Outlook for Mining Strong to Support Green Energy Initiatives

The new Administration has their eye on expanding the power grid in the United States as well as globally. Their stated goals are to include and expand power sources adding additional production from renewable energy, such as wind and solar energy; all while enticing companies with tax credits to both create and invest in new and emerging technologies.

 The National Law Review stated recently that “Democratic ideas include consolidating dozens of energy incentives into “technology-neutral” approaches, creating new tax credits for investment in emerging energy technology—like wind power and solar energy—and producing electricity from such technology, and an energy tax credit for energy storage technologies.”

Mark P. Mills from the Manhattan Institute , in his report titled Green Energy Reality Check, said, “all energy-producing machinery must be fabricated from materials extracted from the earth.” Here is an excerpt from Mills’ article illustrating how global mining will be impacted as green technologies and initiatives increase.

Some of the statistics are stunning. These factors will be the key drivers of a record increase in global mining operations including:

·        Cobalt required for a single electric car is the equivalent of that required for 1,000 smartphone batteries.

·        In the US green energy sources currently manage to supply 4% of the nation’s power demands, as opposed to 56% from fossil fuels such as oil and gas. 

·        To replace a single 100-MW natural gas-fired turbine it would take a minimum of 20 wind turbines the size of the Washington Monument on a wind farm taking up 10 square miles of land area.

·        Construction of a single wind farm consumes some 30,000 tons of iron ore and 50,000 tons of concrete, as well as 900 tons of nonrecyclable plastics for the huge turbine blades. 

·        Solar power farms use 150% more tonnage in concrete, steel, and glass than wind farms to reach the same power output.

·        To be prepared for cloudy windless days requires an energy storage battery system equivalent to using 10,000 Tesla class batteries for the above 100-MW green machines. 

·   Just one Tesla class electric car battery requires 25 pounds of lithium, 30 pounds of cobalt, 60 pounds of nickel, 110 pounds of graphite, 90 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of steel, aluminum, and various plastic components.

Mills ends his article by saying, “While the global push to green machines may not make much sense after a closer examination of the data, for the mining industry the inevitable transition is sure to create a spike in demand, sustaining the trend of higher prices for mining, minerals and metal commodities, and triggering an expansion of mining operations around the world to meet it.”