Iridium Shortages Threathens Electrolyzer Potential

Because the availability of scarce raw materials such as iridium and platinum will become acute in the short term, there is a growing problem for the energy transition. By 2050, hydrogen production in the EU alone will require much more iridium than is currently produced worldwide every year.

[tno.nl] – Shortage of materials threatens planned green hydrogen production
[euractiv.com] – Metals needed for hydrogen production could get scarce, German authority warns
[sciencedirect.com] – Is iridium demand a potential bottleneck in the realization of large-scale PEM water electrolysis?
[wikipedia.org] – Iridium

[woodmac.com] – Why iridium could put a damper on the green hydrogen boom

World iridium supply is currently dominated by South Africa, as a by-product of platinum and palladium production. In 2018 South Africa accounted for 87% of global iridium production, with a further 8% coming from Zimbabwe and 3% each from Russia and Canada, according to the US Geological Survey. South Africa also has the great bulk of the world’s PGM reserves: about 91%, followed by Russia with about 6%, Zimbabwe with about 2% and the US with about 1%, again according to the USGS.

Translation: the BRICS hold almost all reserves. More illustration that Europe is entirely on the wrong path by letting itself being isolated from Russia by the US and its imperial adventures, that even had the audacity to bomb gas pipelines to Europe to ram hyper expensive LNG through our throats. We need to get rid of the US. Europe is the last colony in this world and that needs to end, fast.

Agromining – Could Plants Help Solve Our Addiction to Mining?

Bloomberg – Agro-mining is the process of growing plants that absorb metals from the ground. The science is solid, but will this innovation ever be scalable enough to reduce traditional, destructive mining practices? Presented by Sabic.

[universe.wiki] – Agro-mining: the alternative for sustainable mining
[pubs.acs.org] – Agromining: Farming for Metals in the Future?

Phytomining technology employs hyperaccumulator plants to take up metal in harvestable plant biomass. Harvesting, drying and incineration of the biomass generates a high-grade bio-ore. We propose that “agromining” (a variant of phytomining) could provide local communities with an alternative type of agriculture on degraded lands; farming not for food crops, but for metals such as nickel (Ni). However, two decades after its inception and numerous successful experiments, commercial phytomining has not yet become a reality. To build the case for the minerals industry, a large-scale demonstration is needed to identify operational risks and provide “real-life” evidence for profitability.

[springer.com] – Agromining: Farming for Metals

[The book] describes the agronomy of metal crops and opportunities for incorporating agromining into rehabilitation and mine closure, including test cases for agromining of nickel, cobalt, manganese, arsenic, selenium, cadmium, zinc, thallium, rare earth elements and platinum group elements.

Copper Becoming Scarce

Copper prices have surged in 2021. The base metal remains in high demand, much thanks to its need in green energy projects and electric cars. In May 2021, commodities analysts at Goldman Sachs called copper ‘the new oil.’ That’s because electric cars need several times more copper than their gas-powered counterparts. And power grids getting electricity from wind, solar and hydro sources also need copper—much more than the industry is currently producing. Here’s how copper became so important to the world economy and the green energy revolution.

The energy transition is not just about swapping fossil fuel for renewable electricity/hydrogen. As the Club of Rome predicted, several commodities will become scarce in the 21st century. The task ahead of us is not merely to decarbonize the economy, it also means do the same with less… or doing less altogether, using the last trump card we have, which the Club mentioned didn’t foresee: technology.

They never for instance anticipated in 1968-1972 that the world would be interconnected with an information system (“internet”), that enables society to cancel most offices and the corresponding daily commute. The Covid pandemic did the rest, to help change behavior patterns. They would also not have anticipated the possibility of autonomous driving car robots, eliminating the necessity of most private car ownership and outsource supply of public transport to companies, that own and maintain fleets of vans, the numbers of which can be a fraction of the current global fleet of sedans of 1 billion, with vastly smaller embedded and operation energy footprint and resource.

[wikipedia.org] – Club of Rome
[wikipedia.org] – The Limits to Growth
[marketwatch.com] – The world risks ‘running out of copper’
[oilprice.com] – Goldman Sachs: Historic Copper Shortage Loom As Prices Rocket
[deepresource] – “By 2030 You Won’t Own a Car”

Silver Price

[source]
Author of the article points to an often forgotten relationship between the silver price and energy market. Core message article: silver demand only just got started. Reason: investment demand has overtaken industrial demand, the public wants silver coins, not in the least because of a deteriorating confidence in paper money. Between 2002 and 2011 the percentage of silver investment as compared to industrial application rose from 9% to 58%. In short: institutional and retail investors have been the predominant force in pushing silver from an average of $4.60 an ounce in 2002 to averaging over $35 an ounce last year. LBMA in London is the largest physical gold and silver market in the world and there has been strong US silver export to Britain to meet rising investor demand. But additionally silver production is highly energy intensive, because the ‘low hanging fruit’ (where did we hear that expression before?) has already been picked. In six years time the silver content of ore declined 34%. The author suggests to see silver as a store of energy. Now that peak conventional oil is upon us and shale likely a fata morgana, oil and gas. This implies that the ‘energy content’ of silver will increase and thus the price. People increasingly turn away from any kind of paper values (fiat money, metal certificates) and demand the real stuff. What we see happening is a bank run on the LMBA. With declining energy liquids supply, silver production will decline. The author concludes: “Get ready. As the forces for pushing silver over $100 have just begun.”

[financialsense.com]
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