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Recent media coverage might have you believe critical mineral policy only revolves around the “battery criticals”lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt and manganese, and maybe the frequently referenced, though still somewhat obscure rare earths.  However, as followers of ARPN well know, this is far from the truth.

The New South Wales Department of Planning and environment has taken a closer look at solar panels, which, just like EV batteries, are at the core of the green energy transition, and outlines the top four metals and minerals that make solar panels work: 

Copper — a mainstay metal with perhaps unrivaled versatility, lending itself to a wide range of traditional and new applications,  and yields access to other critical minerals as a “gateway metal,” an indispensable component for advanced energy technology, ranging from EVs and wind turbines to the electric grid and solar panels.

For some of our most recent coverage of Copper, click here.

Silicon — the most abundant compound in the Earth’s crust, silicon takes the form of ordinary sand, quartz, rock crystal, amethyst, agate, flint, jasper, and opal. To produce pure silicon, the compound is hearted with carbon at extra high temperatures.  The material is used extensively in electronics because of its semiconducting properties. It is used in the manufacture of next-gen 5-nanometer (5nm) semiconductor chips, and is a key component of solar panels and photovoltaic cells.

For ARPN’s recent coverage of Silicon, click here.

Silver — By definition a “precious” metal like gold, it may come as a surprise to those who see silver primarily as shiny adornment or a means to store value that the biggest end users of silver may actually be specialized industries. More recently, the metal has evolved from “money metal to techno metal,” as North of 60 Mining News’s Shane Lasley termed it, with its true value lying in “more industrious properties that make it invaluable to high-tech applications such as solar panels, electric vehicles, and 5G networks.”

For Shane Lasley’s Treatment of Silver in the 2021 issue of “Critical Mineral Alliances” click here.

Zinc — primarily used in metallurgical applications, zinc is also a Gateway metal, yielding access to “criticals” Indium and Germanium. Today, zinc is also seeing greater application in green energy technology.

For examples of ARPN coverage of Zinc, click here and here.

These four may not make the top of the hour news at the moment, but silicon, for example, appears on the Australian and European Union’s critical minerals lists, while zinc, previously not on the U.S. Critical Minerals List, was afforded critical mineral status by the U.S. Government earlier this year, and is also deemed critical by the Canadian government.

As for copper – which Canada considers a critical mineral – followers of ARPN well know that there are good reasons to include Copper into the U.S. Government’s Critical Minerals List, and ARPN’s Daniel McGroarty has consistently argued in favor of doing so via public comments during the draft process of both the initial 2018List and its 2022 iteration.

See McGroarty’s public comments on the U.S. Critical Minerals Lists here and here.

The bottom line is, while people appear to be laser focused on achieving the green energy transition via securing supply chains for the battery criticals and rare earths, the issue is bigger than this limited group of metals and minerals.  With the materials science revolution continuing to yield research breakthroughs at neck-breaking speeds, demand scenarios for metals and minerals will be subject to change.

It is clear that in the words of Forbes contributor Wal van Lierop, “[w]ithout massive investments in base metals and key minerals, Europe and North America will fail to meet their carbon emission targets and face a new form of energy insecurity,” — but these investments have to be made in the context of a broad-based “all of the above” strategy.  

Against the backdrop of ongoing supply chain challenges around the globe, the urgency of untangling and securing critical mineral supply chains essential to a net zero carbon emissions future is becoming increasingly clear.

Following on the heels of the Biden Administration invoking the Defense Production Act for the “Battery Criticals” – lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel and manganese – the energy provisions in the just passed Inflation Reduction Act are indications that this urgency has begun to resonate with U.S. policymakers, and sends a strong signal to investors that the U.S. is serious about “building the secure, responsible industrial base our economy and national security needs.”

Faced with mounting pressures in the global push towards renewable energy, automakers have been taking steps of their own to build out American EV battery manufacturing.

Toyota, which is building a cell-production facility in North Carolina, has announced an additional investment of $2.5 billion on top of the already committed $1.3 billion.  South Korean battery maker LG and Japanese automaker Honda have announced an investment of $4.4 billion into a joint venture in the United States, with mass production of advanced lithium-ion battery cells to start by the end of 2025.  Panasonic is considering a $4 billion investment into constructing a plant in Oklahoma, and north of the border, recent public filings indicate that Tesla is looking to set up a new advanced manufacturing facility in Canada.

Friends of ARPN can guess what comes next.  As the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Wilmot wrote last week, “[a]ll this means car makers can perhaps start to relax where they will get EV batteries. The tougher question now is where they will get battery materials.” He adds: “[a]nother wave of investment in inputs such as processed lithium and nickel needs to follow – and with a new urgency.”

As ARPN already pointed out, the Inflation Reduction Act’s requirement that will exclude EVs with material inputs from “foreign entities of concern” from eligibility for the $7,500 tax credit included in the bill, poses a serious challenge because the auto industry is so heavily reliant on battery materials and components from China.  With China being the global hub for battery-mineral refining, says Wilmot, “this will be hard for automakers to work around.”

Not surprisingly, automakers are increasingly lobbying governments to reform the U.S. mine permitting system.  Metal Tech News’s Shane Lasley points to a recent letter penned by Ford Motor Company’s chief government affairs officer Christopher Smith to the U.S. Department of Interior, in which he laments that “[t]oday’s lengthy, costly and inefficient permitting process makes it difficult for American businesses to invest in the extraction and processing of critical minerals in the United States.” Smith calls on the federal government to alleviate the challenges within the U.S. mine permitting framework, which Ford considers “unacceptable and well beyond the requirements facing Australian and Canadian companies, where responsible mining is a given and a prerequisite for obtaining mining permits.”

However, this is far from the only challenge automakers and the mining sector are faced with in their quest to support the green energy transition, as an inter-departmental “tug-o-war” is adding fuel to the fire.  As Lasley writes in an equally insightful piece:

“While the departments of Commerce, Defense, and Energy are forging ahead with programs and investments aimed at ensuring America has the minerals and metals needed to support the clean energy objectives outlined by the White House, and enabled by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, DOI is pumping the breaks on a domestic project that would produce the requisite raw materials.

The Interior Department’s yanking of the permits to build a road that would connect the rich deposits of cobalt, copper, zinc, and other metals in Alaska’s Ambler Mining District to markets demanding sustainable supplies of these mined materials underscores a disconnect within the Biden Administration.”

Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy had lamented DOI’s lack of acknowledgement of Alaska as a potential source and blasted the Ambler Mining District decision and called for federal permitting reform during the recent critical minerals summit held in Alaska, which we covered here:

“This administration must speak with one voice. It wants critical minerals, or it doesn’t. It wants the lower energy prices, or it doesn’t.  It wants to create jobs in the U.S. or it doesn’t.  It wants to protect the environment or it doesn’t. It cares about human rights, or it doesn’t. (…) The disjointed federal permitting process doesn’t just hurt Alaskans (…), it hurts every industry, and every state. (…) 

If we set ambitious goals for EVs or renewables without permitting the production of critical minerals here, those minerals will still be produced, they just won’t be produced in here in America or Alaska, they’ll be produced by child labor, potentially, they’ll be produced without environmental standards, potentially, they’ll be produced at the expense of the American worker, to the benefit, potentially, of our adversaries.”  

As for the IRA bill, the Wall Street Journal points out, “[h]ow far and how fast EV and battery makers need to scramble [to meet the law’s requirements] depends on how the Treasury Department interprets the Inflation Reduction Act. This process, which will be subject to intense lobbying over the coming months, could weaken some of the strings attached.”

However, the pressure to diversify supply chains away from adversaries is here to stay – and with that, the federal government will have to take steps to foster greater predictability in the mining sector to unleash the United States’ mineral potential.  As U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski told attendees of last month’s Alaska critical minerals summit, the rest of the world won’t wait for us, and “other countries” are moving now to implement “longer-term policies that allow them to focus on what it means to be sticking with a policy, and a view, and a vision towards dominance.”

In a new piece for Canada’s Globe and Mail, columnist Robert Muggah zeroes in on the geopolitics of mineral resource supply, which have, in his view, triggered a new “Great Game” – a term coined by British writer Rudyard Kipling to describe the “fierce competition between Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia, both of which sought to control South Asia [...]

As nations and industries grapple with the global push towards net zero carbon emissions, researchers  from India’s Bengaluru Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) have discovered a new material called “single-crystalline scandium nitride (ScN)” that is able to “emit, detect, and modulate infrared light with high efficiency making it useful for solar and thermal energy harvesting [...]

In a new piece for RealClearEnergy, John Adams, U.S. Army brigadier general (ret.), argues that the newly proposed Inflation Reduction Act, negotiated by Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) is not only the most ambitious climate bill in U.S. history, but also represents an opportunity to bolster our nation’s economic and national security.  General [...]

The mainstream media and parts of the political establishment may just now have begun to realize it — but followers of ARPN have long known that our nation’s critical mineral woes are real, and go beyond the often discussed battery criticals (lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, and manganese) and include one of the key mainstay metals: [...]

In case anyone needed a visual reminder of how the EV revolution is adding fuel to the fire of the overall critical minerals challenge we’re facing, Visual Capitalist has put together a handy graphic depicting the material inputs for EV batteries. Here’s a snippet – for the full graphic and context, click here. The infographic [...]

Supply chain challenges in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine, rising resource nationalism in the southern hemisphere, and now China’s Xi Jinping doubling-down on its zero-Covid policy this week which may lead to more lockdowns with serious economic and trade consequences – critical mineral supply chains can’t seem to catch a break. As [...]

It’s not exactly news to followers of ARPN that the global green energy transition will require vast amounts of critical minerals, however, against the backdrop of the raised geopolitical stakes in light of Russia’s war on Ukraine and rising resource nationalism in the southern hemisphere, new figures released by Belgium’s KU Leuven University underscore the [...]

Last week, against the backdrop of mounting pressures on U.S. critical mineral supply chains, U.S. President Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) to encourage domestic production of the metals and minerals deemed critical for electric vehicle and large capacity batteries. The move is a sign that “America is finally taking the battery metal shortage seriously,” as the [...]