There is an insidious lie that has taken root in the energy transition narrative pushed by the world’s most powerful financial, political, and environmental institutions: we need to massively scale up “critical mineral” mining to secure a green future. The World Bank claims that production of key minerals will need to increase by 500% by […]

  • The world needs to move from fossil fuels to renewable ones, but the narrative pushed by powerful financial, political, and environmental institutions — that it’s necessary to massively scale up mining of “transition” or “critical” minerals to achieve this — is false, a new op-ed argues.

  • Not only do these minerals’ extraction cause countless environmental and community harms, the numbers cited about how they are used — and the number of new mines needed — don’t add up, a recent report has shown.

  • “The vast majority [of critical minerals] are used in industries that are either unrelated — or in direct opposition — to the clean energy transition,” the author writes.

  • ikt@aussie.zone
    0·
    2 months ago

    I never said the grid is perfect as is. Just that those saying it cannot handle EVs are blowing smoke.

    Well that’s a bit more elaborate from what you initially said :P

    The result is a lopsided flow of power that’s maxing out transmission corridors from the Highlands to London. That grid strain won’t ease any time soon

    https://spectrum.ieee.org/grid-congestion-uk

    In 2022, TenneT, the Dutch transmission system operator, spent EUR 388 million on grid congestion management, over six times the amount spent in 2020, although this was partly linked to higher electricity prices. Similar trends are seen in other countries, such as Germany, where grid congestion management costs increased more than three-fold from 2020 to 2022 and surpassing EUR 4 billion. In most cases, these costs are passed on to the consumers via network charges.

    https://www.iea.org/commentaries/grid-congestion-is-posing-challenges-for-energy-security-and-transitions

    etc

      • ikt@aussie.zone
        0·
        2 months ago

        edit: why did you downvote me ya dick?

        not a lot I suspect, renewables is the biggest driver of transmission grid upgrades

        netherlands in particular was not built for renewables but has the most enthusiastic renewables deployment in europe:

        He explains that the problem is that the grid “was designed in the days when we had just a few very large, mainly gas-fired power plants”.

        "So we built a grid with very big power lines close to those power plants, and increasingly smaller power lines as you got more towards the households.

        “Nowadays we’re switching to renewables, and that means there’s a lot of power being injected into the grid in the outskirts of the network where there are only relatively small power lines.”

        And these small power lines are struggling to cope with all the electricity coming in from wind turbines and solar panels scattered around the country.

        https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn40y9yxkgvo