In a world powered increasingly by clean energy, drilling for oil and gas will gradually give way to digging for metals and minerals. Today, the "critical minerals" used to make electric cars, solar panels, wind turbines, and grid-scale battery storage are facing soaring demand and some acute bottlenecks as miners race to catch up.
At the MIT Conference on Mining, Environment, and Society, the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative convened academics, industry, government officials and NGOs to discuss the environmental and social challenges of supplying the critical minerals for solar, batteries, the electric grid, and more, and to identify opportunities for future collaboration.