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Merely days after assuming office U.S. President Joe Biden has already signed a series of executive orders on climate change and related policy areas, marking an expected shift in priorities from the preceding Administration.

But even before, and irrespective of where you come down on the political spectrum, there was no denying that we find ourselves in the midst of a global green energy transition. At ARPN, we have long made the case that the current push towards a lower-carbon future is not possible without critical metals and minerals — lots of them.

As the World Bank outlined last year, and as confirmed by various other studies, “the future energy system will be far more mineral and metal-intensive than it is today,” as Dr. Morgan Bazilian, Director of the Payne Institute and Professor of Public Policy, Colorado School of Mines told members of Congress.

The World Bank report, entitled “The Mineral Intensity of the Clean Energy Transition,” published in the spring of 2020 estimated that production of metals and minerals like graphite, lithium and cobalt will have to increase by nearly 500 percent by 2050 to meet global demand for renewable energy technology. To achieve the transition to a below 2°C pathway as outlined by the Paris Agreement, the deployment of wind, solar and geothermal power, as well as energy storage will require more than three billion tons of minerals and metals.

The renewed emphasis on shifting towards a lower carbon future will not only have to be reconciled with the above referenced facts, but also with the growing realization that as we push to reduce greenhouse gases, we can’t ignore the geopolitical challenges associated with the supply chains for the metals and minerals underpinning the green energy transition — a realization the urgency of which the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has only reinforced.

As entire supply chains are being overhauled, the mining and resource sector, which represents one of the most energy-intensive industries on the planet, is increasingly “recognizing [its] responsibility and trying to meet the increased expectations of consumers, society and governments” to contribute towards the push towards a greener energy future. Thankfully, the industry can harness advances in materials science and technology to meet the challenge of restoring a balance between mining and environmental protection.

Last year, we outlined several initiatives by mining companies to “close the loop,” ranging from overhauling supply chain policies to ensure suppliers conform to certain environmental and social standards, to incorporating renewable power sources into their operations to offset some of the carbon costs of resource development. (Take a look here.)

Since then, many more steps have been taken by mining companies big and small, and we’re taking the opportunity to highlight several today:

• As part of its push to pursue “closed-loop” solutions, in December of 2020, mining company Rio Tinto announced its plan to increase recycling capacity at its aluminum operations at Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec, Canada. A $8.4 million project will involve the installation of a new remelt furnace to melt down aluminum cuttings from customers for use in rolling ingot production for packaging and automotive clients.
• Chemistry giant BASF has announced a new “Circular Economy Program” in the context of which the company aims to process 250,000 metric tons of recycled and waste-based raw materials annually, replacing fossil raw materials. Specifically, BASF is developing a new chemical process to recover high-purity lithium from batteries with high yields.
• Copper Miner Codelco has outlined a set of five sustainability commitments. Among them are the reduction of its greenhouse gas emissions by replacing all production and logistics equipment in underground mines with electrical equipment, reducing unit consumption of continental waters, and recycling 65% of industrial waste.
• Rio Tinto Fer et Titane (RTFT) metallurgical complex in Sorel-Tracy, Quebec has developed a sustainable process with a small environmental footprint to extract high purity scandium oxide from waste tailings in the titanium dioxide production process – obviating the need for additional mining for the sought-after material.
• While delayed largely because of COVID, London-based miner Anglo American — as part of its FutureSmart Mining™ innovation program — is moving ahead with the deployment hydrogen-powered (Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle or FCEV hybrid) large mining trucks, working in collaboration with global energy and energy services company ENGIE. A pilot truck is expected to be deployed in the first half of 2021 at the Mogalakwena platinum open pit mine in the north-western part of South Africa in Mokopane, Limpopo. If the technology proves successful, 400 mine-haul trucks of the company’s vehicle fleet could be rebuilt to use hydrogen fuel.
• U.S. gold mining group Newmont in December 2020 announced a planned investment of US$500 million over the next five years into wind and solar technology to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. As part of the project, the company will study how to best inject solar, wind and energy storage projects into its operations and will work to develop new technologies.

Of course, this list is only a small snapshot of what is happening in the resource sector as part of the push towards a circular economy, and we will continue to monitor and draw attention to innovative ways to sustainably greening the future going forward.

The current coronavirus pandemic has shed a light on an inconvenient truth. We have become over-reliant on foreign (and especially Chinese) raw materials. As we previously outlined, “PPE has become the poster child, but whether it’s smart phone technology, solar panels, electric vehicles, or fighter jets — critical minerals are integrated into all aspects of U.S. supply chains — and, in spite of the fact that the United States is rich in mineral resources, we have maneuvered ourselves into a situation where we often find ourselves at the mercy of China.”

It’s no secret that China is less friend than foe, and has a history of playing politics when holding leverage over its adversaries.

With COVID-19, the chickens are coming home to roost.

In a new piece for Foreign Policy, Jacob Helberg, senior advisor at the Stanford University Program on Geopolitics and Technology, an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, outlines how “China’s recent weaponization of supply chains and information networks exposes the grave dangers of the American deindustrialization that Jobs accepted as inevitable.”

He writes:

“Since March alone, China has threatened to withhold medical equipment from the United States and Europe during the coronavirus pandemic; launched the biggest cyberattack against Australia in the country’s history; hacked U.S. firms to acquire secrets related to the coronavirus vaccine; and engaged in massive disinformation campaigns on a global scale. China even hacked the Vatican. These incidents reflect the power China wields through its control of supply chains and information hardware. They show the peril of ceding control of vast swaths of the world’s manufacturing to a regime that builds at home, and exports abroad, a model of governance that is fundamentally in conflict with American values and democracies everywhere. And they pale in comparison to what China will have the capacity to do as its confrontation with the United States sharpens.”

Warning that “[n]eglecting to quickly safeguard the access and integrity of American supply chains and information networks in the face of successive warnings would be a costly strategic mistake and a blow to U.S. national sovereignty,” Helberg makes the case for a U.S. domestic reindustrialization.

He argues:

“In this new cold war, a deindustrialized United States is a disarmed United States—a country that is precariously vulnerable to coercion, espionage, and foreign interference. Preserving American preeminence will require reconstituting a national manufacturing arrangement that is both safe and reliable—particularly in critical high-tech sectors. If the United States is to secure its supply chains and information networks against Chinese attacks, it needs to reindustrialize. The question today is not whether America’s manufacturing jobs can return, but whether America can afford not to bring them back.”

As ARPN’s Daniel McGroarty recently pointed out, the first word in “supply chain” is “supply” – and, as followers of ARPN know, the vulnerability issue on the front end of our mineral resource supply chains in particular is largely homegrown:

U.S. reliance on foreign non-fuel minerals has significantly increased over the course of the past 65 years, both in terms of number and type, as well as as a percentage of import reliance. Along with the rise in import dependency came a drastic shift in provider countries.

Whereas the number of non-fuel mineral commodities for which the United States was greater than 50% net import-dependent was 28 in 1954, this number increased to 47 in 2014. And while the U.S. was 100% net import reliant for 8 of the non-fuel commodities analyzed in 1954, this total import reliance increased to 11 non-fuel minerals in 1984, and currently stands at 17. In the latest USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries report, China continues to be the elephant in the data room, and is listed 25 times as one of the major import sources of metals and minerals for which our net import reliance is 50% or greater.

As such, it has been encouraging to see that in the wake of the above-referenced developments, U.S. policymakers on Capitol Hill, in the Cabinet Departments and at the White House have begun to strategic materials and critical minerals issues with a new seriousness.

Reform-minded lawmakers have put forth several legislative initiatives, and have even formed a bipartisan “Critical Materials Caucus.” However, while critical minerals provisions were added to the latest round of COVID relief stimulus packages, chances of their passage have been dwindling as partisan tensions continue to flare.

Opponents of comprehensive reform and increased domestic mining tend to argue that trade with allied partners, as well as mitigation strategies like recycling and reuse obviate the need for domestic mining. However, they fail to account for new estimations that material supply pressures will increase dramatically in the coming years in the context of a low-carbon transition. Earlier this year, the World Bank released a study estimating that that production of metals and minerals like graphite, lithium and cobalt will have to increase by nearly 500 percent by 2050 to meet global demand for renewable energy technology. And just last week, Nedal Nassar, chief of the Materials Flow Analysis Section at the National Minerals Information Center, U.S. Geological Survey stressed in a Mining and Metallurgical Society of America webinar that “a combination of trends and issues raise concerns regarding the reliability of supply for certain non-fuel mineral commodities.”

Of course, recycling and reuse, as well as increased cooperation with our close allies to secure critical materials supply are important strategies as we strive to address our supply chain vulnerabilities for a post-COVID context — and it is encouraging to see that progress is being made here. [see our blog for examples of research breakthroughs, successful public-private partnerships, and updates on partnership agreements with allied nations.]

The scope of the mineral resource supply challenge, however, warrants an “all-of-the-above” approach we have come to know from the energy policy discourse. As ARPN’s McGroarty outlined in a panel discussion last year, in the context of working toward “resource independence” that means a focus on new mining, recycling and reclamation of new minerals from old mine tailings, as well as leveraging cooperative agreements with allied nations.

And China’s recent actions outlined by Helberg show that the time to act is now.

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