![]() According to deep-ocean-mining proponents, the seabed nodules could provide most of the minerals the world needs, with minimal impact. Meanwhile, the efforts to extract cobalt, which is mined almost exclusively in the Democratic Republic of Congo, are dogged by persistent accounts of human-rights and environmental abuses. But after decades of exploitation, the quality of the ore is going down while the energy required to quarry and refine it is going up. Fears of such shortages have countries and companies racing to secure the supplies needed for the coming energy transition.īy most assessments, existing mines on land could supply the needed minerals. “If supply chains can’t meet skyrocketing demand, mineral shortages could mean clean-energy shortages,” the report argues. Demand for the metals in electric vehicles alone could grow by more than 30 times from 2020 to 2040, say the report’s authors. But according to a May 2021 report by the International Energy Agency (IEA)-the Paris-based intergovernmental organization that helps shape global energy policies-the world isn’t mining enough of the minerals needed to make the batteries that will power that clean-energy future. Nevertheless, a radical embrace of electric vehicles will be necessary to limit global warming to less than 1.5☌ above preindustrial levels, the goal of the Paris Agreement. Taking those nodules and then using them to make batteries is like making cement out of coral reefs.” The nodules are a core part of a biome roughly the size of the Amazon rain forest, she notes. “If this goes wrong, it could trigger a series of unintended consequences that messes with ocean stability, ultimately affecting life everywhere on earth,” says Pippa Howard, director of the biodiversity-conservation organization Fauna and Flora International. The process of extracting the nodules is unlikely to disrupt that ability on its own, but the very nature of the world’s oceans-largely contiguous, with a system of currents that circumnavigate the globe-means that what happens in one area could have unforeseen impacts on the other side of the planet. Oceans are a vital carbon sink, absorbing up to a quarter of global carbon emissions a year. Mining them, he says, would be as simple as vacuuming golf balls off a putting green.īut conservationists say doing so could unleash a cascade effect worse than the current trajectory of climate change. ![]() Barron estimates that there is enough cobalt and nickel in those nuggets to power 4.8 billion electric vehicles-more than twice the number of vehicles on the road today, worldwide. Gerard Barron, the Australian CEO of seabed-mining company the Metals Company, calls them something else: “a battery in a rock,” and “the easiest way to solve climate change.” The nodules, which are strewn across the 4.5 million-sq-km (1.7 million-sq-mi.) swath of international ocean between Hawaii and Mexico known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), contain significant amounts of the metals needed to make the batteries that power our laptops, phones and electric cars. Marine biologists say they are part of one of the least-understood environments on earth, holding, if not the secret to life on this planet, at least something equally fundamental to the health of its oceans. ![]() Similar in size and appearance to partially burned charcoal briquettes, the nuggets are called polymetallic nodules, and are an amalgamation of nickel, cobalt, manganese and other rare earth metals, formed through a complex biochemical process in which shark teeth and fish bones are encased by minerals accreted out of ocean waters over millions of years. ![]() Scattered three miles deep along the floor of the central Pacific are trillions of black, misshapen nuggets that may just be the solution to an impending energy crisis.
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