News
Mining Critical to Renewable Energy Tied to Hundreds of Alleged Human Rights Abuses
A report released Wednesday faults the U.S. and other nations for providing incentives for the mining of rare metals like lithium and cobalt without enacting adequate labor and environmental safeguards.
By Katie Surma
Over the past dozen years, hundreds of alleged human rights abuses have been committed by over 90 corporations mining minerals critical to the production of clean energy, a U.K.-based human rights organization said in a report released on Wednesday.
Related Knowledge Center: ENERGY BASICS: renewables
State of Play
Renewable energy sources — once the fuel of the future, then practical in specific, narrow applications — are increasingly economic mainstream sources of power generation. Hydropower was long the mainstay of U.S. renewable electricity generation, although wind power surpassed hydro for the first time in 2019, and solar continues its rapid growth. The continued growth of wind and solar, with their fluctuations, is tied in part to improvements in storage technology: batteries.