Stephen Cornford

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A work for radio, made for Radiophrenia 2026.  

As the narrative of energy transition gathers pace, the planet is being sounded for scoured for its resources. Building a circular economy requires a massive expansion of mining activity to extract the critical raw materials for so-called green technologies. To find these minerals, drill-core samples are extracted, ground penetrating radar surveys are undertaken, multispectral cameras are flown over landscapes, radiometry and conductivity measurements are taken. These instruments, and the energy infrastructures built from the metals they find are geotechnical: they measure the earth and exploit its materialities in their functions. For the last 5 years I have documented and collaborated with various earth scientists researching the circular economy and the minerals required to resource it. In this work for radio, we hear the technologies of prospecting, the laboratories of earth science, the infrastructures of renewable energy and the field equipment of geophysics.

Our guide during this geotechnical audio tour is Anthony McNulty, the chairperson of Protect Moylisha, who I met while following a scientific prospecting team searching for lithium-bearing pegmatites in European territories. Anthony is leading the community resistance to prevent the establishment of an open cast lithium mine near his home in County Wicklow, Ireland. Accompanied by his dog, Pepper, we strolled around the commercial forest where mining companies Ganfeng and Blackstairs are proposing to establish an open cast lithium mine. Anthony led me to its aquifer, its Bronze Age wedge tomb and the sites of boreholes left by prospecting teams. By his own account, Anthony would talk to the stones in the road, but if he did, they would learn a lot of the environmental and geopolitical trade-offs involved in energy transition.