The Dirty Secrets Behind the Clean Revolution

Chris Morrison
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s environment editor.

The dirty manufacturing secrets behind the ‘clean’ green power revolution continue to pile up. As do the piles of filthy toxic waste growing across a China seemingly keen to supplant traditional energy and auto industries around the world at almost any price. The rare earth elements neodymium and praseodymium provide the best magnets for wind turbines and EVs, but they can arise from the ground at a fearful environmental cost.

A modern wind turbine can contain up to 600 kilos of neodymium that is used to make powerful permanent magnets (NdFeB – neodymium-iron-boron magnets). But the metal, along with the praseodymium also added in the magnets, is found in very low quantities in ore, and substantial extraction and refining is necessary using toxic acids, solvents and leaching ponds. To produce one tonne of the material, it is estimated that up to 12,000 m³ of waste gas is produced, along with a tonne of chronic radioactive residue. Up to 2,000 tonnes of toxic waste including slurry tailings mixtures that can leak into ground water supplies are produced.

The rest of the world cannot compete on price for this and other ‘green’ requirements because historically the country has been prepared to accept the high environmental costs. Chinese neodymium is often half the price of the metal mined elsewhere. It is estimated that over 50,000 metric tonnes of the metal is mined every year in China at what might be termed rock-bottom prices. Overall world production approaches 70,000 tonnes. The other huge demand for NdFeB magnets comes from EVs. Sales have soared of late as China attempts to flood world markets with cheap battery autos.

Sinister green political forces are destroying energy security in the UK by closing down local oil and gas sources in favour of a reliance on supply from known difficult places. To their apparent surprise, one of the usual Middle East suspects has gone embonpoint elevated, and a country that was exporting hydrocarbons until 2004 faces possible rationing. Similar future difficulties might await if China attempts to retake the Civil War 1949 redoubt of Taiwan.

But with no domestic cars on UK roads, there will not be a need for so many windmills. There could however be plenty of green jobs with the young enrolled to power cycle taxis on the empty highways. In addition, Dobbin could be persuaded to come out of retirement, with again, green jobs a plenty clearing up all the mess.

Mining for rare earth elements involves open pit mining followed by complex chemical separation using large amounts of energy and huge volumes of water. This generates significant waste including toxic tailings, acidic wastewater and sometimes radioactive by-products, due to associated thorium and uranium in many ores. In the past this has caused substantial environmental damage in China, including soil, groundwater and air pollution along with health problems in nearby communities. The radiation emissions are low, but there are fears that over time the contamination can lead to increased risks of various cancers.

Neodymium demand is driven by magnets that are needed for so-called clean power applications. One of the largest and fastest growing uses is EVs. According to the latest figures, 17.3 million electric cars were produced worldwide in 2024, with China accounting for over 70 per cent of the total. Depending on type, each EV uses between 0.5–2.5 kilos of neodymium, suggesting an annual demand of well over 20,000 tonnes a year.

Of course smug ‘save the planet’ elites have long turned a blind eye to all the environmental damage and the growing political insecurities caused by their mad dash to remove hydrocarbons from a modern industrial society. Don’t bother me with details – whatever the costs, seems to sum up their increasingly questionable attitude. Such is their blinkered stance, that they seem unaware of the growing threats to industrial bases, food supplies and ultimately the defence of the nation that their insane policies are producing. It was all highlighted a year ago in the UK Parliament when about a third of the MPs were prepared to support a bill that would have cut hydrocarbon use by 90 per cent within a decade. That would hardly have been enough energy to run emergency services, let alone anything else. All the LibDems and Greens, 80 Labour members and two Tories were in favour. The restrictions would have applied to imported goods using hydrocarbon and if passed it would have led to mass starvation and societal collapse.

Perhaps when you are saving the planet, all these mere details do not matter. If you are worried by the limited mileage of your EV, there is always another Indonesian rainforest to dig up to pump the lithium-ion battery with range-improving nickel. And all that battery cobalt provides plentiful employment for the children of the Congo. Wind turbines might be one of the most inefficient ways to harness reliable energy, but the machines are top notch, helped by a lightweight blade core of balsa wood, courtesy of hundreds of thousands of trees illegally logged in the Amazon. The virtuous who walk amongst us might have insisted – loudly and publicly – on a 1,000 metre bat tunnel costing £100 million for a new UK highspeed railway, but slightly less concern is expressed for the millions of bats and thousands of raptors killed every year by turbines blades across the world. 

It might not be inaccurate to suggest that, in this, and all the other blind eyes turned to environmental devastation, they do not give a flying flittermouse.

This article was originally published by the Daily Sceptic.