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.