Book Review: "Material World" by Ed Conway, published WH Allen 2023

Material World is an outstanding book. It takes six materials: sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium and explores their role in the world economy. What is especially fascinating about this book is that the author takes both an historical approach and a forward look into the coming transition to a low carbon economy. The author is no scientist or engineer so whilst this can be frustrating at times it allows him to take a wider perspective connecting the past, present and future and considering many aspects of how these materials came to be so important. It is refreshing to share with him as he discovers more about his subject. This is a deeply researched book with an extensive bibliography and many interviews as the author travels the world to visit mines and quarries.

A major theme of the book is that this 'material world' of mines, oil refineries and chemical factories is mostly hidden from us and so we take it for granted. We don't need to think about it too much any more in the developed world, or so it seems. Very few people have ever seen an iron ore mine or considered the importance of sand or salt in the construction and chemical industries. This book demonstrates the ongoing importance of the 'real world' as opposed to the 'ethereal' world of smartphone apps with which we seem to be more comfortable. The author could have taken up this theme a bit more as it has a huge influence on the evolution of policy for the transition to net zero. This transition will involve a major change in material use, away from oil and gas but a significant increase in copper, lithium and other metals for use in power cables, batteries, generators, motors and transformers. It's only with a greater awareness of this change and what it will involve (many more mines, less polluting processes) that good policy can be made. 

Largely the book is not at all technical and so is very accessible. However, the author makes good use of statistics and the one I liked most was that in the developed world on average everyone has 15 tonnes of iron in their life, perhaps as a car and the steel in the bridges they drive over. By contrast the average person in China has only 7 tonnes of iron. This was a neat way of presenting the inequalities across the globe and, given that steel production generates 7-8% of the worlds greenhouse gases, a stark reminder of the big improvements in steel making technology required for economic development to happen in a carbon neutral way.   

My interest in this book comes partly from my own story as a former employee of ICI, one of the chemical companies the author writes about. A bit of an epiphany for me was when I was injured from a car accident and had to use public transport to get to work and then walk across ICI's then Wilton site. This involved going past Olefins 6 a 'cracker' in which naphtha was converted to ethylene. Well, that means that a component of crude oil was being heated in a furnace at over 800C to make an inflammable chemical that is a key part of everyday products such as polyester. I definitely felt fear going past this factory especially as occasionally gases would be flared off from a high chimney. The scale of the factory was alarming too. It had never dawned on me before the processes needed to make the 'stuff' we use in everyday life. It's nothing remotely straightforward or easy and I was left with the feeling that more people need to know about how it's done. This book fills that gap and more. It tells the story of some major technological developments, for example of lithium batteries, and explains the persistence and time required to get these technologies working. 

I did wince a bit when reading the Introduction as the author writes that "Britain does not have a gold-mining industry". That's wrong as Scotgold has a mine producing over 8,000oz per annum at its Cononish mine near Tyndrum. It's all the more surprising as later in the book the author describes his car journey to the Lochaline sand quarry when he would have passed right next to the gold mine. But he did say he travelled in bad weather with heavy rain, so maybe he wisely kept his eye on the road! The re-opening of the Cononish gold mine does illustrate a key trend due to developments in mining technology and changes in the economic environment: formerly un-economic mines can be reopened. This is happening more and more as countries try to build a more resilient supply chain for key metals involved with electric vehicles and batteries.

The chapter on oil was good and I enjoyed his description of his tour of the Wesseling refinery in Germany but I'm not convinced by his conclusions. He says that in the future "Wesseling will be producing plastics and chemicals from starch and biological waste rather than oil". Worldwide huge areas of forest have been felled for the purpose of growing crops such as palm oil and soyabeans in fragile ecosystems. To maintain the biodiversity of the planet it's not a good choice to accelerate that. Especially as companies such as Shell have already invested in producing natural gas from biological waste. By contrast many plastics such as polypropylene can be recycled and so a modest level of petrochemicals production would have a low climate impact. The author also overlooks the fact that many chemical products such as adhesives and engine oil have been produced for a long time from natural raw materials such as starch and palm oil. Perhaps the author could have included palm oil as one of his materials so as to tell a contrasting story to mineral extraction? It was also telling that the author describes the REFHYNE project to produce green hydrogen at the site as "an ambitious, untested plan - perhaps overambitious". This was dismissive and needed further discussion because if a successful transition to net-zero is to happen then many major technology changes such as this will have to be a success.

This book will give you valuable insights into the importance and role of materials in everyday life. Because many have become so cheap it's easy to ignore them and because of the complex transformations they undergo their role is obscured. It's a very timely book as the material world is being shaken up by the transition to a low carbon economy. It's very engaging and well written and it's impressive that a non-scientist has taken up such a technical subject with enthusiasm. I thoroughly recommend it.