"As communities around the world transition to the green economy, one thing becomes increasingly clear - the shift to renewable technologies requires extraction. Instead of extracting coal, oil, natural gas and tar sands, we turn to lithium, cobalt, chromium, neodymium, and a plethora of other elements commonly deemed 'critical minerals.'
Though the list of elements varies somewhat between countries and different organizations such as the International Energy Agency, the European Union and the International Renewable Energy Agency, all entities agree that these materials enable the function of our complex industrial society.
Often obscure, with hard-to-pronounce names, and produced in far-away places, myriad metals facilitate the function of laptops, phones, batteries, vehicles and industries. Interestingly, scaling up production of common metals presents a different set of challenges than scaling up production of other critical minerals such as dysprosium or platinum.
This article presents a brief introduction to aluminum and its importance in our economy, its uses and demand within renewable technologies, and the ongoing environmental and social costs of aluminum production."
Read this article by Christopher Medary, former research fellow at Sustainable Development Strategies Group...
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Kat Friedrich
Editor in Chief
American Solar Energy Society
Monona WI
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