We Might Not Have Enough Materials for All the Solar Panels and Wind Turbines We Need, an Analysis Finds (popularmechanics.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Plenty of high-tech electronic components, like solar panels, rechargeable batteries, and complex circuits require specific rare metals. These can include magnetic neodymium, electronic indium, and silver, along with lesser-known metals like praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium. These metals are mined in large quantities in countries around the world, and they make their way into the supply chains of all sorts of electronics and renewables companies.

A group of researchers from the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure determined how many of these important metals will be required by 2050 in order to make enough solar panels and wind turbines to effectively combat climate change. With plenty of countries, states, cities, and companies pledging to go 100 percent renewable by 2050, the number of both solar panels and wind turbines is expected to skyrocket. According to the analysis, turbines and solar panels might be skyrocketing a bit too much. Demand for some metals like neodymium and indium could grow by more than a dozen times by 2050, and there simply might not be enough supply to power the green revolution.

Comments

FUD

[mspohr]

Popular Mechanics? Idiots.
Solar panels don't use "rare earth" elements (and rare earth elements are not rare).

Re:FUD

[Zorpheus]

Does it talk about alternaives though?
Indium is used in the transparent conductor Indium Tin Oxide. There are alternatives, such as Aluminium tin Oxide. Not as good, but it will be used if we are running out of Indium.
And others already wrote that Neodymium is not needed for wind turbines. It is just a generator in there, it can be built in many different ways.

Re:The dynamo in a wind turbine

[mspohr]

There’s a persistent myth about wind turbines that just won’t seem to go away despite reality running to the contrary: they need rare earth materials to generate electricity.
For those not acquainted with rare earths like neodymium and dysprosium, they’re used in products from your iPhone and computer to flat screen TVs and certain types of batteries.
While they can be difficult to mine, rare is a misnomer: they exist in abundance throughout the earth’s crust.
Many people think rare earths are also a necessary component of wind turbines, but the facts find otherwise: only about two percent of the U.S. wind turbine fleet uses them, and that number shouldn’t change much in the years to come.

https://www.aweablog.org/rare-...

Re:The dynamo in a wind turbine

[jeff4747]

The dynamo in a wind turbine currently uses rare earth magnets.

FTFY.

Neodymium magnets are used to make the generators smaller and a little more efficient. We already have other materials that will do the job, it will just be larger or a little less efficient. And if neodymium ends up being the bottleneck, well we'll get to figure out more about magnetism since we'll have a huge incentive for an alternative.

Of course

[jlowery]

They stopped teaching alchemy in schools ages ago, and now look where we are.

Have we run out of imagination as well?

[munch117]

There are so many different ways of building wind turbines. Neodymium and indium is used today because it's readily available. When it becomes scarce, we will come up with different designs. Or maybe we will just find new places to dig neodymium and indium out of the earth. This is not a real problem.

And there's a solution for this

[necro81]

I predict that when the coming resource crunch comes, if ever, the rising price of such-and-such raw material will rise enough that an alternative will emerge. Neodymium too costly? You can make a perfectly good electric generator using other magnets or inductance. Indium too expensive? Well, perhaps we won't use as many CIGS solar panels, and instead stick with silicon.

And, who knows, we'll probably be prospecting asteroids by 2050. If the cost for certain materials on earth is high enough, there may be a business case for it. Indium costs about $5/gram presently, or $5M/tonne. If there's a resource crunch and the cost goes up, say, 5-fold, perhaps someone will have enough incentive to mine asteroid indium for $25M/tonne.

Basic assumption.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

1. The known reserves of these elements today, will be the same reserves we will have till 2050

2. The known techniques and cost for extracting them today, will be the same till 2050

3. Similar study done in 1868 would have concluded there is not enough oil in Pottsville, PA to replace coal as a major source of fuel

4. Similar study done in 1750 would have concluded there is not enough coal to replace whale oil as a fuel for lighting

5. Similar study done in 1550 would have concluded the known reserves of whales and the cost of extracting oil from their blubber would be prohibitive and wax candles will be used forever for lighting.

Re:You mean like peak oil?

[mspohr]

The stone age didn't end because they ran out of stones.
The oil age will not end because we run out of oil.
The oil age will end because we have better, cheaper sources of energy and we need to stop burning fossil fuels.

Nuclear, alternatives or space mining

[rsilvergun]

All perfectly doable if we can just stop fighting among ourselves and spending 1/3 of our entire civilization's output on war and war profiteering.

Also, human population is in decline where ever you find significant technical civilization. Assuming we don't regress (which, don't get me wrong, a not insignificant portion of humanity wants to) then it's a problem that will solve itself. People don't actually breed uncontrollably if they've got options. Japan, Singapore and now the US with their declining birthrates prove that.

Folks mostly have a ton of kids as a kind of makeshift retirement program and between automation and productivity increases we just aren't going to need the vast labor pool we used to. We are going to need a way to distribute the wealth from the bots an A.I.s. Either that or we're going have have a dystopia where the 1% have everything and the rest of the world looks like a mix of Ethiopia, Somalia and the worst years of the American Indian Reservations.

Re:The dynamo in a wind turbine

[Shaitan]

You do realize this article is in fact an analysis of these materials and their accessible quantities and the determination that THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH OF THEM for the demand required through 2050. Rare is a subjective term this is quantative analysis of what is actually there not guesswork based on the word "rare" which you are battling. Abundant within the Earth's crust isn't particularly meaningful, we can't get to all the earths crust by a long shot and not all of what we can get to is easily accessible or cheaply accessible and even if we can get to it easily and cheaply we can still only pull it out so fast.

Re:Wow yes

[AvitarX]

It wasn't new and shiny. It was cheap.

It was known to be inferior, but thought to be good enough (it wasn't).

Re:Wow yes

[PPH]

aluminum - didn't work out too well.

It works just fine. Look up some time. All that stuff strung between the poles and transmission towers ... aluminum. So is the stuff underground. Even the larger service lines into your house are made of aluminum. Pretty much the only copper left is small wire (branch circuits from your panel) due to the higher cost of terminating aluminum properly.

Re:Wow yes

[Areyoukiddingme]

LOL. Uh, no. You'll have to provide some pretty hefty citations and facts to back up that ludicrous bunch of baloney.

Really? You're that lazy? And also ignorant? So... you're stupid. From fucking Wikipedia:

The bare wire conductors on the line are generally made of aluminum (either plain or reinforced with steel, or composite materials such as carbon and glass fiber)..

Or you could just look at the fucking pictures, since you're too stupid to read:Sample cross section Carbon Core.

Idiot.