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The dark site of the energy transition

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Season 25Episode 14Aired 2025-12-22
The dark site of the energy transition

The dark site of the energy transition

French journalist Guillaume Pitron warns of the shadow side of the energy transition and digitization. Rare metals are essential for the production of electric vehicles, fighter jets, wind turbines and solar panels, as well as for our smartphones, computers, tablets and other everyday devices. But most people actually know very little about the way they are extracted, or about the ecological and geopolitical cost of this. Pitron wrote the book The Rare Metals War: The Dark Side of Clean Energy and Digital Technologies.