Toxic rare earth mining industry at the heart of the green energy transition

https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/natural-resource-governance/myanmars-poisoned-mountains/

by rsolva • 2 years ago

37 47 2 years ago

ggm• 2 years ago

It's headline-ese because it could have been "at the heart of the computer industry" or "at the heart of the car industry" or space, mining, construction, any industrial sector which needs these inputs.

The green energy transition may be a more recent consumer.

It's still shit, but implying this wouldn't happen if we stuck with coal and nuclear is silly.

dexwiz• 2 years ago

And nuclear has its own set of toxic metals. Hell even coal has a heavy metal issue.

awolf• 2 years ago

Coal has a much worse heavy metal issue than Nuclear.

angiosperm6• 2 years ago

Nuclear is effectively irrelevant to the future of power production, as it cannot compete on cost, and falls further behind with each passing year.

rsolva4• 2 years ago

What worries me as a green, is how we keep adding renewable energy to the mix without replacing the use of fossil fuels.

defrost4• 2 years ago

There is a real need to keep at reducing fossil fuel usage for sure.

That said, in some small assuage to your worry there are large sectors that are transitioning to replacement of fossil fuels.

Global scale mining operations, such as Australia's ~ one billion tonne per annum iron ore industry consume large quantities of fuel for trucks, trains, and electricity generation for shovels, loaders, crushers, conveyots, screens, etc.

https://fortescue.com/what-we-do/green-energy-research/green...

https://fortescue.com/news-and-media/news/2024/03/15/world-s...

https://reneweconomy.com.au/fortescue-starts-work-on-world-f...

Infinity Train: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuLrc1u43gU

angiosperm6• 2 years ago

Use of fossil fuels will fall off naturally as the cost of renewables continues on down the learning curve, radically undercutting them. Without the enormous subsidies fossil fuels still enjoy, they would have been undercut years ago.

IshKebab• 2 years ago

What do you mean? We are reducing fossil fuel usage. Look at the UK's grid.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63976805.amp

cinntaile• 2 years ago

It is replacing fossil fuels, look at the statistics.

sunshinesnacks4• 2 years ago

Every MWh produced by new wind or solar is one less MWh produced by fossil fuels.

CO2 reductions aren’t necessarily 1:1, but are usually very close.

So, adding renewable energy is replacing fossil fuels, even if the fossil plants don’t immediately shut down.

It’s a lot like replacing car trips with walking/biking/transit and then complaining that you still have a car.

cyanydeez• 2 years ago

Toxicc oil mining and paptmospheric pollution at the heart of the fossil fuel cabal.

flgb• 2 years ago

Dog whistling.

The phrase "green energy transition" is mentioned only in the headline, and is completely irrelavent to the point being made in article, which is that unregulated mining in poor developing countries is bad.

defrost4• 2 years ago

As a point of order, and especially with most (not all) rare earth elements it's not the

unregulated mining in poor developing countries

that's the worst part of the chain, it's the processing of concentrates.

With, say, lithium for batteries a great deal of the mining takes place in Australia and that mining produces a spodumene concentrate which is shipped onwards for processing - which creates acid lakes in holding dams and low level radioactive waste as a by product.

This has recently occured on location in countries such as China and Malaysia :

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3242368/mal...

https://apnews.com/article/malaysia-australia-mining-lynas-r...

but has recently expanded to locations in Australia and (soon) Texas and other US states.

rsolva4• 2 years ago

OP here, I thought it was relevant as alot of the output goes to production of windmills and electric cars (motors).

I am genuinely worried about the squeeze we are in now between conserving and protecting nature and transitioning away from fossil fules. I am active in the green party i Norway where we are fighting to wind down our oil production in a responsible and controlled maner.

But alot of the new non-fossil energy production is now added to the existing energy mix, not replacing fossil fuels.

Close by where I live (45 min drive), Google is building a huge server park that will require approximately 5% of Norways total electricity production. The region does not have enough power and energy companies are now in a frenzy to build solar parks along the delicate norwegian coastline in the south. This will mostly go to cover the needs of Googles new datacenter, not replace fossil fuels in any way.

Just because someone calls something "green" does not automatically make it so.

Scarblac2• 2 years ago

But alot of the new non-fossil energy production is now added to the existing energy mix, not replacing fossil fuels

I agree completely. Global CO2 output is still increasing, afaik, despite all the work on alternatives so far.

We need much more emphasis on using less energy.

angiosperm6• 2 years ago

"Windmills" and electric cars do not, in fact, rely heavily on rare earth materials. Enormously more are used, e.g., in quadcopters. Even in places where powerful rare-earth permanent magnets are now important, they will soon be largely displaced by nitrogen-iron magnets, which are both radically cheaper and more powerful.

Google data centers are not examples of a "green energy transition".

Nasrudith• 2 years ago

But alot of the new non-fossil energy production is now added to the existing energy mix, not replacing fossil fuels.

Do you know how replacement and phase out works in the real world? Hint, you don't just immediately install 100% new capacity and then rip out the still working old capacity.

ZeroGravitas2• 2 years ago

I am genuinely worried about the squeeze we are in now between conserving and protecting nature and transitioning away from fossil fules.

You shouldn't be, as pretty much the biggest thing you can do to conserve and protect nature is to transition away from fossil fuels.

Which you maybe already know since your example of a new data center has nothing to do with the transition from fossil fuels, and would only be much, much worse if their plan to power it was to burn fossil fuels.

dopylitty• 2 years ago

But alot of the new non-fossil energy production is now added to the existing energy mix, not replacing fossil fuels.

This is a really good point that worries me quite a bit as well. Energy is essentially fungible so any energy used by wasteful and pointless endeavors such as cryptocurrency mining or model training is energy that's not going toward reducing our use of fossil fuels. Worse it's energy that still has externalities associated with production and storage such as mining for solar/batteries destroying natural areas and hydroelectric impacting river ecosystems.

Fossil fuels should be phased out ASAP and the way to do that is to stop increasing energy usage and to ensure renewable energy is used only for activities that are actually necessary such as food production and heating/cooling.

As someone working in the "cloud computing" industry I see companies spending huge amounts of energy to index non-production logs they'll never look at. I see developers wasting huge amounts of energy to create useless models for generating content nobody will ever look at. I see companies leaving huge infrastructures running 24/7 just in case someone might want to get an Ad served at 3am. And I see the enormous grey data center housing all that junk that now sits nearby where there used to be a pristine forest full of wildlife.

Close by where I live (45 min drive), Google is building a huge server park that will require approximately 5% of Norways total electricity production.

It's amazing how much these things consume and at the end of the day they aren't doing anything of value. Communities really need to come together to prevent new data centers and remove existing ones.

shermozle• 2 years ago

Don't worry. Oil and gas have no negative impacts from their extraction!

elcritch• 2 years ago

Exactly, it needs to be about the relative impacts of each. Extracting oil and gas produces lots of toxic and carcinogens for every unit which is used just once. In theory rare earth metals produce toxic waste but have a longer lifetime and smaller concentrations even then. Not to mention the rise in recycling of these materials.

mc32• 2 years ago

Dog whistle is a facile retort without substance. It’s like when someone says back to you “greenwashing” it doesn’t mean anything. Dogwhistling doesn’t mean anything.

What OP is talking about is total impact of renewables. Just because renewables are the future and on paper are less polluting does not mean they are currently less polluting when everything is taken into account and people need to realize that. Transitions are messy, disrupting and during a period are less efficient than what they replace.

sunshinesnacks4• 2 years ago

Just because you imply they might be more polluting when everything is taken into account doesn’t mean they are.

I challenge you to find a credible source that shows they are.

jmclnx• 2 years ago

unregulated mining in poor developing countries is bad

But we all know that will never stop :( Bribe a few pols and off we go. For context look at e-waste which is being dumped into poor countries. People there are working in the dumps striping the waste for valuable items like gold and living on the edge of starvation.

Until there is a worldwide enforceable environmental laws, we will see these mines popping up all over the place.

Toxic rare earth mining industry at the heart of the green energy transition

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