Introduction
Since our ancestors first discovered fire millennia ago, civilization’s continued expansion has been dependent on finding cheap and plentiful energy sources. While much of our history has been dominated by the use of biomass as the primary fuel source, our move toward industrialization in the 18th century changed this in a couple of decades. Cheap and abundant coal that drove the machines and factories of the Industrial Revolution was added to our energy mix. More than a century passed before the transportation sector prompted another addition to our core energy sources: oil.
We have doubled our energy consumption over the past 40 years, something that took us a century to do during the 1800s. This growing demand for energy, combined with a heavy dependence on non-renewable sources, has been the norm until recently. Increased climate change awareness and rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions have driven a call to action to curb our dependence on fossil fuels. Additionally, diversifying our energy mix to increase the use of renewable energy sources is prudent risk management in economic terms.
Historically, adoption of new fuel sources came with a shift toward new technologies, like the steam powered machines of the 18th century and combustion engines of the 19th century. However, the current energy transition we are witnessing is driven by our goal to reduce our carbon emissions, whereby innovative technologies are being embraced with an explicit purpose of diversifying our fuel sources.
Diversification within Transition
One feature of the Energy Transition playbook is the use of metals in various technology solutions to the problem. Electrification entails demand for metals used in battery technology (lithium, cobalt, nickel), in electric vehicles (copper, aluminum) and in various industrial applications. Increasing use of renewables in our electricity generation requires the input of metals in solar cells (copper, aluminum), wind turbines (copper, rare earth elements) and geothermal power plants (nickel, chromium).
Diverse technologies at play in the shift to low carbon energy sources require a diversified group of minerals (see Exhibit 1). Some metals like lithium and cobalt find their use in battery technologies, while others like copper and chromium have wider application areas.
