The current trajectory is towards a mix of natural gas + solar + wind, with natural gas balancing unreliable renewables. Better flow batteries might make solar + storage more competitive, but without natural gas, Europe would need some seasonal electricity storage, which is much too expensive.
There are many different minerals; you can’t lump them all together. Short-term, lithium availability is a big problem for batteries, but in terms of reserves I don’t think that’s the main issue. Nickel is also up a lot, which is part of why people are using LiFePO4 more despite the lower specific energy. (Some people have proposed collecting seabed nodules, but there’s a reason they’re called “manganese nodules”—they’re mostly manganese, which is much cheaper. I don’t expect that to be economically competitive with even low-grade nickel ores.)
More copper mining output should be coming up, but I still expect prices to be a lot higher than they used to be, and you need copper for electric motors. The high-concentration ores of copper and nickel are what’s limited; there’s more supply at lower concentrations, but that can be a lot more expensive.
I expect continued heavy use of:
US natural gas from fracking
Chinese coal
LNG in Japan
The current trajectory is towards a mix of natural gas + solar + wind, with natural gas balancing unreliable renewables. Better flow batteries might make solar + storage more competitive, but without natural gas, Europe would need some seasonal electricity storage, which is much too expensive.
There are many different minerals; you can’t lump them all together. Short-term, lithium availability is a big problem for batteries, but in terms of reserves I don’t think that’s the main issue. Nickel is also up a lot, which is part of why people are using LiFePO4 more despite the lower specific energy. (Some people have proposed collecting seabed nodules, but there’s a reason they’re called “manganese nodules”—they’re mostly manganese, which is much cheaper. I don’t expect that to be economically competitive with even low-grade nickel ores.)
More copper mining output should be coming up, but I still expect prices to be a lot higher than they used to be, and you need copper for electric motors. The high-concentration ores of copper and nickel are what’s limited; there’s more supply at lower concentrations, but that can be a lot more expensive.
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