Scaling from 3% to 10% wind/solar penetration globally would represent a 300% increase in energy supply and would be quite a remarkable accomplishment, indicating that transitions are slow and difficult and expensive.

Global capital spending on the green transition is currently approximately $800 billion per year in direct spending, but real numbers are higher because government mandates on utilities and energy companies create real economic costs that don't show up in direct spending figures.

Energy is functionally infinite in the universe; the challenge for humanity has always been designing machines that extract energy and convert it into useful forms at a price we can afford, and price includes economic, social, environmental, and geopolitical costs that all distill to money.

All machines wear out due to entropy (the most enduring law of physics), meaning continuous replacement is necessary; this applies to batteries, solar arrays, combustion turbines, and cars, creating perpetual need for new materials and mining.

The cost of minerals to produce a single EV (aluminum, steel, nickel, cobalt) was approximately $4,000 before metal price inflation, and has doubled to about $8,000, driven primarily by steel increases; aluminum, copper, and nickel costs are not expected to relax.

Over all of history, the ore grade (percentage of rock containing desired metal) for higher-value metals like copper, nickel, molybdenum, and magnesium has been declining; typical copper ore grades are 1%, meaning mining 1 ton of ore yields only 20 pounds of copper plus tons of overburden rock.

Over one century of IEA energy demand data shows that the absolute rate of percentage increase in world energy demand is declining, but it's declining over a much larger base; the percentage increases on larger numbers require more absolute energy input than percentage increases on small numbers.

The 2-5 year midterm underinvestment in all energy markets translates into bullish price impacts on energy commodities for a very long time, with duration determined more by politics than engineering capabilities.

Mineral mining is predominantly located in sub-Saharan Africa, South America, and Asian nations rather than Europe or North America; while trade is beneficial, the world should not be naive about the social, environmental, political, and economic challenges in expanding mining in these regions.

The Volkswagen study's diesel baseline is fixed by diesel chemistry but will not change; the EV carbon line will change based on grid carbon intensity, but larger modern batteries than modeled in the study mean actual manufacturing emissions are ~25 tons for typical Norwegian-driven EVs.