Renewables may fuel new import addictions

It has become a truism that the U.S. is addicted to foreign oil. Heck, even George Bush owned up to it a couple years back. As we're trying to climb out of that addiction, are we about to fall into another?

As a Greenwire.com article points out, a boom in clean and renewable energy sources in the U.S. could lead to a new dependence on imported minerals and metals. We may shed our need for oil from the politically treacherous Middle East, only to replace it with a need for gallium and indium (ingredients in photovoltaics from central Africa, China, and Russia -- places with their own foreign-policy problems.

Says the article:

How about batteries for storing wind- and solar-generated power or for hybrid and electric vehicles? They need vanadium, zinc, bromine, nickel, cobalt, manganese, lithium and rare-earth elements, a group of 15 metals that are "absolutely indispensable in the use of clean-energy technologies," said Mark Smith, CEO of rare-earth miner Molycorp Minerals. Many of those must be imported.

Then there are energy-efficient light bulbs, which demand the rare-earth metals cerium, lanthanum and europium. Even wind turbines require neodymium, a rare-earth element, for magnets that produce electricity from turning blades.

"All people see is a serene wind turbine turning out in a pasture with cows underneath," Smith said. "I don't think they see a lot of what it takes to get from rare-earth mine to turbine."

The United States has the planet's second-largest concentrated rare-earth deposit, the U.S. Geological Survey says. But China nonetheless produces more than 97 percent of the world's rare-earth needs.

"When you think about these dependencies -- and think about hybrid vehicles as an example -- the use of hybrid vehicles ... is an attempt to minimize dependence on Middle Eastern crude oil," Smith said. "But think about what we're doing here, if that's the purpose. We're trading one dependence for another."

In the case of wind turbines, Smith said, even magnets from rare-earth elements are manufactured in China, despite the technology's development in the United States.

Read the full article here.

Image from another excellent article: Clean Energy's Dirty Little Secret.