Mining destroys ecosystems
Fossil fuels and renewable energy both require mining that harms ecosystems, but renewable energy requires less mining than fossil fuels.
Read a round-up of the headlines:
“Extracting fossil fuels. There are two main methods for removing fossil fuels from the ground: mining and drilling. Mining is used to extract solid fossil fuels, such as coal, by digging, scraping, or otherwise exposing buried resources. Drilling methods help extract liquid or gaseous fossil fuels that can be forced to flow to the surface, such as conventional oil and natural gas. Both processes carry serious health and environmental impacts.”
Union of Concerned Scientists, The Hidden Costs of Fossil Fuels | Union of Concerned Scientists
“An investigation by conservationists has found evidence that deep-seabed mining of rare minerals could cause “extensive and irreversible” damage to the planet.
The report, to be published on Monday by the international wildlife charity Fauna & Flora, adds to the growing controversy that surrounds proposals to sweep the ocean floor of rare minerals that include cobalt, manganese and nickel. Mining companies want to exploit these deposits – which are crucial to the alternative energy sector – because land supplies are running low, they say.
However, oceanographers, biologists and other researchers have warned that these plans would cause widespread pollution, destroy global fish stocks and obliterate marine ecosystems.
Fauna & Flora first raised concerns about ocean mining in a 2020 report. Since then, scientists have intensified their study of deep-sea zones and highlighted further dangers posed by mining there. These form the focus of the organisation’s report. “It has become increasingly clear in the last couple of years that, apart from other dangers, deep-sea mining poses a particular threat to the climate,” said Catherine Weller, Fauna & Flora’s director of global policy.
“The deep sea holds vast reservoirs of carbon which could be completely disrupted by mining on the scale being proposed and exacerbate the global crisis we are experiencing through rising greenhouse gas levels.”
The Guardian, Deep-sea mining for rare metals will destroy ecosystems, say scientists
“The grand transition from a fossil fuel-based economy to a green one is underway. It will involve a fundamental shift in the way we generate and use energy for various purposes. Instead of drilling and mining for fossil fuels, we’ll need to mine for critical minerals to manufacture a whole lot of “clean” technologies like solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries.
This raises some common questions — when we account for the impacts of the mining and manufacturing of these technologies, are they really better for the environment, human rights, and climate than the fossil fuel alternatives they’re replacing?
In general, the answer is yes. Clean technologies will have a non-zero impact, but they will be much smaller than the dirty fossil fuel status quo.
Which requires more mining — fossil fuels or clean energy?
The short answer to this question is that fossil fuels require much more mining and drilling than clean energy technologies. Today the world mines 8 billion tons of coal every year, whereas the clean energy transition is estimated to require around 3.5 billion tons of minerals in total over the next three decades.
A December 2021 paper by Rice University researchers sought to answer this question in detail. Among clean energy technologies, wind turbines in particular require a considerable amount of minerals per amount of energy produced, as illustrated in the chart below from the International Energy Agency.”
Citizens’ Climate Lobby, Are clean technologies and renewable energies better for the environment than fossil fuels?
“Every year, about 15 billion tons of fossil fuels are mined and extracted. That’s about 535 times more mining than a clean energy economy would require in 2040.
Part of the reason for this massive difference in mining requirements is the fact that fossil fuel infrastructure is much less energy efficient than clean energy technology. Gas-powered cars are three times less efficient than electric vehicles. Gas furnaces are three to four times less efficient than heat pumps. Coal, oil, and gas all need to be transported long distances from mine or well to the source of combustion.
A clean energy economy just requires much less energy than a fossil fuel economy.
But there’s another important reason for this difference. Fossil fuel infrastructure requires constant fuel input. Building a coal or gas power plant, like building a wind or solar project, requires a lot of materials and energy input upfront. But for a fossil fuel power plant, construction is just the beginning. In order to generate power, you need to burn coal or gas every day for decades. Wind and solar projects, by comparison, don’t require any ongoing fuel input.
Still, both the environmental and human impacts of mining minerals for the energy transition can’t be ignored. Policymakers should use every tool available to both minimize the total amount of clean energy minerals needed in the future and ensure those minerals are mined in socially and environmentally-friendly ways.
But make no mistake: transitioning away from fossil fuels is one of the most effective ways to protect both the environment and the most marginalized communities in the world.”
Distilled, A Fossil Fuel Economy Requires 535x More Mining Than a Clean Energy Economy