Heat waves, floods and droughts across the world are a wake-up call to cut fossil fuel use fast, reducing CO2 emissions to near zero by mid-century. To do that we must electrify as much as possible, decarbonise electricity supply, and use hydrogen, bioenergy, and carbon capture in applications where direct electrification is not feasible.

By 2050, global electricity supply will need to grow around four times; transmission grids stretch from 70 million kilometres to around 200 million kilometres, and the use of electric cars spread from 25 million to over 1 billion. That implies huge amounts of mineral supply - seven times more lithium used per annum than in 2022, and copper use doubling.

This scale-up will be challenging, and raises many concerns, for example, that mining will use huge quantities of scarce water, high lithium prices make EVs impossibly expensive, or discarded solar panels create a landfill disaster. We must separate myth from real concern.

One myth we don't need to worry about is long-term supply. For all the key minerals, known resources exceed total future requirements. One worry to put to rest is the CO2 or other greenhouse gases emitted when using fossil fuel energy to produce the materials required for the first generation of wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and electrical equipment. The Energy Transitions Commission estimates this will amount to a cumulative 15-35 Gt of CO2 equivalent over the next 30 years. In comparison, over 40 Gt CO2e is produced every year by the fossil fuel based energy system.

Land and water needs are also manageable. The roughly 5 billion cubic metres of water needed annually for new mineral extraction for the energy transition compares with 2,700 billion cubic metres used in food and fibre production. And all of the solar PV farms and raw mineral mine sites required would take up less than 2% of the land area devoted to agriculture. Red meat consumption threatens the world's tropical rainforests, not batteries for electric vehicles.

There are three real key challenges. The first is growing metal and mineral supply fast enough to meet rapidly growing demand. There is plenty of copper and lithium to meet global needs in 2050, but announced plans for supply fall short of likely demand in 2030. New mines and refineries must be built, which require bigger financial flows to developing countries, and planning system reform that allows some mining and refining activity in economically developed countries.

The second challenge to tackle is the adverse local environmental effects of new mining developments. In aggregate, the adverse impacts will be more than offset by putting a stop to coal mining, but that won't be true for specific local communities. Best mining and refining practices can dramatically reduce harmful effects, and must be imposed by regulation on both mineral producers and users. Communities should share in the profits generated, which is a marginal additional costs that should be borne by the industry to deliver more sustainable supply.

But environmental impacts can also be dramatically reduced via product innovation and recycling, cutting the need for newly mined supply. New battery designs have reduced future cobalt needs by 50% in just 5 years. Nickel-free LFP batteries now account for 40% of EV use - up from 7% in 2019. And by 2040, over 50% of lithium used in new batteries could come from recycling. Regulation must and increasingly does require complete recycling of all battery materials.

The third challenge is building more diverse supply chains. 68% of cobalt comes from the DRC, 48% of nickel from Indonesia and 74% of refined lithium from China, even though lithium resources are spread across the world. Significant concentration of mining is inevitable given natural resource location. Decoupling completely from China would increase the cost of key technologies disproportionately which would slow progress towards a zero carbon economy. But policies to reduce reliance on imports make sense to manage risk: the EU's objective to source 40% of refined mineral supply domestically reflects a reasonable balance.

Mineral supply challenges are legitimate. But we must also recognise the inherently sustainable nature of a renewable energy system. Today we burn 8 billion tons of coal, 35 billion barrels of oil, and 4 trillion cubic metres of gas each year, producing over 40 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases. In a clean, electrified system, we would extract far smaller quantities of key minerals and place them in solar cells or batteries which generate and store clean electrical energy. These materials will remain useful year after year and can be recycled over and over again. We must prioritise building this renewable and sustainable system faster to displace fossil reliance.