While it could be good to shift to renewable for other reasons, it's naive to assume that nations won't be dependent on others for critical minerals and metals needed to make solar/wind/batteries/etc.

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shadowgovt 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

They are, but unlike fossil fuels, those dependencies go down over time (modulo the utility growth that makes demand for everything go up, of course).

If you buy fossil fuel from a country that may not be an ally forever, your demand remains constant (or goes up over time) because you are changing that fuel into a state that cannot be used again.

If you buy, say, lithium, you put that in a battery and in the future, you can get more lithium from the ground but you can also grind up batteries and re-extract it when they fail. Battery ingredients are, generally, not consumable over even medium and long-term scale if you build out the recycling infrastructure to recapture those ingredients.

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giantg2 4 days ago | parent [-]

Yes, the shocks aren't as immediate if you have the infrastructure set up and you are out of the initial adoption phase. Even things like lithium and silver are limited resources, so getting more out of the ground will eventually face scarcity as energy demand has always increased over the long term.

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triceratops 4 days ago | parent [-]

Lithium is one of the most abundant elements on earth.

Newer battery chemistries don't use lithium.

By the time we use enough energy to run out of all the elements we could make batteries with, we're likely to be at the "cheap asteroid mining" level of technological development.

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giantg2 4 days ago | parent [-]

Abundant doesn't mean unlimited, nor does it mean economical or environmentally friendly to access. The point is that most countries would need to import metals and minerals critical to renewable energy.

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triceratops 4 days ago | parent [-]

Batteries aren't burned to produce energy. They can be recycled. They can use elements besides lithium.

We're talking about a trickle of imports if recycling doesn't cover growing needs.

	▲	giantg2 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		If you have growth in demand and population, recycling is unlikely to cover it.

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adrian_b 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The dependencies needed for the replacement of equipment having a lifetime of many decades are infinitely less dangerous than the dependencies for consumables like fuel.

For critical minerals and metals it is easy to stockpile them to have a buffer sufficient for many years of infrastructure replacement.

Such dependencies may remain a problem during a war, when the infrastructure could be destroyed, but in normal times such dependencies would not be sufficient to enable the kind of blackmailing that can be done with consumables, like food and fuel.

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giantg2 4 days ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure the stockpiling you mention will work the way you propose. We already stockpile oil, yet we still see price shocks. Stockpiling metals can still lead to price shocks due to reluctance to release them and the need to eventually replenish them.

We also stockpile foods and medications, and that doesn't provide price stability.

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KaiserPro 4 days ago | parent [-]

Yes, but you are missing the critical bit.

Food is a constant need, and you can't exist for long without it.

Sure we need to increase battery sotrage, but in ~5 years time, it'll be maintainance, assuming the correct adoption rate. So yes we will still _need_ batteries, but we don't need a constant supply of new batteries to keep the lights on.

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giantg2 4 days ago | parent [-]

A 5 year full adoption rate is not even close to possible.

Once you reach maintenance phase you still have to replace stuff, so just like food you will need a constant supply.

	▲	KaiserPro 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Right, but you realise that even if we manage to buy everything all at once, we are looking at at least a 15 year operating lifespan. Yes, there will need replacement, but not all at once and not the same volume