Clean energy is uniquely more resource intensive --- requires massive use of REEs
Serpell, et. al, 21 --- a research associate at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy (May 2021, Oscar Serpell, Benjamin Paren - a Ph.D. student in the department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, Wan-Yi Chu - assistant professor at Mills College in Oakland, California and a former postdoctoral researcher in the Goldberg Group, located in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, “RARE EARTH ELEMENTS: A RESOURCE CONSTRAINT OF THE ENERGY TRANSITION,” https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/KCEP-Rare-Earth-Elements.pdf, JMP))
Climate change is presenting humans with an unprecedented challenge: the need to wean ourselves off of a group of valuable natural resources; not because of scarcity or cost, but because of their long-term global pollution impacts. Although the combined capabilities of wind, solar, hydropower, and geothermal technologies have the potential to harness near limitless amounts of energy from our environment, they are not free from the limitations of resource availability.
On the contrary, the clean energy transition will require economic mobilization on a scale not seen since the industrial revolution, and will strain the global production of silicon, cobalt, lithium, manganese, and a host of other critical elements (Behr 2019).
One group of natural resources that may prove essential for the next generation of electric motors and turbines are the rare earth elements (REEs)—17 elements consisting of scandium, yttrium, and the 15 lanthanides (Institute of Rare Earths and Strategic Metals, n.d.).