Preface. The transition could require as much as $173 trillion in energy supply and infrastructure investment over the next three decades. One HELL of a lot of metals needed – questionable if possible in in three decades, especially with China dominating these technologies and minerals. As you read this, consider that the U.S. generates over 4 million terawatt hours (TWH) of electricity a year.
- Solar panels with the power capacity of ONE GW need about 18.5 tons of silver, 3,380 tons of polysilicon and 10,252 tons of aluminum. If they generated electricity 4 hours a day, 365 days of the year, it would take 273,000 of these solar farms
- Wind turbines and infrastructure with the power capacity of ONE GW need about 387 tons of aluminum, 2,866 tons of copper and 154,352 tons of steel. If the average wind capacity is 33% (wind blows a third of the time) every day of the year then 138,000 wind farms would be needed
- Lithium-ion batteries able to store ONE GW hour of energy require 729 tons of lithium, 1,202 tons of aluminum and 1,731 tons of copper
And then decommissioned, taken to a recycling center, though far more likely to a landfill, every 10 years (battery lifetime) or 20 years (wind turbine lifespan) or 18-25 years (solar panels). We aren’t recycling many today or designing them to be recycled. If you still think there are enough minerals, read: Limits to Growth? 2016 United Nations report provides best evidence yet
And as Irena Slave points out below, the cost of metals is rising which makes solar, wind, batteries and other renewables cost more.
And will cost even more when oil shortages begin. Wind and solar depend on fossils for every step of their life cycle, for mining, transporting and crushing ores, smelting the metal out, fabrication and transportation of parts and materials to the assembly factory, and final delivery to the solar or wind site.
No wonder Trump wants to buy Greenland with its potential rare earths, cobalt, copper, graphite, and nickel. Due to melting ice, 1600 kilometers of new coastline has emerged. But this new land is unconsolidated, not cemented with ice or permafrost, so it erodes easily. In narrow fjords glacier ice keeps sloping cliffs in place, but when it melts these slopes can collapse and trigger tsunamis. Indeed, this happened in 2023 when a landslide in a narrow fjord triggered a 200-meter-high tsunami. So mining and drilling for oil and gas will be risky and destroy the infrastructure set up to exploit resources (Kavan 2025 New coasts emerging from the retreat of Northern Hemisphere marine-terminating glaciers in the twenty-first century. Nature Climate Change).
Because world oil production peaked in 2018, and mining is very dependent on diesel fuel, the peak year for many minerals will surely happen sooner, since they require oil, coal, and natural gas energy to blast, dig, haul, crush, grind, smelt, refine, transport, and manufacture the metals and minerals into final products.
Calvo G et al (2017) Assessing maximum production peak and resource availability of non-fuel mineral resources: Analyzing the influence of extractable global resources. Resources, conservation & Recycling 125: 208-217.
Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Women in ecology Podcasts: WGBH, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity, Index of best energyskeptic posts
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Friedemann A (2025) Showstoppers to Electrifying the World: Peak Everything and Running out of Time (my book, still in progress)
It is not just copper likely to run short, so are many other metals (Calvo 2022, Valero 2018). The amount of energy return on invested (EROI) of the renewables constructed would be far too low to sustain civilization, have huge environmental impacts, and deplete mineral reserves of tellurium, indium, tin, silver, and gallium (Capellán-Pérez 2019). Antimony, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, indium, molybdenum, nickel, silver, and zinc will have bottlenecks within two decades, and all materials eventually be severely critical (Lundaev 2023). Michaux (2024) goes to great lengths to calculate exactly how many tons of minerals would be needed for EV, battery energy storage, wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, and more, and found a dozen that would make it difficult to reach IPCC 2050 goals (and his renewables only replace about a quarter of total energy consumed in the world, the goal is “net zero”, not replacing fossil fuels entirely.
Slav I (2022) The Era of Cheap Renewables Grinds To A Halt. oilprice.com
- Raw material shortages, notably in metals and minerals and polysilicon are impacting the renewable energy industry
- The cost of solar panels, wind turbines, and EV batteries is climbing after years of declines
- Solar panel prices had surged by more than 50% in the past 12 months alone. The price of wind turbines is up 13% and battery prices are rising for the first time ever
The continual decline in production cost for wind, solar, and EV batteries was touted as the driver of their growing adoption and ultimate takeover of the global grid. Up until two years ago, there was no other scenario on the table—even though inflation was as much a reality then as it is now. Only now, it has become a lot more pronounced.
At a recent metals and mining conference in Riyadh, several attendees noted that the mining industry had fallen out of favor with lenders because it was deemed as damaging for the environment as oil and gas. Yet now, it is becoming abundantly clear that without the mining industry, there can literally be no energy transition. Solar panels, wind turbines, transmission lines, and EVs all depend on metals and minerals in sufficient quantities. These quantities are already problematic. During the pandemic, supply chain disruptions wreaked havoc across industries that resulted in various raw material shortages, notably in metals and minerals and polysilicon.
Shortages typically lead to higher prices, and this is exactly what happened here. As a result, the cost of solar panels, wind turbines, and EV batteries started climbing—a development that virtually no renewable energy forecaster had anticipated. Bloomberg reported this month that solar panel prices had surged by more than 50% in the past 12 months alone. The price of wind turbines is up 13% and battery prices are rising for the first time ever, the report noted.
Of course, all this could be dismissed as a temporary glitch because of those pesky supply chain disruptions; once those are dealt with, prices should return to normal. Unfortunately, this argument does not hold water because the demand projections for all those metals and minerals called critical precisely because the energy transition hinges on them are invariably bullish. Put another way, the world will need a huge amount of copper, lithium, nickel, manganese, and cobalt, among others, to continue with the energy transition. And they are not coming fast.
That lending problem for the mining industry as well as oversupply in some segments of the metals market led to lower investments in new mines in recent years. That added to an already existing problem of falling ore grades: now, a miner needs to dig out a lot more ore to find the same amount of copper, for instance, than they had to 20 years ago.
This means that the extraction of a ton of copper has become costlier even without the rising demand. With the rising demand projections, the outlook for copper and other critical metals is definitely bullish. But a bullish outlook for copper means higher prices for windmills and solar farms, and for EVs as well.
This is not all, either, because there is also the issue of new supply. Banks are now definitely more interested in investing in the mining industry, what with those critical metals and minerals, but their shareholders—and governments—are insisting in these metals and minerals being mined responsibly—that is, in compliance with certain ESG requirements. A recent report by Metal Bulletin notes that carmakers are now putting their mineral suppliers through a vetting process to ensure they were mined responsibly. That’s more additional costs piled on, too.
And this is not all, either, because new metal and minerals supply will be vital for the energy transition. And one of the key characteristics of the mining industry is long lead times. There is no way around it. It takes about a decade to turn a prospective deposit into an operating mine, even with the most modern technology. To sum up, then, the current trend for higher prices in the low-carbon energy sphere may very well be just the beginning of an extensive rally that could last for decades.
Janes A, Stringer D, Leung A (2021) There’s a Fortune to Be Made in the Obscure Metals Behind Clean Power. Bloomberg.
The era-defining shift from fossil fuels to clean energy will deliver an unprecedented new boom for commodities—and an opportunity for investors—as a range of relatively obscure materials become essential to delivering emissions-free power, transport and heavy industry.
The transition could require as much as $173 trillion in energy supply and infrastructure investment over the next three decades, according to research provider BloombergNEF, and will reverberate from lithium-rich salt flats in Chile to polysilicon plants in China’s Xinjiang region.
As electric vehicles supplant gas guzzlers, and solar panels and wind turbines replace coal and oil as the world’s most important energy sources, metals like lithium, cobalt and rare earths are on the brink of rapidly accelerating demand, along with more familiar industrial materials like steel and copper. Efforts to lift supplies of key raw materials—which can require years of exploration and construction—must begin now to keep pace with future requirements.
Failing to act fast enough could even risk an economic shock comparable to the oil crises of the 1970s, said Robert Johnston, an adjunct senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University in New York. Concerns about future bottlenecks are reflected in the eye-watering gains of some green stocks. “I don’t see an easy solution because these supply chains don’t magically appear overnight,” he said.
By 2030, demand for cobalt, used in many battery types, will jump by about 70%, while consumption of lithium and nickel by the battery sector will be at least five times higher, according to BNEF. There’ll be a need for more manganese, iron, phosphorus and graphite, while copper, needed in clean energy technologies and to expand electricity grids, will also be a major beneficiary. Four key components of the energy transition—solar panels, wind turbines, lithium-ion batteries, and EV charging units—show the complexity of supply chains required to help the world quit fossil fuels, and how the need for vast quantities of crucial metals should spur prices higher.
SOLAR PANELS:
KEY METALS AND MATERIALS: Steel Aluminum Polysilicon Copper Silver
Solar panels with the power capacity of a gigawatt need about 18.5 tons of silver, 3,380 tons of polysilicon and 10,252 tons of aluminum
WIND TURBINES
Wind turbines and infrastructure with the power capacity of a gigawatt need about 387 tons of aluminum, 2,866 tons of copper and 154,352 tons of steel
KEY METALS AND MATERIALS: Concrete Steel Glass fiber reinforced plastic Electronic scrap Copper Aluminum Carbon fiber reinforced polymers
LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES
Lithium-ion batteries able to store 1 gigawatt hour of energy require about 729 tons of lithium, 1,202 tons of aluminum and 1,731 tons of copper
KEY METALS AND MATERIALS: Copper Aluminum Lithium (LCE) Nickel Cobalt Manganese
Limited availability of other materials is already threatening the battery sector’s ability to keep pace with the EV boom, said Yang Hongxin, general manager of SVolt Energy Technology Co.
EV CHARGERS
CHARGER TYPE: Home Work Public (slow) Public (fast) Bus & Truck (Public) Bus & Truck (Depot)
A fast, public electric vehicle charger typically needs 25 kilograms of copper, while a smaller charger to use at home needs around 2 kilograms of copper.
“It doesn’t matter what battery chemistry you have, lithium is needed across all of them, and nickel is needed in many of them,” she said. “If it’s solar or wind or EV charging units, you need copper to connect it all together—that’s why we like looking at these commodities.”