This article was originally published as an edition of the Green Transition, New Statesman Spotlight’s weekly newsletter on the economics of net zero. To see more editions and subscribe, click here.
In the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the UK’s energy security has been catapulted into the spotlight. Britain’s reliance on imported natural gas left it exposed to the volatile international energy market. As a result, our energy prices shot up.
Ed Miliband and his team at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero have grand plans to tackle this. They include accelerating the UK’s use of “clean, homegrown power” and turbocharging the transition to renewables.
By increasing our reliance on renewable power generated at home, the UK could – in theory – find itself energy independent. But there is another element of the pursuit of energy security that is often overlooked: wind turbines and solar panels are dependent on expensive, often imported, critical raw materials. As it currently stands, the UK remains a relatively resource-poor country.
The experts at Green Alliance have been looking into this and have produced a state-of-the-nation report assessing the current situation, which they have shared exclusively with the Green Transition. According to Mission Critical – Safeguarding Resources for UK Energy Security, the new Labour government must find a fresh approach to critical raw materials, and embed it within its energy security strategy.
Currently, the UK is nearly 100 per cent reliant on certain imported materials that are needed for the construction of electric vehicles, wind turbines and solar panels. This includes things like lithium, which is needed to construct EV batteries. Since the UK has few raw materials of its own, we must look abroad for the resources we need to achieve our clean-power goals.
Green Alliance recommends that the UK take a more circular approach, rather than remaining dependent on expensive imports. This would mean building in capacity to reuse, re-manufacture and recycle the materials used to build solar panels and windfarms. At the end of a product’s lifespan – as old solar panels, batteries and other goods become waste products – the UK ends up being a major exporter of the same critical raw materials that we import.
[See also: Can Chris Stark succeed as “Head of Mission Control”?]
Libby Peake, head of resource policy at Green Alliance and one of the report’s authors, explained that “although [the UK is] quite resource poor in terms of our geological formations of these critical raw materials, we are accumulating a wealth of them in the products and the infrastructure around us”.
She said that instead of continuing as we currently are – importing materials for construction and then exporting them as waste at the end of products’ lives – the UK instead should look to integrate plans for reuse. “If you’re thinking about long-term resource security and energy security, end-of-life infrastructure could be really valuable assets – you could just keep reusing the materials over and over again,” Peake explained.
Peake told the GT: “If we don’t move quickly, we’ll wind up having locked-in supply chains… which is expensive and risky.” She said there needs to be a mindset shift around how we approach waste: “We want to look at the waste from wind turbines and solar panels and think of it as an asset. We need to think of a way we can ensure we can reuse the materials, and ideally the products, again, so we don’t have to keep making more and more projects and so we don’t leave ourselves exposed to these volatile supply chains.”
Peake is right. Finding our own, independent way forward is becoming increasingly urgent. Many of the global supply chains for critical minerals are dominated by China, and other potential hostile and competitor nations. At the current rate, demand for the critical raw materials essential to the global energy transition is expected to grow by three and a half times by 2030, the target year the government has set in its race to achieve clean power.
Shifting mindsets takes time. But with a flurry of new clean-power projects currently beginning to take shape (GB Energy, the National Wealth Fund and Clean Power 2030), perhaps this is the most opportune moment.
[See also: Can GB Energy make Britain an energy superpower?]
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