The Depletion of Non-Renewable Abiotic Resources - Thanatia: The Destiny of the Earth's Mineral Resources - page 15

doped NdFeB magnets are recommended as a palliative substitution, since
samarium is cheaper and does not lose its magnetism at high temperatures.
Beyond the case of rare earths, it is worth analysing the more familiar case of
copper which is considerably scarcer than REE. Its reserves to production ratio
is only 35 years as will be seen later in Chap. 13. Therefore it makes sense to
comprehensively evaluate the impact of copper on wind energy technologies because
in fact, electric grids and motors use, in general, large amounts of copper for their
transmissions and windings. García-Olivares et al. (2012), estimate some 2.7 tonnes
of Cu per MW installed in a conventional wind farm are required. In an offshore
wind farm, these values soar and depending on the length of the transmission line
to the coast can reach anything as high as between 8 to 15 t/MW.
Furthermore, it is estimated that for an overall renewable electricity solution
of 11.5 TW by 2030 (broken down into 51% wind power, 40% concentrated solar
power and 9% hydroelectricity) the amount of copper required for both the motors
and the transmission lines would be in the order of 221 Mt. (García-Olivares et al.,
2012) 19 . Considering that the world's current economically exploitable reserves are
550 million tonnes, this effectively means that 40% of these reserves (i.e. the equi-
valent of 14 years of global production) would be used solely in the renewable sector.
If one were then to add the copper demand corresponding to the electrification of
the transport sector, nearly 60-70% of all world reserves would be used. This strong
demand may then mean that Cu prices reach values similar to that of the precious
metals such as silver 20 .
1.5 The shortage of strategic elements. An international problem
The criticality of some of the minerals mentioned above has been recently underlined
by different international organisations as a grave concern. A key report is the 2010
Critical Raw materials for the EU (EC, 2010) which defines a raw material as
critical when the risk of supply shortage and its economic importance for the EU
is considerably higher than that for other raw materials. EU supply risks are often
linked to the fact that world production for key elements is concentrated in only
a few countries 21 and that such elements either have poor or low substitutability
and recycling rate. In that report, two types of supply risks are considered, those
relating to the political-economic stability of the producing countries and those
correlating to a country's weak environmental performances that could indirectly
endanger the supply of materials. In total a group of 41 raw minerals and metals
were analysed (Fig. 1.5).
19 Note that the current values of renewable electricity are 2 TW from a total 12.5 TW (2010
figure).
20 A viable alternative is the use of aluminum power lines. In this case, only 1.4 years of the world
aluminum production would cover all necessary transmission infrastructures (García-Olivares et al.,
2012).
21 China (Sb, fluorspar, Ga, Ge, graphite, In;Mg;REE and W), Russia (PGMs), Democratic
Republic of Congo (Co and Ti) and Brazil (Nb and Ta).