Ronald Stein and John Shanahan
Ronald Stein is an engineer, senior policy advisor on energy literacy for CFACT. John Shanahan is an engineer and energy consultant.
In the transition to so-called clean and green electricity, critical minerals and metals bring new challenges to electricity security.
Solar plants, wind farms, and EVs generally require more minerals to build than their fossil fuel-based counterparts. A typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car, and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired plant. Since 2010, the average amount of minerals needed for a new unit of power generation capacity has increased by 50 per cent as the share of wind and solar renewables in new investments has risen.
Our electricity is increasingly dependent on rare earth minerals and metals mined for wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries under atrocious slave labor and environmental conditions in other countries that the DOE and bureaucrats ignore.
China controls a stranglehold of 80 per cent of the global supply monopoly on rare earth minerals and metals, with the Congo in Africa a 90 per cent source of vital cobalt.
On a total component basis for an EV battery, graphite is about 25 per cent to 28 per cent of the whole EV battery. Turkey has the largest reserves of graphite, followed by Brazil and China. Together, these three countries accounted for 66 per cent of the estimated world graphite reserves.
It should concern everyone that all those “blood minerals” come from mining at locations in the world that are never seen by environmentalists, policymakers, or EV buyers.
For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, just one Tesla EV battery requires the processing of more than 500,000 pounds of materials somewhere on the planet.
A battery for a heavy-duty electric truck can weigh up to 16,000 pounds, which is 16 times more than the Tesla battery! A single truck battery requires 8,000,000 pounds of earth to be dug up. That’s astounding – digging up eight million pounds of earth for each truck battery!
Policymakers setting “green” policies are oblivious to the reality that electricity came AFTER the discovery of oil 200 years ago.
- ALL electrical generation from hydro, coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, and solar are ALL built with the products, components, and equipment that are made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.
- All EVs, solar panels, and wind turbines are also built with products, components, and equipment made from crude oil derivatives.
- Further, all cars, trucks, excavating equipment, cranes, merchant ships, planes, and trains are also made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.
Our advanced society uses oil derivatives manufactured from black, cruddy crude oil to make fuels for larger jets, ships, and space launches and to make the 6,000 products made from oil that did not exist 200 years ago. If we weren’t such an advanced society, there would be no need for so-called “big oil.”
We’re over three-and-a-half years into Biden’s presidency, which from the outset promised an “all-government” regulatory onslaught to force a transition away from fossil fuels to “green” electricity.
Demand for products made from oil is stressing the supply chain, thus continuously spiking the cost of products and fuels from fossil fuels to meet society’s materialistic demands.
Most importantly, there is a lost reality that the primary usage of crude oil is NOT for the generation of electricity but to manufacture derivatives and fuels, which are the ingredients of everything needed by economies and lifestyles to exist and prosper, i.e., all products that did not exist before the 1800s.
None of the six methods for generating electricity can manufacture anything to support a materialistic society! Electricity can charge an iPhone but cannot make the iPhone. Electricity can make the defibrillator work in the hospital, but it cannot make the defibrillator.
Products that need electricity, such as iPhones, defibrillators, computers, data centers, and X-ray machines, are also dependent on the petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil to make all the parts and components of every method to generate electricity.
Looking back at the history of the petroleum industry, it illustrates that the black cruddy looking crude oil was virtually useless unless it could be manufactured (refineries) into oil derivatives that are now the basis of transportation fuels and the oil derivatives that are the basis of products, such as silicon-based semiconductor chips, plastics, lubricants, and medications, that are essential for supporting modern lifestyles.
“Big oil” only exists because of the wealthier countries being addicted to the products and fuels that are manufactured from fossil fuels that make OUR life more comfortable?” OUR needs for smaller and faster electronics and for bigger and faster planes, ships, and launches into outer space are the only reasons that crude oil is needed.
Thus, before we chastise “big oil”, we must ask ourselves, “How dare ME to continuously demand the products and fuels made from oil that make MY life more comfortable?”
Rick Amato’s Politics & Profits 8-minute conversation with Ronald Stein is an 8-minute video conversation on Your America TV that sheds light on the fact that those pursuing net-zero emissions may be oblivious to the reality that wind turbines and solar panels do different things than crude oil. “Mandatory Emissions (just in wealthy countries) To Achieve Net-Zero Is A Fool’s Game.”
Adding huge wind turbine blades and solar panels to generate electricity occasionally is the ‘green’ scam of the century, as ‘renewables’ are increasing fossil fuel demands, but those so-called renewables CANNOT make any products that are the basis of our materialistic world.
This article originally appeared at America Out Loud and was republished by CFACT.
