Metallic Mineral Resources: The Critical Components for a Sustainable Earth - Chapter 10: The future of metallic mineral resources and their exploration

Since the Industrial Revolution, the increase in global population from about 1 to 8 billion has placed increasing pressure on metals supplied by mining and processing of metallic mineral deposits discovered by increasingly sophisticated exploration by professional mining and mineral exploration companies. Concern about climate change, promulgated by the UN-based IPCC, has led to Net Zero mitigation of CO2 policies which are attempting to transition from conventional energy supply to clean energy supply via technologies that require ever-increasing amounts of metals, particularly critical metals. There seems to be little political recognition that the metals that are the cornerstone of the so-called renewable energy transition are nonrenewable resources. In the past few years, there have been growing predictions that supply of these metals must increase between 100 and 1000%, dependent on the specific metal, with strong indications of short-term shortfalls and long-term indications that many critical metals may be highly depleted or exhausted at economically viable metal grades and increasing energy requirements during the first cycle of Net Zero remediations ending in 2050. The most obvious remedy is to discover more metallic mineral deposits through sophisticated global mineral exploration but there are increasingly serious natural, environmental, and social impediments to overcome. Add to this the large average times from deposit discovery to metal production, and it is self-evident that current mineral exploration discovery rate cannot alone solve the urgent problems of increasing metal demand and of metal deposit exhaustion. Recycling of metals from existing clean energy devices such as wind turbines, solar panels, and EVs, or better still manufacturing recyclable technologies, are other possibilities, but there is little progress. There is an urgent need to move to a circular economy in terms of critical metals where there is conservation of metals discovered by mineral exploration via manufacture of economically recyclable clean energy technologies and continuing recycling of those critical metals for the future. To preserve our materials-based civilization, it will be necessary to develop a balanced portfolio of energy sources, involving fossil fuels, nuclear fission, hydroelectric and thermal power, and clean energy, while researching the use of hydrogen and nuclear fusion as potential future major energy sources.