The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread

[ElwoodBlues1]

The main reason why companies like Toyota and Mercedes and BMW are looking towards EV alternatives is that the resource numbers do not stack up.

The Green economy pushes more and more EVs, Wind and Solar, but to achieve the equivalent of the current energy / transport system we have to increase the mining of copper, lithium and other rare earth elements more than tenfold. It's the elephant in the room nobody is talking about, and ultimately it will be why countries go nuclear to take advantage of existing infrastructure without requiring more copper resource.

A traditional ICE car uses at least 23kg of copper, an EV uses at least 80kg of copper. EVs are currently less than 10% of global vehicles yet they already consume as much as 30% of the available transport copper resource. So to get to anywhere near 100% of global vehicles requires a 300% increase in copper resources just for transport.

Renewables energy sectors are still a minority of global energy, but already the single biggest consumer of copper, already using about 3x more copper than the transport sector. That is just the renewable part, not including infrastructure like the grid.

I read estimates that for renewable SolarPV, Wind and EV to replace existing solutions will require between 500% and 1200% more copper mining globally. That assumes they can find that much resource, at the moment it doesn't exist.

Ultimately, the thing that might force societies hand, could well be kilograms of copper per kilowatt hour.

The USA just uncovered the world's biggest lithium resource, unfortunately it sits in deep salt brines under California's already limited water supply. But even as the world's single biggest resource it only covers about 45% of what the US predicts it will need, so the search goes on. Who and how they will mine that is whole other question, environmental groups are already protesting and it hasn't even started! Yet the same protesting groups demand we close coal and convert to SolarPV, they are obviously deliberately ambivalent to the reality of the limited resource situation, what they demand is a fantasy.

BYD own the battery market and other car companies cant compete and keep costs down down, its complete Chinese domination in the EV world for passenger vehicles and Toyota are admitting now they are targeting the commercial world for hydrogen sales. The Mirai has been a fail due to its high initial cost and lack of refuelling stations...in the USA where they sold around 2K odd they only have refuelling stations in California and they are only good for 50 refills a day each, not sure why those 2k folk bought a Mirai if you cant travel further than California?
Emission targets set by countries are creeping up to the stage where infrastructure will need to be in place to achieve those targets and most Governments seem to have chosen EV's as their preferred option where they can piggy back onto existing infrastructure and get joe average to help pay for the add ons required by forcing homeowners, passenger vehicle users to buy solar systems, chargers etc and slapping extra charges on power bills, registrations, council rates etc.
https://asiatimes.com/2023/03/its-time-f...-strategy/