While the number of metals and minerals for which the U.S. remains 100% import dependent may have dropped by two from 17 to 15, the number of materials for which we are more than 50% or more import dependent has actually gone up over last year.

When cross-referencing the U.S. Net Import Reliance chart with the 2022 Final list of Critical Minerals, the United States was 100% net import reliant for 12, and an additional 31 critical mineral commodities (including 14 lanthanides, which are listed under rare earths) had a net import reliance greater than 50% of apparent consumption.

Recent policy developments, such as the Biden Administration’s invoking of the Defense Production Act (DPA) for the five “battery criticals” — graphite, lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese –  as well as the rare earths, declared DPA priority materials during the Trump Adminstration, plus the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the energy provisions of which contained EV tax credits observers said would send important signals to investors and industry that the U.S. was serious about domestic supply chains, provide hope for a positive change.

But, after decades of dwindling domestic resource production and rising import reliance, no one ever said turning an aircraft carrier this size would be easy.  As Morgan D. Bazilian of the Colorado School of Mines and Gregory Brew from the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University argue in a recent piece for Foreign Affairs, while this general trend represents “welcome and overdue progress, (…) implementing plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could be stymied in part by a material obstacle: the procurement of critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper that are essential to clean energy systems,” which in their words have so far been “myopic.”

At the same time, as scholars at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Center have pointed out, “the Biden administration’s efforts to free up federal funds for domestic mining activities has highlighted the inherent conflict between accessing the minerals needed for climate action and the administration’s commitment to environmental and social justice.” 

Developments like the recent Biden administration halt on progress on the Ambler Road project in Alaska, which proponents say would unlock access to critical minerals and create new jobs, or the cancellation of the two mineral leases held by Twin Metals Minnesota LLC which seeks to mine copper, nickel and other commodities near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, point to conflicting viewpoints between the President’s stated objectives and his Administration’s policy.

This week’s State of the Union Address to both chambers of Congress could have provided important impetus to strengthen critical mineral supply chains. However, while professing that his administration understood the importance of making sure that “the supply chain for America begins in America,” the President’s speech never once referenced the terms “critical minerals,” “mining,” or “processing.”  

That is in spite of the fact that there are promising developments underway – especially for the “battery criticals.”  Over the next few weeks ARPN will be looking at each of these materials, now deemed under President Biden’s DPA determination to be “essential to the national defense,” and the U.S.-based projects working to urgently needed new supply into production.

Let’s start with graphite, one of the materials for which USGS noted an ongoing 100% import dependence this year.

As the key raw material in the battery anode, graphite is the largest component of lithium-ion batteries by weight. In light of “phenomenal demand growth from the EV battery sector and delays to new capacity as well as rising power costs,” the graphite supply chain represents a significant and growing challenge for automakers looking to reduce the carbon footprint of the materials they use for their EVs.

However, that’s not for lack of known graphite resources.  As USGS noted in February 2022 in its updated U.S. Mineral Deposit Database, the Graphite Creek deposit near Nome, Alaska – being developed by Graphite One, Inc. — is America’s largest graphite deposit.

Graphite One recently announced it is cooperating with two U.S. national laboratories under the Department of Energy umbrella in an effort to establish a mine-to-manufacturing all-American graphite supply chain.

In January, the company announced that it had entered into an agreement to have active anode material and other materials sourced from Graphite Creek tested to verify conformity to EV battery specifications by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).

Aside from these public private partnerships according to Metal Tech News’s Shane Lasley, at least three automakers to date have also taken notice and are currently testing Graphite One material for use in their EV batteries.

In keeping with the new generation of miners looking to harness the materials science revolution to responsibly green our energy future [see ARPN’s post series on mining companies’ sustainability initiatives here], the company is also collaborating with Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico to explore the lab’s award-winning green extraction methods to recover materials other than graphite from Graphite Creek – providing, in Lasley’s words, an opportunity to “provide an ancillary income stream for Graphite One while maximizing the Alaska deposit’s potential to supply minerals critical to the U.S” or – to use the President’s State of the Union verbiage — an opportunity to make sure that “the supply chain for America begins in America.”

As ARPN recently pointed out,

“If U.S. Government efforts to develop an American-based EV and lithium-ion battery supply chain have any hope of succeeding, looking for ways to help projects like Graphite Creek down the path to production will be, in a word…. Critical.”

The post As Critical Mineral Dependencies Persist, Promising “Battery Criticals” Projects Provide Opportunity to Ensure that “the Supply Chain for America Begins in America” – A Look at Graphite appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

2022 surely was as fast-paced a year as they come.

Didn’t we just throw overboard our New Year’s Resolutions?  We blinked, and it’s time for another review of what has happened in the past twelve months.

So with no further ado, here is ARPN’s annual attempt to take stock of what has happened on the critical mineral resources front in 2022 — to assess where we are, and, filled with hope for a New Year, where we are headed. 

Early 2022 —

As Covid Pressures Fade, Geopolitical and National Security Concerns Mount, While the Global Push Towards Net Zero Carbon Emissions Intensifies

Coming off two years of a global pandemic affecting virtually every aspect of our lives, the world was ready to take a collective deep breath.

The severity of the coronavirus strains had lessened, vaccines, therapeutics and treatment methods for Covid-19 became more readily available, many restrictions had been loosened or dropped, and global supply chains appeared to slowly recover and reorganize from the strain of lockdowns.

In the U.S. domestic critical minerals realm, against the backdrop of the accelerating global green energy transition, it appeared that stakeholders had learned their pandemic-induced lesson as the 2021 Biden Administration’s 100 Day Supply Chain report and subsequent policy statements pointed towards the adoption of an “all of the above” approach to mineral resource policy to strengthen North American supply chains and decouple from adversaries, and especially China.   (see our 2021 Year in Review post for more)

However, any sense of collective relief was short-lived.

Only weeks into 2022, geopolitical tensions were rising fast with China and Russia declaring a “no limits” partnership in the face of what both nations perceived as “interference in the internal affairs” of other states by “some forces representing a minority on the world stage” which “continue to advocate unilateral approaches to resolving international problems and resort to military policy.”  

Resource nationalism began rearing its head in the Southern Hemisphere, which, often overlooked in the policy discourse, is no less crucial in the global race for critical mineral resources and has emerged as a major source of renewable energy metals and minerals.  Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, which form the so-called Lithium Triangle — home to more than half of the world’s known lithium reserves — were central to this new development, but other countries in the region, like Mexico, are also in the critical minerals business.  Specific developments varied from country to country (for more on the issue click here), but in each case, the trend toward resource nationalism was unmistakable.

Against the backdrop of a global lithium market expected to grow by 500% in the next 35 years, developers in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and possibly Peru were even reportedly evaluating the possibility of creating an OPEC-like lithium cartel.  While observers contended that it was “important not to confuse this resource nationalism with predictions of a highly ideological leftward turn,” the underlying implications for U.S. critical mineral resource supply chains as U.S. demand for lithium and other green energy critical materials continues to grow are not to be dismissed.

Meanwhile, countries around the globe forged ahead with their pursuit of net zero carbon emissions, with up to 20 countries to date having have announced phase-out bans on internal combustion engine car sales over the next 10 to 30 years.

But the watershed moment for 2022 was undoubtedly Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24.  While the ongoing war has serious implications for European energy supply, the ramifications of Russia’s actions stretch well beyond oil and natural gas, and well beyond Europe.

Russia’s war on Ukraine set off a potential realignment of critical mineral resource supply chains that warrants attention.  Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has largely isolated it on the global front both diplomatically and economically, and, with sweeping sanctions taking hold, the Western world has turned elsewhere to meet certain critical mineral needs previously supplied by Russian companies and halted shipments of materials to the Russian Federation. Unsurprisingly for followers of ARPN, Russian buyers began turning to China to plug shortfalls.

As ARPN cautioned earlier this year:

“While to date, Beijing has walked a carefully calculated line on Russia’s war on Ukraine emphasizing its concern with violence while maintaining the need to respect territorial integrity and security interests of all parties, China stands to gain major strategic opportunities from filling the void left by a Western business pullout from the Russian market, both in terms of imports and exports. China will also be able to further its grip on global critical minerals via access to Russia’s vast mineral riches.”

By mid-March of 2022, a confluence of factors — pandemic-induced supply chain shocks, increasing resource nationalism in various parts of the world, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — had completely altered the Post-Cold War geopolitical landscape and mineral resource security calculus.

Critical Mineral Security = National Security. President Joe Biden Invokes Defense Production Act 

Responding to the resulting growing pressures on critical mineral supply chains and skyrocketing demand scenarios, 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 via Presidential Determination No. 2022-1.

The Presidential Determination instructs the Secretary of Defense to “create, maintain, protect, expand, or restore sustainable and responsible domestic production capabilities of such strategic and critical materials by supporting feasibility studies for mature mining, beneficiation, and value-added processing projects; by-product and co-product production at existing mining, mine waste reclamation, and other industrial facilities; mining, beneficiation, and value-added processing modernization to increase productivity, environmental sustainability, and workforce safety; and any other such activities authorized under section 303(a)(1) of the Act.”

Observers and stakeholders hoped that the presidential determination would “oil the wheels of domestic mining and refining” by “funding easy wins” and “low hanging fruit,” as Simon Moores, Managing Director of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence phrased it, and set the stage for subsequent additional steps to support domestic mining and processing projects.

Mid 2022 –

A New Great Game?

Post-Cold War Realignment Spurs Domestic and Global Efforts to Strengthen Critical Mineral Supply Chains

Over the course of the following weeks and months, awareness of the importance of securing critical mineral supply chains and decoupling from adversaries, i.e. China, against the backdrop of an increasingly volatile geopolitical landscape and mounting environmental pressures continued to grow, not just domestically, but also amongst the United States’ key allies.

In the eyes of Globe and Mail (Canada) columnist Robert Muggah, the geopolitics of mineral resource supply had 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 and Africa” which “went on to shape geopolitics for much of the rest of the 19th and 20th centuries.”

Said 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, and prompted Western nations to rethink and reorganize their supply chains.

As director of the Payne Institute and professor of public policy at the Colorado School of Mines Morgan Bazilian, and postdoctoral fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University Gregory Brew suggest:

“Where the 20th century featured battles over access to oil, the 21st century will likely be defined by a struggle over critical minerals, particularly as the United States views China as a global competitor and strives to limit its reliance on Chinese supplies for EV manufacturing and a wide variety of energy and defense technologies.”

In July, the United States and allied countries announced the formation of a new cooperative initiative to bolster critical mineral supplies. The Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) comprises the United States, Canada, Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the European Commission, and seeks to “ensure that critical minerals are produced, processed, and recycled in a manner that supports the ability of countries to realize the full economic development benefit of their geological endowments.”

Observers like Reuter’s Andy Home posited that the formation of the MSP might signify a post-Cold War “tectonic realignment with far-reaching implications” as it — against the backdrop of Russia’s war on Ukraine and mounting tension with China — is “defined as much as anything by who is not on the invite list — China and Russia.” Arguing that a “previously highly globalized minerals supply network looks set to split into politically polarized spheres of influence” he suggested that a “metallic NATO [was] starting to take shape, though no-one [was] calling it that just yet.”

U.S. Congress “Net-Zeroes” in on Critical Mineral Supply Chains, Passes Inflation Reduction Act

In August of 2022, the U.S. Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes 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.

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.”

Experts like John Adams, U.S. Army brigadier general (ret.), believed the sourcing requirements for the battery materials contained in the package would become key to addressing “emerging energy security vulnerabilities before they are intractable crises,” while others have cautioned that because the auto industry was so heavily reliant on battery materials and components from China that the requirement would represent an almost insurmountable challenge in light of lagging timelines for mine permitting.  These concerns notwithstanding, the provisions have sent a strong signal to investors that the United States is serious about “building the secure responsible industrial base our economy and national security needs,” kicking off a flurry of activity in the industry.

Fall/Winter 2022 –

Regulatory Changes Prompt Rethink As China Tightens Reins on Supply Chains 

Energy Provisions in Inflation Reduction Act Spur Efforts to Build Out U.S. Battery Supply Chain, as States Step Up Their Own Efforts

In October of 2022, As part of the implementation of the 2021 infrastructure law, the U.S. Department of Energy announced the first round of funding under the Act for projects aimed at “supercharging” U.S. manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles and electric grid.

Awardees — a total of 20 companies — will receive a combined $2.8 billion “to build and expand commercial scale facilities in 12 states to extract and process lithium, graphite and other battery materials, manufacture components, and demonstrate new approaches, including manufacturing components from recycled materials.”

Meanwhile, adapting to “recent regulatory changes and intensifying competition over key battery raw materials,” automakers, miners and suppliers have begun to rethink and reorganize their critical mineral supply chains.  ARPN featured several examples (see here and here) of new offtake agreements  and contracts between battery makers and mining companies – and even states and cities are getting in on the action, entering into partnerships with and offering incentive packages to mining companies to cultivate a “vertically integrate supply chain that will help companies increase efficiencies by reducing the reliance on imported materials,” as Georgia Governor Bryan P. Kempdescribed the rationale for a new battery plant construction partnership in Georgia.

Tying into the overall push towards net zero carbon emissions, these agreements increasingly leverage advances in materials science and technology as the mining industry has made strides towards balancing modern mining practices and environmental protections in the quest to sustainably green our future.

For more examples of initiatives by mining companies to significantly reduce carbon emissions or even “close the loop,” take a look here, here and here.

Xi’s China – Beijing’s Tightening of Reins Underscores Urgency of Decoupling Critical Mineral Supply Chains from China

Also in October, China’s Communist Party confirmed President Xi Jinping for another term in office.  In what effectively amounted to a “coronation,” as the Wall Street Journal editorial board phrased it, the CCP’s move has effectively “confirm[ed] China’s combination of aggressive nationalism and Communist ideology that is the single biggest threat to world freedom.”  Xi has since reaffirmed the need to increase China’s self-sufficiency in technology and supply chains, and China’s commitment to attaining control over Taiwan — a key point of contention in the country’s relations with the United States, which have already starkly deteriorated in recent years.  According to the Wall Street Journal, the “coronation” “all but guarantees an era of confrontation between China and the U.S.”

Earlier this summer, Beijing had established a new state-owned group to serve as a consolidated hub for the country’s iron ore trade with a registered capital of 20 billion yuan ($3 billion).  China Mineral Resources Group’s mandate covers mining, ore processing and trading.  As mining.com outlines, the company’s creation was “encouraged and closely monitored” by senior government officials in Beijing.   These Chinese officials have repeatedly accused the United States and its allies of “ganging up to try to suppress China’s global rise,” and consider the formation of a consolidated trading platform a “way to strengthen the country’s negotiating position in an unfriendly international environment.”  

Since then, with a newly emboldened Xi at the helm, the Chinese government has been actively tightening the reins on its critical mineral supply chains. Most recently, according to news reports, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced plans to increase its supervision of China’s lithium battery supply chain, which, according to the ministry, is “severely unbalanced.”

Efforts to decouple supply chains from China may become “all the more pressing in light of current fears that (…) China may retaliate after the U.S. Department of Commerce announced sweeping limitations to semiconductor and chip-making equipment sales to Chinese customers this fall.” 

2022 Reality Check

– The Real World Challenges of “Decoupling” -

Against the backdrop of a growing realization that “China has big footed a lot of the technology and supply chains that could end up making us vulnerable if we don’t develop our own supply chains,” as U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm phrased it earlier this summer, the push to decouple critical mineral supply chains from China has been one of the emerging key trend lines of 2022.

However, in spite of having made it de facto policy, it appears that Biden Administration officials are becoming increasingly wary of the term “decoupling” – as evidenced most recently by U.S. Secretary of Commerce stating explicitly that the United States is “not seeking a decoupling from China” in a policy speech on U.S. Competition with China.  This development may be rooted in the fact that, in light of the complexity of critical mineral supply chains, the process of “decoupling” is fraught with more significant real world challenges than some would have thought.

Earlier this summer, a RealClearInvestigations exposé discussed the alleged China connections of a domestic lithium extraction project in Nevada, where, as RealClear’s Steve Miller writes “a Chinese-dominated mining company has procured millions of dollars in American subsidies to extract lithium in the United States – but, given a dearth of U.S. processing capacity, the mineral is likely to be sent to China with no guarantee that the end product would return as batteries to power President Biden’s envisioned green economy.

The Nevada project is still in the permitting process, but similar scenarios have already unfolded elsewhere, such as in the case of rare earths magnets used in engine parts for F-35 fighter jets, where the U.S. Department of Defense has resorted to granting a waiver for sourcing requirements because at the current time acquisition of parts without Chinese components is not possible.  While the U.S.’s national security imperatives may make a rare earth waiver unavoidable, it should serve to turbo-charge domestic rare earth supply chain development to break the U.S. Armed Services’ Chinese rare earth dependency once and for all.

Of course, experts have long warned that decoupling supply chains for lithium, for example represents a formidable challenge.

As Simon Moores, chief executive of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence argued in the wake of the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, “[c]onsidering 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.”

Meanwhile, the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) challenge, becoming increasingly prominent in 2021, continues to represent a significant hurdle for shoring up domestic supply chain security, particularly as it now appears that its newest manifestation, “virtual weaponized NIMBYism” in the form of concerted cyber warfare campaigns in which networks of inauthentic accounts across social media platforms, websites and forums pose as local residents opposed to certain mining or processing projects.

(see our post on virtual weaponized NIMBYism here) 

Interestingly, and underscoring that the critical minerals challenge has gone mainstream it was CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, who put his finger on the crux of the issue stakeholders are currently grappling with in a TV segment this summer. He said:

“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.”

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 arena – Zakaria closed his segment as follows:

“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.” 

2022 – Metals in Focus

Government Critical Minerals List, Rare Earths and the Battery Criticals 

While USGS released its second government critical minerals list in February of 2022 (an update to the 2018 list of 35) featuring 50 metals and minerals deemed critical to United States national security and economic wellbeing, this year’s media coverage might have you believe that all that matters when it comes to securing critical mineral supply chains, is the rare earths and the battery criticals (Lithium, Cobalt, Graphite, Nickel, and Manganese).

And even here, initially, lithium appeared to steal the spotlight – after all, much of the green energy transition is fueled by Lithium-Ion technology.

In recent months, this has shifted.

Cobalt

With the U.S. Department of Labor including 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 international standards regarding child or forced labor, tracking the cobalt supply chain is becoming increasingly important and the added scrutiny of labor practices for cobalt adds increased urgency for U.S. policy and other stakeholders to build out a North American supply chain.

Nickel

With Indonesia’s investment minister hinting at the possibility of Jakarta pursuing the creation of an OPEC-like cartelfor nickel (and other key battery materials), the spotlight is falling on nickel.

the looming specter of battery material cartelization – first introduced earlier this year by South American Lithium producers — should be reason enough for U.S. stakeholders to kick the buildout of domestic battery supply chains into high gear wherever possible.

As recent U.S. developments suggest, efforts are already underway.

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.  As ARPN has noted, the 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.

Graphite

Graphite has also entered the chat.  As the key raw material in the battery anode, graphite is the largest component of lithium-ion batteries by weight. In light of “phenomenal demand growth from the EV battery sector and delays to new capacity as well as rising power costs,” the graphite supply chain represents a significant and growing challenge for automakers looking to reduce the carbon footprint of the materials they use for their EVs.

Currently, according to the USGS, the United States is 100% import dependent for its graphite needs, but as ARPN recently pointed out,

“that’s not for lack of known graphite resources.  As USGS noted in February 2022 in its updated U.S. Mineral Deposit Database, Graphite One’s Graphite Creek deposit near Nome, Alaska is America’s largest graphite deposit.  If U.S. Government efforts to develop an American-based EV and lithium-ion battery supply chain have any hope of succeeding, looking for ways to help projects like Graphite Creek down the path to production will be, in a word…. Critical.”

Until then, China’s battery anode dominance could be the West’s Achilles heel in the green energy transition – in defense planners parlance, a potential “single point of failure”:  irrespective of whether we succeed in developing multiple minerals and metals for the battery cathode, if we are unable to meet anode material needs – and we cannot do so sustainably and ESG-friendly without natural graphite — we will not be able to build a rechargeable battery independent of China.

New Focus: The Super-Criticals 

Altogether, a new set of critical minerals appears emerge as a key priority for stakeholders.

What ARPN has dubbed the “super-criticals” – the five battery materials, plus a sub-set of five rare earths required for permanent magnets (neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium and samarium) altogether comprise a group of 10 criticals within the 50 critical minerals on the official U.S. government list, and many of the efforts to build out a secure North American critical minerals supply chain are focused on this group of materials.  By June, courtesy of another DPA Presidential Determination, platinum and palladium pushed the super-critical list to 12.

All-of-the-Above and Supply Chains in 2022

At the end of 2021, ARPN suggested that if the term “supply chain” could “move from jargon to meme in 2021,” maybe 2022 could be the year that strengthening supply chains could “move from rhetoric to reality” – and in some ways it was.

As outlined above, much progress was made, including important groundwork to build out a secure North American critical minerals supply chain.  However, much more remains to be done, and to overcome the many challenges, new alliances will need to be forged.

As Shane Lasley argues in Critical Minerals Alliances 2022, a magazine covering 29 metals and minerals (when counting rare earths as 14)  deemed critical to North American supply chains as well as related policy issues:

 “The optimum solution to laying the foundation for the next epoch of human progress will only be discovered through the forging of unlikely alliances between the woke and old school, environmental conservationists and natural resource developers, liberals and conservatives, national laboratories and private sector entrepreneurs, local stakeholders and global mining companies, venture capitalists and innovators, and everyone else with visions of a cleaner, greener, and high-tech future.”

And so the stage is set for 2023, as decisions to come will determine national fortunes and human progress in decades ahead.

The post 2022 – ARPN’s YEAR IN REVIEW appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

You might not recognize how mining plays a role in your daily life. Most people do not see the raw materials produced by mining, from metals and minerals to coal and stone, sand, and gravel. Instead, we use items every day that come from mined raw materials, never knowing that mining played an integral part in the development of the mobile devices we use, the roads we travel on, the cookware we use to make our meals, and the mined fertilizers that helped grow our food. These products, in addition to countless other necessities and conveniences, start with mining.”

This is not an excerpt from a puff piece written by a trade association – it’s a snippet from the CDC website today, and many other U.S. government agencies, as well as Members of Congress have put out similar statements acknowledging the mining industry’s contributions to our modern way of life.

Since 2009, when National Miners Day was first proclaimed by Congress to be observed every December 6, awareness of the importance of metals and minerals, and securing their supply chains, has steadily grown.

Fueled by a global pandemic severing supply chains and compounded by mounting environmental and geopolitical pressures, and the realization that our green energy future will be mineral intensive, critical mineral supply chain security today is more than a buzz word, and stakeholders understand the need to — responsibly and sustainably — mine and process the metals and minerals that underpin the global push towards net zero carbon emissions and 21^stCentury technology in the broader sense.

Thankfully, the mining industry is ready to meet the challenge and is not only upping the ante on the ESG front in general, but is specifically leveraging the materials science revolution to sustainably develop and process the metals and minerals we need today and in the future.

In recent years, ARPN has been showcasing initiatives by mining companies to sustainably green the future, 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 for resource development.

Perhaps most recently, in November of 2022, mining equipment manufacturer Caterpillar announced a successful demonstration of its first battery electric large mining truck, going hand in hand with a “significant investment to transform its Arizona-based proving ground into a sustainable testing and validation hub of the future.”

Many more initiatives are underway (several are featured here and here), and we will continue to feature them going forward.

The post On National Miners Day, A Look at The Mining Industry’s Contributions to Sustainably Greening our Future appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Not surprisingly, many of these efforts are focused on what ARPN has dubbed the “super-criticals” – the five battery materials, plus a sub-set of five rare earths required for permanent magnets (neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium and samarium), which altogether comprise a group of 10 Criticals within the 50 Critical Minerals on the official U.S. Government list.

With the new sourcing requirements in the energy provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act mandating that to be eligible for the EV tax credits contained in the package, qualified cars must be assembled in North America, and adhere to “escalating levels of critical minerals to be sourced from the U.S. or a country with a free-trade agreement with the U.S,” car and battery makers are being forced to rethink their supply chains.

LG Energy Solutions’s (LGES) just-signed offtake agreement for the purchase of battery-grade lithium carbonate from U.S.-based Compass Minerals is a case in point for companies adapting to “recent regulatory changes and intensifying competition over key battery raw materials.”

The companies have entered into a six-year term agreement under which LGES would receive 40% of Compass Minerals’s anticipated annual production from its lithium brine development project located on the Great Salt Lake in Ogden, Utah.

With Compass Minerals having adopted a low-carbon profile for its operations — the company recently announced it will rely on Energy Source Minerals’s direct lithium extraction (DLE) technology to remove lithium with superior absorption and minimal environmental impact, using a solar evaporation process projected to produce significantly lower rates of greenhouse gas emissions — the partnership will tie into the overall push towards net zero carbon emissions.

As ARPN has frequently pointed out, the mineral intensity of the green energy transition dictates that the pathway to net zero carbon leads through the mining sector — which, thankfully, is ready to meet the challenge of striking a balance between modern mining practices and environmental protections.

In this context, the LGES and Compass Minerals partnership is another example of the mining sector harnessing advances in materials science and technology to do its part to sustainably green the future while securing critical mineral supply chains underpinning 21^st Century technology.

For more examples of initiatives by mining companies to significantly reduce carbon emissions or even “close the loop,” take a look here, here and here.

The post Sustainably Building Out Domestic Supply Chains — Auto and Battery Makers Rethink Their Value Chains in Wake of Recent Regulatory Changes and Intensifying Competition appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Bearing testimony to these new realities, ABC News has put together a brief yet insightful video clip on “Critical Minerals in the Climate Fight.”

In the clip, policy experts Reed Blakemore, deputy director, Atlantic Council Global Energy Center and Abigail Wulf, vice president and director, critical minerals strategy at SAFE, underscore the need to — responsibly and sustainably — mine and process the metals and minerals that underpin the global push towards a net zero carbon future in the United States to ensure resilient supply chains.

Thankfully, the mining industry, as we have outlined on several occasions, is ready to meet the challenge and is leveraging the materials science revolution to sustainable develop and process the materials underpinning 21st century technology.

Says Abigail Wulf:

“We’re not just digging for digging’s sake. We’re trying to make sure that we can solve the climate crisis and also that we can make sure that we can compete in the new economies of the future, which will be electric and which will run on minerals.”

Click here to view the full clip.

The post Critical Minerals Go Mainstream: ABC News Clip on Critical Minerals in the Climate Fight appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

The emerging geopolitical landscape has sent countries scrambling to devise strategies to not only ensure steady supply of oil and gas in the wake of looming cuts of exports from Russia, one of the major global supplier of fuel minerals, but also to secure current and future needs of the non-fuel metals and minerals underpinning 21st century applications, ranging from green energy to defense technology.

Over the past few weeks, we have looked at how Russia’s war on Ukraine and rising resource nationalism in Central and South America and parts of Africa is affecting the global supply picture for titanium, lithium, nickel and cobalt.

As we end the week, we’re taking a look at copper – which often gets lost in the media shuffle.

Followers of ARPN know that while this mainstay metal may be less flashy and headline-grabbing than some of its tech metal peers, it deserves far more credit and attention than it is currently getting.  We have long touted the versatility, stemming from its traditional uses, new applications and Gateway Metal status.  Copper is also an irreplaceable component for advanced energy technology, ranging from EVs over wind turbines and solar panels to the electric grid.   The average EV 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.

The West’s severing of ties with resource-rich Russia has sent commodity prices skyrocketing. The Wall Street Journal this week cited a Morgan Stanley’s analysis which found that “there isn’t enough thermal coal, nickel, aluminum or palladium being produced to meet global demand this year. Other markets including copper, which were forecast to be in balance before the Ukraine conflict, could face material shortfalls if Russian supply dries up.”

This development comes less than a year after analysts warned that the world might be “running out of copper” amid widening supply and demand deficits, suggesting that prices could hit $20,000 per metric ton by 2025, and pointing to inventories at levels last seen 15 years ago.

As the Wall Street Journal points out, there is no easy way out of the critical mineral resource challenge, as “years of underinvestment in new mines means they don’t have additional production that can be brought on quickly. After a decadelong focus on productivity, existing operations are mostly running at full tilt. Difficulties in getting permits to build pits and community opposition have slowed developments in some countries, and scuttled projects in others.”

And, as Laura Skaer, a member of the board of directors of the Women’s Mining Coalition and former director of the American Exploration & Mining Association, outlined in a piece for Morning Consult last summer, the challenge is not just mining, but also processing:

“Last year, the United States imported 37 percent of the copper we used. 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.” 

However, from a U.S. supply perspective, there is reason to be optimistic. While snubbing the material again for its updated Critical Minerals List, the Biden Administration has recognized copper as an integral component of Lithium-ion battery technology, in the context of being what we have called a “gateway metal” to other critical materials, and for its “use across many end-use applications aside from lithium-ion cells, including building construction, electrical and electronic products, transportation equipment, consumer and general products, and industrial machinery and equipment” in its 100-Day Supply Chain Review report.

Coupled with 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,” this is an encouraging development. In this context, U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and other officials have been cited as stating that “the need to domestically produce more metals is rising as EVs go mainstream,” but that new mines must not harm the environment.

This is where the private sector is increasingly stepping up to the plate, with the latest case in point being a deal between Lion Copper and Rio Tinto America for a stake in copper assets in Mason Valley, Nevada, where the stakeholders will “explore the potential commercial deployment of (…) Nuton copper leaching technologies in a historical mining district with a large copper endowment,” and look to not only “unlock additional copper, but to also deliver low carbon production with significant environmental benefits through reprocessing old stockpiles and tailings, and reducing waste from new and ongoing operations.”

ARPN has featured other examples of industry harnessing advances in materials science and technology to help develop domestic critical mineral resource supplies while maintaining and advancing sustainable mining practices on numerous occasions, and will continue to do so.

As the National Mining Association’s Rich Nolan wrote earlier this week for RealClearEnergy:

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its effect on global commodity markets has added new urgency to get to work. Fortunately, our challenge is one of policy, not geology. We have the resources to supply significant domestic production for many of the metals most essential to advanced energy technologies.” 

Now is the time to get serious about harnessing them.

The post The Reorganization of the Post-Cold War Geopolitical Landscape and its Impact on Critical Mineral Supply – A Look at Copper 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.

a Last Look Back at the United States’ Critical Mineral Resource Challenge in 2021

Well, two words, for the sticklers.  Merriam Webster may have gone with “vaccine,” but for ARPN, there was really no doubt. As one article put it, “2021 is the year ‘supply chain’ went from jargon to meme.”  

As we noted more than once in 2021, the first word in supply chain is supply – a broad hint that we should wonder, and in many cases worry, about where we get the constituent parts and essential materials that make our EVs, our laptops, computers and CT scanners, smart phones, and smart bombs.

Even cookies – not the website kind, more the chocolate-chip variety.  As Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster put it in a 2021 New Yorker Cartoon: “What me wants to know:  What are the implications of the supply-chain crisis for cookie?”

For ARPN, it all added up to a teachable moment:  A reason to step back from the magic of modern life and ask, where does the stuff that makes our stuff come from?

And what better time to take that step back than mid-December, which is customarily the time for ARPN to take stock and assess what has happened on the critical mineral resources front in the past twelve months — where we are, and, filled with hope for a new year, where we are headed.

COVID-19 and Push Towards Net Carbon Zero as Catalysts

With the U.S. presidential elections behind us, one of the two key issues dominating the news cycle in 2020 has faded into the background, but of course the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has not. Vaccines have brought hope and have helped save lives, but the arrival of new virus variants have made clear that the issue is here to stay.

In 2021, two major themes — the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the accelerating global push towards net carbon zero dominated headlines.

Both themes served as catalysts for the rise of one key issue in the mineral resource realm and beyond:  Securing the Supply Chain.

After all, the supply chain is what everything hinges on these days — our success in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, the global push towards net carbon zero, buying a new car, putting presents under the Christmas tree, or (if you’re trying to find cream cheese for that traditional holiday dessert) just minding our day-to-day business in our personal lives.

In 2020, we were given a first glimpse into the 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.

In 2021, the extent of our supply chain vulnerabilities has reached crisis levels.

Where We Began – Amidst Big Policy Shifts, Signs for Continuity in Mineral Resource Realm

Observers of the critical mineral resource realm saw early indications that, unlike some other policy areas, critical mineral resource policy would display a certain level of continuity. In December of 2020, then-Assistant Secretary of State (Energy Resources) Frank Fannon declared that he expected the Energy Resource Governance Initiative (ERGI) — an initiative aimed at securing supply chains for metals critical for the clean energy transition — would continue in 2021, and policy statements made by the transition team suggested that, while emphases were certainly going to shift, efforts to secure critical mineral supply chains was going to continue taking a central role under an incoming Biden Administration.

Remarks made by the incoming Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in January signaled that the Biden Administration acknowledged the urgency of our nation’s critical minerals challenge, and the importance of securing supply chains:

“If we are to build the supply chain for batteries, as one example, if we allow for China to corner the market on lithium or for the Democratic Republic of Congo to be the place where everyone gets cobalt when there may be child labor or human rights violations associated with that supply, then we are missing a massive opportunity for our own security but also for a market for own our trading partners that also may want to have access to minerals that are produced in a responsible way.”

She added, “the responsible way is an important thing to mention — we know we can mine in a responsible way.”

The Push towards “Building Back Better” 

One of the key priorities of the Biden Administration would dominate the domestic policy agenda for much of 2021.  President Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda: an economic recovery package seeking to “make historic investments in infrastructure, along with manufacturing, research and development and clean energy.”

The increased focus on clean energy brought the critical minerals challenge to the forefront of the political discourse.  As followers of ARPN well know, the road to a lower-carbon future is paved with critical metals and minerals – not least evidenced by the instructive 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.

The growing emphasis on clean energy on the part of the Biden Administration, embedded into a global push towards net zero carbon emissions that began to accelerate in 2020 and has continued into 2021, culminated in the 2021 Climate Change Conference (COP26) commitments by various countries, territories, and automakers to sell only zero-emission vehicles by 2040.  Against the backdrop of these commitments, and the growing awareness of the mineral intensity of sustainably greening the future, supply chains took center stage.

Supply Chains Take Center Stage – the White House’s 100 Day Supply Chain Report

On June 8, 2021, the White House released its 100 Day Supply Chain Report — key findings from reviews directed under Executive Order 14017 “America’s Supply Chains” (E.O.14017). Signed on February 24, 2021, the Executive Order instructed President Biden’s economic and national security teams to conduct a 100-day review of four key U.S. supply chains across federal agencies to assess the nation’s “resiliency and capacity of the American manufacturing supply chains and defense industrial base to support national security [and] emergency preparedness.” 

The report assessed the risks and vulnerabilities for several key industry sectors — semiconductors, high- capacity batteries, medical supplies and critical and strategic metals and minerals, and offered recommendations on how to address the challenges.  Not only did the report endorse an all-of-the-above approach to critical mineral resource policy, by looking to  invest in “sustainable production, refining, and recycling capacity domestically,” while at the same time looking to “diversify supply chains away from adversarial nations and sources with unacceptable environmental and labor standards” by working closely with allies and partners. The Department of Defense-led chapter also specifically acknowledged the importance of the inter-relationship between what we at ARPN have been calling “gateway metals” and their “co-products.”

See ARPN’s report on the 100 Day Supply Chain Review here.
To learn more about the Gateway Metal/Co-product relationship, click here. 

 On July 22, 2021 the House Armed Services Committee’s bipartisan Defense Critical Supply Chain Task Force, chartered in March of 2021 to “review the industrial base supply chain to identify and analyze threats and vulnerabilities,” released its final report, which includes key findings and policy recommendations, many of which mirror the Administration’s 100-Day Supply Chain report in the context of an all-of-the-above approach.

Against mounting pressures, hope was building that both reports would create sufficient momentum to translate recommendations into actual policy, programs, and projects to address the nation’s deep shortfalls in Critical Mineral supply.

Shoring Up Supply Chains in the Wake of the 100 Day Supply Chain Report

Industry Deals
Only weeks after the release of the 100 Day Supply Chain Report, several deals struck in the critical mineral resource realm suggested that the “all of the above” approach was off to a good start.

International Cooperation
Efforts to promote closer collaboration with allied nations to secure stable supply of critical minerals had already been underway in 2020, and continued in 2021, in line with the all-of-the above approach endorsed by the 100 Day Supply Chain Report.  In this context, relations with long-standing trading partners Canada and Australia remained the focal point, but stakeholders also called for increased leveraging of the National Technology and Industrial Base (NTIB), which, originally established to strengthen technology links between the U.S. and Canada in 1993, was expanded in 2016 to include the United Kingdom and Australia. 

Industry Efforts to Sustainably Green Our Future
Acknowledging their role and responsibility in supporting and building out “sustainable production, refining, and recycling capacity domestically,” the mining sector and associated industries have made significant capital investments and – long before 2021 – began harnessing the materials science revolution to meet increased expectations of consumers, society, and governments to support the green energy transition.  ARPN has, over the course of 2021, featured many of the industry initiatives to that effect, and will continue to do so going forward.

 Examples of recent industry initiatives to sustainably green the future can be
found here and here.

Legislation and the New Draft Critical Minerals List
While several pieces of critical minerals legislation never made it out of Congress, the bipartisan infrastructure package passed by Congress and signed by President Biden contains key provisions ranging from mine permitting reforms, to investments in carbon capture and critical mineral mapping initiatives aimed at strengthening critical mineral supply chains.

Meanwhile, the fact that a new draft Whole-of-Government Critical Minerals List released by USGS in November with a request for public comment has grown from 35 to 50 metals and minerals deemed critical for U.S. economic and national security (– essentially half of the naturally-occurring elements on the Periodic Table –), is proof of the critical role these materials play in our Tech Metal Era.

See our commentary on the new draft list here, here, and here.

Once finalized, the updated list, additions and omissions to which we featured in a series of blog posts, may provide fresh impetus for policy reform in 2022.

The NIMBY Challenge
While much is being done to shore up U.S. supply chain security, efforts continue to face a significant hurdle:

For all of the verbal affirmations of an “all-of-the-above” approach to mineral resource policy on the part of the Biden Administration, the overall plan thus far appears more geared towards “rely[ing] on ally countries to supply the bulk of the metals needed to build electric vehicles and focus[ing] on processing them domestically into battery parts, [as] part of a strategy designed to placate environmentalists.”

The latest manifestation of this challenge became apparent at a November 2021 congressional hearing, during which U.S. Representative Scott Peters (D-Calif.) suggested that rather than onshoring minerals production, the U.S. should try “friend-shoring,” adding that “it seems like we should be working with our allies to develop new mines and factories for clean energy technologies in more favorable locations.”

While the “friend-shoring” concept is an important pillar of the “all-of-the-above” concept and highly appealing especially to those policy makers with “not in my backyard (NIMBY)” constituencies, it is insufficient to alleviate our overall problem.

As Thom Carter, energy adviser to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and executive director of the Governor’s Office of Energy Development, argued in a piece for the Deseret News, the “keep it all in the ground” push by “Washington, D.C. and the East and West Coasts” provides little more than a “talking point. (…) Anyone who says that you can get power through a ‘keep it in the ground’ policy isn’t telling you the truth. (…) All power, whether traditional or renewable, is impacted by what comes out of the ground. Advocating for renewable energy sources also means maintaining, if not expanding, our mining infrastructure.”

The good news is that courtesy of the materials science revolution, industry can harness new technologies to do expand our mining infrastructure responsibly and sustainably – as we outlined above, and as even Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm acknowledged this summer during a U.S. Senate hearing:

 “This is the United States. We can mine in a responsible way. And many places are doing it. And there are some places where there are more challenges, but we can do this.” 

A Sense of Urgency:  On China, Winning the Battery Arms Race, and the Overall Critical Minerals Challenge

While not making as many headlines this year, the tech war between China and the United States, the extent of which was exposed in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic placed a magnifying glass on our mineral resource dependencies, continued in 2021. 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 tech war has a number of battlefronts, ranging from aviation to space technology, from biotech and quantum sciences to robotics, and from military technology to artificial intelligence.

From an ARPN perspective, critical mineral resources are – in the military sense of the term — the materiel from which modern weapons of war are fashioned, and within that context, aside from the rare earths challenge, perhaps the biggest theater of U.S.-Chinese confrontation is the battery arms race, which in 2021 not only continued, but punched into overdrive.

As National Mining Association president and CEO Rich Nolan argued in a November 2021 op-ed, while the United States still has a shot at winning the EV revolution, it is currently not only not in the lead, but is “being lapped” by China, which jockeyed for pole position in the EV race a long time ago and has since attained a startling level of “control of the EV supply chain, particularly the production and processing of minerals that make lithium-ion batteries possible.”

As Benchmark Mineral Intelligence data shows, the battery arms race trend was set in motion in 2015 – but today the megafactories are mainstream, with 225 plants in the pipeline as of August 2021.  While the U.S. is no longer a bystander in this race, only very few megafactories are currently located in the United States.

To succeed in this environment, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence’s Simon Moores says stakeholders will need to understand the lithium-ion-to-EV supply chain, its individual sections, and the linkage between them:

“Automakers who quickly understand the importance of these linked steps in the battery supply chain to the quality and cost of their EVs will be the most successful at navigating the next decade. 

For governments, the shifts in the economics of the supply chain […] provide opportunities to create jobs, garner influence over a strategic industry, and establish new trading relationships, particularly relevant as Europe and the United States, under a Biden presidency, will seek to reduce reliance on China as a single point in the supply chain.”

And in stern message for us as we look to the new beginnings of a new year:

“Those who do not see the importance of the lithium-ion battery will have no meaningful future.”

All-of-the-Above and Supply Chains in 2022 – Beyond Verbal Commitments 

2020 was a watershed year to expose the extent of our nation’s over-reliance on foreign mineral resources. Meanwhile, considering the aftershocks of pandemic-related policy measures such as lockdowns, and a new global resolve to pursue a low carbon energy future we feel confident to say that 2021 could go down in history as the Year of the Supply Chain.

While several steps were taken to address associated challenges, pressures will only continue to mount – particularly when it comes to the sought-after global green energy transition. Stakeholders increasingly realize the urgency of the situation, as the mineral resource-focused passages the freshly codified infrastructure bill underscore.

However, many have yet to fully embrace a comprehensive “all-of-the-above” strategy to secure our supply chains.

Consequently, current efforts “might pale in comparison to the scale and pace of mineral demand growth,” as Reed Blakemore of the Atlantic Council lamented in a recently released study on the role of minerals in realizing US transportation electrification goals.

The challenge is too large to address piecemeal.

While recycling, substitution, and partnering with allies should be part of any overall comprehensive strategy, strengthening domestic mineral resource development across the entire value chain must be a key focal point of our efforts if we want to ensure reliable access to the critical minerals we need to meet our current and future needs.

New Years are an invitation to take stock – a phrase with multiple meanings now that our just-in-time economy has rudely reminded us that stocks can be rapidly depleted, and dependencies exposed.  Here’s hoping that as we survey our prospects for 2022, it will be the year we take critical minerals and metals as seriously as Cookie Monster takes the things that make his cookies….  cookies.

If “supply chain” could move from jargon to meme in 2021, maybe 2022 can be the year that strengthening supply chains can move from rhetoric to reality.

The post ARPN’s 2021 Word of the Year: Supply Chain appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Blackmon argued that with the green energy transition requiring vast amounts of critical minerals, sparks would “inevitably fly when the traditional priorities [of the anti-development green lobby and the politics that push a rapid net zero carbon transition] collide with realities on the ground.”

It appears we have reached that moment.

A few weeks ago, the Biden Administration, with the release of its 100-Day Supply Chain Report, embraced an “all of the above” approach to critical mineral resource security. Against earlier concerns that it would pursue a more selective strategy, this approach encompasses both investing in “sustainable production, refining, and recycling capacity domestically,” AND working to “diversify supply chains away from adversarial nations and sources with unacceptable environmental and labor standards” by cooperating closely with allies and partners.

A Financial Times story from earlier this week outlines the “green dilemma” the Administration is facing as it pushes to build out the United States’ rare earths capacity.  Pointing to negative reactions towards a recent announcement that Lynas, an Australian rare earths company, had received a $30m U.S. Government grant to open a new processing facility with U.S. company Blue Line in Texas, the Financial Times story says it illustrates the dilemma President Joe Biden is facing: “while rare earths such as cerium and yttrium are needed for green technologies, the mining and processing to obtain them, which takes place mostly in China, has a reputation for being polluting and environmentally damaging.”

As the piece points out, the United States currently only has one operational rare earths mining site — and no processing capacity, so that currently rare earth concentrate sourced in California has to be shipped to China for processing.

To meet soaring demand and develop supply chains that are not reliant on adversary nations, both new domestic mining and processing capabilities should be boosted, but, as one mining executive quoted in the FT piece put it, while domestic —responsible — mining would be preferable to outsourcing it to China, “[e]nvironmentalists want to have their cake and eat it. They want these materials for the EV sector — but if they’re causing environmental devastation [in China], then how are you going to put them into green technologies?”

The FT piece points to public private partnerships funded by the Department of Energy and the Pentagon to develop new technologies and methods that would extract and process rare earth elements from existing mining waste.  However, while that is a welcome development, “recycle, reuse and substitute” can only be one part of a comprehensive “all of the above” strategy, because the material inputs required to achieve a net zero carbon transition are simply too immense.

Caught in the “green dilemma,” the Biden Administration, according to a consultant cited by the Financial Times, will deny funding to companies that do not have an “environmental element” — this would be a “non-starter.”

The good news is that the mining industry of today is not your grandfather’s industry anymore, and has “recognized ‘[its] responsibility and [is] trying to meet the increased expectations of consumers, society and governments” to contribute towards the push towards a greener energy future.

As such, the industry has increasingly been harnessing advances in materials science and technology to meet the challenge of developing a domestic critical minerals supply while maintaining and advancing responsible mining practices — current examples of which can be found here.

As we have previously stated:

“Recent studies — we featured the latest IEA study here — and policy experts agree: against the mounting pressures of the 21st Century Tech Metals Age, keeping it all in the ground is too simplistic, and a holistic ‘all of the above’ approach to energy and critical minerals is the only viable path to success.”

The post Caught in the “Green Dilemma” of Securing Critical Mineral Resource Supply Chains appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

In its commitment to ensure a stable supply for these tech sectors, the Administration has embraced an “all of the above” approach to critical mineral security, which spans all segments of the supply chain and a broad array of strategies. In the run-up to the Report’s release, there were news reports that the Administration would focus on expanding domestic processing and rely on allies and other nations to mine the minerals and metals. However, both the 100-Day Supply Chain Assessment and subsequent statements by Administration officials like Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm have made clear that the “all of the above” referenced by DoD, or the “wrap-around strategy” Sec. Granholm has touted, would not only include recycling and substitution as well as partnering with close allies such as Canada and Australia, but also new domestic mining — with the caveat that it be “sustainable” and “responsible.”

This is good news for the mining sector, which has 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 and has increasingly been harnessing advances in materials science and technology to meet the challenge of developing a domestic critical minerals supply while maintaining and advancing responsible mining practices.

Over the past few months, ARPN has been highlighting initiatives by mining companies to sustainably green the future, 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. With the 100 Day Report focusing a new level of attention on critical minerals supply chains, ARPN is spotlighting several new initiatives across the entire spectrum of the supply chain, from upstream to downstream.

- DoE has provided funding for BHE Renewables’s lithium extraction efforts from geothermal brine at its operations in the Salton Sea, California, where the almost $15 million award will go towards constructing a demonstration plant to convert lithium chloride into battery-grade lithium hydroxide.

- U.S.-based precious metals producing and processing group Comstock Mining has partnered with others to “deploy novel [clean energy] technologies for gold processing and extraction across its portfolio” and aims to “efficiently reprocess and renew silver and other strategic metals as part of a ‘clean energy transition’ towards ‘climate-smart mining.’”

- Having developed a patented process for recycling cathode materials from spent lithium-ion batteries, Canada-based American Manganese, an industry member of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Institute (CMI), is working with U.S. National Labs to “promote a circular economy for the lithium-ion battery supply chain and set the standard for high recovery and purity of cathode materials from spent lithium-ion batteries.” American Manganese’s battery recycling work even received a “shout-out” in the White House’s 100 Day Report.

- Rio Tinto has announced plans to construct a new plant to recover tellurium, a co-product of copper refining and a material critical to the green energy transition, at its Kennecott mine in the Utah. By harnessing an innovative extraction processes at an already existing mine site, the company is able to reduce waste while adhering to federal and state environmental standards and minimizing the carbon footprint of the operation – achievements that align well with the 100 Day Report’s objectives.

- Epiroc, a Europe-based developer/producer of drill rigs, rock excavation and construction equipment, has updated its North American underground mining market strategy to reflect “increasing demand for electrification solutions that deliver savings on maintenance, ventilation and cooling while lessening environmental footprint.” The strategy seeks to support North American mining operations through battery-electric, zero-emission equipment.

- Clean energy start-up Heliogen has announced a partnership with Rio Tinto to deploy its solar technology at the the largest open pit mine in California, Rio Tinto’s borate project in Boron, California. Using artificial intelligence and computer-vision-controlled mirrors, Heliogen will harness the power of the sun to power operations while cutting the project’s carbon footprint.

- And more is happening at Boron: Drawing on its longstanding partnership with DOE’s CMI, Rio Tinto has begun producing battery-grade lithium at a demonstration plant located at the operation using a new extraction process developed on-site. As part of the company’s full-value mining strategy, the global miner seeks to recover lithium out of waste piles stemming from more than 90 years of mining at the site.

- Barrick Gold Corporation is looking to reprocess tailings at the currently-closed Golden Sunlight Mine in Montana. The project would focus on removing and concentrating sulfur (iron pyrite) —a source of potential water pollution from the mine site. The sulfur would then be sold to and used in gold production by Nevada Gold Mines (NGM). According to Barrick company statements, the combination of rehabilitation with value creation would serve as a model for Barrick’s future mine closures.

Of course, more can and should be done. But, as Secretary Granholm told U.S. Senators last week:

“This is the United States. We can mine in a responsible way. And many places are doing it. And there are some places where there are more challenges, but we can do this.”

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