Marielle Remillard

For every decarbonization pathway, the mix of technologies down to small design choices can sway our ability to achieve net zero.

And for businesses, what this necessarily means is that they're going to look for substitutes as they try and overcome these scarcities.

But those substitutes and those transformations can lead to more scarcity.

So.

We can do a thought experiment.

Say we had a scarcity in carbon fiber.

It's used to strengthen the wind turbine blades.

A logical substitute here is fiberglass.

The fiberglass market is quite large.

It could easily absorb additional demand coming from the wind sector.

But to make fiberglass, you need boron, and boron is becoming increasingly used throughout the energy transition.

It goes into rare earth magnets that are used in EVs and wind turbines.

It goes into boron steel in the automotive industry.

It goes into borosilicate glass in certain types of solar applications.

So as we increase demand for fiberglass, we may put strain on boron supplies.

So maybe we just increase the supplies.

Well, as it would turn out, there's only a few countries that mine boron.

Seventy-three percent of known reserves exist in Turkey.

And to open a new mine?

That's a 20-year process.