The Rare Metals War: The Dark Side of Clean Energy and Digital Technologies

Nice book

It’s a good book on the “rare metals” that are so essential to modern computer and cellphone technologies: vanadium, germanium, beryllium, rhenium, tantalum, antimony, niobium, and a couple of dozen others. It especially focuses on the control that China has over these materials. It describes the energy consumption and mining pollution issues associated with obtaining these minerals. It also points out the possible overly optimistic claims made for “green energy” systems such as electric vehicles.The problem I have with this book is that it wasn’t written by a scientist or a metallurgical engineer who might actually know something about the subject. The author, Guillaume Patron, is a journalist. He seems to be a fairly well informed one with good intentions. In my opinion, the book falls into the category of gloom and doom literature that was popular back in the 1960s and 1970s. Do any of you remember books such “The Population Bomb” or “Famine 1975?” They forecast imminent world-wide famine at the time. It never happened. Patron (page 163) cites the 1972 “Club of Rome” doomsday forecast that also proved to be spectacularly wrong.Patron has an equally spectacular math error on page 46. He points out (correctly, I assume) that Japan has more than 200 million used or obsolete cellphones. He then states “ .. every one of Japan’s … cellphones contain a few tenths of a gram of rare materials that can be isolated. That’s 300, 000 tones of rare-earth metals…. “ He is wrong! If every used cellphone contains even one gram of rare earth material (not just a few tenths of a gram), then that is 200 million grams or 200 000 kilograms or 200 metric tons — not a couple of hundred thousand tons. If the 200 million cellphones contain just a few tenths of a gram of metals, then that puts the number down to around 20 metric tons. His conclusion that rare earth materials from used cellphones can be removed and economically recycled is then flat-out wrong. Alternatively, if the used cellphones contain 300 000 tons of rare-earth material, then that works out to 1.5 kilograms per cellphone. That is also impossible — an entire cellphone weighs much less than 1.5 kilograms, let alone containing 1.5 kg of rare earth materials.Patron points out that these rare earth minerals exist elsewhere outside China. Mining them is uneconomical compared to mining in China — western countries won’t tolerate the water and land pollution that China ignores and which allows Chinese producers to sell the minerals so cheaply. That is a political problem — western nations could ban the import of Chinese rare earth minerals and develop their own supplies at a higher cost but so far have chosen not to do so.

I have the paperback with 192 pages not including notes, appendices and bibliography. Well written and an easy read except when I considered the findings that the book presents. The author is French, but he has a global perspective. What he book refers to as rare metals are called rare earths elsewhere. Consistent with the book, I'll call them rare metals.Rare metals are found in many places, but to mine them involves significant negative environmental impacts. The rare metals are essential for an electrified future society freed from dependence on oil and gas and the digital hardware that we in the West use daily. So, the West and increasingly elsewhere must have these materials for electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines and the like for a sustainable future and to fend off climate change. The book outlines the environmental price to be paid to secure these essential materials.The book also looks at how China has appropriated the capacity to deliver many of these rare metals to the rest of the world and the price to be paid by the West for this. Strong environmental movements in the West have driven mining out of the United States and Europe. China, with much less environmental activism, has seized for itself the telecom geoeconomic power that comes from mining. Read the book to see some of the implications that arise from the West's abdication of the power to mine.The West wants a green world powered by sustainable technologies that require rare metals with a very harmful environmental impact. This inconsistency leads the author to repeatedly ask the Western reader to consider this inconsistency and reduce the use of digital technologies and power generally.The author' review of China's power arising from its dominance in the production of rare metals was very troubling. The West's insistence on being "green" while being willfully blind to the damage caused by rare metals' extraction was also troubling.If any of these topics interest or intrigue you, I highly recommend the book. Get it, read it and think about its conclusions.

I just finished reading the book. I am so impressed with what I learned from it. I had written a statement for this book with three stars only due to the poor printing quality at my early stage of reading. After completing my read I wanted to correct my statement without loss of time.The content of this book is very valuable for any person who claims to be caring for environment and who is curious about the scientific and political future of humanity. Every page was full of shocking but inspiring knowledge which I had not met before in no way. I feel enlightened in understanding the risks caused by advances in technology and world trade politics much better and also in seeing to what extend could world powers dare to go unless common wisdom reigns. The enclosed bibliography is quite rich to satisfy anyone who wants to dive deeper into the subject. I highly recommend this book.

El libro muestra la importancia que tienen actualmente la mayoría de metales dentro de nuestro día a día. Es una lectura necesaria para lograr entender el presente y futuro geopolítico de la humanidad. Recomendado.

Well worth reading if you really want to find out how dirty and environmentally damaging renewables really are.

An Eye opening account of the hidden cost and deception behind high tech manufactured products. Alternative green energy versus fossil fuels emits just as much CO2 if not more, it depends how you add up the raw material and manufacturing process. The consequential pollution and whether you pay to deal with it. China's patience and its long game reaps the rewards as its rivals are blindsided and out manoeuvred.

Loved this book and don't think I've ever taken so long to read something. Ended up reading less than a chapter per night. It is simply fascinating to read and author has done such a good job.I am not a scientist and barely heard of a quarter of the rare metals but an eye opener.Highly highly recommended.

Rare earth critical components of all AI, Robots and Space technology. China has full monopoly - from mining to high end products. Controlling the vast rare earth supply chain.. China is playing the power game better than West,Anglo Saxon or 5 eyes . Kudos to China. Winning the key resources war so far