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<p>A successful energy transition is crucial for mitigating climate change but may be hindered by bottlenecks in the availability of critical metals. The energy transition scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change overlook such risks, proposing energy and transport pathways deemed unrealistic by past studies. Yet by relying on fixed market shares, those studies ignore the market’s ability to shift towards a (sub)technological mix requiring fewer supply-constrained metals. Here, for the most stringent decarbonization scenarios, we show that an optimized technology mix trims the list of metals constrained by mining capacities from 13 to copper, lithium and vanadium only. Key levers include substituting silver and gallium in solar technologies, prioritizing gearbox wind turbines and induction-motor electric vehicles without permanent magnets, and replacing part of the grid’s copper with aluminium. Sixteen other metals remain under pressure, but because over 90% of their demand stems from sectors outside the energy transition, our results underscore the need for economy-wide metallic sobriety.</p>

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Technology flexibility and sobriety to address shortage of energy-transition metals

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年1月28日

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  • Pénélope Bieuville,
  • Guillaume Majeau-Bettez,
  • Anne de Bortoli

摘要

A successful energy transition is crucial for mitigating climate change but may be hindered by bottlenecks in the availability of critical metals. The energy transition scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change overlook such risks, proposing energy and transport pathways deemed unrealistic by past studies. Yet by relying on fixed market shares, those studies ignore the market’s ability to shift towards a (sub)technological mix requiring fewer supply-constrained metals. Here, for the most stringent decarbonization scenarios, we show that an optimized technology mix trims the list of metals constrained by mining capacities from 13 to copper, lithium and vanadium only. Key levers include substituting silver and gallium in solar technologies, prioritizing gearbox wind turbines and induction-motor electric vehicles without permanent magnets, and replacing part of the grid’s copper with aluminium. Sixteen other metals remain under pressure, but because over 90% of their demand stems from sectors outside the energy transition, our results underscore the need for economy-wide metallic sobriety.