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Irrespective of where you come down on the political spectrum, there is no denying that we find ourselves in the midst of a green energy transition. At ARPN, we have long made the case that the current push towards a lower-carbon future is not possible without mining, as green energy technology relies heavily on a score of critical metals and minerals.

Testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources chaired by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) this fall, Dr. Morgan Bazilian, Director of the Payne Institute and Professor of Public Policy, Colorado School of Mines told committee members:

“The future energy system will be far more mineral and metal-intensive than it is today. Many of these advanced technologies require minerals and metals with particular properties that have few to no current substitutes.

The opportunity for the mining industry is tremendous. An industry that has experienced enormous public pressure and critique, accompanied by offshoring production overseas, can now evolve into one fundamental to supporting a shift to a low-carbon and sustainable energy system based on domestic natural resources.”

Representing one of the most “energy-intensive industry” on the planet, mining companies are increasingly “recognizing their responsibility and trying to meet the increased expectations of consumers, society and governments,” as Fleming Voetman, VP for Public Affairs at the International Copper Association outlined earlier this year. Advances in technology, make it possible increasingly to restore a balance between mining and environmental protection, and the industry is working to meet the challenge.

Sustainably greening the future begins with responsible sourcing, an area where consumer electronics companies like Ericsson and mining companies like Rio Tinto have been overhauling their supply chain policies to ensure suppliers conform to certain environmental and social standards, and companies like consumer electronics maker Phillips and mining company Teck are supporting local communities.

The World Bank’s Climate-Smart Mining Initiative, a new program designed to help “resource-rich developing countries benefit from the increasing demand for minerals and metals, while ensuring the mining sector is managed in a way that minimizes the social, environmental and climate footprint” also ties into this context. As part of the initiative, earlier this year, the World Bank’s “Climate-Smart Mining Facility” – a multi-donor trust fund with the initial backing of the German government, as well as private sector companies Rio Tinto and Anglo American – was launched. The trust fund has the stated goal of “help[ing] resource-rich developing countries benefit from the increasing demand for minerals and metals, while ensuring the mining sector is managed in a way that minimizes the environmental and climate footprint,” and will support specific projects aimed at helping developing countries and emerging economies devise and implement “sustainable and responsible strategies and practices across the mineral value chain.”

But it does not end here. In an effort to offset some of the carbon costs of resource development, mining companies have started to incorporate renewable power sources into their operations. These include, for example:

• Rio Tinto looking at incorporating renewables and battery storage into its main mining sites in Australia, for example as part of its $1 billion upgrade for its Pilbara ore project

• Fortescue Metals having partnered with a power utility to – with the backing of the Australian federal government – help power its Pilbara operations with solar energy and battery storage

• Gold Fields planning to predominantly operate its Agnew gold mine in Western Australia (WA) using renewable energy by partnering with a global energy group and investing in an energy micro grid combining wind, solar, gas and battery storage

• Antofagasta partnering with a utility company to turn its Zaldívar mine into the first 100% renewable energy-powered Chilean mine with a mix of hydro, solar and wind power

• Rio Tinto looking to reduce its carbon footprint at its Kennecott Utah copper mine by as much as 65% through the purchase of renewable energy certificates

These are just a few examples, and we can expect more companies to follow suit in the coming decade.

The tech war between China and the United States over who will dominate the 21st Century Technology Age is heating up.

Earlier this week, China’s rare earth producers, who control the vast majority of global REE output, put out a statement declaring they are ready to “use their dominance of the industry as a weapon in the country’s year-long trade war with their customers in the United States.” 

Against the backdrop of these news, the recent announcement by a Florida startup regarding their successful extraction and separation of rare earth elements out of phosphoric acid becomes all the more meaningful and deserve a feature in our Materials Science Profiles of Progress series.

As part of this series, we highlight public-private partnerships that are fueling the materials science revolution which is transforming the ways in which we use and obtain metals and minerals and their work to develop practical solutions to critical minerals issues. 

Using a reusable nano-filtration system called Thor, Precision Periodic, a company based at the University of Central Florida’s Business Incubator Program, successfully extracted and separated REEs out of both phosphoric acid and the resulting waste.

Earlier in July, as part of a flurry of activity on the part of the U.S. government to spur domestic critical mineral — and especially REE — development, the Trump Administration in July took its own actions to respond to Chinese REE saber rattling and invoked the 69-year old Defense Production Act to spur domestic REE development.

We can expect to see more of these public-private partnerships take off as the 21st Century Tech Wars evolve.  The stakes are high, and resource supply dynamics are subject to enormous volatility, as the latest developments in the Cobalt realm show.

Hopefully our policy makers and other stakeholders will continue to press ahead with meaningful resource policy reforms. 

Against the backdrop of a growing awareness of our over-reliance on foreign mineral resources — one need to look no further than the current coverage of China’s threat to play the “rare earths card” — Penn State University is launching a Center for Critical Minerals. Under the auspices of the College of Earth and Mineral [...]

Evolving out of its 2017 report “The Growing Role of Minerals and Metals for a Low Carbon Future”, which found that the sought-after transition to a “low-carbon future will be significantly more mineral intensive than a business as usual scenario,” the World Bank developed its “Climate-Smart Mining” initiative, which ARPN discussed a few weeks ago. [...]

Followers of ARPN have long known that China is the big elephant in the room.  In a piece for the Wall Street Journal, Ezekiel Emanuel, Amy Gadsden and Scott Moore lament that while there is a growing  awareness that China may be the – in the words of Sec. of State Mike Pompeo “greatest challenge that [...]

“Thousands of years ago, humans discovered they could heat rocks to get metal, and it defined an epoch. Later, we refined iron into steel, and it changed the course of civilization. More recently, we turned petroleum into plastic, with all that implies. Whenever we create new materials that push the limits of what’s possible, we [...]

Speaking at the Bipartisan Policy Center’s American Energy Innovation Council last week, Energy Secretary Rick Perry announced the launch of a new research center on lithium battery recycling. The Battery Recycling R&D Center will focus on reclaiming and recycling “critical materials (e.g. cobalt and lithium) from lithium based battery technology used in consumer electronics, defense, energy [...]

In case you hadn’t noticed amidst holiday preparations, travel arrangements and the usual chaos of everyday life – 2019 is just around the corner, and with that, the time to reflect on the past twelve months has arrived. So here is ARPN’s recap of 2018: Where we began. Unlike previous years, we started 2018 with [...]

There’s a lot going on in the realm of critical minerals these days – and that does not only apply to policy, but also personnel changes. After five years of building and leading the Critical Materials Institute (CMI), a Department of Energy research hub under the auspices of Ames Laboratory, its Director Dr. Alex King [...]

The Critical Materials Institute (CMI), a Department of Energy research hub under the auspices of Ames Laboratory, is expanding its research on tech metals “as rapid growth in electric vehicles drives demand for lithium, cobalt.” According to a recent Ames Lab press release, the Institute will focus on maximizing the efficiency of processing, usage and [...]