Comment by crote
6 hours ago
Contrary to their name, "rare earth metals" aren't actually rare, and for a lot of the renewables stack they aren't strictly necessary.
Take lithium batteries, for example. They were attractive for early BEVs because the consumer electronics market already developed an industry for them, and they were attractive for early grid storage because the BEVs scaled that industry up. But that doesn't mean you have to use lithium for grid storage, and when push comes to shove we could also use sodium-ion batteries, or iron redox flow batteries.
If your country no longer has access to iron and salt, I reckon you have bigger things to worry about.
Didn’t say they were rare I said they weren’t distributed equally which ends up creating geopolitical tensions and while newer chemistries might change the equation that doesn’t seem like what is going to happen at least in the short term.