The Rocky Mountain Institute just released their transformative new “The Battery Mineral Loop” report. They calculate that after an ongoing one-time surge in mining of critical minerals, we could power a “circular loop” clean energy economy with entirely recycled minerals by 2050.
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Reasons For Hope
The Rocky Mountain Institute has just released an amazing new report, “The Battery Mineral Loop,” with some incredibly hopeful findings. Essentially, thanks to the complementary solutions of “circular” mineral recycling, ever-increasing efficiency, and new battery chemistries, we should be able to eventually run our clean electron-powered civilization with only a relatively small one-off increase in critical mineral mining, potentially reaching a “circular loop” of recycling minerals by 2050. Here’s RMI in their own words:
“Battery minerals are not the new oil.
Even as battery demand surges, the combined forces of efficiency, innovation, and circularity will drive peak demand for mined minerals within a decade — and may even avoid mineral extraction altogether by 2050.
These advancements enable us to transition from linear extraction to a circular loop, with compounding benefits for our climate, security, equity, health, and wealth.
Change is already underway. Without the past decade of improvements in chemistry mix, energy density, and recycling, lithium, nickel, and cobalt demand would be 60–140 percent higher than they are today.
Continuing the current trend means we will see peak virgin battery mineral demand in the mid-2030s.”
-Rocky Mountain Institute
Here’s the full post from RMI’s Substack.
And here’s the report itself, at rmi.org/insight/the-battery-mineral-loop.
One particularly vital point that this report emphasizes is that while we definitely need more mining for critical minerals like lithium in the short term, that adds up to a tiny fraction of the annual mass of fossil fuels extracted. Concerns about mining for cleantech are fundamentally missing the point due to misunderstanding the broader context: this is a one-time investment in increased mining with the potential to bootstrap us to an unprecedentedly low-mining economy, and even that one-time increase is tiny compared to fossil fuel mining.
“Accelerated progress means we only need to mine a cumulative 125 million tons of battery minerals.
This quantity alone can get us to circular battery self-sufficiency.
That is 17 times smaller than the amount of oil we extract and process for road transport every year.
And, at today’s commodity prices, about 20 times cheaper as well.”
-Rocky Mountain Institute
To repeat the key finding again: the one-time mining investment we need to make to power the renewables transition adds up to less tons of material moved than the amount of oil we currently use per year! After that one-time battery mining investment, we should be able to just keep recycling the minerals in our batteries for decades if not centuries, possibly achieving a full “circular loop” as soon as 2050.
This is absolutely vital context for the ongoing cleantech revolution. Mining for critical battery minerals like lithium is vital for the clean energy transition, but it’s not a long-term issue like fossil fuels: after a one-time mining boom in the next few decades (still tiny in comparison to fossil fuels!), we could reach a circular loop by 2050. People need to know about this.