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In this recent presentation, as speaker of the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK), Prof Simon Michaux does the math on what’s required, on the mineral side, to completely phase out fossil fuels. He presents an actual picture, taking the latest developments and future-tech scenarios into account, such as battery backups, hydrogen as energy storage, solid state batteries, recycling and even an hypothetical increase of +100% in efficiency for solar and wind technology.
His findings are sobering: there is no scenario where a complete transition is even remotely feasible. There are simply not enough minerals available, and even if there were, it would take hundreds of years to mine them and the required growth in mining capacity would severely impact nature.
For example, it would take 745 years to open up enough new copper mines to mine the copper required to achieve net zero with an 84 day backup power; with a very conservative 12 day backup power, it still takes 254 years. That is: when there is enough copper to mine in the first place; which there isn’t. For other renewable-tech minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite and vanadium, his findings are similar (or worse).
He ends the presentation concluding that net zero is clearly impossible, and that the math he uses is pretty basic, so the impossibility should be known to the planners within net zero.
Michaux held his presentation at the Navigating Nuclear workshop held in Leighton Hall, University of NSW Sydney on 13 May 2024. Professor Simon Michaux is leading global research into the role of minerals in a circular economy, is currently based at the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK), Finland, and previously based at University of Queensland. Simon plans to transform our relationship between energy, minerals, and industrialization to achieve sustainable societal consumption of materials