Demand for neodymium-based magnets might outstrip provide within the coming decade. The longer-term prospects for the steel’s provide aren’t as dire, however a cautious have a look at neodymium’s potential future reveals lots of the challenges we’ll possible face throughout the provision chain for supplies within the coming century and past.
Peak panic
Earlier than we get into our materials future, it’s vital to level out simply how laborious it’s all the time been to make correct predictions of this type. Simply have a look at our steady theorizing concerning the provide of fossil fuels.
One model of the story, instructed continuously in economics courses, goes one thing like this: On condition that there’s a restricted provide of oil, sooner or later the world will run out of it. Earlier than then, we must always attain some most quantity of oil extraction, after which manufacturing will begin an irreversible decline. That prime level is called “peak oil.”
This concept has been traced again so far as the early 1900s, however probably the most well-known analyses got here from M. King Hubbert, who was a geologist at Shell. In a 1956 paper, Hubbert thought-about the entire quantity of oil (and different fossil fuels, like coal and pure gasoline) that geologists had recognized on the planet. From the estimated provide and the quantity the world had burned by, he predicted that oil manufacturing within the US would peak and start declining between 1965 and 1970. The height of world oil manufacturing, he predicted, would come a bit later, in 2000.
For some time, it appeared as if Hubbert was proper. US oil manufacturing elevated till 1970, when it reached a dramatic peak. It then declined for many years afterward, till about 2010. However then advances in drilling and fracking strategies unlocked hard-to-reach reserves. Oil manufacturing skyrocketed within the US by the 2010s, and as of 2023, the nation was producing extra oil than ever earlier than.
Peak-oil panic has lengthy outlived Hubbert, however each time economists and geologists have predicted that we’ve reached, or are about to achieve, the height of oil manufacturing, they’ve missed the mark (to this point).
