The Dirty Green Energy Game with China

The faster we go green, the sooner we can do without Russian gas, is the adage in Europe. But then we run the risk of becoming dependent again, on superpower China. Once in the world, wind turbines, solar panels and electric cars are indeed the pinnacle of clean energy. However, their conception is a dirty business.

In terms of CO2 emissions, there is no debate: wind and solar power are far superior to oil and coal. Nuclear power too, as a low-carbon energy source requiring fewer metals than green technologies, can play a key role in the energy transition.

However, what politicians, NGOs and environmentalists do not seem to realize is that the beautiful ideal of a low-carbon economy requires a lot of raw materials. The switch to green energy means that we will need more aluminium, copper, lithium, rare earths and other metals, which cause a different kind of pollution to fossil fuels.

The magnets in an electric car require six times more lithium, manganese, neodymium and other minerals than an ordinary car, and a wind power plant up to nine times more than a gas power plant, show IEA figures. For many of these metals Europe needs the Chinese even more than they do need Russians for gas.

The silicon or gallium in solar panels? China supplies 61 and 73 percent of the world's supply, respectively, figures from the European Commission show. Graphite for electric car batteries? 69 percent. Neodymium in offshore wind turbines? 95 percent. Of antimony China supplies 87 percent, of bismuth 82 percent, of tungsten 84 percent and of yttrium 95 percent.

More than nine out of ten electric vehicles currently have an engine with green elements. If we want to meet the Paris climate targets, our use of them will have to increase sevenfold by 2040, according to the IEA.

Just before the turn of the millennium, Japan, the US and Europe together controlled 90 percent of the magnet market, now China is the undisputed market leader. Lured by cheap labour, lax environmental laws and rich mineral resources, many factories and jobs have moved to China in recent decades.

For companies, this was a pact with the devil, for in exchange for access to China's metals, they had to reveal their technological secrets. Those who did not want to move were forced to compete with their hands tied: while their rivals in China paid rock-bottom prices for green elements, China pushed international prices up to artificial heights by rationing exports.

As Western companies moved their production to China, they got the best of both worlds: the lowest prices, and no pollution in our backyard.

Thus, now it is the Chinese population that pays the price.?China has many cancer villages, where rivers and rice fields are polluted with the cadmium and indium for solar panels, or the green elements for windmills. Rural dwellers thus pay the price for the clean energy of (foreign) city dwellers, in the form of cancer, birth defects or respiratory diseases. Just to refine a ton of rare earths requires 200 cubic meters ?of water, which then flows into rivers, soils and ground waters polluted with metals and sulphuric and hydrochloric acid.

It is therefore a lie that green energy is clean. Well, on the front end it certainly is, but not at the back end. Besides we are selling us out to China.

Source: VK