Metals are critical to the energy industry

Our energy system is on the verge of major change. The dominance of electricity will grow. Many metals – formerly unused or rarely used – will become indispensable in energy production, storage systems and innumerable electricity-consuming products. Over 60 metallic elements are involved in energy pathways to a greater or lesser extent. The quantities required and available vary dramatically and some bring challenges with their use, such as toxicity. 

Energy consumption is set to increase steadily and concerns about the global carbon cycle, coupled with the desire for greater energy security, drive substitution of conventional energy systems by renewable technologies, leading to new energy pathways. This poses an enormous challenge. 

During the past two centuries, the man-made techno-sphere has changed in an unprecedented manner. Industrial production, individual mobility, visible pharmaceutical achievements and information technologies have been realised by harnessing natural resources to an enormous extent. Myriads of chemical compounds have been transformed into technically reliable functional materials and all these activities are powered by appropriate energy inputs, with fossil fuels as the main source. Moreover, fossil fuel industries have required many elements to enable extraction, processing and production of the fuels or power we use today.

Securing future energy supply requires a critical awareness of the functionality, availability, substitutability and recyclability of the metallic resources. Uncontrolled ecological and adverse socioeconomical impacts, as well as creeping dissipative losses, have to be minimised. It is therefore necessary to conceptually define and inform decision makers of the extent of criticality in consumption of the strategic and valuable materials and metals available from the Earth’s crust.

Fortunately, metals can be both used and reused – they do not ‘die’. In the Materials critical to the energy industry book, we seek to define and validate criteria to identify the most critical metals. By thinking about the concepts of substitutability, recycling and trade, as well as geological and market availability, and ecological impact, we can keep metals circulating in the economy, powering our generation and the ones that follow.

Professor Armin Reller is Chair of Resource Strategy at the University of Augsburg. This article is an edited version of his introduction to the 'Materials critical to the energy industry' handbook.