"Is overconsumption the ‘elephant in the room’ in the energy transition?", 09 May 2024

"Mining is a  significant driver of deforestation. Not only do mines clear native forests, they often establish new infrastructure too, which indirectly opens up access to land and further clearing. The extraction and primary processing of metals and other minerals is also responsible for 26% of carbon emissions and 20% of the health impacts linked to atmospheric pollution.

Since transition minerals are essential components of renewable technologies, meeting global demand for them will mean consuming more minerals in the next generation than in the last 70,000 years (in French).

A future where mining is even more prevalent than it is today has also raised concerns about human rights, as mining operations are often associated with rights violations, lack of transparency and unequal sharing of benefits at the local level...

In the private sector, some mining companies have begun to take steps to reduce their environmental footprint through investment in technologies mostly based on renewable energy and energy storage systems, the development of which also requires critical energy transition minerals. 

Meanwhile, scope for recycling minerals is severely limited by challenges around the availability of recyclable products and the technological efficiency required to meet the needs of the sector. Even in the most optimistic scenarios, recycling would not eliminate the need for continued investment in new supplies of critical minerals. 

The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) 2021 report estimates that, by 2040, quantities of recycled copper, lithium, nickel and cobalt from spent batteries could reduce primary supply requirements for these minerals by just 10%.

It is clear that for now, green technology solutions to global warming cannot do without transition minerals, which need to be either extracted or recycled...

A study published in 2015 found that the production and use of household goods and services were responsible for 60% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Technology can expand energy efficiency measures to help combat climate change, but fundamentally addressing the problem requires questioning current consumption patterns. 

According to the authors of an article published in 2020, “consumption (and to a lesser extent population) growth have mostly outrun any beneficial effects of changes in technology over the past few decades.”

A critical report from the Ellen Macarthur Foundation published in 2021 argues that developing a circular economy is a compelling strategy for achieving climate goals. A circular economy goes way beyond reducing emissions from our linear economy where we buy products that are based on the extraction of raw materials, use them, then throw them away...

The climate emergency requires humanity to take bold decisions to reverse consumption patterns and practices that threaten to unbalance the climatic equilibrium. We need the courage to explore all solutions, even those that require drastic changes in lifestyles..."