The shift to renewable energy can’t be done as “planned” due to a lack of resources and manufacturing capacity to make the lithium-ion batteries needed for the change, says Geological Survey of Finland Associate Prof Simon Michaux.
Researchers in Australia and Europe have found there are not enough lithium-ion reserves to create all the batteries required to power approximately 1.39 billion EVs and renewables – as the Labor government pushes for net zero.
“We don’t have the reserves in the ground, but we also don’t have the manufacturing capacity in the global system to do that very quickly,” he told Sky News host Chris Kenny.
“And so, the real problem is we are out of time not just out of money.”
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In 2014 consumption rates, at that time there were 365 years of Lithium reserves.
At predicted 2030 consumption rates, based on Elon Musk's predictions of Gigafactory requirements, there would be 17 years of reserves (note this was calculated in 2017).
Hydrogen ICE was the logical stop gap, EV is a white elephant.
My god, is as if technology will never move on, batteries will never get better, recycling will be stuck with today's processes and we will be stuck with 3Mw wind turbines. Australia already produced 32% of electricity from renewables. Wind and solar has gone from almost nothing to more than 35Tw in 10 years. Heat pumps use less electricity generated by gas than if you were to use gas to heat the home. There are challenges but technology marches ever onwards. The other alternative is to extract the co2 from the air but no credible sign of that being possible yet, but maybe in the future.
The question should be how many people can we sustain on the existing?
So the one thing no one seems to want to acknowledge is that without viable energy options in 20-50 years the world will have to regress to some type of modern gilligan's Island way of living or mad max or sea world. I better get my hunting and fishing skills up lol
If we change all the cars into EVs, how much the climate turns better? How much the global temperature goes down? What is the gain? No idea, who cares.
And how much emissions will come from all the mining. EVs are not forever, every few years you'll need a new battery set at least. There will be more mining.
It is not too hot everywhere and not all the time. Cool down the weather (rather than the climate) where it is too hot, when it is too hot. It is pointless to cool down Vostok station.
How do we manage our nuclear waste? By using it to build betavoltaic and alphavoltaic batteries. You could power a cell phone for 50 years on a spent fuel rod battery.
What a load of BS! You are using out of date information, and misleading rhetoric, to try and put people off electric vehicles. Lets look at the REAL facts. Combustion vehicles (ICE), are going to be around for another 30 – 40 years. Solid state batteries are a thing now… In 30 – 40 years time, they will be as common as smart phones are today. They are starting to use different materials in the makeup and design of batteries. In 30 – 40 years time, batteries will be made from many different chemistries, and recycling of these materials, will be in full flow. As to solar panels, they are getting cheaper by the day, and just recently, one company announced (Australian company, if I'm not mistaken), that they are producing solar panels, that are printed on a role. This will bring the price down enormously. Cheap solar, with a decent battery backup, and you will never have to worry about blackouts again… Coming to a town near you. Some random guy from Microsoft, way back in 2005, said the iPhone would never sell, that nobody would buy it. The same rhetoric is being sounded here, it seems, some people just can't see beyond the end of their noses! 🤔😆
As long as humans inhabit this world and live with all the trapping of a modern society true net zero is impossible. It's a smoke screen to charge legitimate taxes.
For starters, we don't need cobalt, period. Elon Musk himself has said that LFP batteries (which contain zero cobalt) are the future. Secondly, a far more abundant element that can be used in place of lithium is sodium. The world's largest battery maker, CATL, is already starting to make sodium ion batteries. Lastly, if we make more efficient EV's like the Aptera, we will need less batteries to get the same range. It's so easy to pick holes in renewable energy if you have a political agenda and ignore the facts. If every rooftop that currently has no solar panels were thus equipped, we would have enough energy to make up any future shortfall, and that's before we even install more centralised power plants powered by solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, nuclear, etc.
I'm a geologist. thizs is so true. There isn't the volume of material to build what the powers that be want to have. It's an absolute pipe dream of epic proportions. The amount of mining and oil production is going to need to be ramped up to a scale never imagined. Think about that for just a minute. More mining and oil production. Stack on top of that the requirement to make the environmental approvals and project approvals. The Green plans require immediate approval of all these projects. That means no protests, no court cases and no other nonsense from the green groups that don't want major projects. They are their own biggest enemies and ignorant of what it takes to achieve.
In 30 years time, our children will be stating with disdain …
"Our greedy, stupid, thoughtless, inconsiderate ancestors have used up all of the planet's Rare Earth Minerals to fix a Climate Crisis that only existed in their minds."
Oil, gas and coal will be part of energy requirements for many decades to come..
Eventually we'll all be riding bicycles..
You should put a lot of these questions to Prof. Saul Griffith who is an Ozzie who spent basically the past 20 years living in the US and wrote the book “Rewiring America”. He also wrote “THE BIG SWITCH’ which is Australia specific. To be brief he was/is an adviser the the Biden administration , who have now fully adopted the very exhaustive and detailed plan put to them by his company.
Lithium will probably be obsolete in a few years and be replaced by something more plentiful, safer and cheaper. Patience, grasshoppers.
All you have to do is follow the money and see who is gaining and has gained financial windfalls for pushing this agenda!
And the next question ; what are we gonna use as backup for wind turbines the and solar panels ?
There are many types of batteries, not just lithium. Aluminium-sulphur batteries and CO2 batteries are two low cost examples.
Kenney start to reseach not just take the world from who pays you the most
The woke socialist agenda is to make the Western world poorer and to dramatically reduce the population of the world by starvation and other means. That is the real agenda of the left.
Our own coal it better leave it alone and lower power and gas now ripoffs