While Nickel’s biggest traditional application is in alloying, particularly in the production of stainless and heat-resisting steels, it is its ability to achieve good storage capacity and higher energy density in batteries at an affordable cost that has sent the material’s star soaring in recent years.  It has also sent demand projections soaring, as nickel’s role in the EV revolution takes center stage.

At the end of 2021, nickel was only one of two new metals (the bulk of the expansion of the list from 35 to 50 minerals and metals was owed to the fact that the Rare Earths and Platinum Group Metals were now listed individually) to be added to the revised U.S. Government List of Critical Minerals. As Reuters’s Andy Home wrote at the time, while a “relatively benign supply profile kept nickel off” in the past, there are two reasons for including it on the updated list:

Pointing to the only domestic operating nickel mine in the U.S. and a single producer of nickel sulphate (which only produces Nickel as a co-product), Home said “the USGS has expanded its criticality criteria to look beyond trade dependency to domestic supply, particularly what it calls ‘single points of failure.’”

The second reason, according to Home, was “nickel’s changing usage profile from alloy in stainless steel production to chemical component in electric vehicle batteries.”  The rapid uptake of EVs as a key to the net-zero carbon transition has propelled nickel onto the critical minerals list, and has sent carmakers like Tesla and others to embark on missions to secure their own supply chains.

This push gained new urgency with Indonesia’s investment minister hinting at the possibility of Jakarta pursuing the creation of an OPEC-like cartel for nickel (and other key battery materials) last fall.  What is resource nationalism to some is supply risk to others, and that’s clearly part of the narrative around nickel.

The looming specter of battery material cartelization – first introduced earlier this year by South American Lithium producers — along with soaring demand scenarios provided fresh impetus for U.S. stakeholders to kick the buildout of domestic battery supply chains into high gear wherever possible, and efforts to this effect are currently underway.

According to USGS, in 2022, the underground Eagle Mine in Michigan – currently the only U.S. primary nickel mine in operation – “produced approximately 18,000 tons of nickel in concentrate, which was exported to smelters in Canada and overseas. Nickel in crystalline sulfate was produced as a byproduct of smelting and refining platinum-group-metal ores mined in Montana. In Missouri, a company produced nickel-copper-cobalt concentrate from historic mine tailings and was building a hydrometallurgical processing plant near the mine site.”

But with the Eagle project entering its final years, Michigan’s near-neighbor Minnesota holds promise for strengthening the U.S. domestic nickel supply chain.

The first recipients of federal funding disbursed under the 2021 infrastructure law to “supercharge” U.S. manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles and the electric grid included the Tamarack Nickel Project in central Minnesota.  Talon Metals’ subsidiary Talon Nickel was one of 20 processing and manufacturing companies in 12 states chosen for a combined $2.8 billion award to “expand domestic manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles and the electric grid.” 

Talon, which had previously signed a six-year agreement with Elon Musk’s Tesla under which Tesla would buy 75,000 metric tons of nickel concentrate, is looking to use part of the government grant to further its plans to construct an ore-processing facility in Mercer County, situated in the east-central region of North Dakota.

As ARPN has noted, the Tamarack project had previously been awarded  $2.2 million to fund an effort to achieve carbon capture by a process that mineralizes the carbon in rock – a process far more stable than methods that inject carbon, where it remains vulnerable to seepage and fracturing due to earthquakes. Bringing the supply chain home could not only inoculate the U.S. from trade issues on the critical minerals front but could also help reduce the industry’s — arguably large — carbon footprint.

The project is expected to start the environmental review process this year, a process that will be closely watched in particular in light of the Biden Administration’s recent decision to withdraw northeastern Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness from future mining – a move that could effectively kill another nickel and copper project, the proposed Twin Metals Minnesota underground mine, which has seen an ongoing legal and regulatory battle over the years.

A third proposed copper-nickel project in northeastern Minnesota — the PolyMet mine near Babbitt and Hoyt Lakes, just saw PolyMet Mining and Teck Resources finalizing a joint venture earlier this month to develop PolyMet’s copper-nickel deposit along with another larger ore body controlled by Teck. The project – a 50-50 venture, will be called NewRange Copper Nickel.

With the Tamarack and NewRange Copper Nickel projects situated in different watersheds, they are not affected by the Biden Administration’s Boundary Waters decision; however, as followers of ARPN well know, the not-in-my-backyard sentiment is a firm staple in the discourse over bolstering domestic supply chains, and brings us back to the “inherent irony” or “paradox of the green revolution” Reuters columnist Andy Home has invoked in several instances when covering critical mineral resource supply chains for the very materials underpinning the green energy transition — the paradox that “public opinion is firmly in favour of decarbonisation but not the mines and smelters needed to get there.”

As ARPN has previously pointed out – lofty goals of net carbon neutrality will not be achievable if we don’t embrace a push to secure critical mineral supply chains from “soup to nuts” to borrow a term used by Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.  That means “all of the above,” including domestic production and processing of metals and minerals like nickel.

After all, as we’ve noted often at ARPN, the first word in supply chain is… supply.

The post Critical in Spite of “Relatively Benign Supply Profile?” A Look at Nickel appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

The clean energy provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act negotiated by Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) — which passed the U.S. Senate on August 7, 2022, was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on August 12, 2022 and is now headed for U.S. President Joe Biden’s desk – include combined investments of $369 billion aimed at reducing carbon emissions by roughly 40% by the end of this decade.

A swath of significant clean energy tax credits aims at increasing domestic energy production while at the same time accelerating energy innovation abroad.

Among them are:

• $30 billion in production tax credits to accelerate domestic critical minerals processing as well as manufacturing of batteries, solar panels and wind turbines

• $10 billion in investment tax credits to build manufacturing facilities for EVs, wind turbines and solar panels

• $500 million to use the Defense Production Act to accelerate critical mineral production among other defense priorities

• $2 billion in retooling grants for existing auto manufacturing facilities to transition to the manufacture of EVs

• Up to $20 billion in loans for the construction of new clean vehicle manufacturing facilities

• $2 billion in materials science research funding for the National Labs

The package further includes funding for tax credits and rebates for consumers buying electric vehicles, installing solar panels or making other energy-efficiency upgrades to their homes, including, a credit of $4,000 for lower-and middle-income individuals purchasing used EVs, and up to $7,500 tax credits for EVs.  These represent a renewal of the existing $7,500 electric vehicle Federal tax credit starting in January of 2023, and carrying it through until the end of 2032. The former 200,000-vehicle cap is removed and all manufacturers will have access to the credits if they comply with the other requirements in the package.

However – and of considerable interest for followers of ARPN — a new requirement is that qualified cars must be assembled in North America, and adhere to mandated “escalating levels of critical minerals to be sourced from the U.S. or a country with a free-trade agreement with the U.S.”

Green Car Congress summarizes the escalating levels of sourcing requirements for applicable battery critical minerals (with the bill defining an extensive list of applicable minerals) as follows:

“40% for a vehicle placed in service before 1 January 2024;

50% for a vehicle placed in the service during calendar year 2024;

60% for a vehicle placed in service during calendar year 2025;

70% for a vehicle placed in service during calendar year 2026; and

80% for a vehicle placed in service after 31 December 2026.

The bill places similar restrictions on the percentage of value of the components, but leading up to a 100% requirement for vehicles placed in service after 31 December 2028.”

While experts like John Adams, U.S. Army brigadier general (ret.), believe that the sourcing requirements for the battery materials contained in the package are key to addressing “emerging energy security vulnerabilities before they are intractable crises,” others have cautioned that because the auto industry is so heavily reliant on battery materials and components from China – as evidenced by the latest supply deals inked by Tesla – the requirement will represent an almost insurmountable challenge. Says Simon Moores, chief executive of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence:

“Considering it takes seven years to build a mine and refining plant but only 24 months to build a battery plant, the best part of this decade is needed to establish an entirely new industry in the United States.” 

The challenge is certainly real as, in the words of General Adams: “China has worked diligently to turn mineral supply chains into an economic leg up but also an enormous source of geopolitical leverage — not unlike how Russia has leveraged its energy trade with Europe.”  He maintains however, that “the mineral sourcing requirements in the reconciliation bill – coupled with other incentives to encourage domestic mining, mineral processing and recycling– are precisely the bold measures needed to address this alarming vulnerability.” 

Also of note for followers of ARPN, the package places an emphasis on a concept which, as Reuters columnist Andy Home recently suggested, “could allow some to move beyond [carbon] neutrality to become net carbon negative:” a set of incentives to substantially expand carbon capture technologies that capture carbon dioxide and either store it underground or ship it for reuse.

As ARPN previously pointed out, “experts believe that harnessing the natural chemical reactions that convert captured CO2 into rock and store it underground, as currently done at large scale by carbon mineralization company Carbfix at its Coda Terminal in Iceland (see our piece on the issue here), could become an important asset in the push to meet global climate goals.”

The emphasis on carbon capture in the package is consistent with the U.S. Department of Energy’s recent $2.2. million award to fund to a Rio Tinto-led project with joint-venture partner Talon Metals Corp. at the Tamarack Nickel Project in central Minnesota to achieve carbon capture by a process that mineralizes the carbon in rock – a process considered far more stable than methods that inject carbon, where it remains vulnerable to seepage and fracturing due to earthquakes.

Some caution, however, that “while the new bill may appear helpful on a theoretical basis, both carbon capture and storage and direct air capture could face some serious headwinds over the course of the next decade and beyond,” possibly in the form of opposition to the construction of necessary pipelines.

Any new law this wide-ranging will require federal guidance on the way to implementation – and spark follow-on efforts by resource development opponents to roll-back some elements even as resource development proponents look to build on this new legislative initiative.

All of which is good reason to be hopeful that the bill’s requirements will help jumpstart a more comprehensive push towards domestic sourcing and processing, onshoring, friend-shoring, and harnessing the materials science revolution, which are important components of a comprehensive “all-of-the-above” resource development approach.

As the bill proceeds to the president for signature, ARPN will continue to monitor what may well be, as General Adams phrases it, “a critically important leap forward to build the secure, responsible industrial base our economy and national security needs.”

The post Congress “Net-Zeroes” in on Energy Security, Supply Chains for Critical Minerals – A Look at the Inflation Reduction Act appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Underscoring the extent of China’s chokehold on critical mineral supply chains, especially for the “battery criticals” lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, and manganese, Tesla Inc. signed two new long-term contracts with two of its existing Chinese battery materials suppliers, according to Bloomberg.

The company signed pricing agreements with Zheijang Huayou Co. and CNGR Advanced Material Co. for supplies, specifically ternary precursors used for energy storage, until the mid-2020s.

As followers of ARPN know, China dominates not only the resource development segment of the EV battery supply chain, but also the processing segment for the battery criticals.  As Manhattan Institute senior Fellow Mark Mills told the Daily Caller News Foundation: “If you want to build EVs, one needs access to the entire suite of specialty chemicals, and the vast majority of those are produced in China – the issue is not the mining per se, but the refining wherein China utterly dominates most relevant chemicals. Or else one could wait 5 to 10 years – if you’re lucky – for non-Chinese refineries to be built.”

Amidst the global push towards net zero carbon emissions, demand for EVs will continue to soar, in the U.S. fueled in part by the adoption of an ambitious climate agenda by the Biden Administration, further driving up demand for critical minerals.

The question becomes whether the net zero transition deepens dependency on Chinese and foreign-sourced Critical Minerals – or galvanizes a push to provide new sources of supply in the U.S..

Thankfully, positive policy developments that could help reduce our over-reliance on China are underway.

U.S. President Joe Biden in March of this year invoked the Defense Production Act to encourage domestic production of the metals and minerals deemed critical for electric vehicle and large capacity batteries, including nickel, and the Administration has acknowledged that “the need to domestically produce more metals is rising as EV’s go mainstream, but that new mines must not harm the environment.”   The development followed the adoption of a broader “all-of-the-above” approach to supply chain security on the part of the Biden Administration in 2021, and may be strengthened with the adoption of provisions contained in the Inflation Reduction Act just passed by the U.S. Senate.

The package would require that by 2024, 40% of the minerals used in EV batteries would have to be extracted, processed or recycled in the U.S. or by a free trade partner — a requirement that increases to 80% by 2027 – and 100% for battery components by 2029. According to John Adams, U.S. Army brigadier general (ret.), the sourcing requirements for the battery criticals could be key to addressing “emerging energy security vulnerabilities before they are intractable crises.” 

On the supply side, the mining industry is ready to meet this challenge and has increasingly been harnessing advances in materials science and technology to help develop domestic critical minerals supplies while maintaining and advancing responsible mining practices.   A case in point we recently highlighted was  Tesla’s  deal with Talon Metals Corp, developing a new nickel project in Minnesota, which Elon Musk singled out, “due to plans to make the electric vehicle battery metal in a way it considers more environmentally friendly.”

As we outlined, this is the mine site for which the U.S. Department of Energy recently announced a $2.2 million award to fund to a Rio Tinto-led project to achieve carbon capture by a process that mineralizes the carbon in rock – a process far more stable than methods that inject carbon, where it remains vulnerable to seepage and fracturing due to earthquakes.

These are positive developments, but more must be done. Until then, there will be more announcements of automakers signing deals with Chinese companies — certainly not an ideal scenario at a time when tensions between the U.S. and China are mounting over Taiwan.

The post Latest Tesla Deals with Chinese Suppliers Underscore Critical Mineral Supply Chain Challenges appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

The latest case in point concerns one of the new materials on the U.S. Government’s Critical Minerals List — nickel:

Earlier this week, dozens of environmental non-governmental organization (NGOs) sent an open letter to Tesla CEO Elon Musk and company shareholders, asking that the company terminate plans to invest directly into Indonesia’s nickel industry over concerns that the company’s plans would result in disposing of mining waste into the ocean, increased deforestation, and overall pollution.

The NGOs further demanded that the company ban nickel sourced and produced in the country from being used in any of Tesla’s business lines.

The letter, according to Reuters, was sent in the wake of a meeting between Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo and Musk in Texas in May to discuss the company’s potential investments.

A critical ingredient in lithium-ion battery technology, nickel has been in the crosshairs of automakers’ worries for quite some time, even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  Experts were issuing warnings that global demand for EV battery grade nickel could outstrip supply by 2024, and Elon Musk famously called on global mining companies in 2020 to boost production of nickel in early 2020, when he publicly announced:

“Any mining companies out there … wherever you are in the world, please mine more nickel. (…)  Tesla will give you a giant contract for a long period of time if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way. (…) Don’t wait for nickel to go back to some high point you experienced five years ago (…).”

The good news is that while Indonesia may be the biggest producer of nickel globally, and U.S. nickel production had been considered “objectively very lame,” as Musk lamented on Twitter that year, things are changing.

U.S. President Joe Biden in March of this year invoked the Defense Production Act to encourage domestic production of the metals and minerals deemed critical for electric vehicle and large capacity batteries, including nickel, and the Administration has acknowledged that “the need to domestically produce more metals is rising as EV’s go mainstream, but that new mines must not harm the environment.” 

The mining industry is ready to meet this challenge and has increasingly been harnessing advances in materials science and technology to help develop domestic critical minerals supplies while maintaining and advancing responsible mining practices.

Followers of ARPN may recall Tesla’s recent deal with Talon Metals Corp, developing a new nickel project in Minnesota, which Elon Musk singled out, “due to plans to make the electric vehicle battery metal in a way it considers more environmentally friendly.”

As we outlined, this is the mine site for which the U.S. Department of Energy recently announced a $2.2. million award to fund to a Rio Tinto-led project to achieve carbon capture by a process that mineralizes the carbon in rock – a process far more stable than methods that inject carbon, where it remains vulnerable to seepage and fracturing due to earthquakes.

This may not be a silver bullet for the auto industry’s nickel woes — but, as the Indonesia situation shows, to ensure supply chain security for its manufacturers critical mineral needs, the U.S. is well-advised to pursue a comprehensive all-of-the-above approach to resource policy that promotes the domestic — socially and environmentally responsible — production and processing of critical materials.

The post New “Critical” in the Crosshairs — NGOs Call on Automaker to Terminate Nickel Investment Plans in Indonesia appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

With Ukraine considered the “breadbasket of Europe,” Russia’s invasion of the country stands to take a toll on the food supply chain.   And, as the war enters its fourth week, the writing is on the wall: For European consumers, it’s 2020 all over again with empty shelves in the grocery store – just this time the run is not on the toilet paper aisle, but rather, pantry staples like flour and cooking oil.

On the critical minerals front, ARPN has discussed looming supply crunches and implications for the United States using the example of titanium, but effects of the war can be felt across the spectrum of critical minerals.

As a case in point, consider nickel.  With Russia’s assault on Ukraine deepening, nickel prices jumped as much as 250% in just two days earlier in March, leading the London Metal Exchange to suspend trading for the metal. As Reuters’s Andy Home observed, “[w]hat Russia terms its ‘special operation’ has broken the LME nickel contract and forced the exchange to impose emergency measures across the rest of its core base metal contracts.”  Nickel has since reached a decade high of $25,000 per ton.

A critical ingredient in lithium-ion battery technology, nickel’s abrupt price surge has analysts and investors worried about automakers’ electric-vehicle ambitions, which are at the heart of the global push for achieving net zero carbon emissions.

Even before Russia’s euphemistically self-proclaimed “special operation” in Ukraine, experts and stakeholders were raising the alarm about a likely supply shortage for nickel as automakers shifted to EV production, with warnings that global demand for EV battery grade nickel could outstrip supply by 2024.  Perhaps most famous is Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk’s call on global mining companies to boost production of nickel in early 2020, when he publicly announced:

“Any mining companies out there … wherever you are in the world, please mine more nickel. (…)  Tesla will give you a giant contract for a long period of time if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way. (…) Don’t wait for nickel to go back to some high point you experienced five years ago (…).”

Thankfully, for U.S. consumers and manufacturers, the message appears to have begun to resonate, and while we can argue that it has taken far too long for U.S. stakeholders to realize the seriousness of the situation, there are indications for a momentum shift.

The Biden Administration last month announced several “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,” following in the wake of the Administration’s 100-day supply chain report.

Meanwhile, with the stakes raised significantly in light of the war on Ukraine, U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Joe Manchin (D-WV), James Risch (R-ID), and Bill Cassidy (R-LA), sent a letter to President Biden last week urging the him to take congressional and Administration efforts to bolster mineral supply chains one step further and to “invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) to accelerate domestic production of lithium-ion battery materials, in particular graphite, manganese, cobalt, nickel, and lithium.”

While President Joe Biden missed an opportunity to convey the urgency of the critical minerals supply challenge with the American people during his first State of the Union Address early this month, 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 encouraging.

Mining Weekly cites U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and other officials speaking at an energy conference earlier this week as stating that “the need to domestically produce more metals is rising as EV’s go mainstream, but that new mines must not harm the environment.”

The good news is that the mining industry is ready to meet this challenge. Having recognized “[its] responsibility and trying to meet the increased expectations of consumers, society and governments” to contribute towards the push towards a greener energy future, the industry  has increasingly been harnessing advances in materials science and technology to help develop domestic critical minerals supplies while maintaining and advancing responsible mining practices.

ARPN has highlighted industry initiatives on numerous occasions, and will continue to do so.

In the nickel realm, Tesla’s recent deal with Talon Metals Corp comes to mind, in which Elon Musk chose the company’s Tamarack mining project site in Minnesota, “due to plans to make the electric vehicle battery metal in a way it considers more environmentally friendly.”

Followers of ARPN may recall that this is the mine site for which the U.S. Department of Energy recently announced a $2.2. million award to fund to a Rio Tinto-led project with joint-venture partner Talon Metals Corp. to achieve carbon capture by a process that mineralizes the carbon in rock – a process far more stable than methods that inject carbon, where it remains vulnerable to seepage and fracturing due to earthquakes.

As Senators Murkowski, Manchin, Risch, and Cassidy argued in their letter to President Biden:

“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.”

The post Russia’s War on Ukraine Hits Critical Mineral Supply Chains: A Look at Nickel appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

As friends of ARPN will appreciate, the catalyst is the materials science revolution redefining how the world uses scores of metals and minerals for technology applications unknown just a few years ago. Enter the concept of carbon capture, which — as Reuters columnist Andy Home recently suggested – “could allow some to move beyond neutrality to become net carbon negative.” 

Home notes that while “[t]he technology for industrial-scale carbon capture and storage is still in its infancy and largely untested,” there are certain minerals that “do it naturally,” and harnessing their potential could in fact turn miners — who “tend to be the perennial villains in the environmental debate,” into “the unlikely pioneers of large-scale and permanent carbon storage.”

Case in point:  the U.S. Department of Energy’s $2.2. million award to fund to a Rio Tinto-led project with joint-venture partner Talon Metals Corp. at the Tamarack Nickel Project in central Minnesota to achieve carbon capture by a process that mineralizes the carbon in rock – a process far more stable than methods that inject carbon, where it remains vulnerable to seepage and fracturing due to earthquakes.

Experts believe that harnessing the natural chemical reactions that convert captured CO2 into rock and stored underground, as currently done at large scale by carbon mineralization company Carbfix at its Coda Terminal in Iceland (see our piece on the issue here), could become an important asset in the push to meet global climate goals, which is why this  new public-private partnership deserves a feature in ARPN’s Materials Science Profiles of Progress series.

In the context of this series, ARPN has been highlighting public-private partnerships that are fueling the materials science revolution which is transforming the ways in which we use and obtain metals and minerals and their work to develop practical solutions to critical minerals issues.

With the help of the just-announced funding via the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E Innovation Challenge the project, to which Rio Tinto will contribute an additional $4 million, seeks to explore “new approaches in carbon mineralization technology as a way to safely and permanently store carbon as rock.”

The company’s technical experts will work with consortium partners from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Columbia University, plus private-sector partners Carbfix and Advantek Waste Management.  The project will leverage insight and build on the findings from PNNL’s Wallula Basalt Carbon Storage Pilot Project in Southeastern Washington State, where researchers successfully performed the first supercritical CO2 injection into a basalt reservoir in 2013 and demonstrated the potential to transform CO2 into a “solid form that is immobile and poses no risk of leakage.” 

At a time when the Biden Administration is grappling to reconcile its green credentials with the acknowledged need for domestic resource development, the significance of carbon capture opportunity cannot be overstated, as, in the words of Andy Home, it “could inject a whole new dimension into the heated debate around new mines and metals plants.”

The post Materials Science Profiles of Progress: DoE Funds Carbon Capture Project in Minnesota appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

As policy makers and industry stakeholders look to address our mineral resource supply chain vulnerabilities during and beyond the pandemic, researchers are forging ahead to provide innovative solutions that not only transform the way we use certain metals and minerals, but have the potential help alleviate our over-reliance issues. 

We have outlined several promising research breakthroughs and projects as part of our Materials Science Profiles of Progress series here. 

In the same vein, the Department of Energy has stepped up its efforts to promote collaboration between its research hubs and the private sector to look for ways to diversify mineral resource supply, develop substitutes and drive recycling of critical minerals and rare earth elements. 

In a recent piece for Real Clear Energy, U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouilette outlines some of the initiatives spearheaded by DoE and its research hubs, ranging from “identifying and extracting critical minerals and REEs from previously untapped sources such as our vast coal reserves,” over capturing lithium from waste product generated by geothermal power production to developing “high-performance magnets used in renewable energy technologies and advanced motors with reduced REE content.”

With regards to critical materials and REE recycling, Brouilette cites two promising developments:

“The first involves using a high-speed shredder that turns old computer hard drives into scrap containing significant amounts of REE content. Our scientists apply an acid-free recycling process to the scrap that recovers REEs with greater than 99-percent purity, reducing the steps involved in the previous process and lowering recycling costs.

The second involves recovering nickel, cobalt, and manganese from disassembled electric vehicle battery packs. A recent American Manganese Inc. project, on which DOE partnered, generated recycled products with purities greater than 98-percent of the 3 critical minerals.”

In a time when keeping up with the headlines is anxiety-inducing for many, it is nice to see that some positive developments are on the horizon.  They may seem wonky, but their importance should not be underestimated, because, as Brouilette concludes in his Real Clear Energy piece: 

“Our over-reliance on countries like China that are not reliable trading partners for critical supply chains threatens our economic and national security. We must reclaim our independence over critical mineral and rare earth element supplies to secure a prosperous future.”

The post Silver Linings: Materials Science Revolution Marches On Amid Pandemic appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Why are we talking about space other than the fact that the focus on SpaceX is giving us a short, but much-needed break from the ever-consuming coverage of the coronavirus pandemic?

As followers of ARPN will know, aeronautics is a field in which we owe many breakthroughs in recent history to metals, minerals, and the materials science revolution.

Scandium is a case in point.  Dubbed the “super metal that the aerospace and electric vehicle industries dream of” because of its alloying capabilities that promote lightweight, strength and corrosion resistance, it has become an indispensable tech metal, particularly in the context of the ongoing lightweighting revolution. 

Aluminum-Scandium alloys have helped reduce aircraft weights by 15% to 20%, without compromising the strength of the building material.   3D-printed Scandium and Aluminum-based high-performance alloys may become even more relevant as the U.S. government embarks on a path to create a U.S. Space Force, and a successful launch of the SpaceX Crew Dragon may further increase demand for hi-tech metals like Scandium.

While all systems may be go for Scandium demand to take off, the supply side has been challenging. 

As we  outlined a few years ago:

“[W]hile on paper, Scandium resources may in fact be abundant, it is rarely concentrated in nature, making commercially viable deposits extremely rare. Because it is at present largely recovered as a co-product during the processing of various Gateway Metals, including Tin and Nickel, total global production rates are quite low.  Scandium may also be present in certain Copper and Rare Earth deposits.”

To date, the U.S. has been 100% import-dependent to meet our domestic Scandium needs and has had to rely on China and Russia — arguably not our most reliable trading partners — to meet demand. In recent years, with demand forecasts for Scandium on the upswing,  mining companies have begun exploring the possibility of primary Scandium recovery and researchers — on behalf of developers of multi-metallic deposits began studying the inclusion of scandium recovery into their project plans.

And while the launch of SpaceX has to be postponed, news of a breakthrough with potential to change the Scandium supply picture arrived today.  

As Reuters reports, researchers at Rio Tinto have developed process to extract scandium from waste tailings in the titanium dioxide production process in one of its production facilities in Quebec, Canada.

The company had previously joined forces with the Critical Materials Institute (CMI), a U.S. Department of Energy research hub, to study new ways to capture Gateway Metals and Co-products that are increasingly becoming indispensable in clean power manufacturing — an endeavor we highlighted in the context of our “Profiles of Progress” series highlighting public-private partnerships proving to be valuable tools in the effort to alleviate supply risks for critical raw materials. 

The post Materials Science Revolution Continues to Yield Breakthroughs – a Look at Scandium appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

In the latest issue of Metal Tech News, a new publication we recently featured, editor Shane Lasley zeroes in on opportunities offered by the World Bank’s Climate Smart Mining initiative.

The initiative, which “supports a low-carbon transition where mining is climate-smart and value chains are sustainable and green,” kicked into high gear in May of 2019 with the launch of the so-called “Climate-Smart Mining Facility.”  This multi-donor trust fund has the stated goal of “help[ing] resource-rich developing countries benefit from the increasing demand for minerals and metals, while ensuring the mining sector is managed in a way that minimizes the environmental and climate footprint.”

Writes Lasley:

“World Bank said wind, solar and the batteries that store this energy and power electric vehicles will be the biggest low-carbon technologies that will drive global demand for metals in the coming three decades.

[…]

The batteries needed to store wind and solar energy, as well as power zero-emissions vehicles, are expected to be the biggest renewable energy driver of minerals and metals demand.

Many of these renewable energy minerals and metals are found in developing countries, which provides enormous economic opportunities for the more than 3 billion of the poorest and most vulnerable people on Earth.”

(Read Lasley’s full article here.)

The initiative is timely, and ties into the overall context of the growing realization that the current push towards a lower-carbon future is not possible without mining, as – in the words of Dr. Morgan Bazilian, Dr. Morgan Bazilian, Director of the Payne Institute and Professor of Public Policy, Colorado School of Mines – “[t]he future energy system will be far more mineral and metal-intensive than it is today. Many of these advanced technologies require minerals and metals with particular properties that have few to no current substitutes.”

As Bazilian has pointed out:

“The opportunity for the mining industry is tremendous. An industry that has experienced enormous public pressure and critique, accompanied by offshoring production overseas, can now evolve into one fundamental to supporting a shift to a low-carbon and sustainable energy system based on domestic natural resources.”

The World Bank’s Climate Smart Mining initiative is one facet of approaches taken to sustainably green our future, but, as we recently outlined, it does not end here. In an effort to offset some of the carbon costs of resource development, mining companies have started to incorporate renewable power sources into their operations, and we’ll continue to feature these efforts (as we have done here) in the months to come.

The post The Future of Mining is “Climate Smart” appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Where we began:

In last year’s annual recap, we had labeled 2018 as a year of incremental progress, which had set the stage for meaningful resource policy reform. The Department of Interior (DOI) list of 35 metals and minerals deemed critical from an economic and national security perspective, released in May of 2018, marked a first tangible step towards addressing the question of “how the U.S. Government can match policy to the priority of overcoming our Critical Minerals deficit.” Additional progress was made on several other fronts (see our 2018 recap). However, most legislative efforts to reduce our mineral resource dependencies – save for a “potentially precedent-setting” provision in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) prohibiting the acquisition of sensitive materials from non-allied foreign nations – faltered in 2018; and it took another full year since the Critical List release —until June of 2019 — for the U.S. Department of Commerce to release the interagency report pursuant to Executive Order 13817, A Federal Strategy to Ensure Secure and Reliable Supplies of Critical Minerals.

At last, a strategy? But in the Trade War – or Tech War?

The Commerce report, which, according to the agency’s official announcement, “contains a government-wide action plan, including recommendations to advance research and development efforts, increase domestic activity across the supply chain, streamline permitting, and grow the American critical minerals workforce,” came at a critical juncture.

Only hours before the Commerce Department report release and against the backdrop of an escalation of U.S.-Chinese trade tension, China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) had announced it is studying proposals to impose export controls on rare earth elements to “protect and better use such a ‘strategic resource.’”

As ARPN’s Dan McGroarty pointed out, the specter of using rare earths as an economic weapon has revealed that the current trade war between the U.S. and China is in fact one front in a larger tech war – 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 and China’s dominance across the supply chains for many of them.

Leave it to the Rare Earths

China’s decision to cut off Rare Earths exports to Japan in the fall of 2010 helped bring the mineral resource supply challenge into focus. For the first time in a long time, non-fuel mineral resource issues entered the mainstream political discourse. However, as we noted at the time, there was no comprehensive approach to these issues, and though some progress was made over the years — such as the creation of the Critical Materials Institute (CMI) under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy — a more holistic approach was not yet in sight. Particularly on the legislative front, partisan differences hindered passage of comprehensive reform bills.

With the tech wars heating up and the battery arms race kicking into high gear, 2017/2018 set the stage for reform. This summer’s specter of China playing the “rare earths card” yet again set off alarm bells — and may have served as a catalyst for policy makers across the political aisle to understand the urgency of securing mineral resource supply chains, and the need at long last for a more comprehensive approach to mineral resource policy.

Since then, progress has been made on several fronts:

International Cooperation to Counter Chinese Dominance

In an effort to stave counter China’s dominance in the critical minerals segment on the whole, and REEs in particular, the US State Department and its Canadian and Australian counterparts in June of 2019 announced that to ensure future supplies of materials needed for new energy technologies, including lithium, copper and cobalt, they will cooperate and “work to help countries discover and understand their mineral resources.”

Since then, we have seen the following examples of increased mineral resource cooperation between the United States and its allies:

- The signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Australia and the United States on energy mineral resources in the context of the Energy Resources Governance Initiative (ERGI) launched by the U.S. Department of State on June 11 and convened with partners at the United Nations General Assembly on September 26.

- The signing of an agreement on developing U.S. and Australian critical mineral assets between Geoscience Australia and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in which both partners outlined “specific steps to strengthen an existing Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)” with an emphasis on collaboration on “joint critical mineral potential mapping and quantitative mineral assessments; determining geological controls on critical mineral distribution; and developing data analytics capability to understand supply and demand scenarios for developing critical minerals trade between the two countries.

- The creation of a U.S.-Canada Critical Minerals Working Group tasked with developing an action plan for U.S-Canadian collaboration on “critical minerals” subsequent to a June meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Domestic Developments and Policy Initiatives

• After weeks of Chinese threats that it could cut off U.S. access to REEs, the Trump Administration in July invoked Title III of the 69-year old Defense Production Act to spur domestic REE development. The President issued five Presidential Determinations (PDs) permitting the use of Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III authorities to strengthen the domestic industrial base and supply chain for light and heavy REEs, rare earth metals and alloys, neodymium iron boron (NdFeB) rare earth permanent magnets, and samarium cobalt (SmCo) rare earth permanent magnets.
• In a move that would represent the “first financial investment by the U.S. military into commercial-scale rare earths production since World War Two,” the U.S. Army has plans to fund construction of rare earths processing facilities. As part of this push, an Army division in November solicited proposals on the cost of a pilot plant to produce so-called heavy rare earths, indicating it would “fund up to two-thirds of a refiner’s cost and that it would fund at least one project and potentially more.”
• While long-standing and often-introduced legislation to reform our outdated and cumbersome permitting process for mining projects — as put forth by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) — still faces uphill battles, there is growing awareness across party lines that a “more holistic” approach to mineral resource policy is warranted. Case in point: a recent hearing in the U.S. Senate and a recent hearing on the issue in the U.S. House. As E&E’s Dylan Brown wrote: “They are split on solutions, but many Republicans and Democrats share national security concerns about growing reliance on foreign countries, in particular China, for a slew of minerals used in military and renewable energy technology.”
• Meanwhile, the Administration has set out to modernize National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations. On June 13, the US Forest Service announced a proposal to streamline environmental review of proposed projects on National Forest System land. The White House Council on Environmental Quality is expected to soon issue a draft of its revamped National Environmental Policy Act regulations, while the Bureau of Land Management has already implemented several changes resulting in shorter wait times for Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) for infrastructure and mining projects.
• U.S. imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum coming from Canada and Mexico were weighing heavily on the negotiations surrounding the USMCA (U.S.-Mexico-Canada) trade agreement earlier this year. In May, the tariffs, which particularly in the case of Canada ignored nearly 80 years of deep defense cooperation with our northern neighbor, were lifted. However, the agreement signed earlier this month between Canada, Mexico and the United States may open the door to increased metal imports from China via Mexico as its amended rules of origin for automobiles exclude definition for aluminum.

Profiles of Progress – Public-Private Partnerships to Secure Mineral Resource Supply Chains

In 2019, public-private partnerships to advance R&D in materials science — which we have been featuring as part of our “Profiles of Progress series” — have continued to yield positive results.

Examples include:

DoE’s New Research Center on Lithium Battery Recycling to Leverage Resources of Private Sector, Universities and National Laboratories
Advances in Metals and Minerals Research May Yield Breakthrough in Quest for Fusion Power
Public and Private Sectors to Collaborate on World Bank “Climate-Smart Mining Facility”
Penn State University Launches Center for Critical Minerals
REE Extraction and Separation From Phosphoric Acid

Sustainably Greening the Future – Changes in Mining Technology for the New Decade

Meanwhile, it’s not your grandfather’s mining industry anymore. Advances in technology harnessed by the modern mining industry make it possible to restore a balance between mining and environmental protection. As Fleming Voetmann, VP for Public Affair at the International Copper Association outlined earlier this year, “industries are responding by recognizing their responsibility and trying to meet the increased expectations of consumers, society and governments.”

Sustainably greening the future begins with responsible sourcing, an area where consumer electronics companies like Ericsson and mining companies like Rio Tinto have been overhauling their supply chain policies to ensure suppliers conform to certain environmental and social standards, while companies like consumer electronics maker Phillips and mining company Teck are supporting local communities. The World Bank’s Climate-Smart Mining Initiative also ties into this context.

But it does not end here. In an effort to offset some of the carbon costs of resource development, mining companies started to incorporate renewable power sources into their operations. These include, for example:

• Rio Tinto looking at incorporating renewables and battery storage into its main mining sites in Australia, for example, as part of its $1 billion upgrade for its Pilbara ore project
• Fortescue Metals partnering with a power utility to – with the backing of the Australian federal government – help power its Pilbara operations with solar energy and battery storage
• Gold Fields planning to predominantly operate its Agnew gold mine in Western Australia (WA) using renewable energy by partnering with a global energy group and investing in an energy micro grid combining wind, solar, gas and battery storage
• Antofagasta partnering with a utility company to turn its Zaldívar mine into the first 100% renewable energy-powered Chilean mine with a mix of hydro, solar and wind power.
• Rio Tinto looking to reduce its carbon footprint at its Kennecott Utah copper mine by as much as 65% through the purchase of renewable energy certificates

These are just a few examples from 2019. In 2020, we can expect more companies to follow suit.

Towards an All-Of-The-Above” Approach?

2019 continued the path of incremental progress begun late in 2017. Momentum has been building, but partisan obstacles remain that are near certain to continue into the coming decade. However, as ARPN Principal Dan McGroarty recently noted during a panel discussion:

“We can’t admire the problem anymore. We don’t have the luxury of time,”

arguing that once supply chains are formed, “it’s very difficult to break them, and this will have national security consequences for us.”

McGroarty has suggested that the application of an “all-of-the-above” approach we’ve come to know from the energy policy discourse – in the context of working toward “resource independence,” a focus on new mining, recycling and reclamation of new minerals from old mine tailings — could be useful in formulating policy solutions for our critical mineral woes.

To reclaim America’s leadership role, from which “we have clearly – clearly stepped away” according to Sen. Murkowski, we must take swift and comprehensive steps, building on the progress that has been made over the past few years. ARPN holds hope that the 2020’s will be the decade of American resource independence.

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