Is Zero Carbon by 2050 attainable?

The UN Paris Agreement demands that humanity must reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of this century. British Prime Minister Theresa May has committed the UK to attain this goal by 2050, making Britain the first major economy to do so. Some significant changes are happening already – new coal-free records are being set every week and diesel and petrol cars are set to be phased out by 2040. Established zero-emissions technology such as wind and solar power are all rapidly growing.

How realistic are these goals, however? Unfortunately politicians promise great things without a passing thought to the fact that to attain these goals will put enormous demands on what are very finite resources of raw materials.

Phasing out of the internal combustion engine is a very worthwhile aim, as petrol and diesel vehicles are a major source of pollutants and greenhouse gases, but electric vehicles do not grow on trees- they need substantial amounts of metals and non-metals, all of which have to be mined.

Ten years ago China had no electric cars, but last year sales reached over 1 million and are climbing rapidly. It is projected that by 2050 there will be around 1 billion more electric cars in the world than there are now. Each car will need around 80 kg of copper, and add to this copper in electric lorries and buses, and around 20% extra copper would need to be mined annually.

Although there are adequate reserves of copper, the latest analysis by Bank of America Merrill Lynch suggests that new copper developments will not swamp the market and create oversupply any time soon. Average mine grades fell from 1.31% in 2000 to 0.94% in 2018, raising operating costs and slowing the enthusiasm to develop new mines. This has been exacerbated by the low esteem in which the industry is currently being held, inhibiting capital investment, and the need to obtain social licenses to operate (Is mining facing its second existential crisis?).

But there is much more to electric vehicles than just copper. The lithium-ion battery is the heart of an EV and the figures below show estimates of the commodities in a typical battery pack, and how the demand on commodities would change if all cars became electric by 2050.



Source: UBS Estimates

Currently around 45,000 tonnes of lithium are produced annually, from hard rock ores containing spodumene and petalite, and from lithium brines. Reserves are estimated at about 16m tonnes but production will need to be significantly ramped up to satisfy demand, and potential new areas of operation, such as the lithium brines in Cornwall, are being evaluated.

Cobalt is an essential element in EV batteries, but unfortunately around 60% is from the politically unstable Democratic Republic of Congo and Roskill estimates that 16.5kt of cobalt was produced by illegal artisanal mining in the DRC last year, much of it involving children and accounting for many fatalities. As such, artisanal production accounted for roughly 15% of the country’s cobalt output.

It has been estimated that a 20% increase in UK-generated electricity would be required to charge the EVs to be driven in the UK. This, and all electricity, would have to be generated mainly by non-fossil fuels if a zero carbon footprint is to be attained, although expensive carbon-capture and storage could be used for electricity generated by natural gas. 

Wind power gives many the impression of getting something for nothing, but of course that is not the case. Construction of a wind turbine requires a great deal of energy and there is also an environmental factor, not least involving the construction of the concrete foundation, as the cement industry is one of the world's greatest emitters of CO2.

The heart of the wind turbine is the nacelle and inside it carries the technology required for converting kinetic energy into electricity. Hence it is the most complex component, made up of a series of elements which are widely differing in nature. Each of these elements has its own associated technology and manufacturing processes. Copper is a critical metal, and is used in high quantities but a crucial component within the nacelle of large turbines is the powerful direct-drive permanent magnet generator, which contains a critical rare earth element, neodymium. Neodymium is commonly used as part of a Neodymium-Iron-Boron alloy (Nd2Fe14B) which is used to make the most powerful magnets in the world. It has been used in small quantities in common technologies for quite a long time – hi-fi speakers, hard drives and lasers, for example. But only with the rise of alternative energy solutions has it really come to prominence, for use in electric vehicle and wind turbines. A direct-drive permanent-magnet generator for a top capacity wind turbine would use around 2 tonnes of neodymium-based permanent magnet material.

 Neodymium is found mostly in monazite and bastnaesite. Due to the fact that these minerals also contain lanthanides and other rare earth elements, it is difficult to isolate neodymium and it is an energy intensive and potentially environmentally harmful process, carried out mainly in China, by far the world's greatest source of rare earth metals.  Leaching  involves acid or sodium hydroxide at high concentrations, producing potentially hazardous wastes. Separation, concentration and recovery all  require much energy either for the process itself or for the reagents in the process. Monazite and basnaesite are associated with radioactive actinides such as thorium and uranium and safe disposal of these wastes is problematical.  So when you look up at a huge wind turbine, it is not as 'green' as often made out to be.

Solar power is also dependent on finite resources, all the photovoltaic systems currently on the market being reliant on 'hi-tech metals' such as high purity silicon, indium, tellurium, gallium, often referred to as 'critical' because of their recovery being dependent as by-products of the mining of other metals, such as zinc, or due to their natural scarcity.

Nuclear energy is the preferred option for many people. It is carbon free, but since Chernobyl it has been side-lined by many countries as a potentially very hazardous operation with no really acceptable means of disposing of the eventual waste.

In an ideal world we would like a single energy source which would convert limitless fuel into vast amounts of energy, drastically reducing the costs of metal extraction and thus easing the supply of the commodities needed to satisfy society as it moves into the 4th Industrial Revolution. This Holy Grail of energy exists, the science is well understood, but the engineering problems are immense. Just over 4 years ago I wrote about the quest to contain nuclear fusion, a carbon-free process that produces four times more power than nuclear fission, with no waste disposal problems, and a fuel, isotopes of hydrogen, which is abundant (Is the end of the world of mineral processing nigh?).

Despite billions of dollars having been thrown at it, fusion’s imposing challenge has not yet been met. For atoms to fuse, a huge amount of energy must be generated. As such, materials must be developed that can withstand hundreds of millions of degrees. To create fusion energy, light nuclei of deuterium and tritium are fused within high-pressure, high-temperature plasma, which is contained by a magnetic field. As yet, scientists haven’t refined this magnetic confinement efficiently enough to reach a break-even point – where the energy output equals the energy input.

But immense amounts of money have been expended by various companies. Lockheed Martin claimed 5 years ago that its compact fusion reactor, which will fit "on the back of a truck" and produce a 100 MW output, enough to power a town of 80,000 people, would be developed and deployed within 10 years. The company claimed that the key to the success of its reactor concept lay in a magnetic bottle that withstands 150 million-degree temperatures while offering 90% size reduction over previous concepts.  Lockheed Martin's plan was to build and test a compact fusion reactor in less than a year with a prototype to follow within five years, operational reactors being available in 10 years time.

Lockheed Martin registered a patent in March last year, but no further information is available, but in France construction has begun on a $20 billion dollar fusion reactor ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor). This is the most advanced fusion reactor in the world, but is many years away from providing a source of fusion energy.

Construction of ITER

Limitless energy generated by fusion will eventually happen but maybe not this century? But never underestimate the ingenuity of man; if great minds get together to solve a problem there is a fair chance that they know that the problem can eventually be solved. There are great parallels between fusion and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.  The science behind the LHC experiment is fairly simple, but the engineering problems are immense, but were overcome despite much opposition.

In an excellent article in The Times (July 1st 2019) Science Editor Tom Whipple evokes the spirit of the Apollo moon landings, showing what humans can achieve when they put their minds to it. Putting a man on the moon 50 years ago was a staggering, almost impossible, feat of engineering, considering the computing power then available, but the USA threw 4% of the federal budget at it and achieved the impossible. As Whipple observed, landing on the moon was not impossible, as President Kennedy would not have called for it eight years earlier. Engineering problems, no matter how formidable, can be overcome, just as 25 years before the moon landing the Manhattan project, working on the basis of a "simple" scientific equation, utilised the best brains available and limitless funds to develop the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, a feat which is even now beyond the capabilities of most countries.

British Chancellor Philip Hammond has said that achieving a target of zero carbon would cost the UK £1tn and could thus require spending cuts to public services. Whipple concludes by saying that if governments can intervene at scale for a largely symbolic mission to a barren rock, then surely we can do the same to try to save what life remains on our own rock? To paraphrase the famous line from Kennedy's 1961 speech, which global leader has the guts to say "A sun on Earth before the next decade is out"?

I have made a note in my diary to come back to this posting in 10 years time! In the meantime, the issues discussed above are very relevant to two MEI Conferences next year: Sustainable Minerals '20 in Falmouth in June, and Hi-Tech Metals '20 in Cape Town in November of that year.

Twitter @barrywills