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Late last month, international automakers made headlines when pledging “to uphold ethical and socially responsible standards in their purchases of minerals for an expected boom in electric vehicle production.”

As Reuters reported, a group of 10 car manufacturers have formed an initiative to “jointly identify and address ethical, environmental, human and labor rights issues in raw materials sourcing.”

Members of the so-called “Drive Sustainability” partnership include Volkswagen, Toyota Motor Europe, Ford, Daimler, BMW, Honda, Jaguar Land Rover, as well as Scania and Volvo.  According to Stefan Crets of the CSR Europe business network, the alliance will “assess the risks posed by the top raw materials (such as mica, cobalt, rubber and leather) in the automotive sector (…)” which will “allow Drive Sustainability to identify the most impactful activities to pursue” as automakers tackle supply chain-related issues.

While a commitment to ethical and socially responsible standards is certainly welcome, followers of ARPN will understand that it is fraught with challenges and raises the question of where materials will come from.

Take Cobalt, for example: Roughly 62 percent of global refined Cobalt is sourced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where production conditions are commonly known to involve child labor and poor environmental standards.

Supply issues relating to other critical materials carmakers require – which include not only the above-referenced Mica, Cobalt, Rubber and Leather, but also Graphite and Lithium, as carmakers invest more in electric vehicle (EV) technology – are less well known but equally challenging.

Case in point:  Lithium Ion batteries, a key component of EV technology, use both naturally-mined flake Graphite as well as synthetic Graphite, in which the former accounts for roughly 60% of inputs, and the latter for roughly 40%. According to Simon Moores, Managing Director of Benchmark Minerals and member of the ARPN panel of experts, China – arguably not a leader in environmental standards – dominates natural flake mining at 62% of global production in 2016, followed by Brazil at 23%.  A similar scenario unfolds for refining, most of which also takes place in China.  China’s graphite mining standards have come under fire and were featured in an in-depth Washington Post piece last year.

Mica sourcing is another problematic area.  Used in car paint and coveted for its ability to reflect and refract light, Mica has raised red flags in the past for child labor issues in its supply chains. The U.S., which is 100% import dependent to meet its sheet Mica needs (but only 48% import dependent for scrap and flake Mica), is fortunate to import most of its supply from close ally Canada, but once again, a large portion of imports are sourced from China (32%), which also accounts for the majority of global Mica output, followed by India (13%).

Automakers are not the first ones to pledge ethically and socially responsible sourcing of materials – problems relating to Cobalt have previously prompted tech giants like Apple and Tesla to rethink their sourcing strategies, with Apple even going as far as announcing their goal of working towards a “closed-loop supply chain where products are built using only renewable resources or recycled material.”

In their quest to meet pledged goals, automakers should join forces with those who promote efforts to create policy frameworks that foster both recycling and the responsible mining of mineral resources we need today, and will increasingly rely on in the future.

As part of our latest feature series “Materials Science Profiles of Progress,” in the context of which we highlight positive steps towards the development of the comprehensive mineral resource strategy our country is so sorely lacking, we’re zeroing in on a promising public private partnership that recently celebrated its first birthday.

In October of last year, the Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Institute (CMI)  announced it would join forces with global mining and minerals company Rio Tinto to study new ways to capture Gateway Metals and Co-products that are increasingly becoming indispensable in clean power manufacturing.

As Ames Lab described the project last year,

“the new initiative aims to ensure that the United States fully leverages domestic mineral and metal resources necessary for global leadership in clean energy manufacturing.

The Rio Tinto-CMI research partnership will combine Rio Tinto’s operational expertise with CMI’s research capabilities, materials science expertise and computing power.  Focused on the efficient extraction of critical materials from the copper smelting process, the research will have three core work-streams:  

1.            Improving recovery rates of critical minerals and metals (rhenium, selenium, tellurium, scandium, etc.) from samples sourced from Rio Tinto’s operating Kennecott Copper Mine in Utah and the Resolution Copper project currently under regulatory review and permitting in Arizona.

2.            Exploring potential for increasing recovery rates of rare minerals and metals through processing waste tailings.

3.            Examining process improvements that would facilitate the blending of processed electronic waste (‘e-waste’) with copper concentrates to substantially increase the recovery of valuable metals such as gold, copper, silver, platinum, lithium and rare earths present in spent cellphones, computers and solar panels.”

CMI’s collaborations with private sector companies have already proven to be valuable tools in the effort to alleviate supply risks for critical raw materials:

According to a GAO report released last year, as of May 1, 2016 CMI “research projects had already resulted in 42 invention disclosures, 17 patent applications, and 1 licensed technology.” Moreover, two recent CMI technologies developed in the context of ongoing public-private partnerships have been named 2017 R&D 100 Award finalists. The award is presented annually “to the top 100 scientific innovations as selected by independent panel of more than 50 judges representing R&D leaders in a variety of fields.”

As those who have followed ARPN’s “Through the Gateway” informational campaign will know, while demand for Co-Product Metals is increasing, the United States not only has a significant degree of import dependency for many of them, but also for the respective Gateway Metal – all of which has implications for both the United States’ competitiveness and national security.

Against this backdrop, CMI’s research partnership with Rio Tinto is a promising endeavor, tying into the research hub’s overall mandate to address our nation’s critical mineral needs.

The following is a re-post from 2012: Today is American Thanksgiving – a celebration of the blessings afforded by our forefathers as they overcame adversity in a new land, laboring to obtain from the resources around them the necessities of life:  food, shelter, and warmth against winter’s cold. Since that first winter, the bounty of (…) more

We are thrilled to announce that Dr. Ned Mamula, a senior geoscientist with over 30 years of experience in energy and mineral research and resource policy issues, has joined the ARPN Panel of Issue Experts. Currently a scholar with the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, Mr. Mamula has spearheaded resource (…) more

Followers of ARPN are well aware that we have been calling out policy makers and other stakeholders for their inaction when it comes to working towards the development of a coherent, forward-looking and comprehensive mineral resource strategy – and we frequently point to missed opportunities to work towards this goal. While we stand by our (…) more

Another week, another great infographic by Visual Capitalist – this time on the “Secret Driver of the Battery Revolution” – Nickel. Long an important base metal because of its alloying capabilities, Nickel’s status as a Gateway Metal, yielding access to tech minerals like Cobalt, Palladium, Rhodium and Scandium – all of which are increasingly becoming (…) more

In a recent piece for The Hill, William Murray, federal energy policy manager, and Ned Mamula, associate fellow for the Washington, D.C.-based R Street Institute, lament that while policy makers and stakeholders are increasingly focusing on energy security issues, leaders are failing to pay “the same attention to a national security risk at least as (…) more

Visual Capitalist has put together another great infographic – this time one that shows that Boron is far more ubiquitous than one would think.  You may have come across them in your laundry room or your kids’ slime-making experiments in the form of Borax, but may not have heard much about them otherwise. However, with (…) more

In a detailed letter to Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Dr. John G. “Jerry” McGinn, Katie Sweeney, General Counsel of the National Mining Association, urges the Department of Defense to “acknowledge the importance of domestic metals and minerals to meet our defense needs” as the agency moves forward to implement Executive Order 13806, “Assessing (…) more

Earlier last month, the European Commission released an updated list of critical raw materials in the context of the European Union’s “Raw Materials Initiative” – a project put forward in 2008 to tackle challenges associated with raw material access.  The 2017 list is an update and expansion of the Commission’s 2014 list, identifying 27 raw (…) more