Paulikas, and 4 co-authors, reported in 2020 that the urgent transition away from fossil fuels is driving a very large, transitional demand for base metals. It is critical that we source these large amounts of base metals with the lowest environmental, social, and economic impacts possible. In this paper, the authors focused on four specific base metals required for the electrification of the global passenger fleet and compared the impacts of two sources of these metals: conventional ores on land and polymetallic nodules on the seabed in the CCZ. While the focus of this paper was EV batteries, the availability of these metals is important for a plethora of other uses, including other renewable technologies, all of which face significant benefits if metals may be
supplied from less-impactful sources.
By comparing the cradle-to-gate impacts of producing metals from these two different sources in depth, this paper focused on the question: How does conventional and green mining of land-based deposits compare to proposed projects to collect seafloor nodules as a source of supply for the anticipated expansion in metal demand? We examined all major categories of impacts: climate change (including global warming potential and carbon sequestration), nonliving resources, biodiversity, social, and economic impacts.
The authors' analysis suggests that producing metals from seafloor polymetallic nodules could have significant advantages over land ores across nearly every impact category, with an important caveat: further environmental-impact-assessment work is required to baseline and evaluate the impact of nodule collection on seabed wildlife and ecosystem function.
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