Assoc Prof Simon Michaux - The quantity of metals required to manufacture just one generation of... 

Indeed. However people also see this as an argument for continuing to consume as we are on a fossil based economy as its "not worth it" to switch to renewables. That nothing has to change. The earth is a closed system with finite resources and a closed climate system. Most people realise that its not very smart to bring your coal grill into your living room and close the doors. You will eventually die due to the gases being emitted into the closed indoors climate. The same can be said on a grander more complex scale for the earth. The world needs to look at some form of end to the consumerism world and look for other/more sources of renewables that require less rare earth metals. Like geothermal for generating and hydrogen for storage. However an end to the consumerism society isnt going to happen sadly. Because the last thing people want to give up is their own personal comforts. Its a NIMBY mentality. Many see the need of change, but the change has to happen somewhere else by someone else. And being representative democracies, few politicians dare to do what's needed because they commit political suicide. Instead both people and politicians pray at the altar of technical progress that will eventually save us all without us needing to change in any way. The real magical thinking is the global economy of infinite growth and the neoliberalistic self-centred way of life. Liberalism hasn't always been about me myself and I.

Well said. I was in denial and delusional enough to think we could "innovate" our way out of this problem but lectures like this one opened my eyes to the reality of our predicament.

Right. Consumption will ultimately have to decline, people will have to get poorer, and the population will have to contract. I wish it were not so, but it is what it is.

Renewable energy eliminates the huge cost and constant effort to maintain a supply of fossil fuel. And all the EV batteries are 95% recyclable after they can't be upcycled or reused. EVs don't use more material but they do use different, newer and for awhile more expensive parts.

@@TheViewFromUpHere could you please point me to a lithium battery recycling center that reclaims the lithium and sells it for use in new batteries.

hmm good point, as i understand it making cement creates a lot of gas, and once cement is set it slowly releases gasses too as it sits there.

More devastation in sight.

Great observation. If you want electric vehicles then we need to run high voltage copper lines, underground, to what would be essentially, every parking space in a city. That adds to the required copper that is not included in the calculation. The 4 week energy storage is not only conservative, but does not take into account the excess energy required to restore a spent reserve. i.e., if we need to draw upon 4 weeks of stored energy we need an excess of 4 weeks' energy to replenish the reserve before it is called upon again. More generally -- this analysis does not take into account the immense energy required to mine, transport, smelt and form the metals, batteries, turbine blades, concrete etc. In almost every life cycle analysis there is a negative payback when the entire system energy cost is taken into account. This is not a criticism on this lecture, but rather, even this highly conservative presentation cannot take into account the larger system costs of a fully non-carbon energy system.

Stop looking at the details...just believe in magic....

not if you have enough home made solar production and distributed network of smaller production sources

Totally, I think most people fundamentally misunderstand the enormity of what's happening, what's been proposed and are searching for a quick marketing slogan to escape the danger when nothing could be more futile.

Those proposing the transition are incapable of thinking it through. Their minds are consumed with their ideology and the “rush” they get from all the attention they garner. The Al Gores of the world will never listen to a very practical presentation like this because it doesn’t fit the carefully crafted narrative they have developed - and which enriches them enormously the longer it is sustained.

The skeptic in me says they have thought about it. That's how the hypothetical models originate. The sad thing is the models only include the components that have been considered and didn't skew the results beyond those expected. If they did, they're identified as aberrations or outliers and discounted as such.

No. Sure not. We have all the technology for a high living standard. Only people from the leftist hate ideology do not like this. They need poverty to keep their hate ideology alive,.

Is it sure he didn't make a mistake between terawatthour and gigawatthour?If I understand well everybody else talks about gigawatthour even in peer reviewed papers.

@@Battery-kf4vu In several other presentations he makes he does mention tera. He does acknowledge his calculations are vastly different from everyone else & wants people to review his work

@@Battery-kf4vu In another presentation he mentions going back to the source of the "giga" number and they admitted it was just "made up", not based in calculations. His tera is correct.

It is as suspected, they're just not thinking this through. Just make the money now.

If you look at the Georgia Guide Stones which recently were blown up or The WEF Agenda 2030 it is obvious that the Global elite are aware of this information, Covid was a warmup excercise for Klause, unfortunately given the Central Banking Sysem has well passsed its used by date ,they need a WAR, its the only viable future for them, Humans do not learn from history

Very well said! Agree absolutely.

“Efficiency is the forgotten fuel” springs to mind. I.e. not using energy in the first place. In Australia we have somewhat forgotten that recently. I assume elsewhere also.

Very well said. "Net zero is possible!" people pushing business as usual are sickening. Growth cannot be sustained, there is no "green growth" or "decoupling". The system will soon enter its death throes.

@@glennjgroves @Ssiar xox How about double glazing (standard in Europe), good wall and roof insulation? In Australia new houses are still built with single glazing, like in the 70s, when energy was cheap and abundant. Passive houses reduce the need for energy. Unfortunately retrofitting existing dwellings is very expensive, so ppl opt for paying for heating and cooling. Economic ($$) reasoning is how we ended up here.

@@MB-jy2oi economic short sightedness and externalised costs are how we ended up here, not economic reasoning EXACTLY; the builders do not bear the long term costs of their poorly built or insulated homes, so they don’t care (very much). It needs regulation (unfortunately) and regulation needs a population that will support the government regulating. I largely agree, I just wanted to say that it is our flawed, selfish form of economics - where it is easy for one person to make a short term profit and for others to bear the long term costs - that is the a fundamental issue.

*credible report.

I think 4 weeks' storage changed to 12 weeks at some point in the discussion. But nobody proposes to use batteries to store energy just once a year. It's too expensive and everyone knows that. There are better ways to store energy for seasonal shortfalls. Consider that the main additional energy demand in winter is for heat. So store the heat.

Not if you listen to Simon. He is supporting The evolution of The Venus Project.

The paper does not discuss the grid itself. Enormous additions to the electricity transportation system will be needed to bring power from production sites to demand sites. Otherwise, Pr. Michaux is simply trying to put numbers (tons of metals) beside the grandiose transition supply-side scenarios proposed by the EU, IRENA and the IEA.

Fossil fuels will become exhausted. So will U235. There will still be resources in the earth, but it will eventually require too much energy to extract them.

@@michaels4255 > So Will U235. So stop wasting it on energy production and use it to make Pu-239 and U-233.

I think the chinese government needs to incorporate a better understanding of limita into its plans

Why since CO2 isn't the main driver of climate change. It's impact is minimal eg a doubling to over 800PPM would bring a tenth of a degree warming. IF nature didn't absorb any of it. The so called green energy sector is born from blatant lies about how CO2 behaves and the past data record of it.

Any form of storage requires some energy losses.

Our infrasture is absolutely Fragile as it stands now.

All mined by machinery burning Diesel.

@@marcushiam6940 The first metals and fossil fuels were mined by people burning Food.

I think they understand it very well, but deliberately don't and won't do anything about it, because they just want power and money, that's all. They don't care about their own society or humankind. They just care about themselves, that's all.

No, the maintenance itself is not included in his calculations, so indeed his numbers are underestimated for the most part. He mentionned the recycling problem (only ~30% of the metals would be recycled) at the end of the life cycle of the unit, so replacement of each unit will need additional new ressources.

I think we will have to scale back more than just that. If what is presented in this presentation is true, human civilization as we know it will probably crumble in the coming 50 to 100 years.

@@domitron It will be sooner. Technically it has already started. Especially with a group like WEF and the Canadian government already sending DIY epstein yourself kits if you call to have someone fix your stair chair.

Yes we are supposed to have societal collapse by 2040. Look up "Update to limit to growth".

Glad you see this. One could understand this even with none of this detail by simply bringing together a few simple ideas: The planet is finite. Growth is beyond exponential. The risks are existential. The timing of tipping points is unknowable. Climate chaos and ecosystem destruction are beyond exponential. So, from a risk perspective, we may have waited too long, and the longer we delay the more certain that becomes. This basic awareness is not hard to understand and some of us have been saying it for MANY years. It's good to have people like Michaux making it more explicit - though that should never have been necessary.

I think we'll end up with geoengineering instead. Apparently sulphate aerosols are relatively easy and cheap. Population will peak soon and decline dramatically it seems.

The consequences of going post peak should start off gradually, but become more severe over time.

So what is your proposed solution?

Can you elaborate on "all hell breaks loose" ? I'm curious about what this might look like, mostly to prepare in whatever way I can - but also because I'm deeply curious about it.

@@georgeholloway3981 There is no acceptable solution

@@nicksince9487 Grow your own, source your own water, prep for defense

Say it another way so it makes sense ???

Coal is finite and so is the atmosphere. So either we run out of coal or its pollution will stop itself. At 4°C warming our food production collapses.

FRISCO : I think he tries to address this problem when he gets into the part about batteries providing your base load energy in the off peak periods , it's pretty mind blowing how many batteries and the amount of material AND infrastructure required for just that effort !

@@JohnnyBelgium nuclear war , u know where , will fix with big dust clouds :)

Reckon the best solution to both the intermittent solar and wind and the inflexibility of nuclear is to siphon surplus energy by processing it into natural energy carriers, like hydrogen , methane or ammonia. These are fairly easy to produce, readily transportable with the possibility to store large quantities. Especially methane, of which most countries already have an infrastructure. Need to check on this, but I've read it's a rather easy and manageable process to turn hydrogen into methane. Most energy economist are against as it decreases the efficiency. But compared to all resources needed to be produced for storage in batteries, methane and or hydrogen should be far preferred. We're awfully late on this, but most countries keep several months of national consumption of oil in storage. That's what the large storage in Amsterdam and Rotterdam are for -they been used in 2022 to lower the price pressure caused by the Russian gas ban. We should move quickly and turn those reserves into large hydrogen and methane energy buffer storage. We should have used the last 20 years to set up these processes and get the production running, but instead, we're only in preliminary stages. We may get eclipsed by peak energy, as the large & easily mined resources of oil, coal, and gas have gone, but we're still not too close to the steep downward curve in oil production. By and far, there's not enough mineral resources to fix all this, so Europe should get firm legislation in place to lengthen life cycles of resource heavy gadgets and installations which currently are "burning" minerals like crazy - less than 3 years life cycles for gear like phones, tablets, home electronics, should be outlawed immediately. We're late on the show, and we probably won't get the same energy security in place before oil runs low, but it should have all strategic priorities Now

The complete report is here: tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf

Work done in the link below gives the full size of the system. The metal content has been put together from an IEA report The Role of Critical Minerals

@@simonp.michaux1638 I've since found out that the problem is your abundant use of lithium batteries for stationary storage. I wish you had contacted someone who actually designs low cost fully renewable systems first like prof Christian Breyer and would have take the estimates of resources needed from that. That would lead to the reduction of lithium demand by a factor 10 to 20. But I'll look through the report when I have time. It's rather voluminous.

@@aukehoekstra9834 I used a prediction of what the battery chemistry split would be in 2050 by IRENA 2022. This was projected onto the number of units needed.

Would a 10-20x reduction in lithium demand get you out of this quagmire? I don’t think so.

And that ore grade is going to tend to decrease too. Imagine how bad the ore grade would be if we started mining 1000x as fast!

Seabed mining? How much will that increase the energy inputs of the mining industry? Has anyone demonstrated that this is even workable? Sounds very science fictiony to me.

Extremely difficult to do. Easier to explore outer space than deep oceans, and the biodiversity destruction would be massive.

Almost every month there is another news story about a new technology that will save us from natural limits. 20 years ago I read about making oil from algae. They always disappear. Virtually all of these stories are publicity, released by a company or businessperson as a way of attracting investors and/or increasing share prices. They're popular because people want a magical pill solution that will save us from ourselves.

With current and future fuel prices I doubt that'll be viable anytime soon.

Actually he did a study assessing that. assuming all resource are recoverable regardless of the cost (including seabed mining) the total result was 44% of what is needed

You would watch those two get destroyed, absolutely leveled, good sir.

@@robertoheliaz9856 Given that Simon Minchaux is the person presenting in this video, both getting destroyed seemingly couldnt happen. To my larger point though. The audience and sway of persons explaining how the energy transition is under way and can/will happen is vastly larger than the group saying that it cant. Until well researched, authoritative voices enter into the fray, this message will be lost in the noise. There needs to be debate amongst the different camps to set the direction of the vast middle that has no idea of the dangers of the current energy/mineral situation.

@@jturbo68 ah, yes. tony seba would get destroyed. you're right, we do need debate (not that the two sides are equal). the great majority of experts and plebes alike are engaging in wishful thinking. if voices like michaux's are drowned out, it only supports ample evidence that individual human beings, and vast majorities and groups, are very often absolutely, utterly foolish idiots.

Most of the climate, energy and green transition scientists have either reduced themself, or been reduced to political instruments paid by big government, EU, FN etc.

I think Tony Seba is a shill for the EV industry. Prove me wrong.

Good luck with that hydrogen thingy.

Debating with techno optimists is like a game of whack-a- mole. They propose some grand solution without the actual accounting of thermodynamics, ecology, and planetary limits. Simone like Simon Michaux demonstrates in detail how wishful and unrealistic the proposal is. Then techno optimists prose some grand tech solution to the problems exposed without again providing the details of how in practice the ecological, economic, and social transition can be feasible. It's always "this other solution will reveal itself in due time, but for now let's keep exponential economic growth going without actively reducing throughput of energy and material usage". Magical thinking at its finest.

@@kvaka009 it has nothing to do with being a techno-optimist, or not. I'm not techno-optimist, neither techno-pessimist. Some technologies are part of the solution, but not alone. The economical system in which you implement a technology is more important than the technology itself, by the way. My point was just to says that the hypothesis with which were done the computation of Michaux are completely non realist. Even techno-optimists do not propose to do what he says, for a simple reason : batteries can be used for hourly or daily storage, but not for longer period of time, because it is totally irrelevant in a technico-economical point a view. Such storage will be done with other technologies (and we can challenge these technologies also, no pb with that). What Michaux is exactly what fossil fuel compagnies want you to believe. It's juste desinformation

@Vincent Bizouard Simon is not proposing a plan or analyzing his own plan. He is analyzing net zero proposals offered by other agents looking at technologies we actually know of. Technologies you are suggesting are either untested or not tested at scale. So your comment is no different than the response "that plan is not worth analyzing because there will be some other plan, whose details we have no idea how to even envision or implement"

@@vincentbizouard6057 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-YVjEK_PjvD0.html

To avoid the coming catastrophe we need to stop burning fossil fuels. Just a fact.

Correct. And this poses a grave dilemma.

Nuclear thermohydro produktion with a sabatier bio reactor with Waste heat feedback. This is 3 difftent system that all exist today, but just never been combined. If it would be used on full scale sweden alone could produce all The fuel needed for northern europe. (Including uk and ireland)

@@matsv201 Half of every barrel of oil goes to make fuel. The other half goes to make thousands products that we depend on. Can you make asphalt and car tires out of nuclear thermohydro production with a sabatier bio reactors?

@@redhen2123 Well.. That is kind of sort of true but not quite. There is a fairly normal spread between gas, nafta, jet fuel, diesel and light fuel oil. With Bitumen and gasol coming in at both end with about 5-8% each. But its not as simple. Most fractions are synthesized or cracked to some degree or a other. That gives it an end product of about 80% of the main fuels from light fuel oil to Gasoline. Synthetic ruber is made form basically a synthesized version of normal fuel or nafta. So that is really not a problem, close to the sweet spot. For bitumen its a bit more complicated. While it can theoretically just feed very little hydrogen, basically made tar from the wood. This is not a good option. The more reasonable solution is to make light fuel oil, then synthesize it down to bitumen. This is not quite the cheapest way, and it will make bitumen, a bit more expensive than diesel. But its not only drawbacks. For instance heavy fuel oil will not be produced in a system like this. And really, there is no reason to produce light fuel oil either. Basically anything between Methane and light fuel oil can be made. The heavier product, the more wood, the lighter product, the more nuclear hydrogen. When the technology matures, the lighter elements will be cheaper. Methane would cost about 1:50cent/kWh in current economics (if the system was commercial today). Petrol/Gasoline would cost about 2cent/kWh, Jet-A and diesel about 2:50 cent, light fuel oil about 3 cent, heavy fuel oil 3:50 and bitumen probobly around 4 cent. That would be about 15cent/L of gasoline or about 60cent/US gallon. Of cause, that is with out distribution or taxes. The reason why its so incredibly cheap and much cheaper than numbers you might seen before, is that the way i set it up i done away with carbon capture totally. This eliminate energy and machinery cost. It also eliminate the cost of removing the oxygen, and as well as that it provides additional system energy. On top of that, i made a 3 way feedback loop to reduce the reactor temperature, making the system available sooner. (of cause its just theoretical for now, but it should work) A lot of people ask if its just cheaper to just use the hydrogen as is. Well its not. The thing is distributing hydrogen is really expensive.We talking in the 1.5-2cent range. And this is not effected by the cost of hydrogen it self. If hydrogen cost say 7 cent like today, 1.5-2 cent is not a big deal. But if it cost 1.5 cent out of the reactor... it is. And with the feedback system, it can´t even produce hydrogen alone. It have to produce at least 60-70% hydrocarbons to get sufficient temperature. Also worth saying that a majority of earth oceanic ships runs on heavy fuel oil today. The reason... its very cheap, and its painfully costly to crack. So the refineries rather sell it for cheap then cracking it. The drawback. Diesel engines that run on heavy fuel oil are very inefficient. Only like 38-40% peak. This can be compared to diesels running on pure diesel-fuel that can be as efficient as 52% (and even 56% with heat feed back system, currently only two ships have that). Its even possible to go up to a combine cycle turbine, currently operating at 64% (no ship use that today). The reason why they don´t do it today is that heavy fuel oil is so cheap, so it don´t make sense.

So, are you hopeful for humanity?

I'm hopeful that less students will enroll in _humanities_ over time. We are going to need people who actually know how to contribute to society.

That's not even close to how it works. 1. Pure lithium has about 4000Wh/kg. The real cell is much less thanks to other materials. 2. The cells have 1500-5000 cycles. Meaning the actual amount of energy stored per mass over the lifetime is way higher in batteries.

Storing hydrogen in tanks and caverns is really not difficult, nor is transporting it by pipeline. Both are already done on industrial scale in the petroleum and fertiliser industries. Hydrogen is never quite as useful in the role of energy carrier as heavier fuels that pack more energy into a smaller volume, but it can be readily converted into those fuels with the addition of further feedstocks such as carbon dioxide (to make methane, methanol or heavier hydrocarbons similar to those found in petroleum) or nitrogen from the atmosphere (to make ammonia). Hydrogen is not the problem here. It is also not the solution, just a very small step towards a solution.

@@JonathanMaddox Thank you for the information. I was concerned because if the physical size of the molecule of H2. I fully agree with your comment that requires any sensible government to have a variable and balanced energy policy. Focusing on a single or on few sources is suicidal.