APPG 2030 Ban

Fair Fuel APPG for UK Motorists and UK Hauliers August 2021 Page | 26 The rare metals in question include such exotics as germanium, antimony, beryllium, and niobium to name a few. The worst thing is they are called rare, (the clue is in the title), because they appear in exceedingly small quantities. For example, it takes 8½ tonnes of rock to extract 1 kilo of Vanadium, 50 tonnes of rock for 1 kilo of Gallium and 1200 tonnes of rock for 1 kilo of Lutecium. Imagine the energy required to extract these quantities. Often these metals are found closely related to Uranium and radioactive metals so their extraction can be hazardous. In addition, copious amounts of water, purifying one tonne or rare earths requires 200m 3 of water, along with sulphuric, nitric and hydrochloric acids. The western world has taken the decision not to be involved in this ‘dirty’ rare earth extraction but export the problem to China who has positioned itself as the major world supplier. The legacy for China is obvious; it is the biggest emitter of green - house gases, 10% of its arable land is contaminated by heavy metals and 80% of its ground water is unfit for consumption. Other less developed countries in Africa and S America want to get on the rare earth gravy train and are striving to exploit the associated economic boom. Wi th the wor ld going ‘green’, rare earth product ion needs to double every 15 years meaning that over the nex t 30 years we w i l l ex tract more minerals from the earth than the human race has done in 70,000 years. Green Energy: Not only do wind turbines require rare earths but Solar Panels do as well. Each panel generates 70Kg of CO 2 in manufacture. World demand will require an increase in production of 23% over the next few years so that 10Gw of panel power can be produced each year. This will generate 2.7bn tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of 600,000 conventional vehicles. The Second-hand car markets. If one assumes that the life of a modern car is up to 20 years then by 2050 all 60m cars in Britain should have been replaced by electric, apart from a few classic and historic vehicles. On average 2m new cars are sold every year in the UK but about 8m second- hand cars are sold so the used market is 4 times that of the new. The majority of these traded cars are 9+ years old which means the average price paid is around £6700. This is in line with the depreciation estimate of a car being worth only 20% of its new value after 10 years. The reason is probably obvious, not everyone can afford a new car. EVs are more expensive when new but the batteries may only last about 5-10 years, so by the time they would come within the reach of a second-hand buyer they could be poor value. Depending on what you read, motor manufacturers think batteries could last 20 years, but others think 5-10 as their capacity degrades. This makes the industry one of the most toxic in the world. These acids are either poured into the ground or held in large lakes. Most of this takes place in China where there is little regard for human working conditions, pollution control or dumped waste.