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Wind turbines, devices that can convert energy from the wind into electricity, do not burn fuel during operation and could thus reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Despite their possible environmental advantages, building these devices depends heavily on the mines and factories supplying the metals they are made of.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland recently examined how different renewable energy expansion plans could affect the European Union's mineral requirements. Their findings, published in Nature Energy, suggest that even if the EU builds fewer solar panels and wind turbines on land than planned, prioritizing the expansion of wind capacity at sea could still keep rare earth requirements almost as high as they would be under full expansion of both offshore and onshore technologies.

The team modeled three possible paths for the expansion of renewable energy technologies in the EU's 27 member states through 2050. The first path assumed that the wind and solar capacity goals used in the study were met in full.

Another assumed that constraints slowed expansion across solar, onshore wind and offshore wind. The third prioritized offshore wind turbines while allowing slower growth of solar panels and onshore wind turbines.

Rather than predicting which of these scenarios is more likely to occur, the researchers set out to compare their possible outcomes. To do this, they translated each technology's additional generating capacity above 2023 levels into material requirements, using estimates of the amount of each material needed per unit of capacity.

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