Smith Lecture - Dr. Adam Simon, University of Michigan

Transitioning to an energy infrastructure entirely reliant on a combination of photovoltaic solar, wind turbines, electric vehicles and grid-scale battery storage requires production of metals from new mineral deposits on an unprecedented scale. Manufacturing and deploying these renewable energy resources requires dozens of metals, including boron, cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel, tellurium, tin 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 geopolitical constraints on their availability? How do environmental permitting constraints impact the timeframe for production and delivery to market? Please join me for a presentation where I answer these questions and more.