There is growing support for the transition from a global energy infrastructure dependent on coal, natural gas, and oil to one entirely reliant on a combination of battery electric vehicles, photovoltaic solar, wind turbines, and grid-scale battery storage. Manufacturing and deploying these renewable energy resources requires dozens of natural resources, including copper, lithium, nickel, tellurium, cobalt, indium, tin, chromium, and many, many others. Where do these resources come from? Is there enough? Will they be available on the timescale we need? What are the economic constraints on their availability? What are the environmental permitting constraints on the timeframe for production and delivery to market? What are the political constraints on their availability? Professor Simon will answer these questions and more.
Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences
University of Michigan
Adam C. Simon is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan and the Faculty Director for the Michigan Research & Discovery Scholars (MRADS) Living Learning Community. He earned degrees in geology and geochemistry from the University of Maryland and Stony Brook University and was a postdoctoral fellow at The Johns Hopkins University. His scholarly work focuses on the global flow of energy and mineral resources with an emphasis on the geologic availability of energy critical metals. Adam has co-authored two textbooks Mineral Resources, Economics and the Environment, and Earth Materials: Components of a Diverse Planet, and published seventy papers in the field of energy and mineral resources. Adam has done research and given invited lectures on all seven continents including a TEDX talk in 2022. He has earned numerous awards for undergraduate teaching including the University of Michigan Provost's Teaching Innovation Prize.