Does renewable energy guarantee energy security?

Renewable energy is not only an environmentally friendly option but using more renewable energy would also improve our energy security. Many energy experts would agree with the sentence above but not all of them. While all energy experts would agree that renewable energy is indeed much more environmentally friendly option compared to fossil fuels, not all would agree that using renewable energy would significantly improve our energy security, at least not given the current situation. Why is that?

Many renewable energy technologies require a lot of rare metals for their production, for instance several very rare metals are needed to make photovoltaic panels, while some rare earth magnets are needed to construct wind generators, fuel cells and high-capacity batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles.

Renewable energy still doesn't guarantee energy security.

United States, as well as many other industrialized nations are heavily dependent on foreign import for these rare metals. Gallium, indium, selenium, tellurium, and high purity silicon are all needed to make photovoltaic panels and they are all rare and expensive metals.

In the worst possible scenario this would mean that US would practically swap its dependence on foreign oil import with the foreign metal import in order to further develop its domestic renewable energy sector.

Such solution certainly wouldn't do much good in terms of improving domestic energy security because US, as well as most developed countries would depend upon importing these rare metals from China.

China is currently the dominant world supplier of those rare earth elements but since China has already started huge renewable energy expansion Chinese could soon have little or none of these metals to export which could even stop a further development of renewable energy technologies on global scale.

This is the main reason why global renewable energy sector desperately needs new sources of these precious but rare metals. Depending solely on China will soon not be enough, not with its rapid expansion of different renewable energy projects across the country.

Many countries will need to invest more in mining because this could soon become the only way to remain competitive on global renewable energy market. This means that domestic exploration and mining that are usually associated with fossil fuels could also become crucial part of renewable energy future for many countries of the world.