Rare earths and metals are fundamental to renewable energy technology, but as the name suggests, they are scarce on the Earth's surface. So what would happen if we started mining the ocean floor for them? 🐚 DW's timschauen on the ecological impact. ⬇️
to mine the ocean floor. But campaigners and even corporations are pushing back due to fears of the massive environmental impact.
According to estimates, in just three years the world will need twice as much lithium and 70% more cobalt. "The nodules' composition happens to be remarkably well-aligned with the needs of electric vehicle makers," said Gerard Barron, CEO of The Metals Company."Carmakers will need a great deal more of these metals in order to make battery cathodes and electrical connectors for an electric vehicle fleet of around a billion cars and trucks by mid-century."
But the living part of the seabed is destroyed along with the nodules, said Matthias Haeckel, a scientist at the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany. Rapid regeneration is impossible because it can take a million years for a nodule to grow a few millimeters.To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser thatScientists and opponents of deep-sea mining also fear that the clouds of sediment from the suction could cause enormous damage to ecosystems within a radius of several hundred kilometers.
These permits allow companies to explore the resources and potential for future extraction, but also require them to collect data for environmental analysis.
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