Power Metal

The Race for the Resources That Will Shape the Future

By: Vince Beiser

Narrated by: Vince Beiser

The powerful ways the metals we need to fuel technology and energy are spawning environmental havoc, political upheaval, and rising violence—and how we can do better.

An Australian millionaire’s plan to mine the ocean floor. Nigerian garbage pickers risking their lives to salvage e-waste. A Bill Gates-backed entrepreneur harnessing AI to find metals in the Arctic.

These people and millions more are part of the intensifying competition to find and extract the minerals essential for two crucial technologies: the internet and renewable energy. In Power Metal, Vince Beiser explores the Achilles’ heel of “green power” and digital technology–that manufacturing computers, cell phones, electric cars, and other technologies demand skyrocketing amounts of lithium, copper, cobalt, and other materials. Around the world, businesses and governments are scrambling for new places and new ways to get those metals, at enormous cost to people and the planet.

Beiser crisscrossed the world to talk to the people involved and report on the damage this race is inflicting, the ways it could get worse, and how we can minimize the damage. Power Metal is a compelling glimpse into this disturbing yet potentially promising new world.

©2024 Vince Beiser (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Unflinching. . .Beiser urges us to rethink our understanding of sustainability." —Scientific American

“Journalist [Vince] Beiser enumerates the precious metals comprising the electronics we consume with near-thoughtless abandon…[but] counters the darkness with bright stories of entrepreneurs salvaging the metals, giving old batteries repurposed afterlives,and repairing electronic devices to extend their lives…[This is] a book that alarms even as it leads us to solutions.”—Booklist

“Power Metal is a necessary, illuminating, and often shocking read. Fast-paced, fascinating, and alive with colorful characters, it’s a whirlwind tour of the epochal energy transition currently underway as we enter what Vince Beiser so aptly calls the ‘electro-digital age.’” —John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather

The scope and scale of the metal issue

That the author travelled as much as he did in pursuit of the story speaks to his passion for pursuit of the full story.

Fascinating, dire, hopeful

The author successfully navigates the line between "we are in the midst of an environmental catastrophe of our own making" and "here are practical solutions real people are currently using to fix this problem." The descriptions of different metals, how they are mined and used, and the impacts, is fascinating. Highly recommend.

Excellent book by Vince Beiser

Instant classic from Vince Beiser. A true breath of fresh air: well-written, nicely balanced between breadth and depth. Mr. Beiser takes the reader on a multi-leg journey from the cobalt mines of the Congo to the lithium pools of the Atacama salt flats.

What makes this book so good is Mr. Beiser's ability to deftly contextualize each level of the process, from the materials themselves to their economic impact to their environmental and human costs.

This is an important addition to the pantheon of contemporary materials science non-fiction, joining the likes of The War Below and Cobalt Red.

Another fantastic feature of this book, one that is far too often lacking in similar publications, is the set of tangible policy recommendations set forth by Mr. Beiser in the last two chapters.

This is also the only area of the book where Mr. Beiser does, in my opinion, become slightly myopic--though, again--with a more panoptic view than most.

Misleading title

I purchased this book in the hopes of learning more about the metals and their use. However, this book doesn’t contain much about that. It should be something along the lines of «Mining - and how it is destroying the life for everyone and everything close to one»

Don’t missunderstand. The reader reads well, the content is somewhat interesting, but I don’t know which rock you have lived under if you think the working conditions in a Congolese mine is fine. So not really much new information for those that have paid attention

So the book if fine if you want to dig deeper into the problematic sides of metals. If you on the other hand wants to learn about metals and their use or importance; look elsewhere

Nice Outline for Dangers and Opportunities

Details about recycling process and opportunities were good. Balance opportunities are better discussed in a follow up work rather than by 15 mins at end.