Material demand of the energy transition

Background

We face the major challenge of rapidly reducing our CO₂ emissions at a global level. Our energy system must be transformed to enable the production and use of clean, renewable energy. This requires the construction of large numbers of wind turbines, solar panels, electrolysers, and batteries for storage and electric mobility.

Building these sustainable energy technologies leads to a substantial demand for critical metals such as lithium, cobalt, iridium, and neodymium. The rapidly growing global demand for these metals may become a new barrier to the energy transition.

Research question

On the one hand, rapid growth in renewable energy production is essential. On the other hand, this rapid expansion increases the demand for critical metals — which in turn leads to supply risks and greater risks of environmental harm and human rights violations.

This raises the following questions:

1. What is the critical metal demand of the Dutch renewable energy system?
2. Which circular strategies can help reduce this demand for critical metals?
3. What does this require from stakeholders within the Netherlands?”

Approach

We are conducting these studies in collaboration with Metabolic, Quintel, and Polaris. The three studies were carried out based on the following principles:

• Providing insight into the expected demand for critical metals, using current scenarios for the future of the energy system;
• Aligning with the best available global data on metal production, acknowledging that these figures fluctuate due to market conditions and geopolitical developments;
• Offering actionable perspectives for all stakeholders in the Dutch energy sector, enabling them to contribute to reducing these risks.

Status

Within this research topic, we have now published three studies:

• Critical metal demand of the energy transition (2018), an initial exploration of the critical metal demand of solar panels and wind turbines;
• Critical metal demand of electric mobility (2019), examining the critical metal demand of electric vehicles;
• Circular energy transition (2021), providing insight into the critical metal demand of the entire renewable energy system.

The figures from Circular energy transition were updated in 2023 by Metabolic, commissioned by Netbeheer Nederland. That update can be found here.

The result

Through these studies, we aim to build a better understanding of the material risks faced by the Dutch energy sector, the ways in which Dutch stakeholders can help mitigate these risks, and the opportunities this presents for Dutch industry.

From this research, we have drawn several key conclusions:

• The Netherlands requires a significant share of global critical metal production — larger than its share of global GDP (1.0%), final energy consumption (0.5%), or population (0.2%).
• A combination of circular strategies is necessary to reduce these risks. This includes redesigning the energy system (rethink), substituting critical metals (reduce), extending the lifespan of technologies (reuse, repair), and recycling recovered metals (recycle).
• enabling conditions must be met for the Netherlands to contribute effectively to a circular energy transition. These include strong industrial policy, greater transparency in supply chains, and continuous monitoring and knowledge development.