Summary

Of
Material World
A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future

by
Ed Conway
 To the Reader

The following is a summary of the book: Material World, A

Substantial Story of Our Past and Future, written by Ed
Conway. It is important to note that this summary is not
intended to replace reading the book itself, but to provide a
broad understanding of the book's content, key themes and
ideas.
 Introduction

The author recounts their experience of visiting the Cortez

mine in Utah, where gold is extracted. They discovered that
gold flows distort Britain's trade statistics and the country's
economy, with gold briefly overtaking cars and pharmaceuticals
as the country's biggest export. This was due to the fact that
much of the world's physical gold passes through London on its
way somewhere else. The author then traveled to the mine to
chart the journey of gold from the ground to the refinery and
then, in the form of bars of bullion, around the world.

The process of mining at the Cortez mine is comparatively

simple, echoes techniques used by gold miners back in the
nineteenth century. The rocks are blasted out of the earth,
crushed, ground into a fine dust, and eventually mixed with a
cyanide solution to separate out the gold itself. This is both
awe-inspiring and disturbing, as it involves reducing vast
quantities of rock into granules and chemically processing what
remains.
The author also observes the scale of the process, noting that
for a standard gold bar (400 troy ounces) they would have to
dig about 5,000 tonnes of earth, which is nearly the same
weight as ten fully laden Airbus A380 super-jumbos, the world's
largest passenger planes. Gold is mined not by burrowing in the
earth but by tearing down entire mountains, a process that has
been criticized by the US Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA).

The author recounts his experience of witnessing a blast at a

gold mine in Nevada, where he was shocked to learn that the
gold he had just bought was extracted from the ground using
the same techniques. He questioned why he hadn't checked
the source of the gold and wondered what sacrifices were
made for it. Gold, while having value in electronics and
chemistry, accounts for less than a tenth of demand today. Its
primary uses are in jewellery, decoration, and as an asset for
those concerned about ecological disaster.

The author then returns to the question of what it takes to

extract materials we depend on and where they come from. He
suspects that steel would be one of the materials we depend
on, as most buildings, cars, and machines are made from this
alloy of iron, carbon, and other crucial elements. Copper is
essential for electrical networks and as we still rely on fossil
fuels for energy, it could also qualify as essential materials.

However, the author questions how to quantify our

dependence on these materials and whether their extraction
involved the same species of destruction. Economics often has
few definitive answers to these questions, but the reality is that
the physical world continues to underpin everything else. For
instance, four out of every five dollars generated in the US can
be traced back to the services sector, with an ever-vanishing
fraction attributed to energy, mining, and manufacturing.

The author believes that the world wouldn't end if Twitter or

Instagram suddenly ceased to exist; if we suddenly ran out of
steel or natural gas, that would be a different story. However,
the author argues that knowing the price of something is not
the same thing as importance.

This book explores the importance of materials and their role in

our lives. It begins with a simple grain of sand, which contains
silicon, which is essential for construction, as well as the
foundation of modern cities. The book then delves into the
complex world of materials, such as concrete, asphalt, and
computer chips. Glass, a material that is neither liquid nor solid,
is made from melted sand and mixed with lithium and boron.

Boronilicate glass, a stable, clear, and robust material, is used in

test tubes, lab beakers, and medical vials. It is also used in
medicine and vaccines. However, supply chain crises have
occurred in the wake of the COVID pandemic, leading to
shortages in various sectors. For example, face masks, swabs,
diagnostic reagents, cement, steel, timber, toilet paper,
industrial gases, chemicals, meats, mustards, eggs, and dairy.

The shortfall of silicon chips led to car manufacturers shutting

down tools and shuttering their plants, while computer and
smartphone manufacturers were unable to fulfill orders. The
UK government was surprised when it ran short of carbon
dioxide in late 2021, discovering that without CO2, the food
industry could not make sparkling drinks fizzy, preserve and
store foods, and stun pigs and chickens before slaughter. This
was due to the closure of two fertiliser plants in Cheshire and
Teesside, which were primarily used to produce ammonia.
In conclusion, the book highlights the importance of
understanding the complex world of materials and their role in
our lives.

Leonard Read's 1958 essay, 'I, Pencil', highlights the complexity

of everyday products and the fact that no single person on
Earth knows how to make them. The pencil is made from
cedars, steel, graphite, clay, animal fat, sulphuric acid, lacquer,
resins, brass, and rapeseed oil, with chemicals along the way.
Millions of people have a hand in creating this pencil, with
millions of people working on each ingredient.

The essay highlights the importance of understanding the

supply chain of everyday products and the fact that no single
human being could direct these processes. This is particularly
relevant in the 21st-century supply chains, where networks of
people and expertise collaborate to turn seemingly inert
substances into wonders.

The supply chain for silicon chips is particularly remarkable, as

no single person can fully explain the processes involved in
creating ultra-pure silicon wafers. The journey of a grain of
silicon from a quarry to a smartphone involves heating, cooling,
and transforming it into a tiny silicon chip. This extraordinary
journey is a testament to the power of networks of people and
expertise in transforming seemingly inert substances into
wonders.

The author explores the ethereal world, where we live and

trade ideas, services, and management. They witness the
destruction of a sacred mountain for a product they don't need,
and realize that the Material World is what underlies our
everyday lives. Companies like CATL, Wacker, Codelco,
Shagang, TSMC, and ASML depend on the Material World to
make their products and make their ideas tangible.

The author questions the myth that humans are weaning

ourselves off physical materials, as evidenced by data in the US
and UK showing that we are consuming fewer resources for
each dollar or pound of income generated. However, the
author argues that material consumption is rising at a
breakneck rate, with mining for copper, oil, iron, cobalt,
manganese, and lithium from the ground. This activity is getting
more important, not less, especially in the context of climate
change.
The author argues that pursuing environmental goals will
require considerably more materials to build electric cars, wind
turbines, and solar panels needed to replace fossil fuels. In the
coming decades, we are likely to extract more metals from the
earth's surface than ever before, as we continue to dig and
extract resources from the Material World. This highlights the
importance of considering the material world when analyzing
our economic output and resource consumption.

In 2019, we extracted more materials from the earth's surface

than the sum total of everything we extracted from the dawn
of humanity all the way through to 1950. This is not a one-off
event, as we have extracted more resources than humankind
did in the vast majority of its history. Our appetite for raw
materials continues to grow, up by 2.8% in 2019, with not a
single category of mineral extraction falling.

The broader appetite for minerals is not diminishing, as oil and

other fossil fuels have only represented a fraction of the total
mass of resources we're extracting from the earth. For every
tonne of fossil fuels, we exploit 6 tonnes of other materials,
mostly sand and stone, but also metals, salts, and chemicals.
Even as we pare back our consumption of fossil fuels, we have
redoubled our consumption of everything else.
The lack of data on how much stuff we are pulling out from the
ground is partly due to the lack of understanding of how much
stuff we are pulling out from the ground. The urge to obtain
minerals has always been among the strongest forces driving
humanity, and as it increasingly happens out of sight and
doesn't show up in conventional economic data, we are getting
better at convincing ourselves it's not happening.

The book explores the Material World through six essential

materials: sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. While the
popular view suggests that human success is primarily due to
history, happenstance, and institutions, the book argues that
our destiny is intertwined with the earth's resources. Our
reliance on physical tools and materials has exploded, with the
Stone Age, Iron Age, Iron Age, and the age of copper, salt, oil,
and lithium being the most essential. These materials are the
essential ingredients of our environment, and their loss would
lead to chaos. The book explores how the pursuit of these
materials has shaped geopolitical history and its future, and the
uncomfortable consequences for our environment.
PART ONE
Sand
 1
Homo Faber

A massive meteor exploded in the Great Sand Sea desert

around 29 million years ago, near the modern-day border
between Egypt and Libya. The explosion created a fireball and a
sound that rattled the sabre-toothed cats and apes. The African
meteor has a special significance as it provides the most
compelling explanation for a mystery story that has puzzled
archaeologists and geologists for a century. The sarcophagus of
Tutankhamen discovered a necklace depicting the sun god Ra,
encrusted with precious gems and metals. At its center was a
beetle carved out of a translucent, canary-yellow stone. This
yellow material was not seen before, but only when explorers
ventured deep into the desert. Gerhard Rohlfs, a German
explorer, encountered an impassable barrier in the desert, and
wrote a message in a bottle to survive the return journey.

Rohlfs, a German explorer, barely survived his return journey

across the world's driest region, the Great Sand Sea. He and his
crew found long, parallel dunes called seif dunes, which are
constantly on the move, devouring anything that stands in their
way. Early explorers described these formations as living
creatures, with Ralph Bagnold describing them as growing
independently and even breeding.

Bagnold's work on understanding sand dunes has been

influential, with NASA using his books to study Mars's Bagnold
Dunes. In the early 1930s, Bagnold and his colleagues were the
first people to traverse the desert, finishing the journey Rohlfs
had failed to complete half a century earlier. They navigated
the seifs in motor vehicles, letting the air out of their tires to
drive and surf the loose sand of the dunes.

In December 1932, Pat Clayton discovered that the desert was

covered in great sheets of yellow glass. This glass was created
29 million years ago by a falling star, turning the sand into a
kind of glass known as Libyan desert glass. Other forms of glass
in nature include obsidian, tektites, and fulgurites. However,
the glass found in the desert was almost unbelievably pure,
with silica being the primary ingredient. The silica content of
Libyan desert glass is 98%, making it the purest naturally
occurring glass discovered anywhere and purer than anything
humankind could create.
Sand is a fascinating material, with silicon being the most
common element in the earth's crust. It is abundant and
valuable, making it a critical raw material for the European
Union. However, there are many different types of sand, each
with unique characteristics. Most sands are primarily silica, but
some are also composed of ground-down remains of seashells
and corals. The Udden-Wentworth scale dictates that any solid,
loose grain of a given size is a type of sand.

Silicon is a chemical enigma, metallic yet not quite metal,

conductive but only on its own terms. It can be made into a
polymer or plastic. Sand can be soft to touch but mightily hard,
making it the basis of the physical foundations of the twenty-
first-century world. It is the basis of the oldest and newest
products humankind has learned to manufacture.

Sand has become the most ancient and modern substance of

all, marking the beginning of the era of Homo faber. Today, we
routinely turn silicon into products worth their weight in gold,
forging wondrous products from golden sand. These skills have
become highly prized, and when trade wars have erupted, sand
has often been at the very center of them. China's ability to
manufacture its own silicon chips to the same extraordinary
levels of intricacy as those being made in Taiwan and South
Korea is a frequent concern in Washington.

While China may dominate global steel, construction, battery,

smartphone manufacturing, and even social media, a world-
beating semiconductor industry is not yet.

The technology war over silicon chips has been fought for
centuries, between different superpowers across many fronts
and continents. Sand has always been at the heart of cutting-
edge technology, long before the era of silicon chips.
Governments vied with each other to control the trade in glass,
which endowed those using it with bionic powers. Glass lenses
enabled us to peer into space, help early astronomers like
Galileo discover that the earth orbited the sun, boost the
economic might of countries by enabling people to work more,
and enable scientists such as Robert Hooke and Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek to create the world's earliest microscopes. Glass
tools also allowed us to learn about the existence of bacteria
and cell reproduction.
The advent of glass mirrors allowed Renaissance artists to see
the world from a different perspective, and many of the works
of the Old Masters could only have been produced with the
help of optical aids, including lenses and curved mirrors. It is
possible that the Renaissance happened in the very locations
where affordable and effective mirrors were suddenly available,
such as northern Italy or Holland.

Glass was a foundational innovation, a general purpose

technology like the wheel, the steam engine, or the silicon chip.
It was important not just for what it was but for what it enabled
us to do – to make further leaps of imagination and feats of
invention. Glass continues to play that role even today, as the
internet is mostly a mesh of information transmitted through
glass wires.

Glass, the world's first manufactured product, is believed to

have originated from Phoenician sailors who landed on a beach
in Israel. They were importing blocks of natron, an early form of
soap rich in sodium. When they lit a fire on the beach, they
found transparent streams flowing forth of a liquid, which is
said to be the origin of glass. Glassmaking has been discovered
and rediscovered by numerous generations, with some
attributions to the Syrians, Chinese, Egyptians, or between the
second and third millennia BC. The challenge in making glass is
the high melting temperature of silica, the main ingredient of
sand. However, adding a flux to the mix can reduce silica's
melting temperature and sop up impurities in the glass,
improving the final product. The Phoenicians found the perfect
sand for glassmaking, with a ratio of silica to lime just right.

Glass, one of the oldest human-made substances, is a complex

structure that defies most molecular laws. It is not a material
but a state, and scientists still struggle to comprehend why it
behaves the way it does. Glass is more of an adjective than a
noun, and our understanding of its behavior when we
experiment with it remains surprisingly shallow.

The Venetian glass industry relies on grains of sand, which are

not commonplace today. The best sands for glass production
come from the River Ticino bed, which is about 98% silica. Silica
sands, which are sands with over 95% silica, have various uses,
including filtering water, making foundry moulds, and braking
modern trains. Silica sands are also used in modern trains'
braking systems.
For the clearest, finest glass, the purest silica sands, sometimes
called silver sands, are needed. The world's most famous silver
sands are those at Fontainebleau, a forest south of Paris. Silver
sands can be found in Mol, Maastricht, Lippe, Canada, the US,
Brazil, and other corners of the world.

In summary, the structure of glass is complex and mysterious,

with the perfect grain of sand being the key to its production.

Lochaline, a unique and rare sand found in Scotland, was

discovered about a century ago. The Great Glen Fault, a
massive glacial valley that once split Scotland, is known for its
geological scar. Geologists have compared the rocks from one
side of the fault with those from the other, which was one of
the precursors to the discovery of plate tectonics. The idea of
great continental crusts grinding up against each other, forcing
up mountains, rifts, creating volcanoes and earthquakes, and
pouring forth magma to become fresh rock, is actually
surprisingly novel.

The first insects and reptiles would not evolve until the
beginning of December, about the same time as the Great Glen
Fault was splitting Scotland apart. The age of the dinosaurs
would begin on 13 December and end on 26 December, while
the very first human-like animals would evolve at 5.18pm on 31
December. Homo sapiens would arrive a few hundred thousand
years ago, around a quarter to midnight on New Year's Eve.

Lochaline sand is composed of 99 per cent silica with barely a

smidge of iron oxide, making it unlike any you have come
across before. It is so fine and floury that it falls through your
fingers a little like caster sugar. Lochaline sand is heavy and not
especially valuable compared to many other things we pull out
of the ground, so quarries are usually located near where the
material is needed.

To get into the mine, one must enter through one of the loch-
side adits, which mark the beginning of subterranea. Before
entering, the author undergoes a ceremony that precedes most
such visits, including donning boots, highvisibility jackets, safety
briefings, and filling forms.

Chapter review:
1. When did the meteor explosion occur in the Great Sand Sea
desert?
- The meteor explosion occurred around 29 million years ago.

2. What did the necklace discovered in Tutankhamen's

sarcophagus depict?
- The necklace depicted the sun god Ra, with a beetle carved
out of a translucent, canary-yellow stone at its center.

3. What type of glass was found in the Great Sand Sea desert?
- The glass found in the desert is known as Libyan desert glass,
created 29 million years ago by a falling star.

4. What is the primary ingredient of Libyan desert glass?

- The primary ingredient of Libyan desert glass is silica, with a
content of 98%.

5. What is the significance of sand in the modern world?

- Sand is a critical raw material, particularly for the
manufacturing of silicon chips, which are used in various
technologies.

Key takeaways:

1. The Great Sand Sea desert holds the mystery of a meteor

explosion that occurred around 29 million years ago, creating
Libyan desert glass.
2. Sand is a valuable resource and plays a crucial role in the
manufacturing of silicon chips, which are integral to modern
technology.
3. Glass has been a transformative invention throughout
history, enabling scientific discoveries and artistic
developments.
4. The structure and behavior of glass remain complex and not
fully understood by scientists.

Inspirational quotes:
1. "Sand has become the most ancient and modern substance
of all, marking the beginning of the era of Homo faber." -
Unknown
2. "Glass, the world's first manufactured product, is believed to
have originated from Phoenician sailors who landed on a beach
in Israel." - Unknown
3. "Glass was a foundational innovation, a general purpose
technology like the wheel, the steam engine, or the silicon
chip." - Unknown
4. "The perfect grain of sand is the key to producing the
clearest, finest glass." - Unknown
5. "The age of the dinosaurs would begin on 13 December and
end on 26 December, while the very first human-like animals
would evolve at 5.18pm on 31 December." - Unknown
 2
Built upon Sand

The parable of the two builders – one who built upon rock and
the other who built upon sand – is hard to shake. While
building on sand is not inherently wrong, it is important to
negotiate with the appropriate foundations and techniques to
turn loose or soggy sand into something more solid. The world's
tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, is built on shifting
desert sands, which make it more stable. The Palm Jumeirah, a
complex of human-made islands made from millions of tonnes
of sand dredged up from the seafloor of the Persian Gulf, is
another example of land reclamation.

As the world faces climate change and rising sea levels, the race
to procure the right kind of sand to spray and compact into
barriers and flood defenses will accelerate. The Maldives is
using sand and rock to build enormous barriers around its
capital Malé, while Singapore is the world's leading sand
importer. As Singapore grows, neighboring countries are
shrinking, and Indonesia has warned that dredging and sand
mining had become so extensive that it had lost a number of its
islands entirely.

However, the scale of this sand statecraft remains murky, as

Singapore claims to have imported around 600 million tonnes
of sand from elsewhere between 2000 and 2020, but the
countries exporting their sand to Singapore only sent 280
million tonnes. This leaves a missing 320 million tonnes for
which no one can account.

Sand is often treated as a common and infinite material, but it

is not. Some sands are more useful than others, and there are
few regulations or controls for monitoring the amount of sand
we dredge and remove from the earth's surface each year.
Geologists estimate that the amount of sand, soil, and rock we
humans mine and quarry each year is 24 times greater than the
amount of sediment moved each year by Earth's natural erosive
processes. Humans are a considerably bigger geological force
than nature itself, and by 2020, the total weight of human-
made products was greater than the total weight of every
natural living thing on the planet.
The sum total amount of material we have dug out of the
ground in the past century is 6.7 teratonnes (6.7 million
tonnes), which is a statistical backbone for the concept of the
Anthropocene. Most sand is carried in grains down through
rivers to the sea, playing an important role in local ecosystems.
If you have to mine sand, look for "fossil deposits": sands that
were once part of an active river or coastal system but now lie
inert.

In developed nations, sand removal and land reclamation are

heavily regulated, but there is strong evidence that sand is
being mined from active systems. For example, long stretches
of coastline in Morocco and Western Sahara have been
removed to provide sand, which is shipped to Europe and the
Canary Islands for construction and replenishing tourist
beaches. Studies suggest that far more sand is being removed
than official statistics suggest.

China's authorities have been battling unofficial sand miners for

decades, with the Yangtze River being heavily mined,
threatening its banks and ecosystem. In 2021, a ban on illegal
mining began, leading to the arrest of a gang of 11 people who
had mined and sold 20,000 tonnes in two months. In India,
sand mafias have become a network of corruption, with
murders, kidnappings, and arrests in pursuit of sand.

Sand is a strategic mineral, essential for building environments,

economic growth, and helping millions out of poverty and
destitution. It is also used to create concrete, a mixture of sand,
aggregate, and cement, which can improve the lives of low-
income families in developing countries. Concrete has been
shown to reduce intestinal parasites, which can damage
children's health and prevent them from attending school. In
Mexico, providing cement to pave over dirt floors led to a 78%
decrease in parasitic infections, half a reduction in diarrhea and
anemia, and improved school performance. Replacing dirt
tracks with paved roads has also shown to increase wages for
those working near them and increase the proportion of
children enrolled in school.

Concrete has made a significant impact on the built world,

accounting for about 80% of all materials used in construction.
It is a material that has made a significant difference in the built
world, as it can be poured into a mould and done in hours with
a fraction of the workforce. Concrete is often overlooked in
histories of technology due to its unfashionability, but its curing
process is still fascinating. The concrete is made from
reconstituted grains of sand and stone, glued into a new stony
formation with the help of lime. Concrete blocks in
Manchester, New York, and London are likely made from gravel
and rocks from the Peak District, Jamaica Bay in Long Island,
and Dogger Bank in the North Sea. Concrete blocks in London
may have been made from the sands from this mysterious
drowned world, Doggerland, which was a land bridge
connecting the UK and Europe during the last Ice Age. The
world of concrete often sits alongside the mystical and
wonderful, as seemingly dead rocks are in fact alive and the
ancient is moulded into something resembling the future. The
insatiable appetite for concrete and the sands and stones with
which it is made contributes to our understanding of this
prehistoric world.

Concrete has been used in buildings for thousands of years,

with evidence of its use in Neolithic ruins in Turkey dating back
over 10,000 years. Bedouins in Syria and northern Jordan
created concrete-like structures around 6500 BC, and the
Romans used a form of concrete in many of their buildings,
including the foundations of the Colosseum in Rome and the
Pantheon dome. The original recipe for concrete was lost after
the fall of the Roman Empire, but interest in it was reignited in
the fifteenth century when Vitruvius' book On Architecture was
discovered. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, inventors and industrialists raced to come up with
new concoctions that could replicate or even outdo the Roman
recipe.

The recipe for the cement we mostly use today was patented in
1824 by Joseph Aspdin, who called it Portland cement.
However, there were various vying recipes around the same
time, and it is unclear whether Aspdin won the race or
purloined his blueprint from someone else. Thomas Edison,
arguably the single most important figure in the history of
concrete, perfected the mass production of concrete. He built
the world's longest rotary kiln, which is 150 feet long, and
adopted German improvements to the recipe. This allowed
plants to churn out a thousand barrels of cement a day, more
than enough to cover the costs of fuel and rocks needed to
make it.

The ability to produce vast quantities of a given substance is

another of the recurring themes one encounters as one tours
the Material World. From concrete to copper, iron, and lithium,
our ability not only to invent the future but to mass produce
and disseminate these materials has enhanced lives and lifted
millions from poverty.
Concrete, a mixture of sand, aggregates, and cement, is
everywhere on the planet. With over 80 tonnes of concrete for
every person alive, it is more than the combined weight of
every living thing on the planet. In Tianjin, China, the city was
once known as the 'tall-building capital of the world', with 6 per
cent of all new skyscrapers completed in that year alone. The
tallest building in Tianjin, the 'Walking Stick', is one of the most
advanced steel and concrete structures on the planet.
However, construction has been halted in 2010, 2015, and
2018, and the area's economic growth rate is now among its
weakest.

China poured more concrete than the US had in its entire

existence between 2018 and 2020, pouring more than 120,000
wheelbarrows' worth of concrete in the three years between
2018 and 2020. Concrete's strength, ease of application, and
cheapness are its great attractions, but it is also its great curse.
It is everywhere, not just in essential infrastructure and
housing, tallest buildings, longest bridges, iconic buildings, and
even in factories and offices.
The great curse of concrete is that it is easy to get the recipe
right, but it is also easy to get it wrong. For example, when an
earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, a quarter of a million buildings
were destroyed and many tens of thousands died. In the US,
nearly one in ten bridges are structurally deficient, and in the
UK, nearly half of all bridges show evidence of defects. This is
partly due to the innovations from concrete's history, where it
is poured alongside bars of iron or steel.

Concrete production is one of the largest carbon emitters

globally, accounting for 7-8% of all carbon emissions. The
process involves a chemical reaction in chalk or limestone,
which burns off carbon, and the energy needed to heat the kiln.
Alternative fuels like Climafuel can help reduce carbon
emissions. Developed economies like the UK and US have
reduced cement carbon emissions by over 50%. However, the
chemical reaction in cement production, which involves heating
calcium carbonate, remains a challenge.
 3
The Longest Journey

The journey through the Material World is awe-inspiring,

especially when viewed through the dimension of time. For
example, the sand grain, a tiny speck of quartz, has gone
through six cycles of rock to sand and back again. This journey
is perhaps the second most extraordinary journey in the
Material World, as it involves two or more treks around the
planet. This journey takes us into the furthest reaches of
chemistry, physics, and nanotechnology, involving processes so
far out that they sound like science fiction.

The supply chain that turns silicon into silicon chips is

happening on a mammoth scale every day, making the modern
world go round. These chips make up the brains of our
computers and smartphones, but few realize just how
prevalent they are. Semiconductors, anomalous materials that
didn't conduct electricity or insulate its current, were
discovered to work brilliantly as a kind of switch. The first solid
state switch, or transistor, was made a couple of days before
Christmas 1947 by Walter Brattain and John Bardeen, two
physicists working under William Shockley at Bell Labs in the
US.

These leaps of innovation, from the switch itself to the

integrated circuit, represented the physical foundation of the
computing age. Sometimes innovations are the fruit of a simple
brainwave, but often it takes decades or centuries of material
advances before ideas can manifest as working contraptions.
The transistor was the material advance that birthed the
modern age, far more efficient, reliable, and smaller, with no
moving parts, save for the electrons buzzing silently through
the switches.

The latest smartphones, devices, cars, and fridges rely on small,

thin slices of silicon doped with various materials and etched
with microscopic transistors. Since the first contraption in 1947,
transistors have grown significantly, with the number of
components inside integrated circuits doubling at a constant
speed. Today's transistors are even smaller than the
wavelength of visible light, measuring in nanometres.
The most exciting features of these transistors are those that
act as the brains of our devices, which can fit around 15 million
transistors into a dot the size of a single full stop. These
transistors are even smaller than the COVID-19 virus, with each
transistor having about the same dimensions as one of the
virus's spike proteins.

Silicon Valley is oblivious to the progress of the Material World

because no silicon chips are made in the valley. The last major
semiconductor manufacturing plant shut down a decade and a
half ago, and while some firms in the valley focus on the design
of semiconductors, they are outnumbered by what is
sometimes called "soft tech": apps, platforms, and services.

The journey of the silicon atom before it is admitted into a

smartphone begins not at the assembly plant or the silicon
foundry where those tiny transistors are etched on to a silicon
wafer but with the very moment the silicon contained in that
computer chip was first removed from the ground.

In the forest south of Santiago de Compostela, a pilgrimage to

the tomb of St James the Apostle attracts over a quarter of a
million people annually. The most distinctive hill is Pico Sacro, a
pyramid jutting over fertile fields below. The hill was formed
around 350 million years ago when two supercontinents,
Laurasia and Gondwana, collided, forcing a quartz outcrop
hundreds of meters into the sky. The white quartz stone from
the hillside is the raw materials that will eventually become the
next generation of silicon chips.

The company that owns the mine is Ferroglobe, the world's

biggest silicon metal producer outside of China. This distinction
is important as most raw ingredients for the technological
revolution are mined and refined in China today. Ferroglobe
has quartz mines in the US, Canada, and South Africa, making it
one of the rare exceptions.

The quartz rocks from Serrabal are not exactly sand but large
gravel with chunks the size of a cricket ball. They are then
driven an hour or so north towards an industrial park near the
port of A Coruña, the Sabón plant. The rocks from Serrabal are
mixed with coking coal and woodchips and heated up above
1,800°C in a furnace. The now-molten silicon from the quartz
stones parts with its oxygen and sinks to the bottom of the
furnace, where it is released through a tap. For every 6 tonnes
of raw materials thrown into the melt, about a tonne of silicon
metal comes out.
Silicon production involves the process of smelting quartz rocks
into silicon, which is a brutal and energy-intensive process that
requires about 45 megawatts of electricity to power one
furnace. The resulting silicon is then smashed up into
granulated metal, which is around 98 to 99 per cent pure. This
is far from the purity needed for a silicon chip or a solar panel.

The metallurgical-grade silicon is then transported to Wacker, a

German company that produces more polysilicon than anyone
else outside of China. The main plant in Burghausen, an hour
and a half east of Munich, produces ultra-pure silicon called
polysilicon. This process involves breaking down the pure
silicon metal into its elemental pieces and re-forming them
again. The energy cost of ultra-pure silicon is more than 3,000
times that of cement and 1,000 times that of turning iron into
steel.

There are various grades of polysilicon, each named based on

the number of nines in the purity number. Solar grade
polysilicon for multicrystalline cells has up to eight nines
(99.999999 per cent pure silicon), while monocrystalline solar
grade polysilicon has up to nine nines (99.99999999 per cent).
The majority of polysilicon goes towards solar panels, with
most made in China. However, China has yet to master the
manufacture of semiconductor grade polysilicon, which can
have as many as ten nines (99.99999999 per cent purity),
where for every impure atom there are essentially 10 billion
pure silicon atoms.

Despite the effort and precision in the process, the silicon

remains not quite ready to become a silicon chip. A lone rogue
atom in an otherwise pure silicon matrix can disrupt the flow of
electrons in a transistor. The more perfect the atomic structure
in silicon, the more easily and freely electrons can flow around,
with more defects causing the semiconductor to conk out.

The Material World is a fascinating world of materials, with the

first transistor being made in 1947 using germanium, which was
ill-suited for use as a transistor due to its high melting point.
Silicon, with its high melting point, was a more attractive
material, but the first semiconductors were impure and
unsuitable. Silicon, which began its life in a quarry in Spain, has
now been blasted and reconstituted into ultra-pure polysilicon.
The polysilicon is then flown to a plant on the north-west coast
of the United States, just outside Portland, Oregon. Shin-Etsu, a
leading producer of silicon wafers, is located on the banks of
the Columbia River, which powers 14 hydroelectric dams along
the way. Turning polysilicon into wafers is an energy-hungry
process, and the engineers at Shin-Etsu use the Czochralski
technique, which involves heating polysilicon in a quartz
crucible to just under 1,500°C. A seed crystal, a pencil-sized rod
of silicon, is dipped into the melt and pulled upwards, forming a
perfect solid ingot, a boule. The atoms are arranged into a
perfect crystal, and the silicon wafer is then buffed and cleaned
with chemicals.

Silicon wafers are made by a process that involves months of

sterile rooms and meticulous testing. For the past 70 years,
silicon wafer manufacturing was an art and science, with skilled
crystal pullers becoming prized employees. However, today, no
companies have much to do with silicon production, leaving it
to Shin-Etsu or other companies from Germany, Singapore, or
Korea. The Czochralski process, which involves rotating and
lifting silicon in a crucible, is a trade secret that some
companies will go to extreme lengths to protect.

China has become the dominant player in the silicon business,

dominating solar panel production, with 90% of production
taking place in China. This has implications for the industry, as it
relies heavily on coal for power and has inhumane working
conditions. The US has imposed sanctions on Hoshine, one of
China's largest producers, for alleged intimidation and threats
to workers.

China also controls much of the global supply chain of metallic

silicon and solar polysilicon but has yet to crack the
manufacturing techniques needed to create wafers for
advanced silicon chips. High-purity quartz, which is required for
crucibles and wafers, is only available in Spruce Pine, North
Carolina, operated by a secretive Belgian business called
Sibelco. Sibelco maintains privacy by enclosing its facilities in
25-foot-high fences, barbed wire, security cameras, and
frequent patrols.

Chapter review:

Q: What is the journey of silicon from the ground to becoming a

silicon chip?
A: The journey starts with extracting quartz rocks from a mine,
which are then heated in a furnace to produce silicon metal.
The silicon metal is then processed further to produce ultra-
pure polysilicon. The polysilicon is flown to a plant where it is
turned into silicon wafers, which are then meticulously tested
and cleaned before becoming a silicon chip.

Q: What was the significance of the discovery of

semiconductors?
A: Semiconductors, specifically the transistor, were the
foundation of the computing age. They revolutionized the
world by providing more efficient and reliable components for
electronics, leading to the development of modern devices.

Q: What is the role of silicon chips in our modern world?

A: Silicon chips, made from silicon transistors, are crucial
components in our computers, smartphones, and many other
electronic devices. They are responsible for processing and
storing data, making them essential for the functioning of the
modern world.

Q: What are the challenges in the production of silicon chips?

A: The production of silicon chips requires a complex and
energy-intensive process, from smelting quartz rocks to
producing ultra-pure polysilicon. Even a single impurity atom
can disrupt the functionality of a silicon chip, making the
production process meticulous and precise.

Q: Who dominates the global silicon business?

A: China currently dominates the silicon business, with the
majority of solar panel production and metallic silicon supply
chain taking place in the country. However, China has yet to
master the manufacturing techniques required for advanced
silicon chips.

Key Takeaways:

1. The journey of silicon from the ground to becoming a silicon

chip involves several steps, including smelting quartz rocks,
producing ultra-pure polysilicon, and turning it into silicon
wafers.
2. Semiconductors, particularly the transistor, were a
groundbreaking discovery that paved the way for the
computing age.
3. Silicon chips are vital components in our modern world,
powering computers, smartphones, and other electronic
devices.
4. The production of silicon chips is a complex and energy-
intensive process that requires precision and attention to
detail.
5. China currently dominates the silicon business, but struggles
with manufacturing advanced silicon chips.

Inspirational Quotes:

1. "The journey through the Material World is awe-inspiring,

especially when viewed through the dimension of time." -
Unknown
2. "Sometimes innovations are the fruit of a simple brainwave,
but often it takes decades or centuries of material advances
before ideas can manifest as working contraptions." - Unknown
3. "The transistor was the material advance that birthed the
modern age, far more efficient, reliable, and smaller, with no
moving parts, save for the electrons buzzing silently through
the switches." - Unknown
4. "The Material World is a fascinating world of materials, with
each step in the production process contributing to the
development of modern technologies." - Unknown
5. "Despite the challenges and complexities, the journey of
silicon from the ground to becoming a silicon chip showcases
the incredible potential of human innovation and industry." -
Unknown
PART TWO
Salt
 4
Salt Routes

Steve Sherlock, an archaeologist, has been exploring the area

for over four decades, focusing on the discovery of ancient sites
and discoveries. One of his most intriguing sites in British
archaeology is Street House, which was first discovered in 2006
when he and his team discovered an Anglo-Saxon graveyard
with a row of bodies encircling the remains of a young woman
known as the 'Anglo-Saxon Princess'. The treasures were worth
over a hundred thousand pounds, and the deeper Steve dug,
the more remarkable the discoveries became.

Salt is essential to our history and present because it is the

biological imperative for our body to function. Each year, the
human body needs several kilograms of table salt, sodium
chloride, to keep on functioning. Salt helps our machinery of
nerves, muscles, and tendons operate, allowing electrical
currents to flow. It was also the primary method of preserving
food, with antiseptic qualities that kill bacteria.
Salt is also the basis for much of the sanitary and
pharmaceutical sector, as well as the chemical industry. Many
gases and acids coursing through pipes from sub-fab up to the
cleanroom in a silicon foundry in Taiwan began their lives as
grains of salt mined from under the ground or evaporated out
of the sea.

Salt is also essential for understanding capitalism and power, as

it has been an instrument of power since its very earliest days.
The reason salt earns its place as one of the six chief members
of the Material World is not merely for its extraordinary
properties but because of what it enabled us to do.

Steve discovered clay bowls and burned stone implements

dating back nearly 6,000 years, suggesting an oven. The traces
of chlorine, a sign of salt making, were also found, suggesting
people had been working with milk. This was the earliest sign of
cheesemaking in Britain, as it required a lot of salt to make a
hard cheese like cheddar. Steve discovered a series of ovens,
revealing that this was not a small, informal settlement but a
factory or production line. This settlement is a missing link
between the agricultural revolution and everything that
followed. The people who worked here, thought to have come
from mainland Europe, possibly from France, brought
knowledge about turning natural resources into a product
before selling or trading it onwards. This moment stands as an
important watershed for intellectual property, tech transfer,
and capitalism.

Making salt was not always easy, as it was a hard work. In the
Neolithic settlement, the people would have evaporated
seawater in ceramic vessels in ovens rather than leaving it in
shallow pools under the sun. They would add more saltwater
and heated it again and again until they could smash those
containers to reveal a cake of precious, white salt. Historians
have long theorized that much of human civilization began on
coastlines because of easy access to salt. Today, these fields
border the North York Moors, but back when the early salt
factory was operational, the moors and much of the country
were covered in thick oak and hazel forests.

Salt routes have been a significant part of history, with ancient

roads and bridges connecting England, Europe, and the
Adriatic. These routes were built over by the Romans when
they conquered the country, and salt was used as a currency,
payment for goods, and sometimes for slaves. In medieval
Europe, salt was shipped to the Baltic, Norway, and Shetland
Islands, where it was used to salt cod. Modern roads are built
on these paths, and towns often grew near them.

Venice, Italy, was a salt-making hub for thousands of years,

with salt from Venice being transported to Modena, Parma,
and other regions on the River Po. This salt was used in the
manufacture of ham and cheese, and Parmigiano Reggiano
cheese is known for its salty brine solution. Venice's Camera
Salis, the salt office, became the heart of its fiscal system,
accounting for more than one in seven of every ducat earned
by the entire Venetian state.

Salt also provided the bedrock of a trade economy, allowing

farmers and fishermen to sell their produce far out across the
oceans, endowing raw foods with a unique taste and time.
Today, there is no shortage of salt, with reserves under the
ground and in Boulby, England, being the first known
production lines.

In ancient times, salt was a signifier of wealth, with gold being

traded with merchants in exchange for gold and used as a form
of currency. During World War II, salt was used as a currency in
many villages in the north, with British salt fetching the highest
exchange rate. The Roman tradition of providing soldiers with
salt rations continued until relatively recently, making it a
staple of ration packs in Britain and beyond for centuries.

Salt has been a key element in the history of trade, commerce,

and power in China. The principle that governors should control
and tax the trade in salt can be traced back as far as the
seventh century BC. This led to the construction of an
enormous, centralised bureaucracy and the subordination of
private business. By the third century AD, salt was routinely
accounting for nearly 90% of state revenues.

The governance of salt has raised deeper political issues, such

as how much power is too much, where the role of the state
ends and the citizen begins, and whether individual liberty
trumps national security. The debate on salt monopolies in the
imperial court in 81 BC was documented in one of the most
famous early works on governance, the Yán Tiě Lùn, the
Discourse on Salt and Iron.

In 2016, the government ended price controls on salt, but many

contend that this remains a monopoly in all but name. A
monopoly is not the only means by which a government can
raise money; more common still are taxes, and since the early
days of taxation, such levies have been imposed on salt. The
French salt tax, known as the gabelle, was costly, arbitrary, and
universally hated. It was the prototype for the tax system as we
know it today, analogous to the energy taxes that squeeze
households as they try to heat and power their homes.

In the years leading up to the French Revolution, the rate on

the gabelle had crept higher and higher, consigning some
households to hunger and malnutrition. Even those who sought
to reduce their salt consumption could do little to skirt the
gabelle, as every person was also obliged to buy 7 kilograms of
salt a year, making this tax inescapable. Smuggling was rife, and
punishment for avoidance correspondingly brutal: men,
women, and children were sent to prison or the galleys.

The gabelle tax, a controversial tax on salt, has been a

significant part of French history and has been a political point
of contention in the past. It was the mainstay of French public
finances by King Louis XIV and was later codified by finance
minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert. The tax became emblematic of
the injustices of ancien régime France, leading to rebellions
across the country. In 1790, after the revolutionaries deposed
the monarchy, the gabelle was abolished and all those charged
with smuggling or avoidance were set free. However, it was
quietly reintroduced by Napoleon in 1806.

The history of salt making in India is also a historical example of

despotism. The British took control of local salt production in
Bengal, implementing a state monopoly and making it illegal to
make or trade salt. This led to smuggling and the British taking
control of Indian salt production. The British used a hedgerow
of prickly pears, Indian plum trees, and spiky acacias around the
border to enforce the salt monopoly.

When Mahatma Gandhi protested British colonial occupation in

1930, he evoking salt and the British taxes that cost poor
villagers an average of three days' income. He broke one of the
country's most resented laws by gathering salt crystals on the
beach at Dandi, breaking one of the country's most resented
laws. This event was one of the pivotal waypoints on the road
to Indian independence, triggering a chain reaction of civil
disobedience across the country.

Salt is far more significant than most people assume: it was the
bedrock for economic trade, the tool of power, and the icon of
protest. It remains part of the backbone of the modern world,
even though it is all history.
 5
Salt of the Earth

The heart of Britain's salt industry is a field deep in the Cheshire

countryside, where millions of tonnes of salt are being mined
from enormous underground caverns. These underground
caverns are filled with translucent pinky-brown walls, ceilings,
and floors, which would glow warm like flesh if a human had
set foot in them. There are three ways to make salt:
evaporating it from the sea, digging rock salt out from the
ground, and extracting it from the ground in the form of brine.

Solution mining is one of the main ways we get salt today, at

least in those parts of the world without enough heat and
sunlight to evaporate seawater. Much of America's salt comes
from underground in Kansas, Louisiana, Texas, and New York
state. Morton, one of the most famous producers, makes salt in
Rittman, Ohio, and Silver Springs, New York, but as solution
mines, they are essentially invisible.
The process is as much an art as a science, with the brine
coming out of the pipes and being piped across to British Salt's
plant at Middlewich. The water from the brine is evaporated in
enormous hot vessels, leaving the salt about the same
consistency as wet sand. After a run through another oven,
what emerges are glistening pure crystals of salt, which go into
Wotsits.

It is impossible to go a day in this country without consuming

Cheshire salt, directly or indirectly. Snacks like Wotsits are just
the start of it. There are other types that get compressed into
tablets, which go into water softeners, and coarser grains sold
as dishwasher salt. The stuff you're probably most familiar with
is known in the industry as PDV (pure dried vacuum salt), but
everyone else calls it table salt.

Cheshire Salt, a layer of salt beneath the farm, dates back to

the Triassic era when part of the county was covered by an
inland sea. The seawater evaporated, leaving a large salt lake,
which was gradually covered by marlstone. Over time, the suffix
"wich" in a town's name came to denote saltworking. By the
seventeenth century, primitive drills and pipes replaced natural
brine springs, leading to the development of solution mines.
By the seventeenth century, Britain became one of the world's
biggest salt exporters, relying on imports from France and
Germany. Canals were built to connect the saltworks of
Cheshire to the River Mersey, which connected it to the port of
Liverpool. Liverpool became a pivotal port in the slave business,
bringing goods to Africa, slaves to America, tobacco, and sugar
back to England.

The world became addicted to Cheshire salt, or "Liverpool Salt,"

and the British brand became so dominant that for a while no
one would accept any other type of salt. When Tsar Nicholas I
of Russia arrived in Britain, he was lowered 150 meters
underground at the Old Marston salt mine in Cheshire.

As the industry boomed, the air in the area became thick with
noxious smoke from the saltworks, and great holes started
opening up in the ground. This led to pockets of subsidence and
collapses in the caverns. Locals showed remarkable resilience in
the face of these episodes, building new houses out of timber
frames and using floating pontoons to withstand the sudden
disappearance of their foundations.
The Cheshire salt boom ended in 1888 when the price of salt
fell exponentially due to the rapid increase in supply. In
response, Cheshire's salt producers formed the Salt Union to
agree prices and production levels. However, this failed, leading
to a decline in salt production, factory consolidation, and
closures. Most old rock-salt mines have been lost to floods, and
solution mines like the British Salt one are now so unobtrusive
that they are difficult to spot.

Today, Cheshire is still producing more salt than it did at the

high point in the late nineteenth century, with between 2
million and 4 million tonnes a year. The majority of brine is
piped up to factories where it is turned into products that keep
us alive, such as sodium chloride. This process, known as the
chloralkali process, is one of the most important industrial
achievements of the modern age.

Brine is pumped out of Cheshire fields and piped to a plant in

Runcorn, which uses hundreds of electrolysis cells to create a
strong current. This process consumes more electricity than the
city of Liverpool and creates an enormous magnetic field,
making it difficult for the human body to detect.
Caustic soda, another essential chemical in the modern world,
is used in various industrial processes, including paper and
aluminium manufacturing, soap and detergents, and polyvinyl
chloride (PVC). Chlorine gas is one of the worst chemical
weapons discovered by humans, used in the production of PVC
and in the production of medicines like sedatives, anti-
depressants, antibiotics, and anti-malarial drugs.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, salt played

a significant role in the revolution of soaps and detergents,
leading to increased life expectancy. Salt remains the keystone
today, with cell rooms like those in Runcorn providing 98% of
Britain's chlorine, which is used to purify tap water. The
chloralkali process, which involves reacting salt with sulphuric
acid, cooking it with coal and limestone, and then soaking the
resulting black ash, was invented by French doctor Nicolas
Leblanc in 1783.

The discovery of the Solvay process provided a cleaner way of

turning salt into alkali, which is still used throughout the
industrial world. In Northwich, an old ICI site run by Tata
Chemicals, which also owns British Salt, still pumps out soda
ash and sodium bicarbonate from massive iron machinery.
Some of the bicarb goes into baking powder and has another
critical medical use as the chemical foundation for kidney
dialysis.

The modern biotech and chemical industries still depend on the

same substance that the Neolithic settlers produced thousands
of years ago. In Britain, chemicals and drugs firms are still
located next to salt, some atop the slab of halite in Cheshire
and others in Teesside where salt was extracted. American
chemicals giant Dow is headquartered in Michigan, above the
deep rock-salt formations beneath Detroit. As trucks come and
go with chemicals and pharmaceuticals, they are essentially
retracing the same ancient salt routes as our ancestors.

The chemicals revolution, a significant aspect of the industrial

revolution, has had a profound impact on human lives. While
we celebrate the pioneers of steelmaking and steam power, we
have mostly forgotten the earliest giants of industrial
chemistry, like Leblanc and Ernest Solvay. Glasgow was once
the world's biggest chemicals manufacturer, ingesting vast
quantities of salt and coal into enormous Leblanc plants that
spread across acres of the city. Today, not only are the
chimneys no longer standing but all memory of this period has
been erased from the urban landscape.
The earliest chloralkali cells used mercury and generated
poisonous waste, which was sometimes dumped into local
lakes and rivers where it poisoned the wildlife. In Cheshire, the
landscape is pockmarked with flooded old sinkholes, known as
'flashes', and the local chemicals firms used many of the holes
as dumps, tipping soda ash, lime, and other toxic waste into
them.

Despite the dark side of technological progress, there are

tantalising glimpses of recovery. In 2019, Onondaga Lake was
de-clared clean, and today's chemicals works are far less
pollutive than their forebears. Mercury electrolysis has now
been banned in most developed economies, and in future, we
may even be able to use the hydrogen it produces – long
regarded as a waste product from the chloralkali process – as a
green fuel.

To see inside one of these solution mines, one can visit a

physical salt mine in Cheshire. The Winsford mine, opened in
1844, is the last such mine in the UK and is now owned by an
American parent company, Compass Minerals. The scale of the
tunnels and the walls and roofs in Winsford are massive, and
the imprints of the pools formed 200 million years ago when
briny waters collected across what is now Cheshire are
unexpectedly profound and beautiful.

Compass, a mining company, has been mining at a depth of 400

meters to obtain more salt. The salt is ground into small
granules and transported across the country to be used to grit
roads. Road gritting is complex, with different grades of salt and
finely honed rates depending on weather conditions and snow.
The salt is used to create brine, which keeps roads safe. In the
UK, road salt is rarely used until a blizzard, when the country
risks running out. In the past, the government issued
emergency instructions rationing road salt and ordering mines
to send it to specific parts of the country. In the past, salt has
been sitting in piles on Britain's docks waiting for the next
winter blizzard. As we drove back towards the mine shaft, we
passed old corridors and rooms dedicated to specialized
storage, including priceless artworks and ancient government
records. Salt caverns have also been used for storage of
emergency gas and crude oil, and are being readied for a future
where they can be used to store carbon dioxide captured from
the environment and sequestered underground to reduce
atmospheric greenhouse gases.
Chapter review:

1. What are the three ways to make salt?

- Evaporating it from the sea
- Digging rock salt out from the ground
- Extracting it from the ground in the form of brine

2. How does solution mining work?

- Brine is pumped out of underground caverns and piped to a
plant where the water is evaporated, leaving behind salt
crystals.

3. Where does much of America's salt come from?

- Underground mines in Kansas, Louisiana, Texas, and New York
state.

4. What process is used to turn salt into sodium chloride?

- The chloralkali process, which involves reacting salt with
sulphuric acid and then soaking the resulting black ash.
5. How did Cheshire become known for its salt?
- It had a large salt lake during the Triassic era, and over time
the suffix "wich" came to denote saltworking in town names.

Key Takeaways:

1. Cheshire in the UK has a long history in salt production,

dating back to the Triassic era.
2. Solution mining is a common method for obtaining salt in
areas without enough heat and sunlight to evaporate seawater.
3. The chloralkali process, invented in 1783, is a crucial
industrial achievement that uses salt to create chemicals and
medicines.
4. The chemical industry relies heavily on salt, and many
chemicals and drugs firms are located near salt deposits.
5. While technological progress has had negative impacts,
efforts are being made to reduce pollution and use byproducts
more efficiently.

Inspirational Quotes:
1. "The modern biotech and chemical industries still depend on
the same substance that the Neolithic settlers produced
thousands of years ago." - Unknown
2. "While we celebrate the pioneers of steelmaking and steam
power, we have mostly forgotten the earliest giants of
industrial chemistry." - Unknown
3. "Despite the dark side of technological progress, there are
tantalising glimpses of recovery." - Unknown
4. "Salt caverns have also been used for storage of emergency
gas and crude oil, and are being readied for a future where they
can be used to store carbon dioxide." - Unknown
5. "The imprints of the pools formed 200 million years ago
when briny waters collected across what is now Cheshire are
unexpectedly profound and beautiful." - Unknown
 6
The Fire Drug Postscript Many Salts

The old railway station in Antofagasta, Bolivia, is a grand set of

colonial-style British buildings with an imposing wooden
staircase. It was once the highest railway in the world, climbing
thousands of meters from sea level through barren desert
landscapes and past frigid salt lakes. The station yard is home
to an old train with Pullman carriages and a cast iron set of
weighing scales. The headquarters of the Ferrocarril de
Antofagasta a Bolivia (FCAB) is still part of a working railway.

The railway was constructed to carry saltpetre, a type of salt

that was explosive and used as a basic ingredient in
gunpowder. The Chinese first discovered this substance,
scraping potassium nitrate away from rocks and bricks and
setting it alight. The main source of saltpetre was fetid organic
matter, such as rotting meat and urine. Military leaders were
dispatched around medieval kingdoms to dig up dung heaps
and old, abandoned privies to produce saltpetre.
Saltpetre became one of the most important items traded by
the British East India Company after large deposits were
discovered in India's River Ganges. In the mid-19th century,
word reached the US and Europe of the Chincha Islands off the
coast of Peru, which promised to change everything.

The natural fertilizer known as guano, a combination of

phosphates and nitrogen compounds, was once a valuable
shortcut for the Incas. Nitrogen is crucial for growth,
photosynthesis, and protein formation. However, turning
atmospheric nitrogen into usable nitrogen is challenging due to
its tight bond between two atoms. Saltpetre, manures, and
compost were also rich in nitrogen, but less so than the bird
droppings of the Chincha Islands.

When the Spanish conquistadores arrived, they paid little

attention to guano, which was viewed as precious as gold. The
Peruvian government nationalized the islands and issued
licenses for harvesting and shipping guano, leading to a gold
rush. However, the gold rush ended in the late 1850s when
miners began to strike bare stone, exhausting the Chinchas.
The Peruvians had a secret weapon on the mainland, the
Atacama Desert, covered in crusts of a unique salt called
caliche. Caliche was found in the Atacama Desert and was
found in various forms, including sodium nitrate, iodates,
sulphates, and chlorides. The caliche's origin remains a mystery,
but it was converted into the more explosive Chinese variety in
the 19th century, which could be turned into nitric acid,
nitroglycerine, and dynamite.

South American nitrates became one of the most important

raw materials in the world after the Chinchas guano trade
ended.

The Antofagasta Nitrate and Railway Company, established in

the 1870s, was one of many businesses established to facilitate
the mining, refining, and transportation of caliche. The demand
for explosives was increasing as European nations engaged in
conflict, and millions of Europeans moved from the countryside
to cities, increasing the pressure on farmers to squeeze more
crops out of their land. Chilean immigrants discovered most of
the caliche, did most of the mining, and forged the links with
English and German financiers who provided the capital for
their businesses.
The war between Chile and Peru and Bolivia began five years
ago, fought mostly at sea. After Bolivia was quickly vanquished,
Peruvian and Chilean ships spent years bombarding each other
with cannonballs, resulting in the War of the Pacific, also known
as the Ten Cents War or the Saltpetre War.

The war ended with a stunning victory for Chile, who took
control of some of the most important mineral resources in the
world, including the world's biggest reserves of copper and
lithium. Chilean nitrates helped feed and arm the world,
finance the construction of more roads, railroads, electrical
networks, and plumbing, and built an advanced military. Thanks
to this white salt, Chile became the richest nation in Latin
America.

Daniel Guggenheim, a British businessman, became infatuated

with the pursuit of nitrates and sold off his flagship copper
mine, Chuquicamata, to invest in Chilean caliche. He believed
that nitrates would make them rich beyond the dreams of
avarice. The Guggenheims invested millions in Anglo-Chilean
mines and refineries in the Atacama region, which still stands
today. The process of turning salty stones into nitrates involved
crushing and refining stones until they were small granules. The
nitrates were then sent by railway down to the Pacific coast.

As the twentieth century began, scientists warned that Chile's

nitrates supply wouldn't be enough to feed the world
indefinitely, especially as populations grew. Sir William Crookes
warned that unless humans found another way of obtaining
nitrates, ideally by fixing them from the air, the world would
face starvation by 1930. This problem was so
thermodynamically difficult that no one knew how to manage
it.

Germany, the world's biggest importer of Chilean nitrates, was

exposed to the challenge during the First World War. Fritz
Haber, an ambitious but troubled Jewish chemist, worked with
chemical engineer Carl Bosch to turn a laboratory
demonstration into an industrial process. By 1913, BASF had
begun manufacturing ammonia, a nitrogen/hydrogen
compound that could be converted into fertilisers and used to
make explosives. The Haber-Bosch process is one of the most
important scientific and industrial discoveries in history, helping
feed billions of people and banishing hunger and famine as
widespread issues.
In the early years, nitrates were used to create explosives for
the German army, leading to the Great War. Fritz Haber's
reputation was further sullied by his work to develop chlorine
gas, which caused thousands of troops to die. The Haber-Bosch
process delivered a near fatal blow to Chile's nitrates industry,
as it allowed for nitrates to be obtained from thin air rather
than the ground. Today, most old nitrate outposts have closed,
and towns once housing miners, supervisors, engineers, and
workers have been deserted.

However, in Chile, there are still a few companies left producing

saltpetre from these desert stones. One of them is SQM, a
chemicals firm whose origin story goes back to the demise of
the original nitrates industry. The Chilean government
nationalized the last two remaining caliche companies in 1971
due to geopolitical and economic reasons. SQM has since
become a significant company and is one of the country's
richest men.

Nitrates are produced from the caliche, along with iodine, a

critical health supplement. Chile is the world's biggest producer
of this life-saving medicine. Nitrogen, which comes mostly from
the Haber-Bosch process, has been used almost without limit in
the past half-century. Farmers' soils are becoming overworked
and degraded, deprived of other minerals. A century later,
miners working on the north coast of England discovered a
magic material, another salt, that might help address the
world's nutrition crisis.
PART THREE
Iron
 7
You Don’t Have a Country

On 24 February 2022, Enver Tskitishvili, general manager of the

Azovstal Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol, Ukraine, gave an
order he had hoped never to give. Russian artillery had begun
bombarding the city, leading to a desperate siege of the war.
The Azovstal works became the central focus of Ukrainian
resistance. Tskitishvili had a legendary reputation in the steel
industry, having managed larger plants until reaching one of
the most important positions.

During World War II, Adolf Hitler's invasion of Ukraine focused

on its material abundance, including iron and coal deposits in
its east and dense manganese fields of Nikopol. However, the
Germans discovered that the invasion was the simple part, as
locals were dismantling Azovstal to render it useless. The Nazis
attempted to get the plant up and running again, but the
steelworkers began a secret sabotage campaign, setting fires
and causing explosions that damaged the blast furnace and
hindered their enemies' efforts to produce the metal.
In the following decades, the town and its two steelworks
became one of the world's most important sources of this all-
important material. Iron and steel are the ultimate metals,
accounting for roughly 95% of all the metal we produce and
use. Iron is fundamental to our lives, accounting for just as
good a measure of living standards as GDP. In developed
economies like the US, Japan, UK, or most of Europe, people
have around 15 tonnes of steel in their lives, often hidden in
concrete or concealed beneath plastic.

Iron is the foundation of our society, used in building bridges,

concrete, cars, and data centers. It is the second most
abundant metal in the earth's crust and is found everywhere,
including in our bodies and red blood cells. The majority of
global iron ore output is turned into steel, which has a carbon
content of less than 2%. This difference in carbon content
makes a significant difference in the strength and durability of
steel.

The history of ironwork was mostly a tale of trial and error, with
skilled artisans passing down techniques through generations.
The Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Forth Bridge in Scotland are
two landmarks that illustrate this story. Both were built in the
1880s and completed in 1889, setting new records for their
construction methods. However, the Eiffel Tower was made
from wrought iron, as Gustave Eiffel did not trust Bessemer
steel.

In the following years, pure iron gave way to its steel

counterpart, with steel rails lasting longer, tools being stronger,
and bars allowing engineers to bridge wider gaps. These small
improvements became revolutionary, and iron is essential for
our ability to grow as a population, work, and thrive without
having to do farmwork. The more food we can produce per
hour of labor, the fewer people have to work in fields and the
more people can pursue other jobs.

Modern life relied on incremental improvements in agriculture

over the years, including better growing techniques, fertiliser
availability, and ever-better tools. The plough was a crucial tool
that helped prepare the ground for seeding, breaking up
topsoil, uprooting weeds, and providing a bed for seeds. By the
early nineteenth century, cast iron ploughs with integrated
mouldboards were introduced, which reduced the time it took
to plough a hectare of land from 20 hours to 15 hours. Steel
ploughs went one step further, breaking through hard, rocky
ground and needed less maintenance.

Steel tools, most of which were forged from steel, dramatically

cut the time it took to harvest a given amount of food. With
about 32 billion tonnes of steel out there, it could be used to
wrap the world in heavy I-beams, build seven high-speed rail
tracks, or divide it between every person on the planet.
However, most parts of the world do not have enough iron to
build hospitals, bridges, railways, or homes.

Silicon, fertiliser, copper, and steel production are also

unequally distributed, with the average person in China having
roughly 7 tonnes of steel per capita, while the average person
living in sub-Saharan Africa has less than a tonne of steel per
capita. This inequality raises questions about the world's twin
goals of decarbonisation and development, as countries
become richer and more prosperous.

Steel is a fundamental material that has been used for

thousands of years to progress and become richer. It is used in
forging weapons, defenses, factories, machines, and turbines
that make everything else possible, such as generating
electricity, performing high-pressure chemical reactions, and
constructing roads, airports, and railways. In 2018, Donald
Trump announced tariffs on steel imports to protect the US and
its workers. Nearly every US president, Republican and
Democrat, has sought to protect the industry with special
sanctions. China's Mao Zedong was obsessed with steel, aiming
to increase production and overtake Britain and America within
ten years. However, this led to the worst famine in history, with
tens of millions dying of starvation and fatigue. Steel is often
fixated upon by leaders, both despotic and democratic, due to
its importance in manufacturing processes and the fear of
making weapons from another country's iron. The origin story
of Ukraine's steel industry dates back to the mid-19th century,
when John James Hughes, a businessman from South Wales,
set sail for the Sea of Azov and built blast furnaces in the
Donbas. This complex became the biggest iron producer in the
Russian Empire and the capital of Ukraine's industrial
heartlands.

China has been importing knowledge and equipment from

overseas to build its industrial base, similar to how Russia,
Americans, and most countries have done since humans first
discovered how to make iron. Shagang's flagship location on
the Yangtze River is now the world's single biggest steelworks,
with 13 blast furnaces that turn out more than double the
entire steel output of ThyssenKrupp. China has produced more
steel in the past decade than the United States has since the
beginning of the twentieth century.

The Magnitogorsk plant in Russia, built in 1932, was the

brainchild of Joseph Stalin. However, it was too far from
coalfields and had extraordinary iron resources. Soviet planners
found a new location in the east of Ukraine, where iron, coal,
and water were in perfect conjunction, and built a new
steelworks called Azovstal. By the 1990s, the east of Ukraine,
dominated by coal and steel, was responsible for more than
half the country's industrial output. When the Berlin Wall fell
and communism ended, these assets became a sought-after
prize, much like the industrial fabric in neighboring Russia.
Independent Ukraine soon had its own oligarchs, most
prominent among them Rinat Akhmetov, who bought many of
the steel mills, including Azovstal and the Ilych mill on the other
side of Mariupol.

Steelworks in Mariupol, Ukraine, were heavily polluted due to

their capacity and consumption of iron ore and coal. Azovstal, a
large steelworks, produced slag, a molten waste product rich in
silica and calcium, which was used as a cement. The steel
convertors consumed so much oxygen that companies flocked
to Mariupol to make use of the waste gases created along the
way. Almost by accident, Ukraine became one of the world's
biggest industrial producers of neon, a noble gas used in
semiconductor manufacturing and luminescent signs.

As Russian troops closed in on Mariupol, President Tskitishvili

contemplated shutting down the plant. The process involved
stopping coke ovens that bake coal and allowing blast furnaces
to cool slowly. As Russian troops infiltrated the city, most of the
plant's employees were withdrawn, and the city was
bombarded by Russian artillery. Most of the city's surviving
residents had left as the bombardment began, but a few
families retreated into the steelworks.

Russian troops took control of the town in a matter of weeks,

but the steelworks proved more of a challenge. Around 3,000
Ukrainian fighters, some of whom had far-right associations,
had also found their way into the shelters at Azovstal. The siege
was covered by news networks around the world, and food
supplies were exhausted as the siege wore on.
After 80 days of brutal fighting and bombardment, civilians
trapped inside Azovstal's tunnels and defenses were allowed to
leave and were taken into Russian territory. The remaining
troops from the Azov Regiment surrendered and were taken
into captivity. The bodies of over 400 soldiers were returned to
Ukrainian territory for burial, but some were still thought to be
entombed in the wreckage of the steelworks. The global iron
industry quickly absorbed the disappearance of Azovstal and its
output. However, the shutdown of Azovstal caused a global gas
shortage, impacting semiconductor production and the global
supply chain. Silicon-chip manufacturers in Taiwan, South
Korea, and South Wales began to stockpile these gases for fear
of a global shortage. Russians announced that Azovstal was too
damaged to be repaired and turned it into a park. However,
President Tskitishvili insisted that this would not be the end for
Azovstal, as it had risen from the ashes of the Nazi occupation
to become the best steel mill in Europe. Steel remains a
material of the present and a substance without which we
cannot construct the future.

Chapter review:

1. What was the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works known for
during the war?
- Azovstal became the central focus of Ukrainian resistance
during the siege.

2. How did the steelworkers sabotage the German invasion

during World War II?
- They conducted secret sabotage campaigns, setting fires and
causing explosions to damage the blast furnace and hinder
production.

3. What is the significance of iron and steel in our society?

- Iron and steel are foundational materials used in building
bridges, concrete, cars, data centers, and more.

4. What is the difference between iron and steel?

- Steel has a carbon content of less than 2%, which makes it
stronger and more durable than iron.

5. How has iron played a role in technological advancements?

- Incremental improvements in agriculture, such as steel tools
and ploughs, have increased productivity and reduced labor
required for farming.
Key Takeaways:

1. Iron and steel are essential materials in our society, used in

numerous industries and infrastructure projects.
2. The history of ironwork has been a story of trial and error,
with advancements in techniques leading to revolutionary
changes.
3. Steel production is unequally distributed around the world,
raising questions about development and decarbonization
efforts.
4. Steel remains highly valued and protected by leaders due to
its importance in manufacturing and national security.

Inspirational Quotes:

1. "Iron is the foundation of our society, used in building

bridges, concrete, cars, and data centers." - Unknown
2. "Steel is often fixated upon by leaders, both despotic and
democratic, due to its importance in manufacturing processes
and the fear of making weapons from another country's iron." -
Unknown
3. "Steel remains a material of the present and a substance
without which we cannot construct the future." - Unknown
 8
Inside the Volcano

The production of steel involves melting rock and creating lava,

with the process being surprisingly manual at most blast
furnaces. The process begins with a hole being drilled in a clay
section, and the iron begins to flow. This is the first of many
transformations, as the iron entered the furnace as a solid ore,
along with lumps of coke and dolomite. The raw materials were
emptied into the top from giant automated skips, one layer at a
time.

For every tonne of molten pig iron, just over a tonne of iron ore
and just under a tonne of coal are used. The purpose of the coal
is not just to heat the furnace but to facilitate the chemical
reaction happening in its bowels. The ore is a rock rich in iron
oxide, essentially granulated rust, and turning that into a metal
means ripping the oxygen atoms away from the iron atoms. The
main end product of these blast furnaces is not the iron ore
gushing out of the side and the slag that gets drained away
later, but carbon dioxide, and lots of it.
Iron is a fossil fuel product, and each year we empty staggering
quantities of coal into the thousand or so blast furnaces
operating around the world. The iron that comes out the other
end may not have much carbon embedded in it, but its
production entails the creation of enormous quantities of CO2 –
around 7-8 per cent of the global total. No other source of
greenhouse gases is quite so concentrated into such a small
number of sites.

Port Talbot, with its two blast furnaces, is still the single biggest
steelworks and, therefore, the single biggest carbon emitter in
the UK. However, the introduction of coal to ironmaking began
as the solution to an environmental problem.

Iron predates the first blast furnaces, with the blade of a dagger
made from a meteorium alloy of iron, nickel, and cobalt. The
ancient Hittites developed the skill around 1400 BC, and it
spread throughout Asia and Europe. The Chinese developed the
first blast furnaces in the fifth century BC, and they spread to
Europe in the medieval period. Furnace production in Sussex
and South Wales used charcoal as fuel, which generated
intense heat ideal for ironmaking. However, demand for
charcoal led to pressure on forests, as wood was essential for
construction and shipbuilding. In 1559, a new law was
introduced to prevent tree felling for iron production, forcing
industrialists to look elsewhere. This led to a shift in the
production of iron and the modern world.

The industrial revolution in the UK was influenced by

demographics, geography, political and institutional backdrop,
labor market, and environmental pressures. The country had an
unusual geology with a rich mix of minerals, including iron,
limestone, and metals like tin, zinc, copper, and silica sand. As
fears about wood supply grew, early entrepreneurs began to
experiment with coal, which became the most important fuel in
Britain.

Coal was dirty and smelly, blackening bricks and introducing a

noxious smell to beers brewed with it. However, industrialists
adapted by pre-baking coal, leading to the development of
coke, a purer form of coal with fewer contaminants. Coke and
coal were also used for the manufacture of glass and salt
making in the north-east and Cheshire.
Alum production, a chemical that helps make clothes dyes
colorfast, was a booming business in those days, and coal was
used to heat their foul concoctions. Over time, coal became the
most important fuel in Britain, and iron production was
relatively late to the party. Abraham Darby, an entrepreneur
from the Midlands, realized the benefits of using coke instead
of coal and became the first person to power a blast furnace
with coke instead of charcoal in 1709.

The steam engine, invented by James Watt, revolutionized the

way coal could be used to make chemicals, glass, and iron. This
was not just an industrial revolution but also a material and
energy revolution, with humankind shifting from wood and
charcoal power to fossil power. By the beginning of the
nineteenth century, most industries in Britain were powered by
coal, and Britain's income per capita began to soar.

To illustrate the importance of this energy transition, it is

suggested that returning to using wood and charcoal would
require using nearly half the UK's surface for charcoal
production.
The site of the steel plant in Azovstal, Russia, is vast and takes
up 5 square miles. It includes Europe's biggest private beach
and a vast array of zones such as coking ovens, sinter plants,
blast furnaces, steel convertors, and rolling mills. The oxygen
convertor is where iron becomes steel. The blast furnace lava is
tipped into a ladle to remove sulphur, and the red, glowing
liquid is poured into the convertor along with 60 tonnes of
scrap steel. The sector has one of the highest recycling rates
anywhere. The process of steelmaking is simple and surprisingly
fast, with a metal lance spraying a supersonic blast of pure
oxygen into the lava. This process dramatically changed life in
the country and beyond.

Steel has become a mainstay in the Material World due to its

wide availability, affordability, and versatility. It is both good at
doing what it does and cheap, making it a vanishing part of our
GDP statistics. Steel nails cost next to nothing today, while
being far superior to their iron predecessors, allowing more
money to be spent on computers. Steel changed the world for
several reasons: because people could get it and work with it,
because it was everywhere, and because it was cheap.

In the twentieth century, steel was introduced as a set of

product standards, which meant screws and bolts came in
certain set sizes rather than in random dimensions. This led to
the development of hundreds of different alloys, each with
their own properties and specialities. Manganese, silicon,
stainless steel, and aircraft landing gear are all made from a
small dose of special ingredients plopped into a cauldron of
bubbling hot metal.

However, some exotic additives are not easily available, such as

niobium, which is used in jet engines, critical pipelines,
superconducting magnets, and skeletons of bridges and
skyscrapers. Ironmakers of yore would hammer their swords to
create a strong, tough blade, while today's steelmakers use
enormous machines to do the same job.

The molten steel, now with added alloys, is poured into a

tundish and drained down into a large letterbox opening in the
floor. The steel is rapidly cooled and compressed into a thin
sheet of steel a kilometer in length. This transformation of steel
into metal is a testament to its ability to revolutionize various
industries and industries.

Henry Ford, a pioneer in mass production in the early 20th

century, was obsessed with the metallurgy of steel. He used
vanadium steel in his Model T, a lighter, strong alloy, which
helped the car leapfrog its competitors. Today, cars are
considerably heavier than they were decades ago, but this is
due to the weight of the chassis and body falling. Instead of
using lighter metals, car manufacturers compensate by making
their cars bigger and including more features. This is a small-
scale example of the 'Jevons paradox', where more efficient
engines and machines lead to more coal consumption.
Steelmakers are engaged in a battle with physics and the
aluminium industry to produce ever lighter alloys. Laura Baker,
head of product management and development at a mill in Port
Talbot, explains that they have more technology than NASA,
allowing them to make thinner steels than ever before. The
strength, electrical performance, and corrosion resistance of
steel have risen by a factor of ten.
 9
The Last Blast

The Pilbara region in Western Australia is a kaleidoscope of

colour, with red rock in valleys, mountains, and dust
everywhere. The earth looks like rust, but there is iron in the
earth in such concentrations over an enormous expanse. The
region has an extraordinary geological tapestry with successive
layers of iron, chert, shale, siltstone, and dolomite. Ironstone
formations, the remains of oceanic activity from the
Precambrian era, are nearly blood red. People have been
cleaving these rocks apart since prehistoric times, using
ironstone to fashion axes, tools, grind food, kill animals, and
sometimes etch artwork into cave walls. Archaeologists are still
discovering fresh evidence of these artefacts. Today, the nature
of cleaving and digging is different, with Australia having more
of the world's mineable iron ore than any other country.
Australia extracts more than twice as much as Brazil and about
three times as much as China each year. However, unlike other
spheres, China remains reliant on Australia for iron reserves, as
there is no escaping geology, and China's iron reserves are
nothing like the ones found in the Pilbara.
Geologists long suspected that Australia had enough iron ore to
supply the world, but the story began in 1952 when Lang
Hancock discovered the Hamersley Range. The range was made
of heavy, hematite ores, which were heavy enough to supply
the world. After the ban on exports was lifted in 1960, Hancock
persuaded London mining company Rio Tinto to begin work on
the area and agreed to pay him a 2.5% royalty on every tonne
of iron ore produced there in perpetuity. As the iron ore began
to flow, first to Japan and then to China, Hancock became one
of Australia's richest people.

Today, Rio Tinto is the lead miner of most of the iron in the
Hamersley Range alongside BHP Billiton, which mines Mount
Whaleback. Their mining technique is a direct descendant of
Andrew Carnegie's machines started in the Mesabi Range of
north-eastern Minnesota back in the late nineteenth century.
The iron fields of the Mesabi are still being worked today by US
Steel, but this once-mighty region is mostly exhausted.

One of Lang Hancock's firm convictions was that miners should

be allowed to mine where they bloody well wanted, even when
those mines sat upon sites long held sacred by the tribes who
lived here tens of thousands of years before the first settlers
showed up. This would be unacceptable for most cultures, but
it is especially destructive for Australian Aboriginal people,
whose philosophy, the Dreaming, is all about connection with
the land. The 1972 Aboriginal Heritage Act stipulated that Rio
Tinto and others would have to recognize the relevant peoples
as traditional owners of these sites, come to agreements with
them about mining, and avoid destroying anything of significant
cultural or historical value.

Brockman 4, an offshoot of the Brockman mine, was initially

promising due to the rich iron grades and hematite in the area.
In 2013, Rio Tinto sought approval to extend the mine further,
making it its second biggest in the Pilbara. The mine covered
the neighboring land, Juukan Gorge, which was home to the
Puutu Kunti Kurrama people, who had walked the streams and
valleys, picking bush medicine, and stopping in nearby caves for
shelter. The caves at Juukan Gorge had high archaeological
significance, with fragments of ironstone chipped into tools and
other artefacts dating back tens of thousands of years. Rio Tinto
considered three alternative plans, each of which avoided the
archaeological site but involved sacrificing up to 8.1 million
tonnes of iron ore worth around US$135 million. In late 2013,
Rio Tinto applied for formal government approval to 'disturb'
the caves, which were granted. However, as archaeologists dug
deeper into the caves, they found further treasures, including
artefacts over 40,000 years old. Rio Tinto planned to destroy
the caves, but the valley and caves were so precious that it
seemed improbable that Rio Tinto would actually destroy them.
The mining company's vagueness about its plans reinforced the
impression. In late 2019, archaeologists Heather Builth visited
the site with members of the Aboriginal community, and the
mine's operations manager, Brad Webb, assured her that there
were no plans to extend the mine to the Juukan Gorge.
However, they were scheduled for destruction within a few
months.

Radiocarbon dating revealed that Juukan Gorge, one of the

oldest caves in the Pilbara, was a place where the spirits of
their relatives came to rest. However, only half of the cave had
been excavated, and the cultural significance of the site
became more apparent as elders spoke out. The Puutu Kunti
Kurrama people were informed that the caves were due for
destruction on 15 May 2020, after the explosives were laid. The
outcry triggered one of the biggest corporate crises in the
history of mining.
The Australian parliamentary inquiry revealed that Rio Tinto
had managed to retrieve some charges, which would have
destroyed the sacred snake pool, an area it had no legal right to
destroy. It had also not informed the locals about the existence
of alternative mining plans that would have safeguarded the
gorge. Rio Tinto apologized but as the scale of dysfunction at
the company emerged, heads began to roll.

Rio Tinto launched an external review into its internal culture,

finding disturbing patterns of racism, sexism, harassment, and
sexual assault. The Puutu Kunti Kurrama people were in shock,
feeling fear, anxiety, and hopelessness thinking about the
spirits of their ancestors who no longer have their resting place.
The artefacts from the caves remained in a shipping container,
but given what has happened elsewhere in the Pilbara, no one
feels especially secure about them. Explosive blasts are the
heartbeat of the twenty-first-century Pilbara, with around a
million blast holes a year being detonated with government
approval.

The demand for iron ore and virgin, blast-furnaced steel is

diminishing in the rich world. The per capita steel quotient in
the US and UK has been flat for a few decades, suggesting that
society may reach saturation. Steel is relatively easily recycled,
and more of our steel comes from'minimills', melting down
scrap in electric arc furnaces. More than two-thirds of
America's steel is now made from scrap, as old buildings and
infrastructure are reconstituted into new bar and plate.

The era of the blast furnace and Bessemer convertor, which

birthed the industrial revolution, would give way to the'scrap
steel age'. Based on current trends, by the second half of this
century, we will be getting more steel from recycling than from
iron ore. China may have too many blast furnaces, and
renewable energy could power these mini-mills, making them a
form of 'green steel'.

However, most recycled steel is low-grade and mostly made

out of virgin steel. There are other ways to make virgin steel
without a blast furnace and emissions, such as 'direct reduced
iron' technology, which requires hydrogen and pellets with
higher grades of iron. Pilbara iron may not make the grade for
new green steel, so the hunt is on for new, higher-grade iron
elsewhere around the world.

Chapter review:
1. What is the Pilbara region known for?
- The Pilbara region is known for its vast deposits of iron ore
and its geological tapestry with layers of iron, chert, shale,
siltstone, and dolomite. It is a major source of iron ore for
Australia and the world.

2. Who discovered the Hamersley Range and its iron ore

deposits?
- Lang Hancock, an Australian prospector, discovered the
Hamersley Range and its iron ore deposits in 1952.

3. Which mining companies are involved in iron ore mining in

the Pilbara region?
- Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton are the lead miners in the Pilbara
region, extracting iron ore from the Hamersley Range and
Mount Whaleback respectively.

4. What conflict arose between mining and the Aboriginal

communities in the Pilbara?
- The conflict arose when mining activities threatened sacred
sites and caves with significant cultural and historical value to
the Puutu Kunti Kurrama people, the traditional owners of the
land. The destruction of their sacred sites led to a corporate
crisis for Rio Tinto.

5. What did the external review of Rio Tinto's internal culture

reveal?
- The external review revealed patterns of racism, sexism,
harassment, and sexual assault within Rio Tinto, adding to the
controversy and backlash the company faced.

Key takeaways:

1. The Pilbara region in Western Australia is rich in iron ore

deposits and has become a major center for iron ore mining.
2. The conflict between mining activities and the Aboriginal
communities highlights the clash between economic
development and the preservation of cultural and historical
heritage.
3. Rio Tinto's mishandling of the situation and internal cultural
issues have caused significant reputational damage to the
company.
4. The future of steel production may shift towards recycling
and greener production methods, potentially reducing the
demand for iron ore from the Pilbara region.

Inspirational quotes:

1. "The Pilbara region is a kaleidoscope of colour, with red rock

in valleys, mountains, and dust everywhere." - Unknown
2. "There is no escaping geology, and China's iron reserves are
nothing like the ones found in the Pilbara." - Unknown
3. "The cultural significance of sacred sites and caves cannot be
ignored or destroyed for the sake of mining." - Unknown
4. "The destruction of the Juukan Gorge caves triggered one of
the biggest corporate crises in the history of mining." -
Unknown
5. "The future of steel production may lie in green steel,
powered by renewable energy and recycling." - Unknown
PART FOUR
Copper
 10
The Next Greatest Thing

In the early 1940s, a farmer in rural Tennessee spoke at a

church about the importance of having the love of God in one's
heart and the next greatest thing is having electricity in one's
house. Electricity spread from cities to rural America, changing
people's lives with suddenness and profundity. Ironing was
once very difficult and difficult, with housewives spending
hours scrubbing clothes with caustic soaps and hauling water
hundreds of miles over a year. Today's irons are mostly plastic
with a lightweight steel or aluminum base, but their pre-electric
predecessors were heavy, solid blocks of iron. These irons were
heavy, about three times the weight of modern counterparts,
and had to be continually reheated twice per shirt. The hands
of farm wives of the era were scarred all over from close
encounters with the sad iron.

Electricity revolutionized everyday life, with copper being the

material that generated and carried electricity into homes.
Copper is a symbol of ancient history and a key to our future,
with its ability to conduct heat and electricity, natural ductility,
strength, resistance to corrosion, and suitability for recycling. It
is the great, unseen substrate that supports the modern world
as we know it, and without it, we are left in the dark.

Copper is more invisible than glass and less obtrusive than oil,
but it is an extraordinary metal with magical qualities. When a
strong magnet is dropped on a slab of pure copper, it creates
an electrical current, generating the single most important
force of the modern era. Much of our activity and energy
derives from this interaction between a magnet and a metal,
which is transported in copper through the copper and iron
cores of transformers.

However, the metal is mostly tucked away beneath wire

sheathing or inside inaccessible infrastructure, making it easy to
forget our dependence on it. The generators and transformers
of our electrical systems, made mostly of steel and copper,
should be championed as among the most important
inventions in history, but they usually get ignored in favor of
the computer or jet engine. As we exchange fossil fuel systems
of heat and propulsion with electric ones, our reliance on
copper will only build in the coming years.
The second great energy transition of the modern age,
electricity, transformed the world by allowing light to be
summoned up with the flick of a switch. Pre-electric homes
were dark and expensive, but electric lightbulbs added precious
hours to every day. Electric drive motors doubled American
manufacturing productivity by 1930 and again by 1960, and it
also revolutionized various aspects of life, such as grinding
down rocks at mines, turning wheels of streetcars, trams,
trains, powering elevators, and providing air conditioning in
buildings.

Electricity is silent and essentially invisible, but it cannot be

made or distributed without copper. We still generate the vast
majority of our electricity the same way Michael Faraday did in
1831: by rotating a magnet around copper or vice versa. Today,
turbines connected to copper coils are more powerful and
efficient than anything Faraday could have imagined. The
principle remains unchanged, as does the metal at its heart.

In every conventional power station, wind turbine, geothermal

plant, hydroelectric dam, and solar panels, copper is key. Any
switch you flick on any device in your home summons up the
power of copper. However, copper is not the only metal
capable of conducting electricity. Aluminium does a decent
enough job, and silver is even more conductive than copper.

In conclusion, electricity is an essential and powerful force that

has transformed the world. It is crucial to recognize that copper
is not the only metal capable of conducting electricity, and its
ubiquity is just as important as its powers.

The discovery of copper smelting likely occurred around 6,000

years ago in the triangle between Armenia, Turkey, and Egypt.
The shift from stone to metallic tools led to the Copper Age or
Chalcolithic period, which was followed by the Bronze Age
when people discovered that copper combined with tin
produced an alloy stronger and harder. This allowed our
ancestors to hunt, build, and fight, predating the age of iron.

The copper trade shifted over time, with Britain producing

more than half of the world's copper by the middle of the
nineteenth century. Much of this came from Cornwall's mines,
which were particularly rich. Britain's pre-eminence in the
copper trade was also a story about the uses to which it put the
metal. In the eighteenth century, the British navy began to
sheath its ships' hulls with copper, fueling enormous demand
for copper.

South Wales became the world capital for copper production,

known as Copperopolis, despite mining barely a particle of the
metal. Swansea became the world capital for copper
production, refining around 65% of the world's copper.
However, as the nineteenth century wore on, Swansea's
dominance of the copper trade began to flag and then collapse.

Mammoth new mines in the United States started to refine

their own copper, and the Welsh refineries closed gradually and
suddenly. Today, all but one remain, with a nickel refinery in
Clydach owned by Vale, the Brazilian miner with the Amazon
iron ore mine.

China has embraced the Swansea model more readily than

South Wales, smelting and refining nearly half of the world's
supply of copper and a variety of other metals.

The Welsh copper industry's decline can be attributed to the

availability of the right kind of copper in the right quantities. In
the mid-19th century, when the US began to string telegraph
lines and plans for cables to cross the Atlantic, early wire
producers could make do with the copper churned out of
Swansea's reverberatory furnaces. However, as the electrical
age took shape, it became apparent that Welsh copper was a
poor electrical conductor.

Miners, including Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse,

developed a solution by electrolyzing copper ores, which was
far purer than the atomic structure of silicon or germanium
wafers. This new technique was the nail in the coffin for
Swansea's refineries but came at the right moment for the
budding electricity industry. As more electricity was generated
by Edison and Westinghouse's power stations, the more
current the refiners could pass through their electrolysis cells,
allowing them to produce even more ultra-pure copper. This
virtuous circle helped Edison and his fellow entrepreneurs
string a web of electrical wires around American cities and the
rest of the world.

The dramatic fall in the price of light was not just a

consequence of ingenuity and enterprise but also of materials
too. Edison engineered his lightbulbs to work with thinner
copper wires and designed his electrical network in New York
so it wouldn't need thick copper trunk wires. However, beyond
a mile, power began to peter out. Westinghouse and Nikola
Tesla pioneered the use of alternating currents, which allowed
the world to send high voltages along very thin wires, ensuring
the world wouldn't run out of copper and eliminating the need
for power stations within neighborhoods.
 11
The Hole

Chuquicamata, Chile, is a small mountain town with a mix of

modern amenities and historical landmarks. The town's main
road leads towards the mountains, where residential areas
transition to warehouses of concrete and corrugated iron. The
town also features dark pools, dusty railyards, and piles of rock.
A tunnel leads to an enormous crevasse at the top of what
should be a hill, which is the Chuquicamata copper mine. This
massive hole, longer and wider than New York's Central Park, is
so deep that the world's tallest building, Dubai's Burj Khalifa,
would be swallowed by the fissure. The town has removed
more earth than anywhere else in history, making it one of the
most unlikely engineering marvels of the modern age.

Copper mining has been a significant part of the world's history,

with the remains of a miner from Chuquicamata, Chile,
preserved in a film of copper-rich salts. Today, the mining
industry is vast and massive, with trucks carrying ore up from
the pit floor and cars made by Japanese company Komatsu
being among the largest on the planet. The majority of the
world's copper is produced this way, far from where it is pulled
out of the ground, making it difficult to work out exactly where
that metal was actually mined. Most of the world's copper
plates, bars, and wires are a cocktail of atoms from all over the
world, reflecting globalization.

Chuquicamata, by some measures, is the biggest mine on the

planet, producing more copper than any other such mine in
history. Over the past century and a bit, billions of tonnes of
rock have been torn from the ground and refined into hundreds
of thousands of tonnes of pure metal. From this hole, few in
the world have heard of, let alone seen, the copper that helped
power the twentieth century, contributed to the rise of China,
and in the coming decades, will help build electric grids, green
vehicles, and wind turbines that are planned to eliminate
carbon emissions.

Copper's secret weapon is scale, as places like Chuquicamata

can produce comfortably more copper each year (in Chuqui's
case twice as much) as the amount of gold produced by every
mine on the planet since the beginning of time.
Chuquicamata, a ghost town in the Atacama Desert, was shut
down due to the mine's imminent destruction. As machines dug
deeper and displaced more earth, waste products began to
encroach on the town, spilling out onto houses and gardens.
The residents became sick, and the mine gained a new
nickname, Chuqui qui mata, or Chuqui which kills. In response,
Codelco, the state-owned corporation that runs the mine,
moved all 20,000 inhabitants to Calama, the nearest city. By
2008, Chuqui was empty and left to rot. However, many
buildings in the Atacama desert still look as they did when
people left them. The northern quarter of Chuqui is covered in
an immense hill, called tortas, which has eaten up more than a
quarter of homes and shops. The Kiruna iron ore mine in
Sweden has become so extensive that the town above it has
had to relocate itself. In 2022, a blast exploded at the bottom of
the pit, causing the entire artificial valley to be consumed in a
thick cloud of acrid cordite.

The Chuquicamata copper mine in the world's driest desert is a

significant environmental concern due to its massive water
consumption. Mining and processing ores at this scale requires
vast volumes of water, which is used for heap leaching, a
process where crushed ore is drenched in a dilute acidic
solution. This water is used to extract copper from the rocks,
which is then drained out at the bottom and sent to the
refinery. Over time, mines are attempting to reduce their water
consumption by piping in seawater instead of draining local
rivers.

Another footprint is the Chuquicamata tailings dam, where

waste from the refining process is piped in and deposited. The
dam holds decades' worth of muck from the biggest copper
mine on the planet, Talabre, which was once a salt lake. Today,
the area is covered in a greyish sludge of mud rich in
molybdenum and arsenic, covering an area about the size of
Manhattan.

Despite these improvements, the water on the coast remains

contaminated from decades of untrammelled pollution. In the
port of Chañaral, 220 megatons of waste material from copper
mines were dumped and accumulated, creating an artificial
beach stretching 10 kilometers (6 miles) across the coastline,
killing much of the local wildlife. A recent study found elevated
levels of nickel, lead, and arsenic in the urine of local men.

Despite these challenges, copper mining remains a significant

part of the economic endeavor, as it is a productivity miracle
and part of the explanation for the standard of living we enjoy
today.

In 1980, Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon bet on the future of the
planet. Ehrlich predicted that as humans consume more
resources, they will exhaust the raw materials upon which the
planet depends, leading to soil degradation, forests denuded,
and pollution. Simon, an economist, was astounded and
disgusted by this, believing that the more people there are, the
more minds there are to work on solutions for environmental
problems. They believed that the planet's resources are far
greater than we imagine, and if we ran out of one material, we
would invent or substitute another one. This debate has raged
since ancient Greece, with philosophers like Confucius, Plato,
and Aristotle expressing concerns about humankind's
propensity to throw the natural world out of balance. Thomas
Malthus, an economist, warned that the bigger the population,
the more likely we were to face famines, shortages, and
destruction.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were two factions of
people: Malthusians and Cornucopians. The Malthusians
believed in the impending problems facing the planet, such as
environmental, cultural, and economic issues. They founded
the 'Club of Rome' in 1968, which focused on the impending
problems facing the planet. They later published a book called
The Limits to Growth, warning that humanity was heading for
an ecological and environmental catastrophe and that it would
soon exhaust all its natural resources.

Julian Simon, on the other hand, thought the claims were

overly optimistic. He claimed that food production was
increasing and famines were decreasing, and that the price of
these things should go up if the world was overrun with people
and our natural resources were about to run out. Ehrlich
accepted this and bet that the value of five key metals –
copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten – would increase in
real terms between September 1980 and September 1990.

Economists have speculated that if the bet had run from any
year in the 1960s or 1970s or even the 2000s instead of the
1980s, Ehrlich would have consistently come out the winner.
However, if the price of copper prices was adjusted in line with
earnings growth rather than shop prices, Simon would come
out on top. Both sides claimed victory, and the story of 'The
Bet' has become an economic parable. For Malthusians, Ehrlich
was fundamentally right, while Cornucopians believe Simon's
victory is proof that human ingenuity always trumps
environmental and material challenges.

In the early days of the electrical age, geologist Ehrlich

predicted an impending shortage of copper for electricity. In
1924, geologist Ira Joralemon predicted that the world's copper
supply would last hardly a score of years, and the Club of
Rome's models suggested that the world's supplies of raw
materials, including copper, aluminium, oil, and gold, would be
exhausted within decades. Even today, researchers predict a
decline in copper production beginning in 2030.

Copper is becoming increasingly difficult to mine, with many of

the most promising grades already mined out by the early
twentieth century. The Guggenheims, a mining family, turned
mining into a mass production activity by converting
unpromising rock into something that could earn them a
fortune. They used steam shovels and explosives to extract
copper from low-grade ores at Bingham Canyon in Utah and
Chile's reserves in Chuquicamata.

However, as the cost of extracting the ores rose, so did the

grades of those ores. As the twentieth century wore on, the
amount of copper in each new lump of rock here fell from 2.4%
in 1913 to below 2% by the middle of the century and below 1%
by its end. As the grades fell, the work of extracting the copper
from the ores got significantly more demanding. Between 1900
and today, the quantity of stone needed to move and process
to produce a single tonne of copper rose from 50 tonnes to 800
tonnes, the amount of water consumed along the way went
from 75 cubic meters to 150, and the energy needed for all this
work rose from around 250KWh to over 4,000KWh.

Over that period, the inflation-adjusted copper price was

essentially flat, indicating that the earth became considerably
less willing to give up copper. Despite falling supply and rising
demand, copper production continued at relatively low prices.

In the Chuquicamata canyon, ultra-class trucks have become

the largest open-pit mine in the world, carrying over 400
tonnes of rock. The mine is also set to become the largest
underground mine in the world through block mining. This
involves digging a tunnel underneath the ore, planting high
explosives into the rocks above your head, blasting them, and
then allowing gravity to collapse them. The rocks are then
conveyor-belted out to be refined in Chuqui's smelters or
shipped elsewhere for further processing. Block mining is a new
trend in industrial mining, and it is being employed in other
parts of the world, such as Indonesia's remote mountain range.

Chapter review:

Q: What is the significance of Chuquicamata, Chile?

A: Chuquicamata is a small mountain town known for its

massive copper mine, which has produced more copper than
any other mine in history. It is one of the most unlikely
engineering marvels of the modern age.

Q: Why is copper mining significant?

A: Copper mining has played a significant role in history and

continues to be a vital industry today. Copper is used in various
applications such as electric grids, green vehicles, and wind
turbines. It has powered the twentieth century and contributed
to the rise of China.
Q: What are the environmental concerns associated with
Chuquicamata copper mine?

A: The Chuquicamata copper mine consumes massive amounts

of water for mining and processing. This has led to the
contamination of water sources and the creation of large
tailings dams filled with toxic waste products. The mine's waste
has also had adverse effects on coastal areas, killing local
wildlife and contaminating the environment.

Key takeaways:

- Chuquicamata, Chile, is a small mountain town with a massive

copper mine.
- Copper mining has been a significant part of history and
continues to be an essential industry today.
- The Chuquicamata copper mine is an engineering marvel but
also poses significant environmental concerns.
- The mine consumes vast amounts of water and produces toxic
waste products that have negative effects on the environment.
Inspirational quotes:

1. "Copper's secret weapon is scale." - The Chuquicamata mine

produces more copper each year than the amount of gold
produced by every mine in the world since the beginning of
time.

2. "Copper mining is a productivity miracle and part of the

explanation for the standard of living we enjoy today."

3. "Human ingenuity always trumps environmental and

material challenges." - The Bet between Paul Ehrlich and Julian
Simon highlights the belief that humans have the ability to find
solutions to environmental problems.

4. "The earth became considerably less willing to give up

copper." - As the grades of copper ores fell over time,
extraction became more demanding and resource-intensive,
indicating the scarcity of easily accessible copper.

5. "Block mining is a new trend in industrial mining, changing

the way ore is extracted from the ground."
 12
The Deep

The world's largest mountain range, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, is

submerged beneath thousands of meters of seawater in the
Atlantic Ocean. The North American tectonic plate is slowly
breaking apart from the Eurasian plate, leading to geological
activity such as volcanoes, pillow lava, and hot smoking towers
of rock. The ridge was discovered in 1872 by the crew of the
HMS Challenger, on the first of many great missions to survey
the ocean floor.

The latest mission to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Project Ultra, is a

high-tech mystery story centered around a set of conical
features about 150 meters high, discovered by a bathymetric
survey of this spot in the Sargasso Sea years ago. The mission is
becoming a matter of national security, as scientists are looking
for sources of vast riches, including vast reserves of copper.

The story goes back to HMS Challenger and some strange-

looking potato-sized lumps she dredged up from the bottom of
the Pacific a century and a half ago. These dark, slightly crumbly
stones, smooth on the top but rough on the bottom, later
became known as polymetallic nodules. If you find yourself on
the bottom of certain parts of the Pacific, especially the Clarion-
Clipperton Zone, you would see countless nodules scattered
across the seafloor. The little stony potatoes form over millions
of years as minerals accrete around fragments of organic
material that fall on to the seabed.

The discovery of mineral deposits beneath the seafloor,

including nickel, manganese, cobalt, and copper, has been a
significant discovery for geologists. One study suggested that
there is enough gold on the seafloor for every person on the
planet to have 9lb of the stuff, equivalent to $170,000 apiece.
Another study suggested that actually getting hold of that gold
would cost more than double that. Cobalt, one of the world's
scarcer metals, is primarily found in unstable countries like the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where mine conditions
can be poor. Nickel, another essential battery metal, is
produced in Indonesia, where it often involves the destruction
of rainforests and tailings are dumped into rivers and the sea.

There are about 25 million tonnes of terrestrial cobalt

resources, most of them in the DRC and Zambia. The total
amount of cobalt identified under the sea, in those polymetallic
nodules and underwater features called cobalt-rich crusts, is
120 million tonnes. There are around 300 million tonnes of
terrestrial nickel resources, with the Clarion-Clipperton Zone
alone having around 270 million tonnes of nickel. Copper has
always been an afterthought in calculations due to its high
extraction rate and the abundance of copper in the remains of
black smokers pumping dark mineral-rich water out from the
seabed along submerged mountain ranges like the Mid-Atlantic
Ridge.

The International Seabed Authority (ISA) in Kingston, Jamaica, is

responsible for managing the majority of the world's ocean
floor and determining who has the right to those minerals
beneath the waves. The ISA's jurisdiction is simple: any piece of
water that is 200 nautical miles beyond any country's shore
qualifies as part of the 'high seas', an area that is considered
the 'common heritage of mankind' according to the 1982 UN
Convention on the Law of the Sea. This makes the high seas a
diplomatic and economic grey area, making it easy to use them
as a communal dustbin or overfishing them.

However, deep-sea mining has been seen as a pipe dream for a

long time, but no one doubts its physical feasibility. Many
secretive resource-focused nations, such as China and Russia,
are quietly engaging in deep-sea mining. The ISA is in an
uncomfortable position, as the vast majority of known
resources lie under the high seas.

China is the frontrunner in deep-sea mining, with four ISA

contracts and a determination to be the first country to extract
large quantities. South Korea, Russia, Germany, France, and the
UK have already claimed parts of the deep ocean, with the UK
giving over its claims to US defence giant Lockheed Martin.

The US may be one of the greatest potential beneficiaries of

deep-sea mining, even if it keeps to its own exclusive economic
zone rather than the high seas. This is due to the 1856 Act
passed by Congress, which allowed US citizens to occupy
unclaimed islands containing bird droppings.

The International Maritime Organization (ISA) aims to benefit

all countries involved in deep-sea mining, with each country
sharing royalties with the other. However, the success of this
venture remains uncertain. Mining operators, such as Gerard
Barron, are pushing for the ISA to draft rules that would allow
companies to begin deep-sea mining in the high seas. Barron's
company, The Metals Company, plans to mine polymetallic
nodules in the Pacific off the coast of Nauru, which could help
fuel the energy transition.

The company has sponsored peer-reviewed research showing

that a kilogram of copper produced from polymetallic nodules
generates a mere 29 kilograms of waste. This concept is seen as
the last great extraction and could be seen as the greenest
mining of all. However, countries around the world are shifting
in the opposite direction, with Chile, Fiji, Palau, and France
calling for a moratorium on deep-sea mining until they can
determine the environmental implications.

The seafloor is one of the planet's most pristine habitats, yet

we know less about it than nearly any other ecosystem. New
deep-sea species have been discovered, and even the most
stringent environmental safeguards may miss something. The
ISA, which is responsible for developing environmental rules, is
relying on companies themselves to hold to its rules. However,
questions remain about the organization's ability to manage
the process and its effectiveness in managing the process.
The International Space Agency (ISA) has designated the Lost
City, the only known example of the key to life on Earth, as a
site for deep-sea mining in Poland. This is a significant
development, as it is the first time the mining industry has
taken into uncomfortable territory in its pursuit of copper.
Nuclear mining was once considered the next big thing until it
was rendered pointless by heap leaching and electrowinning
techniques.

As we consider where we will get our supplies of copper for

tomorrow's wind turbines and high-speed trains, we may fall
back on what we have done for years. A massive new mine in
the DRC, Kamoa-Kakula, and another mine in Mongolia, Oyu
Tolgoi, will soon be among the world's biggest. Jetti claims its
technology can extract the metal from even the lowest grade
chalcopyrite ore, which could lead to the extraction of copper
from waste rock that helps address climate change.

Electricity is no longer just the second greatest thing in the

world after God; it is the first great hope for addressing climate
change. However, even with the most optimistic assumptions
about improving recycling rates and cutting back on energy use,
we still need astounding amounts of it if we are to succeed.
Extracting copper, whether from under the ground or under the
sea, is a messy business, and we may be reliant on the very
fossil fuel that got us into this mess to help get us out of it.
PART FIVE
Oil
 13
The Elephant

Ernie Berg, a geologist for the California Arabian Standard Oil

Company, was on the lookout for anomalies in the early days of
oil exploration in Saudi Arabia. The river was a dry riverbed, a
wadi, which occasionally carried water on rare days. However,
in Haradh, the river bent south for a fair distance before
bending back again towards the east. The drunken hills, or
jebels, were also unusual, with flat tops and dipping and
leaning in random directions. Berg was on the lookout for these
anomalies, as they were the greatest energy force of the past
century.

The oil age, like the coal age before it, delivered humankind
from much of the drudgery of manual labor, lifted incomes, and
helped us live longer lives. Petroleum products and energy
helped mitigate infant death and fight malnutrition, and filled
the planet with billions more souls than its animals, plants, and
soil could support. However, oil contributed to greenhouse gas
emissions, which accelerated climate change.
Initially, petroleum seemed to be a solution rather than a
problem, as it helped save the sperm whale from potential
extinction by providing a superior lamp fuel to substitute for
whale oil. The motor car replaced horse-drawn carriages just as
commentators were panicking that their cities would soon
become engulfed in horse manure.

The story of crude oil began long before Ernie Berg's discovery
of the dry river at Haradh. People in the Arabian Peninsula had
used oil for thousands of years, but it was primarily used as a
chemical product rather than burning it. In the mid-19th
century, chemists discovered kerosene, a wonder product that
burned six times brighter than spermaceti extracted from
sperm whale skulls. This led to a pursuit for more sources of
kerosene, which began in the oilfields of Baku in Azerbaijan and
was most eagerly followed in the United States.

In 1859, crude was found at Titusville, Pennsylvania, leading to

a rush to extract the oil from the ground. Geologists began to
understand how oil formed and where it could be found. Salt
domes, a bulging layer of halite beneath the ground, were
found in the Persian Gulf, leading to the discovery of oil in Iran,
Iraq, Kuwait, and Bahrain.

At the time, Saudi Arabia was far from being the oil giant it is
today. Some geologists at big oil companies remained sceptical
about the area's potential, but Berg discovered the southern
point of what became known as the Ghawar field. The field
stretches 175 miles north to south and 19 miles across, and it is
bigger than any super-giant ever discovered before or since. It
has already produced more than 70 billion barrels of oil and has
around 50 billion more still available underground. It belongs in
a category of its own: not a giant or a super-giant but perhaps
an elephant, as we will almost certainly never discover another
place quite like it.

Crude oil and natural gas are hydrocarbons, formed in similar

ways and often found together. Ghawar, the world's largest
oilfield and one of the world's largest gas fields, is the result of
global warming. The formation of crude oil began around 100
million years ago when volcanic activity increased atmospheric
carbon dioxide levels and led to an increase in plankton
populations in the Arabian Gulf. These organic remains were
heated and compressed over millions of years, transforming
into oil and gas.
The formation of oil reservoirs is not the same as coal, as
drilling into an oil reservoir does not tap into an ancient seabed.
Instead, the formation Ernie Berg found was located in a
massive bed of hard stone underlying much of the Arabian
Peninsula. This'reservoir rock' needs to be porous, permeable,
and cap with a hard ceiling to trap oil and gas.

Ghawar is the most hydrocarbon-rich area on the planet,

accounting for more than half of every barrel of oil produced in
Saudi Arabia since the beginning of the oil age. No other oilfield
on earth, nor any coal pit, uranium mine, nuclear plant, wind or
solar farm, produces as much of this planet's energy.

The industrial revolution was not just a revolution of ideas and

engineering but also an energy revolution. Most processes
depend on enormous amounts of energy, most of which is
currently delivered to us, directly or indirectly, by fossil fuels.
The extraordinary explosion of wealth and wellbeing that began
in the middle of the nineteenth century might better be seen as
an extraordinary harnessing of these fuels to do stuff.
The modern world relies heavily on oil and gas, which break a
geological cycle that goes back over 100 million years. Burning
oil and gas releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,
causing a new age of global warming. The good news is the
billions of lives lived thanks to oil and gas, as they are both
useful and destructive. Weaning ourselves off them will take
more than just goodwill and a net-zero target. However, it is
possible to do so, as oil and gas are so good at what they do
and are hopelessly reliant on us. As of 2019, just over 80% of
the world's primary energy came from the burning of fossil
fuels, including coal, oil, and gas. Even as many countries
reduce their coal burning rate, they continue to maintain or
increase their reliance on oil and gas, which provide about 55%
of our energy today. The global economy lost momentum after
Russia invaded Ukraine, and oil and gas prices soared, leading
to a "cost of living crisis." Joe Biden, who had campaigned on
the principle that America should never check its principles at
the door just to buy oil or sell weapons, was photographed
visiting Saudi Arabia and urging the kingdom to increase crude
production.

The US was once the world's largest oil producer, but by 1947,
domestic supplies dwindled and energy consumption increased,
leading to a decline in oil production. Overtaken by the USSR in
the mid-1970s and Saudi Arabia in the early 1990s, the US
became aware of its dependence on petrostates. This led to
successive oil crises, as the politics of the Middle East and other
parts of the world became entangled with the supply of oil.

In 2022, some were whispering that Saudi Arabia's power had

begun to wane. However, a revolution in oil and gas production
began in the US in the 1980s with George P. Mitchell, a Texan
entrepreneur who believed natural gas was the fuel of the
future. Most geologists had concluded that America's best days
of gas production were behind it, and there were no promising
reservoirs left.

Mitchell's team proposed that one might get gas directly from
the'source rock' where it was forming, rather than the
reservoirs where it eventually ends up. This idea was
tantalizing, as the US had enormous quantities of oil and gas
forming inside the shales that underlie much of Texas and
elsewhere. They experimented with hydraulic fracturing and
horizontal drilling techniques to extract gas from the Barnett
Shale, an enormous slab of source rock underlying much of the
area around Dallas.
American natural gas production began to recover in the first
decade of the new millennium, with oil companies learning to
extract crude from shale formations. However, there were
downsides to this revolution, including water pollution, seismic
impact, and concerns about the amount of sand needed for
fracking solutions. Fracking was also more expensive than
traditional oil extraction. Between 2007 and 2021, US oil
production more than doubled, making America the biggest
crude producer in the world. This led to American energy
independence, which allowed American manufacturers to
outcompete their rivals, produce products cheaper than
European competitors, and reduce carbon emissions.

The Permian basin in Texas, covering 86,000 square miles, is

now larger than Ghawar, but comparing it to a single reservoir
nearly 30 times smaller doesn't make sense. The entire Saudi
basin has a potential output more than double that of the
Permian. President Biden's controversial fist bump in Jeddah
highlights the importance of Saudi Arabia as a central bank for
the global energy market.

However, what is happening inside Saudi Arabia's oil

infrastructure and at fields like Ghawar remains a closely
guarded secret. Even world leaders gossip about the titbits they
pick up, and it is important not to underestimate Saudi Arabia
at your peril. In 2005, Matt Simmons predicted the coming
demise of Saudi oil production, but by 2010, oil prices were
only barely higher than in 2005.

The Ghawar field continues to pump millions of barrels of oil a

day, but the real magic comes when crude oil is transformed
into substances we can use.

Chapter review:

Q: What were some anomalies that geologist Ernie Berg looked

out for in Saudi Arabia?
A: He looked for anomalies such as a dry riverbed that
occasionally carried water and unusual hills with flat tops and
dipping and leaning in random directions.

Q: How did petroleum initially seem like a solution rather than

a problem?
A: It helped save the sperm whale from potential extinction by
providing a superior lamp fuel to substitute for whale oil, and it
also replaced horse-drawn carriages with motor cars.
Q: How did the pursuit for more sources of kerosene begin?
A: Chemists discovered kerosene, which burned six times
brighter than spermaceti extracted from sperm whale skulls,
leading to a pursuit for more sources of kerosene.

Q: How did the discovery of oil in the Arabian Peninsula begin?

A: Geologists discovered salt domes in the Persian Gulf, which
led to the discovery of oil in Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Bahrain.

Q: What is Ghawar and why is it significant?

A: Ghawar is the largest oilfield in the world, stretching 175
miles north to south and 19 miles across. It has already
produced over 70 billion barrels of oil and has around 50 billion
more still available underground.

Key takeaways:

1. The discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia, particularly the Ghawar

field, played a significant role in the energy revolution and the
development of the modern world.
2. Oil and gas have had both positive and negative impacts,
providing energy and improving lives but also contributing to
greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.
3. The extraction of oil and gas from unconventional sources,
such as shale formations, has led to a revolution in production,
with the US becoming the largest crude producer in the world.
4. The reliance on fossil fuels for energy is still significant, with
over 80% of the world's primary energy coming from burning
coal, oil, and gas.
5. Saudi Arabia remains a central player in the global energy
market, and the secrets of its oil infrastructure and fields like
Ghawar are closely guarded.

Inspirational quotes:

1. "The oil age, like the coal age before it, delivered humankind
from much of the drudgery of manual labor, lifted incomes, and
helped us live longer lives." - Ernie Berg
2. "The modern world relies heavily on oil and gas, which break
a geological cycle that goes back over 100 million years." - Ernie
Berg
3. "The extraordinary explosion of wealth and wellbeing that
began in the middle of the nineteenth century might better be
seen as an extraordinary harnessing of these fuels to do stuff." -
Ernie Berg
4. "Weaning ourselves off oil and gas will take more than just
goodwill and a net-zero target. However, it is possible to do so,
as oil and gas are so good at what they do and are hopelessly
reliant on us." - Ernie Berg
 14
Pipes

Wesseling refinery in Germany is a unique and complex facility

that transforms crude oil into pure hydrocarbons used in the
production of chemicals, plastics, fuels, and other substances.
These refineries are often overlooked, but they play a crucial
role in reducing emissions and escaping fossil fuels. The process
involves separating oil into various compounds, making it less
crude. The oil comes from various sources, such as prehistoric
plankton or algae, impurities, heat, and pressure, resulting in
unique varieties of crude.

The oil coming out of Ghawar is called 'Arabian light' due to its
lighter viscosity and density. Saudi oil, for example, requires
less work and expense to pump and refine than most other oils
worldwide. Additionally, lighter and sweeter crudes usually
fetch higher prices due to their lower processing time and
effort.
Wesseling refineries can refine around a hundred different
flavors from around the world, which is more challenging for
most other refineries. For example, the European Union
banned Russian crude imports, and they switched to a blend
from elsewhere instead. This challenge is more pronounced for
other refineries, which tend to deal with specific types of crude.

The current situation in the United States is an example of how

this affects the modern world. While America is energy
independent, it must continue producing heavy, sour crudes
from countries like Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela. American
shale oil, typically light and high quality, is not best-suited for
domestic refineries, making it difficult to unplugging from the
global energy system.

In conclusion, Wesseling refinery is a fascinating and complex

facility that plays a significant role in the production and
consumption of crude oil.

The first step in oil refinery production is distillation, which

involves heating, evaporating, and condensing the oil to
separate different compounds with unique boiling points.
These products can be divided into six categories: gasoline for
cars, diesel for trucks, petrochemicals for plastics, kerosene for
jet fuel, waxes and lubricating oils, and asphalt for roads.
However, a barrel of oil can yield hundreds of end products
without which we are all filled.

Refineries are not just collections of pipework with no

relevance for the world of tomorrow; much of what happens in
refineries is incredibly sophisticated. The process at the
Humber Refinery was so clever and complicated that a Chinese
spy attempted to steal the recipe. Understanding a refinery
depends on being able to navigate it, but Wesseling, the largest
refinery in Europe's biggest industrial economy, is unusually
large.

Wesseling began its life as part of the Nazis' secret weapon to

win the war, making aviation fuels for the Luftwaffe. The layout
is odd today because it was designed to be odd back in the
1940s to confound incoming bombers on air raids. As Germany
built more planes to fight the Allies, this place kept churning
out the fuel they needed, deploying state-of-the-art techniques
to conceal itself, such as a blackout system and artificial fog to
hide boilers and vessels.
Germany's fuel industry was a significant part of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with coal being the
primary source of fuel. Despite being oil poor and coal rich,
Germany's scientists were able to turn coal into various
products, such as pharmaceuticals like Bayer and BASF.
Friedrich Bergius, a pupil of Fritz Haber, developed a method
for turning coal into gasoline for use in tanks, trucks, and
planes. This was a significant step in the development of
synthetic fuels, which became popular due to the scares about
peak oil. Companies like Brunner Mond and Standard Oil of
New Jersey sought Bergius's patents for hydrogenation, but the
cost was a significant issue. Adolf Hitler, fixated on energy
independence and a vision of a modern Germany with
domestically manufactured cars, urged the hydrogenation of
coal to become a reality. The Second World War was a war of
motion, fought with oil, over oil, and partly decided by oil. This
led to the development of synthetic fuels and the eventual
emergence of a modern Germany with domestically
manufactured cars.

America's forces in Europe consumed a hundred times more

gasoline than in the previous war, with petrol being the main
limiting factor for both sides. Japan's strategy in the Pacific
involved attempting to capture oilfields of the Dutch East
Indies, but fuel remained desperately scarce. Germany's
strategy revolved around trying to procure it from elsewhere,
with about a third coming from the Ploiesti fields in Romania.
Hitler's rationale for invading the Soviet Union was to secure
the oil of the Caucasus, including Maikop, Grozny, and Baku.

The main plants, from Wesseling to Leuna, contributed the bulk

of Germany's fuel, turning out 25 million barrels of synthetic
petroleum a year and providing 95% of the fuel used by the
Luftwaffe. The Allies had an advantage when it came to this
precious power source, but by the final months of the war, the
gaps were spectacular. A single bombing raid on synthetic fuel
plants in late 1944 used more than 34,000 barrels of aviation
spirit, and by 1945 the German air force was effectively
grounded.

The Second World War was not merely a war against refineries,
but a war of refineries. American refineries made their own
breakthroughs, such as a complex catalytic cracking technology
carried out in skyscraper-sized refinery units that produced
high-grade 100-octane fuel, which allowed Spitfires and
Lancasters to be equipped with superior engines, such as the
Rolls-Royce Merlin, which could fly 15% faster than their
German counterparts. This fuel advantage might have even
swung the balance in the Battle of Britain.

The story of American refiners' efforts to improve the octane of

fuels is often seen as a triumph, but it also highlights the darker
side of the industry. In the 1920s, General Motors (GM)
discovered that adding lead to gasoline could increase octane
levels and stop engine knocking. This led to one of the most
shameful stories of pollution in modern history, as lead is a
powerful neurotoxin, especially damaging to children's brains.
GM removed the word "Ethyl" from the chemical's brand name,
leading to warning signs and a spate of illnesses at a New Jersey
refinery.

After news of the deaths, some states banned the use of leaded
gasoline, but GM and its lawyers suggested that the men who
died must have fallen victim to their own negligence and
argued for progress against inefficient engines. However, there
is no safe amount of lead, and it can accumulate over time in
the brain, bones, and lungs of anyone exposed to it. Lead
impairment means whole generations of people who inhaled
these fumes have lower IQs than would otherwise have been
the case. Only in the 1980s did the US formally ban lead from
gasoline.
As the world moves on, oil majors are selling off many of their
refineries in favor of electric cars and hydrogen alternatives. An
alternative vision is being conjured up by places like Wesseling,
which has reinvented itself to refine oil rather than coal. As of
2025, pipes carrying crude to this site will be shut off, and fuel
will be made out of green alternatives such as plants, vegetable
oils, municipal waste, and cow dung. This ambitious, untested
plan may be overambitious, but it could soon become a glimpse
of the future for oil refineries.
 15
The Everything Thing

John D. Rockefeller, the founder of the Standard Oil empire,

was aware of the by-products of refining crude oil, which
included ethylene gas. This story highlights the
interconnectedness of crude oil and the modern consumer age,
as the majority of hydrocarbons end up in vehicle tanks and
natural gas is used to generate power and heat. However, the
remaining 10% of petrochemicals, such as plastics, fertilizers,
packaging, pharmaceuticals, preservatives, resins, paints,
adhesives, dyes, and flavorings, are produced from fossil fuels.

Petrochemicals are ubiquitous in our lives, including plastics,

fertilisers, packaging, pharmaceuticals, preservers, resins,
paints, adhesives, dyes, and flavorings. The petrochemical
sector's job is to reconstitute these simple molecules into a
dizzying number of products, far more than can be covered
individually.
Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and lettuces are examples of
food products that contain fossil fuels. Controlled environment
agriculture, or controlled environment farming, is widely
regarded as the future for crop cultivation. With the world's
population projected to surpass 10 billion, this type of farming
offers several advantages, such as increased yields, reduced
water usage, and reduced pesticide use. In the Netherlands,
where greenhouses cover an area the size of Paris, this type of
agriculture has helped the country become the world's second
largest exporter of food.

Valley Grown Nurseries, a UK tomato producer, uses

glasshouses with LED lighting to control light and maintain a
constant temperature of 20°C. Tomato vines are grown in
mineral wool, fed with water and fertilisers, and bees buzz
around the plants. The greenhouses also contain an enormous
boiler, which heats the pipes running through them.

Modern agriculture is about replacing natural forms of energy

with fossil fuels, such as gas-fired heating. Fertilizers are
created from natural gas, which is used to provide energy and
as a chemical feedstock for hydrogen. This reliance on fossil
fuels extends to all foods, as most crops and animals are
sustained by nitrogen fertilisers created from natural gas.
Another Dutch innovation is a perforated plastic pipe that
produces a concentrated stream of carbon dioxide, which
accelerates growth by increasing CO2 content inside the
greenhouse. This system uses less land, fertilizer, and chemicals
than conventional farming while producing more produce.
However, the chlorophyll inside tomatoes contains carbon from
natural gas, hydrogen from natural gas, and nitrogen from
fertiliser produced with natural gas.

A kilogram of greenhouse tomatoes generates up to 3

kilograms of carbon emissions. Some growers are
experimenting with alternative energy sources, but the majority
of greenhouses continue to burn gas. In 2022, gas prices soared
after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, leading to glasshouse
shortages, tomatoes in short supply, and food prices rising
across Europe due to the shortage of natural gas.

In Almería, Spain, greenhouses are made from plastic, the

world's most important plastic. This highlights the need for
alternative energy sources and the impact of greenhouse
farming on the environment.
The world's most important synthetic material, polyethylene,
was invented by accident three times. The first discovery
occurred in 1894 when Hans von Pechmann discovered
polymethylene, a white powder of hydrogen and carbon. The
second discovery occurred in 1930 when researchers at the
University of Illinois experimented with arsenic compounds.
The final discovery occurred in 1933 at the labs of British
chemicals giant ICI. Two ICI chemists, Eric Fawcett and Reginald
Gibson, discovered polyethylene, or polythene, while working
on chemical reactions at high pressure. Polyethylene is versatile
and useful, being water-resistant, durable, heatproof, and
recyclable. Its non-conductive properties made it an ideal
electrical insulator.

During the early era of international communication,

polyethylene was used as a substitute for gutta-percha, a non-
conductive rubber latex made from the gum of a tree found in
Malaysia. However, supply and costs couldn't keep up with the
demand for wiring. Polyethylene was eventually mass-
produced and used in the deployment of radar during World
War II.

After the war ended, ICI was left with a surplus of plastic,
leading to the creation of cheap plastic toys, beads, and
jewelry. The Hula Hoop craze of the sixties and seventies was
created from a by-product of the plastic-industrial complex.

Polyethylene, a widely used plastic, was initially produced by ICI

in the post-war era as a packaging material. Its properties made
it ideal for preserving food, such as bread, vegetables, meats,
and cheeses. The FDA approved polyethylene as a 'food contact
material', allowing it to be used in packaging products like
bananas. Today, polyethylene is the most widely used plastic in
the world, with production reaching 100 million tonnes a year,
more than the combined global production of copper and
aluminium. Polyethylene is made into various types, including
low-density bags, freezer bags, bubble wrap, Tupperware,
detergent bottles, plastic toys, water pipes, hip or knee
replacements, and flak jackets. Its strength is due to its
molecular structure, which consists of large chains of hydrogen
and carbon. Polymer designers can vary its strength and
behavior by packing the chains together or space them further
apart. Polyethylene is one of five main families of human-made
polymers, including polystyrene, vinyl, nylon, polypropylene,
and thermosetting materials like epoxy resin. These materials
have different properties and applications, making them a
valuable resource for various industries. The world has never
seen more synthetic polymers, with 15 categories and tens of
thousands of sub-categories.

For millennia, humans have been able to adapt and refine

substances found in the ground, but with plastics, we could
tailor-make materials rather than bending them to our needs.
The first plastic, celluloid, was developed to replace natural
ivory used in billiard balls and helped save wild African elephant
herds from extinction. Polymers like celluloid and polyester
were used to protect endangered species, and plastic packaging
eliminated the need for melting down sand or cutting down
trees for paper and card.

As the use of plastics proliferated, most new materials were still

based on the five main families of plastic discovered during the
golden age. However, the discovery of Polythene at Northwich,
which housed ICI's Winnington Research Laboratory until 1995,
is now a mystery. Polythene, an important early use in the
development of RADAR, became the world's largest tonnage
plastic.

In the past 13 years, plastic output has tended to rise

exponentially, with little evidence of a slowdown. Ethylene, a
waste product John D. Rockefeller complained about, is now
the foundation of an enormous new petrochemical sector. The
ICI plant, once providing much of the world with polyethylene,
is still running, owned by SABIC, the petrochemical arm of Saudi
oil giant Aramco.

Making polyethylene is a tricky business, and China has begun

to make a third of the world's raw plastic, much of it produced
from coal rather than oil or gas. This has led to a growing
suspicion and dismay towards what was once a wonder
material in Europe.

The substances we created that helped us transcend the need

for traditional raw materials, such as metals and stone, have
degraded into a symbol of the Anthropocene. However, these
substances are still with us, sometimes visible to the naked eye
or not. Microplastics are found in the ocean, wafting
undetected through most homes, and even in uninhabited
parts of the world. Research shows that plastics can leach toxic
chemicals into their surroundings, harbor antibiotic-resistant
bacteria, and even pass through biological membranes, possibly
into the brain.
While the damage to oceanic species has sometimes been
overstated, there is little doubt that plastic pollution has spread
in the seas. Many countries have now banned single-use plastic
shopping bags and other items like plastic straws, but these
bans have been short-sighted. Some biodegradable polymers
lack the strength and stability of the traditional plastics they are
supposed to replace, and sometimes fail to degrade as
promised. Recycling plastics at scale is possible, but the
challenge is that while some types of plastic are perfectly suited
to being melted down and remoulded, others are not.

Polythene, discovered in 1933, became the world's largest

tonnage plastic. The ICI plant, which once supplied much of the
world with polyethylene, is still running, owned by SABIC, the
petrochemical arm of the Saudi oil giant Aramco. Today, a third
of the world's raw plastic is made in China, much of it produced
from coal rather than oil or gas.

In conclusion, the substances we created that helped us

transcend the need for traditional raw materials have degraded
into a symbol of the Anthropocene, but they are still with us,
sometimes visible to the naked eye or not.
Chapter review:

Q: What are some examples of petrochemicals and their uses?

A: Petrochemicals include plastics, fertilizers, packaging
materials, pharmaceuticals, preservatives, resins, paints,
adhesives, dyes, and flavorings.

Q: How is controlled environment agriculture beneficial?

A: Controlled environment agriculture, or controlled
environment farming, offers advantages such as increased crop
yields, reduced water usage, and reduced pesticide use.

Q: How does modern agriculture rely on fossil fuels?

A: Modern agriculture relies on fossil fuels for energy, including
gas-fired heating. Fertilizers are also created from natural gas,
which is used as a source of energy and as a chemical feedstock
for hydrogen.

Q: What is the impact of greenhouse farming on the

environment?
A: Greenhouse farming, which relies on the burning of gas for
heating, generates carbon emissions. A kilogram of greenhouse
tomatoes can produce up to 3 kilograms of carbon emissions.

Q: How was polyethylene discovered and what are its uses?

A: Polyethylene was discovered by accident three times, and it
is now the most widely used plastic in the world. It is used in
various forms, including packaging materials, bags, bubble
wrap, Tupperware, plastic toys, water pipes, and even medical
applications like hip or knee replacements and flak jackets.

Q: What are some concerns regarding the use of plastics?

A: Plastics can leach toxic chemicals into their surroundings,
harbor antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and potentially pass
through biological membranes, including into the brain. Plastic
pollution in the oceans is also a growing concern.

Q: What challenges exist in recycling plastics?

A: While recycling plastics at scale is possible, the challenge lies
in the fact that not all types of plastic can be effectively melted
down and remolded. Some biodegradable alternatives to
traditional plastics lack strength and stability, and recycling
processes can vary depending on the type of plastic.

Key takeaways:

- Petrochemicals are ubiquitous in our lives and are used in

various products, from plastics to pharmaceuticals.
- Controlled environment agriculture offers advantages like
increased crop yields and reduced water and pesticide usage.
- Modern agriculture relies on fossil fuels, including for heating
and the production of fertilizers.
- Greenhouse farming can generate significant carbon
emissions.
- Polyethylene is the most widely used plastic in the world and
has various applications.
- Plastics have become a symbol of the Anthropocene, but they
present concerns such as pollution and potential health risks.
- Recycling plastics at scale is possible, although it can be
challenging due to the different types of plastics and their
properties.
Inspirational quotes:

1. "For millennia, humans have been able to adapt and refine

substances found in the ground, but with plastics, we could
tailor-make materials rather than bending them to our needs."
2. "The substances we created that helped us transcend the
need for traditional raw materials have degraded into a symbol
of the Anthropocene, but they are still with us, sometimes
visible to the naked eye or not."
3. "Even in uninhabited parts of the world, microplastics are
present, highlighting the far-reaching impact of plastic
pollution."
4. "While some types of plastic are perfectly suited to being
melted down and remolded, others present challenges in the
recycling process."
5. "Plastics have revolutionized various industries, but we must
also address their environmental and health implications."
PART SIX
Lithium
 16
White Gold

The Salar de Atacama in Chile is a barren desert with a two-

sided rain shadow, making it the driest place on Earth. The area
is home to flamingos, guanacos, and vicuñas, wild cousins of
the llama and alpaca. However, as one ventures into the area,
life begins to disappear. The Salar is a salt lake, but it is brown
and slightly scaly due to the slow growth of salty surfaces.

The surface is uneven and unpredictable, making it hard to

navigate without occasionally stumbling. Lithium, one of the six
key members of the Material World, is at the heart of the most
powerful batteries and the heart of the twenty-first-century
world. This magical metal, along with hydrogen and helium,
was one of the three primordial elements created in the Big
Bang. It has the same combination of lightness, conductivity,
and electrochemical power as no other element and is
excellent at storing energy.
To eliminate carbon emissions and phase out fossil fuels, we
will need to electrify much of the world, build more wind
turbines, solar panels, and hydroelectric dams. However,
storing energy for short periods is crucial for renewable sources
of energy and for road vehicles without burning fossil fuels.
Lithium is a better option than other chemicals inside batteries,
and the universe has provided us with nothing better than
lithium.

The Salar de Atacama is the largest source of lithium in the

world, originating from a cauldron of Andean volcanoes and
hills. Water from the Andes flows down through deep gorges,
picking up minerals from the Chilean earth. The water
evaporates, leaving a concentrated liquid cocktail of salts,
including sodium chloride, potassium salts, and magnesium
salts. The salt lake has been imprisoned in this dark, salty
dungeon for millions of years, making it an essential source of
lithium.

Two companies mine lithium in the brine: Albemarle, which

started as a paper manufacturer and chemicals firm, and SQM,
which mines caliche and turns it into fertilisers elsewhere in the
Atacama. The process involves pumping out ancient brine from
under the salt crust, channeling it into gigantic ponds where the
water is evaporated away. The process takes many months,
with sodium chloride precipitating, potassium salts
precipitating, and magnesium salts being removed.

The main difference between the evaporation ponds turning

out Mediterranean salt and those in the Salar is its scale. SQM,
which now extracts most of the lithium, became one of the
world's biggest lithium producers almost by accident. Lithium
was an interesting by-product that played little more than a
passing role in civilization, but it has become an essential
coolant for molten salt reactors and breeding tritium for
mainstream nuclear fusion. It can also strengthen glass, play an
alloy in certain metals, and improve the look and wear of
ceramics.

Lithium's place as an essential substance in our lives is the

result of a long-standing challenge, similar to the rediscovery of
the recipe for cement or the invention of the solid state
semiconductor. The quest to create a strong, powerful, and
resilient battery was a century in the making.

Thomas Edison, a pioneer in the manufacture of concrete,

sought to improve the process of creating batteries. The use of
batteries to store energy was not new even when Edison began
working on them at the dawn of the twentieth century. The
earliest electrical devices were powered almost exclusively by
batteries, with their chemistry dating back to Alessandro Volta's
discovery of stacking layers of zinc and copper discs separated
by cardboard soaked in brine. Edison's first battery, a voltaic
cell, was the world's first.

Fifty years later, French physicist Gaston Planté developed the

first rechargeable battery using lead electrodes bathed in acid.
Edison experimented with various ingredients, eventually
settling on a complex mixture of nickel and iron, bathed in a
potassium hydroxide solution, packed into the best Swedish
steel. This led to the development of other battery chemistries,
including nickel-cadmium and nickel-metal hydride, which are
the basis for most consumer rechargeable batteries.

However, until the 1970s, no one was able to tame lithium

enough to put it into a battery. Batteries are a form of fuel,
albeit electrochemical rather than fossil. The first breakthrough
came in the 1970s at ExxonMobil, where Stan Whittingham
worked out how to shuttle lithium atoms from one electrode to
the other without causing much damage. This breakthrough
changed the battery world forever, as batteries now contain a
set of two skyscrapers, one office block and the other an
apartment block.

The concept of intercalation, which allows ions to travel across

from one electrode to another, is the basis of how batteries
work today. John B. Goodenough, an American physicist,
created the world's first rechargeable lithium battery in the late
1970s and early 1980s. He discovered the optimal recipe for the
cathode in a lithium-ion battery using lithium cobalt oxide, a
compound that improved safety and capacity.

Akira Yoshino, a Japanese researcher, perfected the other

ingredients by pairing Goodenough's lithium cobalt oxide
cathode with an anode made from graphite. This combination
allowed lithium ions to shuttle safely and smoothly between
the two electrodes as they charged and discharged the battery.
The final intellectual leap occurred when the materials were
pasted onto paper-thin sheets and coiling them together in a
metal canister, separated by a thin membrane.

The rechargeable battery began life as a spiral of metal

compressed into a canister, but it took another few years for
these batteries to find their way into consumers' hands. Sony, a
Japanese electronics firm, created the first production lithium-
ion battery in 1992, which was a third smaller and lighter than
standard nickel-metal hydride batteries yet carried even more
capacity.

Lithium-ion batteries gradually proliferated into various

devices, but it wasn't until the advent of smartphones that they
found their first true calling. Today, almost all smartphones run
on batteries derived from the discoveries of Whittingham,
Goodenough, and Yoshino. The trio was awarded the Nobel
Prize in Chemistry in 2019.

The reason why production always dominated by Asia was

because Japan had a burgeoning market for the manufacture of
electronic goods that needed higher-density batteries. As the
1990s and 2000s progressed, lithium-ion batteries became an
essential component of the electronic world, including laptops,
smartphones, and electric cars.

The Atacama Salt Lake in Chile is home to the world's largest

concentration of lithium brine, which is being extracted from
various sources around the world. The lithium triangle, a region
in South America, includes Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina.
Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni is the most famous, covering 4,650
square miles and having more lithium than the Atacama.
However, the Bolivian government has made little progress in
extracting lithium due to political reasons and the difficulty of
processing the brine.

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China also contains lithium brine,

which can be extracted from hard rock called spodumene.
Mining spodumene is similar to mining iron or copper, but it
requires blasting and processing. Australia is now the world's
biggest lithium producer, with nearly all of its spodumene
shipped to be processed in China.

Refining these rocks in China reduces Australia's responsibility

for all emissions produced when they are refined. Lithium
produced from hard rock is responsible for many multiples of
the greenhouse gas emissions and water usage of lithium
produced from the brines underneath the Salar in Chile. As the
world rushes to secure more lithium, these considerations are
taking a back seat. Mining companies are also exploring newer
sources of lithium, such as old quarries in England and a rock
discovered in Serbia.
Despite the potential success of some pilot programs, the real
question remains: what it will take to remove lithium from the
environment and money.

The environmental uproar surrounding lithium mining in the

Atacama Desert is primarily focused on water. Locals, activists,
and farmers argue that the miners pump freshwater out of the
ground to shift brine from one pond to another, which is
essential for the extraction of lithium. They point out that the
amount of water extracted is small compared to copper or the
amount pumped up by the local ecotourism community.
However, there are two separate issues: the water the miners
extract from the sides of the salt flat and the brine itself, the
prehistoric subterranean reservoir from which they get the
actual lithium.

The definition of 'water' encompasses the liquid glistening in

those pools on the salt flats. For many, including those who live
on its fringes, the answer is an emphatic yes. The brine has salt
in it, but the rest is water. Even as locals struggle to conserve
every droplet, what is evaporating from those vast ponds under
the beating desert sun is life-giving, thirst-quenching water.
Local Indigenous communities, who consider the Salar de
Atacama part of their God-given territory, argue that the brine
should be defined as part of their water resources. Miners and
their regulators argue that the brine behaves differently to
water, rarely mixing with it and sinking deeper into the ground
than freshwater. Hydrogeologists work at these mining
companies argue that something similar is happening under the
ground at the Salar, with the two liquids repelling each other,
creating separate layers, and behaving like very different
substances.
 17
Jelly Rolls

In the deserts of northern Nevada, a massive, L-shaped edifice

covered in solar panels is home to three tall double-sized
storeys of factory space. Two-thirds of the complex is devoted
to the manufacture of batteries, with millions of cells - finger-
sized metal cylinders - that will help electrify road transport.
The lithium extracted from beneath the Salar de Atacama is
transformed into something us can actually use. The real
challenge here is not merely to come up with the best
chemistry inside those batteries but to turn out enough of them
to make electric vehicles an affordable reality.

The Gigafactory in Nevada is where the ancient lithium brine

we saw in Chile is repurposed into something that can actually
change the world. As of 2020, more than a fifth of all our
greenhouse gas emissions could be traced back to fossil fuel
vehicles. There is no other single activity that has quite such a
bearing on our carbon footprint, which is why today there is
such an obsession with batteries and why places like this
building are quite important.

Tesla's Gigafactory 1 (also known as Gigafactory Nevada) is the

world's first gigafactory, producing more than a billion cells
within a few years of its construction. By the time you're
reading this, it will probably have surpassed 10 billion, a battery
for every man, woman, and child on the planet, all from this
hidden valley in the wilds of Nevada.

Gigafactory Nevada, located in Nevada, is a vast factory that

produces cells, battery packs, and electric motors for Tesla's
Fremont, California, factory. The factory is not just about
making cars, but also producing lithium-ion batteries. The
company's co-founders, Elon Musk and J.B. Straubel, believed
that the key to turning the car market on its head was creating
brilliant internal power management systems and software
features.

However, the most intriguing aspect of this factory is that every

cell made in Nevada is actually made by Panasonic, which
occupies about twothirds of the footprint. This is similar to how
Apple doesn't make its own computers or silicon chips, as
batteries used in electric vehicles (EVs) are often made by a few
other companies, which are far beneath the radar.

Making batteries at this level is an exceedingly challenging

business, even though the basic science is reasonably
straightforward. Cell manufacturing has something of the 1980s
about it, which is a close cousin of cassette-tape manufacturing.
Both involve pasting a chemical slurry on to thin sheets and
then winding them up, and this reel-to-reel manufacturing
works equally well for lithium-ion batteries.

The cells made at Gigafactory Nevada consist of three thin

sheets: the cathode, anode, and separator. These sheets are
tightly coiled and packed into a steel canister, creating a jelly
roll. These jelly rolls are filled with a lithium-based electrolyte
solution, sealed and closed with a steel cap.

Tesla's success in the battery industry can be attributed to its

choice of the right battery shape at the right time. Apple and
other manufacturers were shifting from cylindrical to pouch
and prismatic cells, leading to a glut of cheap cylindrical cells in
the marketplace. Tesla's cars still run on a tray of thousands of
tiny laptop batteries, many made in Gigafactory Nevada's 'dry
room'. The clean, sterile environment of the battery assembly
line is a waypoint in the journey of lithium from under the
ground and into your life.

On the other hand, at the Tesla end of the gigafactory, the vibe
is more chaotic and messy, with batteries and packs lying
around all over the place. The defining feature of the enormous
building is a solid wall that runs through the middle, keeping
the two companies hermetically detached. This East-meets-
West arrangement is increasingly the norm in battery
manufacture as European and American carmakers team up
with Japanese, Korean, and Chinese firms to help them produce
electric cars.

Tesla has talked about its plans to start manufacturing fatter

cylindrical batteries with higher energy density and lower costs
than the cells currently being supplied by Panasonic. However,
these so-called 'Coke can' batteries turn out to be very tricky to
manufacture, more prone to overheating and malfunctioning.
This dysfunctional relationship between Tesla and Panasonic
contributes to their success in the battery industry.
The shift from gasoline to electric power will challenge
conventional wisdom about car companies' roles and
responsibilities. Tesla, for example, is a tech company, but its
focus on hardware and software raises questions about its
future in the Material World. In an electric car, the battery is
the most valuable component, and China controls about 80% of
the world's battery production capacity. This dominance is not
only evident on the surface, but also in the manufacturing of
the materials that go into these batteries.

China's companies control about 80% of battery production and

the manufacture of the materials that go into these batteries.
Turning lithium and graphite into chemicals pure enough to
play the role of cathodes and anodes is a complicated business
that represents an entire economic sector of its own. A panoply
of cathode active materials firms supply these companies,
including Panasonic and CATL. The chemistry of these battery
materials makes an enormous difference to the cell's eventual
performance.

There are several recipes for cathode active materials, each

with their own trade-offs. However, the constant metal,
lithium, is essential for the electrochemical powers of
smartphones, laptops, and electric cars. As the world electrifies,
we will need batteries in unexpected places, such as homes,
solar power storage, and cookers with batteries that enable
them to boil water faster than conventional hobs.

This will increase the demand for the chemicals inside these
cells, which will be crucial for the development of electric
vehicles and the future of our economies and industrial fabric.

In the long run, there may be alternatives to lithium, such as

sodium-ion batteries, but sodium will never provide as much
weight-adjusted power and capacity as lithium. Scientists are
working on solid state batteries that eliminate the liquid
electrolyte needed for lithium-ion cells and some are working
on batteries that use air as part of the chemical reaction.
However, nearly all of these prototypes still leverage the special
electrochemical properties of one particular element: solid
state lithium batteries.

China has a head start in procuring these minerals, having done

deals with nations from South America to sub-Saharan Africa in
return for funding and investment. The European Union and
the US now have critical minerals policies aimed at securing
their supply. In America, old storage depots are being dusted
off and repurposed for the twenty-first-century race for
minerals. One of the sites of this stockpile is near the
Hawthorne army base in Nevada, which houses piles of critical
metals, a kind of elemental war chest ahead of a coming
industrial battle.

The US is thoroughly dependent on China, as it controls not

only the vast majority of battery production but also the vast
majority of battery material processing. This has helped cut
battery prices enormously, with prices falling 89% in inflation-
adjusted terms between 2010 and 2020. The US and its allies
could probably win the battle for control of the semiconductor
supply chain, but not so for batteries.

Although no one can presume to locate the entire supply chain

for batteries, semiconductors, advanced glass, or chemicals in a
single country, many of the world's leading nations promise to
do precisely that. There are echoes of the nineteenth century
when European countries colonized much of the world, seeking
rubber, copper, gold, and saltpetre.

Chapter review:
1. Where is the Gigafactory located?
- The Gigafactory is located in Nevada, USA.

2. What is produced at the Gigafactory?

- The Gigafactory produces cells, battery packs, and electric
motors for Tesla's vehicles.

3. Who manufactures the cells at the Gigafactory?

- Panasonic manufactures the cells at the Gigafactory.

4. What is the significance of batteries in the shift to electric

vehicles?
- Batteries are crucial to making electric vehicles affordable and
reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

5. What is the dominance of China in battery production?

- China controls about 80% of battery production and the
manufacturing of battery materials.
Key takeaways:

1. The Gigafactory in Nevada is a key player in the production of

batteries for electric vehicles.
2. Battery production is crucial to achieving affordable and
widespread adoption of electric vehicles.
3. China currently dominates the battery industry, controlling a
significant portion of production and materials.
4. The shift to electric power will challenge the roles and
responsibilities of traditional car companies.
5. The supply chain for batteries and battery materials is
becoming a strategic concern for many countries.

Inspirational quotes:

1. "The Gigafactory in Nevada is where the ancient lithium

brine we saw in Chile is repurposed into something that can
actually change the world." - Unknown
2. "The real challenge here is not merely to come up with the
best chemistry inside those batteries but to turn out enough of
them to make electric vehicles an affordable reality." -
Unknown
3. "In the long run, there may be alternatives to lithium, but
sodium will never provide as much weight-adjusted power and
capacity as lithium." - Unknown
4. "As the world electrifies, we will need batteries in
unexpected places, such as homes, solar power storage, and
cookers with batteries that enable them to boil water faster
than conventional hobs." - Unknown
5. "The US and its allies could probably win the battle for
control of the semiconductor supply chain, but not so for
batteries." - Unknown
 18
Unmanufacturing

In Brussels, visitors can explore the Royal Palace, where they

can see a bronze statue of a middle-aged man, Leopold II,
sitting on a horse. The statue, which may resemble a monk, is a
reminder of the brutal colonial legacy of Belgium. Leopold II,
who never visited Congo, was the Belgian king who ran Congo
as his personal fiefdom for over two decades. During his rule,
millions of people died in Congo due to the colonial overlords'
wealth. The statue has been defaced and graffitied, with his
hands painted blood red. After George Floyd's death in 2020,
the statue was defaced again, with the words "THIS MAN
KILLED 15M PEOPLE" sprayed on the plinth. Although the paint
was removed, Leopold remains disapproving and unrepentant.

The legacy of colonialism in the Material World is a stark

reminder of the brutality of resource exploitation. Countries
like Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, and Spain have been
involved in the "scramble for Africa," exploiting minerals and
trading them elsewhere. This process has occurred many times
before, from ancient Rome to the conquest of the Americas.
The occupied countries often suffered a destructive legacy that
often endured long after their overlords had left. The
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a vivid case study of this
resource curse, with low income per capita and life expectancy.
However, the DRC has a unique set of geological features,
including the former Katanga province, which has the richest
uranium reserves ever discovered anywhere in the world.
Cobalt, a crucial ingredient in steel alloys, is also found in the
DRC, with grades as high as 10 to 15%.

The Union Minière du HautKatanga, a company that controlled

and ran Congo's mining industry since 1906, was the central
vector in this appropriation. By the 1920s, it was the world's
biggest copper producer, cobalt miner, and nuclear fuel
provider. As many as a quarter of a million people were pressed
into working for the company, it was more like a political
institution than a company. When other African countries won
independence in the mid-20th century, the Union Minière
funded political parties and intelligence agencies trying to fight
the cause.

In 2022, the tooth of Congo's first post-independence leader,

Patrice Lumumba, was finally returned to members of his
family. The union Minière is said to have supplied the sulphuric
acid used to dissolve Lumumba's remains.

The Union Minière, a company that formerly mined for cobalt

in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has been renamed
Umicore in 2001. The company's plant in Hoboken, where it
processes metals like nickel, manganese, and lithium, is a
hotspot for lead pollution. Despite the company's past,
Umicore is a pioneer in a field that will depend on many other
products in the coming years.

Umicore's plant produces cathode active materials for

batteries, which are used in electric cars. The company is also a
pioneer in the 'circular economy', treating waste as a resource
and focusing on closing loops. Recycling is becoming a priority
in the coming era, with the end-of-life recycling rate for various
metals being between 70-90%.

Batteries are a useful example of this shift, as they contain

minerals we would prefer to mine less of in the future. The
DRC's harsh mining conditions and the global supply being
bound up in a single place make it ethical and strategic to find
alternative sources. Car manufacturers have become
increasingly focused on where their minerals come from, with
many signing up to the Global Battery Alliance scheme.

Lithium-ion cell production is a new industry that has the

potential to close some of the loops from the very beginning.
Mercury pollution from batteries chucked into landfills was a
serious problem in Japan in the 1980s, and some fear that lead
from a century of lead-acid batteries is continuing to contribute
to lead pollution around the world. With new batteries, there
might be a chance to do it differently, contributing to a greener
future.

Battery warranties on electric cars are expiring, requiring more

material for urban miners like Umicore. By 2030, old minerals
from batteries might only provide about a tenth of forecast
demand. However, this is a start, and the lithium in an
exhausted lithium-ion battery can be repurposed without
wasting it. Other recycling start-ups include Redwood
Materials, Li-Cycle, GEM, and CATL's recycling wing, Brunp.

Umicore has been doing this for longer than anyone else, and
its process involves pulling the battery pack apart and dropping
them into a blast furnace where they are smelted down into a
molten liquid. The molten liquid contains nickel, cobalt, and
copper, while the slag being drained away contains the lithium.
The energy stored up in the lithium helps fire the furnace and
melt the rest of the contents.

However, even a 95% rate doesn't add up to a truly circular

economy. In a hundred years, the battery in an electric car will
have less than 60% of original raw materials left, and the rest
will come from fresh mining. The future of mineral extraction
could look different to the past, with the bulk of materials
coming from old devices we no longer need.

Developed nations already have enough steel but not enough

batteries to electrify roads. Even optimistic projections of mine
discoveries and openings suggest that the world will not have
enough lithium to meet its needs by 2030. This shift towards
mining and refining lithium to seal into batteries that can reuse
and recycle may mean this time is different.
 Conclusion

The Material World is a fascinating exploration of the hidden

networks of substance and intelligence that make the world go
round. It explores the four great energy transitions of the
modern era, including the transformation of silicon and lithium
into semiconductors and batteries. These materials are not only
good at their jobs but also have the ability to turn complex
products into commonplace items. The smartphone in your
pocket and the computer are just the beginning of this
transformation. Silicon chips inside these devices are now
smaller than viruses and would be dwarfed by one of your red
blood cells.

These products are not only commonplace but often cheap.

Over time, glass was once a luxury, but its value has fallen
dramatically, making it cheaper and ubiquitous. The cost of
producing polyethylene has also decreased, with the cost per
megabyte falling from $5.2 million in 1960 to $46 in 2016.
The learning curve phenomenon suggests that the more
experience we have of making things, the better we get at
doing them and the lower the cost for producers and
consumers. This virtuous circle has been turning since the
Phoenicians accidentally made glass on a Mediterranean beach
and the men and women on the cliff at Boulby began to
manufacture salt. Theodore Wright, an American aeronautical
engineer, noticed that the cost of planes and cars was falling
year by year, demonstrating that specialising in discrete tasks
can lead to more work being done.

The division of labor and the slow accretion of experience have

led to a steady fall in prices and improvements in quality over
time. Wright's law, which states that every time production of
an item doubles, its cost falls by about 15%, has been successful
in explaining this trend. As the fruits of the Material World
become cheaper, they account for a smaller fraction of our
national expenditure, leading to their neglect in conventional
accounts of the economy.

Salt and sand are essential materials for various applications,

such as chlorine, microchips, solar panels, glass, vials, lenses,
and lasers. Concrete and steel are intertwined, with steel being
essential for building materials. Batteries rely on copper, and
lightbulbs are useless without glass. Transformers, the most
unappreciated innovation, are essential for electrical grids.

However, there is a darker side to this progress. While learning

and experience contributed to the improvement in making and
doing things, the material world also led to an energy
transition. From wood to coal, coal to oil, and finally to gas, the
energy density of these fuels increased with each step. While
the fuels became cleaner, more people consumed energy,
causing problems that threaten all. Governments aim to bring
carbon emissions down to zero in net terms by 2050, which
would help keep global warming below 2°C and possibly close
to 1.5°C.

This ambitious transition is challenging, as it is often seen as a

way to benefit manufacturers from cheaper, more energy-
dense fuels. However, the numbers are challenging, and many
people remain optimistic about the challenge due to the focus
on electricity.

Renewable energy sources like wind power are becoming more

abundant, but they are inherently intermittent and require
energy storage to keep grids running. Hydrogen, a new fuel,
could be a backup option, as it can be stored in pressurized
tanks and burned in power stations when the sun goes down.
This is an alternative to using coal or gas for fertilizers, as
hydrogen can also be used in other industries like the refinery
in Wesseling.

However, electrolysis to create hydrogen is inefficient, and

many large-scale industrial processes account for more of the
world's primary energy use than electricity generation.
Offshore wind turbines, made of glass, iron, copper, and oil, are
a potential solution to this issue. These structures are made of
heavy steel plates, towers, nacelles, and transition pieces, with
sails covered in fibreglass and carbon fiber.

Fossil fuels are essential for mass producing wind turbines and
solar panels, but they are being turned into products rather
than releasing them into the atmosphere. Building with fossil
fuels, rather than burning them, is the future of energy
production, and the scale of these projects is likely to be much
larger than previously imagined. By building with fossil fuels,
we can build a net-zero energy system that uses renewable
energy sources and reduces our dependence on fossil fuels.
The future of humankind may involve replacing most fossil fuels
with renewable alternatives, with oil and coal still needed for
some products and natural gas in smaller doses. Affordable
schemes to capture emissions will be built, and sub-sea
electricity cables will be laid down to create an international
grid. Green fuels and fertilizers will be developed, and refineries
will produce plastics and chemicals from starch and biological
waste. The world will be healthier, more productive, and have
fewer deaths from pollution.

Renewable energy is practically infinite, and it takes more work

to capture energy from the sun and wind. As carbon emissions
plateau and fall, the world could become less constrained by
energy, becoming more wealthy and productive. Super-
abundant energy opens up other tantalizing options, such as
extracting carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and
turning it into polyethylene, making synthetic fuels for
hypersonic planes, and sintering desert sand into rarer angular
varieties used in construction.

However, this vision of the future involves a momentous effort

and a lot of time and money. It requires extraordinary amounts
of raw materials, such as iron, concrete, plastics, fiberglass, and
copper. The first generation to benefit from this period of
sacrifice and investment might not be born until the middle of
this century, and there are three risks on the road ahead:
people may despair and give up, political resistance and public
apathy may stifle progress towards net zero, and a long-lived
shortfall of lithium or copper may lead to a lack of ingenuity in
obtaining these minerals.

The Material World, the interconnections between materials

and the world, is at risk of disintegration due to geopolitical
challenges. The world relies on these interconnections, with
materials like silicon chips and copper being mined and refined
in different parts of the world. When supply chains break down,
such as during war or trade battles, the Material World
becomes increasingly important, and countries around the
world may choose to survive without imports. The complexity
of product manufacture today makes it difficult for countries to
survive without imports.

When materials and energy are suddenly in short supply, things

don't go well, and the impact can be subtle or dramatic. For
example, the US and Europe's economic productivity plateaued
during the 1970s due to energy cuts, while the 2022 invasion of
Ukraine caused a gas shortage and forced Europe to rethink its
industrial heartlands. Decisions like this could help accelerate
the shift away from fossil fuels but are disruptive and
expensive.

Policymakers struggle to understand the current structure of

the global economy, and the last world war provided an
analogy for the US Department of Commerce's survey of the
silicon-chip supply chain. Maps of the Material World could
provide a counterpoint to GDP statistics, revealing the power of
dependency and dependency.
*****