http://www.economist.com/node/21550243
With things like climate change and pollution being talked about a lot more frequently, people are looking to cleaner technologies. Things like electric cars and wind turbines are on the rise currently as people look for clean alternatives for transportation and energy. These clean technologies require some rare earth metals to make magnets for generators. If these technologies are to have the desired impact that some people want they would have to make dramatic increases in supplies. These supplies aren't easy to come by, especially more recently since China has closed off their some of their exports of rare earth metals. Essentially, the demand of these metals in the next 25 years may far outpace the supply if more suppliers aren't found.
5 comments:
Interesting to read about how some of our renewable technologies have unrenewable components. This sounds like it could be a major problem for what we call more "sustainable" energy technologies and could be another major stumbling block in freeing our country from its dependence on oil.
I agree...this makes me wonder if we'll ever have a sustainable source of energy. Even if we utilize something we have a lot of now, eventually it will dwindle and we will be left scrambling again.
I was unaware that there were parts of these "sustainable" technologies that were nonrenewable. If the general public is not told about this, then the push for using these methods will continue to rise until we also run out of those rare earth metals. We should be looking for more alternatives that do not depend on gas or these earth metals.
After all the researches that have been done and all the expectations from renewable resources, this article has raised a serious concern for environmentalists and scientists in finding effective and sustainable ways to reduce CO2 emissions. If finding substitutes for dysprosium and neodymium is not practical, there should be another huge investment in developing other ways to reduce the world's emissions of CO2.
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