The transition metals needed to power net-zero

The transition to a net-zero world relies heavily on mining raw materials for new green technology

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By Katie Burton

I think it’s really important that we are using more of the periodic table than we’ve ever used before,’ says Kathryn Moore, senior lecturer in critical and green-technology metals at the University of Exeter. It’s a side-effect of the move towards low-carbon technology that she doesn’t think everyone has fully grasped. ‘Too often, the conversations are polarised – mining is bad, environment is good – but if we want a low-carbon transition, we’re essentially replacing fossil-fuel extraction with mining and I think we need to be really candid about that.’ 

This predicted increase in mining arises from the fact that almost all low-carbon alternatives (electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels) require a plethora of raw materials, some of which humanity has dug up for decades, if not centuries (think gold), and some of which are relatively new to our coffers. Many of these substances have now been officially dubbed ‘critical raw materials’ – meaning that they’re both necessary for development and come with serious supply issues. 

Different bodies use different lists for which materials are ‘critical’ – the European Commission’s includes antimony, beryllium, cobalt, fluorspar, gallium, germanium, graphite, indium, magnesium, niobium, platinum-group metals, rare earth elements (REEs), tantalum and tungsten. They are critical because the UK and the EU are almost wholly dependent on imports of these materials, some of which come from just one or a handful of countries. China, for example, accounts for 98 per cent of the EU’s supply of REEs and South Africa 71 per cent of the EU’s platinum needs. (REEs alone are used in the screens of smart phones, computers and flat-screen televisions; the motors of computer hard drives; the batteries of hybrid and electric cars; and new-generation light bulbs.)

Of course, the ideal situation would be to recycle these raw materials, extracting them from the technology already in existence and minimising the need to dig them up. The Royal Society of Chemistry for one is heavily promoting better recycling of technology. However, even with significant improvements in recycling, it won’t be enough for the initial stages of the clean-tech revolution. There simply aren’t enough products ready to be recycled at this stage and recycling rates are wholly inadequate to meet demand (recycling rates for most critical raw materials stand at less than one per cent). Andrew Bloodworth, policy director and interim chief scientist at the British Geological Survey (BGS) explains further: ‘We’re in a world where demand is increasing, so even if we were 100 per cent efficient at reusing those metals, there isn’t enough.’

The quantities that will be needed in the coming years will vary greatly. Some materials are used in such tiny quantities that even a huge increase in demand won’t require many new mines. But in other cases, the quantities are significant. For example, the UK wants all new cars to be electric from 2030, but to switch those 31.5 million petrol and diesel vehicles over to a battery-electric fleet would take an estimated 207,900 tonnes of cobalt – just under twice the current annual world cobalt production. 

According to the Natural History Museum, there are about a billion cars in the world. By 2050, there will be two billion. For those two billion cars to be electric, annual production of neodymium and dysprosium (both REEs) would have to increase by 70 per cent, copper output would need to more than double and cobalt output would need to increase at least three and a half times for the entire period from now until 2050 to satisfy the demand. A recent World Bank report noted that: ‘It would be reasonable to expect that all low-carbon energy systems are more likely than not to be more metal intensive than high-carbon systems. In fact, all literature examining material and metals implications for supplying clean technologies agree strongly that building these technologies will result in considerably more material-intensive demand than would traditional fossil fuel mechanisms.’

Mining, therefore, is set to play a big part in humanity’s future and importing materials from around the world will be essential. All of this means open discussions about the practice are increasingly necessary, and serious thought about the environment, ethics and human rights must be at the forefront. Wishing mining away won’t work. 

The future of mining

Some people are fairly optimistic about the future of mining. While acknowledging its often devastating history, both for people and planet, they note that it can and has improved. ‘I think there are a few hugely positive changes happening,’ says Moore. She points in particular to the EU’s Conflict Minerals Regulation, which came into force in January 2021. The regulations seek to stop ‘conflict minerals and metals’ from being exported to the EU and to prevent global and EU smelters and refiners from using them. Conflict materials include those extracted in politically unstable areas where armed groups use forced labour to mine them. Tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold (collectively known as 3TG) are all covered by the regulations. ‘It’s not idle talk, it’s not just pen pushers working on this,’ continues Moore. ‘There are NGOs and semi-governmental organisations that are working on the ground with artisanal miners, small-scale miners and even with larger-scale miners to actually put in place the infrastructures and agreements so that sellers can go direct from their site to an authorised buyer.’

For his part, Bloodworth is keen to emphasise that the required quantities of many of these materials aren’t as high as might be thought. ‘Platinum is a good example,’ he says. ‘You need platinum for hydrogen fuel cells and it’s produced at about 400 tonnes a year, but that’s a very small amount considering we produce a billion tonnes of iron and steel a year or about 50–60 million tonnes of aluminium. So, really, these metals that we need for all these low-carbon technologies are still going to be produced in relatively few places in relatively small quantities. It’s not like we’re going to be digging up the whole planet after these things. We’re really digging up the whole planet after things such as copper, aluminium and iron – and coal, quite honestly. Still, the largest single commodity we mine from the Earth’s crust, other than construction material, is coal.’

Nevertheless, both Moore and Bloodworth acknowledge that big structural issues will pose problems for the green-tech transition. For starters, we dig up these materials for low-carbon technology, but processing them is very carbon-intensive. To produce the useful metal from the ore dug from the ground, it must first be transported to a smelter. Smelting involves heat and some kind of reductant – usually carbon-based and therefore carbon-emitting. ‘There are other ways, other technologies around solvent extraction, for example, that do offer the possibility of decarbonising some metal production,’ says Moore. ‘But it’s a major challenge for the industry, which is being addressed – although probably not quickly enough.’ 

Transport also adds up. Materials might be shipped from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to China for smelting, to Germany for refining and then to the UK for manufacture into a car battery, all in a carbon-intensive way. And it’s this globe-trotting that ensures the other big structural issue when it comes to the ethics of the industry. Simply put, those who dig up the materials tend to receive the lowest pay-out, ensuring that resource-rich countries such as the DRC (rich in cobalt) remain relatively poor. 

Mining countries are well aware of this and know that one option would be for them to do more processing themselves. At a meeting of the DRC Africa Business Forum in November 2021, hosted by Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo, the country’s president, it was noted that: ‘The DRC supplies about 70 per cent of the world’s cobalt used in the production of batteries, an essential component to power electric vehicles and to store energy in solar- and wind-energy systems. The country is locked in the lower end (mining and mineral processing) of the value chain, capturing only three per cent of the global battery and EV value chain.’ The prime objective of the event was ‘to help change the fortunes of the Congolese people and those of other African countries by adding more value to their endowments in battery minerals including cobalt, copper, lithium, manganese, nickel and graphite.’

Patience Mususa, a senior researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute, focuses particularly on mining in Zambia (the country is a major producer of copper and cobalt). She notes that the new head of state has explicitly pointed to mining as an answer to the economic crisis caused, in part, by Covid-19. ‘The expectation now is that because of this green transition, this increased demand, we’ll see a sustained period of mining activity. And, in practice, in Zambia, there’s been an increase in exploration activity.’ 

Not all of this has been welcomed by everyone, however. Mususa also points to ongoing debates around new mining activity in the Zambezi Basin, highlighting the fact that even if new mines don’t cover a vast area, the resulting environmental damage can still be significant. In March 2022, the Zambian government approved a proposal to open the Kangaluwi open-pit copper mine, despite the fact that it’s located in the middle of the Lower Zambezi National Park, a wildlife haven. The project is being carried out by Mwembeshi Resources, a subsidiary of Zambezi Resources, an Australian Stock Exchange-listed company, and although proponents argue that it will bring jobs to the community, the highest estimates of the number of jobs promised are for just 300 employees, none of whom legally have to come from the local area.

In reality, restructuring the economics of mining is a huge and daunting task. For Moore, the notion that some African countries could take on more of the supply chain is particularly encouraging. ‘That’s really exciting for me, because if you’re trying to reduce inequality, you also need to try to reduce some of the shipping of these raw materials,’ she says. But she knows that it will take nothing short of a total transition in the global economic system. ‘If you want to improve equality, and if you want to mitigate environmental damage, then we need a wider discourse about a new type of globalisation – a more equitable type of globalisation.’

What the west will do

For Western countries, the big mining questions centre less on making more money from mining operations and more on securing supply of vital resources. The very fact that the amounts of each material required are still relatively small compared to other commodities means that they tend to become concentrated. If something goes wrong in a producing country – a natural disaster, civil conflict or even a trade dispute – supply chains can be severely disrupted. 

According to Bloodworth, a country such as the UK has three options: mining more at home, recycling more and understanding the global pinch-points when it comes to imports. It will need to do all three to secure supply. The UK isn’t alone in considering these options. A project run by the Natural History Museum and six UK universities is working to explore untapped reserves of cobalt in Europe, including in Poland, Greece, Macedonia and Kosovo. Currently, less than 0.1 per cent of cobalt is produced within Europe, yet European countries use around 30 per cent of globally produced cobalt. This is something it would like to change. In 2021, the European parliament responded to a proposed action plan on critical raw materials. Outlining the parliament’s ideas, MEP Hildegard Bentele from Germany mentioned a strengthening of the European Raw Materials Alliance, new initiatives regarding storage and recycling and, crucially, ‘casting around for materials’ at home. 

Nevertheless, given that no-one denies that imports will still be essential, Bloodworth notes that it’s really about collating information. He argues that the UK’s needs ‘require us to have a trade policy that’s quite open. And it requires us to really understand the vulnerabilities in those trade routes.’ The BGS has a big role in advising the UK government on these issues. ‘It’s not just knowledge about where that material is being mined in the world; it’s also knowledge about where it’s being refined.’

Being aware of the issue seems to come up again and again in these conversations. ‘Green technology’ sounds ideal, but as Richard Herrington, the Natural History Museum’s head of earth sciences has made clear: ‘Society needs to understand that there is a raw-material cost of going green.’

It’s something Moore feels particularly passionate about and, more than anything, it’s the message that she wants to convey. ‘As demand for some of these metals increases, the problem isn’t going to go away,’ she emphasises. ‘We’ve got quite used to exporting our environmental obligations elsewhere; we’re quite happy for someone else to produce the material that goes into our mobile phone or electric car. We’re not really always making that connection between a hole in the ground that somebody has to work in and look at.

‘I’m not saying mining is a bad industry,’ she concludes. ‘It’s got a bad record but I firmly believe that it can be done in a sustainable way that minimises damage to the planet and that will enable us to transform our economy. Because we need very urgently to move to net zero.’