Minerals for the green agenda, implications, stalemates, and alternatives

• Published in: Open Geosciences Vol. 17; no. 1; pp. 226 - 41
• Main Author: Vukosavić, Slobodan N.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Warsaw De Gruyter 15.05.2025; De Gruyter Poland
• Subjects: Alternative energy; Alternative energy sources; battery-powered electrical vehicles; Carbon dioxide emissions; Chemical elements; Critical minerals; Crystallization; Decarbonization; Electric vehicles; Energy industry; Energy storage; Environmental conditions; Fossil fuels; Global temperatures; green agenda; Lithosphere; low-carbon technologies; Minerals; mining; Power plants; Raw materials; Renewable energy; solar; Solar energy; Sustainability; Wind power; wind power plants
• ISSN: 2391-5447; 2391-5447
• DOI: 10.1515/geo-2025-0813

The European green agenda aims to preserve the environment and climate, reduce CO emissions, and replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. It mostly relies on electric vehicles, energy storage, solar, and wind power plants. It requires an order of magnitude higher amount of critical minerals (In this text, the term minerals is often used for individual chemical elements, although it is common to refer to combinations of chemical elements that have a corresponding chemical composition, crystallization, and name.), poorly represented in the lithosphere, with problematic recycling, with extraction requiring considerable amounts of energy, fossil fuels and causing unacceptable damage to people and nature in countries that supply raw materials. Rising global average temperatures cast doubt on the overall effects of decarbonisation. The time frame of profit-oriented planning is too short and cannot respect the dynamics of the energy sector. Together with market uncertainty, regulations, and incentives did not encourage investors to take all the steps we had hoped for. The long-term needs and availability of key minerals are considered together with an overview of the financial and environmental conditions offered to the population in the countries where mining is carried out. Growing popular resistance to cheap and environmentally damaging mining and increasing demand for critical minerals may call into question the sustainability of current practices. The development of new technologies should be geared towards solutions that use abundant minerals in the lithosphere, while long-term sustainability requires, within a much-desired paradigm shift, that fair conditions be offered to the population of countries that supply critical minerals. The main objective of this article is to use scientifically based considerations to identify the key issues of the title topic, to assess this complex and multidisciplinary subject, and to draw feasible conclusions and recommendations. Coltan mine in Rubaya, Democratic Republic of Congo (taken from WikiPedia,