How can we overcome the pressure on natural resources?

Listen to the podcast in English 

Erik Orsenna

Today we have the great chance to meet a wonderful gentleman. 5 years ago, I toured all European factories that recycled. And I found a particularly interesting one, south of Antwerp, in Belgium, which managed to extract silver and gold ingots from the micro pieces of all our everyday tools, laptops, etc.,. This company called Umicore creates treasures from our waste.
Today we are going to talk to Koenraad Debackere, a director of Umicore and a professor at the Catholic University of Leuven.
Hello Koenraad, nice to meet you. 

Koenraad Debackere

Hello Eric. 
I have been involved for quite some time in issues related to climate change, issues related to energy transition, also as a member of the Scientific Council of ENGIE where we do a lot of work on understanding how to mitigate the challenges posed by climate change. As you may remember, yesterday, the Copernicus Observatory of the European Commission published a report showing that heating in Europe is taking on significant proportions. So this means that decarbonising our economies and our societies is of extreme importance, and therefore, we need a lot of new sources of energy, renewable sources of energy like for instance photovoltaic, solar energy, wind, new fuels, which we call E-fuels because they are developed in a sustainable manner. Hydrogen is one example of non carbon fuels.  Also, there are important evolutions in the area of what we call small nuclear reactors and energy fusion.
All those different technologies have to help us to make the leap forward in the energy transition that we are confronted with.
This also means that when we talk energy transition, we have to cope with different bottlenecks related to economic feasibility,  social acceptance,  the status of the technology and the availability of materials. Because when you look at electrification,  which will be one of the major vehicles to support our energy transition, it is important to realise that materials will become the new oil. We will need a lot of materials in order to be able to do the electrifications we want to achieve in order to avoid the use of fossil fuels.
To give you one example in relation to what this means to materials, if we look at an average electric vehicle today, then we need about 200 kgs of special materials, rare materials that will have to be deployed in order to make and produce that electric car.

This figure is very important because we always have the impression that we are in a magical process, that just by saying a few words we will suddenly manage to electrify all our cars, without realizing the incredible efforts that must be made and all the materials needed to achieve this so-called miracle.
This miracle has a cost and represents enormous efforts.

Koenraad Debackere

Yes, you’re right.
One of the important components of electrification is our mobility, electric cars. If we take the present internal combustion engines, the fuel cars that we all use today, they need about 40 kgs of special materials per vehicle, 40 kgs. If we talk electric cars, then we need more than 200 kgs per vehicle, 200 kgs of materials like cobalt, nickel, manganese, lithium. This means that electrification is a solution to the energy transition, but at the same time it creates an enormous challenge, an important challenge on the material side, moving from 40 kgs to 200 kgs, even more than 200 kgs per vehicle. This is a challenge that we will have to cope with, and this is why we will have to look at energy transition in a very systemic way, in a way where we are not just looking at the car that solves the problem, but where we also look at the problems that the car creates, namely materials-related problems and that we also have to solve.
To give you another example, not just cars but also solar energy. If we want to make the switch from current fossil fuel use to electrification and renewable energy, we will need 1 terawatt peak of solar power to be installed every year in the world, and definitely in Europe, between now and 2030. This means we will need 56 million tonnes of steel, 47 million tonnes of concrete, 42 million tonnes of glass to achieve this. This is 14% of the current world production in glass.
Steel and concrete are very, very difficult to decarbonise. This means again that we are confronted with an enormous systemic innovation challenge. We need the solar power, we need to instal the solar power, but to do so we will need a lot of materials, and some of those materials will create their own challenges for being decarbonised.

Erik Orsenna

Which basically means that there is a multiplicity of sources of energy to replace the 2-3 sources that we knew. That’s good news, but what is more difficult to manage is that each of these sources is not unique but must be integrated into a system. It is a whole various production chain that must be implemented to make this source effective.

Koenraad Debackere

Indeed, you are absolutely right. If we look at the major sources of renewable energy, electrification, which is connected to batteries, lithium-ion batteries, wind, solar and hydrogen, they are solutions, but they are solutions that create their challenges in their own supply chains.
One of those challenges, as we said is related to materials, and if you just take batteries, then we see that both from a manufacturing perspective and from a materials perspective, the world is dominated by China. Therefore, I am entering another challenge that pops up once we start talking renewable energies and their materials implications. We are also entering the realm of geopolitical implications. Because, as we all know, the tensions between the three big powers in the world, US, Europe and China, those tensions create new challenges also when it comes to materials and when it comes to climate mitigation and when it comes to energy transition.
This means that when we think batteries, when we think wind, when we think photovoltaic, when we think hydrogen, we are confronted with four solutions that we will have to develop and that will require a lot of investment, a lot of ingenuity, but also a lot of social acceptance going forward.
The four solutions going forward are related to what we call materials intensity, materials substitution, recycling and relocating.

Erik Orsenna

You mentioned two absolutely key issues:
- the geopolitical question, because the transition also aims to be less dependent on countries that were considered a bit difficult, for example the Gulf countries
- the condition that our society accepts the opening of mines to decarbonize. And we know that mines are obviously very aggressive towards the environment.
So you need to know what you want. Do we want to decarbonize, and at that point we have to accept some damage to the environment, or do we not want to decarbonize and at that point we will refuse the mines. 
The issue of acceptability is absolutely key. We have geopolitics on the one hand including the acceptability of dependency, and on the other hand the question of mines, therefore the acceptability of a certain damage to the environment to try to save our planet.

Koenraad Debackere

Absolutely, and we face those challenges every day. Just think of the European Commission, the European Raw Materials Act. The European Commission is convinced that we will have to look into mining within Europe. Think of Lithium mining, but at the same time as soon as you pronounce the word, you see that there is a lot of social commotion, a lot of turbulence, a lot of questioning as to whether this is socially acceptable or not. So, if we are not careful, we will find ourselves between a rock and a hard place. We want to decarbonise, but in order to decarbonise, we need solutions that come along with geopolitical challenges, with technological challenges and with social acceptance challenges.

Erik Orsenna

We also are in a state of emergency, and acceptance takes time, in particular because of the legal support, all the procedures which are normal in a democratic country.

Koenraad Debackere

That is absolutely true, and this also means that Europe, and definitely European countries, will have to take into account how far they go with certain kinds of administrative procedures, how much appeal will you allow in order to build the social acceptance that you need. That is not an easy balance, and it will be a big challenge to our democratic societies to be democratic on the one hand, because that is a value, a European value we all cherish, and on the other hand, to make sure that we come to conclusions, and that we come to action within a reasonable timeframe. Because 2050 is nearby, and if you need to make the investments, then this takes time.
However, it is not just the investments, because let us look at the four solutions that I was referring to, materials intensity, substitution, recycling and relocating, and let us pick the recycling option. If we want to become less dependent on the plus 200 kgs of special materials we need in an electric car, if we want to become less dependent on mining, or on geopolitical tensions, we have to recycle those materials. Well, in recycling those materials, there are a number of challenges as well. The first challenge is technological. We have a good insight into what different technologies might be, but today, we are still experimenting. We do not yet have the one winning technology that will offer the best economic technological recycling output. This will come quite quickly, within a year or two we will know much more, but there is still this level of technological experimentation going on.
However, even then, once we have the technology available, chosen, selected, then we have to look at the lifetime of the car. We need a sufficient supply of used batteries to create and to close the loop. In the value chain, you have to close the loop from time to time, and closing the loop from used batteries to new raw materials means a sufficient amount of supply, means a sufficient amount of used batteries.
Today, we are only starting with the wave of electric vehicles, so it will take five to seven years before we will have first massive, sufficiently large levels of supply of used batteries. Even there, there is still uncertainty because, for instance, we do not yet know what the second life of an electric car will be. The first user of the car may use the car for five, six years, but a second-hand electrical car may still live for two, three, four, five years. Therefore, it will take five to 10 years before the supply comes up to level in order to have a significant impact on closing the loop and being circular.
Then we have to scale up our recycling production capacity, which is a huge investment and comes with de-risking the investment, which is linked to the supply that I was just referring to, supply of used batteries.
The fourth and final variable that comes into play is the organisation: how will we organise the logistics of the recycling process? The logistics being who will own the used battery? Is it the automotive company or an independent company? Will it be collected by independent companies or by the automotive companies? We are still developing those models as well. We call this ecosystem development.
This shows, as you just mentioned, it takes time and there is an urgent need to make progress, but as the nice French statement that I love so much, ‘Le temps n’accepte pas ce qui se fait sans lui’ (Time does not accept what is done without it). Well, in this instance of recycling, we will need time to de risk and to contain all the bottlenecks that I was just referring to. So, it is obvious that closing the loop, working along the new value chains offers opportunities, is part of the solution, but at the same time poses quite some challenges that we will have to cope with. 
Then, of course, as you already mentioned, there is not only the issue of climate, there is not only the issue of energy transition, but there is also the issue of environmental impact. The European Commission just passed some new legislation on biodiversity for instance, but we have to understand that quite some of the technologies related to recycling, also come with new environmental challenges.  For instance, using water, for instance, using reagents and all those products also have their specific environmental impact.
This means, yes, we know where we are heading, we know why we are heading that way. We also know what solutions are, but the solutions are not yet fully in place and even if we know what they are from a technical perspective, they still require a lot of work from a technological and an organisational perspective.
This is explained by the recycling example, but another issue that I refer to is decreasing the materials intensity of the energy sources like batteries that we will use. Well, decreasing the materials intensity, meaning we will use less material, less kilogrammes of material per car, per vehicle. Also, this materials intensity reduction requires a lot of technological research, a lot of development in order to achieve this.
Europe has to move in that direction because, as we mentioned, the geopolitical, the environmental, the climate challenges all force us, or require us to do so. This means that circularity, closing the loop, understanding the new organisation of the value chains in those energy transition scenarios will be of extreme importance and luckily, a lot of companies, a lot of researchers, a lot of investors are working towards that direction. However, it is not a done deal; it is a work in progress that will still require a lot of ingenuity and a lot of effort.

Erik Orsenna

Thanks Koen. I had many great teachers but I don't think I've ever had a teacher like you.
You speak of the value chain, and therefore of logistics, you speak of circularity, you speak of systems instead of a single solution and by telling this, you are painting a portrait of life itself. Because life is about interrelation, it's a circle, and also obviously systems. 
But you clearly show that our society is challenged, and must think about different conceptions of space and time, with the possibility for our democracies to integrate the urgency in the long term and to make decisions now.
What is the right time scale, the right space scale? Those who think that a single country will be able to succeed in this transition without links with the others, those are obviously in the craziest error and total illusion. But that's also what you say: it’s a plea for Europe. If we don't want dependency, we need a space large enough to find what we need, and this space is obviously Europe.
Koenraad, a huge thank you.

Koenraad Debackere

Many thanks to you too.