German Industry Concerned About Supply Of Raw Materials Needed For Green Transition
By Paul Homewood
From The Globe Echo:
There are concerns in the German economy because Germany is dependent on imports for so many raw materials – sometimes even more than for gas and oil. Where could that be a problem? An overview.
Representatives from politics, industry, science and civil society are discussing Germany’s supply of raw materials at the Raw Materials Congress of the Federation of German Industries (BDI) in Berlin today. From the point of view of the BDI, a secure supply of raw materials is a prerequisite for the green and digital transformation of the economy and society to succeed. It must therefore be considered strategic for national security – but where does Germany actually stand in terms of raw material supplies?
BDI President Siegfried Russwurm told the German press agency that the dependence on critical mineral raw materials – especially from China – is much greater than that of oil and natural gas.
“The race for strategically important raw materials is in full swing. Germany and Europe are in danger of losing important sources of raw materials in competition with other countries. The result: dependencies are increasing,” says Russwurm. Without raw materials there will be no energy transition, no e-mobility or digitization.
In 2019, Germany was the second largest producer of lignite, the third largest producer of raw kaolin, the fourth largest producer of rock salt and the fifth largest producer of potash salt.
For many raw materials, however, the country is heavily dependent on imports from abroad. In addition to energy raw materials, these include metals and industrial minerals such as quartz or graphite, which are at the very beginning of industrial value chains and are needed in many companies. We have an almost 100 percent import dependency on China for rare earths,” said Matthias Wachter, head of the International Cooperation, Security, Raw Materials department and aerospace at the BDI, recently in Deutschlandfunk.
According to the EU Commission, the demand for critical raw materials will double by 2030. The World Bank even expects demand for metals and minerals to increase thirtyfold over the next 30 years. In order to cover these quantities, more than three billion tons of the raw materials would have to be dug in the period. The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects demand for individual minerals such as lithium to increase by a factor of forty.
Lithium is a key raw material for modern storage technologies and is therefore essential for e-mobility. The experts at the German Raw Materials Agency estimate that funding will have to be increased globally by a factor of four to seven in the coming years so that the switch to electromobility can be successful. Lithium-ion batteries are also installed in smartphones, PCs and tablets. As a result, the price of the element has increased almost eightfold since the beginning of last year.
According to the Natural Resources Agency, 75 percent of the lithium production capacity is in Chile and Australia.
For some non-replaceable raw materials, the countries of origin are classified as critical. According to the RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research, nickel and palladium – which is used in catalysts, among other things – is about Russia, cobalt – which is used for batteries and alloys – about the DR Congo and China as suppliers.
https://globeecho.com/news/europe/germany/how-dependent-germany-is-on-raw-materials/
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
See in particular page sixteen of this report:
Click to access blackrock-energy-and-resources-income-trust-plc-interim-report.pdf
And guess who’s pretty much cornered the market for most of those critical resources…
Where have the Germans been for the last 20 years? China has been trawling the world, especially Africa, tying up contracts while the West has been lazy and fat on the ease of previous technologies. Now they are waking up. Should have been reading this site where Paul and others have been pointing the obvious out for years.
“In order to cover these quantities, more than three billion tons of the raw materials would have to be dug in the period.”
And how much overburden would have to be moved to access the seams of the “raw materials”?
Obviously, it depends on the thickness of the seam of desired mineral, its value, its purity and so on.
But back in the day, when we had opencast coal mines in the UK, around ’20 to one’ might just have been worth considering. (So dig out 30 metres of soils and overlying rock to win a metre and a half of decent coal.). As time went on the economics altered (or were altered by HMG) and it was difficult to justify ’15 to one’.
I mention this to point out that even for coal, that “three billion tons” could easily become 60 billion. Or very much more for a more valuable mineral than coal.
They had better work up good designs for ‘zero-carbon’ draglines and heavy bucket wheel excavators, together with 200 ton carrying dump trucks pretty quickly! Could prove to be quite a challenge! Particularly if they also go for Potato Ed Davey’s limit on tremors of 0.5 Richter.
Ah.. but the open cast mining will be done in places like Africa so the disturbance and burning of fossil fuels to extract these green resources “doesn’t count”. The West can remain virtuous because all this fossil fuel use doesn’t happen here.
Coal mining is different from mining for metals. Overburden is the rock you need to remove to get at the ore. That will be a depth of many metres in an open pit. The ore is then often only 1% or less metal these days for things like copper. You thus have to remove 99% of the material in the ore too.
Just read that China clay produces 9 tons of waste for every 1 ton of product.
Simon Michaux, an Associate Professor of Geometallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK), recently published a study on Net Zero and the Metals required to do it by 2050. This is nothing to do with should we be doing it at all but is it actually possible. The bottom line is that it isn’t possible! There just isn’t enough of the required metals in the world and not enough time.
He recently did a video presentation to the Sustainable Minerals Institute in Queensland University, Australia on his study:
Sky News Australia also picked it up:
https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/chris-kenny/simple-answer-is-we-cant-do-renewable-energy-the-way-it-is-being-planned/video/c04c1ecf142864962c3537b477728afc
No one seems to be bothered by this information which I find incredible. It’s just being swept under the carpet with all the other inconvenient truths.
I think everyone on skeptical blogs already knows this information, so THEY are not surprised.
Either our leaders are incredibly thick or they know about the information but choose to ignore it just as they ignore the child labour and coercion in making solar panels . I incline to the latter theory
The paradox of human societies is that those who run things reach that position not through being wise or knowledgeable but through being good at getting to those positions. And those who do so, really, really want to reach those positions.
“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”
And those who wish to rule already know the answers because ruling to them is imposing their opinions on us. As wise men have said, anyone who wants to be king should be executed.
Seems the UK is now pretty much habitually burning 3-4GW of gas to supply Europe via the interconnectors.
Doh….Never saw that coming!
Rowlatt/Kerry still trying to politicise King Chaz the absurd.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63350197
“Without raw materials there will be no energy transition, no e-mobility or digitization”
This might be our saving grace…
The so-called transition would only be the start. Replacement greencr@p would be continuously needed as old stuff expires, plus yet more to meet the inevitable increases in demand. Plus replacing all today’s mining equipment with yet more greencr@p, etc. etc.
What could possibly go wrong?
The whole global economy is far too highly interwoven, every country depends on other countries for essential commodities because of the globalist mentality that rejects auto-determination and self sufficiency. It’s a recipe for disaster.
The UK for example could frack like crazy, could mine those enormous coal deposits, could wave bye-bye to the import of wood pellets and etc. but no, we are always subject to the globalist orthodoxy.
And they’ll be shutting the farms down soon, then what?
Sorry that’s silly nonsense. So called globalisation has made us much richer. Self-sufficiency is a mad fantasy unless you are willing to go back to the 1600s – or earlier. You don’t like citrus fruits? Bananas? Rice? The majority of metals and thus things made from them? And those we could move would be 5-10 as expensive because of their grade. Cotton? Most woods? And without the specialisation that globalisation allows, our production would fall by 30% or more. All for what?
I think you’ve jumped the shark there, We should use what raw meterials we have responsibly but not to the point of harming ourselves because some globalists insist. Or do you think it’s a great idea shipping wood pellets across the Atlantic?
It’s not globalization that produced the wealth it’s capitalism.
German industry doesn’t need to worry, because of Energiewende they won’t have enough energy to turn those precious materials into anything of value.
BBC1 just had a program on a cucumber producer in the UK having to reduce production because of energy prices, potentially having to close after 3 generations. Deep irony, as the BBC is part of the problem.
And C5 did another one of their factual programs on stand out UK weather as an excuse for more climate propaganda, this time the storm of 87, and of course at the end they veered into it being the start of our climate getting more unpredictable/violent nonsense.
Surely cucumbers are one of the lowest value things we produce? Who is going to pay double for a cucumber?
Maybe the government would… This Quadrant article from 2008 looks back at Jonathan Swift, which so encapsulates the current madness.
https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2008/10/sunbeams-from-cucumbers/
“Jonathan Swift would have just loved Australia’s political and scientific debate regarding “climate change”. It would have reminded him of Gulliver’s visit to The Academy, “where a man of meagre aspect … had been for eight years upon a project for extracting sun-beams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials, hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers”.
Gulliver went on:
He told me, he did not doubt in eight years more, he would be able to supply the Governor’s gardens with sunshine at reasonable rate; but he complained that his stock was low and intreated me to give him something as an Encouragement to Ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers.”
“For those of us seeking guidance through the mystical corridors of “global warming”, “global cooling” or “global dimming” (neatly packaged as “climate change” to cover all three possible scenarios)—as well as shrinking ice packs, melting glaciers, rising seas, growing deserts, encroaching shorelines and shrivelling river-beds—a re-reading of Jonathan Swift may be just the thing. As the morally empowered scientific and political elite encourage us to “throw off our carbon chains”, they should at least tell us what they think we should wear in their place. Cucumbers?”
I think we are being forced back to seasonal eating since I presume the cost is for heating greenhouses out of season. Of course, his business may not be viable on a seasonal basis.
“We have an almost 100 percent import dependency on China for rare earths” So does the US, especially for updating our military weapons & I suspect this had something to do with Russia pulling ahead with their new mother of all weapons against which we, presently, have no defense, according to Biden’s DOD
China’s share of global Critical Resource Minerals (CRMs)
Heavy Rare Earth Elements (HREEs) 95%
Light Rare Earth Elements (LREEs) 95%
Magnesium 87%
Antimony 87%
Tungsten 84%
Bismuth 82%
Gallium 73%
Natural Graphite 69%
Germanium 67%
Scandium 66%
Silicon Metal 61%
Phosphorous 58%
Indium 57%
Vanadium 53%
A report for the Dutch Government warned
“To reach renewable energy production targets Netherlands requires a significant percentage of the annual production of 5 specific critical metals…..As future demand for these metals exceeds expected supply, the energy transition becomes a vulnerable process. While we are working on reducing our dependence on Arabian and Russian oil, we are creating a new dependency at the same time: a dependency on (Chinese) metals.
The Netherlands has a population of 17.5m
https://www.metabolic.nl/publications/metal-demand-for-renewable-electricity-generation-in-the-netherlands-pdf/
I thank you so, so much, Dave Andrews! There are so many issues arising every day, here in the US and globally, that I cannot keep ahead with my research. Much obliged for your information and link.
Raw materials don’t just appear, they have to be mined and then sent to refineries and to where they will be used. That requires the use of conventional vehicles that run on fossil fuels.
Climate emergency game over?
Before being refined most have to be crushed and then concentrated using a great deal of energy and a range of chemicals which also require a great deal of energy to produce. Substantially increasing mine production requires a large increase in total energy consumption.
Germany has just agreed to provide $800m of financing to Trafigura to enable it to acquire key commodities on world markets. Seeing socialists and greens hiring an arch capitalist trading company to provide such a service is one of the stranger events of our current world.
Smacks more of Fascism where the companies worked alongside the Nazis.
Exactly right, Gerry.
Benito Mussolini – who knew a bit about such things – remarked he preferred the term “Corporate Socialism” to Fascism.
Green transition seems to be mentioned more and more, is it in the hope that the more it is repeated that it may eventually happen?
‘From the point of view of the BDI, a secure supply of raw materials is a prerequisite for the green and digital transformation of the economy and society to succeed.’
Two decades into Energiewende and someone realizes, “Hey, we’re going to need materials for this!”
Apparently, consumption and production rates were a secret, so nobody could know the transition is Mission: Impossible.
“The Costs of Germany’s Support for Ukraine”
I despair that western governments don’t know about this https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/the-50-minerals-critical-to-u-s-security-2/ vet they claim to know the world is coming to an end due to climate change and it is all our fault. Whether that is true or not, they are being derelict, with heads in the sand