As a google-born 90s kid I haven’t spend much of my time in mines but I’m quite accustomed to data mining. I hope that you haven’t spent much of your time worrying about @JohnLeePettim13 thread.
Earth will not be destroyed because of energy transition related mining.
That being said, I respect the ones who have done the “heavy-lifting” as we need more some of the industrial minerals, but seems that the years spent in mines doesn't correlate with the knowledge of the mineral requirements, availability or the scale.
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| Lee Pettimore's twitter thread. |
For the context the thread has got more than 5 million views and 20k retweets. It has been shared by many prolific influencers such as
@DecoupleMedia and @vtchakarova who commented: "Decarbonization means the great acceleration of dirty mining."
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| Lee Pettimore's thread has got too much attention even though almost all the claims and scales are false. |
In addition to this mineral outcry, @DecoupleMedia has also given fair share of publicity for the controversial @GTK_FI mineral study which was debunked last year.
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| Thread about GTK's study shortcomings. (Also as a blog) |
Instead of 1000 page report, this time it’s a blue collar twitter-thread-push.
I’m sure it doesn’t come as a surprise for most of you that these lately occurring mineral-topics simple goal is to mix things up so that unfunded doubt about the energy transition would emerge. It's time for another reality check.
Lee Pettimore's claim that we will destroy the Earth comes in three different argument groups.
- Energy transition mineral demand scale
- Mine pollution and waste management
- Mining land area need
So, let’s investigate sequentially what is true and what is false.
1. Mineral demand
Lee Pettimore claims that due to the energy transition: “We will consume more minerals than all of the 108 billion humans who have ever walked the Earth.” Is there a truth in here?
Short answer. No. Longer: Not even close.
I mean even our beloved @GTK_FI would probably get this right. Lee Pettimore correctly references that transition will require around 3 billion tons of minerals which is also estimated by @WorldBank. That is the same amount of metals/minerals that is consumed YEARLY.
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| Yearly metal extraction is 2,8 billion tons. Source: Visualcapitalist. |
Iron ore dominates the mineral production and has done so since the industrial revolution. For the past 93 years that I found production statistics world have produced cumulative 84 billion tons of iron ore alone. Energy transition minerals will be only around 2-3% of that.
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| Annual iron ore extraction statistics from 1928 to 2021 (USGS). |
Also if we assume the positive option that transition will work, take the next 27 years, and require 3 billion tons of minerals, the transition will add ONLY avg. 3,4% more minerals to the annual mineral production.
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| Transition mineral cumulative demand compared to other minerals. |
The Eifel Tower claim is near the ballpark: “We consume the equivalent metal amount of more than 500 Eiffel Towers a day."
In reality we produce twice the amount. Eifel Tower metal parts weight 7300 tons and on average daily consumption is 7,6 Mt so that makes 1050 towers.
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| Eifel tower metal frame weigths 7300 tons. |
John also claims:
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| Lee Pettimore's claim about raw material requirement per energy technology/ MW. |
Turns out that in reality these estimates are only... off by: 12x Cement, 8x Aluminium, 24x Steel, 13x Copper, when you compare technology material averages of wind & solar with the nuclear and fossils averages. Source: IEA, 2023.
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| Material demand/MW. IEA estimates compared to Lee Pettimore's claims. |
The rock and ore amount required for these minerals are also a distortion of reality:
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| Lee Pettimore's claim about ore & rock amounts required for different metals. |
In reality, all of these minerals are mostly mined as a by-product of something else, or together with the other rare-earth oxides.
- Most of vanadium comes from vanadiferous iron ore
- Gallium is a by-product of bauxite mining (Aluminium source)
- Cerium or lutetium are mined with the other rare earth minerals.
Earth will not be destroyed because of the rare earth metal mining.
2. Mining waste management
“the overburden, slurry, tailings, rock and other discards.” From macroeconomic perspective mineral FUELS; (coal mining, lignite, uranium, natural gas, and other petroleum products) accounts 83,9% of the mine waste management market size.
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| Mining waste market share between extraction commodities. Source: Fortune Business Insights. |
"Rare minerals" are part of the industrial minerals which currently has only around 3-4% market share in mining waste management. Industrial mineral demand will grow but the waste problem will be nowhere near the mineral fuel waste today.
With the same analogy we can also address the pollutant problem.
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| Lee Pettimore's claim about green technology required mining and environmental disaster. |
The real problem in the mining waste today are not the "rare minerals" but mineral fuels i.e. FOSSIL FUELS which require by far the largest share of mining waste management.
3. Mining land area
This is maybe the single most ballsiest claim made in the thread:
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| Lee Pettimore's claim about renewable energy related mining and land area requirements. |
Let's think of China. China (in red) has a lot of material processing capacity but only small share of the mineral extraction happens there, excluding graphite.
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| China has geographically only limited share in critical mineral extraction and mineral reserves. (IEA, 2022). |
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| China's share about material processing is much larger than mineral extraction. (IEA, 2022). |
Here's a 1100 x 500km area of Ordos Prefecture famous of its mining activity. The world largest rare earth metal mine is marked on green & produces around 40% of the world REOs.
The blue marked area covers 219 other mines (mostly coal). Still blaming the energy transition?
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| Bayan Obo REE mine compared to other mines in the same area. |
Tweet continues: "Mining the materials needed for renewable energy potentially affects 50 million sq. km, 37% of Earth’s land." Nonsense, but for the sake of applied sciences let's calculate this. How much Earth's land will be needed for the energy transition new mining?
It gets a bit technical here so bear with me. I use the IEA NZE (latest assessment, 2023) for critical mineral and the bulk material demand in 2050. After factoring the energy transition demand, I reduced the secondary mineral share. Results --> right-down corner.
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| Primary mineral demand increase in IEA NZE. |
After the mineral demand estimate (NZE 2050), I used seven benchmark mines, their production and the land area to estimate the new land area required for the energy transition related mines.
= 9822 sq km. --> 0,007% of Earth land. 5000 times less than the claim. #DEBUNKED
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| IEA NZE energy transition mineral demand and mine land area requirement. |
In terms of actual land areas on the map, John's claim means that energy transition mining would require a land area equal in size to USA, China and the whole of Africa= 50 000 000 sq km.
Don't ask me what is meant with: "Now imagine that number 10 fold."
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| Lee Pettimore's claim equals a land area equal to USA, China and Africa. |
IEA based mineral demand estimate with the actual mine based production and land area data shows that we would need only around 10 000 km2 for new energy transition mines. That means a land area equal to 1/4 of Switzerland.
Don't get me wrong, I love cheese and the Alps.
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| Actual energy transition related mining land area need based on IEA NZE. |
The land area need will be smaller if there are more underground than open pit mines. Worth also mentioning that the IEA estimate doesn't include all the transition minerals but it is the most up-to-date assessment of the energy transition technologies and the minerals.
All fun comes to an end, and so does this thread. It's important to focus on making mining and the mineral economy as sustainable as possible but let's forget these dubious claims.
Here is the summary of the debunked claims. Thanks for tuning in.
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| Summary of the most absurd Lee Pettimore's debunked claims. |
Author: Visa Siekkinen
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