The energy transition
world will need to increase by nearly 2000% according to the research (Mills, 2025). For example, an abundant mineral such as copper, which is crucial in anything electrical, the world will need to double its copper production, with the current copper industry valued at $270 billion (Statista, 2024c). More copper mines would be needed to open, taking between 10-20 years, as huge amounts of investment, capital and infrastructure become tied down to these new projects, which costs billions of dollars (Manalo, 2024). Therefore, it is not a very attractive investment. But if governments and firms do not properly invest in copper mining, the price of copper will rise drastically due to the scarce supply, leading to a potential tenfold increase in the price of copper (Mills, 2025). Renewable energy products such as electric vehicles (EVs), where on average a battery weighs about 450kg, and roughly 40% of this weight is made up of critical materials (‘The Complete EV Battery Guide | EVBox’) including copper, cobalt and lithium, could be up to $15,000 more expensive (Mills, 2025). Because of such a hike in price, there will be less demand for these EVs and fewer will be manufactured. This highlights a potential problem with renewable energy products which rely on these critical minerals, as businesses will have to invest billions into just farming materials. And, if businesses do not make that investment, renewable products will be very expensive for the consumer to buy and therefore won’t be very popular. Could reaching net-zero by 2050 be cheaper than one might think? Reaching net-zero by 2050 will be a financially difficult task, and according to the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, it will be ‘impossible for the UK’ (Francis, 2025). Badenoch controversially and boldly asserted that net-zero cannot be achieved by 2050 ‘without a serious drop in our living standards or by bankrupting us’. This claim is an overstatement, as nearly all independent research from outlets including the CCC and IEA suggest net-zero will not bankrupt the UK, especially if policies are well- designed (Sissons, 2025). Many costs are investment-based and are not direct losses, as over-time savings on fossil fuels will outweigh the initial outlay, despite the research indicating that the next five years of the energy transition will be very investment-heavy (Sissons, 2025). Policies, such as carbon taxing or bans, can raise short-term costs for the lower-income households, making them more vulnerable as they spend a high proportion of their disposable income on energy and essentials (Callaghan, 2019). This is what Badenoch meant by net-zero causing a ‘serious drop in our living standards’. However, although it would be initially painful, it would only be in the short-term, and governments should be motivated by the prospect of cleaner air, healthier cities, and jobs in clean tech, which would boost quality of life in the long-term. Furthermore, we can state that it will cost trillions of dollars to decarbonize the planet (Wang, 2024). However, when really analysing the data, this daunting figure may not actually prove to be as expensive as assumed. The Economist , relying on a variety of economists, consultants and other researchers, has looked at estimates of the global cost of an ‘energy transition’ to a zero-emissions world, where the cost of reaching net-zero by 2050 varies from around $3 trillion a year to $12 trillion a year, which is a significant range (Wang, 2024). These models that major firms use to predict the cost of reaching this goal by 2050 rely on a number of assumptions and underestimate a few key factors. Firstly, there are assumptions that the population and economy will grow implausibly rapidly, spurring ‘pell-mell’ energy consumption, when in fact population and economic growth is often much slower than predicted. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes projections which have tended to overestimate economic growth in both rich and poor worlds (Burgess, 2024). Therefore, the IEA’s estimation of 2.7% annual average annual global growth until 2050 may prove optimistic (IEA,
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