Storage is definitely a factor currently, but a lot of battery factories are scheduled to come online in the next few years and I expect the situation to improve considerably.
1) The Mining industry is incredible mature and there are no easy disruptive technologies on the horizon.
2) Even if there was the will to do it, new capacities take at least ten years to go live and he does not even see any relevant increased investment in the sector, never mind concrete projects.
He is a senior fellow for a think tank that claims as axiomatic that the popular conception of climate change as posing an existential threat to modern civilization is not supported by climate science or economics.
It comes as no surprise that he repeatedly makes presentations aimed to undercut transition to green energy.
Regardless of the truth of his position though he is clearly no expert on the mining industry.
Mills makes a number of statments so I'm unsure what "the same thing is" .. but as far as the two points raised in the GP comment go:
1) Rio Tinto has 'recently' improved throughput using semi autonomous Haulpaks, trains, plants [1] and 'proved' that this works to the order of some ~ 800 million tonne per annum. They also have well advanced plans for a very different type of mining operation for a USD $64 billion copper resource in the US .. should that go ahead.
2) New operations do typically take ten years to bring up to production from (say) exploration drilling to mine opening ... however that's very much the rythm of the domain, relatively steady demand and growth sees forward planners leaving new $360 million capital investments "uncommitted" as long as possible - when the last active resource tails off, a new one is bought online. There's no hard constraint that prevents them bought online faster other than fear of surplus crashing price - typically there are many potential green sites ready to be advanced through further exploration and into economic feasibily technical reports and intial prospectus raising (to meet mine plant costs). [2]
[1] https://www.riotinto.com/en/about/innovation/automation
[2] https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/met...
Also, when there is a demand the market finds a way.
These guys have been doomsaying about renewables for decades now and have been consistently wrong. https://zenmo.com/en/photovoltaic-growth-reality-versus-proj...
The world makes about 2 BILLION tonnes of steel a year. Storage made from materials like that will not cause significantly increased mining.