This week, the Indian Ministry of Mines released a comprehensive Critical Minerals List, consisting of 30 metals and minerals deemed critical for India’s ambition for cleaner technologies in electronics, telecommunications, transport and defense, according to the government.

The list comprises the group of 17 rare earth elements (REEs) and six platinum group metals (PGMs) as complexes. It also encompasses four of what ARPN has dubbed the “battery criticals” lithium, cobalt, graphite and nickel (India’s list does not include manganese which rounds out the five battery criticals), as well as antimony, beryllium, bismuth, gallium, germanium, hafnium, indium, molybdenum, niobium, phosphorous, potash, rhenium, silicon, strontium, tantalum, tellurium, tin, titanium, tungsten, vanadium, zirconium, selenium, and cadmium.

Lastly, the list also includes copper, a mainstay metal and key component of the green energy transition which the United States has thus far failed to add to its own list of critical minerals in spite of numerous pushes for its addition.

According to Indian web news hub Rediff.com, the government plans to encourage public and private investment in exploration, mining and processing to secure the country’s critical mineral supply chains, and will seek to “facilitate the adoption of advanced technologies and international collaborations to enhance efficiency and environmental sustainability in the extraction and processing of critical minerals.”

One of the first such international collaborations was just made official during a state visit of India’s Prime Minister Narenda Modi to Washington, D.C. last week, where Modi and U.S. President Joe Biden announced the country’s joining of the Minerals Security Partnership alongside several bilateral and defense deals.

The MSP is a partnership between the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and several other countries convened in June 2022 as an initiative to bolster supply chains while aiming “to ensure that critical minerals are produced, processed, and recycled in a manner that supports countries in realizing the full economic development potential of their mineral resources.”

As the rest of the world aims to decouple its critical mineral supply chains from China, which has long dominated most of the critical minerals sector across all links of the supply chain, India is looking to harness its geopolitical wealth to become a “global hub for critical mineral production and reinforce its position as a major player in the global economy.”

In keeping with that objective, India’s recent moves have global implications.

At the beginning of this year, a New York Times piece called on G20 leaders gathering in Davos, Switzerland, to “pivot to the new reality provoked by the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the growth of extreme inequalities and aggressive Russian and Chinese autocracies.” 

In the critical mineral realm, these recent events served as a catalyst for a new “Great Game,” which the geopolitics of mineral resource supply had triggered and which gained momentum with the adoption of the Paris agreement in 2015.

India’s recent critical mineral moves are highly relevant in the context of this new “Great Game,” particularly as relations between India and China are strained by an ongoing border conflict and growing regional rivalry, both of which are shaping South Asia’s security landscape and strategic environment.

With India having overtaken China as the world’s most populous country and set to become the third-largest economy in the coming years, India’s recent moves could be seen as a direct challenge by Beijing.

As Frédéric Grere and Manisha Reuter outline for the European Council on Foreign Relations, “New Delhi still exerts a dominant role in South Asia and, specifically, the Indian Ocean, but as China consolidates its position in the region, its attitude towards India has become more assertive. India remains resolute about preventing Chinese hegemony in Asia, repeatedly stressing that a multipolar world starts with a multipolar Asia, and seeking partnerships with a variety of countries, including the US and the EU. Beijing is concerned about India’s growing military ties with the US and tends to consider India’s intentions through the lens of its own rivalry with the US.”

The new Great Game may have just gotten Greater.

The post India Ups the Ante in New “Great Game,” Releases Critical Minerals List and Joins MSP appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

With the material accounting for up to 20% of the weight of the cathode in a typical lithium-ion EV battery, cobalt was considered the highest material supply chain risk for electric vehicles by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2021.

While geopolitical challenges and rising demand in the context of the green energy transition are a factor for the supply scenario for all battery criticals, the cobalt conundrum differs in that more than 70% of the world’s material is supplied by the Democratic Republic of Congo, and labor practices in the country have long been scrutinized by the global community, including the United States.

In 2009, the Department of Labor first placed cobalt, specifically referred to as “cobalt ore” on its List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor, and a year later, Congress included language in the Dodd-Frank financial law targeting the sale of conflict minerals from the DRC to address profits from commodities mined in Congo, but stopped short of including cobalt, and only focused on gold, tin, tantalum and tungsten.

In 2016, Amnesty International released a report on child labor at the DRC’s so-called “artisanal” informal mine sites, increasing international scrutiny, but fast forward to 2022, and child labor persists in the DRC, prompting the U.S. Department of Labor to include lithium-ion batteries into its “List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor” – a list of 158 goods from 77 countries assumed to be produced in violation of internationals standards regarding child or forced labor.

The added scrutiny of labor practices for cobalt also increased urgency for U.S. policy and other stakeholders to build out a North American supply chain for “battery criticals” lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel and manganese — which already has received fresh impetus with the passage of the sourcing requirements contained in the statutory language on EV credits in the recently-passed Inflation Reduction Act.

(ARPN has already outlined current U.S. efforts to this effect for graphite and manganese in our recent posts.)

After years of inaction on the domestic development front, U.S.-based cobalt projects have begun to move forward.

According to USGS, “in 2022, the nickel-copper Eagle Mine in Michigan produced cobalt-bearing nickel concentrate. In Missouri, a company produced nickel-copper-cobalt concentrate from historic mine tailings and was building a hydrometallurgical processing plant near the mine site. In October, commissioning began at a cobalt- copper-gold mine and mill in Idaho, where cobalt concentrate will be produced.”

While it “will be a while before we can actually say that this is going to be a growth industry,” as Brad Martin, director of the RAND National Security Supply Chain Institute says, the opening of the Idaho mine operated by Jervois Global is a “geopolitically significant” development for the United States and a small first step away from relying on materials sourced from a country using child labor practices.

However, as Gregory D. Wischer and Jack D. Little with Westwin Elements outlined in a recent op-ed for the Idaho State Journal, while Jervois’s mine will produce roughly 2,000 metric tons of cobalt, Idaho’s other untapped cobalt reserves “will sit uselessly dormant unless U.S. government policy changes — and, even if tapped, this cobalt ore will be shipped overseas for refining.”

They added, in a storyline familiar to followers of ARPN:

“U.S. government policy has long influenced America’s cobalt industry. For instance, during the Cold War in the 1950s, Calera Mining Co. expanded mining and refining in Idaho’s Blackbird district in exchange for U.S. government purchases of its refined cobalt. However, as U.S. government support dissipated, permitting timelines lengthened, and cobalt prices cascaded, U.S. cobalt mining evaporated. 

Consequently, China today controls approximately 35 percent of global cobalt mining production — given Chinese ownership of 50 percent of cobalt mining production in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — and more than 70 percent of global cobalt refining production.”

On the processing side, Canadian Electra Battery Materials is set to launch cobalt refining operations this year, but North American efforts — and in particular U.S. efforts — are still few and far in between because domestic cobalt mining and refining continue to face significant regulatory and financial hurdles, including lengthy permitting times that in the U.S. can range between seven and ten years.

Add Wischer and Little:

“Some people may argue that the United States can rely on mined and refined cobalt from ostensibly ‘friendly’ countries. Yet, as the COVID-19 pandemic displayed, even allies like Australia will protect their own supply chains and block critical exports to the United States during crises. Future events, such as wars, trade disputes and natural disasters, could similarly disrupt global cobalt supply chains. For instance, a possible U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan would likely delay U.S. cobalt imports, with consequences magnified by the defense industrial base’s increased cobalt demand for the war effort. In short, cobalt supply chains dependent on any foreign countries are insecure and risky.”

As such, cutting red tape for domestic cobalt projects like Jervois’s operations in Idaho, as well as supporting and incentivizing refining projects should range high on U.S. stakeholders’ priority list in the 2023 and beyond.

The post Bolstering the Domestic Supply Chain for “Battery Criticals” – A Look at Cobalt appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Leaders must “pivot to the new reality provoked by the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the growth of extreme inequalities and aggressive Russian and Chinese autocracies,” writes the NYT.

In the critical mineral realm, these recent events have served as a catalyst for the new “Great Game,” which the geopolitics of mineral resource supply had triggered and which had gained momentum with the adoption of the Paris agreement in 2015 which in turn had committed countries to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition to renewables.

Over the course of the last few months, awareness of the importance of securing critical mineral supply chains and decoupling form adversaries, i.e. China, continued to grow against the backdrop of an increasingly volatile geopolitical landscape and mounting environmental pressures.  While, as the New York Times suggests, “the shape of an alternative international system is unclear,” we are seeing first steps towards a realignment as nations around the world rethink and reorganize their critical mineral supply chains.  

ARPN has discussed several developments involving the United States and key allies like Canada and Australia, but Asian nations, too, are taking steps to diversify their supply chains away from China, particularly in the rare earths (REE) space.

In spite of having signed a deal with Vietnam on rare earth development after having experienced the ramifications of an over-reliance on Chinese minerals first hand with the 2010 rare earths standoff between China and Japan, Japan’s domestic rare earth production has remained limited to date, with more than two thirds of the country’s rare earth supplies coming from China.  With demand surging in the context of growing EV markets, Japan is looking to “curb excessive dependence on specific countries, carry forward next-generation semiconductor development and manufacturing bases, secure stable supply for critical goods including rare earth, and promote capital reinforcement of private enterprises with critical goods and technologies,” according to a government strategy paper cited by Qu4tro Strategies this month.

To do so, Tokyo inked a critical mineral agreement with Australia in October of 2022 and Japan’s Organization for Metals and Energy Security (Jogmec) is working with private companies to take control of its holding in a joint venture to develop dysprosium-terbium heavy rare earths in Namibia.  Jogmec is also an investor in Australia-based Lynas Rare Earths’s latest push to increase its meaning capacity in Western Australia.

Vietnam, not traditionally known as a global mining powerhouse, is looking to become a key player in the global REE supply chain.  While, as Qu4tro Strategies outlines, North Korea is believed to be home to the world’s largest rare earth deposits, Vietnam’s large REE reserves are more viable as an alternative to Chinese REEs, as North Korea’s political situation and economic sanctions prevent the country from becoming a link in the global supply chain.

While exploration in Vietnam has so far been unable to tap into the country’s considerable mineral potential, that may be changing. As a fast-growing economy, Vietnam is attracting companies trying to find new regional bases as U.S.-Chinese trade tensions rise, and post-Covid supply chains remain strained.

In recent months, several countries have entered into partnership agreements with bot the Vietnamese Government and private companies to establish “an integrated supply chain for rare earths and other critical minerals.”

Qu4tro Strategies cites the December signing of an agreement between Vietnam and South Korea to jointly explore and develop core minerals including rare earths in Vietnam, as well as a partnership between Australia Strategic Minerals (ASM) and Vietnam Rare Earths for “long-term supply of rare earths to provide feedstock for ASM’s Korean Metals Plant.” 

Trade between Canada and Vietnam is reported to increase under the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement, and the Canadian province of Saskatchewan is actively exploring the “potential for the countries to collaborate on green energy, including sustainable mining and rare earth elements.”

The Middle East, traditionally known as a leader in the fossil fuel realm, could also emerge as a critical mineral player in a newly realigned world, particularly as nations like Saudi Arabia incentivize investment towards creating integrated value chains, with the country currently processing 145 exploration license applications sent in by foreign companies, according to a new report issued by the Future Minerals Forum in Collaboration with the Payne Institute for Public Policy Colorado School of Mines.

Meanwhile, Africa’s resource richness is well known. As the Future Minerals Forum’s report outlines, trade tensions with China as well as Russia’s ongoing war have triggered many Western countries to turn to Africa for investment opportunities in critical mineral supply during 2022.

Discussions between Minerals Security Partnership countries (see our post here) have begun involving African regions as targets for potential partnerships, and five countries — the DRC, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania and Zambia – have initiated conversations on development opportunities to “diversify and bolster critical mineral supply chains while lowering trade reliance with China and Russia” during the UN General Assembly conference in September 2022.  Deals made at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, which included a commitment of over $150 million dollars into Zambia’s mining sector to develop copper and Cobalt, are a case in point.

However, as the authors of the Future Minerals Forum’s report point out, of Africa, “the scale and pace of investment inflows will largely hinge on the restructuring of domestic governance and policy changes.”

As leaders continue to deliberate on the new realities of the post-Cold War world order in Davos this week, we will continue our focus on the realignment underway in the minerals sector and will zero in on the West in our second post this week.

The post A New Critical Minerals World Order? — A Look at the Post-Cold War Realignment in the Wake of Covid, War in Ukraine and Geopolitical and Economic Tension appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

The new Great Game, according to Muggah, foreshadowed by the 2010 rare earths dispute between China and Japan, gained momentum with the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 which committed countries to significantly reduce greenhouse gases and transition to renewables.

Writes Muggah:

“In order to achieve the agreement’s targets by 2050, more than 60 per cent of installed power capacity will need to come from a combination of solar plants, wind farms, hydropower, bioenergy, geothermal reservoirs and batteries to power electric vehicles. But scaling these climate-friendly technologies comes with a catch: a sixfold increase in the sourcing of so-called critical minerals such as nickel, copper, lithium and cobalt as well as rare earths, by some estimates.

And so while the effort to move away from oil, gas and coal to low-carbon energy sources is essential, it has also unleashed powerful destabilizing forces. Countries are scrambling to secure the minerals needed to power the green transition; competition among major powers to control supply chains could trigger new global security risks.”

Muggah points to China as the undisputed dominant player “when it comes to refining those critical minerals and rare earths, effectively leveraging its state-backed firms, low-cost work force and lax environmental standards to gain a stranglehold on global markets.” Despite its omnipresence in global critical mineral supply chains, he says, China “does not yet dominate the exploration and extraction of critical minerals such as cobalt, lithium or nickel.” As a result, companies with backing from Beijing are “busily scouring international markets for raw materials, from Argentina, Bolivia and Chile to the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa and Zambia, but the competition is fierce.”

While Russia is another key player as one of the top producers of palladium, scandium, titanium and nickel, Russia’s war on Ukraine and subsequent sanctions against Russia have slowed down Moscow-backed domestic critical minerals production and processing and external pursuits, further consolidating China’s pole position in the global race for resources.

Muggah laments North American and Western European lack of expediency to build out their own critical mineral supply chains, not least due to most Western countries facing “major hurdles when it comes to accelerating domestic and international production and processing of critical minerals and rare earths, including the high costs of capital investments, long lead times to build out mines and refineries, and stronger environmental and labour standards compared to countries such as China and Russia.”  However, he says, “supply chain disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and rising tensions with China – including Chinese threats to curb rare-earth exports to the U.S. – have all served as a wake-up call,” and a new Great Game is on.

He goes on to detail recent steps taken by the U.S. and European Union to diversify its supply chains away from adversaries in general, and China in particular, which both appear to embrace a comprehensive “all-of-the-above” strategic approach, ranging from strengthening domestic production, over strengthening closed-loop concepts to increased “friend shoring.” 

In this context, Muggah believes Canada “will have a consequential role to play in what is shaping up to be one of the defining struggles of our era,” and goes on to discuss Canada’s latest policy initiatives to strengthen critical mineral supply chains.

Muggah says there is reason for “cautious optimism that Canada can achieve its goals,” but that “Canada and its partners still face major obstacles to meet their ambitions, including from China.”   He points to Chinese firms having acquired several key Canadian mines (see ARPN’s recent post on the issue here) and calls for greater scrutiny for mining deals with state-owned mining companies from authoritarian countries, arguing that “Canada will need to broaden its conception of what constitutes national security in relation to critical minerals and rare earths.”

He closes:

“To achieve more strategic autonomy amid the new Great Game, Canada must build more predictable and sustainable supply chains and take a more pro-active global role in driving the global shift to renewable energy. (…) Notwithstanding China’s firm grip on global supply chains of critical minerals and especially rare earths, Canada and its allies can support a more predictable green transition.

This is one game that Canada can and must help the whole world win.”

The question for the United States, where the midterm elections — and with that intensified partisan politics — are just around the corner, is whether policy makers will maintain their newly gained bipartisan focus on the importance of critical mineral supply chains and continue to work towards achieving greater mineral resource independence.

The post A New “Great Game” is Afoot – Are We Able to Keep the Focus on Diversifying Critical Mineral Supply Chains Away from Adversaries appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

As the stakes continue to get higher and stakeholder pressure to take action mounts, it is encouraging to see that mainstream awareness of the issue is increasing.

Case in point: CNN’s Fareed Zakaria dedicating a “Last Look” segment of his Global Public Square program to the new race for natural resources triggered by the green transition.

Followers of ARPN will appreciate that unlike much of the coverage of the critical minerals challenge we’re seeing lately, which often might have you believe that concerns only revolve around the “battery criticals”lithium, graphite, cobalt, nickel, and manganese, Zakaria’s segment makes clear that the challenge is much bigger – and includes many other metals and minerals, including what we at ARPN have dubbed the “unsung hero of the green energy transition” and one of the “most critical non-criticals” (alluding to the fact that the U.S. official government critical minerals list has thus far not included it):

Copper.

As we previously argued, while less flashy and headline-grabbing that some of its tech metal peers, Copper deserves far more credit and attention than it has been getting — not least due to its versatility stemming from traditional uses and an increasing range of new applications.  Then there’s Copper’s Gateway Metal status, with the metal yielding access to Critical List co-products essential to “manufacturing the advanced technologies that will power or generations to come, such as Cobalt, Nickel, Tellurium, Molybdenum, Rhenium, Arsenic and REEs.

In the context of advanced energy technology, Copper is an indispensable component for the manufacture of EVs, wind turbines, solar panels, and the electric grid.   The manufacturing process for EVs requires four times more Copper than gas powered vehicles, and the expansion of electricity networks will lead to more than doubled Copper demand for grid lines, according to the IEA – so it’s good to see mainstream media is including the material in its coverage.

Zakaria rightly outlines the challenges stemming from the United States’ over-reliance on foreign supplies, and China’s having cornered the market not only in the supply, but also the processing segment – a challenge Laura Skaer, member of the board of directors of the Women’s Mining Coalition and former director of the American Exploration & Mining Association, outlined succinctly in a piece for Morning Consult a year ago, arguing that “China already refines 50 percent of the world’s copper and the United States only refines about 3 percent. National security experts have warned that relying on China for critical supply-chain materials like refined copper poses a serious threat to America’s national security interests.”

While the U.S. has taken important steps to reduce our over-reliance on foreign metals and minerals and the processing thereof, much more remains to be done.  Zakaria puts his finger on the crux of the issue stakeholders are currently grappling with.

He says:

“The minerals industry isn’t as popular as renewable energy – particularly on the Left. There are real environmental hazards. But if people want to protect the planet from climate change and authoritarian powers, they will have to get onboard with new mineral projects.”

He continues:

“So far the process very slow, according to the IEA. Even after mineral deposits are discovered somewhere, the average time to production is over fifteen years. Some of that is planning and construction, but governments can streamline the permitting process to get these projects moving.”

While pointing to the importance of other components that ARPN has consistently highlighted as part of a comprehensive “all-of-the-above” approach to mineral resource security – recycling and closed-loop solutions as well as increased R&D in the materials science segment – Zakaria closes:

“This will have to remain a priority for years and years to come. For the sake of the planet and international security, we will need to dig deep, quite literally.” 

Watch the full segment:

CNN, Fareed Zakaria, Global Public Square, Last Look: The green transition will trigger a new race for natural resources, 4/30/2022

The post As Stakes Continue to Get Higher, Critical Minerals Challenge Goes Mainstream with Realization Issue Goes Beyond “Battery Criticals” appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

However, with most global supplies of the material coming from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where mining conditions often involve unethical labor standards and child labor, as well as poor environmental standards, battery makers and researchers were in some cases beginning to turn to nickel as a substitute for cobalt — as in nickel-iron-aluminum cathodes, for example.

And here’s where environmental and human rights concerns intersect with geopolitics.

Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine is increasingly straining nickel supply chains (see our latest post here).  As a result, analysts are keeping a close eye on cobalt, which could see prices go up as potentially persistent “elevated nickel prices could push demand from battery production back in cobalt’s direction.”

At the same time, concern over cobalt supply chains is mounting against the backdrop of a major court ruling in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which, according to the Wall Street Journal’s What’s News podcast from March 14, has sent “shockwaves through the industry with potentially wide reaching implications for China, the US and the world.”

In the recent ruling, a DRC court appointed a temporary administrator from the state miner to effectively take control of China Molybdenum’s Tenke Fungurume mine amid a dispute between the shareholders over reserves of copper and cobalt. According to Reuters, the dispute began last fall, when the DRC’s government set up a commission to “reassess the reserves and resources at the mine (…) in order to ‘fairly lay claim to (its) rights,’” after alleging that the Chinese miner deprived the country of millions of dollars in annual payments for undeclared discoveries of copper and cobalt.

As WSJ correspondent for Uganda and Africa’s Great Lakes Region Nicholas Bariyo argues, the move appears to be part of a larger push by the DRC to take control of the lucrative cobalt industry. Says Bariyo:

“The DRC, despite having all these huge mineral resources remains one of the poorest countries in the world with a significant percentage of the population living under less than $2 a day and most of them unemployed and this widespread poverty. So in this case, the Congolese feel like they’re not benefiting so much from this mineral earth. And at the same time, when you look across the wider continent, commodity prices are skyrocketing and most of these resource rich nations tend to push for bigger share of proceeds from this industry as prices go up here. So this is something that is likely to really spiral beyond the Congolese border.” 

Developments in the DRC tie into an overall shift towards resource nationalism around the globe, as evidenced most recently in Central and South America, where the political tide “has turned decisively toward leaders who openly shun laissez-faire economics” and “a new generation of presidents and legislative leaders is advocating for greater government control of national economies, and with this trend, the specter of resource nationalism has once again gained a foothold in the region,” as Peter Schechter and Juan Cortiñas recently outlined in a  piece for Marsh McLennan’s Brink News.

All of which is to say that the newfound resolve of the Biden Administration to make “major investments in domestic production of key critical minerals and materials, ensuring these resources benefit the community, and creating good-paying, union jobs in sustainable production,” and new reports that “US regulators are warming to approving new domestic sources of electric vehicle battery metals, as Washington bids to avoid a reliance on strategic minerals imports similar to that on crude oil,” are a more than welcome development.

As Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Joe Manchin (D-WV),  James Risch (R-ID), and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) argued in a recent letter to President Biden urging the Administration to “invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) to accelerate domestic production of lithium-ion battery materials, in particular graphite, manganese, cobalt, nickel, and lithium:”

“Allowing our foreign mineral dependence to persist is a growing threat to U.S. national security, and we need to take every step to address it. The 100-day report acknowledges the ‘powerful tool’ the DPA has been to expand production of supplies needed to combat COVID-19, as well as the potential the DPA could have to ‘support investment in other critical sectors and enable industry and government to collaborate more effectively.’  The time is now to grow, support, and encourage investment in the domestic production of graphite, manganese, cobalt, lithium, nickel, and other critical minerals to ensure we support our national security, and to fulfill our need for lithium-ion batteries – both for consumers and for the Department of Defense.”

As the world begins to realign in the wake of Russia’s attack on Ukraine and rising resource nationalism, it is becoming increasingly clear that the U.S. will have to harness our arguably vast domestic resource potential across the entire value chain — from mine to manufacturing – if we want to remain safe, secure and competitive in the 21st Century.

The post Russia’s War on Ukraine and Rising Resource Nationalism to Reshape Global Post-Cold War Order and Resource Supply Chains – A Look at Cobalt appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Thus, it came as no surprise that President Biden’s February 2021 executive order launching a 100-day review of supply chain vulnerabilities for four key products targeted advanced batteries. The Department of Energy has now completed its review, with the findings released last week as part of a comprehensive 100-Day Supply Chain Report.

As DoE points out:

“Advanced, high-capacity batteries play an integral role in 21st-century technologies that are critical to the clean energy transition and national security capabilities around the world—from electric vehicles, to stationary energy storage, to defense applications. Demand for these products is set to grow as supply chain constraints, geopolitical and economic competition, and other vulnerabilities are increasing as well.”

In its report chapter, DoE notes that

“The rationale for supporting the U.S. supply chain now is clear: demand for EVs and energy storage is increasing, investors are increasing investment in the clean economy, and the pandemic has underscored the fragility of some U.S. supply chains. China and the European Union (EU) – in contrast to the U.S. approach – have developed and deployed ambitious government-led industrial policies that are supporting their success across the battery supply chain. China has also moved beyond conventional policy support with practices involving questionable environmental policies, price distortion through state-run enterprises to minimize competition, and large subsidies throughout the battery supply chain.”

In other words, as ARPN expert panel member and Benchmark Mineral Intelligence managing director Simon Moores told members of Congress a while back:

“We are in the midst of a global battery arms race.”

Moores had told members of Congress that “[i]t is not too late for the US [to secure global supply chains post-COVID] but action is needed now.” — a sentiment DoE echoes in its report chapter:

“However, the opportunity for the United States to secure a leading position in the global battery market is still within reach if the Federal Government takes swift and coordinated action.”

While less explicit about the “all of the above” approach than the Department of Defense, DoE notes that:

“With the global lithium battery market expected to grow by a factor of five to ten by 2030, it is imperative that the United States invests immediately in scaling up a secure, diversified supply chain for high-capacity batteries here at home. That means seizing a critical opportunity to increase domestic battery manufacturing while investing to scale the full lithium battery supply chain, including the sustainable sourcing and processing of the critical minerals used in battery production all the way through to end-of-life battery collection and recycling.

Through strong collaboration across the federal government, with U.S. industrial stakeholders, the research community, and international allies, the U.S. must develop a durable strategy that invests and scales our potential industrial strengths to meet this challenge.”

Among the Agency’s key recommendations for immediate and future action to strengthen the domestic advanced battery supply chain are:

• Strengthening U.S. manufacturing requirements in federally-funded grants, cooperative agreements, and research and development (R&D) contracts.
• Procuring stationary battery storage.
• Providing financing to the advanced battery supply chain for electric vehicles.
• Releasing the National Blueprint for Lithium Batteries by the Federal Consortium on Advanced Batteries (FCAB).
• For Congress to catalyze private capital with new federal grant programs to support battery cell and pack manufacturing.
• The electrification of the nation’s school bus fleet, and the acceleration of the electrification of the nation’s transit bus fleet.
• Providing consumer rebates and tax incentives to spur consumer adoption of EVs.
• Investing in the production of high-capacity batteries and products that use these batteries to support good-paying, union jobs.

Developing strong environmental review permitting practices for the extraction of critical minerals.

Under the sub-head “Mapping the Supply Chain,” while the Department zeroed in on the usual suspects — notably Lithium, Cobalt, Graphite, Manganese — all of which were officially deemed critical on the U.S. Government’s official 2018 Critical Minerals list — DoE also prominently features Nickel and Copper. For Nickel, DoE even notes that “if there are opportunities for the U.S. to target one part of the battery supply chain, this would likely be the most critical to provide short- and medium-term supply chain stability.”

Which would make Nickel the most critical “non-Critical” – a status consistent with the word cloud we created based on the number of 100-Day Report mentions (footnotes included) of the metals and minerals that made the official U.S. Government Critical Minerals List of 2018 — and the two that didn’t but should have (Nickel and Copper).

As we noted in our post earlier this week, the Biden Administration is right to give prominence to Nickel and Copper in its strategy.

After all, as Reuters’s Andy Home has pointed out,

“There is no domestic nickel processing capacity outside a limited amount of by-product salt production.

Yet this particular battery metal is the one likely to experience the most significant demand increase over the coming years, the report says, with ‘market indications that there could be a large shortage of Class 1 nickel in the next 3-7 years.’

Indeed, with nickel content rising in battery cathode design, not having enough of the right kind of nickel ‘poses a supply chain risk for battery manufacturing globally, not just in the United States.’”

And for Copper, the latest IEA report has estimated that — largely driven by the EV revolution — demand will be 25 times greater in 2040 than it was in 2020.

Thankfully, there are opportunities to alleviate our supply chain vulnerabilities and to begin the “sustainable sourcing and processing” here at home, both for Nickel and Copper, as well as for the other battery “Criticals,” and many other metals and minerals.

With the Administration having endorsed an “All of the Above” strategy to secure our supply chains “soup to nuts,” as Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm phrased it earlier this week, here’s hoping that this broad-based approach will find swift application via policy, programs and projects.

The post DoE Chapter of 100-Day Supply Chain Report Calls for Immediate Investment in “Scaling up a Secure, Diversified Supply Chain for High-Capacity Batteries Here at Home” appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Time for the Administration and Congress to move on to the next key priority of the Biden Administration’s “Build Back Better” agenda: an economic recovery package that will “make historic investments in infrastructure, along with manufacturing, research and development and clean energy.”

The BlueGreen Alliance, a national network of labor unions and and environmental organizations, is here for it:

“Strengthening and retooling our manufacturing sector to make today’s and tomorrow’s clean technologies and all products in cleaner ways, and modernizing our crumbling infrastructure to be safer and more energy efficient will protect our air and water, boost efforts to end economic and racial injustice, and create good union jobs across our nation,” Jason Walsh, executive director for the organization that is calling for at least $4 trillion in federal investment, said last month.

It may be popular in many circles, but it is going to be a massive undertaking — not just because it will require trillions of dollars in investment.

To use an infrastructure metaphor, we have already established that the road to a lower-carbon future is paved with critical metals and minerals — lots of them, as evidenced by last year’s World Bank report entitled “The Mineral Intensity of the Clean Energy Transition,” which estimated that production of metals and minerals underpinning the shift, such as the battery tech metals graphite, lithium and cobalt, would 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.

A similar scenario unfolds for overhauling America’s infrastructure, which, undeniably, is crumbling. In 2017, the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Infrastructure Report Card assigned a D+ to America’s roads, bridges, dams and other infrastructure. With an update of the quadrennial report due this year, and infrastructure reform having fizzled after a first push during the Trump Administration, there is no reason to expect a better grade this time around.

The sheer need for mainstay materials like steel and copper for construction and wiring or zinc for galvanization already make clear that we’re looking at another mineral intensive component of the Biden Agenda. But it’s not just old school transportation infrastructure that is in dire need of an overhaul.

ARPN’s Daniel McGroarty made it clear in a piece for Investors Business Daily in the early days of the Trump Administration:

“This isn’t your grandfather’s infrastructure. Bridges, tunnels and roads are just part of the story. Today, our infrastructure extends to the national power grid — currently a patchwork of lines, nodes and often antique switching towers we rely on to move energy to where we need it — to the internet itself, which has a physicality we easily overlook in this Age of the Cloud and Wireless. These systems, marvels that they are, come closer to tin-can-and-string contraptions than the modern version we would build if we began the work today.”

With that, comes another layer of material inputs — lots of copper for wiring, but also battery tech metals like lithium, graphite, nickel and vanadium for energy storage, to name but a few.

Meanwhile, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has highlighted our nation’s over-reliance on critical metals and minerals underpinning the above-referenced goals of a lower-carbon future coupled with a comprehensive infrastructure overhaul.

How do we reconcile massive material inputs and sustainably “Building Back Better”? The challenge is big, and will likely require an “all-of-the-above” approach — but thankfully, as we previously pointed out, 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.’ In its growing efforts to do so, it is harnessing “advances in materials science and technology to meet the challenge of restoring a balance between mining and environmental protection.”

As Washington D.C. delves into part two of President Biden’s “Build Back Better,” agenda, we will continue to highlight 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 — as we have done in the past (take a look here and here).

Stay tuned for the next roundup.

The post The Road to “Building Back Better” is Paved with Critical Metals and Minerals appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

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 post Sustainably Greening the Future – How the Mineral Resource Sector Seeks to Do Its Part to Close the Loop appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

It feels like just a few weeks ago many of us quipped that April 2020 seemed like the longest month in history, yet here we are: It’s mid-December, and we have almost made it through 2020. It’s been a challenging year, and the holidays certainly look very different for many of us. One thing, however has not changed: The end of the year is the time to take stock and assess what has happened in the past twelve months, where we are, and where we are headed.

While two major issues — the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the U.S. presidential elections — sucked up most of the oxygen in the public discourse and garnered most of the media’s attention, it has been an incredibly busy year on the mineral resource policy front. So, without further ado, we’re offering ARPN’s take on 2020 from a critical mineral resource perspective:

Where We Began — Incremental Progress in 2019 in the Wake of E.O. 13817

For the most part, the U.S. mineral resource policy realm had seen slow but steady incremental progress in 2019. Faced with mounting supply chain pressures and growing trade tensions with China, stakeholders had continued to push for comprehensive resource policy reforms in the wake of Presidential Executive Order 13817 of December 20, 2017, “A Federal Strategy to Ensure Secure and Reliable Supplies of Critical Minerals.”

Against the backdrop of a previously-signed memorandum of understanding (MOU) for critical materials between the United States and Canada to reduce U.S. reliance on Chinese rare earth supplies, and the FY2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which furthered a 2019 mandate for the U.S. military to not only buy non-Chinese rare earth permanent magnets but rather develop and implement a strategy to establish a “total domestic American rare earth supply chain” for all rare earth-enabled products utilized by the U.S. military, 2020 was shaping up to be a “pivotal year for rare earths.”

Meanwhile, with the battery arms race intensifying and Chinese-American trade tensions continuing to escalate, interest in a national policy conversation on critical minerals had increased. That notwithstanding, partisan pressures on Capitol Hill remained a key obstacle for reform because, as one observer noted as late as December 2019, the prevailing sentiment was that “neither [political] party’s base sees critical minerals as such a dire threat.”

The First Few Weeks of 2020 – Staying the Course towards an “All-of-the-Above”Approach on Critical Minerals

Efforts to strengthen mineral resource cooperation between the United States and our Canadian and Australian allies, which had hit a stride in 2019 with the signing of several cooperative agreements and the formation of the U.S.-Canada Critical Minerals Working Group, were off to a good start: On January 9th of this year, the U.S. and Canada announced the finalization of its Joint Action Plan on Critical Minerals Collaboration, and in February, U.S. and Australian officials met in Washington, D.C. to further flesh out a joint U.S.-Australia Action Plan on Critical Minerals.

On Capitol Hill, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Joe Manchin, (D-W.Virginia)., released the text of their energy innovation package in late February, which contained provisions to streamline the federal permitting system for mining projects, calling for research and development on recycling and developing alternatives to critical minerals, the development of analytical and forecasting tools to evaluate critical minerals markets, and the strengthening of the critical minerals workforce. With regards to rare earths, specifically, the package called for the enactment of a program to “develop advanced separation technologies for the extraction and recovery of rare earth elements (REEs) and minerals from coal and coal byproducts,” and respective reporting to Congress.”

Coronavirus as Watershed Moment – Pandemic Exposes Vulnerabilities, Serves as Catalyst

Already, however, the global spread of the coronavirus began to overshadow all developments. In the weeks and months that followed, COVID-19 pandemic not only took over headlines all over the world, it also slowed down economic activity, drastically scaled back public life, turned parents into homeschool teachers, and sent financial markets into turmoil.

It also, perhaps more than any other event in recent memory, began to expose the depth of our supply chain challenges associated with an over-reliance on foreign, and especially Chinese, raw materials, the effects of which were being felt across broad segments of manufacturing.

While early on in the pandemic, the focus was on critical medicine —from basic drugs to treat COVID-19 to N95 surgical masks to guard against its spread —it quickly became apparent that, as ARPN’s Dan McGroarty observed in March of this year, “just as critical medicines from China are integrated across the U.S. health care spectrum, so too are critical minerals imbedded into all aspects of the U.S. supply chains for energy, high-tech manufacturing – and most worryingly, national defense.”

Tech War Exposed

While arguing that China had “no intention to fight either a Cold War or a hot one with any country,” Beijing has long engaged the U.S. in a “technology war,” of which most of the American public has been unaware. In essence, this tech war is a competition “to see which country will dominate the 21st Century Technology Age, in which our ‘Achilles heel’ is our over-reliance on foreign metals and minerals underpinning 21st Century technology.”

The coronavirus pandemic has placed a magnifying glass on the fact that the U.S. “lost a major battle in a war that it didn’t even realize it was fighting when China over the past decades established monopolies on several critical rare earth elements and a few other strategic minerals.”

According to National Defense Magazine editor-in-chief Stew Magnuson, the tech war has a number of battlefronts, ranging from the control over rare earths (or, more generally speaking, critical mineral resources) over aviation, space technology, biotech, quantum sciences, robotics, and military technology to artificial intelligence. Already down 0:1 over rare earths, he argues that the U.S. runs the risk of going 0:2 when factoring in the battle for 5G dominance, an area where, according to several recent think tank reports, the U.S. is allowing “China to eat its lunch.”

Global Energy Transition Continues to Fuel Demand for Critical Minerals

Covid-19 may have temporarily put public life and global markets on hold, but, the pandemic notwithstanding, the green energy transition marches on — and with that, our skyrocketing materials supply needs for the metals and minerals that underpin renewable technology.

In May of 2020, the World Bank released a landmark report, entitled “The Mineral Intensity of the Clean Energy Transition,” in the context of the global lender’s “Climate-Smart Mining” initiative. The global lender estimates 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. Several other institutions, including the International Energy Agency echoed the sentiment of a mineral- intensive green energy future.

As such, reports that the pandemic was disrupting clean energy supply chains only added fuel to the fire, prompting Francis R. Fannon, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Energy Resources at the U.S. Department of State, to observe that “the world must dramatically increase the extraction, refining and processing of critical energy minerals to meet the world’s ambitious clean technology demand.”

Unprecedented Attention for Supply Chains

The pandemic has drastically increased attention for supply chains. Dictionary publishers have just announced that their choices for “word of the year” in 2020 have fallen on “pandemic” and “quarantine,” but the frequency with which we have heard “supply chain” referenced in the public discourse would make the term a worthy runner-up.

And while, of course, as Dan McGroarty noted in an op-Ed for The Economic Standard earlier this year, “the first word in supply chain is ‘supply’” — underscoring the need to focus on where we source critical materials — COVID has also shed a light on the fact that supply chain vulnerabilities loom along virtually every point of the chain. The make-up of the supply chain for critical minerals may vary from material to material, but the key “link” (it’s a “chain” after all) between supply and manufacturing is refining — or, more bluntly, it’s the processing, stupid.

Unfortunately, but not unsurprisingly, this is another area where China has a leg up on us.

Over the course of the past few decades, by shutting down one smelter and refining facility after another the U.S. has effectively allowed the “hollowing out of its industrial base.”

Meanwhile, pursuing a strategic vision of controlling the entire supply chain, China has invested aggressively in metals and minerals processing, even — and especially — if the country does not develop the material domestically. For many metals and minerals, China has successfully ensured that “that all the trade flow arrows go into China before they make a product.”

As ARPN expert panel member and Benchmark Mineral Intelligence managing director Simon Moores has pointed out, “you don’t need the mass volume of raw materials mined in the U.S. — you can build other links in the supply chain to ensure those arrows point towards your country. To me, that’s the biggest challenge the U.S. has.”

Resource Policy in the Wake of COVID

The Great (Bipartisan) Reshoring

Grappling with these realities, which really are not new, but have been brought to the forefront in recent months, the “Great Reshoring” of critical materials supply chains has begun. After long period of inaction, the U.S. Government seems to be viewing strategic materials and critical minerals issues with a new seriousness — a seriousness that, while emphases will differ, stretches across party lines. During the often bitter and heated presidential campaign season of 2020, both U.S. President Donald Trump and his then-challenger and now-President-elect Joe Biden stressed the importance of “bring[ing] home our critical supply chains and permanently end[ing] our reliance on China,” (Donald Trump) and “bring[ing] Back Critical Supply Chains to America so we aren’t dependent on China or any other country for the production of critical goods in a crisis.” (Joe Biden).

The high stakes and particularly the national security implications of critical mineral resource policy have begun to resonate not just in Washington, DC., and the push for an “all-of-the-above” approach to critical minerals has received new impetus – resulting not only in multiple congressional hearings on the issue, but rather specific policy initiatives.

Specifically, we have seen progress in the following areas:

Legislation:
Aside from long-standing proponents of comprehensive mineral resource policy reform like Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Sen. Joe Manchin (D, W-Virginia) and Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nevada), other lawmakers on Capitol Hill took on the issue:

• Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) “The Onshoring Rare Earths Act of 2020,” or ORE Act, seeks to reduce U.S. reliance on China for critical minerals. Defined as the 17 rare earths, plus four key minerals underpinning battery technology (lithium, cobalt, graphite and manganese), the ‘Cruz Criticals’ are key to establishing a domestic supply chain. The bill proposes a series of measures aimed at encouraging domestic mineral production, and strengthens existing federal statutes prohibiting rare earth magnet sourcing from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Recognizing that mineral production can take many forms, from traditional mining to recycling, reclamation from legacy mines, coal waste and even fracking water, it also sets up a federally-funded pilot program for traditional mining of critical minerals as well as what Cruz terms ‘secondary recovery projects.’ (…)
• House Reps. Lance Gooden (R-Texas) and Vincente Gonzalez (D-Texas) introduced the “Reclaiming American Rare Earths Act or RARE Act,” which is modeled after Sen. Cruz’s ORE Act.

• Reps. Paul A. Gosar (R-Arizona) and Michael Waltz (R-Florida) introduced the “American Critical Mineral Exploration and Innovation Act of 2020” intended to facilitate the availability, development and environmentally responsible production of domestic resources to meet national material or critical mineral needs.

• Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) offered two key amendments to the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) setting forth U.S. policies to achieve ambitious 10-year critical mineral goals and would requiring the Department of Defense (DOD) to produce a study on U.S. defense critical mineral needs.

• Sen. Mark Rubio (R-Florida) introduced the “RE-Coop 21st Century Manufacturing Act,” which would establish “a privately funded, operated, and managed Rare Earth Refinery Cooperative responsible for coordinating the establishment of a fully integrated domestic rare earth value chain to serve U.S. national security interests and restore American competitiveness of critical advanced manufacturing industries.”

Critical Materials Caucus:
In June of this year, U.S. Reps. Eric Swalwell (D- Calif.) and Guy Reschenthaler (R-Penn.) joined forces to launch a bipartisan caucus to “focus on ways to increase domestic production of specialized minerals used to make missiles, cell phones and other high-tech equipment.”

Administration Efforts and New Critical Minerals Executive Order:

• Over the summer of 2020, the Department of Energy (DOE) overhauled its target critical minerals list to include several rare earths and materials considered building blocks of battery tech. DOE has asked for project proposals to develop, in cooperation with its technology hubs, next generation technologies to extract, separate and process ‘key critical materials’: five rare earths — neodymium, praesodymium, dysprosium, terbium, and samarium — as well as cobalt, lithium, manganese, and natural graphite.
• After an initial pause during the onset of the pandemic, efforts to foster cooperative agreements with friendly nations have been re-kindled. The State Department in June announced its hopes to expand the Energy Resource Governance Initiative (ERGI) – an initiative launched last year by the United States and joined by ten other countries, including Canada, Australia and Brazil – aimed at improving supply chain security for the metals and minerals underpinning green energy technology.
• In line with cooperative agreements entered into in 2019, Geoscience Australia, the Geological Survey of Canada, and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) are coordinating their critical mineral mapping and research efforts to create a shared foundation of mineral information to help ensure a safe and secure supply of the materials needed for each country’s economy and security.
• At the White House, three new Executive Orders take aim at strategic materials and critical mineral development:
• - One order, directing an executive branch review to reduce the regulatory burdens under NEPA — the longstanding National Environmental Policy Act — in order to speed infrastructure, energy and mining projects, has triggered threats of legal action that, if successful, could stop the regulatory review even before it begins.
• - While receiving far less media attention, the second Executive Order, delegating Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III emergency authorities to the U.S. Development Finance Corporation, including the authority to underwrite loans to support strategic material production.
• - The third and perhaps most important executive order of the three, E.O. 13953, declared a critical minerals national emergency and instructs the Department of the Interior to explore the application of the Defense Production Act — used earlier in the year to accelerate production of medical supplies in the context of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic — to promote domestic resource production and development.

China’s Response

After an initial hard lockdown, China quickly revved up its engine to move past the coronavirus pandemic. Observers worrying that China would look to exploit the global shutdowns in response to the first wave of COVID-19 were proven right. Beijing was already stretching its “tentacles” across the globe even as the country was shut down and has since looked to solidify its geopolitical position as its relations with the West deteriorated.

The battery arms race is a case in point. Here, Beijing has actively and aggressively built out its EV battery megafactories since the onset of the pandemic —only recently Benchmark Mineral Intelligence listed the following numbers for “planned EV battery plants in 2020”: EU – 2, USA – 3, and China: 38.

On the rare earths front, China’s legislature passed export control legislation to “take countermeasures against any country or region that abuses export-control measures and poses a threat to China’s national security interests,” and effectively allow the “government to ban exports of strategic materials and advanced technology to specific foreign companies” – raising the specter of yet another rare earths ban.

And while China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative in the context of which China has been investing hundreds of billions of dollars in Africa and beyond to gain access to mineral riches has suffered a setback, one must assume it will double down on the strategy particularly as relations with the West have been deteriorating.

Harnessing the Materials Science Revolution

If there is a silver lining to be found in the coronavirus pandemic, it’s that it has been unleashing the powers of innovation. The materials science revolution has not only not been slowed — it has delivered amazing promise.

Whether it’s the development of vaccines, rapid tests, new treatment methods or novel materials for personal protective equipment (PPE) at neck-breaking speeds – we’re seeing innovation unfold in front of our very eyes as materials science provides “platform technologies and tools for virus research.”

Courtesy of the materials science revolution, old school mainstay metal Copper recently has garnered a lot of attention due to its antimicrobial properties. We featured several new ideas on how to harness copper’s properties in the fight against coronavirus ranging from the development of copper-infused fabrics to copper-alloyed cell phone cases, and using copper-alloys in high-touch areas in transit, hospital settings and schools, as well as the development of copper-infused paints and coatings.

Critical minerals R&D certainly showed its promise in 2020, and we can expect the materials science revolution to continue to deliver more breakthroughs in the coming months and years.

A Look Beyond 2020

2020 has brought many changes, in our personal lives, in the way we travel or conduct business. It has also brought about political change — which will certainly impact policy making going forward.

We will explore our expectations in this regard and policy recommendations for 2021 in a more comprehensive manner in a forthcoming post.

For now, suffice it to say that regardless of who occupies the White House, the critical minerals challenge is here to stay.

While the Biden/Harris ticket proclaimed its intentions to bring home supply chains during the presidential campaign, priorities will undoubtedly shift come January 2021. Whereas the Trump administration, among other things, placed an emphasis on strengthening and increasing domestic mining, it is reasonable that expect the incoming Biden/Harris administration to greater emphasize leveraging partnerships with allied nations, as well as recycling, and reclamation of new minerals from old mine tailings.

The concept of a circular economy — a system which thrives on sustainability and focuses mainly on refining design production and recycling to ensure that little to no waste results — is not new, but has gained traction in recent years, and — with technological advances and shifting resource supply scenarios — will likely continue to do so under President-elect Joe Biden.

What will not change, is the urgency with which we need to treat the United States’ critical minerals challenge, because, as the coronavirus pandemic has made crystal clear, neither China, nor the rest of the world will wait for us.

The post 2020 – A Watershed Year for Resource Policy appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.