A rejection of that wisdom is on display in the reaction to news that a federal land exchange package is included in the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act, which passed the House last week and is now awaiting Senate action. The package opens approximately 100,000 square acres of federal lands to resource development, while receiving more than 240,000 new acres into the federal wilderness reserve. In the effort to balance competing public goods – economic development, national security, and environmental conservation – it sounds like the kind of compromise people are anxious to see from the U.S. Congress.

Not so – at least for some officials who, unlike members of Congress, feel no such need to balance public goods. Witness Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, whose department includes the Bureau of Land Management — which, under the proposed package, will receive those new acres into the federal lands reserve – who pronounces herself “deeply disappointed” with the inclusion of one element in the package: the Arizona copper land exchange. That provision transfers more than 5,000 square acres to the federal government in exchange for 2,400 acres known to contain the significant copper reserves, an amount equal to less than one-tenth of one percent of Arizona’s 3 million square acre Tonto National Forest. As for Secretary Jewell, this is the same person who, as Secretary-designate, at her 2013 Senate confirmation hearing, embraced the concept of balance in public land policy, stating: “I have had that kind of balanced perspective in my career and would bring it to the role.”

That, as they say, was then.

Critics also claim the Arizona compromise ignores the concerns of local Native American tribes. But if you dig deeper – and by deeper, I mean if you Google the bill — the legislative language tells a different story. In fact, there are no less than four provisions that respond to the concerns of area tribes:

• Government-to-government consultations with the tribes;
• Special protection for an area called Apache Leap, and its withdrawal from any proposed mine plan;
• Provisions for safe access to the Oak Flat area after the land exchange;
• And a full NEPA review before the land title changes hands.

Where does this information come from? It’s in the published bill, as posted online. So much for the meme that the package is being slipped into the defense bill in the dead of night.

The same is true of the “last-minute” meme that plays so well at the close of any Congress. Contrary to this claim, the outlines of the Arizona land exchange have been discussed, debated and subject to Congressional hearings for years.

Then there’s the bipartisan, bicameral nature of the compromise. The package was shaped in the House by Republican Paul Gosar and Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick. In the Senate, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) negotiated the provisions responding to tribal issues in consultation with Senator Jon Tester and his Democratic colleagues.

And finally, there’s the claim that the land exchange package is being attached to the must-pass 2015 National Defense Authorization Act – in Hill-speak, the inclusion of a measure that’s “non-germane.”

And yet, copper is the second most widely utilized material in defense weapons platforms, and a Department of Defense study has found that a copper shortfall has already resulted in a “significant weapon system production delay.” If Congress authorizes and funds defense weapons systems, isn’t it within their power to facilitate production of the materials that allow those weapons systems to function?

Is the package perfect? What Congressional compromise ever is? In Congress as in life, you can’t always get what you want, but as Mick Jagger may have learned at the London School of Economics and Political Science, sometimes, “you get what you need.”

The post Resources in the Balance: The Concept of Compromise and the NDAA Land Exchange appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Analyzing breaking legislation is a tricky business, and some have characterized the land exchange package as a federal land grab, appropriating even more acres into the already-massive federal wilderness inventory. And if that’s all there was to the package, there would be little reason to support it.

But that’s not the full story. The new lands added to the federal wilderness register are part of a balanced agreement that frees up current federal lands for resource development — providing new and needed domestic sources of oil, natural gas, coal, timber and key metals like copper.

As such, the land package is an opportunity to break the logjam that has characterized much of the 113th Congress, and to do so in a way that encourages the development of key materials critical to a revival of America’s manufacturing might.

Including such a package in the NDAA is well within the purview of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, as land exchanges have been a fixture in NDAA’s for at least 25 years, across both Republican and Democratic presidencies.

And in the case of copper, where the U.S. currently imports 600,000 metric tons a year, the exchange can facilitate a new source of domestic supply sufficient to nearly close the copper gap. That’s a legitimate national security objective, as the lack of copper and two of its by-product metals – molybdenum and tellurium – have, as the National Defense Stockpile Requirements Report notes, already caused significant defense weapons system delays.

Nor is this an example of last-minute special interest legislation being tossed into a must-pass bill. Senator Murkowski and Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle have been crafting this compromise for the better part of two years. This isn’t a last-minute ornament being hung on the Congressional Christmas Tree; the NDAA is the culmination of this process.

The NDAA land exchange package is a solid example of sound policy — a balanced package with bipartisan support that will generate jobs and GDP while advancing critical national security interests.

The post Economic Development in the Balance: the Land Exchange Package in the NDAA appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

The NMA report notes what it terms

“…a gross structural mismatch between domestic mineral supply and demand. Although the United States is a major mining country, it enjoys a much higher global ranking as a manufacturer than it does as a miner.”

The mismatch has emerged in less than a generation:

“In 1990, the United States was the world’s largest producer of metallic and industrial minerals. By 2013, the country had fallen to seventh place in the global ranking, with output accounting for less than 5 percent of the value of global mined output. China, Australia, Brazil, Russia, Chile and South Africa all ranked ahead of the United States.”

In a world where there is more and more demand for metals and minerals, the U.S. has done less and less mining, proportionate to other mining nations. Consider these data-points from the NMA study:

• Since 2000, mining of iron ore globally has increased 101%. U.S. iron ore production has decreased by 19%.
• Silver production worldwide is up 41%; in the U.S. it is down 45%.
• Global copper production is up 36%; in the U.S., it is down 15%.
• Global zinc production is up 55%, but down in the U.S. by 11%.

What’s changed in the United States to account for this resource reversal? After all, NMA notes there is much to commend U.S. mineral extraction:

“Relative to their global peers, miners in the United States are highly efficient, often exemplifying best practices with regard to productivity, sustainability and safety. The United States remains highly prospective, from a geological point of view, with abundant, diverse mineral resources of high quality.”

And yet,

“While the country’s mining sector is ideally positioned to support manufacturers’ need for greater sustainability and shorter supply chains in the production process, an outdated, inefficient permitting system presents a barrier to American companies’ access to the minerals they need and thus to economic competitiveness.”

“As a consequence of its inefficient permitting system, it takes on average seven to ten years to secure the permits needed to commence operations. To put that into perspective, in Canada and Australia, countries with similarly stringent environmental regulations, the waiting period is two years.”

For ARPN followers interested in the link between mining and manufacturing, the new NMA report LINK is required reading. America’s economic competitiveness hangs in the balance.

The post Mines to Market: The National Mining Association’s New Report on the Connections Between Mining and Manufacturing appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

That question and more is answered in a new report co-authored by ARPN Expert Simon Moores LINK and his colleagues at Industrial Minerals Data.

As Simon writes:

“Does Elon Musk really know where Tesla Motors’ battery grade graphite comes from?

The chances are no, and neither do the sellers as the spotlight intensifies on the sourcing of critical minerals and metals that will fuel the new age battery economy

Tesla Motors’ CEO Elon Musk was forced to defend the company’s sourcing of graphite used in its electric vehicle (EV) batteries following a Bloomberg article in February linking the company to controversial graphite mining in China.

The link between Tesla – the US’ most high profile electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer – and environmentally damaging practices as far upstream as the mine seems harsh but is becoming unavoidable for large public companies.

In reaction to the story, Musk took to Twitter to explain that the company’s graphite was sourced in Japan and was mined on a “clean way”. But that didn’t really tell the whole story.

In fact, Japan does not operate any graphite mines. It sources all of its product from China.”

Read the full article @ data.indmin.com/Tesla

The post Does Elon Musk Know Where His Giga-Metals Will Come From? appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

How the EPA Sticks Miners With a Motherlode of Regulation
The years-long wait for mining permits in the U.S. is the worst in the world.

On Dec. 13, the proposed Rosemont Copper project in southwestern Arizona—which would produce about one-tenth of all the copper in the U.S. every year—got the green light from the U.S. Forest Service to begin operations.

It was a long time coming—more than seven years after the company presented its mine plan and began the National Environmental Policy Act review process. Then again, since the average time to get a mine permitted in the U.S. is a worst-in-the-world seven-to-10 years, Rosemont’s long wait isn’t the exception. It’s the rule.

The Forest Service’s approval should be great news for our high-tech economy, powered by copper in, for instance, electric vehicles, smart homes and smartphones (about 10% of an average phone’s weight is copper). But that decision is overshadowed by the last remaining—and most formidable—governmental hurdle, the Environmental Protection Agency, the guardian of Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. Having run the gauntlet of state and local permitting requirements, Rosemont now faces two potentially fatal challenges from the EPA in the final stages of review: either death by a thousand pesky comments or an outright veto.

In the bureaucratic equivalent of sticky riot foam—a substance meant to slow and stop people on the street—every few months, a couple of dozen pages furl out from the EPA to Rosemont’s managers. Past communications have included the suggestion that the project might jeopardize the leopard frog, or the Gila topminnow, or the water umbrel. One official worry was that the project might impede the opportunity for people to canoe in a desert region where summer temperatures reach 118 degrees.

The EPA churns out concerns about potential impacts on 18 miles of streams and threats to the “water quality” of the Davidson Canyon Wash, a single gulch—filled intermittently by rain—in a state with 39,039 rivers and streams. The agency also lets Rosemont know it will be looking at the impacts of mining on air quality—but only after a preliminary process to determine which air-quality standard should apply. Each governmental query receives a Rosemont reply in the never-ending race toward a moving finish line.

Even this snail’s pace doesn’t satisfy antimining advocates. Many environmentalists and anticapitalists (and many critics are both) would like to see the EPA simply short-circuit the review process and veto the mine proposal. After all, the agency has used Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act to shut down a mine—famously, the Spruce Mine in West Virginia—even after it had received its operating permit.

For the most vocal environmental groups, the EPA is perfectly suited as judge and jury. Jennifer Krill, the director of Earthworks, confirmed in congressional testimony earlier this year that her group has never supported or endorsed a single U.S. mine. The threat of an EPA Clean Water Act veto of various projects hangs over more than $220 billion in economic development, ranging from mines to agriculture and infrastructure projects.

Sadly for communities around the proposed mine—about 30 miles southwest of Tucson in an area where unemployment is still stubbornly close to 10%—every day of delay means a longer wait for much-needed jobs, which would funnel much-needed revenue into local tax coffers. Mothers and fathers struggling to support their families may feel endangered, but unlike the leopard frog, they’re not on a government list.

The nation, meanwhile, is losing the output of a mine with a projected yearly output of more than 100,000 metric tons. That’s Arizona copper the U.S. wouldn’t need to import from abroad, feeding a negative balance of trade, and providing political and economic leverage to nations that supply the metal we fail to mine ourselves.

If we mine fewer metals, won’t manufacturing jobs leave the U.S. and go where the metals are? If we don’t mine in the U.S.—with arguably the world’s most stringent oversight, environmental and safety standards—won’t Americans end up importing products made with metals mined in other places under less-stringent standards (if any), leading to far more damage to the environment and the health of the miners? All of these questions are critical to determining whether a mine serves the public good. Surely they must matter to the nation as much as a topminnow does to the EPA.

Finally, did Congress pass the National Environmental Policy Act to put in place a means of balancing the benefits of resource extraction with competing public goods? Or did it set up an endless bureaucratic gauntlet designed to delay, derail or economically exhaust mine developers?

Seven and a half years on, Rosemont Copper is still waiting for an answer.

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Now that Ukraine, formerly known as the “breadbasket of the Soviet Union,” has lost Crimea to the Russian Federation as Russian forces mass along its border, it’s time to wonder about the fate of another former republic of the USSR: neighboring Belarus – especially given Belarus’ position as a global leader in potash production.

What will happen if Belarus is next on Vladimir Putin’s list? Everyone who consumes food has a stake in the outcome.

The post Ukraine, Food Security, and Russia’s Imperial Reset appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Chairman Broun, Ranking Member Maffei, Members of the Committee: Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Daniel McGroarty, and I am president of the American Resources Policy Network, an experts-led organization dedicated to exploring and informing the American public and American policy-makers of the importance of U.S. resource development – and the dangers of unnecessary foreign resource dependence.

The Pebble deposit, the subject of the EPA assessment, is the largest potential copper mine in the United States. America’s lack of this critical metal has most notably been acknowledged in a recent Defense Department report as causing “a significant weapon system production delay for DoD.” Pebble is also potentially a multi-metal mine, with prospects beyond copper for the recovery of Molybdenum — used in alloy form in gun-barrels of many types, Rhenium — used in high-performance jet fighters, and Selenium and Tellurium, both of which are used in photovoltaic solar panels that could not only lead the Green Revolution – but provide a portable power source for U.S. troops in the field.

As a matter of sound public policy, Pebble should be treated no differently than any other potential mineral resources project under the well-established environmental permitting process. But even before the permitting process has begun, Pebble has been subject to inconsistent and unprecedented treatment by the EPA — creating a troubling trend in public policy that has strategic implications. Given these factors, this Committee is right to examine the EPA’s actions in greater detail.

American permitting needs to be predictable — not as to outcome, but in terms of process — in order to encourage investment in American resources. The hallmark of that process – in terms of environmental permitting and public participation — is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Yet, the very act of EPA conducting the Bristol Bay Watershed Study (hereinafter, the “Watershed Study”) — prior to Pebble submitting a mine plan or seeking a single permit — creates a chilling effect on investment in U.S. resource extraction. The likelihood that mine opponents are gearing up to use the Watershed Study as a reason to trigger a pre-emptive permit denial (before NEPA even begins) could deprive the U.S. of reliable sources of critical metals, responsibly extracted under American regulations.

Every issue raised to justify the Watershed Study could easily and amply be raised and reviewed within the existing permitting process, with input from experts and the community. Put another way, there is no issue I see that requires the construction of a wholly new “pre-permitting process,” with the power to prevent a proposed project from even having the opportunity to be judged within the NEPA process.

An unprecedented watershed assessment of a hypothetical mine — and even the minor contemplation of a preemptive permit veto — warrants an extremely high bar for the scientific method, the validity of source material, and the impartiality that must be met by this study.

On all those counts, Mr. Chairman, we believe this assessment fails and falls short.

At this point, two caveats: I am a policy analyst, not a scientist. The substantive points I will raise are detailed by experts, but should give all non-scientists reason for pause.

So far, the most substantive review of one of the key studies in the Watershed Assessment – the EARTHWORKS-funded study, “Kuipers Maest, 2006, “Comparison of Predicted and Actual Water Quality at Hardrock Mines” led by Dr. Ann Maest (hereinafter, the “Kuipers Maest 2006 report”) — is an analysis conducted by global water and environmental management firm Schlumberger, on behalf of the Northwest Mining Association, and submitted to the EPA as part of NWMA’s Watershed Study comments. As the Schlumberger reports says, one of the fundamental tenets of scientific research is that its findings can be replicated by others, provided they have access to the data set. Schlumberger states that it cannot replicate the hydrological data presented in the Kuipers Maest 2006 report relied on by EPA.

Second, Schlumberger finds what I have elsewhere noted as “backward bias” inherent in any hypothetical construct. Schlumberger notes that the Kuipers Maest 2006 report draws on a “preponderance” of case studies taken from mines that operated before the modern regulatory era.

If the “data set” consists of a preponderance of mines permitted and operated before the modern era of regulatory limits – is it any surprise that these mines fell short of the modern limits?

What does the failure of past mines have to do with a proposed mine –using current and perhaps even cutting-edge processes – and whether it will meet modern requirements?

And how does it constitute “sound science” to argue against a proposed mine based on what happened at other mines operated to other standards 20, 30 or 40 years ago?

Would we use such a backwards-biased yardstick to judge the safety of a new airplane? A new car? A new medicine?

Is it “sound science” to say that poor performance in the past proves that we cannot achieve superior performance now and in the future?
Now I will turn from the substance to sourcing — serious questions concerning the impartiality of experts relied upon by the EPA.

My organization expressed these concerns in a letter sent to members of the House, Senate and administrators at EPA, which I include in my written testimony but will summarize here.

Once again, the subject of concern is work done by Dr. Ann Maest and Stratus Consulting.

Many of us saw the coverage of the Chevron environmental case in Ecuador, where plaintiffs were awarded an $18 billion dollar judgment against the oil company. This judgment has been the subject of extensive federal litigation in U.S. courts, where, among other charges, Chevron brought racketeering claims against members of the plaintiff’s team – including against Dr. Maest and Stratus. At the heart of these suits were claims that the plaintiff’s litigation team manipulated data to show contamination where no data existed and created a report written by the plaintiff’s team, including Maest and Stratus, that was then passed off as being written by a court-appointed independent consultant.

How do we know this? For what must have been public relations reasons, the plaintiff’s team actually invited a film crew to document the behind-the-scenes events in a major environmental lawsuit for a favorable documentary. This documentary also generated hours of tape on the cutting-room floor that was uncovered during Chevron’s discovery process.

Here is one such clip:

[VIDEO]

“Facts do not exist. Facts are created.” That’s the lawyer who directed the supposedly independent research. The woman chuckling in the seat next to him is Dr. Ann Maest: the scientist who conducted the Ecuador study, and later disavowed its findings…

…The very same scientist whose work is cited multiple times in the Bristol Bay Watershed Study.

And while the Chevron litigation is still ongoing, Maest and Stratus settled claims against them by submitting sworn statements that “renounced all of the scientific findings” in their report.

Stratus and Maest have numerous contracts with EPA and Maest’s work is cited 11 times in the Watershed Study – seven of those in reference to the Stratus consulting firm.

EPA — apparently understanding the controversy surrounding this work — ordered a quasi-peer review of the Kuipers Maest 2006 report as part of addendum to the second draft of the Watershed Study. I call it a “quasi-peer review” because EPA’s last-minute effort falls seriously short of basic peer review standards.

Case in point: the review relied on one scientist who was a former colleague at the Stratus firm who had coauthored studies with Dr. Maest. The Committee can consider for itself whether this constitutes the kind of independent assessment that defines peer review.

So, to sum up: in the Ecuador incident, the scientist has disavowed her work.

Her firm has cut its ties to her.

And yet EPA builds its Watershed Study on her work.

I want to be clear on this point: I do not know whether the work used in the Watershed Study will prove to show issues similar to the Ecuador studies that the author disavowed. My point is that this question needs to be examined – impartially, independently – and that absent that, EPA’s reliance on work done by this scientist or her firm in the Watershed Study puts the entire study under a cloud.

In closing, there’s a quote I’d like to share with the Committee:
“NEPA is democratic at its core. In many cases, NEPA gives citizens their only opportunity to voice concerns about a project’s impact on their community… And because informed public engagement often produces ideas, information, and even solutions that the government might otherwise overlook, NEPA leads to better decisions — and better outcomes — for everyone. The NEPA process has saved money, time, lives, historical sites, endangered species, and public lands while encouraging compromise and cultivating better projects with more public support.
…because of NEPA — …we are guaranteed a voice.”

That quote is from the website of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). They love NEPA — just not this time, for this project.

That’s a dangerous departure from the law. This time, the mine is Pebble and the metal is copper. But if we allow this precedent, there will be many mines and projects that don’t get built – and many metals we’ll be forced to import, many times from nations that wish us harm.

We have a process in place to determine whether a mine should or shouldn’t be built. We should follow that process – to lead us to a policy based on science, and projects made better by the even-handed scrutiny they receive.

Thank you.

# # #

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The following op-ed by American Resources Principal Dan McGroarty was published in the Wall Street Journal on July 5, 2013. The original text can be found here.

A Potential Copper Bonanza Runs Afoul of the EPA

The metal is essential for wind turbines, but a proposed mine in Alaska has set off Keystone-like alarms.

By Daniel McGroarty

Activists are pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to take a drastic regulatory step that could have significant repercussions for the U.S. economy. I’m not referring to the Keystone XL pipeline or taxing carbon emissions. At issue is the Pebble Mine—a natural-resource project in Alaska that could yield more copper than has ever been found in one place anywhere in the world.

In addition to an estimated 80 billion pounds of copper, the Pebble Mine also holds strategic metals like molybdenum and rhenium, which are essential to countless American manufacturing, high-tech and national-security applications. Yet even before a plan to mine the deposit has been introduced by the Pebble Partnership, the group poised to bring the mine into production, the EPA appears all too willing to bend to the pressure of environmental activists. The EPA has conducted a hypothetical environmental assessment of the region that positions the agency to pre-emptively veto the Pebble project before the partnership even applies for a single permit.

Apparently some left-wing environmental groups, like the Natural Resources Defense Council, Earthworks and Trout Unlimited are so worried that the project might make it through the permitting process that they’re trying to stop it before it starts. As the NRDC put it in August 2012: “EPA’s study (and intervention) is critically important. If left to its own devices, the state of Alaska has never said no to a large mine.”

Thankfully, some liberals are voicing their opposition to a new EPA pre-emptive veto power. The Center for American Progress, for example, has come out in favor of letting the permitting review take place, even though the group has criticized the Pebble Mine project.

This is the first instance of a fissure in the unofficial anti-mining alliance that wants to see the EPA acquire vast new powers. With luck, more groups will emulate the Center for American Progress’s principled position.

The irony here is that renewable-energy industries that environmentalists champion, like solar and wind, rely heavily on copper. More than three tons of it are needed for a single industrial wind turbine. CIGS photovoltaic panels hold out the promise of efficiently capturing the sun’s rays, with an energy conversion rate topping 20%. The “C” in CIGS stands for copper, and the “S” for selenium, 95% of which is derived as a copper byproduct.

Electric cables, of course, carry the energy generated by these renewable sources to the national grid. The cables are usually made of copper, using the metal’s superior conductivity.

Yet to hear anti-mining activists tell it, the project at Pebble Mine offers none of these benefits. Just last week, when speaking to the trade publication Energy & Environment News on the subject, NRDC official Joel Reynolds said flatly: “We view this as one of the worst projects anywhere in the world today.”

Let’s take environmentalists’ advice and “think global” for a moment about that statement. How would a mining project at Pebble stack up against some other places where global markets currently source copper?

Will Pebble employ child-slaves as young as 8 to do the mining? Copper mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo do—and that copper is sold into the global market.

Will Pebble send its miners to work without respiratory equipment, wearing boots with holes that let acid rot miners’ feet? Chinese-run mines in Zambia do. Where are the environmentalist protests at the Zambian or Chinese embassies?

Will Pebble’s leadership be able to order local officials jailed for opposing its project? That’s what happened last month in Iran—a mining nation set on doubling its copper production by 2015—where an entire town council was jailed for opposing a marble and stone mine.

It’s easy for someone like the NRDC’s Mr. Reynolds to protest an American mine from the organization’s $5 million waterfront headquarters (the Robert Redford Building) in Santa Monica, Calif. In the U.S., protesting is a career choice, and movement leaders are feted with awards and grants. Opposing a project the size of Pebble makes a great fundraising tool. It’s far more challenging to life and limb to take on African warlords, Chinese officials or Iranian mullahs.

Environmental activists often preach that the planet is interconnected. Well, that’s certainly true of the global marketplace: Every pound of copper left in the ground in Alaska or the Lower 48 is effectively a price support for producers in the places like Zambia and Angola.

If the EPA reinterprets existing law—Section 404 of the Clean Water Act—and grants itself unilateral authority to stop the permitting process before it begins, Pebble Mine won’t be the only project in its cross hairs, and copper won’t be the only metal. A 2011 study by the Brattle Group, an economic consulting firm, shows that U.S. economic development projects worth more than $200 billion would be exposed if the EPA asserts this new power.

President Obama recently said that we must weigh the opportunity cost of not building the Keystone XL pipeline. The same logic applies to the project at Pebble Mine—and the federal permitting process is the only place to do that.

Mr. McGroarty is president of American Resources Policy Network, a public policy research group in Washington, D.C., that is supported by organizations and companies in mining and related industries.

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“3D printing companies are the new Rare Earths.”

Thus spake Twitter, a few hundred-million Tweets ago, giving birth to the new meme on what matters most in our constantly-evolving technology world. Meaning, of course, that the furor over Rare Earths sparked three years back — when China used its then-97% production monopoly as a weapon against REE-dependent Japan — has run its course.

The new shiny object in the tech world: 3D printing.

But dig deeper (at ARPN, the pun is always intended), and the story gets more complex. Technical papers — like this one from Germany’s Munster University — are reporting that one of the best materials for the 3D printing process are compounds like Nano-Yttria and Lutetium-Aluminum Garnet. From the literature, it seems that these compounds excel as “ligands” — binding agents in the 3D printing process.

Which means that the next new thing — 3D printing — will require plenty of the “last new thing” — Rare Earths.

That’s a useful corrective to the commentators who routinely claim that manufacturers will find ways to substitute around Rare Earth Elements. Of course, in many cases, they will. And in just as many instances, other researchers will find new applications for Rare Earths.

Meanwhile, China’s production monopoly has shrunk — from 97% in 2010 to 95% today.

As the fashion industry well knows, sometimes “the new black” is… black. 3D printing is a truly revolutionary concept destined to transform the process of manufacturing. But to the extent that 3D will require specific Rare Earths in the manufacturing process, the Rare Earths are still “the next Rare Earths.”

And unless the industrialized democracies want to see 3D printing become the new engine of China’s economy, someone needs to make the actual mining of critical metals and minerals “the next new thing.”

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