EVs tend to be charged off-peak, during the night, while A/C peak consumption tends to be at the worst possible time, or just about!
@st-ex8506 you have missed my point.
Electric energy is only a small part of the total energy used in a developed country.
If 100% electric and no fossil fuels, then the amount of electricity needed is huge.
Electric vehicles are only a small part of future demand as ICE vehicles are traded in for EV vehicles.
The bigger amount of electricity means more grid capacity.
I am saying 5 to 7 times electricity to replace all fossil fuels.
@@stephenbrickwood1602 Ok, fair enough!
But still, the electric energy needed in a zero fossil fuel economy is not at all as huge as anticipated. The reason is that the energy efficiency of many processes (home heating, for instance, road transportation... but of that, we have already discussed9, can be improved by a factor of 3 or more by going from fossil fuel to renewable electric.
However, such a scenario does indeed need much more than 10 or even 25% additional power generation... I fully agree. But NOT 5-7 times!
Ir is possible to replace ALL energy by solar + wind + storage (batteries or pumped hydro... which is cheaper and has a HUGE potential) + nuclear for the countries that have that capacity (new nuclear makes little or no economic sense) + hydro , geothermal and others where it makes sense.
I recommend reading RethinkX Energy report, or one of their YT video: th-cam.com/video/fsnkPLkf1ao/w-d-xo.html
Sure, it also means more transportation capacity... but it does not need to happen next year, it can be phased in over a couple of decades... A not insignificant effort, but totally feasible... the needed investments being even less than business-as-usual, and the grid growth rate less over the next two decades than it was during the 60s and 70s!!
@st-ex8506 good facts, you are a thinker.
My main concern is a push for nuclear dominating the existing national grid.
Renewables on the grid, including rooftop solar PV, to millions and millions of EV big batteries and conflicting with the rigid nuclear electricity generation plants.
Nuclear generation that needs government disaster insurance and government guaranteed cash flows and are too big to fail.
More grid construction requires more CO2 and mining, etc.
Selfplug-in EV ( V2G ), in the millions and millions and millions, most parked 23hrs every day, with sodium batteries or similar recycled technologies, will be a huge amount of storage daily.
In fact, if you do the maths cheap rooftop solar PV and EV, big batteries will show that offgrid is a very realistic possibility for most of the year.
A little fossil fuel in an emergency would not be a problem.
Fossil fuels as feedstock to the chemical industry will remain part of life.
Nuclear can not be a big part of the world energy solution. It is economically dangerous.
@@stephenbrickwood1602 I am glad we largely agree!
Still a few comments, though:
- Rooftop solar for individual houses is not that cheap... not because of the panels, but because of the installation. Ground-mounted panels are much cheaper to install (that's what I have) as my house is an over 200 years old French farmhouse, and solar panels would look awful on its roof. . Bifacial panels can even be mounted vertically, and serve a second use as a fence. The lowest-hanging fruits are large flat roofs.
- More grid construction indeed generates CO2 emission and other impacts... like ALL human activities. However, the lifetimes of such power lines, transformers, etc are very long (50 years, sometime 100 years), so the impact per kWh transported is utterly peanuts.
- I have my reservations as to any massive use of vehicle's batteries in V2G applications... and so has Elon Musk, BTW.
My point is that vehicle batteries are much more expensive than stationary grid-storage batteries. They have a completely different, and much more demanding set of requirements. Their lifetime is generally dependent on the number of full charge-discharge cycles they perform. Suppose an expected useful lifetime of, say, 2000 cycles. The average US driver would go through approximately one such full cycle per week, giving the battery a 38 (!) year expected lifetime! more than enough, I would say! But if it is used every day through, say, half a cycle for V2G applications, then its lifetime would come down to 8.5 years, which is unacceptably low! A compromise between those 2 extremes could be acceptable... The grid operator will obviously compensate the vehicle owner for the service, but at a price that is likely to be indexed to the costs of stationary batteries, NOT of mobile ones! Will it be enough to fully compensate (including some fair profit margin) the early replacement of the battery? So, you see, using car batteries to give storage capacities to the grid is not without its negatives!
- Being off-grid is a VERY complex endeavor... definitely not any realistic objective for the majority. I'd rather consider so-called "community grids"!
- Obviously oil (mainly) will stay an important feedstock for the chemical industry... but then, while still "fossil", it is no more a "fuel". And BTW, there is much research on bio-sourced plastics, such as PEF to replace PET in bottling for example.
- I agree that NEW nuclear should not be built, but am adamant that existing nuclear should be kept as long as it stays safe and economic, as it will greatly help and hasten the transition to renewables, by delaying the needs to add storage. A unit of battery storage capacity will be much cheaper in 5 years, or in 10 years than next year!