Dispelling three myths about materials and renewable energy


On the show, a team of special effects experts test myths from TV shows or popular wisdom, such as: Can a snowplow flip a truck? Can you fly using fireworks? Are elephants really afraid of mice? The team tries to figure out the answer through a process that often involves explosions and often enlists the help of a crash test dummy they call Buster.

Today’s journalism process looks a little different, but I think dozens of rounds MythBusters The cycle—ask, search, answer—definitely left an impression on me.

of MythBusters The pilot came out 20 years ago last week in honor of the occasion We debunk some of the myths surrounding one of my favorite topics: the materials we need to fight climate change.

Myth #1: We don’t have enough materials to build what we need to fight climate change.

This comes up a lot, and for good reason. We need many things to prepare for a new, zero-emission world.

To keep things relatively simple, I’ll focus on the two industries with the highest emissions today: power generation and transportation. Together, they account for nearly three-quarters of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions.

We need to build a lot of new infrastructure to reduce emissions in these sectors; In particular, we can store new electric power lines and batteries. So how much material are we looking at here?

Pretty much any construction needs some combination of steel, aluminum, and maybe copper. New research shows we need more of each just to build the infrastructure to generate electricity to meet climate goals. Between now and 2050, demand could total up to 1.96 billion metric tons of steel, 241 million metric tons of aluminum, and 82 million metric tons of copper.

That sounds like a lot, and it is. But if you compare those numbers to the economically viable reserves on the planet, it’s a tiny fraction. And the annual production should not grow more than 20% to meet the demand for supply of these materials.



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