7 ms·

The quick answer is that we are not short of any of those materials. We might not be producing enough right now, but there's far more than enough that can be mi

by joshe 4y ago

The quick answer is that we are not short of any of those materials. We might not be producing enough right now, but there's far more than enough that can be mined or recycled inexpensively. Increased prices will cause more mining and recycling, eventually the price will settle at the cost of production + something for profit. The something for profit is quite small, the coast for low risk capital is ~5% a year. There might be a 5-10 period when profits are high for miners, but eventually the profits will be competed away by new entrants. (Except if you have a mine that produces very cheaply because it is so rich or easy to operate, these people will stay high profit. The most expensive mines will just make back they're capital costs + return). You can see this with fracking which is horribly unprofitable. Hedge funds have lost billions over building fracking wells.

bobthepanda 4y ago
Right. Reserves are really just a measure of "things people bothered to look for at the current price." High prices can and do induce more searching. Part of the whole hullabaloo about "peak oil" is that people stopped looking for oil reserves in an environment with low oil prices. Once prices started rising you saw fracking come into play that regenerated areas previously thought dead for oil production.
- RobertoG 4y ago
  That's not the argument of peak oil. It's not about price or quantity of oil available in the planet. It's an argument about thermodynamics. The argument is that in order to extract oil, you need to spend energy, and, logically, the most easier oil to extract is extracted first. That means that oil extraction is every year more expensive (energetically not financially). Because technology can make extraction more efficient but not indefinitely, at some point, in order to extract oil, it will be necessary to spend the same energy than burning it creates. I suppose we could say that it's kind of an inversion of what's going on with fusion research. Some commenters say that we already pass that point and that's the reason oil companies CaPex have fall in the last years. I don't know if that's the case, but I can't avoid to ask myself about solar. Is the energy that a solar panel generate in its life enough for its normal use, plus extracting the minerals that it's made of, plus push the panel, through the ocean all the way from China? or are we fooling ourselves using oil for all that? I would like to see some numbers and expert discussion about that.
  - Yoric 4y ago
    If you can read French, this guy https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Marc_Jancovici https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Marc_Jancovici has published a lot of vulgarization on the topic - with numbers. If my memory of reading one of his books serves, fracking now costs 50% of the energy it produces (in addition to non-energy environmental impact, which is pretty large), up from ~10% for the easy oil we had ~50 years ago. Current-tech solar panels are in the same order of magnitude (again, not counting non-energy environmental impact). Nuclear energy has the highest yield. I seem to remember that coal is the worst, unless it's burnt at the point of extraction.
    - bryanlarsen 4y ago
      That doesn't pass the smell test. A "raw" solar panel in China costs about 25 cents / W, and each watt should produce about 45kWh over its lifetime (5W per day for 25 years). If the embodied energy in the panel is half of the lifetime energy, that means that there is 22kWh of embodied energy in that W of solar panel, and they're selling that embodied energy for about 1 cent / kWh. And that assumes that there are no costs to the panel other than the embodied energy. A rule of thumb is that embodied energy in a finished manufactured product sells for about $1/kWh. By that rule of thumb, the embodied energy in a solar panel is about 0.5% of the energy it will produce over its lifetime.
      - Yoric 4y ago
        Interesting counterpoint, thanks. > A "raw" solar panel in China costs about 25 cents / W, and each watt should produce about 45kWh over its lifetime (5W per day for 25 years). I imagine that you're making assumptions on having sufficient luminosity all year round, right? So perhaps that depends on where on Earth you are. According to Jancovici [1], in most of Europe, solar panels produce about 100 kWh/m²/year, assuming that they are oriented correctly (I don't know if e.g. the necessity of cleaning them up is factored in). From the same source, in terms of energy used to build the panel (is shipping included?), it takes 1 to 4 years to reimburse that energy but that's under the assumption that all the energy from the panel can be used. In practice, solar panel installations produce energy at a rhythm that depends on nature, which means that for many uses, the electricity needs to be stored somewhere if we want to actually use it at a different rhythm, e.g. when you're actually at home/in the office/etc. Unfortunately, storing electricity at scale with current-tech is energy-expensive (both to build the batteries and because of energy loss during storage), e.g. storing it as hydrogen has a yield of ~30%, couldn't find the yield of other technologies of batteries including the energy cost of building/shipping/disposing of the battery. So, in the worst case, these 100 kWh/m2/year turn into ~30 kWh/m2/year, which means 3 to 12 years for recouping energy cost. So, by this calculation, the worst hypothesis maps to the number I was quoting above and the best one is at least one order of magnitude better. My bad. Now, there is the problem that current-tech battery often relies on metals (i.e. Lithium) that are only available in limited amounts. [1] https://jancovici.com/transition-energetique/renouvelables/pourrait-on-alimenter-la-france-en-electricite-uniquement-avec-du-solaire-ou-de-la-biomasse/ https://jancovici.com/transition-energetique/renouvelables/p...
01100011 4y ago
> we are not short of any of those materials For the most part you are correct. But building the mines, refining, supply chains, etc takes time. So you are perhaps missing one of the main points I was trying, maybe unsuccessfully, to make: we need to deal with the 'right now' and not just worry about how we'll be fine in 50 years. Lithium is a perfect example. We have plenty in the ground. We don't have plenty of mines. We should be allocating Li carefully until those issues are resolved in 5-10 years. If we only base our energy policy on how things will be in a decade we will delay the transition while inflicting maximum pain on the population(energy and food shortages, rampant inflation, lower standard of living, etc).
- admax88qqq 4y ago
  > We should be allocating Li carefully until those issues are resolved in 5-10 years. Well intentioned policy like this can have the reverse effect. If you limit lithium usage you will limit demand, which can reduce the effort expended to build new mines.
  - 01100011 4y ago
    Did I suggest that? I mean we should be realistic about Li availability and incentivize its usage appropriately.
- actually_a_dog 4y ago
  In fact, we do not have "plenty" of lithium. There's not enough lithium in the world to put in all the batteries for all the EVs we'll need to replace ICE vehicles. This is entirely orthogonal to the fact that recycling lithium ion batteries is expensive, difficult, and potentially dangerous in the case of any type of mishap. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-world-enough-lithium-resources/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-wor...
  - Gare 4y ago
    But we do have more than enough sodium, and sodium-ion batteries could be "good enough" for most applications with technology advancement.
kkfx 4y ago
> We might not be producing enough right now, but there's far more than enough that can be mined or recycled inexpensively. That's not reality but a dream. So far we still have to find a sustainable lithium recycling on scale, there are various startups with various solutions, who actually prove to be just like most startup: PR scam for money or childish dream of someone who sold the cat before capturing it. It's not better in mining estimation: we have estimations of different kind but they are nothing than dream, we do not really know how much lithium is accessible on earth.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  Locally, there are several mines that have been trying to open for years (copper and nickel, mostly) but the environmental crowd has been extremely determined in using the courts and bureaucracy to block them from opening. The net result is the green wave will be driven largely by relying on dirty minerals from other countries.
  - kkfx 4y ago
    Mining tech is essentially the same since ever, we just have transferred some physical efforts to machines, how a local mine is "green" and some in exotic places is different? Consider a thing: all industry do not pollute because they are evil but because the tech produce pollution. Something was done, something can be done, to reduce it of course, but that's not always possible, not possible more than a certain extent and not for free. A simple idea: can you pay a 8-years maximum lasting car 100k€? Even if you can, how many others needs cars and can't? Because that's relatively less heavy than the physical possibility of doing something, but it's not marginal at all. I have built a new home, with all actual tech to consume less and get a better life, but if such homes can only be made let's say by 10% of the western population, witch means roughly by 3% of the total human population what's the outcome? We are a society. Some can be richer than others, nothing wrong in that. BUT when the difference between the poorest and richest and so their numbers on total humans diverge too much the society fall apart anyway.
    - zdragnar 4y ago
catawbasam 4y ago
Some hedge funds may have lost billions, but frackers are printing money at current price levels.

by joshe 4y ago

bobthepanda 4y ago

Right. Reserves are really just a measure of "things people bothered to look for at the current price." High prices can and do induce more searching. Part of the whole hullabaloo about "peak oil" is that people stopped looking for oil reserves in an environment with low oil prices. Once prices started rising you saw fracking come into play that regenerated areas previously thought dead for oil production.

RobertoG 4y ago
That's not the argument of peak oil. It's not about price or quantity of oil available in the planet. It's an argument about thermodynamics. The argument is that in order to extract oil, you need to spend energy, and, logically, the most easier oil to extract is extracted first. That means that oil extraction is every year more expensive (energetically not financially). Because technology can make extraction more efficient but not indefinitely, at some point, in order to extract oil, it will be necessary to spend the same energy than burning it creates. I suppose we could say that it's kind of an inversion of what's going on with fusion research. Some commenters say that we already pass that point and that's the reason oil companies CaPex have fall in the last years. I don't know if that's the case, but I can't avoid to ask myself about solar. Is the energy that a solar panel generate in its life enough for its normal use, plus extracting the minerals that it's made of, plus push the panel, through the ocean all the way from China? or are we fooling ourselves using oil for all that? I would like to see some numbers and expert discussion about that.
- Yoric 4y ago
  If you can read French, this guy https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Marc_Jancovici https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Marc_Jancovici has published a lot of vulgarization on the topic - with numbers. If my memory of reading one of his books serves, fracking now costs 50% of the energy it produces (in addition to non-energy environmental impact, which is pretty large), up from ~10% for the easy oil we had ~50 years ago. Current-tech solar panels are in the same order of magnitude (again, not counting non-energy environmental impact). Nuclear energy has the highest yield. I seem to remember that coal is the worst, unless it's burnt at the point of extraction.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    That doesn't pass the smell test. A "raw" solar panel in China costs about 25 cents / W, and each watt should produce about 45kWh over its lifetime (5W per day for 25 years). If the embodied energy in the panel is half of the lifetime energy, that means that there is 22kWh of embodied energy in that W of solar panel, and they're selling that embodied energy for about 1 cent / kWh. And that assumes that there are no costs to the panel other than the embodied energy. A rule of thumb is that embodied energy in a finished manufactured product sells for about $1/kWh. By that rule of thumb, the embodied energy in a solar panel is about 0.5% of the energy it will produce over its lifetime.
    - Yoric 4y ago
      Interesting counterpoint, thanks. > A "raw" solar panel in China costs about 25 cents / W, and each watt should produce about 45kWh over its lifetime (5W per day for 25 years). I imagine that you're making assumptions on having sufficient luminosity all year round, right? So perhaps that depends on where on Earth you are. According to Jancovici [1], in most of Europe, solar panels produce about 100 kWh/m²/year, assuming that they are oriented correctly (I don't know if e.g. the necessity of cleaning them up is factored in). From the same source, in terms of energy used to build the panel (is shipping included?), it takes 1 to 4 years to reimburse that energy but that's under the assumption that all the energy from the panel can be used. In practice, solar panel installations produce energy at a rhythm that depends on nature, which means that for many uses, the electricity needs to be stored somewhere if we want to actually use it at a different rhythm, e.g. when you're actually at home/in the office/etc. Unfortunately, storing electricity at scale with current-tech is energy-expensive (both to build the batteries and because of energy loss during storage), e.g. storing it as hydrogen has a yield of ~30%, couldn't find the yield of other technologies of batteries including the energy cost of building/shipping/disposing of the battery. So, in the worst case, these 100 kWh/m2/year turn into ~30 kWh/m2/year, which means 3 to 12 years for recouping energy cost. So, by this calculation, the worst hypothesis maps to the number I was quoting above and the best one is at least one order of magnitude better. My bad. Now, there is the problem that current-tech battery often relies on metals (i.e. Lithium) that are only available in limited amounts. [1] https://jancovici.com/transition-energetique/renouvelables/pourrait-on-alimenter-la-france-en-electricite-uniquement-avec-du-solaire-ou-de-la-biomasse/ https://jancovici.com/transition-energetique/renouvelables/p...

01100011 4y ago

> we are not short of any of those materials For the most part you are correct. But building the mines, refining, supply chains, etc takes time. So you are perhaps missing one of the main points I was trying, maybe unsuccessfully, to make: we need to deal with the 'right now' and not just worry about how we'll be fine in 50 years. Lithium is a perfect example. We have plenty in the ground. We don't have plenty of mines. We should be allocating Li carefully until those issues are resolved in 5-10 years. If we only base our energy policy on how things will be in a decade we will delay the transition while inflicting maximum pain on the population(energy and food shortages, rampant inflation, lower standard of living, etc).

admax88qqq 4y ago
> We should be allocating Li carefully until those issues are resolved in 5-10 years. Well intentioned policy like this can have the reverse effect. If you limit lithium usage you will limit demand, which can reduce the effort expended to build new mines.
- 01100011 4y ago
  Did I suggest that? I mean we should be realistic about Li availability and incentivize its usage appropriately.
actually_a_dog 4y ago
In fact, we do not have "plenty" of lithium. There's not enough lithium in the world to put in all the batteries for all the EVs we'll need to replace ICE vehicles. This is entirely orthogonal to the fact that recycling lithium ion batteries is expensive, difficult, and potentially dangerous in the case of any type of mishap. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-world-enough-lithium-resources/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-wor...
- Gare 4y ago
  But we do have more than enough sodium, and sodium-ion batteries could be "good enough" for most applications with technology advancement.

kkfx 4y ago

> We might not be producing enough right now, but there's far more than enough that can be mined or recycled inexpensively. That's not reality but a dream. So far we still have to find a sustainable lithium recycling on scale, there are various startups with various solutions, who actually prove to be just like most startup: PR scam for money or childish dream of someone who sold the cat before capturing it. It's not better in mining estimation: we have estimations of different kind but they are nothing than dream, we do not really know how much lithium is accessible on earth.

zdragnar 4y ago
Locally, there are several mines that have been trying to open for years (copper and nickel, mostly) but the environmental crowd has been extremely determined in using the courts and bureaucracy to block them from opening. The net result is the green wave will be driven largely by relying on dirty minerals from other countries.
- kkfx 4y ago
  Mining tech is essentially the same since ever, we just have transferred some physical efforts to machines, how a local mine is "green" and some in exotic places is different? Consider a thing: all industry do not pollute because they are evil but because the tech produce pollution. Something was done, something can be done, to reduce it of course, but that's not always possible, not possible more than a certain extent and not for free. A simple idea: can you pay a 8-years maximum lasting car 100k€? Even if you can, how many others needs cars and can't? Because that's relatively less heavy than the physical possibility of doing something, but it's not marginal at all. I have built a new home, with all actual tech to consume less and get a better life, but if such homes can only be made let's say by 10% of the western population, witch means roughly by 3% of the total human population what's the outcome? We are a society. Some can be richer than others, nothing wrong in that. BUT when the difference between the poorest and richest and so their numbers on total humans diverge too much the society fall apart anyway.
  - zdragnar 4y ago

catawbasam 4y ago

Some hedge funds may have lost billions, but frackers are printing money at current price levels.