Decarbonization improves energy security for most countries, Stanford study finds

A pivot from fossil fuels to clean energy technologies by 2060 would improve energy security and reduce trade risks for most nations, according to an April 9 study in Nature Climate Change. 

Lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, and rare earth minerals are among the prized materials for countries and corporations racing to secure supplies for energy systems that do not add greenhouse gases to our atmosphere. Unlike fossil fuels, natural reserves of these materials are most concentrated in the Global South, shuffling the geopolitics of energy and global trade.

“Most people are focused on the new stuff that could be a problem, and not really considering the security benefits of moving away from fossil fuels,” said Steve Davis, the study’s senior author and a professor of Earth system science in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. “For most countries in a net-zero emissions system in the future, trading off the reduced dependence on imported fossil fuels and increased dependence on these new materials is actually a win for energy security.” 

Even for the United States, which has some of the world’s largest fossil fuel reserves but only a sliver of critical mineral deposits, decarbonization could boost energy security, especially if the country cultivates new trade partners, the researchers found. 

Since 2020, the U.S. has exported more crude oil and petroleum products than it has imported – but it still imports millions of barrels daily, mostly from Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Colombia. “Generating electricity with solar and wind will require more imports than using abundant gas and coal resources in the U.S., but reduced dependence on foreign oil will be a big advantage as transportation is electrified,” Davis said.

Oil-rich nations including Russia and Saudi Arabia are among the minority of countries that would see energy security decline in net-zero scenarios even with expanded trade networks.

Systematic analysis and a new trade risk index

To reach their conclusions, the scientists systematically analyzed the range of each country’s potential new vulnerabilities under decarbonization relative to those associated with continued reliance on fossil fuels. 

As a first step, lead author Jing Cheng, a postdoctoral scholar in Davis’s Sustainable Solutions Lab at Stanford, built a database of countries with reserves of oil, gas, coal, uranium, biofuels, and any of 16 materials that are critical for clean energy technologies, along with the trade flows of these resources between countries. 

The researchers calculated how much of these resources would be required to meet energy demand in each of 236 countries in 1,092 different scenarios for reaching net-zero carbon emissions globally by 2060. Modeled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, the scenarios span a broad range of possible changes to the energy mix across the globe and within individual countries. Some are more dependent on nuclear energy, for example, while others incorporate more solar or wind power. 

For the thousands of combinations of trade relationships and resource needs, the team estimated the level of risk in each country’s transportation and electricity sectors, and overall energy system. They quantified these risks using a new “trade risk index” based on the availability of domestic reserves, the share of demand for a given fuel or material met by imports, the economic value of the imports, and a measure of market concentration widely used to quantify energy security.

Countries benefit from deeper cuts to fossil fuel reliance

The researchers found that if all countries maintain their current networks, trade-related risks to energy security would decline on average by 19% in net-zero scenarios. If countries expand their networks and trade with all resource owners, then trade risks on average would fall by half. 

Reducing the need for imported virgin materials – whether by making technologies last longer, ramping up recycling, or developing less material-intensive designs – is another way for mineral-poor countries to minimize trade risks while eliminating fossil fuels. According to the study, trade risks fall on average by 17% – and by more than 50% for the U.S. – with a quadrupling of today’s meager recycling rates for critical minerals such as lithium, nickel, and indium.

The authors found a U.S. energy mix made up of approximately 70-75% renewables like solar, wind, and biomass; 15-20% fossil fuels; and 10% nuclear would minimize the country’s trade risks across all the modeled scenarios for reaching net-zero by 2060, although other mixes could offer advantages such as lower costs or less air pollution. Today, the U.S. relies on fossil fuels for about 83% of its energy needs, with nuclear energy and renewables providing roughly equal shares of the remainder.

Compared to solar power, wind stands to deliver greater energy security benefits for the U.S. – at least, with the trade relationships that existed at the time of the study. The materials needed to build turbines in recent years have come from a relatively large number of trade partners, Cheng explained. “However, advancing solar photovoltaic manufacturing technologies with more widely available, lower-grade silicon sources, or expanding trade networks with countries rich in silicon and manganese reserves, could further significantly bolster the nation’s energy security,” she said.

The key, as ever, is to avoid putting all the eggs in one basket. “If you’re importing a large fraction of what you need, that’s a vulnerability. If it’s all from a single other party, there’s a lot of risk that some natural disaster or geopolitical conflict could disrupt that supply,” Davis said. “You want to diversify imports among as many sources as you can.”

The security benefits of diversification have limits, however. The study results indicate that keeping fossil fuels in the mix generally drags down nations’ energy security. “It is ultimately encouraging that most countries’ trade risks decrease in net-zero scenarios,” the authors conclude, “and that the greatest improvements often occur in the countries which most drastically reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.”

Co-authors of the study include Karan Bhuwalka, a research engineer in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability’s Department of Energy Science & Engineering. Bhuwalka is also a staff scientist at the STEER program, a partnership between the SLAC-Stanford Battery Center and the Precourt Institute for Energy that is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. 

Co-author Ken Caldeira is a senior staff scientist emeritus at the Carnegie Institution for Science who is also affiliated with Gates Ventures and a visiting scholar in Davis’s research group in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability’s Department of Earth System Science. Additional co-authors are affiliated with Tsinghua University, Beijing Normal University, and Peking University in Beijing, China.

Co-authors Dan Tong and Qiang Zhang of Tsinghua University were funded by a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China.