Tag: renewable energy

Making the Energy Transition Cleaner: Critical Minerals and Circularity Challenges

We live in an age of mass consumption, fuelled by increasing production. We now have an ever-growing ‘anthroposphere’ – a term that encompasses everything that humans have created from raw materials, and how they subsequently interact with the planet.  Such demand obviously puts significant strain on natural resources, but nowhere is this issue more profound than with the critical minerals which underpin…

Biomass – to burn or not to burn, that is the question…

Biomass energy (energy generated from organic material such as plants, wood, and waste) has long been a contentious issue amongst environmentalists, scientists, and governments. Interested parties claim it is a “carbon neutral, renewable” energy source, because the trees being burnt absorb carbon during their lifetime and during regrowth. However, this has been debunked on numerous occasions. Environmental campaigners continue to fight for biomass to be downgraded and for subsidies to be stopped.