Highlights

• Peer-reviewed analysis warns clean energy transition faces severe challenges from:
  • Water scarcity
  • Toxic waste
  • Critical mineral extraction
• Global mineral demand expected to increase sevenfold by 2040
• Significant environmental and ethical concerns in extraction processes
• Study calls for urgent improvements in:
  • Mine water management
  • Mineral waste recycling
  • Ethical sourcing of critical minerals

A sweeping peer-reviewed analysis (opens in a new tab) led by Dr. Evan K. Paleologos (opens in a new tab) (Abu Dhabi University) and an international team of geotechnical engineers (Environmental Geotechnics, Vol. 12, Issue 2, 2025) delivers a blunt verdict: the clean energy transition is on a collision course with water scarcity, toxic waste, and geopolitical bottlenecks—especially when it comes to rare earth elements (REEs) and copper.

The study confronts the intensifying global demand for these critical minerals—forecasted to increase up to sevenfold by 2040—with a comprehensive examination of environmental degradation, waste mismanagement, and systemic recycling failures. Of particular concern are the radioactive risks associated with tailings from rare earth extraction and the acidic mine drainage stemming from copper sulfide operations, both of which pose severe, long-term ecological hazards.

While the paper rigorously documents water use crises, tailings disasters, and underutilized recycling technologies, it also critiques the moral blindness of exporting e-waste to low-income nations where women and children dismantle electronics in unsafe conditions. Yet, despite its technical depth, the study exhibits a subtle normative bias: it leans heavily on UN Sustainable Development Goals as guiding benchmarks while underemphasizing economic realities such as the massive CAPEX and geopolitical inertia required to overhaul rare earth supply chains or commercialize tailings recovery at scale.

The authors call for smarter mine water management, expanded use of mineral waste in construction, and accelerated recovery from consumer products—sensible ideas that, while urgent, require political will and industrial cooperation largely absent from today’s fractured resource landscape.

The questions this report leaves hanging are as politically thorny as they are existential: Can resource-poor nations meet net-zero targets without becoming ecologically bankrupt or geopolitically dependent? Will Western democracies accept the environmental toll of localized mining and processing—or continue outsourcing the dirty work to authoritarian regimes?

Rare Earth Exchanges (REEx) questions whether global institutions can enforce ethical and sustainable mineral sourcing without undermining the pace of decarbonization. As mineral demand surges and environmental thresholds tighten, governments, blocs, and corporations alike must grapple with a hard truth: the clean energy transition is not simply a technological challenge—it is a test of global governance, moral consistency, and long-term economic vision.