We want to get rid of Russian gas as soon as possible. The alternative? Green energy. But even then we are not independent: we desperately need China.
Or how the French journalist and metal expert Guillaume Pitron (1980) describes it: ‘We free ourselves from the clutches of the Russian bear by running straight into the wings of the Chinese dragon’. He wrote the book The Rare Earth Metals War (2021) and wants to warn Europe.
In a interview with de Volkskrant says Pitron: “It’s like swapping cocaine for heroin – we’re trading one addiction for another. We don’t realize that the beautiful ideal of a low-carbon economy is very resource-intensive.”
High price
De Volkskrant sums up: ‘An electric car requires six times more lithium, manganese, neodymium and other minerals than an ordinary car, and up to nine times more for a wind power plant than for a gas power plant.’ And China supplies 61 to 73 percent of all silicon and gallium in solar panels, 69 percent of the graphite for batteries in electric cars and 95 percent of all neodymium in wind turbines.
Previously, these metals and minerals were also mined in Europe, America and Australia, but the environmental pollution it produced led to China taking over. At a high price. The air quality is bad, rivers and rice fields are polluted. It leads to many cancers, birth defects and other diseases among parts of the rural population.
Green jobs disappear
Ultimately, China no longer only wants to do the dirty work, but also wants to sell the end product. “The green jobs are disappearing to China, just like many other technology jobs. The Chinese are understandably no longer satisfied with just supplying us with the raw materials, they also want to sell the finished product, which is where most of the money is. China is waging a cold economic war for supremacy in the new, green world. If we don’t respond adequately, China will outflank us.”
The EU is also trying to tap into other sources, for example by conducting mineral diplomacy with Greenland, among others. But that’s not easy. Pitron: “Last year the Greenlanders voted en masse for an anti-mining party in elections. Greenlanders do not want to pay the ecological bill for countries like the Netherlands and France, they do not want to be the new Chinese.”
Lees the whole interview in the Volkskrant.
