Critical Minerals:
The world’s energy system is mainly powered by fossil fuels. The transition to a low-carbon one will shift its underpinnings away from coal, oil, and gas to the minerals needed for solar, wind, nuclear, and other technologies.
Bauxite: Primary source of aluminum. Essential for wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, electrolyzers, and transmission cables.
Chromium: Key for geothermal and concentrated solar power. Used in wind turbines, and for radiation shielding in nuclear power plants.
Cobalt: Used in consumer electronics, catalysts for the oil industry, resistant metal alloys, critical components in many lithium-ion battery technologies.
Copper: Critical element in solar photovoltaics, wind power, battery storage, and electricity grids.
Graphite: Key component of battery anodes and therefore important for the transition to electric vehicles, and stationary batter- les for balancing electricity grids. Lithium: Core component of lithium-ion batteries.
Manganese: Widely used in solar and wind power, and in lithium-ion batteries for electric cars. Molybdenum: Has a very high electrical conductivity but expands little when exposed to heat.
Nickel: Key component in the cathodes of lithium-ion batteries in electric cars.
Rare earths: Used in wind power for permanent magnets.
Silver: It’s most important role in clean energy is in solar photo- voltaic and electric vehicles.
Uranium: Primary fuel for nuclear energy production.
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