Carlos Barria/Reuters The Biden administration’s ambivalence toward domestic mining for copper and other minerals works against its own climate goals, and sets the U.S. up for long-term reliance on China, a new book argues. In The War Below, longtime Reuters energy correspondent Ernest Scheyder chronicles the booming global demand for lithium, copper, rare earths, and the myriad other metals and minerals that are essential for electric vehicle batteries, grid transmission cables, solar panels, and other energy transition hardware. Ubiquitous consumer electronics have already driven a massive increase in demand for these minerals in the past two decades. Fighting climate change will require a whole lot more: A typical EV motor, for example, requires a mile of copper wiring and nearly 20 pounds of lithium. The International Energy Agency projects that by 2040, global copper demand will be three times higher than today; lithium demand will be 42 times higher. That means the phaseout of fossil fuels will require a massive increase in mining — and present Western governments and voters with a series of uncomfortable, but unavoidable, choices and trade-offs between clean energy goals on one hand, and social and environmental impacts on the other. “I wanted readers in the U.S. to realize the era of us relying on places we will never visit or never see for the building blocks of our everyday lives is essentially over,” Scheyder told Semafor. “Where did the cobalt come from in this battery? Did a seven-year-old take it out of the ground in the Congo? All of us recoil at that. That’s horrible. But is the answer then to produce more cobalt with higher ESG standards in Western countries? I would argue yes — and so we have to grapple with that as well.” |