According to International Energy Agency mineral demand for clean energy technologies would rise by at least four times by 2040 to meet
climate goals, with particularly high growth for EV-related minerals.
You can recycle the minerals and you should recycle minerals, but almost no recycling technology can recycle 100% of minerals and recycling has always costs attached to it (this can be for example capital costs, building recycling facilities, operating costs in form labor costs for separation, energy costs for melting material and purification processes).
For example aluminum is recycled, not because we have have a shortage of aluminium ore (Earth's mantle is 2.38% aluminium by mass), but because recycling is less energy intensive then production of fresh aluminum.
https://international-aluminium.org/work-areas/recycling/
The worst kind of recycling is decreasing the costs of recycling by outsourcing to third world countries, by exploiting lax environmental regulations or corrupted environmental protection officials.
> aluminum is recycled... but because recycling is less energy intensive then production of fresh aluminum
So what?
> Recycling of EV batteries will lose between 1-10% of the valuable metals
How much gasoline, coal, and natural gas can you recycle?
> The worst kind of recycling is decreasing the costs of recycling by outsourcing to third world countries
That's going to happen as long as those countries are poor. They need to develop their economies quickly to demand better laws. Climate change will be a danger for many of them in the coming years.
Better, less-polluting recycling tech will help them far more than continuing to burn fossil fuels.
I just wanted to show that there no such thing as perfect recycling technology.
If you want to choose least material intensive source of energy, you choose nuclear energy. By choosing nuclear energy you get the benefit of almost decarbonizing you electricity production as can be seen in France.
Nuclear isn't perfect either. You can be embargoed for uranium way more easily, if you don't already have it. It's more expensive to build than solar and takes much longer (and don't BS me with "it's because of the regulations!" - everything, even solar, has regulations that drive up the cost and construction timelines).
If you can build price-competitive nuclear energy without government backstops or insurance, you have my blessing.
I personally think nuclear's time is in the far future when we have more advanced, exotic materials that make it radically safer and cheaper. For applications where solar isn't sufficient, such as space propulsion.
No energy technology is perfect each has it's benefits and drawbacks.
Yes a nuclear power plant more expensive than solar power plant. But an electric grid based on renewables, if we add the costs for storage, backup generator, power lines upgrades needed for smoothing out regional variations of production, is more expensive (or it can be cheaper if you have access to cheap natural gas, Texas power grid).
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/material-intensity-electr...
According to International Energy Agency mineral demand for clean energy technologies would rise by at least four times by 2040 to meet climate goals, with particularly high growth for EV-related minerals.
https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in...