No. of Recommendations: 5
These are valid considerations, but I think the IEA article is way too pessimistic. We are not going to convert to mostly electric transportation overnight, it is much more likely to take 15-20 years.I think that this is a good point, particularly because we tend to project only a subset of all variables forward when we make projections. In this case the article projects the use of copper forward, but it does not project how technology can change over long periods of time. Similarly projections only a couple of decades ago were extremely critical of solar power ever being cost effective, but the technology kept improving, so the equations were completely different further down the track.
The article talks about mineral demand for use in EVs and battery storage growing 30-40 times, framing the question in a way that sounds alarming, but the real question is, what do these extra mineral requirements for EVs and storage add to the existing demand for these minerals, not just from EVs and storage but from all other uses?They did address that, and stated it as reaching about 60% over total present global demand, in a fairly aggressive scenario of half of all cars becoming EV. If the requirement for copper increased by 60% even tomorrow, I think the copper would still be supplied and it would just be more expensive, but if that happens over 20 years then we are not talking about a radical increase in demand. So yes, the tone was alarmist but they were essentially verifying that we have plenty of copper.
If the mineral costs really get expensive, they can also be recycled from the EV:
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-well-can-elect...Of course, 10 or 20 years down the track, the technology will look a lot different to how it does today, just as EV technology looks completely different today than it did in 2004.
- Manlobbi
