🔆 Feature, Ars Technica: 'Elephant in the room' — Clean energy’s need for unsustainable minerals

Our need for minerals may strain supply and lead to environmental issues.

Written by Shel Evergreen. Published by Ars Technica May 2, 2022.

In South America’s Atacama Desert, salt flats are dotted with shallow, turquoise-colored lithium brine pools. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, children chip at the ground for cobalt. In China, toxic chemicals leach neodymium from the earth.

This is the energy mineral rush. People around the world are scrambling, drilling, drying, and sifting to get at a range of metals needed for our energy transition. Renewable energy technologies are central to the fight against climate change, but they’re heavily reliant on minerals—naturally occurring, solid materials made from one or more elements. But extracting and refining them presents humanitarian, environmental, and logistical challenges...

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