this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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We need to do both. The amount of renewable energy that we need to decarbonize or economy is enormous.
Right now we don't have the industrial capacity to manufacture the amount of solar panels, wind turbines and batteries needed for the transition. We need to ramp up the production, it means new factories, new trained engineers and technicians, new mines for the ore... All of that takes years or even decades to setup. The estimates I saw for the amount of lithium needed implied that we need to multiply the production by a factor of 20 !! Renewables energy also requires a lot of copper. New mines can take decades to open.
We already have some industrial capacity for building nuclear reactors do we should use it. Same for renewables and ramp up as much as we can.
I'm 2020 this is the world primary energy mix :
Right now fossil fuel are still above 80%, it needs to be close to 0% in 25 years. We need to use all the tools we have available: nuclear, solar and wind.
Is lithium still that important with the new battery technologies emerging?
I've been reading that sodium based and even solid state batteries are making leaps and bounds while at the same time we are actively reducing the amount of lithium required to manufacture large capacity batteries, by introducing new formulas based with much cheaper and plentiful elements.
What I would like to see is a ramp up on recycling more and better.
yes qyron
lithium remains a crucial element in the realm of emerging battery technologies, despite the evolution and diversification of battery chemistries. Lithium-ion batteries, which utilize lithium as a core component, have dominated the energy storage landscape for decades due to their high energy density, reliability, and widespread use in various applications, including consumer electronics, electric vehicles, and renewable energy storage.