Mining for coal is much more resource-intensive than renewables or nuclear power.
If we want to build a low-carbon economy, we'll need to mine a lot of different minerals. To build solar panels, we’ll need silicon, nickel, silver, and manganese. We’ll need iron and steel for wind turbines, uranium for nuclear power, and lithium and graphite for batteries.1This raises the concern that a move to clean energy might drive a huge increase in global mining.It looks this way if you only look at the mining requirements of a low-carbon energy system in isolation. We’ll indeed need to dig out tens to hundreds of millions of tonnes of minerals every year for decades.But zero mining is not the right baseline to compare it to. The relevant comparison is what we already mine for our current fossil fuel system. The alternative to low-carbon energy is not a zero-energy economy: it’s maintaining the status quo of a system powered mostly by fossil fuels.When we run the numbers, we find that moving to renewables or nuclear power actually reduces the material requirements for electricity.Let’s take a look at the data.Nuclear power has the lowest material footprint
Mining for metals also produces a lot of waste rock
Coal requires much more mining than solar, wind, or nuclear power
How does the material footprint of gas compare?
We still need to find ways to mine more responsibly
Moving to renewables or nuclear power reduces the amount of mining needed, compared to the status quo of fossil fuels.However, this fact doesn’t mean we should dismiss concerns about the environmental damage and working conditions associated with mining — for low-carbon energy or any other industry.The move to low-carbon energy will shift what materials we extract and where this mining will take place. There are still important discussions to be had about how to manage this responsibly.Further improvements in the material intensity of low-carbon energy sources are still needed, and recycling and strong governance will play a crucial role in reducing its impacts.What these results do show is that maintaining our current energy systems — mostly running on fossil fuels — is not only worse for the climate and air pollution: it’s worse for mining amounts, too.
