Critical metals resources required to achieve carbon neutrality: Where will they come from and are there enough?

The future of energy resources

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What does carbon neutrality mean? What does it require? Is it possible? In this presentation, Adam Simon will contextualize carbon neutrality through the lens of the metal resources required to transition from a global energy infrastructure dependent on coal, natural gas, and oil, to one entirely reliant on a combination of photovoltaic solar, wind turbines and battery storage. 

Manufacturing and deploying those renewable energy resources requires dozens of metals, including copper, lithium, nickel, tellurium, cobalt, indium, tin, chromium, and many others. What types of mineral deposits do those metals come from? What are the geologic constraints on their availability? What are the economic constraints on their availability? What are the environmental permitting constraints on the timeframe for production and delivery to market? What are the political constraints on their availability? Please join us for a presentation where these questions and more will be answered.

Bio

Adam C. Simon is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan. He earned degrees in geology from the University of Maryland and Stony Brook University, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at The Johns Hopkins University where he investigated the formation of layered mafic intrusions in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica. Adam spent his first seven years as a faculty member of the University of Nevada Las Vegas where he worked on Carlin type gold deposits before moving to Michigan in 2012. He is a Fellow of the Society of Economic Geologists.  His research program combines field, analytical and experimental work to unravel the genesis of mineral systems, including IOCG, IOA, porphyry and Carlin systems. Adam co-authored two textbooks Mineral Resources, Economics and the Environment, and Earth Materials: Components of a Diverse Planet, and has published nearly fifty papers in the field of mineral resources.

This talk is part of the Lundin-Snider Seminar Series

Refreshments will be served after the talk.