Listen free for 30 days

  • Power Metal

  • The Race for the Resources That Will Shape the Future
  • Written by: Vince Beiser
  • Narrated by: Vince Beiser
  • Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo + applicable taxes after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Power Metal

Written by: Vince Beiser
Narrated by: Vince Beiser
Pre-order: Try for $0.00

$14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Pre-order Now for $22.81

Pre-order Now for $22.81

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Tax where applicable.

Publisher's Summary

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
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What the critics say

"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

What listeners say about Power Metal

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.