Addressing the geological realities and challenges to facilitate the energy transition from fossil fuels
The energy transition from conventional fossil fuels to sustainable resources is attracting special attention, due to the high world-wide demand for practical tools to address climate change. The impacts of the energy transition are felt in a variety of sectors that go beyond traditional geoscience disciplines and impact world-wide economies and individuals. Natural resources play a crucial role in addressing energy transition challenges, including their availability and stable supply. Sustainable development of transformational technologies for natural resources systems contribute to limiting the degradation of the environment while facilitating the development of low-carbon economies and societies.
To achieve the energy transition goals, natural resources such as rare earth elements, critical metals, and new economy minerals play crucial roles. Therefore, there is a growing need to explore for new resources, efficiently use and characterize the known ones, and investigate better methods for processing and recovering those minerals and elements. New and innovative techniques in geological storage and geothermal exploitation are also needed to achieve a low-carbon world.
In this Special Issue, we welcome contributions that investigate the geological occurrence of natural resources that are used to achieve energy transition goals such as rare earth elements, critical metals, and new economy minerals. We welcome contributions that include petrology, geochemistry, geochronology, and mineralization styles of those natural resources. Studies on combining numerical methods with experimental observations are especially welcome. Key topics include, but are not limited, to the following:
- Theme 1: Geothermal energy exploitation
- Theme 2: Geologic storage of greenhouse gasses
- Theme 3: Petrology and characterization of rare earth elements, critical metals, and new economy minerals
- Theme 4: Recent advances in numerical and experimental methods for natural resources development
- Theme 5: How critical minerals are associated with plate boundaries or particular geological settings
