Specifically in minerals
Nafeez Ahmed 20 M.A. in contemporary war & peace studies and a DPhil (April 2009) in international relations from the School of Global Studies at Sussex University. Capitalism Will Ruin the Earth By 2050, Scientists Say. Vice. 10-21-2020. https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7m48d/capitalism-will-ruin-the-earth-by-2050-scientists-say
Endless growth will generate minerals scarcity within decades
The EV transition is, in short, a massive industrial project. Electrification of roads and rail will require upgraded smart grids, complex routes connected to high power lines, and regular battery-swap stations. The paper explores several scenarios to explore how such a transition would take place.
In a continuing GDP growth scenario, the authors note that the economy begins to stagnate “due to peak oil limits at around 2025-2040,” but GDP is able to continue growing thanks to the EV transition. This shows that the reduction in liquid fuels in transportation can play a powerful role in avoiding “energy shortages in the economy as a whole.”
But then the economy hits the limits of mineral and material production to sustain this electric transition—in just three decades. And this is even with high levels of minerals recycling.
By 2050, in this scenario, the EV transition will “require higher amounts of copper, lithium and manganese than current reserves. For the cases of copper and manganese the depletion is mainly due to the demand from the rest of the economy,” but most lithium demand “is for EV batteries,” and this alone “depletes its estimated global reserves.”
Mineral depletion takes place even with “a very high increase in recycling rates” in a continuing GDP growth scenario.
In one such scenario, the authors apply what they consider to be realistic upper level recycling rates of 57 percent, 30 percent and 74 percent to copper, lithium and manganese respectively. These are based on extremely optimistic projections of recycling capabilities relative to their costs.
But still they find that even these high recycling rates wouldn’t prevent depletion of all current estimated reserves by 2050. The conclusion corroborates findings of other studies, estimating an expected bottleneck for lithium by 2042-2045 and for manganese by 2038-2050.
Actual bottlenecks could come even earlier because existing studies—including the MEDEAS model—don’t account for material requirements needed for internal wiring, the EV motor, EV chargers, building and maintaining the grid to connect and charge EV batteries, the catenaries to electrify the railways, as well as inherent difficulties in recycling metals.