MTEN3014: Green Gold Rush

Hundreds of billions of dollars are currently being invested within a day’s drive of Cincinnati to develop domestic manufacturing capabilities for the ‘clean energy’ future. Electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels, microchips, and carbon capture devices are all dependent on minerals that are of limited availability worldwide. In this honors seminar, we will explore the geopolitical, national security, economic security, and climate implications of the transition from a fuel-based to a materials-based energy economy. We will trace the supply chains of a few regionally important critical materials from where they are mined through their role in key technologies for the clean energy transition. Students will gain knowledge of how and where critical materials are processed, the role of specific elements in conferring desirable material properties, and the environmental implications of expanded mining and secondary processing operations in developing countries. Students will explore the strengths and limitations of emerging alternative materials, perform an assessment of the ubiquity of interactions with critical materials in their daily lives, and learn to design for recyclability and conservation of products containing critical materials.

We are in the early stages of a rapid transition from a fuel-based energy system to a materials-based system. The transition is driven by a combination of viability of new technologies and government initiatives to address the effects of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions on climate change. The United States government plans to reduce its CO2 emissions by 65% before 2030. Automobile manufacturers worldwide expect to be selling primarily electric vehicles by 2035. However, electric vehicles are expected to increase electricity demands by around 25% and our shift to data center computing consumes a growing fraction of our electricity production, probably around 5-10%. Creating renewable energy facilities requires new construction. Thus, our society is faced with a conundrum: Many materials upon which we are dependent for addressing climate change are themselves substantial contributors to CO2 emissions. The electrification and decarbonization of heavy industry is dependent on a rapid societal shift from a fuel-based system to a materials-based system. This shift will require intensive mining of minerals for which the world’s supply is limited, as well as construction of new buildings, manufacturing capabilities, and infrastructure with steel and concrete.

Increasing our students’ understanding of the complex, interconnected global ramifications of this energy landscape transition will position them better as future leaders of innovative solutions to these issues. Furthermore, now is the right time for this course to be offered. Last year, Intel made the largest private sector investment in Ohio’s history for a computer chip fab near Columbus; earlier this year, Semcorp made the largest foreign direct investment in Ohio history for an electric vehicle battery component manufacturing facility in Sidney; Cleveland-Cliffs recently invested $700 million to create a lower-CO2 emissions direct reduced iron plant in Toledo; Ford and GM have both made their largest investments in their history into new facilities for producing electric vehicle batteries, with facilities in Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Michigan, and Ohio; and Ohio is home to more wind turbine parts manufacturers than any other state. In the past two years, there have been at least twenty-seven announcements of anticipated industry investments totaling at least $255 billion dollars for new US-based manufacturing facilities solely in the areas of electric vehicle (EV) battery and semiconductor device fabrication. Twenty of these twenty-seven planned facilities are within a day’s drive of Cincinnati. The geographic centroid for these investments lies just to the southwest of Cincinnati. The median operational date for these manufacturing sites is in 2025, and in total it is expected that these new manufacturing activities will create over 50,000 jobs. The students who take this course will enter the workforce when this hiring wave crests. They will be prepared to lead because they will have a greater appreciation of the intricate dance between global supply chains, critical materials, materials processing, and the greatest challenge of their generation – reducing CO2 emissions while continuing to improve quality of life worldwide.

• New for Fall 2023