The Depletion of Non-Renewable Abiotic Resources - Thanatia: The Destiny of the Earth's Mineral Resources - page 17

Fig. 1.6 Metals Requirement of the SET-Plan as percentage of 2010 World Supply. Redrawn
from Moss et al. (2012)
wind, photovoltaics, hybrid and electric vehicles and energy saving from lighting, as
explained in Sec. 1.4 and Appendix A. All potentially affect the demand of perma-
nent magnets, thin films, batteries and phosphors. Consequently the report focuses
on the demand of neodymium and dysprosium for permanent magnets; tellurium,
indium and gallium for PV thin films; cobalt, nickel, manganese, lanthanum and
cerium for NiMH batteries; lithium carbonate for Li-ion batteries and yttrium, ter-
bium and europium for phosphors.
A summary of the criticality analysis results is depicted in Fig. 1.7 and Fig. 1.8.
Materials in the upper right quadrant are characterised as critical if red in colour,
intermediate near-critical if in yellow and not critical should they be coloured green.
The most critical metals are therefore Dy, Eu, Y and Tb, both in the short and
medium term. The case of dysprosium is the most critical because new projected
mines supply will not cover demand. The demand of indium not associated with
clean energy technologies meanwhile is so high that it is forecasted to increase by
about 25% between 2015 and 2025. So even if PV CIGS thin films only make up
an expected 10% of the total demand of In in 2025, there may still be important
shortages should production not be expanded post 2015. As the demand of gallium
is coupled with indium in CIGS thin films 24 , the required supply could nearly double
that of 2010 levels. Similarly, tellurium is expected to experience a 50% increase in
24 Ga for clean energy technologies will contribute to 38% of total gallium demand in 2025.