Abstract
The deployment of renewable energy technologies will play a crucial role in the global transition to a low-carbon economy and ultimately in the fight against global warming. However, this transition could face important problems because most of those technologies rely on the steady supply of critical minerals. Colombia, thanks to its hydrological resources, has relied on the hydropower for electricity generation. However, the government has implemented measures to back-up the energy system in draught periods and, consequently, fossil fuels-based plants have increased the market share and with these, CO2 emissions. This study assesses the mineral demand in Colombia in the period 2020-2050 for the rare earth elements embedded in the deployment of wind power technologies in four different climate policy scenarios in order to establish whether they could face geological bottlenecks that could ultimately hamper the transition to a low-carbon economy. The Gigawatts (GW) of future capacity additions in the energy system are converted into tons of metal using published metal intensities of use and assumptions of Colombia’s technological pathway. Then, the cumulated mineral demand is compared against current mining production rates and geological reserves to establish geological bottlenecks. The results show that the reserves will not pose any threat to its transition. However, when compared to current mining rates, the mineral demand in 2050 could pose a problem for the supply of minerals. Finally, this study gives some policy recommendations that could be used to mitigate these issues, such as substitution, improved circular economy and sound technological choices.
Highlights
The worldwide transition from high to low-carbon economies will require the extraction and processing of a significant volume of rare earth elements (REEs) and other minerals which are used in Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs)
This study assesses the mineral demand in Colombia in the period 2020-2050 for the rare earth elements embedded in the deployment of wind power technologies in four different climate policy scenarios in order to establish whether they could face geological bottlenecks that could hamper the transition to a low-carbon economy
Their model suggests that vanadium which is commonly used in nuclear, photovoltaic, carbon capture and storage, electric vehicles and fuel cell vehicles, is “critical” in all three energy policy scenarios, whereas selenium, indium, and tellurium are “critical” in photovoltaic systems, dysprosium in wind power, and nickel, platinum zirconium, yttrium, lithium, and lanthanum in fuel cell vehicles
Summary
The worldwide transition from high to low-carbon economies will require the extraction and processing of a significant volume of rare earth elements (REEs) and other minerals which are used in Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs). To date there has been a lack of studies on how the deployment of RETs in developing countries could impact the global market, and on how the implementation of different climate-policy scenarios in developing countries could affect the global demand for metals. Tely allowing to establish whether the available resources are sufficient to meet future demand or whether there could be potential shortages of mineral resources that would affect the deployment of RETs. this study sheds light on whether the REEs would experience geological bottlenecks that could make them more expensive and concludes with a proposal for some policy options to deal with such issues
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