Global commodities/mining consequences of electric cars
(some notes I jotted down from a recent copy of Mining Monthly)
per Richard Herrington, Head of Earth Sciences of Britain's Natural History Museum, in a speech+post on their website (co-signatories included people from the British Geological Society and several British academics) :
Looking at ONLY the UK:
to meet just UK electric car targets by 2050:
the world would need to produce:* just under twice the current total annual world cobalt production
* nearly the entire world production of neodymium
* three quarters of the world's lithium production
* at least half the world's copper production
* Looking Globally, at proposed 2035 target of all-electric sales, and looking ONLY at cars+smallvans, ignoring trucks etc:
the projected (by then) 2bn cars worldwide will require:
* world copper production will have to double* cobalt production increase by a factor of 3.5×
Biting the hand that feeds IT
